Chapter 27 The Toll #3
“Captured?” Trisha scoffed, swatting the word from the air.
“They were my marks.” She planted her hands on her hips.
“With six kids at home, I ain’t got time to mess around.
I came to fucking collect! Now, my babies will get everything they deserve.
No more shitty healthcare. No more living in the projects or waiting for the bus.
Fuck, it feels good to take from billionaires for once, instead of the other way around!
” She adjusted her breasts with the aggression one would use to fluff a pillow.
“Tax the mother fuckin’ rich! You know?” She cackled again, tossing her hair over one shoulder.
“S—sure,” Maggie said, unblinking.
“Eh, just another day of being a mom. Anyway, I gotta split. My tits and ass are a fucking biohazard, and I plan to sit in a bath for the next two days.” And with that, she swept back into the crowd like the force of nature she was.
Maggie and Daisy stared after her, mouths agape, then looked back at each other and burst into laughter.
The crowd pressed forward around them, bodies funneling toward the entrance. “We should probably get going,” Maggie said.
Daisy sobered. “Oh, I, um…” She glanced back at Jack, who had been pulled deeper into a cluster of hunters on the other side of the staircase. “I’m actually going to stay back.”
“What?” She followed Daisy’s gaze to the group of men. “Did you make a connection?”
“I think, yes. It’s a little too early to tell.”
Maggie studied her face and smiled. “Wow. This entire experience has been quite the surprise.”
It was Daisy’s turn to laugh. “I know. I want to stay in touch—”
“Absolutely!” Maggie gripped her hand. “Let’s meet somewhere. One week from today. A café, somewhere proper where the rich go!”
“Where?”
Maggie’s face lit up. “Oh, let’s pick somewhere completely posh!
You’re in London, right? What about that big gilded brasserie on Piccadilly?
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to sip tea in that grand old room.
” She paused, chewing her lip. “I’d have to figure out the logistics of getting there, but.
..” She waved the worry away like brushing a fly.
“I’ll just figure out how to buy a seat on a plane.
My God, Daisy, can you imagine what our lives will be once the dust from all of this settles? ”
Daisy couldn’t. Not yet. It was still too enormous to conceive. “Next Saturday,” she confirmed, squeezing her fingers. “At noon.”
“Brilliant.” They hugged again, tighter this time. “I’d better go before my limo leaves without me.” She laughed again, already drifting toward the doors. “Another limo! Will you look at us?”
Daisy smiled and waved, then turned to search for Jack. He was deep in conversation with two men. One she didn’t recognize. The other made her blood run cold.
Broad shoulders. Tattoos. Thick neck. Flat, emotionless eyes. And arms wide enough to crush a woman’s throat.
The hunter from the hallway. The one who crushed her windpipe.
He stood across from Jack, black eyes narrowed, mouth set in an unforgiving slash. The man next to him grinned as he spoke to Jack, his icy blond hair and bright blue eyes a complete contrast to the beast at his side.
Daisy watched them from across the emptying hall. Jack’s hands were in his pockets, his expression unreadable. Whatever they were discussing held his full attention.
The hall was nearly hollow now. Stragglers lingered by the doors, exchanging tired embraces, but the great herd had moved on.
Daisy didn’t want to conspicuously stand there alone, and she certainly didn’t want to go anywhere near the man who assaulted her a few hours ago in the hall. So she turned and climbed the stairs.
Aunt Vanessa stood on the landing, champagne flute still in hand, watching her with an expression that held no surprise whatsoever. “The limousines are that way, darling.”
Daisy stopped, her silence saying far too much to a woman who missed nothing.
“But I suspect you won’t be taking one back to the hotel tonight.” Aunt V said, sipping her champagne as her eyes creased knowingly with a hidden smile.
Daisy glanced down the staircase at Jack, still engrossed with the two men. “I’ve…decided to stay.”
Aunt V followed her gaze and nodded slowly. “I’ll have your personal belongings sent over by morning.”
“Thank you. For everything.”
She took Daisy’s hand, her grip warm but firm, the kind of hold that demanded attention.
“Listen to me carefully, darling. Every hunter here knows how to dress well and hold a door. Men are remarkably good at being soft when it suits them. But never mistake manners for nature. Civilized is a choice they make. It takes effort. It is not who they are, and it’s not who you’ll see behind closed doors. ”
The warning settled like stones in the pit of Daisy’s stomach. She wasn’t speaking against Jack specifically. She was arming her with the truth about men. At the end of the day, they were all hunters, predatory animals aching to break free of their societal cage.
But Daisy already realized what Jack was. And she still chose to stay.
“I understand.”
Aunt Vanessa squeezed her hand once more, then released it. “Go on then.”
Daisy hesitated, looking down at Jack as he was still engrossed in his conversation. “Can you tell Jack I went back to his room?”
“Of course.”
Daisy climbed the remaining stairs without looking back.
The upper corridor stretched before her in muted silence.
Sconces flickered along the paneled walls, casting warm pools of amber across the carpet.
The noise of the great hall softened with each step, fading like music heard through water, until only her own breathing and the whisper of her satin flats accompanied her.
