The Sect (28 page)

“Are you…serious? Please tell me you’re joking.” I laughed wryly, furthering his apparent frustration. “Where can I run, Noah? You find me every time.”

“Why do you
want
to run?” His grip on my wrists began to burn as his tone fell into vexation. “Goddamn it, Keaton!” he scolded me, preventing my ability to immediately answer his question. “If you keep your fucking head down and do what you’re told to do, you will get freedom. I want an answer to my question, and I want it right now.”

“You left me,” I spat, my lip quivering. “You left me there to be violated, knowing what I’ve been through, knowing what it feels like to be raped. You didn’t care. You left me. And then, you made an innocent man admit to crimes you committed and you killed him while I was made to watch.”

“This…is about me?” Releasing his hold on me, he swallowed hard, the confidence is his face and posture completely fell away. It was as if he never could’ve fathomed he’d be a part of the reason I didn’t want to live anymore.

“How can you not think that is? All you’ve done to me? You hurt my body and my mind, and then fucked them both. The horrible thing about it all? I liked it. But…you were right before.” I muttered with my voice quavering, “You’re a coward.”

“I’m the coward?” His voice was low and heavy, threatening me without a single word to uphold his threat. “I didn’t try to fucking kill myself, did I?”

I hocked up spit and spat on him. “You are a disgusting person who doesn’t deserve to exist.”

His head tilted down and to the right. He ran his palm down his face, removing what I left there. His eyes darted to mine, blinking rapidly through the steady stream of the shower, showcasing something I’d never seen before. I thought I’d seen the extent of his darkness, but I was wrong. His fists balled as though he wanted to hit me. “I’m not in the mood to dole out your version of punishment. But…don’t push me; I can easily find a way to hurt you and make my cock hard—before I fuck the defiance and disrespect out of you.” His jaw twitched as he continued to glare at me. It appeared as though he was fighting with the need to make good on his threats. “Radley Starling was far from fucking innocent. He died because he was a bastard.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said, slowly. But I remembered the look on Radley’s face when he left Nadine’s room. I remembered her reaction when I asked her if she was all right. I became cognitive of the real reason; Radley raped Nadine.
 

“Radley Starling drugged a woman, raped her, then strangled her to death. The family of the woman he killed never got justice because they released him on a technicality. But what really happened is his father paid everyone off. He had a chance to redeem himself here; instead, he engaged in the same activity that got him into trouble. Come to find out, Radley had a bad habit; he was just sloppy with that particular girl. She was the only one of his victims that they found. Still want to weep for that bastard now?”

Noah’s view of crime and punishment was so distorted. I could scarcely figure out why he would sit back and be complacent about some of the most heinous crimes committed here, but kill a man for committing the same crimes against Nadine and other women. “It…doesn’t make it right,” I said, uncertainty taking control of my words.

“I no longer give a shit what you think. So you know what? Fuck you, Keaton. I do nothing but help you and you spit in my goddamn face? Did those men fuck you? No. You know why? Because of me. Don’t you dare stand here in the place I risked everything to bring you to and tell me I don’t deserve to exist because you think I wronged you. You are so damn blind. I’m trying to make you look at things in focus, but maybe you really are hopeless.”

I looked down as he wrapped his arms around my waist, holding me as if we were lovers. Holding me as though he was trying to comfort me. It was strong enough to make me believe he’d keep me safe, but too light to make me believe the impossible.

“No one gets to touch you that way.” He held me tighter, his eyes narrowing. “No one else ever gets to stick their cock inside what’s mine without repercussions. Not ever again.”

 
“Reven has control over that, not you,” I said, my words distant and full of disbelief. “You seduce me, make me trust you, and then let me fall from what I thought was my safety net. What are you really doing and why are you here? If you don’t care what happens to me, why bother to help me at all?”

He dropped his arms from me. Taking a step back, he palmed back his moisture-soaked hair. He shook his head as he fought with an unsaid thought. “Finish your shower, then we’ll talk.”

