Page 45 of Iridescent
I take another step back, toward the door. My legs are unsteady, but I keep my head high. I don’t look away, even when my vision blurs.
“How do you fix this?” I repeat, almost contemplative. “You can’t. You did this, Xavier. Now you live with it.”
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
“And if you’re so desperate,” I say, my voice hardening even as it shakes, “bleed.”
He blinks, as if he misheard me. I bite back the sob threatening to escape and elaborate. “Bleed, Xavier. And remember why.”
With the last of my resolve, I turn my back on him and walk away.
Chapter 9
eight years earlier
“Iam not going in there.”
Theo lets out a humorless sound. “Yes, you are.” He gives me half his attention, his signet ring flashing as his thumb moves across the phone he has been married to since we left campus. “Don’t be a coward. We’ve been through this, Xavier. You keep your mouth shut, take the punches, and show Dominic Karras you’re a son of a bitch made of titanium.”
I suppose the last part is true. My father spent years testing what I was made of with his hands, his belt, and whatever else happened to be within reach.
Theo prods the back of my calf with the toe of his Chelsea boot. “Get yourarse moving.”
I remain in place.
More accurately, I can’t. My feet stay rooted to the wet pavement, my body resisting the order my mind keeps giving it.
I wish there were an equation for this. A discernible sequence of numbers, variables, probabilities. Something I could solve on paper and be done with. I am good with those. People, less so.
When Dominic Karras agreed to hear my pitch, I knew there would be a catch. Men like him do not open doors without leaving splinters in your palms. I assumed the worst meant the usual ritual humiliation: drinking, laughing at inane jokes, kissing the asses of men whose luck had convinced them they were gods.
Not this.
I lift my gaze to the two-story building in front of us and suppress a scowl. Red brick, darkened by rain. Narrow windows filmed with condensation and old grime. A black door set behind iron railings. Above it hangs a wooden sign carved into the shape of a bell, its clapper painted red.
The Ninth Bell.
My skin crawls at the sight of it, distaste bittering my tongue.
Pain itself doesn’t unnerve me; it is too intimate a language to frighten me.
What I can’t stand is the room behind that door. The sweat. The noise. The bodies. Men converting violence into a test of worth, brutality ennobled by ropes, rules, and an audience.
My father had the same proclivity, though he never needed ropes to dignify it. Walking back into it feels tantamount to returning, obediently, to a room my body spent years learning how to survive.
Thunder rolls across the smog-heavy sky, ushering the scent of rain, petrol, and impending doom through the street.
Theo sighs beside me, the blue-white glow of his phone lending his frustration a harsher edge. “It’s twelve sessions, not a goddamn public execution.”
“Comforting distinction.”
The sardonic note in my voice makes him scoff. He spares me a glance, his mouth curving into a grin. “Steady on, you tragic little wuss.”
I deny him the dignity of a response.
Unlike me, Theo Mercer thrived in places like this. Violence didn’t make his skin crawl. Very little did.
While I had earned my place in LSE’s master’s program through grades, scholarships, and part-time jobs that left no room for sleep, Theo had arrived with a monogrammed trunk, a vintage watch, and the untroubled conviction that charm could be used as both apology and weapon.
