42. Mila
MILA
W hat did Lily have to say tonight?”
Christian walks me up the front walk to our house. We’ve just arrived home after we drove my new car into the city to have dinner with the kids from Home of Hope.
He drove, of course, because watching Christian drive is one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen, but we drove my car and that’s something I never thought I’d get to say.
From living a life on the run to a homeowner, fancy SUV driver, and wife, all in the course of a year.
My mother would be proud.
And then it remember the phone burning in my pocket.
I want to call her. I just don’t know if I’m ready to hear her voice. The disappointment I’m sure she feels because I ran.
How do you come back from that?
“She wants us to visit more.”
He chuckles under his breath, his hand tightening around mine.
“She likes you.”
“She likes you , too,” I correct him.
Christian pulls me to a stop on the porch of our house, reaching for me. He takes my face in his hands, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead.
“I have to go meet up with Levi before we go to bed. Go inside; I’ll be in in a minute.”
“Okay,” I smile. “Don’t be too long. I’m going to go start a shower.”
His chuckle ends with a groan. He swats my ass, and I smirk at him over my shoulder, making my way inside.
The room is warm against my cool skin when I step inside, patting Phantom on the head when he trots over to me happily from his fancy new dog bed.
And Christian thought he was going to shoot him. The man’s just as attached as I am now.
“I don’t know,” I muse, his bag of food in my hand. “Have you been a good boy today?”
He stares at me expectantly.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
I feed Phantom and change his water before I head to the bedroom and grab some clothes. Then, I make my way into the bathroom and start the shower.
Tonight was fun, but my feet are sore, and I’m ready to curl up against Christian and read until we fall asleep. We’re almost done with our book, and I think I’m going to read him Dracula or Frankenstein next because he’d like that.
Tossing my clothes into the laundry hamper, I step under the warm water and let out a sigh.
I close my eyes, slipping in further and soaking the top of my head, letting the water rush over me in droves while I think about tonight.
Things are starting to feel normal . . .
Except, when I open my eyes, everything is black.
I freeze, my heart stalling in my chest, the sound of the water impossibly loud in the silence of the night.
“Chri—” My voice gets caught in my throat. “Christian?”
No answer.
Just silence and darkness.
Fumbling for the water, I cut it off, listening to the sound of water droplets hitting porcelain and the hum of silence in the air.
Even Phantom is silent.
Swallowing over the heavy lump in my throat, I reach blindly for the towel I’d hung up beside the shower.
This is fine.
It’s just a power outage.
Nothing to worry about.
Christian said he’d be in shortly.
Unfortunately, no matter how many words of comfort I hurl at myself, none seem to quell the panic rising in my chest.
I have to be careful when I step out of the shower, wrapping the towel around myself.
I quickly dry off as best I can and slip on my shorts and Christian’s giant T-shirt before I attempt to venture out into the bedroom.
No way in hell, I’m dying naked.
Pressing my ear to the side of the door, I listen for any signs of movement from the other side, my heartbeat hammering in my throat.
I’m about to sink back and hide out in the bathroom until Christian comes home when heavy footsteps sound, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
“Oh, thank God,” I groan when I open the door. “That was terrifying—”
No one.
The room is dark, save for the little light emanating from the moon burning brightly outside. The moonlight shining through the window does nothing but illuminate everything in a glow, making the furniture look like sleep-paralysis demons waiting to claim my soul.
Stumbling back, I crash into the wall behind me, startling myself.
Okay, Mila. This is fine. You’ve been through worse.
Someone could be hiding behind the couch.
Shut up.
Someone could be hiding in the closet.
“Phantom?” I call out, my voice too loud for the tomb-like ambiance of the house around me.
I don’t hear him, nor do I see his sleeping form on his bed in the corner.
Where the fuck could he have gone?
“If you’re playing a joke on me, it isn’t funny.”
I could find the power box. I have no idea where the power box is.
I could run to the door.
What the fuck do I do once I’m outside? I don’t even know where Christian went.
I could wait right here until someone or something reaches out from the darkness and grabs me.
Fuck that.
I don’t have shoes, but I pad towards the door anyway. Anything to get out of this dark room and get to some sense of safety.
Only when I reach out and grab the handle . . . it’s locked.
And then . . . someone reaches out for me.
From the dark, hands grab me around the waist, hauling me back until I fall flat on my ass. The scream gets stuck in my throat, all the air whooshing out of me when a large body falls over me.
