Sinful [malexmale]

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Christmas came and went.

I didn't attend the party Abel had planned with everyone. I felt like a foreigner that didn't belong there. I had used the excuse that I was ill and just stayed cooped up in the closet all day with a bottle of wine and a piece of cheesecake that had been served at the party.

Valentine's Day came and went.

There was another party, but I didn't attend that one either. I told them I was too busy training, which in a way I was. I had spent the entire day in the gym until my muscles felt like rubber and my bones brittle. I'd worked myself to the bone and passed out, sleeping through dinner and breakfast the next morning.

I had gained plenty of weight back. Most of it was muscle. I looked fine and healthy. No one would have ever guessed that I spent an entire year shackled inside a tent, half starved. My clothes fit me just fine now, not too small and not too baggy. I'd finally gotten the uniforms I'd had Hannibal order, so I set them aside for Friday.

Friday I planned to go back home.

I had managed to make everyone in the mansion believe I was improving. I let people touch me now, even though it made my skin crawl and my stomach knot up. I had learned to keep the pain and agony off my face. I hadn't quite mastered the art of a plastic smile just yet, but I was improving day by day. I had gotten into the groove of typical conversation.

Akin would ask me every morning how I was doing and I'd throw him a plastic smile and tell him I was doing much better. And he believed me.

Everything was running smoothly. Within a week, I would be walking toward the entrance to Hell and no doubt I would run into a couple of the Sins that guarded its entrance on a daily basis. I would approach and appear casual. I was either going to get one of two reactions, or both knowing how emotionally unstable they all were.

They were going to cry or they were going to be angry.

Or both.

I wasn't sure which one was worse, but I would take it in stride. I would tell them I was fine and safe. I would go to the palace and let my family know I was alive, and safe.

And when they asked what happened to me, I would tell them I escaped Julius's custody and had spent my time in hiding, watching and studying his movements in order to draw a map of attack. I had no doubt they would be enraged to know I wanted to go after Julius... But I didn't really give a shit.

I wasn't ready to kill Julius, and I knew that.

While I didn't believe Hannibal's words of not being a whore, I did believe that once I'd grown numb to the nightmares, I was ready to take on Julius. If it meant that I would die in the process, then so what? As long as I took that bastard with me to whatever afterlife awaited me.

Until then, I was going to keep my eye on Julius and his movements. I was going to follow him to the end of the earth, then push him over the edge.

No one would ever know what Julius did to me. No one would ever know about the hundreds of men who'd come to me during those nights to use me. No one would know about the mistreatment. That was a secret I would carry to my grave.

After all, if I could hide the fact that I'd had the flu for nearly a month, then I could easily hide the abuse. I wasn't going to dump all my problems on people who could do nothing for me. I'd already tried to seek comfort, but it did nothing, except remind me that no amount of gentleness could erase the scars on my body.

I paused to look into the full length mirror that stared at me from across the shower as I stepped out. Scars that criss-crossed my back from claws ripping my skin, a barbed whip even. Faint, but visible puncture wounds from all the times Julius had torn into my throat for a feeding. The scars that ran the length of my neck where the gold collar had dug into my throat when someone pulled on my chains. The scars scattered across my wrists and ankles from the shackles, the scar across my palm where I'd grabbed the heater. There was even a faint scar in the corner of my mouth. I wasn't sure if it was from the times people had bitten me when they kissed me, or the bites they put in my mouth to keep me from screaming when they had a hangover.