The Price of Dying

The Price of Dying
Ivery Clark POV 

I lay on the edge of the mattress, my knees pulled tightly to my chest, staring at the far wall. 

Every breath felt like dragging broken glass through my lungs, but the hollow ache in my stomach was nothing compared to the dead space inside my head. 

The silence was driving me insane. Being left alone with my thoughts was far worse than his physical presence; in the dark, my mind replayed the horror of what he’d done over and over until my skull felt like it was going to crack open.

Suddenly the door swung inward, and Alrigo stepped into the room. I flinched involuntarily. 

He wore a sharp, dark suit, immaculate and pressed, radiating the cold authority of a man who had been handling lethal business all week.

His dark eyes scanned the space, instantly landing on the untouched dinner tray resting cold on the table, and then shifting slowly toward me on the bed.

“I heard you haven't touched a single bite for days." he said, his voice dropping into a quiet, dangerous rumble as he closed the distance between us.

I just stared straight right through him, offering nothing. No words. No defiance. Just a dead, vacant gaze fixed on the wall behind his shoulder.

A sharp, dangerous tension snapped in the air between us.

Alrigo snatched the bowl from the table, crouched in front of me. “Eat.”

I turned my face away, my eyes settling on the cold stone wall beside me.

Suddenly Alrigo caught my jaw, forcing my face back toward him and tried to push the spoon between my lips. “I said eat!” 

Something inside me snapped. My hand flew up and slapped him with a sharp crack that echoed through the cellar.

Alrigo went completely still.

His jaw tightened, a muscle pulsing violently beneath his skin.

I looked at him, my dead eyes meeting his wild, unhinged gaze without a single trace of life left behind them.

“Kill me instead  Alrigo…” I glared at him, “I mean it. If you won't let me die, I'll do it myself. I'll stop eating. I'll stop drinking. Eventually, you'll have nothing left to punish.”

Alrigo's fingers tightened around the edge of the bowl until his knuckles turned white.

“You think starving yourself is going to make me let you go, Ivery…?”

“I don't want you to let me go.” My throat tightened. “I want you to end it.”

Something flickered in his eyes…a brief, sharp flash of raw, agonized pain, so sudden and deeply hidden that it almost looked like a trick of the light.

But then a breathless, terrifying laugh cracked from his throat, sharp and devoid of any real humor.

“Fine.” The word came so quietly that I almost didn't hear it.

He got up from the mattress in one fluid, terrifying movement, his tall frame looming over me like an inescapable shadow. 

“If dying is what you want, then perhaps I should make your wish more interesting," he said softly, his voice devoid of any warmth.

I frowned, a cold coil of unease twisting deep in my gut through the haze of my grief.

“What do you mean..?”

Alrigo smirked, his eyes glinting with a dark, toxic satisfaction. “If you're worried about dying, then you shouldn't anymore, ma bella. You should gladly do.”

A cold shiver crawled down my spine, turning my blood to ice as he leaned down until his shadow completely swallowed me, “Because if you die, I still have plenty of people left to punish, you see.”

What...?

Slowly, deliberately, he raised his hand and began counting off his fingers right in front of my face.
“Your mother.”

A sharp finger snapped up.
“Your cousins.”

Another finger snapped.
“Your friends.” 

“If you choose to leave this world, I will make sure everyone you love follows you.” He tilted his head, watching the color drain from my face with a horrifying, dark fascination.

"You won't be here to see it, of course. You'll be cold and buried in the dirt. But as I rip their lives away, I'll make sure the last word they hear is your name. I'll let them know they're paying the price for your cowardice.”

“No.” The word escaped me as a broken whisper.

“I'll start with the people closest to you.”

"Don't you dare!" The scream tore from my throat, raw and wild, shattering the dead silence of the room.

I lunged toward him, my weak hands grabbing the lapels of his suit, my nails digging into the expensive fabric as a wave of frantic, unadulterated panic swept through my body. "You do not touch them! Do you hear me?! You do not fucking touch them!”

Alrigo didn't push me away. He stood completely still, his eyes humming with a sick, sadistic satisfaction as he drank in the raw horror and desperate fury consuming my face.

"There you are..." he murmured softly, a dark, chilling smile curving his lips. 

Slowly, deliberately, he unclasped my shaking hands from his jacket and stepped back. 

He walked across the hardwood floor, pulled out the heavy metal chair near the table, and sat down. He pulled the dinner tray toward himself, his posture relaxed, like a king holding court over a broken subject.

"You're willing to die for yourself," he said, his voice dropping into a smooth, measured rhythm. “But you're not willing to let them die for you. How noble of you…”

He picked up the silver spoon, stirring the cold soup with a slow, agonizing metal clink that echoed against the silent walls.

He set the spoon down against the edge of the bowl, his grey eyes locking onto mine with an unyielding, absolute command.

"Come here," he ordered quietly. "Eat.”

I stood frozen beside the bed, my chest heaving with ragged, frantic breaths. My teeth bit down into my lower lip so hard the metallic taste of my own blood burst onto my tongue, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the toxic, suffocating rage boiling inside my chest.

I hated him. I hated him with every remaining drop of blood in my veins, with every broken piece of my heart.

"I won't repeat myself, ma bella," he said, his voice dropping into a quiet, icy register, "Come here.”

Every fiber of my being screamed at me to refuse, to spit in his face, to fight back until he put a bullet through my skull. But the threat of my family was deeply ingrained in my bones. 

Dragging my heavy, trembling legs forward, I took a few agonizing steps across the hardwood until I was standing right beside his chair. 

My body shook so violently my knees nearly buckled beneath me, but I kept my chin locked, forced to look down into the unhinged dark of his eyes.

"Sit," he commanded, his voice dropping into that terrifying register that left no room for debate.

“There is no space," I rasped out, my husky voice breaking over the words. "I'll stand.”

A dark, mocking amusement flickered across Alrigo's features. Without breaking eye contact, he patted his firm thigh with two slow, deliberate taps of his fingers.

"Sit here," he signaled, his eyes locking onto mine with an unyielding, possessive weight.

I glared daggers at him. 

Alrigo let out a laugh, “Why? It's not like you haven't spent hundreds of hours in this exact spot before. You must have been trained really well by them. To make a man forget his instincts long enough for someone else to put a knife in his back…why so hesitant now?” 

A scalding wave of hot, sickening humiliation flooded my veins, burning straight through the icy numbness in my chest. 

He was intentionally dragging our sacred past through the mud, taking the deepest, most vulnerable intimacy we had once shared and turning it into a tool to utterly degrade me. 

My teeth bit down so hard into my lower lip that I tasted copper as I glared at him. He was hurting me beyond repair. 

“Come on now, sit.”

Slowly, agonizingly, I lowered myself onto his lap, my body stiff as a board as I surrendered to the humiliation.

We were suffocatingly close now. I could feel the solid, dangerous heat of his body radiating right through his dark suit, his ragged breath brushing warm and heavy against my cold cheek…just like it used to, except now it felt like poison.

Alrigo picked up the spoon, dipped it into the cold tray, and brought it to my lips.

I parted my mouth.

The food tasted like ash, but I swallowed, bite after agonizing bite. 

Hot, scalding tears burst from my eyes, spilling silently over my lashes and tracing wet tracks down my face, dripping right onto his hand.

“There, there... my dear little pet," he cooed softly against my ear, his voice a low, dark purr. "See how easy that was?"

The word pet hit me like an icy douse of water.