Chapter 2
Adull throb in my right foot drags me out of the darkness, forcing me to battle the last vestiges of sleep when I would rather fall under again. The empty blackness is somehow so inviting, warm when it should be cold. Safe when it should be frightening.
I shift slightly, and the pain intensifies.
With a groan, I try to dive back into the inky place in my foggy brain and roll in the soft, comfortable bed, burrowing deeper under the lush comforter.
I resettle, face buried in a feather pillow, and shift my legs to lie flat on my stomach. The motion only sends more agony through my foot. That sharp jab each time I move, even a fraction of an inch, won’t let me return to that blissful, floaty state.
What the fuck?
Still groggy, my head filled with a fuzzy white haze I can’t seem to clear completely, I push myself up on my elbow and force my eyes open.
Black satin pillowcase.
Equally luxurious silky sheets wrapped around me.
A dark room.
An unfamiliar one.
I freeze.
Unease quickly invades my brain, evaporating any lingering remnants of my slumber. I blink rapidly, trying to take in my mysterious surroundings while tamping down the panic threatening to seize control.
Where the hell am I?
An enormous four-poster bed surrounds me, draped with dark fabric across the top and circling the hand-cut posts. Thick timber beams span the length of the ceiling, giving the entire space a rustic, elegant look. The scent of crisp, clean air and fresh-cut wood invades every breath, just as it did when…
Oh, shit.
It all comes rushing back—a deluge of memories and feelings heavy enough to crush my chest.
The drive up here…
A volatile man coming out of the woods…
Silver hair flashing in the moonlight the same way the head of the axe did…
That feral snarl of warning…
Scrambling away and racing through the woods.
Holy shit.
Was that Weston Barker? Had I encountered The Beast of Barker Mountain?
I quickly scan the room again, but the only light filters in from a hallway through the cracked door. It casts a narrow beam that falls on the foot of the bed, leaving my surroundings in almost total darkness.
Almost.
My eye catches a slight flutter of movement in the right corner of the room.
I narrow my gaze as it comes into focus, and I stiffen, every cell in my body seizing up with the terror flooding my system.
Oh, God…
The Beast reclines in a leather chair, shirtless in nothing but a pair of worn jeans and heavy boots. His muscular arms drape almost nonchalantly on the armrests, large hands dangling down—one near the handle of the very axe from my memory.
But the vibe emanating from the man says anything but casual.
Icy-cold, hard, steely gray eyes stay locked on me as he reaches over and lifts a glass tumbler from a small table beside him. He brings it slowly to his full lips, surrounded by a silvery-white beard, and takes a sip of the amber liquid in it, then swirls it around slowly.
Almost absently.
Almost.
Something tells me nothing this man does is unplanned.
Every move he makes.
Every word he speaks.
Everythingis meticulously calculated.
Including this agonizingly long assessment and drawn-out silence.
He’s making me squirm intentionally, causing as much discomfort as he can without saying a word or moving more than necessary to sip at his drink.
His finger rolls around the rim, but he keeps looking at me, a thousand questions in his penetrating gaze. “Who are you?”
The deep timbre of his voice rolls over me like an ocean wave; only, instead of being calm, and peacefully lapping at the shore, it’s more like a tsunami.
Violent.
Threatening.
Capable of drowning me.
It’s enough to make me scramble back until my shoulders hit the headboard. I wince at the stab of pain in my foot and tug the comforter up over me, as if the material’s going to protect me from the man in the corner who can clearly do whatever the fuck he wants to me in this situation.
And maybe already has…
I’m practically naked.
In a bed.
Maybe his.
I shift again to try to take stock of my body, to search for signs of anything untoward that may have happened while I was out.
Everything feels normal until I move my leg and the sharp prick of pain shoots through my foot again. I peel back the covers cautiously. A crisp white bandage wraps around my arch, holding gauze in place where I must have cut it on something in the woods.
God knows there were enough things to maim myself on out there.
Branches pulling at me and scratching. Rocks and twigs digging into my soles, tearing them apart with each stride I took, trying to escape the madman now watching me from the corner.
Why did he bandage me up?
I jerk my gaze up to his. Even from across the room, the heat of it radiates into me through the darkness. So does his pure, unadulterated ire.
This man isn’t to be trifled with, and I’ve done a lot of trifling.
