“Seek revenge.”
“Revenge?” I asked, not bothering to hide my shock. “I can't wait for this explanation. So tell me, Elias, how did Elizabeth earn glory if she was intent on seeking revenge? They’re contradicting terms, are they not?”
“Sure. Today, and to those with a small mind and self-righteous sense of morality.”
Extending his arm above his head, Elias tipped the jug and the first drip of water hit the top of my head. It trickled through my hair, ran down my forehead, and I shook my head.
“What was that for?”
“I’m stimulating the senses, Trixie. You’re on high alert so everything I say is being absorbed like a sponge, and you’ll remember everything later. It’ll play on loop like a movie you can't switch off.”
“You’re evil.”
“Perhaps.” Another trickle, slow and annoying, hit my head, dripped from my chin and onto my chest. Elias watched it absorb into my bra before he looked at me again, his mouth twitching with amusement. “So revenge. Hundreds of years ago, we didn’t just throw people into a prison and hope confinement would prevent them from going out and doing it again. We took action. We taught criminals that their actions wouldn’t be tolerated, and if they continued to sin, they were removed from the situation to keep the population safe.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Ah, so what GRIT does is confuse revenge and murder with justice. It’s shameful that you can't see that you are criminals, too.”
“Do you think the city has a choice?” The water was a constant stream now, slow and uneven, and it was torturous. I was cold and shivering, I was wet and sticky; I was on edge and frustrated. But still the flame of desire wouldn’t die, no matter how much ice cold water Elias poured onto me. “Do you think that, right now, we have a choice but to eradicate the people stealing lives like it’s their God-given right?”
“Do you?” I spat, shaking my head like a dog, my teeth chattering as I continued, “Don’t you think you’re doing the same damn thing?”
“Maybe. We’ll return to this lesson later, when your parents enter the story.”
“My parents?”
“Yes. They’re part of it too, my difficult student.” My stomach turned again, but it wasn’t with the butterflies of want. It was with the sickness of betrayal. It was the pain I felt knowing he was keeping vital information from me. “Perhaps I would have told you their story today, but since you cannot comprehend the information I’m so kindly offering up, we’ll save that as a reward another day.”
“Fuck you.” I pulled on the chains again, my forbidden hunger for him extinguished, my fight or flight response kicking in and telling me to choose both. “Fuck you and fuck your bullshit lesson. Let me go.”
Elias shook his head and took a deep breath through his nose.
“I warned you.” He softened a little, his brows lowering to shelter his eyes as he looked away from me and reached into his pocket. “I have to do this, Trixie. I warned you that this wouldn’t be pretty and I asked you to watch your language.”
Retrieving the blindfold, he’d stolen my vision with earlier, he extended it between both hands and then shoved it between my lips. I fought and I tried to bite him, but he was too strong. His biceps stretched beneath his shirt as he used the blindfold to gag me, and used his weight advantage to keep my head back, to overpower me so I no longer had freedom of speech.
Gagging her wasn’t the most unfair part of what I’d done to her today, but it had to be done, because I couldn’t bear to hear the fear and disgust in her voice anymore. I’d warned her and I’d hoped it would be enough for her keep her mouth shut, just while I told her the story. And then I would have gladly answered her questions and elaborated on the information I’d provided without covering all the bases. Now she had no choice.
I’d pushed her over the edge. That had been Ambrose’s plan. He’d told me to feed her information about her family and use it against her because, ultimately, her parents—her real ones—were the reason why she was here, and it was the only story she really wanted to discover.
