“I don’t fucking like this,” the other one said now. I didn’t remember his voice from that night, but it had been a mixed-up time. Only the man who had presented the greatest danger to me had stuck. “I didn’t sign up to tangle with Devin O’Hare again.”
“She’s full of shit.” I squirmed aside from hands trying to grope at me. “She knows we won’t tangle with that bastard… but he’s done with her.”
Had Caroline or Angel confidently given them this information? Could I have saved myself the terror of this situation by being a little less mopey in my time with Caroline today, convincing her with my confidence of what might even be true: that we were working out a few things, who wasn’t, but still rock solid?
I could hope to find out for sure eventually. For now, I had pretty good proof that reports of Devin’s departure from my life were premature.
“Full of shit, huh?” I wriggled my fingers, barely visible underneath the arm pinning my wrist to my side. “What do you think this is then? Something I got out of a cereal box I suppose?”
Both men hunched over me to squint at the ring. “It’s a family heirloom,” I added, fairly confident neither of these bozos were going to pick up on the details being all wrong for something that was supposed to be old. “If he didn’t still want me, he would at least want that back. And he wouldn’t be too sweet if I tried to refuse.”
They didn’t give me a verbal response, but I’d clearly made the right impression with that logic.
Then the one holding me flung me forward so I stumbled across to the mattress. I whirled, ordering my shaking legs to stand, only to collapse to my knees as I saw him unbuckling his belt. “No… if you…”
“Oh calm down, you little bitch.” His laugh was careless, without real humour. “Fine, you’re safe for the night—from me, at least. But are you really stupid enough to feel good about having O’Hare on your arm? You wanna see what that means in the real world?”
Of course I didn’t, but he wasn’t giving me a choice. He dropped his pants and took hold of his dick—not the one I’d been hoping to see today for sure. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t throw up in the face of it, which would have been provocative in all the wrong ways.
There was a bandage wrapped around the shaft, just under the head. He peeled it aside, wincing, while I told myself I should refuse to look, and still kept on looking. It hadn’t been long enough for a complete healing yet, but it was less red and swollen than a fresh wound, so some of the details were becoming apparent.
I knew the symbol well, because I also wore it, though not branded into my skin through a series of cuts he must have known by heart to do them so precisely. The O’Hare mark imprinted on my engagement ring.
My fingers curled almost without conscious thought on my part, tucking the ring out of sight. If my kidnapper should get the idea to take it from me and see that mark, it might wipe out any restraint he had left.
There didn’t seem to be a whole lot already, him shaking his sad, flaccid, slashed-up penis ever closer to my face. “This is what your future husband is, sweetheart. Don’t make that sour face and try to hide away from me. You need to see what you’ve got to look forward to.”
“I don’t think what he needed to do to you to punish you for bad behaviour has anything to do with me,” I said, trying to stay calm. The truth was, the sight of that wound had my nerves in a tangle.
“He just didn’t like the fact that I might get my hands on something he intended to have,” said my kidnapper. Now that brought up an interesting question: did he know anything about Devin’s reasons for taking charge of my parents’ debt? Even if he did, I could hardly trust him to tell the truth.
Anyway, he was not interested in giving me space to ask my questions. “It will be you next, you’ll see. Maybe not something that will show so much, force him to answer questions. But he will expect you to behave in a certain way, be a particular kind of wife for him… and you will fail, so he will have to discipline you.”
He was trying to scare me, and I knew so much about Devin’s ability to snap back in retaliation, the precision of his aggression, it was having an effect. I had never felt like Devin was going to cross that line and hurt me in a show of power, to lash out at me when I didn’t intend to lash out at him. But that was a quite normal thing, men hurting women. My father had hit my mother at least once: I wasn’t in the room, but I had heard his voice enraged, hers hysterical. The sound of flesh against flesh. I had vowed I was not going to be a wife like that… and then I had agreed to marry a man I should believe was just about everything my father was. To get back at him? I was a complete idiot.
“Just hope they want to claim you after all tomorrow. Because if that bastard O’Hare is all you’ve got to run to…” He shook his head, and the other guy shook along with him. I didn’t think they were collaborating, either.
They. When it came to the question of who had employed these men, I could think of one they in particular who would want to take me, who hadn’t been visibly involved in this scheme to begin with. Devin’s family, come to think of it, would have found it far easier to snatch me from the building where I was already staying, if they wanted to.
Well… I might be safe from this creep if I could keep invoking Devin’s name enough to keep him alive in the mind of the man he’d mutilated. But I didn’t know if that was going to work to protect me from what lay ahead the next day.
Chapter Sixteen
When my mother and father filed into the room where I’d been sleeping what seemed like far too early the following morning (my captors had taken my phone and refused to let me see any sort of clock), I just lifted my head from my knees to stare at them. I’d slept like that: huddled in a ball at the foot of the mattress, because those goons could fucking think again if they expected me to make it easy for them to cop a feel or something.
“God, Julia,” said Mum, “you’re
a mess. And you had those clothes when you left—hasn’t he at least tried to buy you something new?”
Caroline had asked that exact same question. Maybe that was what helped me to see it for what it was: a pretty cynical play to get me to think badly about Devin’s treatment of me.
And yeah, I guess it might have worked under normal circumstances, the least I’d expect of a guy with that much money is not to be stingy with his future wife, but they were all way off base here. He hadn’t tried to select clothes for me since our hostile revolving restaurant dinner, and I hadn’t taken him up on his invitation to spend a little money on whatever I wanted. I had the card he’d left me in the wallet my kidnappers had taken off me. He’d given me everything I needed… just not when it came to the emotional side of things. And it turned out I cared a lot about the emotional side of things, enough to turn up my nose at the rest.
“Really, guys, did my own parents conspire to kidnap me? You couldn’t just send me a message to open a dialogue?”
“It’s been less than clear lately whether your views are truly your own or his,” Daddy said. “We felt it was necessary to get you away from him to give you some breathing room.”
Breathing room was exactly what it turned out I’d needed from my parents. Of course they’d been away a lot of the time, I’d been alone in the house then, but it was still their house. I had lived in their world and seen things through their eyes… the ones they had chosen to open to me, at least. No wonder my attempts to strike out on my own and see the rest of the world had been so hopeless; no wonder I’d had little interest in going out even once Devin had broken me ‘free’ of them.