Page 24 of Scent of Desire
“It’s a regal name, and truly accurate.” Radcliff analyzed each trait of my face as if he wanted to memorize every inch of it.
“Yeah, it was.” I chuckled, my hands traveling over the grass. “What about you?”
“I don’t have such stories to tell.”
“Well, can you at least tell me a story?” My eyes begged him.
“I know about the three gates of hell.”
Well, it wasn’t what I was expecting, but that’ll do.
“It’s more of a legend,” he added.
“I want to hear it. Can you tell me?” I posed my head on his lap and laid the rest of my body on the grass in the fetal position, watching the sun descend on the water.
His body tensed, probably not used to this display of affection. Nonetheless, he rested his hand on my arm in a protective touch, shielding me from the outside world and demons wanting to consume me. I bit my lower lip at the feel of his growing hardness inside his trousers.
“The first one,” he started, “is the cliff of Ravencliff. The legend believed it’d be a direct gate to the Styx River. The second is an island named Erebus, whose tall walls surround the island and keep anyone from accessing it. The only way is through a cave engulfed underwater. The swamp does not descend until each full moon, leaving a passage for the most courageous. It houses the most sumptuous jewels. And the last one, undiscovered by anyone, is a garden hosting a pomegranate tree, where the fruit would deliver direct access to the elysian fields.”
“Do you think they exist?” The rays tried to persist, the sun almost hidden by the ocean. “Are all those legends real?”
The darkness swallowed the rays, letting the twilight rise.
“Oh, they’re very much real.”
“Have you heard?”
Hugo and I both knew I had. The news was all over France. I lit my cigar and inhaled its bitter, metallic taste of ashes. It was like inhaling the essence of death itself. It calmed down the fresh swell of anger, its grayish color warming my bowels. Carmin’s enterprise would launch a new branch in their luxury pseudo-empire.Jewels. They’d collaborate with celebrities, using the most superficial of marketing strategies.
That was his way of responding to the way I’d bought out parts of his silent investors and made it my personal goal to make his enterprise crumble to dust. It was the first step of the bloody revenge I had concocted for him. I’d take everything from him. Slowly. Painfully. Evilly.
We started a game of chess, but only one of us had the potential for a checkmate—with only a king and a queen, I could annihilate all of his pawns combined.
For the third time, he had hurt Lily, and for that—
“Radcliff,” Hugo called again, calming the hot torrent of lava ravaging my cells.
The smoke twirled across my office, like shades whispering to me the steps to follow. The reflection of my sinister snarl on my club’s window was just a glimpse at the onyx horror dripping down my blood.
I would destroyThe Emperor.
He craved to take what was mine.
He was playing god in my element.
“Well.” I stubbed the cigar out on the floor, crushing it under my shoe the way I’d crush him. It left a hole in my wooden parquet, but all I saw was his grave.
I cracked my knuckles and faced Hugo. Impatient as always, he tapped his foot nervously on the ground, his arms crossed in anticipation of action, his eyes ready to latch onto anyone sinful. Not that I’d complain—his beryl-red energy was useful to me.
“That would be a shame if he didn’t have any supplier to deliver him either precious rocks or metals,” I stated with calmness, knowing that the perfect revenge was demanding patience and a dark, twisted heart.
After all, Carmin was all about luxury—when it wasn’t for sex affairs, child labor, and slavery. Point was, I owned most of the mines, from gold to diamond and minor qualities. This meant he’d have to find another supplier other than me, and hell help me, he wouldn’t find any.
“What are you talking about?” Hugo leaned on his shoulder on the window with an angry wolf’s smirk on his face.
“What if the rocks were to be missing, let’s say at the port.” My stare hardened at Hugo, all my demons ready to be freed, flying to Earth to inflict sweet chaos. “After all, piracy still does exist and is more present than we would think.”
“Piracy?” Hugo raised an eyebrow.
