Chapter 7 Willow
WILLOW
My heart stops when I see them.
Malice is flanked by his brothers, as always, and all three of them are heavily armed.
For a split second, I think I must be losing my mind. Maybe I really am broken. Maybe I’m still in that crawl space, hallucinating all of this.
But then Malice lets out a wordless sound of fury, and it breaks the spell. Troy moves like he’s going to get up and do something, but before he even has a chance, Malice is on him.
He snatches Troy away from me, the muscles in his arms bulging as he drags him off of me. Troy swings at him, landing a punch on the side of Malice’s face, but it’s like Malice can’t even feel it. He shoves Troy backward, bearing down on him like a train as he slams him against the wall.
The force of it looks hard enough to crack some ribs, and Troy grunts—but Malice doesn’t pause for even a second. Shoving his gun in the waistband of his pants, he grabs a wicked-looking hunting knife from a sheath at his hip and drives it through Troy’s hand, impaling it against the wall.
Troy screams in pain, and as the sound echoes in the foyer, Vic strides forward, a savage look in his eyes.
He grabs Troy’s left hand and shoves it against the wall just above shoulder height, making Troy scream again as his bad arm is torqued into a painful position.
Then Vic stabs him through the palm just like Malice did, pinning Troy up like some kind of butterfly on a corkboard.
I sit up, barely aware of the cool hardwood under my bare ass as I stare at the scene before me in shock.
Malice is all towering fury, burning hot and fast the way he does, while Vic exudes more of a silent anger, a simmering rage that lashes out fast and deadly. Ransom steps forward too, looking more like his brothers than he ever has in this moment, his handsome features as hard as stone.
The three of them move in tandem, attacking Troy. Vic goes for the wound in Troy’s shoulder, jabbing his fist against it.
Malice aims for the face, punching him in the nose, the eye, the cheek, leaving him a bloody mess.
Ransom takes body shots, driving his fist into Troy’s gut in a way that makes him groan.
“You bastards,” Troy grunts, struggling to free himself. “You won’t… get away with this. I’ll have you killed for this, you—”
He cuts off with a scream as Vic jostles the knife piercing one of his hands, and he slumps, breathing hard and fast.
I just keep staring.
Part of me can barely believe this is real.
That they’re here. Victor is here, alive, and I saw him get shot.
The whole time I’ve been away from them, I wasn’t even sure that he had made it through the night I was taken.
I have a split second of being unsure, worried that he’s a ghost. That me thinking I see him is proof that this is a dream or a hallucination.
That my mind has finally broken from all the torment I’ve been through since Mexico.
Maybe this is just my brain blocking out the truth by making up this scenario. By giving me the thing I want the most, the brothers here with me, when in reality I’m just getting assaulted by Troy with no end in sight and no help coming.
Troy howls in pain again, and I shake myself.
No. It has to be real. It has to be.
Everything catches up to me in a rush as my mind struggles to process it all.
Being locked in that crawl space, barely eating, Troy forcing himself on me again and again.
My emotions spike, and I sway as I clamber to my feet.
My legs are shaking like they can barely support my weight, adrenaline rushing through me and making my skin go cold and clammy.
A tiny noise escapes my lips, barely audible over the other sounds filling the entryway, but Ransom turns toward me immediately.
“Willow,” he says, his voice hoarse with relief as he rushes over to me.
That seems to spark Malice and Vic out of their rage, and they leave Troy where they’ve pinned him to the wall and come over to me too.
For a moment, all I can do is stare at them as they gather around me. I’m overwhelmed, shaking and lost, and when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.
“Hey,” Ransom murmurs. “You’re okay now. Angel?”
“She’s in shock,” Vic says.
“No surprise after what that fucker has probably been putting her through,” Malice growls.
“Willow, nod if you can hear me.” Ransom’s voice is low, worry shining in his blue-green eyes.
I look at him and feel myself nod, even though I’m not really aware of having given my body that command.
He grins, bright and perfect. “Good girl. There you are. We’ve got you. We’re going to get you out of here. Fuck, what did that monster do to you?”
He takes in the sight I must be, my hair wild and matted, bruises on my skin from fighting with Troy, my face gaunt and my eyes hollow.
Malice makes a noise low in his throat, almost like a wounded animal. He takes his jacket off and passes it over to Ransom, who helps me wrap up in it.
“There you go,” Ransom murmurs. “It’s okay, pretty girl. We’ve got you. I’m so fucking sorry we didn’t get here earlier. But we’re here now.”
