The Pawn and The Puppet (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 1)

No.

Oh my God. Hot saliva pools under my tongue. My fingernails dig into my thighs. And I’m holding my breath, locking it into my chest cavity. The phantom images of Niles spending three days with a woman with male parts knock around on the inside of my brain. Images of his childhood with his father, watching him chop wood, being tucked in at night. It all came to this.

“Niles—” My jaw won’t close. Shut your mouth.

“The world has become so ugly, hasn’t it? Love has faded like a puff of smoke from a cigar. It dissipated into the wind. After that, I only knew the hideous kind of love. Like the kind from Charlotte. But real love, the soft and sweet and the kind with feathery wings, it rises from the ashes of the ugly.”

My chest burns with disgust. Not for Niles, but for his father.

“I decided then that was my life mission. My sacred duty. To find true love and dig it up from the ashes.” He delicately paints a sad smile on his lips.

“Is that why you started abducting people? Locking them in a basement for days at a time?”

Suseas told me he had been caught harboring young men and women. Only two people at a time in his basement. The women had been raped, and both individuals had been starved.

“I would match two young people. Ensure they were soul mates. Twin flames, if you will. And then I’d capture them, force them to have no choice but to find love in a dark and hopeless place. The man would find his courage to protect the woman he would soon fall in love with.”

“But why?”

Niles slams his fists down on the mattress. “Because I cannot live in a world where the only love I’ve seen is from the likes of Charlotte!”

And that I can understand.

This was his way of coping with the horror that filled his heart.

“Saying this out loud—can you understand why your mind clung to Cupid?”

Niles furrows his brow and hardens his eyes. “You still don’t believe that I am Cupid,” he accuses with a hint of betrayal in his voice.

“Neither do you.”

He quickly darts his eyes away from mine. “What am I, if not love?” He sighs.

“You’re angry and disgusted with yourself,” I answer him. “You have to forgive not only your father but also yourself. I think the person that you were was an immeasurably greater person than this new identity you have given yourself.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Not every person has the courage and selflessness to put themselves into situations that are far worse than disturbing, especially as a child, just to save their family.” I lean in a little closer. “I’d choose that man for my friend over Cupid any day.”

“You think we’re friends?” he asks with a newfound hope glinting through his eyes.

“Depends.” I smirk. “Are you Cupid or Niles?”

He lets his head fall against the wall behind his bed. “Niles.” He sighs in defeat.

“Before I go, can I ask you a question?”

He trails the tip of his index finger over his bottom lip, then nods.

“Can you tell me anything about the thirteenth room?”

Niles grins a dangerously mischievous smile.