He takes another sip of his drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing with his heavy swallow. “I suggest you answer my questions.” His free hand spreads wide, motioning toward the cracked bedroom door. “There’s nowhere for you to run. Especially on that foot.”
Shit.
He isn’t wrong about that.
Had he…
I wrack my brain, trying to remember the last few moments in the woods when he finally caught up with me.
Did he hit me, knock me out somehow?
My chest tightens, and I press a hand against it, imagining what he might have done that didn’t leave any physical evidence I can see or feel now.
“You passed out.” He pulls another sip from the tumbler. “I tended to your wound. You better stay off it for a few days, or you’re going to rip the stitches open.”
Stitches?
The Beast put stitches in my foot…
While my brain struggles to grasp that tidbit of wholly unexpected information, he sips his drink and sets down the glass, the tink of it hitting the wood making me flinch.
“I think it’s time you start explaining who you are and what the fuck you’re doing here. I’m not a patient man, and you’ve overstayed the welcome I never extended.”
Shit.
This is not how I wanted things to start.
I had a plan—one I had worked out and honed during my multi-hour drive from Helena up to Barker Mountain. It involved a lot of flashing skin and offering things that made my gag reflex engage several times along the highway. Instead, I’m a fucking mess.
Torn dress.
Scrapes and scratches along my exposed arms and legs.
Wounded foot.
Hair likely full of leaves and twigs and bugs from my race through the woods.
I run my shaking hands through it, pushing the tangles away from my face and avoiding looking at the man I came here to supplicate myself to. “My name is Callista Fox.”
He stiffens instantly, those gray eyes flashing with recognition. “Fox?”
The way he says my family name sends a chill through me, starting from my nape all the way down my spine, and goosebumps break out over my skin, making me shiver and tug the comforter tighter around me.
“My father is Harold Fox.”
I’m not sure what I expected his reaction to that bit of information to be, but the low growl rumbling from his chest makes me tense, readying myself to attempt another escape despite my torn-up foot, fear, and exhaustion.
The menacing way he shifts forward in the chair makes me try to inch back again, but there’s nowhere to go. Only the solid, hand-carved wood headboard.
He may not be holding the axe, but this man is deadly with his bare hands. Everyone knows it. Has heard the stories. Is more than aware that you never turn your back on The Beast because he will end you before you even realize what’s happening.
Flexing his long, strong fingers, he analyzes me with a cool gaze. “And just what are you doing here, Callista Fox?”
I suck in a shaky breath. “Apparently fucking up everything.”
He doesn’t laugh or react at all to my comment, doesn’t even crack a damn smile at my self-deprecating attempt to break some of the tension in the room. The Beast merely continues to sit and stare, his body completely still, his eyes boring into me.
Waiting.
For me to answer the question he asked.
Not give my apparently unwitty commentary about the situation.
What are you doing here?
Handing my soul over to the Devil himself.
Offering up my body like a slab of meat.
Throwing away any chance of a future with any sort of real relationship in order to save the only man I’ve ever truly loved—Dad.
Doing what needs to be done.
Swallowing through my dry throat, I force myself to stare down the man through the darkness, unwilling to show even more weakness when I admit I’m here to do exactly what he demanded—become his.
“My father got your message.”
A moment of tense silence hangs between us. Then The Beast folds his hands together in front of him, resting his elbows on his knees. “What message?”
He’s kidding, right?
It was crystal fucking clear.
A bloody axe stuck somewhere impossible to miss on Dad’s front door—about as direct a message as you can send, with the added clarification of the typed note with explicit instructions.
What’s his game?
I raise a brow. “Um…the note stuck to his front door with the axe…”
Even from across the room, with the darkness enveloping us, I can still see his shoulders stiffen, his brow furrow under a full head of silvery hair, and his hands tighten around each other in front of him. “Remind me what my message said.”
Is he joking?
This must be some ploy to get me to say the words, to embarrass myself more than I already have. To utterly destroy any semblance of self-confidence or self-esteem I might have retained with this man.
It would be easy to cower under his intense gaze, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of breaking down and refusing to do it, of showing my discomfort with what I came here to do.
If I can’t even say the words to the man, there’s no way I can follow through with the act.
I swallow thickly and shift my weight slightly, trying to avoid moving my foot, squaring my shoulders to make it appear I have more bravado than I actually possess. “It said he never should have gone after Rosewood and that if he didn’t send me up here immediately, there would be consequences.”