She’d been disobedient. She’d shown me she didn’t have an open mind and she wasn’t prepared to unlock the bolts on her moral compass to allow me to update it with a few new directions. So now I had to make her listen. I’d taken everything away. She couldn’t run, no matter how much I wanted to encourage her to, before she was in too deep to get out. She couldn’t touch me, no matter how much I wanted to feel her small hands on my hard body, her softness against my aggression, her purity against my evil. She wanted it too. I hadn’t planned to arouse her, I’d just wanted to disable her and snag her attention, but I couldn’t stop pushing. I couldn’t stop testing her limits and seeing if she’d match mine. And now she couldn’t talk. I couldn’t imagine spanking her every time she spat venom at me, or an expletive that I found so sexy no matter how disrespectful it was…and I couldn’t imagine sliding past her swollen lips, the way her tongue might write her name on my shaft, marking me as hers—the way she might swallow me down and allow me to live inside her like my soul wanted to.
Fuck. I had to stop this, but I couldn’t. I needed her to beg me to stop, but she couldn’t do that—and I knew she wouldn’t even if I hadn’t taken her right to speak freely away.
I continued to water torture. I’d done it for thirty-six hours once, sitting on a wooden chair in the dungeon with nothing but drip after drip on the top of my head to keep me company. I wouldn’t subject Trixie to a punishment she hadn’t earned, but I would show her that I had the ability to torture her. I had the right to break her.
When the jug was empty and the tears streamed from Trixie’s eyes until I couldn’t tell which evidence of moisture she’d produced and which was my doing, I placed the jug on the floor and stood in front of her. I wanted to unshackle her ankles and wrap her legs around my waist as I drove into her, but instead I reached for the knife in the back pocket where the feather had been.
It was time to make her bleed.
“Have you heard of the term ‘lingchi’?” I asked.
If she had, she showed no signs of its relevance, and I wouldn’t torture her with another story about her parents when I couldn’t give her the full truth. I didn’t want to cut her, either. She didn’t deserve to bleed, and like I did for making her cry, I’d have to pay for each drop of Ashford blood shed. Eventually Trixie shook her head, as another tear fell and I moved to catch it. She flinched, her eyes widened and a muffled squeal left her when the blade touched her skin as I wiped her cheek.
“I told you I won't hurt you.”
I had promised that, and I’d been lying. I had intended to hurt her, because I was supposed to cut her. Do you understand the mind fuck now? I was supposed to cut her, yet I’d pay for making her bleed. I was supposed to upset her, yet I’d be punished for making her cry. It didn’t matter which way the coin landed, we were doomed in a world of contradiction. I had to remember my goal, why I hadn’t rebelled in a way I wasn’t supposed to, as well as failing to rebel in the way I should have. I hadn’t touched a woman beyond what my own desires led me to do. I hadn’t followed Eli’s lead, I hadn’t clawed at deviance—not because I hadn’t wanted to, or wasn’t expected to, but because I’d been waiting for Trixie. I’d been unknowingly waiting for her to explode into my life and now she had, I couldn’t see a way out. We were either going to get through this together, or one of us was going to fall victim to history that dictated every action we took and every choice we made.
Crouching in front of her, I kept my vision trained on her as her bloodshot eyes dripped with tears and pleaded with me to stop.
“Third principle,” I said, pinching a piece of the denim painted onto her body. “Integrity.” I pressed the blade against her jeans and tore, ripping the material and exposing Trixie’s knee. “I know what you’re thinking. Where’s the integrity in you being a crying, quivering mess, and me causing that mess, but it’s the bigger picture we need to look at. Always the bigger pict
ure, Trixie. I need you to remember that.” I cut the denim on her other knee and she flinched, so close to the blade it made me gasp. “Stop moving,” I growled. “GRIT is always honest with each other. Our principles are strong and whether you believe them or not, you will live by them, and you will keep the integrity of your name. We do not claim to be innocent, but we are set in our ways and we believe we are doing the right thing. We are doing the right thing, and you have to believe that.”
Her eyes narrowed marginally. She was challenging me, silently arguing that she’d believe whatever she wanted and there was nothing I could do about it. She was right…but if she rejected the family and refused to join us, there would be consequences I didn’t want to think about her facing.
