Castle

Chapter 8

EIGHT

My legthrobbed with the unbearable pain and when I touched my leg, I found blood on my fingers. I had a blurry vision, but I could see Castle hovering over me, trying to help as best as he could. You could tell from his expressions that he was upset with the turn of events and was frantic to help me out.

I wanted to scream at him since he was the reason I’d gotten stuck here in the first place. If he hadn’t followed me from the mansion, I would have already been across the lake and riding a cab.

Devin had laid the traps here on purpose so any staff that left the property wouldn’t be able to cross the forest and I’d fallen right into it. I should have known that escaping from here wouldn’t be so easy.

What have I gotten myself into?

What did this twisted family want from me?

“Castle, step aside,” Devin ordered him, the rifle slinging against his shoulders. “You’re making it worse for her.”

“You sick bastard!” I yelled at him.

“There, now Millie. I would suggest you control that smart mouth of yours. I’m your boss and I deserve nothing but respect. Besides, you’re the one who was trying to break the rules of this house and our contract when I specifically told you that breaking rules have dire consequences.” He informed me in a calm tone, “We have traps laid around in the forest for wild animals, and I should apologize that you got caught up in it, unfortunately.”

He was lying through his teeth and I knew it. He wasn’t sorry about anything.

“Greg, call Dr. Walker, and have him see Miss. Davis in her room.”

Greg was another one of the house servants who came forward to pick me up, and that’s when I noticed he limped slightly on his right foot.

Devin raised his hand to stop him from approaching me, “I haven’t finished talking to her.”

Greg stopped in his tracks and stood there with a solemn expression on his face, as if he were used to seeing employees caught in animal traps. It seemed like Greg had witnessed many things of such a gruesome nature and had learned to be numb to it all.

“Sir, we found her bag,” Winston called out.

Devin snatched it out of his hand. “Now what do we have here?” he asked teasingly before opening the duffle bag and emptying the contents onto the ground.

The sandwiches, the drinks, and snacks fell from it, along with my personal belongings.

Devin laughed, “Out of everything that you could steal, this is all you could think of? Millie, the pair of shoes that Dayana gave you the other day alone costs over a thousand dollars. You could have taken those instead.” He flashed me the boy-next-door smile—the same one that I’d mistaken for charming the first time we’d met. “But I do love honest people, and that’s the reason I hired you that day.”

“Please let me go.” I cried. “What do you want from me?”

Devin leaned in and tipped my chin upward, forcing me to meet his gaze. His emerald eyes, which I once thought were beautiful, now looked vacant and devoid of humanity. In that moment, I knew he was capable of far greater evils.

In a dangerously low tone, he promised, “You’ll soon find out what I really want from you, Millie.”

My blood ran cold.

He was likely going touseme for something sexual. I was so sure. He was a predator, just like uncle Mark. The only difference was that Mark was poor and doughy around the middle area, while Devin was wealthy and gorgeous.

It’s the inside that mattered. On the inside, both were clearlyveryugly.

I take back what I said when I first met him about Devin being a nice person.

He was a monster.

“What do you want me to do with her things, sir?” Winston asked him, addressing me in third person like I didn’t even exist.

“Keep the food and get rid of the rest of her stuff. She doesn’t need it here.”

“I need those things!” I pleaded.

He looked at me once before looking at the butler again. “You know what, she wants the stuff, so instead of taking her to her room, just take her to the basement and put that dog collar on her.”

“Okay, fine! Throw everything away, but the wallet has my aunt’s locket that she gave me before she died. Can I have that at least? Please...” I pleaded, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do.

Winston handed my wallet over to Devin, who found the locket inside. He inspected it, turning it around on both sides, probably thinking it was nothing but a piece of garbage.

“Win, I’m feeling a little generous today, so I’m going to keep the locket with me for safekeeping. Millie, you can consider it as leverage. You’ll get it back, of course, when you earn it.” He turned to Greg. “Remove the trap from her leg and take her to her room.”

Greg used a key to open the jaws that were crushing my leg. Running was out of the question. I couldn’t even stand. That had been Devin’s plan all along. I had no idea how long it would take for the injury to heal, and until then, I was stuck in this house.

