SWNOVELS Sinful: Chapter 13
I licked my lips, my ugly story tainting my tongue. I never spoke of my mother. It wasn’t a memory I liked, but the guys knew it, so my girl should also know it. I shoved all the shit out of my head that had transpired with Sirena moments ago. It was a subject I’d broach another time. Right now, I needed to focus on this moment.
“My father forced my mother into marriage,” I said in a soft voice. “They attended Mayfair together. She was beautiful. A singer. A scholar. A model. Hair like spun gold. Eyes green like emeralds. When I was a young boy, I’d stare at her beauty, mesmerized by it. I’d never seen a woman so beautiful in all my life.” I thumbed Sirena’s bottom lip. “Until I met you, that is.”
Her soft, warm breath blew across my thumb.
Fuck, I wanted to devour her.
And maybe that monster she’d let out earlier. I’d love them both to fucking death without a second thought.
I pushed those ideas from my mind, deciding I needed to speak to the guys about what I’d witnessed with her. Ashes hadn’t been overreacting the other day when she’d tried to go naked out the front door.
She really had snapped.
I tabled those thoughts once again and focused.
I cleared my throat.
“My mother never willingly loved my father. He demanded it, but she was strong-willed. A fighter,” I continued. “I was born out of hatred and rape.”
Sirena’s colorful eyes filled with sadness and pity.
“Do not pity my origins, specter,” I warned. “I do not.”
She bit her bottom lip and remained silent.
“My father wanted an heir. Needed one. He wanted a son, of course. Men are stronger than women in his world. I came into the world born of hatred, yet my mother loved me despite it. I grew with her guiding me. When I was five, my father bought me a rabbit for my birthday. I loved that rabbit. I was young, but I knew what love was. My mother had taught it to me despite the dark world we lived in.”
I let out a soft breath, hating this next part.
“For my sixth birthday, my father gave me my first hunting knife. He commanded me to kill my friend. When I refused, he beat my mother in front of me. She told me to stand my ground. To defy. I did, my body shaking with fear. He would kill my mother, though. He knew how much we loved one another. Perhaps he was jealous of the small family we’d made without him. Unable to handle watching my mother being beaten, I knew I had to make a choice. My mother or my pet.” I paused, inhaling, the ugly memory stirring my hatred. “We ate my kill for my birthday dinner. I threw up the entire night, my broken mother consoling me in her bed.”
I paused, focusing my mind to continue.
“After my sixth birthday, my father began my training. Weapons. Fighting. Killing. I killed my first person when I was six and a half,” I murmured. “A man. I didn’t know him. My father’s men held him down in a white room. My father stood over my shoulder and whispered into my ear, ‘Pathetic. Disappointment. Weak. Dante, you’re fucking weak. No one will ever love you. Your mother will grow to hate your weakness.’ His words hurt me. Angered me.” I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached. “I was young, Sirena. I didn’t know how to control myself. I didn’t know how to ignore the pain he inflicted on me. So I took my knife and pushed it through the man’s throat. It wasn’t easy. He screamed so fucking loud until it gave way to gurgling. His blood stained my hands. My clothes. The white room. For once, I felt a freedom I’d never felt before. A way to express my anger. An outlet.” I breathed out. “My father made me pick the part I liked the most on the man. I chose his arm. He had a tattoo of a skull on it. My father made me carve off that part of the man. I did so, then. . .” I sighed. “He taught me to eat everything I killed. It started with the rabbit.”
Sirena’s soft fingers brushed along my cheek. I took her hand in mine and kissed each delicate finger, my throat tight.
“I did not mourn that man’s death nor the end of my innocence. I didn’t know how to. I was a child. I knew it was wrong, but it made my father proud, so I took refuge in that, hoping he would be kinder to me and my mother. I embraced that freedom and let myself go. It upset my mother. She fought with my father. He hit her. Hurt her. My hopes were crushed. When I was nine, she defied him by trying to escape with me in the dead of night.” I let out a sad laugh.