From outside, I can hear Phantom growling and scratching at the door, but I can’t move with the man pinning me down.
I jerk in his grasp, my hand connecting with his cheek and my ring slicing his skin.
“ Fuck ,” he curses in pain. “Fucking bitch.” The back of his hand connects with my face, and my head whips to the side, my lip wet with either blood or saliva.
He falls off me, and I attempt to scramble away, but he’s too fast. He grips my hips, dragging me back until I’m underneath him, this time on my stomach.
No. No. NO.
Panic wells in my chest, and I buck underneath him, my fingers grasping at anything I can reach, but there’s nothing there but the rug.
I’m truly trapped.
“Christian!”
The man’s hand presses into my back, pinning my face to the carpet beneath me while his other slips between us to try and drag my shorts down.
“Does this make your pretty little cunt wet?” he growls, and shame envelops me, my scars searing underneath my clothes.
With all my strength, I rip my head back, my skull connecting with his nose, and the sickening crunch of cartilage shattering fills the air. Blood drips down onto my bare ass, and he lets out a growl of fury, grabbing my legs and pushing all his weight on top of me.
“NO!” I thrash violently under his hold when he snarls through the blood in his mouth, ripping at my shorts. A lance of pain shoots up my side, but I don’t stop fighting him, wrestling to get him off me through the chaos.
“That’s okay, sweetheart,” he taunts in my ear. “I like a little blood on my cock.” His fingers fist in my hair, dragging my head back at a painful angle, and a strangled cry rips from my throat.
Oh fuck.
“Beg for me, huh? Maybe I’ll take it easier on you if you cry a little harder.”
He chuckles through the blood in his mouth, the sound sending chills down my spine. I let out a shrill cry when his fingers grip my ass, my throat clogged with tears and screams. I can barely breathe with all his weight on me.
His other hand clamps around my throat, his fingers digging into my flesh and cutting off my oxygen.
Distantly, I register the sound of a pounding at the door mixed with the feral growl of my dog outside, but the sounds slowly drift away as the corners of my vision grow fuzzy.
“Tell me, sweetheart,” the man growls, but I’m fighting for oxygen. My limbs are growing numb as a sense of calm takes over. “Do you like pain?”
“Do you?”
For a moment, I lie there, sputtering as I suck in air, unable to move as all of the man’s weight is lifted off me. My hands and legs tingle as blood flows back through them, and my eyes are blurry from the mix of tears and makeup clouding my vision.
I roll over, scrambling to my knees and falling back into the wall, my heart nearly beating out of my chest. Christian holds none other than Collin by the throat, pressing him up against the wall opposite me, his gaze darker and more potent with fury than I’ve ever seen it before.
He snarls, his fingers tightening around William’s throat until his face takes on a blue hue from the lack of oxygen.
“Please,” Collin manages to croak, fingers clawing at Christian’s hands, but Christian’s grip only tightens, his eyes wild and his face so blurred with rage that he’s almost unrecognizable.
Christian shoves him back into the wooden wall, his arm shaking with the force of holding the grown man up off his feet. Collin chuckles, seemingly no longer concerned with begging for his life. He spits in my direction, a pool of blood landing at my feet.
Levi rushes into the room, and chaos ensues as two other men I’ve never seen before follow him. It’s too dark for me to see much of anything, but a pain settles in my limbs, my breathing not quite returning to normal.
I reach out to pet Phantom’s head, and a surprising lance of fire shoots through my hand when he whimpers from beside me, barking in my face.
“ Mila .”
It’s Levi falling down to his knees in front of me. He’s got a flashlight, and he’s shining it on my face, nearly blinding me while he looks me over.
Then his eyes go wide as mine threaten to close.
Why is the room tilting?
“I . . . can’t breathe . . .” I mumble, my lips and fingertips prickling with numbness. Shivers ghost through me from head to toe, and I feel cold despite the sweat beading on the back of my neck.
“ Fuck !” he grunts, launching to his feet. “Christian!”
“Get him to the fucking bunker,” Christian growls from somewhere nearby, but I can’t focus on anything.
Not even when Christian drops down in front of me.
“Baby, look at me.”
I can’t.
I can’t open my eyes.
“Goddamnit, Mila, fucking look at me,” he growls, but I can’t. It hurts too bad to move.
And just as my consciousness starts to fade from the pain, I hear three little words that would seem crazy, were I not bleeding out on the living room floor.
“Call Paulina. She’s been stabbed.”