Page 49 of The Castle (Endgame 3)
I’m horrified to realize that he is excited. His dress slacks bulge at the front with an erection. Pain makes him hard. The threat of it turns him on. And it would be sexual, with all that history behind us. Now that I’ve remembered all of it, I can’t stop thinking about it.
Are they getting bigger, little girl? One day they’ll fill up your hands. Like your mother’s. She’s very lovely. All the men look at her, don’t they? One day they’ll look at you like that.
One day they’ll fight for you the way they do for her.
I understand how Pandora felt, bearing the burden of knowledge that she didn’t ask for, pained with the vengeance of gods who created her, her very existence a punishment.
A footstep echoes from behind me.
Without turning I know who it is. “You never left?”
His voice is gentle as he takes the iron poker from my hand. “Never.”
Gabriel pulls me into his arms as I begin to weep. He heard everything, so he knows what happened to me as a child. That the only person I learned to trust was the one who betrayed me, that the only man who cared enough to try was a dangerous predator. That hurts the most. Not that he loved me, in his dangerous and obsessive way. That he was the only one.
I sob against Gabriel’s shirt, dampening the fabric beneath my cheeks. “Please.”
“No, Avery.”
“He deserves it.”
“Yes, but I heard you before. That it would destroy me to torture him. To kill him. And I have more experience in the language of violence. What would it do to you?”
“I need to be destroyed,” I beg. “Like the marble. Broken apart.”
He pulls me in closer, cradling me in his strong arms. “I’m not going to let that happen. Understand? You’re mine to protect. Whole. Strong. Beautiful, inside and out.”
“I’m not whole,” I say, breath shuddering. “You know what he did.”
“He toyed with a child. He played with your mind. He fucked with you the way he fucks with everyone, because he’s sick. It doesn’t taint you, Avery. Not even the auction can do that.” He pulls back, pressing the back of his hand between my breasts. “None of it touches you here.”
“I blocked it out,” I whisper. “All of it.”
“I know.”
“How long?”
“I knew you were hiding something. From me. And from yourself. I didn’t know what.”
“Go away, Miller.” Jonathan Scott rattles the chains, making a creaking sound. “She and I aren’t finished here. You can have her when I’m done with her.”
Gabriel’s eyes are bronze and dispassionate as they gaze at Scott. “Your hold on her was over the moment she left that house. You’re done with her.”
“Oh, and you have a hold on her? I can make her do anything I want. You think I talked to her for years and never figured out how her mind works. Never planted any little trap doors.”
I stiffen. “What are you talking about?”
“Why do you think you went to my son for help? Of all the gin joints in all the world? You went to Damon Scott, a man who isn’t exactly known for being charitable.”
“That was a coincidence.”
“Or your obsession with Greek mythology.”
“No,” I whisper, but I remember now. The stories he would tell me.
“Oh yes. How the titan god Cronus was so paranoid and so jealous that he feared every child would take his throne. So every time his wife gave birth, he swallowed the child.”
The words spill from me, more wound than salve. “When she gave birth to her last child, she gave Cronus a rock swaddled in cloth instead. And she sent the child away.”
“That god grew up to be Zeus.” Jonathan Scott laughs, his eyes crinkling in a way that reminds me of Damon. “I was never humble enough to be anyone else.”
“You’re not a god at all.”
“Of course, he was raised by nymphs, fed honey and milk on the island of Crete. A much better childhood than a ward of the state in an experimental mental institution.”
I swallow hard. “You grew up here?”
“Home sweet home.”
“That’s sick,” I whisper.
“How many children do you suppose Zeus had?” he says, studying me. “They would be demigods. Half human. Half gods.”
I take a step back. “You’re lying.”
“Perhaps,” he says vaguely, but I know the truth.
I was never my father’s daughter.
And maybe he always knew that. Some part of me always knew we were different, always knew that I had to work to ingratiate myself with him, learning chess and hosting his parties like the perfect daughter. It doesn’t even matter now.
Because the man who is my biological father? He’s the one who whispered to me about women’s bodies. He’s the one who taught me how to make myself wet.
Taste it, he said from the darkness of night. I’m sure you’re sweet.