Folding my arms across my breasts, I turned my back on him. “Why didn’t
you
do it? You were hard. I…saw it.” I looked over my shoulder at him. “Why didn’t you do it when he told you to?”

“I’m not into cock parties,” he deadpanned. “I’ve never had to force a woman to be with me, and I never will.” His eyes darted to mine with a piercing intensity. “I meant what I said to you. I’d never—ever—force myself on you.”

For a glimpse of a second, I could’ve sworn I saw compassion from the man I thought was incapable of it. “I don’t believe that, either.”

“It was a test I had to let happen,” he explained, his voice fading. “If he saw me with you, he would know how I felt about you. When I’m fucking you, it’s the only time I can’t hide it.” His words were a contradiction to the man I assumed him to be at times.
 

I blinked so rapidly my eyes stung. Nothing about him made sense or computed. It made me wonder if he was right and my vision was really out of focus. Why was he here if he didn’t agree with what went on? His explanation for why he didn’t do as told, after threatening me often with his brutality, didn’t add up. How could he, a henchman for a madman, stop anyone from being with me? If he was just an employee, how and why did he have that much sway over men who were responsible for reporting to someone with a higher status than he had?

Raising his hands, he stepped backward. “Shower.” Leaving the room, he gave me privacy.

I wasn’t left with anything to wear beyond the terry cloth robe. When I walked in the bedroom, Noah was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring pensively at the floor. “I came here for a purpose,” he said quietly. “I stayed to help someone.”

I took a seat in the nearest chair, keeping my distance from him.

“I didn’t have the greatest upbringing, but I didn’t let it get me down.” He looked up, staring at a faraway place. “Joined the military when I was eighteen. I only did it so I had some way to pay for college because my parents sure as hell weren’t going to help. I was dishonorably discharged and it fucked up a lot of things. I had to make my own way, and I’m not proud of what I had to do to get there. Everything I went through led me here. It was different in the beginning, but when I realized this place created more monsters than it destroyed, I wanted to leave. I did leave for a little bit. I came back for her.”

“Her?” I questioned, puzzled. “Who is she?”

“The answer won’t make sense to you right now. Someday soon it will.”

Sighing in frustration, I fiddled with the belt to my robe. “What happened to you that gave you all of those scars?”

“Obviously an asshole tried to kill me and failed.” He leaned back on the bed. His damp clothes clung to every curve and cut of his body. He combed his fingers through his hair and stared at the ceiling in quiet contemplation. “I was sent to private catholic schools as a kid. I made myself the outcast because I couldn’t be invisible. A teacher there saw through my bullshit and we became friends. He taught me a lot about the world. We’d talk for hours about the Bible and his love for God.” He closed his eyes, almost grimacing in the way he did. “Then he perverted his and my love for a divine being by using it to force himself on me. What’s funnier is that I still pray every night. Real prayer, not the version they do here. Maybe…I’m praying to forget.”

I blinked at him through tears. “I’m sorry—”

He bolted off bed and stood by the window, gazing out of it. “Don’t do that again,” he gritted through his teeth, keeping his back toward me. “Don’t ever fucking give me your commiseration, Keaton. It’s a sure way to piss me off.” He placed his palms on the window and took a deep breath. “I tried to save someone from being brainwashed by this place.

“She believed she had to stay because she thought she was in love with someone here, but he wasn’t in love with her. She thought she could help that person, but nothing she did qualified as help. Seeing him with other women drove her crazy. Her jealousy got the best of her and she retaliated and tried to burn this place down.”

My posture slumped because his story was completely unexpected. Everyone had a past and a story—most weren’t filled with tales of any easy life. “What happened to her?”

“She’s still here,” he said wistfully. “Someday I’ll bring this whole place down. Timing is everything and it’s not there yet. No more questions. I’m done discussing my history.”

As I began to contemplate what he said, my mind ran wild with who the woman in his story could’ve been. “Do you think I’m the one who is going to help you? Is that why you’re helping me?”

