The Bachelor Bargain (Secrets, Scandals, and Spies) by Michaels, Maddison (short books to read TXT) 📕

bitter laugh. “I don’t think Flintock thinks it was so good. You see, I offered the doctor one thousand pounds if he could keep the man alive after I was done with him.”

“Done with him?”

“Yes, you see, I wanted to make an example of him.” Seb was staring beyond her, clearly seeing the man from his past. The man who had taken his mother from him. “And I wanted to make sure he could never do to another woman what he did to my mother. I wanted him to survive and serve as a reminder of what happens to those who hurt mine. First, I cut out his tongue. Then, I cut off his ears. Then both of his hands. And then finally, I cut off his dick.”

Livie flinched at his words, but he wasn’t paying her any attention, staring off into the past as he was.

“It took the doctor some time in between each infliction of an injury to cauterize the wounds and stabilize him before I could move on to the next area, and several times it looked like the man wouldn’t make it,” Seb said. “But the doctor had great incentive for him to survive, and he did. So now Edward Flintock is barely capable of surviving himself, let alone hurting anyone else. He begs every day out in front of a building in Mandago Street that I own. Alive, but no longer a threat to anyone, with no tongue to talk with, no penis to rape anyone with, and no hands to touch anyone with. I make certain he’s given enough supplies to get by on, in addition to the small change he makes begging.”

“After what he did to your mother and then what you did to him, why would you help him survive?” Livie whispered.

Seb shook himself, bringing his attention back to the here and now. “Why? Several reasons, actually. Firstly, death was too easy a punishment for him after the atrocities he did to my mother. He kidnapped her, then brutalized and raped her over and over again, until she was dead from her internal injuries, a battered and broken shell of the once vital woman she had been. And do you know the only reason he did all of that?”

Livie shook her head, feeling sick to her stomach at what the poor woman must have suffered in her final moments.

“Because he wanted to gain control over my territory and unseat me. And he thought using my mother would be the key to doing so, while also showing others he was even worse than the Bastard of Baker Street.” Taking in a breath he looked out the window. “I let him keep his eyes, only so he could have a daily reminder of what I did to him each and every time he looks in a mirror, and so he can see the looks of repulsion on the people who pass him by in the street.

“His punishment also served a much larger purpose, and continues to do so; by allowing him to beg on one of the busiest streets in the Rookeries, I remind all who pass him every day, myself included, of just what I am capable of.”

“You pass him every day?”

“Yes. I get my carriage driver to travel past him as he begs on the corner of the street, on the way to my office each morning, so I, too, am reminded of what happened, and what it felt like to lose my mother. To have a constant reminder that loving someone is a weakness others can exploit. That is why I do what I do, Livie. It reminds me to never to let anyone too close.”

Confusion swam in her head. She’d heard rumors of a man such as he described, though she’d never realized Sebastian had been the cause of the man’s injuries. “Have you done such a thing again?”

“I haven’t had the need to.” Seb was staring at her, almost as if he were trying to see what was going on in her head. “Though I probably would have the other night, if I’d caught the man who took you.”

Livie didn’t know how she felt about his revelation.

“So, you see, I am not someone who can be reformed or changed.” He shrugged, though Livie got the sense he wasn’t anywhere near as blasé as he appeared. “I have done terrible things in my life, and though I believe they were justified, they were terrible, nonetheless. Do you still think we come from the same world, you and I? Do you think a duke, or an earl, could do anything even close to what I am capable of? To commit such violence against another?”

Livie shook her head. “No. I doubt it.”

“I don’t just doubt it,” Seb replied. “I know they couldn’t. Are you scared of me now? Of what I’m capable of doing?”

“I think I am more scared for you,” Livie admitted. “And how you choose to keep punishing yourself for what happened to your mother, which was not your fault.”

He rubbed his hand across his chin. “But do you not punish yourself, too, for your own mother’s death? Blame yourself?”

Livie went to deny it, but she couldn’t. “I do. But at least I don’t push people away.”

“But that is exactly what you do. What you have done for years.” He glanced down at her cane and leg. “You believe you’re not worthy of love or marriage because of your limp, don’t you? And because of that you’ve never let any man get close to you. Always on the offensive, happy to tell yourself they show no interest because of your limp. But the truth is you’ve always repelled them to keep your heart safe. Yet you let me get close to you last night. Do you want to know why you let me fuck you?”

She gasped at his crudeness and how he was debasing what they’d shared. “Don’t presume to know why I did anything.”

“You allowed me to fuck you,”