I’d never considered myself the maternal type, but everything changed the day I saw the test results. Huck’s baby was growing inside me. A baby we’d created together. And even if I wouldn’t ever get to be her mother on the outside, I would protect her as long as I had her.
My resolve didn’t make it any easier to accept whatever was about to happen, but I held my head high as they forced me inside the room. Except when I saw Brentwood lying in wait for me, my fear only escalated.
“Please don’t leave me in here with him.” I turned to the guard with the brown eyes, hoping against hope he’d find some shred of humanity in his heart. But Brentwood shooed them away like gnats, and they obeyed, the door slamming behind them as it sealed my fate.
“What do you want?” I snarled.
“What do I want?” His eyes rippled with undiluted hatred as they moved over my belly, and he shoved the chair away as he lunged toward me, grabbing me by the throat. Despite my resolve to be brave, pregnancy had made me softer, and I couldn’t hide that when I squeezed my eyes shut.
“This was not the way it was supposed to end.” He breathed the words into my face. “I could have got you out of here. I could have given you a nice life. But you chose that filthy biker over me, and now you’re carrying his spawn.”
“You’re fucking delusional.” I tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip. “I never wanted you. Don’t you get that? I never had a fucking choice. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the worst thing that ever happened to me. You and every other man who decided to take what I didn’t give you freely.”
He slammed me back into the wall, and I crumpled forward, trying desperately to protect my belly as I prepared for more of his violent blows. But they didn’t come. What I saw when I looked up at him was worse. It was a man obsessed with me. A man holding onto his sanity by a thread. I barely knew him, but somehow, in his twisted mind, he’d decided we would be together at any cost. And I knew at that moment, I would never truly be free from him. He had pull in here. He would have pull wherever I went. From the day he walked into my life, I was doomed.
“Everything you do, every meal you eat, every goddamn time you go to the bathroom, I know about it, Birdie. Do you think I don’t know what you said to your sister when she was here? Her and that sweet little baby?”
“Don’t fucking talk about him,” I growled. “He’s innocent. He has nothing to do with any of this.”
“That’s what you don’t get.” Brentwood laughed darkly. “I could make him disappear. I could make any of you disappear. In fact, I might just have a little visit this evening with your sister. Or maybe even that filthy biker you seem so fond of. How does that sound?”
I screamed out my frustration, thrusting my body forward before he grabbed me and forced me onto my knees, pinning my face against the floor.
“Suck my dick, and I’ll consider it an apology.”
Acid churned in my stomach, and I couldn’t even consider it. My disgust must have been obvious because before I could even give him an answer, he released me. I was afraid to look up, but it was too quiet, and I had to know what was going to happen next. I had to prepare for it. Except nothing could have prepared me for his wrath.
“You’re a stupid fucking cunt, you know that, Birdie?” His eyes burned into my face. “I gave you a chance to make it right. You’ve pushed me and pushed me. Now I’m going to show you what happens when I don’t get what I want.”
“Please don’t,” I begged as he moved for the door. “I take it back. I’m sorry.”
“Save your tears for another day,” he sneered. “You’re going to need them when that baby’s carved from your belly.”
“WHAT THE—”
A grunt escaped the asshole’s chest as I clocked him in the side of the head, and he went down like a sack of cement. I dragged his ass out the door and loaded him into the back of the van with the other scum bags I’d collected. Five in total, bound, gagged, and lined up in an orderly fashion.
I had wondered if these deeds would weigh heavy on my soul, but as I drove out into the desert, I found that I didn’t feel even the slightest remorse for what I was about to do. As far as I was concerned, every one of these fuckers had a hand in what happened to Birdie as a young girl. It was likely they’d all touched her, but even if they hadn’t, they were aware, and they did nothing. They’d profited off her exploitation along with countless other young girls, some of whom were still sleeping in the houses. Tomorrow morning they’d wake up and find themselves free from their chains. And tonight, I would paint the desert landscape in blood.