I continued to cut her jeans, tearing down her calves before I worked on her thighs. I knew exactly what the punishment stood for, although it was usually done to a naked body and was a slow, gruelling method of capital punishment. When she had symmetrical slashes along the bottom of her legs, I slashed her thighs, gradually making them higher in the race to expose her to me. I wanted to see her, I wanted to touch her and smell her and taste her.
Trixie cried out, slamming her head back against the frame and after looking at her face to see the shock and pain register in her cosmic eyes, I looked down to see blood seep through her jeans. I’d cut her. I’d nicked her thigh, so close to where I wanted to impale her with the weapon I’d been born with, and she was bleeding. Another sin.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, tearing my shirt off to cover the wound. “Trixie, I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t stop. I had one more rule and then I would beg her for forgiveness—not for the last time, but I needed it. Her leg would need to be tended to; I would have to clean it and stitch it, but for now I had to leave her to bleed and move onto the most important principle. The one that answered the question we were always in search of the answer to.
Why were we here?
“The final principle is a simple one,” I said, standing up and taking her jaw in my hand. I forced her to look at me, absorbing every ounce of pain I saw in her eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you…” I bowed my head. “Again. I’m not going to hurt you again, and I’m sorry I broke my promise. That wasn’t part of the plan.”
Granting her some mercy, I removed the blindfold from her mouth.
“Please just listen to me.” She nodded, licking her lips clean from the tears lining the top of her mouth. “The most important principle of GRIT is trust. The bottom line is that we weren’t here in the fifteenth century. We cannot know for certain the things that we preach. We just have to trust in our ancestors. We have to trust that they were right and we are following the right path, laid out before us.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice a defeated whisper. “Why continue this? Why not evolve into something that doesn’t have to do this, whatever this is?”
“There is always a hierarchy. There will always be a social ladder and no matter how hard we try, it’s rare that we change our position on that ladder. Elizabeth was at the bottom, but she stood amongst those at the top, until they banished her for empathy and not following the rules they set her.”
“Why? How?”
“I will tell you over dinner tonight. We’re not bad people, Trixie. We don’t do bad things.” I scratched my jaw and backtracked. “Yes, we do. We don’t argue that what we’re doing isn’t bad. We just believe that we do it for the right reasons.”
“What are the bad things?”
“We control crime. We’ve always had a foot in the door. Look at Richard, he’s the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, an institution that is failing and crumbling inside its own barricades.”
“We’ve always been on both sides of the coin?”
Finally, she was asking the right questions. My methods, although harsh and cruel, had worked. She’d relented; she’d given up the fight—at least for now—and was interested in the story I had to tell. Finally, her curiosity was leading us in the right direction.
“Yes. We’ve always maintained power within the judicial system. We were part of the creation of the police, and we were involved in the Act that locked the city. We’re trying to contain crime instead of allowing it to spread.”
“By torturing people?”
“Sometimes.” I shook my head. “Our methods may be outdated, but they work. One day you’ll have access to the statistics, but you’ve been out there in the darkness. You know it’s out of control. You’ve had your life threatened on more than one occasion.”
“I have.”
“So you understand.”
“I’m beginning to believe I might, one day. But I’m not sure I will ever believe this is right.” She looked around her. “This is disgusting. It frightens me and it repulses me. I love my family, but I don’t want any part of this.”
I nodded once, knowing her refusal to cooperate wouldn’t be received well when Ruby or Richard checked in later. Elizabeth had been banished for refusing to follow the rules and although we protected our family and everything it stood for, I couldn’t promise Trixie wouldn’t suffer the same fate as our creator.
“Just don’t make a judgment now.” I took a step closer. I was crossing so many lines, as Trixie’s naked stomach tensed against mine when I touched her. Her chest rose and fell against mine and I knew if she were not chained down, she would have run. She was disgusted by me and, much like she wanted to be a million miles away from the city, she wanted to be a million miles from me too. “I need you to just not fight this.” Her safety depended on it, but I couldn’t tell her that. Not now. Not when her imagination had gone into overdrive and I’d shown her a glimpse of the nightmares that didn’t always disappear with sunrise. “Please. Just pretend I’m just a man and you’re just a woman, and we have a secret we need to keep for now.”
