I made myself put one foot in front of the other and descend the stairs.
In the back of my mind, I knew this probably wasn’t a good idea. I couldn’t unsee anything I might see down there, but the thought of going back to the room without seeing Mikhail, without proving to Mikhail that I could handle his darkness, was so much more important than my needing to bury my head in the sand.
Perhaps that was why he had been avoiding me.
He didn’t think I could handle it.
The thought made me more determined to prove him wrong. To show him where I belonged: right by their sides.
My foot landed on the last of the stairs.
I wiped my clammy hands on my jeans and looked around.
It was exactly as I had imagined it, but not really.
It was huge, but not as well lit.
On one side of the wall, just adjacent to the staircase, hung all sorts of medieval-looking weapons. I let out a small shudder and looked away once my eyes connected with metal hooks that seemed to be stained with something dark.
Slowly, I walked further into the room and found myself in front of a narrow hallway. One side of the wall was nothing, but the other side was a stone wall lined with about four or five wooden doors. Each door had a small window closed off with bars …
Cells.
I was looking at jail cells.
And there were men inside.
My breathing grew erratic when the first of the men—the prisoners—noticed me.
“Hey, look it here. A pretty girl.” He moved toward the metal bar, causing a loud clanging noise to come out of the silence.
I jumped back.
There was something wild about the man. He was clearly injured, and it seemed he was functioning on nothing but adrenaline at this point.
“The Mute Princess has decided to grace us with her presence.”
It took me a second to figure out how the man knew who I was. My eyes widened, and I moved back a step.
This was Tommaso … my father’s lieutenant.
And he was captured.
I looked around and realized most of the men down here were Father’s men.
I kept walking, ignoring Tommaso calling out for me, and his crude insults that were followed by a cackle of laughter from some of the men. I moved to the furthest cell. There was a noise coming out of there. A rhythmic whooshing noise that was followed closely by a pained moan.
The door was slightly open.
I told myself to move away.
I wasn’t going to like what I saw; I knew it.
I couldn’t help myself when I pulled the door open all the way.
It took a while for my brain to catch up to what I was seeing.
Mikhail was standing in the middle of the room in nothing but jeans and boots. He was shirtless, his upper body sweaty from the exertion. In his hand was a large black whip, and hung up by his arms to the ceiling was Henry Ramos, shirtless and bleeding …