The rest was implied.
You don’t send your thirty-year-old single daughter up Barker Mountain to The Beast without one clear purpose—and it sure as hell isn’t to be the man’s housekeeper.
Finally saying the words out loud, in such close proximity to this man, who could so easily do anything he wants to me in this moment, makes my entire body tremble and tears well in my eyes despite my best effort to maintain a strong front.
I was so sure driving up here that I’d be all right, that I could handle Weston Barker and whatever he turned out to be, but I was so fucking wrong. I underestimated The Beast and what his mere presence could do to me.
An image of his face as he stared down at me in that forest flashes through my head.
Silver hair shimmering in the faint moonlight filtering in.
Strong, angular jaw covered with a matching beard.
Full lips set in a hard, thin line.
Anger flaring behind his ruthless eyes.
Hard muscles rippling on his exposed chest.
Arms flexing as he gripped his weapon and raised it over me, then grasped my wrist and easily lifted me like I weighed nothing.
This isn’t a man you fuck around with, and that’s exactly what Dad did.
Now he sits staring at me, as if he doesn’t know what he’s looking at, like I’m some sort of puzzle he’s trying to fit together when the pieces don’t seem to match up.
There isn’t any reason for him to be confused.
I’ve done exactly what he asked.
What is necessary to save the only family I have left.
So why does The Beast look so confused?
He slowly relaxes the stony set of his shoulders, then reaches over and grabs his drink, taking another sip before he averts his gaze and stares down into it. “So, your father received the message and sent you as a sacrificial lamb?”
I shake my head as a single tear slips from the corner of my eye and trickles down my cheek. “God, no. My father forbade me from coming. We argued about it. I waited until he left town to drive up. He never would’ve allowed me to come if he knew I planned to honor your demand.”
His jaw tightens, flexing under his trimmed beard. “Good father.”
The observation lodges a boulder right in the middle of my throat, that I can’t seem to swallow past, and I choke on a sob. “He’s a great dad, the best. I don’t know what he did, what happened with Rosewood, but—”
Hell, I don’t even know who or what Rosewood is…
“You shouldn’t involve yourself in business that isn’t yours.”
Shit.
That was stupid.
I shouldn’t have brought it up.
Of course, this man doesn’t want to discuss his business with me.
Dozens—maybe hundreds—of legitimate companies and illegal fronts. Thousands of employees—on and off the books. All spread across the state of Montana. Bringing in billions every year in the Barker name. Protected by a sister who sits in the damn governor’s office as the head of the state government and a cousin who serves as a federal senator. Not to mention the various second and third cousins and other relatives who hold positions in local governments all around the state.
It doesn’t matter who or what Rosewood is, anyway.
The damage is done.
That bloody axe embedded in the door with a note bearing my name sent a direct message I couldn’t ignore, despite Dad wanting to stick his head in the sand.
The Beast’s gaze falls on me again. “You think coming here and offering yourself to me is going to be his penance, that it will somehow absolve your father of his sins?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know why I came up here or what I expected, really. All I do know is that if I didn’t drive up this godforsaken mountain, what would happen to my father was spelled out pretty damn clearly.”
His jaw tightens again, a muscle near his ear ticcing wildly. He raises a brow. “And what was your plan?”
The “plan” I had worked out during my drive now seems totally stupid after the incident on the porch that bled into the woods. And since he was the one who asked for me to come, it seems more sensible to put things in his hands—as long as he doesn’t use them to strangle the life out of me. “I assumed you had one, since you requested my presence.”
Requested.
More like demanded.
But antagonizing him with my word choice doesn’t seem wise right now.
He downs the rest of his drink, his hand tightening around the glass as he pushes to his feet. Even from across the room, his towering presence dwarfs me, and he moves closer, getting bigger and more threatening with every sure stride forward.
Still wearing worn, ripped jeans, his exposed, chiseled chest and washboard abs covered in silver hair that matches that on his head rises and falls with his steady breaths. His massive, veined arms—one bearing what appears to be the Barker family crest—honed from countless years of manual labor, seem to throb with the blood flowing through them.
He steps into the sliver of light coming in through the open door, and it illuminates his profile.
My first real look at the man in any form of light not provided by the moon.
Sweet Jesus.
Weston Barker is fucking stunning.
Easily in his mid-fifties, he certainly doesn’t look, nor act, like it.
