“I’m not capable of love,” Xan admitted with a one-shouldered shrug as if it didn’t bother him. “But if I was…”
Dante snorted, the burst of sound breaking the tension between them. He walked forward to join his brother at the island and poured some whiskey into the second empty glass for himself before taking a seat. “Not sure what you know about love, brother, but that energy between you and your wife? That’s about the definition of it.”
They were both quiet, looking down at their glasses before Xan’s face cracked at the edges with condescending mirth. “Dante, the armchair phycologist.”
I watched in awe and humbleness as the two great men laughed softly, gruffly together at my kitchen table. What I had witnessed wasn’t just a beautiful conversation about two men loving me, but a détente between brothers who never should have been at war in the first place.
And that made me smile as I picked myself off the floor and went back to bed.
Cosima
The auction was held on Christmas Eve—of all places—at a bridal warehouse owned by one of the Order members out on the farthest edge of Queens. The middle of the space had been cleared, but the elegantly clad gentlemen sipping glasses filled with hundreds of dollars’ worth of scotch and champagne were hedged in on all sides by rows of virginal white garments that signified a woman’s hope, love, and happiness.
The contrast was not lost on me. In fact, I couldn’t swallow the bile as quickly as it rose in my throat, and I had to duck between a chiffon gown and a classy silk sheath to purge my belly of acid before I could continue through the rows to the main event.
There were half a dozen platforms in the middle of the room, placed in front of a wall of mirrors so that the slaves for sale could be demonstrated from all angles to the gentlemen’s best advantage.
The auction hadn’t commenced yet, but I could see Sherwood, who had come all the way from England, speaking with an elderly man too old to walk unassisted let alone fuck a poor slave, beside a podium placed in the center of it all. Simon and Agatha had found out that Sherwood, still the head of the council, had come to perform a ceremony to transfer power from the American head of the organization—most likely the decrepit man he now spoke to—to his successor.
I was happy about this, if you can call the feeling of dark pleasure curling through my gut happiness. I hadn’t confronted Sherwood yet on my crusade to right the wrongs done to me by the Order, and I wanted that chance before we snuffed them out for good. I wasn’t exactly sure when the moment had happened, the switch had flipped, and I’d gone from suffering victim of my circumstances to righteous avenger. However, it had happened I was grateful for it. There was still a balance to maintain. I didn’t want revenge to make me manic and cruel or victimization to make me weak and bitter, but it was an easier line to find now that I knew both could be had. Living four years in the perpetual gloom of my past, fighting tooth and nail to live an ordinary life under that strain had been no life at all.
Now, standing amid men who had always been predators, knowing that they were currently lambs awaiting slaughter, I felt oddly filled with peace.
The end was near.
Alexander hadn’t wanted me to go at first. There was no real need for me to be there when Xan would be the one bugged with audio/visual to document the entire exchange.
But one look at the resolve hardening my expression like some grotesque Venetian mask had changed his mind immediately. If anyone knew the power of vengeance, it was my husband.
There were women allowed in the American chapter of the Order of Dionysus, but only a few milled about the warehouse, dressed to impress, haughtier than the men as if it proved their worthiness to be there. In the culture of the Order, I suppose it did.
They made it easy to fade into the background. I was outfitted in a black leather dress that parted down the front with a single zipper that started at a deep dip between my breasts and over the knee leather boots so that the only visible skin I showed was a square of tanned flesh on my upper thighs. I caught looks from some of the men, but they were wary, assuming from my Dominatrix-style outfit that I wasn’t exactly to their tastes.
I wandered to the back hallway that led to the room where the slaves were kept and beautified for auction. Apparently, most of the Masters found their slaves this way and had since the slave auctions in England during the 1800s before slavery was—ostensibly, at least—abolished.