“We didn’t make it to the front door before he was on us. He dragged us back to my mother’s bedroom, where I was forced to watch her punishment. Beaten. Stripped naked. Fucked.”
“‘Do you love your mother, Dante?’ my father screamed at me. ‘Do you love her?’”
I stared at Sirena, noting the sadness swimming in her colorful eyes. Telling my story wasn’t something I ever longed to do, least of all to her because I knew she was someone who felt too much, and god help me, I didn’t want her to hurt. I didn’t want her to pity me or feel sorry for me. I didn’t deserve that from her.
“He screamed that at me on repeat until I answered and said I did. He made me move closer. He said it was a lesson in love.”
My throat tightened more. The words were hard to say, the memory still raw and bleeding even after all these years.
“H-he said he’d kill her if I-I didn’t. . .” my voice trailed off. “I couldn’t lose my mother. I loved her. She was my whole world. My protector. She lay in that bed, her eyes barely open, her face swollen and bruised.” I released a shaky breath. “She was so cold. She didn’t fight the punishment. She let it happen, but I remember the tears that mixed with her blood as I did it. As I-I. . .” Fuck, saying the crime was painful.
Sirena’s brows were knit so tightly.
I could do this.
My mother would tell me that speaking my feelings would heal me. It had been many years since I spoke of my feelings in such a way. I figured my soul was an ugly scab that would never heal, truths or not.
“I beat her,” I whispered. “He told me to pick my weapon. The only thing I had was my belt from my pants.” I cleared my throat. “Her blood. Her tears. Her-her body. He forced me to hurt her. He guided my hand. He said it was a glimpse of my beginnings. He said it would make me stronger. I still remember the way she sounded as I cried from my position. The pitiful, soft cries. The way she reached for my hand when it was over to hold me. To comfort me.” I shook my head, hating the fucking memory.
“When father was satisfied with my job, he pulled me away from her and finished her punishment. She didn’t make the same noises for him that she’d made for me. For me, she’d given me muffled cries of pain. For him, she screamed.” I paused. “I didn’t want to hurt my mother that day, specter. Don’t run away thinking that. I simply had the sampler my father wanted me to have so I could be damaged further by his sickness. So I could see my future. So I could have a taste of power. The next day, he gifted me Stitches, my broken and torn brother. It made life easier. I had someone besides my mother because looking at her made me sick to my stomach. What I’d done was wrong, but I was a selfish boy wanting to keep my mother with me. Wanting to save her and always have someone who would love me no matter what.”
I rubbed my eyes, the familiar nausea twisting through my insides.
“I continued killing for my father. I’ve killed so many people, specter. I became bored with it. Hundreds of the dead haunt me. I was growing up and had friends, though. Troubled ones. Stitches. Ashes. Sin. We became broken brothers bonded in our collective darknesses. I took solace in having them in my life. They broke up the ugly I lived in.”
“Mother wasn’t happy yet. She would kiss me goodnight each night and make me promise I’d get out. When I screwed up, my father would use her to punish me. I watched my father hurt her. I stood by, unable to do anything because it would end in her death. Death would have been a far kinder fate, but again, I was selfish and wanted my mother with me always. Love can make us do ugly things. Keeping my mother alive was one of them.”
I took a moment to brush a stray piece of Sirena’s dark hair away from her face.
“My mother took to staring into my eyes while she was beaten. Tears would streak down her cheeks. I’d cry with her. As I got older, her punishments, and mine, were worse. Men. So many men wanted her. She was so beautiful,” I whispered. “Even beaten and broken, she was still so breathtaking. My father sold her to high bidders. The men would have their way with her and then spit on her after. I’d watch her curl into a ball and cry softly. I’d go to my knees and hold her hand through her tears, just like she’d do for me.”
