Cruel Shame

by Sofia Daniel

  Suppressing a shudder, I tilted my head to the side. “Untie me, and let’s see how long you last.”

  Father Neapolitan inhaled a deep breath through flared nostrils, his lips curving downward with revulsion. “You’re worse than your mother. At least she made a pretense at chastity.”

  I spat on the ground. “Times have changed.”

  He flinched away like a little first year. “Disgusting.”

  “Are you going to untie me and let me get on top?”

  “Only your legs get untied, and I’ll take you on your hands and knees.”

  I clenched my teeth and strained against the ropes, hating myself for negotiating with a rapist. “It’s cheating if you get to control the pace. As soon as you start cumming, you’ll slow down and look out of the window. I’d bet a guy like you could keep that going all night.”

  Father Neapolitan chuckled. “I’ll untie your legs and let you go on top.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please. I need something to grab onto while I’m riding that cock.”

  His breathing quickened. He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a knife. It took every ounce of self control not to flinch. This was probably Father Neapolitan’s first time at consensual sex.

  I lay as still as I could while he sliced at the ropes, panting over me like a salivating dog. He turned me onto my side and ran his palm over my breasts, murmuring that I was even more beautiful than Abby.

  My lips tightened into a straight line. A moment ago, he called me a whore. Funny how these judgmental psychopaths flipped their morals when with a girl willing to give them a chance.

  The moment the ropes loosened their grip on my strained muscles, I melted onto the planks with a relieved groan.

  “Get up,” he snapped.

  “Help me,” I murmured. This wasn’t even part of my trap. Holding that position for ages had overstretched my muscles.

  Father Neapolitan slipped the penknife into his pocket and offered me a hand. I wanted to spit on it and watch him dance around in disgust like a twat, but I had to stay calm for my plan. I wrapped my fingers around his and let him pull me to my feet.

  I stood, and a head rush had me teetering forward. Father Neapolitan caught me by the waist and held me steady.

  “Easy,” he said, his voice gentle.

  Right now, I was in no position to escape. I held onto his shoulders, breathing hard. “Have you done this before? You seemed like a professional.”

  “Once or twice,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Wow.” I bent over double. “Let me catch my breath.”

  For a stalker who drugged and trussed women up, he was surprisingly patient at the prospect of having a girl touch him of her own volition. I tried to puzzle out if there was something in the Liddell gene pool that turned them all insane or if it was just something about the way they were brought up. Since I was more of a Liddell than Elizabeth, did that mean it was only a matter of time before I did something crazy?

  Father Neapolitan cupped my cheeks with his clammy hands and smiled. The expression was more of a baring of the teeth, but when I forced a smile back, his eyes softened. With a low groan, Father Neapolitan leaned forward to capture my lips in a kiss.

  I flinched back. “Whore? Remember? No mouth-to-mouth.”

  His eyes widened, and he inclined his head in apology. “Of course.”

  That knife was going to be a problem. I needed to divest him off that coat. “Let’s see what you’re hiding underneath all that fabric.”

  He placed a hand over his chest and dipped his chin, looking almost coy.

  I made a disappointed hum and placed my hands over his nipples. “It’s only fair, since I’m naked.”

  He let out a shuddering breath, and pressed his emaciated organ protruding against my belly. “As you wish.”

  With trembling hands, I unbuttoned his coat and pulled it off his shoulders. It fell to the attic floor with a clunk, making me wonder if he had a gun.

  “Alright,” I whispered, trying to sound seductive when all I wanted to do was hurl. “Lie back and let me ride you like a wild stallion.”

  “Stallion,” he whispered, and flopped down beside his coat.

  I moved it out from underneath him and placed my fingertips on his nipples. Father Neapolitan closed his eyes and groaned, the deep sound making my stomach muscles reverberate with disgust.

  “Ride me,” he purred.

  Trailing one hand down his sparse smattering of chest hair, I grabbed the coat with the other, ready to spring to my feet. As soon as I reached his crotch, I curled my hand into a fist and punched his balls with every ounce of my strength.

