Defaced: A Dark Romance Novel Read online

  Ice settled into her veins. What did he need this sort of security for? Part of her wanted to go back to the room again.

  “I won’t do anything stupid,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

  “Good. I will wait here for you. If you turn right and walk around the perimeter of the house, it will take you approximately four and a half minutes to return to this spot. If you are any longer, I will have someone come and find you, and you won’t be happy with the outcome.”

  It suddenly dawned on her that she wasn’t the only one who was a prisoner here. If Monster didn’t allow himself to leave the house, never mind the property, for fear of someone seeing him, then he was still a prisoner, too. His father might have let him out of the room all those years ago, just as he was doing with her now, but Monster still hadn’t escaped.

  That’s why he wants me to heal his face. He’s finally had enough. He finally wants to be free.

  Feeling crazy, she turned back and put out her hand to him. “Come with me.”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “I can’t do that.”

  “No one is going to see you.”

  “You’re wrong. There are more people watching than you can see.”

  Why did she want to help him? Was healing people so ingrained in her psyche that she couldn’t help but try to heal the same man who had had her kidnapped?

  Lily took a couple of tentative steps off the porch, and then glanced back at him. He stood in the shadows, the side of his face with the birthmark almost hidden by the contrasting light. The trick of the light made him look normal—more than normal, heart-breakingly beautiful, and, for once, perfect.

  Lily stepped backward to join him on the porch.

  “What are you doing, Flower?” he growled from the shadows.

  “I’ll walk out when you walk out. Then I know I’ve done my job correctly.”

  “And what if I never leave?”

  Their eyes locked, and she held his gaze. Perhaps she was a prisoner here, but so was he.

  “I’m ready to go back to my room now.”

  Monster (Ten Years Earlier)

  He’d had enough of being kept in this room.

  Monster was a grown man now, and even with the occasional woman brought to him, like scraps of meat thrown at a caged lion, he’d grown restless. His father’s lessons had become pointless. He’d done enough learning; now was the time to start doing. He wanted to put all those hours and days and years of tutoring to practice. He wanted to work side by side with his father.

  He wasn’t a child anymore, and he’d had enough of being treated like one.

  In his frustration, he spent hour after hour working out with the gym equipment positioned in the corner of his room. He ran for miles on the treadmill, his torso naked, until he poured with sweat and his legs trembled with fatigue. But even exhausted, it wasn’t enough to quell the yearning inside him for more. He lifted weights until his muscles bulged and ached, and still it wasn’t enough. Even his beloved books couldn’t bring him peace anymore, and instead of escapism, he found himself yearning for the lives of the characters in the books, which in turn filled him with a bitter jealousy.

  He needed more.

  Despite everything, his father still held a strange kind of power over him. Monster was physically larger than his father now. He’d grown tall and thick with muscle, where his father had aged, lost weight, and grown slightly stooped. But it wasn’t all about the physical dominance his father had held over him all these years. He loved his father, and respected him, as much as he had feared him. He wanted to please the older man, and knew that demanding more would make his father angry. But what other choice did he have? He couldn’t go on like this for the rest of his life. What good was all the education in the world if he went crazy before he ever had the chance to use it?

  Finally, after another lesson was completed, and his father began to walk out the door, Monster got the courage to speak up.

  “Father, I need to talk to you.”

  His father paused and turned back to him. “What is it, Monster? I’m a busy man.”

  “I understand that.” He caught onto a glimmer of an idea. “I thought perhaps I could help to make you less busy. Ease some of your burden.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’d like some responsibility. I’d like to come and help you run your business, and not just with you teaching me, but actually making decisions and helping with your deals.”

  “No. You’re not ready.”

  “I am ready, Father,” he insisted. “You’ve taught me everything you can.”

  “I don’t want to hear another word about this,” the older man said, turning back toward the door.

  But Monster couldn’t let it go now. The damn had been opened, and everything he’d been thinking about recently came pouring from his mouth. “You raised me to be intelligent. You can’t expect me to not want to be more involved or ask questions. I know this situation isn’t normal. I know I’m not normal, but I need more.”

  His father’s already hard face grew as solid as stone. “You need to sit down, son, before I put you down.”

  Monster forced himself to be strong. “You can’t intimidate me anymore, Father. I’m bigger than you are now. I’m stronger.”

  Infuriatingly, his father laughed. “You need me. You know nothing of the cruelty of the outside world.”

  “What about the cruelty of this world? Of this tiny world you’ve forced me to inhabit?”

  “I’ve taken care of you. You have no idea of the truth of what you could have been.”

  “Then tell me! Tell me the truth!”

  His anger rose inside him like a living entity, something independent from himself. He wasn’t a child anymore. He was a grown man, and he deserved to be treated like one. That his father no longer appeared to be the massive, strapping man he once had been suddenly dawned on him. He appeared shrunken, his cheeks hollow, his shoulders stooped.

