Chapter 15 Premonition
Premonition
Someone was screaming. No. Multiple people were screaming. Where was it coming from? Everything was so damn dark and cold. I couldn’t find my way. But the screaming kept getting louder, more erratic, sharper. What was happening to them?
I tried to follow the voices, stumbling my way through the dark, catching myself on a cold concrete wall. I clung to it, scaling the wall until the screams became so loud my ears rang with horror.
“Jaden!”
I bolted at the sound of my name, racing through the shadows as my heart pounded in my chest, fear crippling my fortitude.
“Jaden, please! Help!”
I’m coming. I’m almost there!
And then a door finally appeared at the end of the shadows. It rattled violently in its frame, the thunderous noise making my stomach clench with pure terror.
“Jaden! Please!”
I lunged for the door, barreling through it like an animal, and burst into a room filled with my worst fears. My heart stopped dead.
My brothers.
Aaron, with blood dripping down the side of his swollen and bruised face, looked up at me from the chair he was currently strapped to. His chest heaved up and down as his eyes moved to his hand, which was covered in red. His middle finger was missing.
“Help us, Jaden.” Brennan’s strained voice came from my right. My heart plummeted as my eyes followed the chains that were currently securing his wrists above his head. He had burns all over his body, and a deep gash up the side of his leg.
They both looked like they’d been beaten to hell.
And then I felt a hand reach around my hip and yank me away into a hard body.
Righting myself, I looked up to find Darren grinning down at me with a sinister look in his deep blue eyes.
But then he moved his other arm into view and revealed a small, rosy-cheeked toddler with brown hair and dark blue eyes.
Darren bounced him in his hold, the two exchanging smiles before Darren turned back to me.
“Soon, it’ll be his turn,” he declared proudly.
I shot up with a gasped scream, my instincts telling me to strike out, making my elbow connect with something hard as I hurled myself out of bed. My knees hit the floor after a single step, but my brain was on total autopilot survival mode, the instinct to flee my only objective.
My heart was ready to burst through my chest as I managed to quickly crawl across the room and lean my back against the solid wall, grounding me to reality. I couldn’t catch my breath, my ears were ringing, and I felt my entire body shaking like a fucking Chihuahua.
Breathe, Jaden. Breathe.
Pulling my legs up, I held my head between my knees to try to take slow, deep breaths.
Five breaths later, I felt warm hands gently wrap themselves around my wrists, thumbs softly grazing against the back of my hand.
Even squatting low to the ground, Darren’s body still managed to tower over me, blanketing all of my space and making me feel so damn small and utterly trapped.
“You’re okay, Jaden,” he said softly. “It was only a dream.”
But it wasn’t a dream.
It was a premonition. The future.
Fuck.
When I finally felt calm enough, I raised my head and connected my eyes with my enemy.
Aside from the clear redness marring his cheek, his face remained passive, the stone-cold features unwavering as he looked me over like I might be hurt elsewhere. When he was satisfied, he released my wrists and placed both hands along the sides of my face and tilted it upward.
“Better?” he asked.
I closed my eyes as I sucked in a slow breath. “Yeah.”
And then I felt myself being lifted into his arms and carried back to bed. I could see the sun was starting to rise as its light escaped through the curtains, so it was still early.
Climbing back into bed, Darren pulled me onto his lap and locked his arms around me, pressing my head against his shoulder.
“Talk,” he ordered.
I blew out a puff of air instead. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to tell him shit.
“Not yet,” I pleaded with a groan. “It’s too early.”
He sighed heavily, a low growl emanating from his chest.
“I thought you had gotten past these nightmares,” he accused.
I bit the inside of my cheek. It was true that my mind was finally coming to terms with what I had endured in the basement. I couldn’t remember the last time I dreamed of those horrors, though they still plagued my inner peace and influenced my actions.
But this dream was a whole new can of worms I was not willing to dissect with him. If anything, he’d probably just validate them instead.
“You know I’m always full of surprises,” I offered innocently.
He groaned, squeezing a little tighter. “Predictably so.”
Before anything else could be said, his phone rang, temporarily saving me from his interrogation.
Reaching over, he grabbed his phone and brought it to his ear.
“Yeah,” he answered.
I could only make out an unintelligible voice on the other end, but the more they spoke, the more Darren’s fingers dug into my arm.
“Then he’s still alive,” he replied gravely into the phone. “I’ll be down shortly.”
He then ended the call and kissed the top of my head.
“I have to go,” he said, releasing my body and quickly slipping from the bed.
Whoever it was that was still alive, they had my thanks for saving me from what would be a very heated argument followed by a callous victory lap.
Apparently, Darren’s non-ass-kicker did survive the encounter…
Darren quickly changed into a suit and headed for the door in record time, his demeanor that of all business and lethal determination.
“You can expect a visit from Sid later,” he warned, giving me a single glance before he opened the door and shut it behind him.
I released a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, relief flooding my lungs as I fell back against the pillows. But that relief was quickly replaced with dread as the images of my nightmare came back with a vengeance. My stomach clenched at the memory, the anxiety building in my blood.
I couldn’t believe what Darren had revealed last night. I still wasn’t convinced I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing up.
To think that Warren Davis had his own children tortured. TORTURED. Every single year! FOR THREE DAYS!
What kind of parent did that?
What kind of person ordered the torture of a child, let alone their own?
On a yearly basis!
Darren’s father was clearly a psychopath. There was no other explanation. And so was his grandfather. An entire lineage of psychopathic, bloodthirsty monsters…and Darren wanted to continue that line.
Fuck that.
