Page 36 of Trapping His Angel
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ihadn’t seen Benedikt for hours. Not that I missed him. Not that I wanted to see him. Being around him was confusing, to say the least. I wanted him. But I wasn’t certain I should have him. The voices that plagued my mind, telling me I was a bad girl, continued to lay siege to my head.
I couldn’t remember my family, but if they wanted me, they had done a piss-poor job of protecting me.
I stepped out of the room I had at the Bratva mansion. I guess it was something like a headquarters for the organization, and I didn’t understand why Benedikt forced me into my room. The other girls were sequestered together in an entirely different wing.
Why me?
A hand grabbed my shoulder, and I let out a shudder in alarm. Fear raced through my veins as I spun around. It took a minute for me to let out my breath when I saw it was Valentina who stood before me.
“Follow me,” she whispered.
I’d never questioned her before, so I did as she demanded. I stayed on my side of the hallway as we walked in the oppositedirection of where I was headed. I thought that was where the kitchen was, but maybe I was mistaken.
“Where are we going?” I hissed.
“You’ll see,” Valentina responded. Nothing else.
We headed up the corridor to a passage I’d never have found had she not shown me the seams lining the wall.
“You have to press just right for it to open,” Valentina said as she revealed a narrow hallway made of stone.
We stumbled down the dimly lit corridor.
“The first time I found these passageways, I knew something was different about them,” Valentina huffed. “You would have to research in the library, and I love throwing myself into a good book,” she babbled.
When was the last time I’d gotten to read? I couldn’t remember the last book I’d read. Surely, something for school. I envied Valentina in a way. She’d found a better life than she’d been born into.
Ignoring my silence, Valentina kept whispering the information she’d learned. I guess it was better than it going to waste.
“These passages carried female heirs to safety from here to The Academy.”
“What? Why?” Wouldn’t they want them to stay within the walls where they would be safe? I couldn’t make sense of it.
“No, they weren’t any safer,” Valentina responded, as if she could read my face. “In the early days of the Bratva, female heirs were a threat to the men who held power. They were weak, liabilities that enemies could exploit, or worse, sold off as tools for alliances. And so, a mother built the passages with a fierce heart, and later every woman inherited her secret; each one desperate to keep her daughter safe. They had whispered stories of daughters spirited away in the dead of night, taken from under their father’s nose, when their only fate otherwise was a life in chains, or an early grave.”
I shuddered in response. “That’s horrible. I would never want to live like that.”
Valentina shrugged. “These hidden corridors became the escape routes for young girls with Bratva blood in their veins, sent to The Academy in secret. To the world, these daughters had simply died, taken by some tragic fate. Each one was mourned in public, her name carved on a headstone in the family crypt, while she was actually being smuggled through these very walls, spirited away in the dead of night, by a guard or a loyal servant, sometimes her own mother.”
“Wait,” I stopped in place. “Did you say there’s a family crypt down here?”
Valentina nodded, looking back at me. “Yeah, it’s a little reminiscent of the Academy, now that I think about it.”
“Are there snakes?” I whispered in fear.
Valentina shook her head no. “It’s super clean. I promise it’s not at all the same.”
I didn’t want to trust her, but we’d come so far already. I didn’t have any choice but to keep following behind her, and hope she wasn’t lying to me. She felt like family, but I didn’t think she was. We looked different for sure. We had different lifestyles as well.
She’d settled down and gotten married. Her pregnancy glow shone for miles, like a beacon of happiness. She wasn’t some broken monster like myself. She hadn’t lived through half the horrors I did.
If she had, she would’ve killed herself already. I followed behind her in silence, thinking about the story she just told me, and hoping that my worst fears weren’t before me. If I saw a rat, I was running. I didn’t care if I got lost in these passages until the end of time.
I knew that when the rats came, snakes were sure to follow.
A phantom hiss played in my ear, and I whimpered. I didn’t know if I’d be able to get through this. The corridor opened upto reveal the crypt. The air was thicker and cooler in this area. I walked down the stairs before me, looking around and taking it all in.