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Suddenly, I stopped caring about the men hanging on the other side of the cell. Their pain meant nothing to me in the face of Leon’s relentless agony. He was still being haunted by the past.
“Let’s go,” Leon said through clenched teeth as he suddenly grabbed my wrist.
Kicking the door open, he dragged me out of the cell.
I stayed silent as he led me back up the staircase and into the upper floors of the manor. Leon was fuming mad but there was nothing I could do or say to ease his pain.
Reaching my room, he shoved me inside and locked me up again.
24
Lucia
I stared listlessly at the ceiling in my room. I’d already taken a cold shower in the tiny closet-like bathroom. The torn pants stayed abandoned on the floor as I couldn’t knot them well enough to keep them hanging around my waist.
Without a phone or a TV, I was forced to lie around with nothing to do, but pay attention to the thoughts haunting me. Until now, I believed Yakim to have suffered the most brutal torture at Callum’s hands. His beautiful, angelic face was ruined to look like a beast’s and it was something he’d been cursed to live with for the rest of his life.
Leon’s scars ran deep into his soul. Watching his brother’s face getting carved was a trauma he was still dealing with. Yakim’s mutilated face was a constant reminder, haunting him every moment.
His obsession with the butterfly knife finally made sense to me. Having it spinning between his fingers was a kind of comfort for him. He was fine as long as he was doing the cutting and stabbing.
Past memories filled my mind. Yakim, Leon, and Mikhail were always together. They never let any jealousy come between them. Whatever they had, they always shared.
Even me...I realized.
This was the very quality that attracted me to them. I yearned to be with them, hungry to be a part of their family.
I have a chance now, I decided.But, how do I get through to them?
Leon wanted me to witness the torture so I wouldn’t miss the monster that lurked behind his beautiful face. In a way, he wanted me to know he was worse than Yakim, that I shouldn’t shun his brother for the scars that marred his face.
I wished I could make him see that Yakim didn’t disgust me anymore. My feelings changed the moment I realized he was the boy I fell in love with.
The sound of a click distracted me. Next second, the door was being pushed open.
Sitting up, I gathered the blanket around my waist.
Lilja strode inside, her gaze immediately falling on the pair of ruined black trousers she’d loaned me yesterday.
“What the fuck did you do?” she muttered, moving forward to pick them up. Holding the trousers, she inspected the sliced waistband. “Do you have access to weapons?”
I scoffed. “I’m not even allowed a fucking toothbrush here!”
She snorted. “Someone’s in a bad mood this morning. I thought all that whiskey would mellow you down.”
“Leon happened,” I said, frowning. “He...I...” I struggled to find a word that described what he did to me this morning. Not only did he cut and stab a man before me, he even had me panting like a bitch before the bleeding, dying man.
Lilja’s expression turned grim. “What did he do?”
“He stabbed a man and slit his gut,” I said in a dead voice. “Then, we fucked.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Too much for you to handle?”
“The act should’ve been the most shocking part but it isn’t,” I confessed. “Leon’s trauma still hurts him. He hurts people to avoid feeling like a victim.”
“You understand him, then.” Her dark brown eyes gazed into mine. “No wonder they were never able to give you up. They’d rather do things the hard way than let you go.”
“They’re keeping me prisoner because they want me to hate them,” I said bitterly. “Sometimes, it works.”