  “I want to know who I am!” he demanded. “You owe it to me to tell me who I am.”

  His father scowled. “You are the man I’ve made you.”

  “But I want to know more. I want to know my real name—no one is called Monster!”

  “You were. It was the first thought I had the moment I saw you come bloodied and squalling from between your mother’s legs.”

  “You thought I was a monster? Your own son?”

  “You should be grateful to me. If it wasn’t for me, you would probably be dead, or treated like a freak in some dusty little village.”

  “Why? Is that where I’m from—a village? Where is my mother? I must have had a mother, didn’t I? Is she still alive?”

  The other man laughed, the sound cold. “Your mother was a cheap whore. She came to me heavily pregnant and told me the baby was mine. I barely remembered her, but I kept her here until the baby was born—until you were born. The moment everyone saw you, they were horrified by you, even the priest crossed himself. I considered killing you there and then. I thought it would be kinder, but the truth was that I wanted a son. I’ve worked for so much in my life, I wanted someone to pass down the business to. To continue my work. I couldn’t allow my competition and enemies to just take it all away with my death. So I had a paternity test conducted, and it proved you were mine.”

  Hearing the start of his life put into words made his heart swell until he thought it might burst. Part of him, he realized, had wondered if he truly was a monster and had burst into existence from some fiery pit.

  But no, he had been born. Just like any other child. And he had had a mother.

  “Where is she?” he asked again, his voice almost a whisper.

  “Who?”

  “My mother!” The whisper was now a roar.

  He laughed again, and Monster balled his hands at his sides, trying to restrain himself from wrapping his fingers around his father’s now scrawny throat and throttling the life from him.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said
, Monster? Your mother was a whore. Unfortunately, she was also a whore who wanted her child. It was ridiculous of her to think it would work out. She thought I would give her money to support both of you, so she could get off the street and give up the prostitution. She thought you were her way out—as if I would allow some whore to raise my only son.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I killed her. Strangled her to death in the very same room you have been living in for the past twenty-two years.”

  Twenty-two years. At least now he had an age.

  But the news of the coldness of his mother’s murder at his father’s hands left him stunned in a way he’d never imagined. He’d been living in his mother’s tomb his whole life. He’d screwed women—prostitutes like his mother had been—in the same place she had died.

  The sensation he’d experienced only moments before upon learning he’d been born to a woman, that he was whole and human just like any other, evaporated.

  No, he was a monster. He was no better than the cruel, heartless man who stood before him. His simply existing had been the cause of his mother’s death—if she’d never been pregnant with him, she would never have come to this cold place and died at the hands of a man who had no ability to love.

  He wanted to mourn for this faceless woman, for this stranger who had given him life, only to have hers so brutally taken away. He wanted to hurl himself at his father and beat him for all the pain he had caused.

  But a lifetime of training did not end so easily.

  His father spoke. “She had to die in order for you to become who you were destined to be.”

  The possibility of him having a destiny made him look up. “What do you mean?”

  “I couldn’t risk her taking you away. I needed you too much.”

  “What could you possibly need me for?”

  His father stepped forward, and again he was struck by how much he seemed to have shrunk. “All these years of lessons, all the teachings of violence, all the physical and mental tests I’ve put you through haven’t been for nothing, Monster. I want you to be my successor, to grow what I have started and take on the world.”

  “You want me to take on the world when I have barely been allowed to leave my room?” He couldn’t hide the bitterness in his voice.

  “I needed to teach you how to be alone. If the people I work with know about your … disability … they will see it as a weakness. In our business, weakness will get you killed. You have been born into the perfect age, Monster. All of our business can be conducted online, and no one ever need know what you look like. But you must be strong, and fierce and cruel. You must not break for a single person.”

  “Why must I be all these things? Why can’t you do it?”

  For the first time, his father’s eyes cast down. “I am dying, Monster. Stage three liver cancer. The doctors have given me three months, at the most.”

  The room seemed to tilt, as though threatening to tip him off. “No, that can’t be right. The doctors need to do their tests again.”

  “I’ve known for the past six months. I have had more tests conducted than I can count. The doctors aren’t wrong. I am dying.”

  Monster should be rejoicing. Finally, he was going to be free of the man who had beaten him and kept him hidden from the rest of the world. He would be able to do whatever he wanted. But instead of rejoicing, fear held him in its grasp. How could he walk into a world where he already knew everyone’s reactions? He’d come face to face with enough people to know exactly how he’d be treated. Perhaps if he’d had his father at his side—his father as he’d been when he was well, strong, powerful, dangerous—then he would have had the courage to enter the real world and try to make a life for himself, but alone? No, he couldn’t. He would do as his father had asked, and continue to run his business for him. He would stay hidden in this house, and perhaps one day he would find the courage inside himself to leave.

