Chapter 23 Ophelia
OPHELIA
Iwatch Ethan, whose eyes are fixed on his father’s back, and the look inside them makes me shiver with cold.
Once the door closes, he turns his gaze to me and I can see the moment he takes to rearrange his features, to show me the side of him he’s always shown me.
Has he always been like this? Have I just never seen it? Never wanted to?
“You okay?” he asks and I have to wonder which face is the true face of Ethan Fox.
“You’re afraid of him,” I say.
His lip curls. “Was. I was afraid of him. He can’t touch me now.”
“He still controls you. You let him control you, Ethan.”
He walks toward the bathroom, turning his back to me. “Those days are coming to an end. Come on. Get showered. You’re not doing either of us any good sitting there.”
“Do you hate him?”
He considers this and I wonder if that time he takes is for my benefit or if he’s really thinking about my question and how to answer it “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do. It’s wicked, isn’t it? To hate one’s father?”
I shudder and I’m not sure it’s the words themselves, his delivery of them, or him. The way he’s looking at me, the flatness in his eyes, the deadness inside them. It’s a deep, dark place.
He blinks, and it’s gone. The Ethan I recognize is back. I exhale, relieved, but I know it’s false. When he smiles, that dimple appears on his cheek, deceptive in its almost childlike innocence. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says. “Because if you knew the truth, you might hate yours too.”
A sick feeling settles in my stomach. I don’t know if it’s the drugs he’s been giving me or that sense of dread, that feeling of foreboding, that’s doing it.
I pick up the glass of water beside the bed and drink the last of it, aware all the while of Ethan watching me.
My heart is racing. I’m at a loss for what to do.
How to act. And I’m not in control of what is coming.
All I know for certain as I glance up at this man I’ve known for most of my life, is that I don’t know him at all.
“Get up, Phee. You heard Dad. Doesn’t want me fucking up.” He laughs an ugly laugh. “We have a schedule to keep.”
I get up out of the bed. I don’t know what else to do.
I’m slowly shedding the weighted, drugged feeling.
Keeping the sheet around me, I pad across the room, my tread as light as possible.
I wince with each step. When I get to the bathroom, he lets me pass without touching me.
I’m grateful for that as I close the door.
His phone rings and he answers, moving away.
I lock the door and walk over to the large mirror over the vanity.
What I see is scary. I look ghostly pale, my makeup from the gala mostly gone apart from my smeared eyeliner making me look ghoulish.
The bruises across the fronts of my thighs and those spots where the belt wrapped around are purple and dotted with broken blood vessels, but it’s when I turn around that I see the true extent of the damage he did.
I reach my hand back to touch a tender spot on my side, my back, ass and thighs marked with thick red welts, some of which opened and scabbed over.
I’m swollen in places. Looking at this, feeling it, remembering when he beat me, when he put my legs up on that stool to whip the bottoms of my feet raw, I think Ethan hates me, too. He must.
“Phee?” he calls out, trying the door. “Unlock the door. You’ll need help.”
“I’m fine.” I switch on the shower and am grateful the lock holds. I step under the flow of the water, instantly wincing when the hot water hits my skin. I cool it as much as I can stand before switching off the water and gently wrapping a towel around myself.
I use the hotel provided toothbrush and toothpaste, along with the soap to wash off the last of my makeup. I feel a little better but not much because I know what is coming and I don’t know how to get out of it.
I open the door and find Ethan sitting on a chair, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee in conversation with someone on his phone. He disconnects as soon as he sees me and stands and for the first time in all the time I’ve known him, it’s like I see how big he is. How threatening.
“Who are you talking to?”
“No one. Here.” He takes the dress his mother had sent out of the plastic bag hanging on the closet door. I’m glad to see she included a bra and a pair of panties. I put them on, still slow to move, my skin tight and tender.
Ethan’s eyes follow my movements. I don’t so much see it as feel it. There’s a hostility I’ve never known with him before.
“You’ll heal soon,” Ethan says. “You know I did that on my father’s order. I’m not a violent man.”
I pull the dress over my head and snort. “No? Really, Ethan? I think this is evidence of the contrary. Why did you do it? If you didn’t want to, why did you?”
“My father can be very controlling, as you’ve seen for yourself. And like I said before, better me than him.”
