Page 73 of Midnight Torment

“You could try phoning him, he’s best friends with your niece’s husband.” I sounded significantly braver than I felt. All I had left was taking on Jordan’s persona of an asshole.

Dante’s lips twitched and he leaned back in his chair. “You have spirit. That’s not something that survives on my island. We aim more for obedience.”

My shoulders straightened and I held my head up. I’d heard the guys talking. I knew who this man was and the atrocities he had committed. “People like you make me sick,” I said in a low voice. “You take the innocence of life and pollute it. I don’t know what Jordan’s done to offend you, but I know that he has a good heart and would do anything to protect his friends and family.”

Dante practically roared, his hand swiping the contents of his desk onto the floor. He slammed the palms of his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “Your precious Jordan cares about no one but himself and that rotten bastard who instilled him as his heir. The two of them have created misery and terror wherever they go for over twenty years. It’s time their reign of horror came to an end and the Berkeley line was exterminated.”

If he wanted to terrify me, then he’d completed his mission because right now it was all I could do not to pee myself. “Horatio seems harmless, he just wants grandbabies to spoil.”

Dante thumped his fist into the table and my eyes cut to the gesture. Danger emanated from him in waves, his top lip curling in disgust. He prowled around the desk and all my fake bravado evaporated.

“Horatio Berkeley is the worst type of villain in this world. He hides behind his high walls and makes the world think he’s the next coming of Santa Claus.” Dante sneered, looming over me, his hands grasping the arms of my chair. “He is the devil incarnate and every time he breathes, it is an atrocity against the human race.”

He left me speechless, all his hatred crashing into me as he stared mercilessly into my eyes. There was incandescent rage in his dark gaze, but something more than that. Unbridled pain that was etched onto his soul.

My brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand. Jordan—”

He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Jordan has had wickedness thrust upon him from his sire. There is no redemption for him.”

He spun so suddenly I cowered back in the chair.

“Jordan fights his demons every single day,” I whispered. “I understand his pain of not belonging. At least he had three years when his parents loved him.”

Dante turned as still as a statue. “Take her away, Amy. Show her how we treat guests who have displeased me. “

The crazy bitch from the plane grabbed my hair and tried to trail me out of the room. My survival instinct activated, and I kicked her, the heel of my palm striking up to knock her teeth together. “Get you fucking hands off me,” I hissed.

I didn’t even see Dante move, but my back was pinned to the wall, his strong fingers wrapped around my throat. “I could break your neck right now, but that is not enough to torment Jordan. The image of your broken and bloody body will be engrained in his head before he dies. He will know the pain of loving someone and that person being a sacrifice to cleanse his sins.” He brought his head down until his nose almost touched mine. “He will finally atone for the sins of his ancestors.”

“No.” I tried to shake my head. “Please, no.”

He nodded to men standing at the door. “Take her away. She’ll understand soon enough when she’s delivered to Jordan’s doorstep.” He waved the psychobitch toward the door. “Amy.”

The two men grabbed me under each arm and dragged me out of the room. There was little point in fighting as I was still weak from the drugs and lack of food. I’d been given one bottle of water since my abduction.

The room had a surgical bed upright against the wall, extensions on either side to make a crude cross. They strapped my arms with leather restraints, another held my middle, one held my neck. My legs were put into a spreader bar. When they were finished, the only body parts I could move were my fingers and toes.

“You should have stayed a little miss nobody,” Amy taunted, her finger tracing from my throat to my belly button. “Jordan is the one man who sets the boss into a rage. Those sins are now transferable to you like a sexually transmitted disease.”

She tapped the wedding ring on my finger, her head canting to the side as she pouted. “Maybe I should cut the finger off with it still attached and send it to him?”

“You seem to be a little obsessed with my husband. Maybe you should find your own man…” I cocked an eyebrow because there was no way I would let her know the fear that pulsed inside and threatened to consume me.

Caine had gone through a scenario like this, he had warned me that part of the torture process was intimidation. They wanted me to crumble, they craved to see me cry. All my tears had been shed in the past and I refused to give this psychobitch the pleasure of my pain.

She stepped too close for comfort to me. “This organisation is based on vengeance and the suffering of our enemies. Dante has watched over the Berkeley heir like a dark angel, because he alone is allowed to claim his soul.”

“Why?”

Her laugh reminded me of when we were little, and someone ran their nails down a blackboard. “Our reasons belong to the wronged alone. Dante knows why he demands a blood sacrifice. I do not need to question that.”

Her grin bordered on maniacal, and her nails trailed over my sensitive flesh. She turned and almost skipped to the back wall, which had instruments found in the Twilight Rooms hanging from racks. She lifted a flogger and made her way back to me.

“In another lifetime I used these tools for pleasure. Then evil took that life away from me, so now I use them to enact revenge.”

I closed my eyes and pursed my lips together, taking myself mentally from the room. In my head, I saw Jordan’s smile, his scowl when Simon our squirrel invaded his window box, the way he looked at me when he told me he loved me for the first time. Every one of those expressions formed a brick in the wall I built around myself. I refused to flinch, to give any indication that she was hurting me.

Amy gave a scream of frustration, throwing the flogger on the ground and stomping across the wooden floor to grab another instrument of torture. I didn’t open my eyes, because the world I existed in was far from this room.

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