  Father Neapolitan jerked up with an almighty howl. I scrambled to my feet, threw the coat over my naked body, bolted to the door, and flung it open—

  Only to meet Lady Liddell standing in the attic stairwell with a gun.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  My eyes locked with Lady Liddell’s, and a gasp caught in my throat. If it wasn’t for the false eyelashes and oversized lips, I might never have recognized the woman. She wore a gray tracksuit with a hooded top, looking like she’d just spent an afternoon jogging.

  A blast of cold air from outside blew up the stairwell across my bare skin, making it pucker into goosebumps. I clenched my teeth to stop them from chattering.

  Lady Liddell swept her gaze down the entire length of my naked body and back up to the rope still attached around my limbs and snarled, “Get back inside.”

  I swallowed. Right now, a homicidal woman with a gun was preferable to what was waiting for me inside that attic.

  Father Neapolitan’s outraged scream made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. If he was at the anger stage of a ball-busting, it wouldn’t be long before the pain faded enough for him to get his revenge.

  Lady Liddell raised her pistol and shot it into the ceiling, filling the air with a blast of gunfire and a shower of dust and splinters.

  Cold shock barreled through my gut, and my heart stuttered with palpitations of terror. Every ounce of concentration coalesced toward the gun now pointed at my face.

  “I won’t ask you again,” she shrieked through the ringing of my ears. “Get back into that room or I will shoot you through the eyes.”

  On trembling legs, I took one step up the stairs, followed by another. Sweat gathered on my skin and soaked into the stolen coat tucked under my arm. This was worse than the situation last Saturday with Myra. At least then, there was an academy-full of people who could walk in on us. Here, isolated at the end of the Liddell estate, there was no one except for the two people who both despised me and wanted me dead.

  It took an eternity for me to scale those few steps. After the second, my body wouldn’t cooperate. Lady Liddell must have engineered my abduction the way she’d engineered my shooting. How many sexual assaults had she covered up for Father Neapolitan over the years? For her husband? I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d helped cover up murders, too. And I would be the latest of their victims.

  The door behind me opened, and a rough hand grabbed the ropes around my neck and hauled me into the attic.

  “You’ll pay for this, whore,” Father Neapolitan snarled.

  “Thomas,” Lady Liddell hissed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Father Neapolitan stepped away. “You told me to bring the girl here. Here she is.”

  “Did you touch her?” she asked.

  “Not yet—”

  “How will you explain it to the police when they find your DNA on her body?”

  Terror shuddered through my insides. She really did mean for me to die. I stepped to the side, trying not to make it obvious that I was looking at the door, but Father Neapolitan tightened his grip on the ropes around my neck.

  The man sighed and bowed his head. “Right. I didn’t think.”

  Lady Liddell ranted that he’d once again ruined another plan. My gaze darted around the room for another possible escape. I only found the doo
r leading down the stairs and the arched window I’d seen before.

  As she continued a barrage of insults, my breathing calmed, and I went through everything I had learned so far. Since Lady Liddell had felt comfortable enough to fire her gun, had to be a good distance away from the academy and the Liddell’s mansion. And the arched window looked familiar. This place could only be the chapel.

  The chapel was only a one-story building, but its main room had double-height ceilings, making this level approximately three-stories high. That glass in the arched window was probably breakable, and I might survive a jump. Even if they dragged me back up the stairs and ended my life, there’d be enough blood spatters both in and outside the chapel for the police to notice when someone reported me missing.

  My heart plummeted, as did my dwindling hope for survival. I was already thinking about leaving a forensic trail for the police to avenge my death. Cameron Liddell would probably suppress my murder investigation the way he seemed to do with anything related to his family’s wrongdoings.