  Fifteen

  The next week passed without incident.

  Each day, Monster came to see her, allowing her out of the room and into the rest of the house. She came across Tudor on several occasions, and met an old Hispanic woman with tiny feet who had not only been bringing her meals, but also cooking them.

  Monster introduced the woman as Marianna. Marianna smiled shyly at Lily, and bobbed her head in a greeting.

  Why was the woman not frightened of him? Just like Tudor, the other woman who worked for Monster appeared to only have affection for her boss.

  Though she still suffered nightmares of her experience when she’d been at the mercy of Cigarette Hands, she stopped thinking about home, and started to think of the room as her room, the bed as her bed.

  Several times each day, she went into the clinic and applied cream to Monster’s skin. He was lucky—as lucky as someone with a birthmark of his size could be—and he was healing quickly. She was even able to see a couple of areas where the blemish had faded.

  It wouldn’t be long until she could repeat the laser treatment.

  She applied another couple of strokes of the lotion onto his skin as he lay in the chair. The gloves she wore allowed her to keep the separation from him that she needed to stay professional, and she gently massaged the cream in so as not to irritate the fragile skin.

  She caught him staring up at her intensely, his eyes seeming to search her face, and she smiled back. “Everything okay?”

  “You’re very beautiful, Flower. Did you know that?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’m very average.”

  “You’re wrong. Your eyes are a mesmerizing shade of green, and I can’t look at your lips without wondering how they would taste.”

  She stopped stroking his skin and snatched her hand away. “I think we’re done for today.”

  He sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “You don’t like me talking about your lips?”

  “Not like that.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Like what?”

  “Like you’ve given the taste of my mouth a lot of thought.”

  A smirk twitched the corner of his lips. “What if I have?”

  She turned away, busying herself with tidying. “Then stop it.”

  She sensed him rise from the bed and come to stand close behind her. She could practically feel his body heat, and his breath against the back of her neck.

  Lily’s heart pattered and she froze, her breath held, waiting for his next movement. His hands lifted and hovered beside her arms, and she held her breath waiting for him to touch her.

  What would she do when he did? Would she push him away, or fall into the arms of a monster?

  The clinic door burst open and Tudor flew in.

  “Sir,” said the older man, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry, but there’s a disturbance outside of the walls.”

  “What?”

  “Gunfire. I believe the cause is that problem we’ve discussed.”

  Both men exchanged a glance, and then looked toward Lily.

  Lily stared between the two men. “What’s happening?”

  Monster lifted his hand to stop her. “Stay here.”

  “No, wait!”

  But they weren’t listening to her anymore. Both men hurried from the room, heading down the hallway at a run, so she could hear their feet hitting the hardwood floor.

  What the hell was going on?

  She wasn’t going to just stay hidden away. Her stomach churned with nerves. Could this be someone here to help her? Perhaps the police had finally managed to track her down, and they’d sent in a team of armed men to rescue her. Did she dare think such a thing?

  Lily crept out of the clinic and peered around the corner, looking down the hall in the direction the men had gone. She strained her ears, trying to pick up on anything that might give her a clue as to what was happening, but with the lack of windows or external doors in this part of the house, it was impossible to hear anything.

  Moving as stealthily as she could, she ran toward
the front of the house.

  Marianna hurried past her, heading in the opposite direction.

  “Marianna, what’s happening?”

  “No, no, Miss,” the older woman cried, her voice filled with fear, her dark eyes wide. “You must hide!”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  Marianna grabbed her hand and started trying to pull her back down the hall.

  Lily pulled back on her. “No, I can’t.”

  Marianna gave her one last look, as though she thought Lily was crazy, and then dropped her hand and turned and ran away.

  “Shit.”

  She looked back in the direction the cook had run, and then back toward the front of the house. Yes, she could go and hide, and a big part of her wanted to do exactly that, but the other part of her would never forgive herself if she missed an opportunity.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Making up her mind, she ran to the entrance hall, coming to stop at the bottom of the staircase. The front door was wide open, and Monster and Tudor were nowhere to be seen.

  The rapid chatter and pop of automatic gunfire came from outside, but it was distant.

  They were outside of the walls.

  The last thing she wanted was to be shot, but if Tudor and Monster had gotten outside of the tall, barbed wire walls, then so could she. She ran out onto the porch. Sticking close to the side of the house, she ran around the outside, ducking low.

  Monster has gone outside.

  He wasn’t completely terrified about being seen. The revelation confused her, but she couldn’t waste time on it now. She needed to find a way out of this place.

  The property was huge. Her lungs were burning from the exertion, her thighs aching from crouching low as she ran. Where the hell was the gate?

  She heard shouts, and the gunfire stopped.

  Had the shots come from that direction? Now the noise had stopped it was hard to tell, but she could see trees beyond the tall wall, and she didn’t know if they would morph the direction of the sound.