Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
His threat was a velvet promise.
Dread wrapped around my heart, squeezing. I knew that threat wasn’t empty. He’d do it. And thought parts of me wanted to die right then, I didn’t want that.
One monster or many? Was that my fate?
I struggled to keep my breathing even. There was only one monster I wanted, and he was gone.
Stone stared into my eyes a moment longer before letting me go and standing, putting his jacket back on and smiling at me as if he hadn’t just threatened to have me gang raped.
“I’ll give you time to consider.” He glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist. “Twelve hours should be sufficient. Enough time for my staff to pull together a wedding. Daisy has already been informed that she’ll be maid of honor. We’d hate to disappoint her, wouldn’t we? Then she’d feel as if we no longer have any use for her, and that would be terrible indeed.”
On that warning, he left.
He stared at the man who had been standing silently in the corner of the room. “No more marks on her face,” he barked. “I want my wife presentable. We can cover this with makeup.” He waved to my black eye as if he knew what could and couldn’t be hidden by cosmetics. As if he had experience in that. I shuddered at just how many brides he might’ve considered before me.
“But I want her looking presentable. Arms too. They’ll be exposed. If she fights, make sure you don’t leave any marks.” His eyes went to my exposed thighs. “And no one touches her sexually, unless I decide that this wedding will no longer be prudent.”
My eyes clouded with tears I refused to let fall. I was nothing but a piece of meat, property, to a man assuming my body was a collection of trophies, his to control.
“I’ll be seeing you,” Stone promised, looking at me again. “It would be in your benefit to wear white and be smiling at me as you walk down an aisle. You’ll like your life. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll plant babies in you, and you’ll be the dutiful wife and mother I know you can be.”
And then he left.
Left me with the horrifying knowledge that Knox was dead, and I was destined to marry a true tyrant.
Plant babies in me.
I felt triumphant knowing that at least that threat would never find its way to actuality. I felt grateful for the cancer that had made it so my womb would never be home to babies that bastard could‘ve used to control me. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be tortured in all the ways a woman could—and those were many.
I’d lain, staring at the ceiling, mute for hours. It had bored my captors, who had probably been expecting, hoping, for more of a fight. They were bloodthirsty to cause me more pain. Their boss had okayed it, after all.
But I didn’t give them a reason. They couldn’t cause me any more pain anyway. Nothing would rival the excruciating anguish tearing at my insides
“I’m hungry, and this bitch isn’t going anywhere, so let’s eat,” Groves said.
The older one eyed me with a more practiced eye, as if he thought my behavior was all an act to lull them into doing something just like that.
I didn’t care what they thought. I was drowning in my fate. In the knowledge that Knox was gone. The ceiling tiles numbered 148, with three of them peeling, thirteen of them covered with a yellowish water stain. I’d counted and roamed my eyes over every one, cataloguing precisely so I didn’t have to think of it.
Knox is dead.
Knox is dead.
Knox is dead.
I knew I couldn’t give up, that this weakness was essentially spitting in the face of his memory, but I couldn’t find any fight in me when I was uncuffed from the bed and carried roughly into the bathroom before they dumped me on a cold tiled floor and refastened my cuffs to the bottom of a filthy sink.
I barely even whimpered when one of them kicked me, hard, in the ribs. There was a loud crack then a feeling of warmth in my abdomen, but I barely noted it.
“Don’t scream,” Grove hissed, yanking my hair so my face was exposed to him. His eyebrows needed plucking, and he had pock marks from acne dotting his skin.
Scream? I was already screaming, wasn’t I? Maybe it was just on the inside.
“You scream, anyone hears you and calls the cops, it’s goodbye little sister.” He grinned, showing gleaming white veneers, fingers bending in a daunting wave. “Not before we chop off her limbs. Or maybe we do that and keep her alive? That would be a fate worse than death for a dancer like her, wouldn’t it?”
The mention of Daisy jerked me out of my stupor. My mind cleared as I focused on his dull-gray eyes.