Page 89 of Cruel Shame

Father Neapolitan pulled me into his chest. “But she said—”

“Do you want to give her a chance to run away and report you the way Abby did?” Lady Liddell snapped. “This time, there’ll be no way to discredit the girl. You abducted her off the street and injected her with—”

“Alright,” Father Neapolitan said, his voice rising with panic. “What should I do?”

Lady Liddell shouldered off her backpack and pulled on its zip. “The original plan was for Miss Hancock to overdose on cocaine because Myra Highmore wrongly identified Elizabeth as her lover and apprentice.”

I would have rolled my eyes if this situation wasn’t so murderous.

“We can still do that,” said Father Neapolitan,

Lady Liddell pinched the bridge of her nose. “Who strips naked and ties themselves up to take cocaine in the middle of winter? If you hadn’t incinerated her clothes—”

“I said I was sorry,” he whined.

My gaze wandered to the door. Now that I had the knife, I could break free and get shot in the back.

“We’ll have to go with a second plan. I’ll enter the stores and fetch one of their nightgowns.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of pills. “In the meantime, make Miss Hancock take these.”

“Alright.”

Lady Liddell handed Father Neapolitan the gun and placed her bag back on her shoulder. “Don’t do anything inappropriate with her. If the police find any of your DNA on the girl, we won’t be able to protect you.”

“I know,” he said.

The woman turned toward the door, paused, and extracted a water bottle from her backpack. “Use this.”

Father Neapolitan snatched back my coat, shoved me to the ground, and kicked the two bottled to my side. “Take the pills, or I’ll shoot.”

He stood in the shadows with the fading afternoon light glinting against the gun. The angles of his face appeared harsher than usual, making the priest look even more sinister.

“You’re going to have to shoot me,” I murmured. “Or come here and stuff the pills down my throat.”

The hand holding the gun trembled, and his thin chest heaved up and down. My gaze travelled down his thin body to his crotch, where his penis disappeared into a whirl of wrinkled foreskin. This was probably the first time he’d handled a gun, even though he appeared accustomed to raping girls at knifepoint.

“I won’t ask you again,” he said from between clenched teeth.

“The Liddells have stolen from you your entire life,” I murmured. “As the son of the previous Lord Liddell, you should be the one holding the title.”

“Shut your whore mouth,” he snarled. “Or I’ll—”

“You’ll shoot me just like Myra Highmore tried to when Lady Liddell gave her a gun?” I said. “Ask yourself what will happen when they find me dead in your chapel?”

Sweat poured down the man’s face. Even though he refused to admit the truth of my words, I was getting to him. Uncovering all the doubts he must have held over the years about the Liddells, who treated him like a barely tolerated nuisance.

My breath came in shallow pants. Father Neapolitan was just as evil as them, and I wanted to see him jailed or dead for what he did to Mother, but right now, he was my only route to surviving.

Footsteps approached from outside.

“If you let me leave, I’ll forget this ever happened,” I whispered.

His gaze darted to the door. “Who’s there?”

“Who’s there?” Lady Liddell said, her voice shrill. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

I stiffened. What the bloody hell was she doing, now?

Lady Liddell stepped into the attic and clapped her hands to her cheeks, her mouth falling open with feigned shock. “Thomas Neapolitan, what on earth do you think you’re doing?”