Catching Pretty (Lovely Broken Doll #2)

17. Ava

AVA

“ I am Tynan.”

I wasn’t sure which was worse: his malicious smile or the amusement in his unflinching eyes.

My breath stuttered in my chest and I laughed to stave off the fear. But it didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. Even to my own ears I sounded like a little kid trying not to be afraid of the dark.

“You’re lying!” I screamed at the imposter.

He arched a long, elegant eyebrow at me, gazing across the bedroom at me like I was a creature in a cage, pity in his cruel eyes.

It stirred anger in my belly. The heat of rage was better than the ice-cold fear and I clung to it even as my knees trembled.

“ You are Ciaran,” I said, snarling at him. “My bully bastard foster brother. You’re trying to trick me. You’re being cruel. You’ve always been cruel.”

The corners of his seductive lips curled up just the slightest bit. Just enough for me to see .

They looked just like the lips I loved: Scáth’s lips, the lips that I loved on my mouth, my aching nipples, my swollen clit.

But they were different: hardened, cruel, with a scar running through the top that I just noticed.

How did I ever mistake him for my Scáth? And how could my body betray me, betray Scáth, by wanting this monster?

The betrayal of my desire turned my stomach. I hated myself.

I hated him .

“Ty went to prison for me!” I said, trying to convince myself. “He knows what it’s like to be held against his will and he would never do the same to me… like you have. You’re either insane or unbelievably cruel!”

With a mix of horror and sick intrigue, I watched as he tugged his shirt out of his black pants. He began to unbutton his shirt all the way open, his icy eyes glittering with madness.

It should have reminded me of the terrible things that happened to helpless girls in twisted fairy tales, but instead it thrilled me with anticipation, a heat building between my thighs.

He shrugged his shirt from his broad shoulders, the soft rustle of fabric falling to the floor echoing in the silence, sending chills all the way up my arms.

The sweltering heat of the room seemed to vanish in an instant, leaving me cold and unsettled.

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stay warm, but it wasn’t just the temperature that made me shiver—it was him .

My eyes drifted to his bare torso, and I couldn’t tear them away.

I sucked in a breath at the rugged beauty of his muscled body. It was ruined, but it was perfect.

Tattoos stretched across his firm chest and rippling abs, dark ink marking him in ways I couldn’t begin to understand. Each one seemed to hold a story, a memory of a place I couldn’t imagine—a place that had hardened him, that had stolen whatever softness might have once been there.

But it wasn’t just the tattoos. Scars crisscrossed his skin, rough and pale against his flesh. Some were thin and long, like they’d been carved by blades, others jagged, like the remnants of violent fights.

My eyes caught on one in particular—a deep scar on his side, circular and ugly. Was that… a bullet wound? It looked old, faded, but the sight of it made my stomach twist.

This was the body of a man who had been to hell and back.

I thought of Scáth, of how perfect his skin was when I’d touched him under his clothes, unmarred by anything more than a stray scratch.

Scáth’s body was like armor, but my captor’s… his was a battlefield.

I swallowed hard, my mind spinning.

Standing before me wasn’t just the man I once knew. This was someone forged by years of pain, of survival, and it was written in every scar, every tattoo, every wound.

The twin who’d gone to prison. The proof was written all over his body.

“Insane or unbelievably cruel…” Holding out his ta ttooed arms, my captor gave a dark, charming smile. “Why not both, hummingbird?”

“You are Ty,” I whispered, shuddering as soon as the admission left my lips.

My head spun with the implications. I shook it as if it might force the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place.

This was Ty.

He stood there so patiently, so assured, while my entire world collapsed around me.

I felt like I was crumbling, but he remained solid, watching as the ground beneath me gave way.

Shakily, I managed to whisper, “But Scáth told me that he was—”

The end of my sentence fell away as the truth slammed into me like a wrecking ball. I was wrong.

Scáth had never called himself that cursed name— Ty .