“‘Dante, please,’ she’d whispered to me after one brutal night where four men had their way with her. They’d hurt her beyond words. She screamed. Threw up. They’d run their cocks through her sick and fucked her with it. And I was forced to fucking listen to it. Sick. Sick. So fucking sick.” My voice shook. “The night that happened, I realized I was hurting my mother more than saving her. There wasn’t a way out for either of us, and she didn’t deserve to suffer as she had been. So I went to her room later that night and lay in bed with her. I was fourteen.”
I drew in a breath in a pathetic way to calm myself for the next part.
“I whispered to her that I loved her. I kissed her. Held her. Told her how much she meant to me. I wanted to show her the love she deserved.” My hands shook.
Sirena widened her colorful eyes at me, her lips parted.
“She whispered against my ear, her voice barely there from all her screaming. Her words were, ‘Please, moy sladkiy d’yavol. Please.’” I cleared my throat. “I would never deny my mother the things she wanted. I moved so I was over her, her body beneath mine. ‘Let me go. Please. Let me go.’ I can’t tell you how many times she’d tried to end her life over the years. Slash her wrists. Try to hang herself. Each time, she’d be found and brought back into our dark world. But I could give her this. I could do this for her.”
I reached into my boot and pulled my hunting knife out. I ran the blade along Sirena’s jaw, along her soft lips, down her throat, and over the tops of her breasts. Her breathing picked up.
“I kissed her forehead again. Her cheek. Held her. And pushed my blade deep inside her body. She let out a soft moan against my skin. She gripped my arms tightly as I continued to cling to her as she clung to me. As I continued to kill her she whispered, ‘Kak ad menya blagoslovil’. It means, how hell has blessed me.” I took a moment to collect myself before continuing with the next part.
“She stilled beneath me, a tear working its way from her eye and dripping onto her white pillowcase. Her blood was everywhere, even in my mouth. Beneath my nails. On my face. I swallowed it, hurting so much I didn’t think I’d ever heal. But it was the smile on her face which let me know she was at peace. That I’d finally saved her. I’d done it. I’d given her the freedom she’d been desperate for.”
“With that in mind,” I continued softly. “I took my knife and chose my favorite part of her. That was the rule. We take our favorite parts and make them part of us by feasting. I took my mother’s heart. She was pure in heart. My father came in and caught me holding it in my hands, her body having grown cold. I’d taken great care of her during my operation.”
“‘It took you long enough.’” I stopped moving my knife along Sirena’s breasts. “That’s what my father said to me. He walked past me and looked down at my mother’s mutilated body before he crawled onto her and fucked her one last time. I watched, satisfied she wasn’t there to hurt anymore.” I let my knife fall away from Sirena’s soft skin.
“He took her tongue, and we ate together that night. I went back later and took some of her skin and made my bracelet with it. Her heart is part of me now. I joke and tell the guys she’s my soft spot. And the bracelet. . .” I shrugged. “I always liked the way her skin was so soft. I like knowing she’s still with me, no matter how small a piece of her.”
Sirena’s bottom lip trembled. I moved my knife back to her breast and stopped it over her heart.
“If you ever run from me, I will find you and cut your heart from your chest and devour it,” I husked out. “Then I will fuck your dead body before I preserve you for eternity. Because my love is forever, specter. When I vow it, I mean it. I fucking love you, and you will always be mine.”
A tear leaked down her cheek before she was crying silently.
“Don’t cry,” I whispered. “And don’t run. I told you it was a bad story.” I licked her tears away, relishing the way she tasted.
I thought she’d pull away from me. I thought she really would run. Instead, her lips met mine in a deep, soul-shattering kiss. My knife fell from my hand, clattering to the hardwood floor at my feet. The monster inside took over, and I pushed my way into her tiny body, her scream of protest against my lips.
“Mine,” I growled as I forced my way inside. “Your body belongs to me. Not him. Get him out of your fucking head.” I shoved upward into her, making her tears flow harder. “This pussy is mine. Not fucking his. I will fuck you until you forget that night. Now fucking scream for me, Sirena.”
And she did.
Music to my fucking ears.