A solid punch landed in Devin’s face and he stumbled back a few steps. Castle had landed the blow, and it looked like Devin least expected it.

He grinned, wiping the trail of blood with a napkin that Winston handed him. “What was that for? I thought you wanted Millie to stay with us, too. I was just helping you out here buddy. There’s no need for violence.”

Castle’s jaw tightened as he glared at his brother before he leaned forward and put one of his arms around my back and the other one gripped the underside of my thighs. He carried me in his arms with ease and despite everything; I felt safe with him, so I held him tightly, clinging to him, burying my face into his chest, trying my best to stay strong.

When we reached upstairs to my room, I felt a little drowsy, and I heard Devin saying that the trap usually had something applied to it to put the victim to sleep.

The last thing I saw was Castle putting me to bed, and I thought that was ironic since I’d put him to bed tonight before all this happened. I knew he whispered something to me, but my mind was so muddled up that his words were incoherent.

I drifted to sleep, and the last thing I remembered seeing was Castle’s serious brown eyes looking down on me with pity.

I woke up in the morning with a jolt and for a second I couldn’t remember where I was until I searched my surroundings and recognized the room. Fragments of yesterday’s incident began resurfacing along with the pain in my leg that felt like someone was stabbing me repeatedly with sharpened knives. The leg was in plaster, which was a clear sign that I’d received proper medical attention.

Out of all the people, Theodore was the last one I expected to see in my room. The seventeen-year-old with a serious attitude problem.

He was sitting near my dresser, playing aggressively on one of those fancy gadgets. When he noticed I was awake, he spared me a glance before turning his attention back to the game.

“Don’t you have school today?” I asked, sitting up.

“I do, but I don’t think that’s any of your business. It’s Castle you should worry about. Not me.” He snapped, pinning me with a sharp look.

“Have I done something to you, Theo? I don’t understand what warrants your rude behavior towards me, honestly.”

“It’s Theodore for you, Millicent. And don’t mind me; I always wake up on the wrong side of the bed, honestly.”

“Are all Montgomerys crazy like you and your brother?”

He laughed, “Which one? And we’re not crazy, maybe a little psychotic and deranged.”

“Same thing.”

Theo glanced at the closed bedroom door before turning towards me. “I’ve been asked to keep an eye on you, although I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere with that leg of yours.” He lowered his voice down further. “Here’s a tip if you want to avoid accidents like these in the future. Stay on Devin’s good side, and do what he tells you to.”

“Fuck all of you,” I said under my breath. “Does he have a kill count?”

He gave me that slow grin, and he looked so much like Castle. The two were similar in so many ways; well, if you ignored Theo’s rude behavior. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“So if I stayed on Devin’s good side, he’ll let me go?”

“I won’t lie to you, but you’re not going anywhere, and it would be best for you to adjust to this life, Millicent.”

I suddenly noticed that my good leg had a round black anklet around it. “What is that?” I couldn’t keep the fear out of my voice.

“The staff here all wear it. It’s a tracker.”

“How does it come off?” I asked, even though chances were he wouldn’t tell me about it.

“It doesn’t, that’s the point. Unless you die or cut off your foot.” His tone was deadpan.

Then it just hit me.

“Greg? Why was he limping? Was it because?—”

“You’re smarter than I thought. Gregory tried to take off several times too and kept getting tracked down, so he cut off his foot with a hacksaw. Didn’t make it too far, and he would have bled to death anyway, but Devin saved his life and now he has a fake foot implant or some shit like that.”

“That’s pretty fucked up. Devin is the one who put him in that situation, so technically that’s not called saving his life. If he was actually saving lives, he would let Gregory go.”

“I’m not telling you this to scare you, but I’m hoping you would think before you plan another escape. If you get the tracker off, Devin will still find you, and bring you back here, and the next time around, it’ll be worse.”

“So I’m not just a caregiver in this house.”

Theo chuckled, “You’re a prisoner.” He planted his foot on the bed in front of me. “Just like me.”

He was wearing the anklet tracker, too.