“No, I’m helping you because in my own fucked up way, I know I can make you a better woman than you were when you came here.” He walked over to me, standing over me and staring at me. “I brought you to my home, because if Reven found out about what you tried to do when he returns—” He bit his lip for a moment, stopping what didn’t need to be said.
 

“Helping me?” I asked, my voice moderately raised. “Are you really that delusional?”

“When you were homeless, did you ever think about the better times you had in your life? Or did you think about the worst?”

My chin dropped to my chest as I remained silent.

“When I hurt you”—he stepped forward, pinching my chin between his fingers and forced me to look up at him—“what do you think about?”

“I know what you’re trying to say. I—”

“I’m trying to save your soul, Keaton.”

“My soul?” I snorted at the preposterous notion. “What’s left of my soul continues to darken with the infliction of pain.”

“No, Keaton. Pain doesn’t do it, not anymore. What really fucks you up is the way I make you feel. What really makes your soul darken is the way I make you feel pleasure. It’s drawing me. I don’t want to stop. Maybe because I want your soul to be just as dark as mine. Maybe I want your soul so devoid of light it becomes a vortex, consuming everything I fill it with.”

I stood a little too quickly, rendering my equilibrium to go askew. I stumbled away from him. “You…just then—you sounded like Reven instead of Noah.”

His eyes became shielded by the device he used to hide his emotions from me. I was no longer able read him from what little I was able to see. “Right now you’re here and the others have been told the reason; that you needed a more hands-on, personal punishment. I need to make it look real, and I will. Right now—today—I’m not going to do that.”

I stood in front of him, trying to figure out what I wanted to say. He was an enigma wrapped inside a decrypted mystery. How it could’ve been that he shared little tiny aspects of his past with me, and I still stood there thinking I didn’t know him even in the slightest, was a talent that lay at his feet. “I should hate you for what you’ve done to me.”

“You should. You really, really should.” With meticulous movements, he approached me, placing his hands on my hips, and brought me closer to him. “You were right. This place…it gets in your fucking head, Keaton. I wish I could say I was immune, but I’m not. I got off on things I never thought I would. The power trip—all of it. I never regretted my actions. I never had any remorse for anything I did.” His eyes darkened, his features firmed. “Hate me, Keaton,” he said with his voice matching the gloom in his eyes. “I’m just like him; the monster who killed your fiancé and his sister. I’ve killed before—all in the name of making the world a better place.”

“That was different; you were protecting your country.” I don’t know if I really believed my words. I remembered Jeff’s issues and his nightmares. The consequences of enduring a war. He would never talk about it, but I had assumed he’d seen his share of horrible things. “You’re not like him”—I cleared the catch in my throat, feeling the sadness over a friend I lost that I never got to mourn—“the man who did those horrible things to me.”

“Am I really that different?” he asked, his question obviously rhetorical with the flippant nature he posed it in. “Killing is killing. I have to tell you—my remorse? I don’t have any. I have a file on you. I have a file on everyone. I knew everything about you from your course schedule at Georgetown, to what you did in high school that branded you the ‘blowjob whore,’ and what that asshole continued to do to you.
 

“I retained the information to exploit you. I lie to you constantly, Keaton. The sad thing is, I don’t think you’ll ever know what’s true and what’s false about me. Doing the things I’ve done to you and to others? I felt like I had a job to do and I did it. I took a pleasure in causing everyone’s pain. Hurting you? I’ve never felt more gratified than I do when I hurt you. You should hate me because it’s a very dangerous thing to like me.”

“I know what you mean about this place changing you,” I said, my voice broken and soft. A part of me thought I was grasping at straws. Another part thought that maybe I was in the wrong for trying to see the good in a man who may not have had a hint of light inside of him. “I don’t believe you’re like Gregory; there wasn’t anything good to him, just him pretending to be. You are pretending to be evil, but I see little glimpses of the man you used to be. It’s not too late for you.”