“Better no one.” I sit down on the edge of the bed to put on the shoes, a pair of heels I know will be excruciatingly painful especially once I slip them on and realize they’re a half size too small. Mira knows my size. She’s sending a message.
“Go on, Phee.”
“They’re too small.”
“Well, barefoot isn’t an option.”
“You can’t make me do this.” I get up and cross the room.
Ethan doesn’t stop me. He sighs instead like he’s bored. “Where are you going to go?” he asks just as I open the door and see the faces of three men I don’t know in the living room of the suite. They’re all big, and I see the holsters strapped to their belts. Those guns aren’t toys.
I close the door and turn back to Ethan. “Am I your prisoner?”
“Don’t look at it that way. I’m trying to help you. I’m the only one trying to help you.”
“Let me call my father, at least. Tell him about the house. Tell him what we’re doing.” Because I need to buy time. To figure out my options. I need to get out of here and get away from Ethan.
Again, there’s that sigh. “I didn’t want to show you this. I made my father swear he wouldn’t. I don’t want to hurt you any more than you’ve been hurt.”
He scrolls through his phone and when he finds what he’s looking for, he comes to me.
“Your father isn’t who he makes himself out to be.”
This turn has me confused.
“For starters, his last name isn’t Hart. It’s Hayes.”
“What?”
“He kidnapped your mother when she was pregnant with you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He turns the screen toward me, and I can’t help but read the words in big, bold letters: Daughter of Oil Tycoon Kidnapped.
The rest of the article I can’t see well enough to read without my glasses.
“Shit, forgot. We’ll get your eyes fixed first thing. No more of those ugly glasses. Basically, your mom and dad were dating, and I’m guessing given who she was and the fact that he was staff, it wasn’t a welcome relationship in the Carlisle-Bent household.”
“Carlisle-Bent?”
“That’s your mother’s last name. Her real last name. And your grandfather, he’s still alive. And he’s still looking for you.”
“What?”
“Your father has been lying to you all your life. He’s kept you away from your family. Told you they’re dead when they’ve never stopped looking for you.”
I drop to a seat on the edge of the bed.
“I mean, can we even be sure you’re his at this point?” he asks.
My head is spinning, and I barely notice Ethan bending down in front of me, forcing my feet into the too small shoes. My father kidnapped my mother? They were in love. Those are the stories I know. I have family, a grandfather who is alive? No. I don’t believe it.
“I’m sorry, babe. I promise to take you to meet them very soon.”
“Them?”
He pulls me to my feet, grips my arm hard and walks me out of the hotel suite. We have to walk slowly, and I can see he’s getting annoyed, but it can’t be helped. We don’t take the main elevator though. Instead, we get into a service elevator at the end of the hall that someone is holding for us.
“This can’t be right. I don’t understand.” My world is coming apart. First Silas, the house, then Ethan and the Foxes, and now this? My father lied to me about, well, everything? “Let me go, Ethan. Let me go.”
“I don’t think so,” he says, passing me off to one of the guards riding down with us as he pulls a syringe out of the breast pocket of his jacket.
“What the hell is that for?” I fight against the guard, whose grip is vise-like around my arms.
Ethan takes off the lid and makes a show of pressing some of the liquid out of the barrel. “It’ll make you more pliable. We need to get to the church. Choice is yours. Are you walking in or is he carrying you in?” He gestures to the giant at my back.
“I need to think. I can’t—”
“Bring her,” he tells the guard whose grip tightens.
“No!” I’m struggling but I know just how limited my options are. “I’ll come. Put it away.”
“Good girl.” He pops the lid back on the syringe and makes sure I see he has more than one in his pocket. Not that he needs any of them. He can easily overpower me on his own, and he’s not on his own.
“Are you lying about my dad, Ethan?” I ask him as the elevator doors slide open. The man still has hold of me.
“Why would I lie about this?” His gaze moves over my face, my hair. “I fucking hate your hair like this. You know that, right?”
“My hair? You’re worried about my hair?”
“I don’t know why you taunt me.”
We walk out onto the loading dock of the hotel as a limousine pulls up. Ethan strolls confidently ahead of us as someone in the passenger seat climbs out and opens the back door.
“In,” Ethan says to me.
I peer inside, seeing a pair of legs in dark slacks. I look up at Ethan, very aware of the firm grip on my arms, the wall of the man at my back.
“Who’s in there?”