Chapter 29
29
MARI
I traipsed between trunks, running my fingers over the different types of bark and undergrowth that snared me in patches. Robe and Miller followed me at a decent distance to allow me a sense of freedom as I delved into my history with the woods at my own pace. Their muted conversation was often loud enough to be heard, though I couldn’t make out the words, and their company offered comfort and the relative freedom to wander through the woods, retracing part of my journey that brought me onto Robe’s land in the first place.
He suggested I take a hike, in the literal sense. Find my way back and do whatever I needed to feel safe on his land. I knew he’d readied me for my return to the world, but I clung to the illusion of living my best life with my boys at my back in a forever sense.
I’d moved on from broken to healing to lying to myself. I mean, why not? A girl needed life goals, and denial was currently my lane.
Inhaling a long breath of crisp air belonging more to winter than spring as it crested the ridgeline in a swift gust that rattled the forest around me, I knew I’d leave a slice of my heart here when Robe made me leave. Part of me wanted to go back, to pretend that I could have a normal life, but Alan had made it abundantly clear that normal had left the building long ago for Mari Merripen.
I didn’t know how I would return to the world at large, just that it had to happen soon.
The cozy sanctuary my five lethal boys offered reduced my fear. I couldn’t be better protected anywhere else.
My legs strained as I walked faster, nearing the tall cottonwood where I first crashed into Robe. It made a significant addition to the landscape and my destination. Robe asked me to stop there, as the ancient tree marked a point close to the eastern border of his lands.
Earthy scents and warm sunny kisses melded into a spring morning lanced with shards of sunlight from a high, cloudless sky. I stepped between trunks where a tall pine had uprooted, leaving a space in the canopy where sunlight struck the forest floor in an array of soft greens.
The cottonwood stood a few paces ahead. I stepped up to it and trailed my fingers around its thick girth, wondering at the age of the enormous sentinel. It reminded me of the two innate protectors who followed me. Their conversation behind me stopped for the moment, or maybe they spoke too low for me to hear.
Robe still kept most of their work secret—whether out of a sense of security or for me, I wasn’t sure. But they’d let me into their small empire despite Miller remaining unwilling for the most part.
I completed my half lap of the cottonwood trunk and nose-butted a broad chest imbued with the faint scent of cloves. Scrunching up my eyes to prevent tears leaking from them, I took a step back and pinched the tip. “Ow. Why do you all have to be in the way,” I grumbled, not really angry. Robe must have caught up with me when I let the forest’s quiet beauty distract me. “Sneaky bastard.”
“You always did have a potty mouth when others weren’t looking,” a smooth American voice that was neither Robe’s nor Miller’s drawled above me.
I know that voice.
I stumbled backward, my heel catching on a heavy tree root as I stared at the man who orchestrated my abuse at the seat of his personal power through watering eyes and landed on my ass. My mouth popped open on a scream, but the sound I needed refused to exit my throat, strangled by a resurgence of world-ending terror that shifted the ground sickeningly beneath me.
“Shhh.” Gideon Blackthorne, ex-boss and personal pimp-slash-abuser, crouched before me, one manicured finger pressed to his pouty lips.
Dark eyes surveyed me with a touch of amusement at seeing me all sprawled out and panicked before him. In another life I might have found him attractive. Once. Now the only emotions I experienced upon staring into his aquiline face were terror and disgust.
“Get away from me,” I whispered, my voice ragged, like I’d run for hours through the forest, sucking at air that wouldn’t let me breathe.
Again.
“Mmmm. I think we need to have a little talk first, don’t you?” Gideon’s head tilted to one side. “You have let yourself go. Huntingdon isn’t caring for you,” he tsked.
I managed a hollow laugh. “You think it’s okay for men to gang-rape a woman, and then she should be able to get up and walk away to live a normal fucking life?” I whisper-shrieked the words, unable to call on the volume I needed.
My heart thrummed heavy in my chest, rising to my throat. If I could have puked it out, I would have on the spot. Anything to prevent the rush of renewed memories coiled invisibly beneath my skin. So many hands, mouths, the teeth ?—
“You’re not worthy of being called a human,” I forced out between numbed lips.
“Perhaps not. It makes no difference. You can tell him, by the way. He already worked it out.”
“I know.” I scooted back a pace, scraping my heels through the mulch to expose dirt beneath. “He’ll come for you.”
Gideon waved a hand as though Robe’s history meant nothing to him, though I didn’t miss the dark flash in his eyes when his jibe elicited no damage.
I tipped my chin back, trying to suck in a big enough breath to scream. Where the hell were my boys?
“Make sure you don’t incriminate yourself at the same time. Will he want you when he knows what you used to do for me?” He leaned closer, looming over me, obliterating all light above and around us. “What you’re doing for me now? You’re never alone.”
Two fingers brushed the bump inside my arm where a small scar lay, healed at the same time as the rest of the damage from that day. His face blurred.
“No,” I breathed, horror squeezing my heart. I swore it jumped a beat. “No, that’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? Don’t his men get hurt? His… friends?”
My throat closed, the forest wavering. Brandon. Was I solely responsible for the old man’s horrific death? “You didn’t?—”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Will you take that risk?”
I shook my head, unable to answer him. “No.”
Time stilled as my stomach flipped over on itself. I turned my head to one side, taking my eyes off the demon predator before me for a half second.
I can’t stay.
My new truth, the one that ruined me. I was the danger Robe always believed me to be, and now my borrowed time had run out.
“Occasionally they ask about you. Your parents. Friends….” He smiled, a slow taunt that unwound like a mechanical beast with a target in its sights.
“My what?” I blinked at his drastic change in pace. But that was Gideon’s best negotiation tactic—pulling the rug out from beneath his opponent. I didn’t know if that meant me or Robe or if I was just an incidental pawn in a larger war. “You?—”
“I watch what you do. I talk to your mother. Your old professor. The friends who think you’ve dropped off the map. Oh, and we’re fucking. At least, according to the group chat.” He pulled my old phone from his leather jacket, the device charged and filled with active messages that scrolled through in regular, recent conversations.
“I’m not missing.” My hands were numb. And my tongue.
“Not in the least. Alive and kicking. You won an award at work last week.” He flicked me a lazy smile, so similar to Robe’s that my insides revolted.
“But my life—” I struggled with the concept, knowing my eyes bugged out of my head and that he was watching me suffer for his pleasure again.
Stop, I can’t ? —
Miller—
His name was the cry that formed on my lips, knowing after our training how deadly and cold he would be against this worst of enemies when Robe’s obsession over us both would blind him, but my throat closed at the critical moment.
Help me ? —
“You didn’t beg. You know I can’t forgive that, don’t you?” he said conversationally as acid seared my veins. “You were supposed to beg, pretty little Mari. It was twelve.” Gideon tucked my phone away as he rose and brushed at his leather jacket like I’d sullied him with my presence alone.
“Twelve what?” I croaked.
I have to warn Robe.
He’ll throw me out.
Or Miller would end me on the spot, and he’d be right to do it, righteous fury burning in his strange yellow eyes.
“Twelve men.” Gideon watched me, emotionless, un-anything. “Twelve men you entertained before we were interrupted.”
“Stop—” I gasped on a desperate note I knew he wouldn’t heed.
Gideon paused, running his fingers over the zip on his leather jacket. The scent of it made me want to puke.
“It could have been worse.” His lips turned up in a soulless smile. “It could have been me.”
He walked away and left me lying on the forest floor, retching at the memory of a dozen ghosts I’d never escape.