Page 87 of At Your Mercy
“What?” I forced the word between my teeth. My mouth was dry; my head thudded. The ropes bit into my wrists when I shifted. “What do you need toclear up?”
He crouched to my eye level, the smile never leaving his face. “I didn’t kill his family.”
The room that had been full of air thinned. My brain misfired—misheard. “You—what? Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“No, no.” He shook his head like a man correcting a misremembered anecdote. “But I don’t think my dear Ro’s been completely… forthcoming with you.”
I swallowed the hot, sour bile in my throat. “Bullshit.”
Elias’s smile became predatory, stretching all too wide across his face. “Oh, I did kill the children,” he said casually, like he was telling me the color of the curtains. “But the parents, no.”
“Sure, they just shot themselves then? Is that what you want me to believe?”
“Can’t you see where I’m going with this?” Elias rose an eyebrow. When I didn’t respond, he rolled his eyes. “I’ll spell it out for you. Ronan killed them. Shot them both dead.” He brought his hand up in a gun-like gesture. He mouthed “bang, bang” as he mimicked firing.
“No. You’re lying.”
“Am I?” Elias asked, eyes glittering. He moved a foot closer, until his face was only inches from mine. “People do… reckless things when they’re terrified.”
My hands curled into fists against the ropes. The men with him stood on either side of the stairs, looking bored.
“What did you make him do?” I asked through gritted teeth.
Elias’s smile dropped a hair, his eyes dimming as if he were relieving the memory.
“What. Did. You. Make. Him. Fucking. Do?!”
His eyes flickered back to the present. “I didn’t make him do anything. He had a choice.” Elias’s voice was almost reverent when he said it. Like he was talking about a holy moment. “He had a choice, Wesley. The kind of choice that defines a person forever. He just chose to survive.”
“Shut up,” I hissed, but it came out weaker than I wanted. The words scraped my throat raw.
Elias tilted his head, amused by my reaction. “Oh, you don’t want to hear it? That’s sweet. Protective, even. But you need to understand who you’re dealing with.” His eyes flicked upward, to the ceiling above us. “It was right up there, in the living room. He was crying, shaking, but he did it anyway.”
“You’re lying,” I bit out again. “You fucking sadistic bastard!”
“I was there,” Elias said simply, his voice like velvet over broken glass. “I stood right beside him. I told him to stop if he wanted. He didn’t.”
My stomach twisted. I didn’t want to believe him—wouldn’t—but there was something in his tone, that steady confidence of a man who never bluffed unless he could back it up, that made my blood run cold.
“I gave him an opportunity. If he were to kill his parents, he and his siblings would be spared. That was his first major lesson under my tutelage. Never trust anyone. Promises mean nothing in the real world.”
“What the fuck,” I rasped. My pulse thundered behind my eyes. “What the fuck?! He was fuckingnine.”
“Yes, he was pretty young,” Elias laughed under his breath, shaking his head. “God. Do you have any idea what it’s like, watching a boy realize what he’s capable of for the first time? The look on his face when he pulled that trigger?” He smiled faintly, almost fondly. “It was beautiful.”
I yanked at the restraints until the chair creaked under my weight, a wild heat clawing through my chest. “You twisted fuck! I’ll kill you!”
“I think,” Elias said, leaning in to whisper in my ear, “that I showed him the truth. That love is meaningless without suffering. That death isn’t tragedy—it’s liberation. He learned that here. In this house.”
I jerked, my teeth bared, but I couldn’t move fast enough to land a bite.
“I’ll kill you,” I seethed.
And I would, if I survived this.
What I needed was to get untied, but the rope bit into my wrists every time I checked the knot. My mind ran through the toolbox of things I knew to do in a bad situation: wiggle, shimmy, work the knot, use friction, wait for an opening.
Elias chuckled, “It would be fun to see you try.”