Even without his reputed relish for violence, I can see how he could have earned the nickname The Beast. The pure, animalistic, raw power permeates every move he makes. Vibrating through taut muscle. Floating on every breath he takes. Expanding his barrel chest. It lies in every damn look he tosses my way. The unyielding focus and intent enough to make anyone wither under it.
He certainly has lived up to his reputation—and then some.
And I’m suddenly vividly aware of everything he does.
The twitch of his hand. The tightening of the other around the glass. That damn muscle in his jaw that seems to tic constantly.
He stares at me from the end of the bed for a moment, far too long for a stranger to examine someone, then turns and grabs his axe from beside the chair and stalks toward the cracked door.
“Wait!” I inch forward. “Where are you going?”
Sharp gray eyes peer over his shoulder. “None of your fucking business.”
“But what about…what am I supposed to…”
He steps out and pulls the door closed behind him without acknowledging me or speaking another word.
A lock clicks into place, sealing my fate.
“What? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Panic tightens my chest, and I throw back the covers and scramble off the side of the bed, momentarily forgetting about my injury until I put pressure down on my sole and yelp. “Fuck!”
Agony sears through my entire leg, and I stumble, immediately grasping the closest bedpost to hold me upright.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
I grit my teeth and hop on my one good foot across the short distance to the door, then try the handle, even though I know what I’m going to find.
It doesn’t budge.
The Beast has locked me in here.
With nothing more than my vivid imagination to keep me company. It already spins wildly, full of dozens of things he might be doing and planning to do to me.
Releasing a strangled sob, I press my forehead against the wood as the tears flow freely.
What the fuck have I gotten myself into?
Callista Fucking Fox…
“Shit.”
Though, somehow that word seems wholly inadequate for the current situation.
All words do.
I scrub my hand over my beard and stare at the monitor, watching her collapse against the bedroom door, sliding down it as her tiny frame crumbles pathetically. Still wearing her ripped dress, she caves in on herself, making her already petite frame seem even smaller, and it’s as if I can physically see her breaking.
Conceding defeat—as so many others have when facing The Beast.
That hard set of her shoulders she was so intent on displaying during our conversation vanishes. She folds her knees up, wincing when her injured foot hits the hardwood floor, and rests her forearms on them. Burying her face in her hands, she releases a violent, sorrowful sob.
It reaches out to me through the speakers attached to the hidden camera in the corner of the room, like a wounded animal that knows it’s facing death, making one final plea.
A haunting sound.
Full of anguish I more than recognize.
I’ve felt it myself more times than I care to count.
She’s trapped. Lost control over her own life to help another. Floating in a cloud of confusion and distress. Likely unsure of what’s up or down, wrong or right, or what her future holds other than pain.
A foreign pang hits the center of my ribcage, one I haven’t felt in decades and never wanted to again. Rubbing at the spot, I watch the young woman meltdown completely—allowing herself to let go when she thinks I can’t witness it.
And for good reason.
Callista isn’t na?ve to her situation. She knows who she’s facing and wants to maintain her false bravado in front of me as much as she can. Coming from that family, she certainly understands what the Barkers are capable of and has undoubtedly heard stories her entire life about me.
Warnings designed to keep her from doing exactly what she did. Yet, she still drove up here, still offered herself on a silver fucking platter—in blood-red fuck-me stilettos—to save her father.
A tiny flutter of something that feels an awful lot like respect grows for the blonde, but I brush it away like I would an annoying fly buzzing around me before it can do any damage to my well-constructed, necessary blockade against anything that might make me think I’m human again.
You can’t feel anything for that girl.
Even respect is a dangerous thing on Barker Mountain—a lesson I learned all too well. It can blind one to the hidden truths behind it. It can twist the way someone sees a situation, open one up to allow in the kind of caring that only ends up causing pain.
I tear my eyes away from Callista and scan the rest of the screens that display the camera feeds covering the entire property.
Mounted at the driveway turn-in. To the trees every few hundred yards, all the way up the mountain. At specific spots deep in the forest that someone might use to gain access to the property, covering hundreds of acres in each direction.
Not to mention every inch of the house—save for the third floor.
My sole retreat, the lone space in this manse where I can almost forget the curse that keeps me here.
The screens ensure no one intrudes on Barker Mountain.