I had called him that.

I could hear his reply to my accusation in the mansion as clearly as if he was whispering it into my ear: Don’t call me that… I like Scáth.

And then it hit me with brutal clarity. Outrage swelled inside me, thick and suffocating, threatening to choke the air from my lungs.

Scáth —no, Ciaran —had lied to me.

He had deceived me, twisted the truth until I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

I had fallen in love with a sick, twisted bully who had manipulated my heart.

And worse— I had almost run away with him .

I was ready to throw my entire life away for a cruel bully, for the boy who had never deserved my trust, my love, or the pieces of myself I’d given to him.

The weight of my own blindness, my own mistakes, crushed me. I had trusted him. I had believed him. And he had made a fool of me.

“Ciaran always was a cunning boy,” Ty said. “But I have become… more cunning.”

I was hyperventilating, my heart erratically skipping beats, and Ty picked up his shirt from the floor of my bedroom and laid it casually over his arm.

I hated him for being so nonchalant with his wickedness. For not caring at all that I was teetering on the verge of a complete mental breakdown.

For being right.

My warden was Ty. My childhood best friend. The twin who went to prison for me.

My shadow was Ciaran. My childhood bully. The twin whose eyes always burned with hatred at me from among the black baccara roses. The twin who had lied to me.

But another truth—fragile, desperate—wrapped its fingers around me, clinging to a thread of hope.

Yes, Ciaran had lied to me, he had deceived me, twisted me into knots. But I knew he loved me. I could feel it in every fiber of my being, as broken as it was.

And despite everything, I loved him, too.

He would find me.

“Ciaran,” I whispered, his name tasting foreign and heavy on my tongue. “He’ll find me. He’ll come for me. He loves me.”

Ty’s expression didn’t change. His face was unreadable, lips pressed into a firm, unyielding line. His eyes were cold, focused, detached—like he was already miles away from me. His posture was rigid, shoulders squared like a judge about to deliver a final, irreversible sentence.

And like an executioner, he wasn’t finished destroying me yet.

“No,” Ty said, his voice low, final. “He won’t even consider that I have you. He won’t come back to this cursed house, not ever again.”

My heart stuttered in my chest, cold terror crawling through my veins as Ty’s next words fell like a hammer.

“Because he thinks I’m dead .”

I flashed back to that moment in my kitchen, remembering what Scáth had said when I’d called him Ty.

“Don’t call me Ty… Ty is dead.”

At the time, I had thought he was speaking figuratively, metaphorically—like a part of him had died inside. But now I realized he had meant it literally .

He believed his brother, Ty, was dead.

Which meant Ty was right. Scáth would never think to look for me here.

Scáth wasn’t coming.

Ty moved so quickly, I barely had time to react. My mind and body were frozen in place, paralyzed by the weight of his revelation.

He dropped his shirt, scooped me up off the floor as if I weighed nothing, and dumped me onto the bed with a swift, careless motion.

I shook my head, trying to force the shattered pieces of the truth to fit together, but they just rattled around inside me like a broken doll tossed in a box. “You… how? Why?”

His voice was low, calm—too calm for what he was admitting. “I faked my death in order to escape prison. So I could return to you .”

I saw it in his deadened, fixated eyes that he had a plan for me and neither heaven nor hell could keep him from it.

I crumpled against the sheets of the bed in a fit of frightened, despairing tears because there was no escaping this nightmare.

I sobbed till I couldn’t breathe, thinking about what lay ahead for me, inescapable and horrifying.

His iron grip on my chin made me cry out in surprised pain.

“There’s only ever been you , Ava.”

He claimed my mouth with his. His tongue was fire against mine and the warmth spread straight down between my thighs.

My hands were on his solid chest to push him away, but I never found the strength. Instead, my lips melted against his and I groaned with sickening arousal, my fingers searching out every knotted scar, every bump and line of his beautiful ruined body.