And they are.
All three of them are here, gathered around me until I can’t even see Troy anymore. They’re here, solid and real, not just figments of my battered, tormented mind.
“I—” My voice gives out, and I swallow and try again. “I can’t believe you came. You found me.”
“We’ll always find you,” Malice says. “Always.” But the strength of his words isn’t mirrored in his face. There’s a tortured expression there, something haunted in his eyes. “We tried to come sooner. As soon as they took you. We tried to get to you.”
I nod because I know. I know they would have been here the very same day I got here if they could have. I can picture them frantically searching, tearing the city apart to find me. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.
Ransom reaches out and touches my face, drawing my attention back to him. He pushes my hair back, tucking it behind my ears as Troy lets out a low moan behind the brothers.
“What happened?” Ransom asks. “What did he do?”
In truth, even though I lived it, I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to bring it all back up. But the three of them are all looking at me intently, so I try to get my mouth to form at least some words.
I lick my lips, and it takes me a few tries to start speaking.
“He… he got me back here, somehow. I was out of it for that, so I don’t know how. When the drugs started to wear off and I woke up, I was… I was in a wedding dress. He and Olivia forced me to marry him, to go through with the deal.”
Malice’s jaw clenches, rage swimming back to the surface of his stormy dark eyes. Vic’s face is set in hard lines, his entire body almost unnaturally still, as if there’s so much chaos inside him that one tiny movement will unleash it all.
“Then he…” I swallow. “He said we had to consummate the marriage, and he—”
I wrap my arms around myself, and I notice distantly that my breathing is turning sharp and shallow again. My teeth chatter, and I can’t force any more words out.
“It’s okay,” Vic tells me, his voice soft even though his expression is anything but. “You don’t have to say it.”
They can put the pieces together, clearly. They did burst in on Troy on top of me, and he’s made enough threats that they can understand what went on here. At least most of it.
I lower my eyes, suddenly feeling… I don’t know. Still overwhelmed and angry and hurt more than anything else.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Fingers slide under my chin, and when I look up, it’s Malice tipping my face up. His nostrils flare with each breath, and there’s so much rage in his eyes, but I know it’s not directed at me. He’s angry for me instead.
“You don’t have a fucking thing to be sorry for,” he says, his voice a low rasp. Then he steps closer and wraps his arms around me, enveloping me in a tight embrace as he presses his lips to my tangled hair.
I melt against him, because it’s what I’ve wanted to do the whole time I was apart from these men. I wanted to sink into them, to let them make me feel safe. To have them remind me what it feels like to be loved.
We stay like that for a long moment, and Malice doesn’t let go until I do, as if he would’ve held me like that until the end of time if I needed it.
But as we separate, his whole expression shifts.
Whatever tenderness was there for me is blotted out by the anger and hatred that fills his face as he turns back to Troy.
My onetime captor is sagging against the wall, his head lolling to one side. I didn’t notice before that he’d passed out, but with both of his hands stabbed through, his injured shoulder torqued, and the beating that the three brothers gave him, it’s no wonder.
Malice strides over to him and grabs a fistful of his hair, yanking his head up. Troy moans something incoherent, and Malice smacks him hard across the face.
“Wake the fuck up,” he snarls. “I want you conscious for this.”
Troy blinks a few times as he comes back to himself, pain and fear filling his expression. He finally gets his bleary eyes to focus on Malice, and there’s no trace of that smug superiority from before. Now he just looks terrified, every bit the shitty little coward he’s always been deep down.
“You hurt someone I love,” Malice says, getting in his face. “And now you’re gonna find out what happens to people who do that. It doesn’t end well.”
He pulls his gun from his waistband and shoves it between Troy’s lips.
Troy tries to fight against it, gagging and choking and trying to spit the metal barrel out, but it’s no use.
His struggle only makes his hands pull harder against the knives stabbed through them, and with each yank, he blubbers with pain.
His eyes are wild with fear, one of them nearly swollen shut, and there are tears at the corners of them, threatening to fall.
Malice’s finger tightens on the trigger, and my pulse skyrockets. Before I can think about what I’m doing, I throw myself forward, stepping between Ransom and Vic.
“Wait!” I stammer out.
Malice hesitates, but I can still see his finger curling around the trigger. I swallow hard, forcing the panicky, shaky feeling aside for a moment. I need my head clear for this.
“Wait,” I say again, my voice stronger this time. “You can’t kill him.”