No one else…
Birds chirp and swoop past the cameras. A deer dips its head to drink from the river at the north end of the property. Leaves rustle in the fall breeze.
Everything is as it should be.
No signs that anything is amiss…
Except for the sound of Callista’s soft sobs as she comes to terms with where she’s found herself. That young woman may have driven up here herself, but no one could consider it done willingly.
She never would have set foot on this mountain if her father hadn’t made a very bad choice. In this instance, she’s quite literally the sacrificial lamb offered to The Beast to appease his hunger.
If only it were so easily satiated…
Old memories threaten to resurface.
Tied to that same pain and knowledge that you’re cornered with no good options.
Bound to the blood on my hands.
Inextricably tangled with every breath and step I take on Barker Mountain.
Keeping those thoughts buried is a much easier prospect when I’m alone. When there isn’t a reminder of the humanity at the base of this peak weeping in my own damn bedroom.
Fuck.
I reach out and flip off the audio feed from the room before I do something utterly stupid, like start to feel bad for the girl.
That’s the kind of weakness I can’t allow myself.
My phone dings with an incoming message, and I tense, my eyes darting to Callista on the monitor rather than the small screen resting on the desk. She hasn’t moved from her spot against the door, allowing herself a few moments of utter despair before she’ll undoubtedly rise and start examining her surroundings.
If I had any choice, I’d ignore the message I just received. Pretend it didn’t come through. Delete it without ever reading it. It might make all this easier if I did and just sent her away.
But nothing has been easy for me for decades, and I have to read it in order to know what it says in response to my earlier text—the one I sent the moment I left Callista in that room.
I grab the offending device I’d rather toss into the lake than have in my home and read the screen.
Two words.
She stays.
“Fucking Hell…”
Any thought of getting her out of here, off my mountain, and back where she belongs disappears instantly, replaced with the dread of knowing Callista isn’t going anywhere—at least for the time being.
My body vibrates with barely contained rage, the thing that earned me my reputation in the first place, and if I don’t find an outlet for it—fast—I’ll end up replacing all the screens in the surveillance room.
Again.
I shove out from my chair, grab my axe from where it rests beside the desk, and storm from the office. The quiet house envelops me as I stalk toward the back door, but so does her sweet honey scent.
It already permeates the entire place.
Every breath I’ve taken since I pulled her into my arms off the forest floor has been filled with it, and the longer she’s here, the more it will invade everything until it’s impossible to rid myself of it once she’s finally gone.
I tug open the door, seeking an escape, a reprieve. Bright morning sunshine hits my bare chest and face. The warmth should improve my mood, but all it does is remind me of the golden color of Callista’s hair and how it looked spread out across my dark pillowcase.
Fuck.
Hard, punishing work.
That’s what I need right now.
The kind that will make my muscles twitch and push me to my absolute breaking point, until I’m shaking and can’t even move tomorrow.
It’s the only way I’m going to deal with having that woman in my space.Until I can figure out a way to get rid of her, this is how it’ll have to be.
Stay as far away from Callista Fox as possible and work myself to death every day.
An excellent plan.
One I must make work.
I exit the rear of the house and slam the door behind me, then make my way toward the tree line and into the same woods I chased her through only last night.
What the hell was she thinking?
Coming up here in those shoes…
That dress…
Running into the depths of the forest, where everything around wants to kill…
My hand tightens on my weapon.
The irony of it is not lost on me—that I, of all people, am the one who saved her from what could have ended very, very badly last night. If she had managed to slip away, gotten lost in the thick trees in the dark, God knows what would’ve found her instead of me.
An unusual chill slides down my spine, but I push the strange feeling away like I do the branches blocking my advance.
It would be easier to take the worn path from the house that leads to the clearing, but I want the pain today.
I crave it.
The scrape of rough bark against my exposed skin. The tug of barbs and of thorns. The nicks my bare chest, back, and arms will bear when all is said and done.
Reminders of why I do this, why I must—my curse.
Death by a thousand cuts is better than the alternative: death by that woman up in the bedroom.
What the fuck am I going to do with her?
She stays.
Those two words echo in my head, and I release a frustrated growl as I push through the last of the trees and step out into the glade.
Almost instantly, the tightness in my chest releases slightly.
Towering pines. Chirping birds. Bright-yellow wild buttercups scattered across the crisp, green blanket Mother Nature has laid out for me. A picture-perfect spot that lures unsuspecting prey with its beauty.