Gripping my neck, he forced me onto my back on the bed.

I should have felt trapped with his big body atop mine, but the friction of his marble chest against my hard nipples was delicious, and when Ty rutted his cock against me, my hips rocked back.

My breathing became ragged when Ty licked my throat.

“I’ll wash every single trace of him from you,” he said. The wet heat of his tongue was everywhere all at once: the line of my jaw, the hollow between my collarbones, the swell of my breast. “I won’t stop until you’re cleansed. Until you’re all mine .”

My body was buzzing with white-hot pleasure, but his words made me shiver.

Ty tore my dress apart down the middle with his hands.

“I’ll suck out every memory of him,” he promised as he licked my nipple, the pleasure making me moan despite my rising panic. “From every dark corner.”

Nausea swept over me when past Ty’s shoulder I saw the shadowed corners of my bedroom reaching out for me. Bile rose in my throat as the soft bed underneath me turned into the cursed velvet couch damp with my own sweat beneath me.

This house was where I was abused.

Ty had brought me here on purpose. He wanted to torture me with my past. He wasn’t loving me. This was all just another part of his sick little game.

“No,” I cried out as I struggled against Ty as his tongue circled my nipple.

Ty just pressed my hips deeper against the bed with his hands.

“I’m sorry, but this is the way it must be,” he said before he plunged his face into my folds.

I fought against him as he licked my swollen clit, but he was way too strong.

I made a noise that was half moan, half whimper as he ravaged my pussy with his mouth because it felt so fucking good and I didn’t want it to.

I hated the way my body responded against my will.

“You’ll never be free of him until you face the darkness,” Ty said between laps of my pussy, his cruel burning eyes never leaving mine. “You need to be broken before you can be put back together again, Ava. And no one loves you enough to do it but me .”

His two fingers thrusting inside me choked off my scream. I bucked and thrashed beneath him, but I was trapped.

“You’re a sadist!” I screamed as he sucked my clit between his teeth, his fingers working my pussy, my wet desperate sounds making me burn with self-loathing.

I shook my head, refusing to let the despair take hold, my survival instincts scrambling desperately for another thread of hope to cling to.

“Ebony,” I cried. “She’ll send the fucking cavalry after me. The whole of Ireland’s police force will be looking for me. She won’t stop until she’s found me.”

Ty chuckled, sending a lash of fear down my spine. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but no one is looking for you.”

“You don’t know Lisa. Or Ebony. They’ll—”

“They all think you’re in Greece, sailing around with a friend with hardly any Wi-Fi all summer. That’s what you told them in your messages.”

“W-what?”

Ty smiled at me from between my legs, and the sight of it chilled me to my bones. “It’s not hard to fake messages, fake post updates on your socials from Greece. Hashtag wish you were here.”

I could feel the color draining from my face. A cold chill crept over my skin. My vision narrowed down to Ty’s dark, victorious eyes.

“I spent every single waking moment in my tiny cell planning for this—for you . Don’t think for a second I haven’t put in place every single possible measure to make sure that we are left undisturbed and that you will never escape.”

No one was going to find me. Because no one was looking.

“No.” The word slipped out, barely a whisper, as hopelessness seeped into every inch of me, numbing me from the inside out.

“Yes,” he hissed before he lowered his face into my pussy again.

“No, no,” I begged. I fought against his tongue, against his fingers, even as my body screamed yes, yes !

My thighs trembled around his ears as my orgasm crested but he slowed his thrusts.

Fuck him. He knew exactly how to keep me on the edge.

He wouldn’t stop until I submitted once and for all to his evil torture—his therapy .

No. I couldn’t say yes. I couldn’t face what had happened to me again. It would shatter me, break me into pieces I’d never be able to put back together.

But what choice did I have? He’d stripped it all away—my hope, my options—until I was left with nothing. Nothing but this.

Nothing but him .

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I cried as tears spilled out over my eyes and I sealed my own fate.