She tried to remember the route. Left at the tapestry. Past the library. Through the long gallery with the arched windows. Jack’s suite was at the far end, beyond the corridor lined with oil paintings of hunting scenes she hadn’t appreciated the first time she passed them.
She walked slowly, letting the silence settle around her like a shawl as the finality of the night finally took hold.
It worked. For all its horror and excess, the Feast of the Fallen had actually worked. A stunning realization that made her smile, thinking back to how silly she had thought herself the first time she typed that web address.
Possibilities like this should only live in fairytales. But what did she know? It had been a twisted road to get here, but she made it, safe and sound.
One night. One fortune. Total transformation.
The horrible, beautiful truth was it only succeeded because society had failed to protect them.
Without people as desperate as her, there could be no tributes.
And without privilege, there could be no reward.
The corruption wasn’t in the game. It was in the DNA of man.
They all wanted to play, but not every man had the means to set his true nature free for a day.
Yes, the risk was grotesque. But the reward was life-altering.
Jack thought himself a bad man, but she disagreed. He created an infrastructure that used evil instincts to create something good. Ten years of tributes had their lives forever changed for the better because of him. They owed Jack everything.
Her heart swelled as she dared to think what this actually meant for her.
Her mother would get the resting place she needed.
Daisy’s debts would dissolve. The flat in Dagenham with its damp walls and broken radiator would become a memory instead of a prison.
All because a man with a good heart left an emerald envelope for a desperate stranger to find.
She turned the corner into the long gallery.
Soft morning light spilled like golden honey through the arched windows in pale rectangles across the floor, alternating with stretches of deep shadow.
The hunting paintings watched her pass with oil-dark eyes.
Horses frozen mid-gallop. Hounds with bared teeth.
Stags collapsing beneath the weight of arrows.
Her footsteps slowed.
The corridor ahead was darker than she remembered. Two of the sconces had gone out, or been turned off, leaving a long stretch of blackness between her and the far door. The carpet swallowed the sound of her steps.
She stopped walking.
Something felt wrong.
Not a sound. The air shifted.
Daisy’s pulse ticked faster. She listened. Nothing. Just the faint groan of old timber settling and the distant, almost imagined murmur of voices from the floors below.
She was being ridiculous. The estate was emptying. Everyone was downstairs or already gone. She was exhausted and overwrought, and her nerves were fried from the longest night of her life.
She forced herself to keep going, certain the suite was up ahead. Shadows pooled in the doorways of unused rooms, and paintings disappeared into blackness. The lights had dimmed now that the party was over. That was all.
But when every hair on her arms lifted, and her stomach dropped, she knew her gut was right, and her logic was wrong. Daisy spun just as a hand shot out from the dark doorway to her left and locked around her throat.
Her scream lodged in her throat, cut off by the crushing grip.
Tannh?user rushed her backwards, into the wall, his eyes pits of fury, bloodshot and wild, stripped of every veneer of professional composure she’d seen before. “Going somewhere?”
Daisy clawed at his fingers, trying desperately to loosen his unbreakable grip. Tannh?user wrenched her sideways with such force her feet left the carpet. Her back slammed into another wall, and the air punched from her lungs.
His lip was split and swollen from the hunt. And a purple bruise darkened the hinge of his jaw. His fingers shifted, crushing her jaw, and she gasped for air.
He forced her face upward until her neck strained. “You filthy little slag.” He spat the words into her face. “Did you think I’d let you get away after what you did to me?”
Daisy clawed at his wrist, shredding soft skin beneath her raking nails. He didn’t flinch.
“Get off me!” Her voice snapped like a whip as she battled to suck in air.
His hand cracked across her face. The back of her skull struck the wall, and light splintered across her vision. Her knees buckled, and before she could catch herself, his full weight slammed into her, driving her to the floor.
Carpet burned against her shoulder blades as he pinned her down. His knee drove between her thighs, forcing them apart while one hand clamped over her mouth and the other grabbed her breast, ripping it from the lace and squeezing until she screamed against his palm.
She bit his hand as hard as she could, and his nails dragged down her chest, raking from collarbone to stomach.
“Fucking bitch!” He snapped, pulling back his hand long enough for her to scream. “Who do you think you are?”
He yanked his hand back and hit her again with his fist this time. The impact snapped her head sideways. Daisy tasted blood, unsure if it was hers or his.
“Stupid bitch.” He grabbed a fistful of her hair and slammed the back of her skull against the floor. “Hold still.”
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. The carpet burned. His weight crushed the breath out of her lungs. Cold air scorched her exposed chest. His hand shoved between their bodies as fabric tore.
A sob ripped from her chest as she tried to shove him off. Her thumbs slipped up his face, pressing hard into his eyes.
“No!” The word erupted, raw and ragged, bouncing off the walls of the empty corridor where no one remained to hear it.
His belt buckle scraped against her inner thigh. She thrashed beneath him, but he was too heavy, too strong. He caught her hands. His forearm pressed across her throat, compressing her airway until the edges of her vision darkened.
He forced her legs open. This wasn’t desire. It was destruction.
The hard, blunt weight of him pushed against her thigh, and Daisy screamed.