Destruction. True kings not only invaded. They pillaged too.
He could see by their coloring that the six women in cages hanging above the party were from places both near and distant as well. The king and his court had learned, after all. Abducting people from one singular geographical location eventually became problematic.
They’d destroy them as well. Tradition and all.
Caspar glanced up to see a young girl with tangled black hair. She peered down at him with half-open, drugged eyes. She was naked, her hands bound and a gag in her mouth. The jewels she was draped in sparkled in the reflected light.
Ah, a nod to where it’d all begun. How nostalgic these beasts could be.
The combination of beauty and violence. It was their ambrosia, and they devoured it. It was what gluttons did.
They’d done so for decades, gathering in numbers, making it more unlikely that they’d ever be stopped. And each act of depravity made them more and more desensitized. And so they created a bloody game where the outcome was never quite certain, and it added to the thrill because it hinged on the wills of their victims, one of the only things they could not control, in a world where everything else was predictably theirs for the taking.
He glanced away from the girl. Hold tight, he thought. If I’ve played my cards right, you might have a savior. Of course, it would be up to her too. No one could save you if you weren’t brave enough to save yourself. He’d learned that well.
He was here to avenge it.
Speaking of vengeance, there was old Dedryck, the king. The one who’d started it all. My, but he had aged, and quite poorly, despite his vast wealth. He looked like a withered corpse in a wheelchair, his tuxedo hanging on his bony frame and a blanket draped over his lap. His back was hunched, but his sparsely haired head was raised, and he was staring at Caspar, his beady eyes trained directly on him. Could the old man even see him from that far away? It seemed so.
A server approached with a tray of flutes filled with pale-golden champagne. He bowed slightly, extending the tray. His disguise was impeccable; even Caspar barely recognized him. Caspar noted that he had done an impressive job covering his birthmark as well. It was undetectable. “Sir?” the server asked, his pinkie finger making the most minute movement toward one of the glasses. Caspar picked up the flute. How lovely. Baccarat, if he wasn’t mistaken. The server moved away.
“Mr. Vitucci.” Caspar turned, responding effortlessly to the moniker. He’d been living under it for longer than he had not, after all.
A man approached him, clapping him on the back as he let out a deep laugh. “Nice touch,” he said, nodding to the tissue paper poppy pinned to Caspar’s jacket. “Ironic.” The man grinned, and so did Caspar.
“Indeed,” Caspar agreed.
A woman in a cage near the back of the room screamed through her gag, the sound muted, her weak plea only met with laughter from the men below.
A nobody to them. Less than that. They chose people who could be easily dismissed. No one would miss them should they disappear. No one would listen to them if they told their story. And these men made sure nothing checked out. Few lived, anyway, so who cared if there were a handful of scattered crazies with a similar story too outrageous to believe? Certainly not the police. They’d made sure of that.
“I don’t think tonight’s your night, Vitucci,” the man said softly, leaning toward him, his rotund belly preceding him and bumping Caspar’s. “One of them has lost a hand.”
“Hmm,” Caspar hummed disinterestedly, taking a long sip of his champagne. He wondered if this was the old man who’d taken Noelle’s virginity so many years ago. That man had had this same physique. The man tipped his own flute back, guzzling it in one gulp. There you go, you disgusting hog. Bottoms up.
The server passed by, presenting another full tray of champagne. Caspar drained his glass and took another, as did the old man. “It’s almost a shame that things look so bleak for them,” the man said.
Caspar smiled. “Almost,” he said. The man ambled away. Caspar looked around. Everywhere here there were bankers and politicians, members of various agencies, and high-powered attorneys. The amount of money they represented was in the billions. They could buy their way out of anything.
Or so they believed.
But they had missed something. Eventually they always did, because they thought themselves invincible.
The man who now called himself Leonard Sinclair was standing at Dedryck’s side, watching him from across the room. Caspar raised his glass to Leonard—Fontane, the spoiled son of a judge and the man he’d once watched rape his sister and tear the necklace from her throat as Caspar had been bound and helpless. He’d taken to the debauchery quite easily, as Caspar remembered. Fontane still didn’t recognize him, not only because they believed him dead, but because Caspar had been a nobody when he’d known him before, invisible to men such as him. Caspar had guessed correctly that Fontane had kept his sister’s diamond, the one Caspar assumed the bastard took out now and again to remind himself how untouchable he was.