“What’s the secret?”
Desire. It had returned to rim her eyes in the dark purple I wanted to swim in until I drowned. Arousal. I felt it in the warmth that covered her skin and transferred to mine. Want. I saw the flush on her pale cheeks and watched her lick her lips. Even here, even now, after everything she’d seen and all the things she was yet to receive an explanation for, she wanted me. She teased me; she threatened everything I’d worked for, because I didn’t know how much longer I could resist her for. The secret should have been an affair. It should have been a love affair, a passionate affair; one of blazing lust, blossoming trust, and happiness. But it couldn’t be any of those things.
“Your feelings towards Sector 1, and everything I’ve told you today. I should report back to my father—and yours—and our grandmother, and you’ll be questioned too. We need to keep what’s in your mind a secret.”
“Why?”
“I understand your hesitation and trepidation. Our fathers and grandmother do not promise the same patience.”
“What does that mean?”
I couldn’t tell her. How could I tell her she’d been chosen? How could I tell her that when she was born, her father signed her life over to us, in exchange for his? A promise we’d failed to uphold? There was nothing I could tell her now that wouldn’t shatter her already fragile soul.
“It means it’s time to get out of here.”
Kneeling at her feet, where I felt comfortable, noble, like I was supposed to be here, kneeling before her, I freed her ankles from the cuffs, watching her roll her feet around the joints. She flexed her toes and I would have given anything to make them curl under different circumstances.
“Don’t run,” I asked. Begged. Pleaded. Hoped. I didn’t want to have to punish her if she made me chase her. “Okay?”
She nodded, deviance flashing in her violet eyes, and I contemplated leaving her chained to the cross. If I did, I’d snap. She’d threatened my control for far too long, and I was about to willingly slash through it so I could have her.
I stood up, running the backs of my fingers up her legs, over her stomach and along the lengths of
her arms, leaving faint red tracks with my fingernails. Trixie shivered and I swear I heard her sigh with pleasure as her legs clamped shut. I unlocked one wrist, waiting for her reaction before I released the other one. When Trixie was free, with her back to the cross, she heaved for breath, deciding on her next move. My chest filled with pride and threatened to combust when she did nothing…and then she held her hands out towards me.
“I’d like to blindfold myself, please.”
I couldn’t process one second of what I’d discovered today. We tortured people. We punished people because we believed we had the right to, based on some screwed up motivation from a woman scorned.
I didn’t understand.
History was made every day. There were millions of people with millions of ancestors who’d lived in a time when every action was questionable in today’s world. Why did my family believe they had the right to enforce fifteenth-century laws in 2016?
I secured the blindfold and felt the itchy blanket assault me as Elias placed it on my shoulders. My body was hyperaware of everything, including the pulsing pain in my thigh where he’d cut me. He’d cut me. Something else I couldn’t understand.
He hadn’t meant to do it. He’d been distracted by looking at me, absorbing how much I’d wanted him, even when he had me chained to a wooden cross and was shredding my jeans. I still wanted him. I wanted him then and I wanted him now. I couldn’t understand why, as much as I hated him for what he’d done to me and everything he stood for, I couldn’t extinguish the way I felt about him. I couldn’t force myself not to react to his closeness and hope for more.
But gentle wouldn’t do now. His hand softly on my elbow as he led me out of the dungeon wouldn’t soothe me. His bullshit softness wouldn’t make the ache go away. The anger I felt towards him wouldn’t be eradicated by me having to trust him not to lead me to another torture chamber.
“Step,” he said, taking some of my weight as he eased me up onto the first step.
Elias (GRIT Sector 1) Page 15