  I shook off the outrage and focused on the coat beneath my arm. There was a flick knife in one pocket and something as heavy as a gun in the other. My fingers slid around the wool fabric, searching for an opening. As they slid through a pocket of satin, they closed around the plastic casing of a phone. I pulled out my hand and searched for the next pocket. Most people protected their handsets with a passcode, and I needed the knife more.

  “Put her clothes back on and follow the plan.” Lady Liddell’s sharp voice sliced through my despair.

  “I threw them into the incinerator to get rid of the evidence,” Father Neapolitan mumbled.

  She growled. “Do I have to do everything myself?”

  My fingers continued to search for the second pocket. I needed more time. I needed to get them to argue. Turning to Father Neapolitan, I said, “Ask her.”

  “Ask me what?” the older woman snapped.

  “Elizabeth got the results from DNA samples she sent for paternity testing,” I said. “You took my DNA when I was born and you know Thomas Liddell isn’t my father.”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Don’t be preposterous.”

  “Am I her father?” asked Father Neapolitan.

  Lady Liddell’s eyes darted from him to me, and uncertainty flickered over her stretched face. Who knows what bullshit she fed him over the years, but as the moments progressed, it was obvious that she hadn’t shared the secret of what the archbishop had done to Mother.

  “Why are you even listening to this girl’s attempts to create discord? She’s just like her mother, whose treachery ruined you for other women.”

  My nostrils flared. Father Neapolitan was ruined before he’d even met Mother. None of that would matter if I didn’t find that bloody knife. After more frantic fumbling, my fingers slipped through another satin pocket and closed around its hilt.

  Father Neapolitan pulled me into his chest. “But she said—”

  “Do you want to give her a chance to run away and report you the way Abby did?” Lady Liddell snapped. “This time, there’ll be no way to discredit the girl. You abducted her off the street and injected her with—”

  “Alright,” Father Neapolitan said, his voice rising with panic. “What should I do?”

  Lady Liddell shouldered off her backpack and pulled open its zip. “The original plan was for Miss Hancock to overdose on cocaine because Myra Highmore wrongly identified Elizabeth as her lover and apprentice.”

  I would have rolled my eyes if this situation wasn’t so murderous.

  “We can still do that,” said Father Neapolitan,

  Lady Liddell pinched the bridge of her nose. “Who strips naked and ties themselves up to take cocaine in the middle of winter? If you hadn’t incinerated her clothes—”

  “I said I was sorry,” he whined.

  My gaze wandered to the door. Now that I had the knife, I could break free and get shot in the back.

  “We’ll have to go with a second plan. I’ll enter the stores and fetch one of their nightgowns.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of pills. “In the meantime, make Miss Hancock take these.”

  “Alright.”

  Lady Liddell handed Father Neapolitan the gun and placed her bag back on her shoulder. “Don’t do anything inappropriate with her. If the police find any of your DNA on the girl, we won’t be able to protect you.”

  “I know,” he said.

  The woman turned toward the door, paused, extracted a water bottle from her backpack and threw it across the room. “Use this.”

  Father Neapolitan snatched back my coat, shoved me to the ground, and kicked the two bottles to my side. “Take the pills, or I’ll shoot.”

  He stood in the shadows with the fading afternoon light glinting against the gun. The angles of his face appeared harsher than usual, making the priest look even more sinister.

  “You’re going to have to shoot me,” I murmured. “Or come here and stuff the pills down my throat.”

  The hand holding the gun trembled, and his thin chest heaved up and down. My gaze travelled down his scrawny body to his crotch, where his penis disappeared into a whirl of wrinkled foreskin. This was probably the first time he’d handled a gun, even though he appeared accustomed to raping girls at knifepoint.

  “I won’t ask you again,” he said from between clenched teeth.

  “The Liddells have stolen from you your entire life,” I murmured. “As the son of the previous Lord Liddell, you should be the one holding the title.”

  “Shut your whore mouth,” he snarled. “Or I’ll—”

  “You’ll shoot me just like Myra Highmore tried to when Lady Liddell gave her a gun?” I asked. “Ask yourself what will happen when they find me dead in your chapel?”

