Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 130048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
My skin crawled as he pulled me through the open sliding doors, through the decadence of a smoky, sultry billiard room, through a bar with a million colourful liquor bottles, past a glass wall dripping with condensation from an indoor swimming pool, and finally into the foyer where we’d first arrived.
The foyer where he’d admitted he wanted to make me scream because that was what he got off on. Admitted that he wanted my pain. My tears. My fight so he could hold me down and prove to me that I belonged to him, and there was nothing I could do about it.
My chest crumbled in on itself.
My heart crushed beneath an avalanche of grief.
Tingles continued to zap in my fingertips, and I couldn’t stop my tears any more than I could stop breathing.
Henri muttered a slur under his breath as he kept yanking me deeper into the castle, following the directions he’d been given. His black loafers barely whispered over the travertine slabs. His slightly shaking hand squeezed me so damn hard as we bowled through luxury, past tall arches leading into parlours and tea rooms, skirted through spaces large enough for twenty cars, and ignored a few guests with various body parts thrusting into dead-eyed jewels.
A masculine gasp tipped my chin up as we cut through a room full of overstuffed settees and puffy flower-printed ottomans. Ferns and palms grew in huge black pots, and the sweeping glass wall brought the manicured gardens inside.
Through my watery vision, I found the source of the gasp.
Peter.
My heart sank as Henri yanked me through the space, but he wasn’t quick enough. I stumbled as I drank in the sight of Peter kneeling between the legs of an obese white man, his hairy belly almost resting on his thighs all while Peter pleasured him with his mouth.
Our eyes locked for a single heartbeat before the man grabbed Peter’s hair and shoved his face back down.
This can’t be real—
Good people. Kind people. They couldn’t be at the mercy of monsters. It just…didn’t compute.
It’s not right.
None of this is right!
I swayed toward Peter, desperate to help him.
Henri muttered something and pulled me even faster.
The rest of the journey was a blur of stone as we marched down chilly corridors, heading deeper into the citadel.
I couldn’t stop tears streaming down my cheeks. Barely aware I cried. Panicking but numb. Hyperventilating but anaesthetised.
I stopped paying attention.
I dropped my stare to my bare legs and did my best to leave. To meditate my way out of this. To imagine a different existence—
“Fucking finally.” Henri shoved me into a musty, circular space. Letting me go as if my skin still electrified him, he raked both hands through his hair and paced the intimate library.
I tripped to a stop in the centre of the William Morris carpet. My brain latched onto something familiar. The heavily detailed pattern of swirling vines, acorns, and oak leaves. One of Morris’s popular carpet designs—no doubt stolen by Victor just like he’d stolen every inch of this castle from others.
I focused on the carpet.
I clung to that one shred of normality.
I willed it to be any other Sunday where I’d head out, armed with my National Trust pass, and visit any number of magnificent properties. I’d linger in dayrooms and marvel over armouries, only to find myself—like always—before cabinets full of fossils and antique jewelry, peering at precious stones and gems that begowned women used to wear.
Henri kept pacing like a caged beast, throwing a look at the open stone archway.
No doors.
Nothing to slam closed or grant us privacy.
Doing my best to ignore him and whatever internal battle he waged, I lifted my gaze and drank in the sky-soaring shelves. The skylight above held stained glass full of skewered flying horses and bleeding angels. White feathers stained with blood. Cream clouds dripping crimson.
Morbid.
Morose.
Beautiful.
My heart ached as I forced my eyes away from the slaughter of heaven, following the orderly rows of leather-bound texts, gold-gilded spines, and on and on toward more contemporary literature with bright colours and bold font.
There must be hundreds of thousands of books here.
A million tomes full of heartache, greed, and war.
Heavier tears rolled down my cheeks.
I didn’t know why this library made me so sad. Why standing in a room full of the written word and pages with the ability to whisk me away from this lifetime filled me with aching despair.
When I was a little girl, my favourite Walt Disney was Beauty and the Beast—not because Belle captured the heart of an enchanted monster, but because she was so smart. A bookworm in a village of simpletons. A woman hungry for knowledge, all while trapped in a town where doting on an oaf of a husband was her future.
I’d related to her because it seemed her life mirrored those of other women in history. All the manors and strongholds I’d visited had portraits of barely smiling women all subservient to their men. Sitting beneath them with a masculine hand planted on their fragile shoulders—a horde of children playing in their skirts all while the lord of the estate puffed on a pipe with importance.