Chapter 16
Who had it been? I was haunted by how close I had come to death.
I tried to get Gabriel to care about finding the killer, but he didn’t give a fuck, and now I wasn’t even allowed to stay home during practice.
“No. I left you once and I found you fucking around in the graveyard. Now you don’t get to be left alone. That’s a privilege. Maybe you can earn it back.”
And I might’ve felt a little self-conscious around the other WAGs, since I was so much older, except that Gabriel never let me forget for one moment that I wasn’t allowed to move a fucking muscle except under his control.
“Oh my god, I should try younger men,” one of the WAG’s friends said to me as she looked jealously at the massive pink diamond on my finger. “You’re so smart.”
Smart, right, that was definitely me.
What was I supposed to say to that?
I didn’t choose this.
He had forced and blackmailed and dominated me on every level.
It wasn’t that I had given up on escaping.
But what was the point? My husband wasn’t going to give up.
“You committed a felony by forging my name on that marriage license paperwork,” I said after he had fucked me up in the upstairs library, my work papers scattered all over the desk.
“I wanted to be a scholar.”
Gabriel was leaning against the stone wall, smoking out the open window. He hadn’t showered after the game tonight and there was still a slick sheen of sweat on his chest, his dark slick curls curving over his ears and the strong lines of his throat.
“I’m all the study you need, baby girl.”
“You won’t tell me a thing about being a psychopath!” I cried. “You never give me serious answers.”
“What do you want to know? You want me to tell you all about the mind of a psychopath? So the police can catch him? It’s the easiest damn thing to understand this one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Psychopaths don’t give a shit about anything.
Don’t care if anyone we see lives or dies.
Until. . . we find that one thing. That one thing we finally give a shit about.
For this dumbass, it’s killing women and keeping totems. It’s the only thing he truly gives a fuck about, so he’s got to keep doing it. ”
“Hmm,” I said, but I felt a little burst of excitement. It was the first time I had actually gotten anything like an insight out of Gabriel.
Maybe there was something to being able to study a psychopath up close.
“But not every psychopath has a totem. You don’t.”
“I do,” he said, scything out of the window and walking toward me.
The sweatpants hung low on the deep v of his hips, his cock hanging thick between his legs.
“You’re my totem. Every inch of you.”
He kissed me, one hand on my belly, as it often was.
Waiting. For that first kick, that first flutter of movement.
Was this 22-year-old psychopath actually planning to. . .be a good father?
“I need some fresh air,” I gasped, rushing over to the window.
It was all too much to process.
As I tried to relax my breathing, I put my hand on the same stone I’d grabbed dozens of times before, to carefully lower myself into the padded window seat.
But this time when I did it the stone slipped out of my hands and down the side of the manor house, falling five stories down onto the jagged rocks below.
. . and I was pitched forward right after it!
I didn’t even have time to scream as I fell headfirst over the ledge, the rolling fog melting away to reveal the deadly rocks and unyielding ground.
No! My baby! was the gutdeep terror that flashed through my brain.
And I couldn’t lie to myself any more.
Then I felt a hard hand on the back of my pants, and I was yanked back into the room until I slammed hard into Gabriel’s chest.
My knees collapsed, and I was startled to feel his heart pounding against the back of my head.
“The fuck?” Gabriel said sharply, and keeping a hold of me, he stepped closer to the ledge, his strong tanned hand probing at the gap where the stone had been.
“How—” I asked, my whole body trembling.
“I came up here as a teen to smoke cigarettes,” Gabriel said, and his voice seemed to come from miles away. “That rock has never moved a fucking inch. This was not an accident.”
He set me carefully down on my feet and I looked up at his face. My husband’s lips were pressed together in a harsh line and his voice was ragged and raw.
“This means,” and he put one hand on the heavy bookshelf. “That someone deliberately tried to kill you.”
With a sudden, savage motion, he ripped the entire bookshelf from the wall and shoved it out the window, the huge heavy piece of furniture falling with heart-stopping speed and then shattering loudly on the ground.
“Who—who?” I asked weakly. “Someone who—knows I saw the killer?”
My eyes couldn’t stop staring at the hole in the window seat.
If Gabriel hadn’t been right behind me. . .
If he wasn’t always such a fucking controlling prick. . .
I’d be dead right now.
“How—"
“There’s no way some fucking random could come all the way up here without any of the servants or us noticing. Which means it’s someone here in Ashgrove Manor who did it. And I am going to find out who this shithead is.”
Gabriel kicked at the other bookshelves, ripping them from the walls as all the priceless leather books fell on the floor.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked, grabbing my notes hastily.
“This place is getting fucked up from top to bottom until I find out who did it.”
“But—what—” I cried as he grabbed my arm and pulled me along behind him down the hall, tearing the priceless art from the walls.
I had never seen Gabriel like this.
In the darkness, with only the moonlight shining on him, he was a massive, hulking shadow.
Once we headed down to the first levell, Gabriel began to whistle sharply, and each worker he found got a sharp, domineering interrogation until my husband was satisfied.
After each person was dismissed, he ordered them to leave the manor.
“Go,” Gabriel said sharply. “Leave now.”
With frightened glances they did, fleeing the house in little knots of twos and threes and into the dark night.
Once he saw Branby, Gabriel gripped him around the collar.
“Where are my father and uncle?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’ve you been all day?”
“Out—” Branby began, but Gabriel didn’t even let him finish his alibi before head-butting him so hard the older man crumped onto the floor.
“He’s the one who’s been following you around. He’s the one who would know where you usually sit.”
Gabriel grabbed my hand and pulled me after him, his fingers reaching for a door that was almost invisible—hidden in a wood panel beside the butler’s closet.
“You doesn’t move a fucking inch without me,” he snarled, and then yanked me down into the cavernous darkness.
Nothing about how I might be too delicate for whatever we were going to find, as we descended level by level into the basements.
“How deep does this staircase go?” I whispered, frightened.
“I don’t know and no need to whisper. I want anyone to know I’m coming. Give them time to piss themselves.”
Who was down here?
Still holding my hand, Gabriel pulled me along the hallway as I shuddered away from the slick walls.
There was a sudden, sharp iron smell in the air, and my pregnant stomach heaved. Suddenly I turned and threw up against the wet walls.
Gabriel wrenched open every door in the hallway until there was only one solid wooden door left.
“Wait,” I hissed. “Just—what if whoever’s in there is dangerous? What if they want to hurt me?”
He turned back to me, his face veiled in shadow.
“I’m the only one who gets to hurt you. I decide. Not anyone else. And you’re not getting spanked today.”
Then with one well-placed kick, he smashed through the wooden door and we walked into the room.
It stunk of viscera and blood, of ruin and damnation, and there were Lucian and Hemsworth in the middle of it, desiccated bodies hanging in rows around them like a gruesome butcher shop.
Hemsworth held out his hands to Gabriel.
“Welcome.”