A light breeze blows through the grass as I cross the flat space to the woodshed and my workshop. But my eyes naturally drift back toward the house, peeking up above the towering trees that have been here longer than humans have lived on this mountain.
Has it really been thirty years that I’ve been up here, locked away in this prison?
That seems impossible.
An entire lifetime alone.
You know it has been.
You know it down to the day.
The hour.
The minute.
The memory of the last time I left the property flares in my head, so vivid it makes me stagger, and I use the axe, thrusting the head to the ground to stop myself from falling forward. Squeezing my eyes closed, I let the haunting images fill my brain.Pain lashes my chest from the inside out until I can barely suck in a breath without the agony threatening to suck me into the black abyss I’ve fallen into so many times over the years.
Don’t let it take you.
I’ve told myself the same thing every time the past tries to come back to haunt me.
It rarely works.
But I do my best to lock it away before it gets to this point, to redirect my focus to something more productive than dwelling on my torment—like the stack of timber I’ve been breaking down into manageable firewood.
The house doesn’t need it.
Not with the solar panels providing enough energy to run it and everything else up here without my ever having to lift a finger. But there’s something about the smell of fresh burning wood, the heat of it radiating from the central fireplace that rises three stories through the house, that always reminds me of simpler times.
Before my life went to shit and the curse consumed me.
So far back that the memories come to me more like a hazy dream than anything that actually happened before my world went dark.
I’d much rather focus on those snippets of time than the ones that keep me on this mountain, but it always seems the things I want to forget won’t let me move on from my mistakes.
No matter how many logs I split.
How many fences or pieces of furniture I build.
How much time I spend just trying to kill the curse.
Nothing will ease the agony—and that woman back there is only going to complicate things further, twist me up inside more. Make my past rear its ugly head in the present. Unlock the very real beast inside me.
Unless I do what I can to keep it caged.
I grab a log and stack it on the giant stump where I do all the splitting, then spit into my palms and swing the axe, driving it down as hard and fast as I can, digging the blade into the center of the wood. Pieces go flying in either direction, and the thwacking sound reverberates through the clearing, bouncing off the tree trunks and dissipating into the air.
It disappears eventually, just like people who come onto the mountain do.
But I can’t just make that girl back there vanish.
That would cause even more trouble, make the situation more untenable, which means I have to figure out another way to deal with my current predicament, another way to handle the beauty upstairs.
Even I know I can’t keep her locked in there forever.
Her father will come for her eventually, and if she has any hope of surviving what she’s walked into, she needs to regain her strength—and pray to whatever god she believes in that things don’t go in the direction I see them heading.
Straight to my own personal fucking Hell.
Here, I thought I’d been living in it. Then she stepped onto my porch in those heels…
I grab another log, set it up, and split it.
Moving by rote.
The motions so ingrained in me after all these years that I don’t have to think about what I’m doing until the hair on my neck stands on end.
I’m not alone anymore.
Ignoring the eyes watching me, I set, swing, split; set, swing, split, over and over again until the pile starts to add up and my palms begin to burn.
Every muscle in my body aches.
Sweat pours down my back.
I finally cast a glance into the trees and lean against my axe, swiping my brow, trying to catch my breath after the exertion. “You leave her alone. If she has to stay, then you stay away from the house. You hear me?”
No response comes, but I hardly expected it to.
My warning will probably go unheeded.
But I’m not about to start a fight right now, nor do I want to stop the one thing that is letting me release some of the tension that’s built up in me.
I return to swinging, losing myself in the repetitive motion. The manual labor. The joy of the pain it brings me. For the first time since she drove up my mountain, I start to relax, allowing myself the freedom to stop thinking about the quagmire and instead breathe in the fresh air untainted by her honey scent.
Time ceases to exist.
The sun reaches its highest point. Its rays beat down on me relentlessly, warning me it’s time to take a break, to go in and get something to eat and drink, and every fiber of my being screams for me to stop.
But I don’t want to break.
I don’t want to be back in there.
You aren’t the only one you need to think about anymore, are you?
“Shit…”
She hasn’t been fed, and I locked her away in that room with nothing but her fear—which isn’t a bad thing, despite the way the thought makes acid rise in my throat.
Callista Fox should fear me.
What I’m capable of.
What the Barkers are willing to do.
It might be the only thing that keeps her alive during her time up here.