I reached down my abdomen until my fingertips grazed the puckered scar where a bullet had simultaneously saved and sabotaged my life at just the right time.
With the destruction of one ovary, I was just one away from stopping that madness right in its tracks. A carefully calculated puncture at just the right angle could permanently free me from ever having to bring a child into Darren’s evil world.
It would spare my would-be children from ever having to suffer the same fate as their sadistic father.
The only thing that had me pausing was what Darren would do to me if I was successful in my objective, even if it was by another happy accident.
I could probably expect to live the rest of my life in the basement while Darren found some other poor soul to bear his children.
If I had learned anything in the years I had been with him, he would find a way.
He would always find a way.
If there was a God, she’d make the damn man infertile.
I sighed in disappointment.
If a child being born to this family was inevitable, maybe it would be better for me to be there.
Perhaps it would be better for it to be mine because at least I would have standing to protest whatever “training” Darren would subject them to.
No one would respect my objections to a child that wasn’t biologically mine.
But the real mother? She held sway. It may not be very strong or effective, but she had a greater claim to it than anyone else. Which meant it had to be me.
Fuuucccckkkkk.
I didn’t even bother trying to leave the bed. I just stared up at the wall for God knows how long while Clive and Owen scowled at my refusal to acknowledge them. You’d think they’d appreciate the silence for once.
I sniffed the air when Carla brought in my breakfast, but I just let it sit there, too deep in thought to care about anything else.
“You’d better fucking eat something, Jaden,” warned Clive.
I clucked my tongue. “Nah.”
A collective sigh of annoyance made me smirk, but I wasn’t trying to be difficult on purpose. My stomach was just too full of knots and dread to fit anything else in it. Contemplating becoming the mother to a very powerful sadistic man’s child was enough to disrupt any woman’s appetite.
“Fine, then Camaro’s gone for the day.”
“Bye, girl,” I said sweetly with a wave as I saw them lead her away out of the corner of my eye. Truthfully, I didn’t think I had the energy for her anyway right now.
“First, you’re not sleeping, and now you’re not eating?” Owen commented. “Sorry, is your dumb bitch juice not to your liking this morning?”
I couldn’t help but snort. They always knew the right words to say.
“Did you guys know that Darren’s father used to have him and his brothers tortured for three days straight every single year while they were teenagers?”
And just like that, crickets. Absolute crickets.
“No? Hmm, okay then,” I murmured, my eyes suddenly fascinated with the ceiling.
“I did.” A different voice came from the doorway.
My eyes glanced to my left, finding Sid closing the door behind him.
“Oh look, my best buddy is here,” I teased, sitting up against the pillows.
Sid gave me a no-nonsense glare before he turned and addressed Tweedledee and Tweedledum. “Gentlemen, would you give us a moment, please?”
Groaning, the two fuckheads left the room and shut the door behind them while Sid took a seat on the nearby chaise.
“Okay, out with it. Let’s not pretend you don’t know why I’m here.”
I rolled my eyes and sat up straighter. Might as well get it over with and get him the hell out of here.
“You said you knew about Darren being tortured as a child?”
He nodded solemnly. “Yes.”
“Were you there?”
“Toward the end, yes.”
I looked away. The shit he must have seen them endure.
“Darren just told me about it last night.”
“And it upset you,” Sid stated.
“Well, no shit, Sherlock. That’s a normal human reaction to something as horrific as that,” I snipped, leveling him with a glare.
“Unlike Darren’s?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.
I could feel my face dropping with disgust just thinking about his response.
“He … appreciated it,” I murmured, shaking my head in bewilderment. “It was one thing to hear him describe his torture as a child. It was another to hear him praise it.”
Sid nodded. “Agreed. But we can’t change what was done to him, and we can’t convince him to condemn it. So what else is there to do?”
I shot my eyes back to Sid. “Prevent him from continuing it.”
“Ah,” he said with a nod. “So that’s what you dreamed about.”
I lowered my head, wishing I could get the image of my brothers out of my mind. But their screams just wouldn’t stop echoing.
“It was my brothers,” I replied. “It was happening to my brothers.”
Sid said nothing, his eyes telling me to continue like he knew there was more. So I finished.
“And then Darren held up a toddler and declared it would be his turn soon.”
Sid sighed, his eyes now traveling anywhere but mine—like he hoped the answer might be written on the wall somewhere. But we both knew there was no answer for this. Darren would do as he pleased, no matter what anyone else thought.
“It’s not just a dream, Sid,” I continued. “It’s the goddamn future if Darren has his way.” And we both knew Darren always got his way.
A heavy silence overtook the room, its weight crushing my heart with each passing second Sid didn’t speak. For once, it seemed he had no words of wisdom to bestow.
When he finally did speak, it broke my heart in half.
“I wish there was a way for me to offer you hope, Jaden. But unfortunately, I just can’t. My advice to you is to do what you’ve always done. Accept and adapt.”
I felt my breath catch in my chest, my lungs choking on a despair I had no chance of fighting.
My throat tightened, and I felt the onslaught of tears building up behind my eyes as they fell to my lap.
If I was forced to have Darren’s children, he would torture them into monsters. And nothing could be done to stop that.
My ass.
“You should go,” I muttered quickly, swiping away my stupid tears.
I paid Sid no more attention as he silently stood and walked toward the door. But then he paused.
“For what it’s worth, Jaden, if there’s anyone strong enough to endure it, it’s you. Your children will be very lucky to have you as their mother.”
But incredibly unlucky to have Darren as their father.
I said nothing as he walked out and left me alone. Left me alone to do the one and only thing that could save this sinking ship. The one thing I was best at.
Plot.