  Sweat poured down the man’s face. Even though he refused to admit the truth of my words, I was getting to him. Uncovering all the doubts he must have held over the years about the Liddells, who treated him like a barely tolerated nuisance.

  My breath came in shallow pants. Father Neapolitan was just as evil as them. I ached to see him jailed or dead for what he did to Mother, but right now, he was my only route to surviving.

  Footsteps approached from outside.

  “If you let me leave, I’ll forget this ever happened,” I whispered.

  His gaze darted to the door. “Who’s there?”

  “Who’s there?” Lady Liddell said, her voice shrill. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

  I stiffened. What the bloody hell was she doing, now?

  Lady Liddell stepped into the attic and clapped her hands to her cheeks, her mouth falling open with feigned shock. “Thomas Neapolitan, what on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  My heart surged with hope. If Lady Liddell was acting, then it meant she was doing it for the benefit of an audience. An audience who wasn’t part of the plot to engineer my death.

  Footsteps tumbled in behind her, and Elizabeth stumbled into the room. She stared at me with bulging eyes. “Mother?”

  “Father Neapolitan,” Lady Liddell screeched. “How dare you violate a student.”

  “Mother,” Elizabeth whispered, her gaze fixed on mine.

  From the way her face paled and her lips trembled, seeing me up here like this was a shock. Elizabeth had tried to speak to me on Friday, but I had walked away from her and disappeared into the academy, leaving her surrounded by a crowd of girls. Was this what she wanted to tell me? That her mother was planning yet another way for me to die?

  Despite everything, Elizabeth didn’t seem like a cold-hearted murderer. She probably got suspicious of her mother sneaking out wearing that tracksuit and decided to follow her.

  “Call the police,” I said to Elizabeth.

  She fumbled in her pocket and tapped an icon on her phone.

  “No!” Father Neapolitan pointed the gun at Elizabeth, who hid the handset behind her back.

  “Thomas.” Lady Liddell rushed to place hers
elf between her daughter and the gun. “Don’t do—”

  The gun went off. Lady Liddell fell to the ground, clutching herself around the middle. Elizabeth skittered back and screamed, dropping the handset.

  I clapped both hands over my mouth to muffle a gasp.

  “Bloody bitch,” he snarled. “You just tried to frame things so you’d look innocent to your precious daughter and the police.”

  “Father Neapolitan.” Elizabeth backed toward the window with both palms raised. “Please put down the gun.”

  My gaze dropped to the smartphone, which had fallen face-down into the shadows. Light glowed around its edges, which I hoped meant that Elizabeth had succeeded in making the call and the person on the other line was listening.

  “Thomas, please calm down,” Lady Liddell said through gasping breaths. She raised a gloved hand and added, “This is all a misunderstanding. We can tell everyone Miss Hancock lured you up here with the promise of illicit sex.”

  The priest swung his gun toward the older woman. “Don’t think I’ll forget you just tried to drop me in the shit.”

  I swallowed several times in quick succession, my breathing slowing back to normal. One would think at a time like this—naked and with ropes tied around my neck and wrists and ankles, that I’d be at the very edge of my panic. This was the most hopeful I’d felt since the needle slipped into my neck.

  Crazy old Father Neapolitan had finally seen the treacherous hag beneath the silicone, I had a knife, and Elizabeth had managed to reach someone with her phone.

  For the next twenty minutes, Father Neapolitan ranted at Lady Liddell about every slight he had suffered since she had married the archbishop. When the woman tried to defend herself, he shot at the window behind Elizabeth and showered her with broken glass.

  My gaze darted to the door, but I didn’t dare tempt his wrath and become a moving target. I also didn’t want to stick him with the knife, in case Lady Liddell turned things around and framed me for the gunshot to her gut. Right now, the crazy priest didn’t notice me. I wrapped my arms around my chest, trying to stay warm, while Father Neapolitan paced the chapel and built himself into a frenzy of rage.