People rushed outside. Someone put a blanket around me. They carefully walked me toward Prescott Manor and my father ran to me as soon as he saw me. His arms wrapped around me. He said things like it’s going to be okay and thank god you’re home. I just sank into his embrace and cried. I was led upstairs to my room and my father knelt beside my bed. He asked me a lot of questions, but I just stared straight ahead, barely muttering under my breath. A doctor came and asked if they hurt me. I told him they did. The police showed up to take my statement, but I didn’t give them anything useful—the ramblings of a damaged girl were all they were going to get—rambling that made no sense to anyone except me.
“You should get some rest now. I asked the doctor to bring you something that would help you sleep.” My father put his hand on my head—a loving stare in his eyes—a stare that I knew was as fake as the love he pretended to have in his heart.
“Thank you.” I nodded and forced a weak smile—a glimmer of hope that maybe his princess was still inside the broken girl that came home.
She wasn’t.
“I’m going to find those fucking animals that did this to you. You really have no idea where they were holding you—even a direction would be helpful.” He tilted his head, pleading for an answer.
“I really don’t.” I weakly shook my head back and forth. “It was a building—downtown somewhere. When I was able to escape, I just drove until I saw something familiar.”
There was no reason to question my story. Why would I lie? I was the same girl who managed to have Rourke and Brody locked in prison with my words. It made sense that they would want revenge—to silence the witness who was supposed to testify against them. The doctor brought me something in a syringe, but I pretended to be scared of the needle—I asked for a pill instead. He relented and as soon as he was gone, I spit it out. I didn’t need that to sleep. There was peace in my heart for the first time since I betrayed the two men that didn’t deserve it. I just hoped they were able to stay hidden until I could do what was necessary to not only set them free but also bring my father’s kingdom down around him.
The next day
I slept through the night, but I woke up early. I had to pretend to be the damaged girl—the one that could barely speak—the one who had experienced trauma. I walked downstairs to the living room and wrapped myself in a blanket as I stared at the Prescott family motto hanging on the wall. Family comes first. What a fucking joke. The workers offered me some food and I ate a few bites. I was starving, but I couldn’t devour the plate like I truly wanted to do. I saw my father coming down the stairs, so I forced myself to try—to let tears roll down my face as he walked into the room.
“Good morning, Anabelle.” He sat down across from me.
“Morning…” I forced out a single word and made it sound like that word took every bit of energy I had in my soul to utter.
“Did you sleep okay?” He tilted his head to the side.
I nodded.
“We’re going to find those monsters.” His eyes reflected anger, but I wondered if he truly was—or if every emotion he displayed was fake as my own—and if it had always been that way.
“Okay.” I nodded again—barely speaking loud enough for him to hear.
But you see the problem now, don’t you? You can’t put me on the stand. I can’t even talk. How could I ever testify? You?
?re going to have to take drastic measures—because that’s the kind of man you are.
I was seeing the man they said he was shine through the facade. He was the King of Chicago—a dangerous man. He hid that from me, but I was going to bring it out of him. To make him take action. We sat in silence for a while, then he got up to leave. It was time for me to say something—to give him a glimpse, but only a glimpse.
“Daddy.” I looked up at him.
“Yes, darling?” He stopped and looked down at me.
“I want you to hurt them.” I swallowed hard. “I want you to hurt them the way that they hurt me.”
“I will.” His hand balled into a fist. “Trust me, I will.”
That was the stage I needed to set—to invoke the king’s wrath. He walked to his study and as soon as the door was closed, I followed—carefully—as quiet as a mouse. I leaned against the wall and listened to the sound of whiskey being poured into a glass—then a phone call. He gave the order without any hesitation. Rourke and Brody had to die. They couldn’t be taken alive. He wanted it to be slow and painful. The king was playing right into my trap.
That confirms it. He really is as dangerous as Rourke said—the kind of man that can give an order to kill as easily as he draws breath.
I was about to leave when I heard him make another call—to a woman, he called Hannah—I remembered someone by that name stopping by, but I never saw her face. The conversation didn’t sound pleasant. My father was trying to reassure her, tell her that it would be okay, that he had the situation under control and Josef Weber’s death meant nothing. Josef Weber? Didn’t he try to get me to marry his son? Had he become another body in my father’s graveyard rather than a potential ally? My father played games of life and death as easily as other people blinked—it was an involuntary reaction and he thought he was untouchable. That wasn’t going to be the case much longer, because he had a spy in his castle—and he didn’t even know it yet.
Rourke
Yesterday
I picked myself back up off the ground after Brody’s car drove out of sight and left me in the dirt. There was no way I could catch up with him—no way I could catch up to Anabelle. My heart told me that I had made the right choice when I noticed she was gone—that she wasn’t running because she wanted to be free, but because she finally saw her father for what he truly was. Letting her go was the only way she would ever be able to return to us. Anabelle had been broken, exactly as I planned. She tasted cruelty and pain—but that wasn’t what she needed to be broken—she needed to feel herself hit the bottom of the deepest emotional chasm and see that the only face staring back at her was her own.
Now I wait. Now I hope that Brody realizes it when he sees her.
A gunshot rang out through the air—it was in the distance, but it was definitely real. I hoped it was fired by Brody and not someone else, but I hoped it had no target. I had seen him kill. If he could take a life for money, he could take Anabelle’s too—because she was a threat to him. She could strip away his freedom and put him back in a cell.