Page 14 of Hell and Halos

"I was in the closet, Savannah."

The words land flat. No inflection. It's nothing more than a statement of fact.

"The whole time."

My stomach drops through the floor.

"I saw you grinding on him like a bitch in heat." His head tilts. Just slightly. Like he's studying a photograph he's seen before but is noticing new details in. "I've been watching you for weeks. I've heard every sound you made. Every filthy word you uttered. The way you begged him to fuck you blind and stick his cock down your throat. He took you in the ass, didn't he?" Marcus laughs. "He did. I saw how much you loved it too. Well, guess what?"

I can't move.

"You're going to love it just as much when I do it too." Marcus smooths his cuff and his voice goes very matter-of-fact. "Legion isn't coming back. He went to Cash's office. They're on their way to find his little feral sister." His eyes haven't blinked. "Which means you and I have some time."

He's right.

Nobody is coming.

"Let's go, my love." Soft. Tender. The voice you'd use to coax a child out of a nightmare. "It's time to clean you up and get you ready for our wedding night."

Wedding night.

The two words don't fit together. They land in my brain like furniture shoved into the wrong room and I just—stand there. Staring at them. Turning them over.

Wedding night. Like there's a dress somewhere. Like there are flowers. Like there's a minister waiting downstairs with a Bible, and a pen, and a legal document that says I agreed to this.

Like the last three months didn't happen. Like I didn't post to four million people that I chose someone else. Like I didn't let a man brand my wrist with permanent ink that says PROPERTY OF DEMON in front of forty-seven patched outlaws and mean it more than I've ever meant anything in my life.

Wedding night.

He truly believes it.

That's what makes my knees go soft—not the threat, or the pie, or the shotgun propped against my own closet door like a prop in his little stage play.

It's the belief. The absolute, unshakeable, marrow-deep conviction in his voice that this is real. That we are happening. That everything between now and I do is just logistics.

Marcus is not pretending to be crazy. Marcus is not performing.

Marcus is gone.

He steps aside. Gestures toward the closet with an open palm, fingers together, like a maître d' showing me to my table.

The closet.

I don't understand. My brain stutters on it like a skipping record. The closet. Why the closet? There's nothing in there but⁠—

Oh.

Oh, God.

The elevator.

He knows about the elevator.

The vault. The safe. The climate-controlled tomb where my mother stored every negative, every slide, every secret she ever kept.

That's where he's taking me.

Underground. Into stone. Into a room with one way in and one way out.