Chapter 48 #2
We’ve been in this small room for hours while Fallon asks the same questions over and over, reminding me to sound genuine. Knowing this is necessary doesn’t help. My nerves spike as each minute passes, and the undercurrent of hatred flowing off Fallon makes my skin prick.
“I’m tired,” I say, focusing back on Fallon’s stern expression across the table. Even cruel, hard, and so full of anger, he’s devastatingly handsome.
“That’s the point.” He readjusts his dark gray vest as he stands.
His suit jacket rests on the back of his chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal his toned, lithe forearms. “You’re weakest when you’re tired.
When you’re scared. And Rune will dig until he finds your weakness.
” Fallon’s gaze slips to the doorway. “And we all know your weakness, Delilah.”
My eyes drop to the pocket watch tucked into his vest, and an inky darkness shoots through me, remembering the gun pointed at my head. Fallon may need me alive, but he certainly isn’t above hurting me, or scaring the absolute shit out of me to find my weak spots.
But he doesn’t realize my weakness feeds my courage.
My teeth gnash together, that fear now colliding with a bitterness that turns my mouth sour. The hatred he has for me is returned tenfold. I hate him for hurting the men. For scaring me. For sending Cora back. For creating that deep fear that I saw in Reaper.
For putting me in this situation.
He crosses his arms, widening his stance. “Tell me again what happened from the moment they took you.”
I spew the same lines, going over the morning I first woke up.
“You’re lying,” Fallon says, his tone sharp.
My shoulder’s bunch. “I told you everything I know.”
The point of these interrogations is to prepare me to face Rune.
Question me as he would. To wear me down.
And after hours and hours of being stuck alone with him, Fallon’s whittled me down the same way Rune would.
I know because it’s exactly what Rune taught me.
A negotiation tactic. As a way to get what I want in a business deal. Push until they agree to my terms.
Fallon’s hand slaps sharply down on the table, making my entire body jolt. “Say it again, but this time make me believe it.”
I repeat everything we’ve rehearsed, adding emotion where he told me to, and once I’m done, I settle back in my seat, brushing my hair over my shoulder. It’s grown in the weeks since I’ve been here.
How long have I been here in this rundown place, facing one nightmare after another? Slowly falling for my kidnappers like a fool. Makes me wonder if that was their plan. Force me to care about them to ensure I’ll follow through with the mission.
But maybe they failed more than they succeeded, because the claim that I’m theirs, feels brutally branded into my flesh.
I wonder if that’s why Fallon hates me so much. Their affection for Cora and me has loosened his hold on them.
“Let’s go over the night at the club.” Fallon clasps his fingers behind his back. Even feet away, he feels too volatile to be this close to me. “Tell me what happened. In detail. Tell me what they said to you.”
“I already did,” I grit out through clenched teeth. I press two fingers to my temple, rubbing at the blooming ache. “Cora and I met them in the club. We spent time with them.”
“Time?”
“Lots of time,” I say, then clear my throat. “Intimate time.”
“With all four of them?”
I bite down on my bottom lip, glancing at the doorway. I have no doubt they can hear this entire conversation, and the thought of fully addressing the fact I fucked his sons while they stand feet away makes my stomach knot.
Fallon’s soft chuckle slips over me, dark and oily. He steps forward. I shrink back, hating that he can see he scares me.
“Did you fuck all of them the night before you were taken?” he asks.
I narrow my eyes. “No.”
“But they touched you in many…” He lets his voice trail off, cocking his head to the side as if choosing the right word. “Intimate ways?”
“I don’t see how this is relevant.”
He shrugs the same way Reaper does. Arrogant and knowing.
“Cora?” he asks.
My brows knit, the weeks of time we spent in bed slamming into me. “I haven’t slept with Cora.”
Fallon’s smirk turns cruel, and I realize I walked right into a trap.
“I was asking if Cora slept with all of them when you went into that VIP room. Makes me think you may be having sex with her too.” Icy eyes bore into me, watching my reaction.
I hope I give him none. “Did you fuck your adopted sister and let the men watch?”
I wince, but refuse to answer, knowing he’s just trying to get under my skin.
“Isn’t that why they took the Julian girl too?” Fallon asks, glee turning his face hard. “So they could fuck her like the whore she is.”
Anger clogs my throat at his choice of words. “Resorting to name-calling now?”
“Stating the obvious,” he says, rocking back on his heels. “We observed the girl for four years.”
I blink, slumping back into my seat. Four years.
Four years of stalking. Watching. Preparing.
My first day here slams into me. They knew our clothing sizes, including bra and underwear. The shampoos and soaps we bathe with. The fucking feminine products we use.
They know every single detail about us.
I brace my hands on the edge of the table. This was planned, I know, but the reality hits brutally, right in the center of my chest. They took me intending to turn me against my father. Was Cora taken because they knew he was abusing her, hoping to use the information to fuel me?
Striker swears they didn’t know the full extent. Only suspected Rune may have been roughing her up. But what if they are lying? About everything?
I saw the pictures. The files linking lodge members to suspicious transactions over the years, but I never saw concrete evidence that Rune was hunting people. I saw images of mutilated bodies. That’s it.
In reality, did I ever see my father in the pictures?
Did any of those transactions prove what he was doing?
Covering up money yes, I helped do that, but covering up receiving money from members for actual hunts?
Every transaction was a membership fee for his lodge, or a purchase, or a sale.
In reality, he could just be reselling weapons. Weapons he purchased from the men.
I was so traumatized after finding out about Rune abusing Cora, I just believed them.
What if showing me those pictures, the supposed evidence linking him to hunts, was a way to implant fear that Rune would do that to Cora?
What if it was just a way to manipulate my loyalty and get me to agree to kill Rune? Get them into his safe?
What the fuck do they want from his safe?
“That is a long time to watch someone, is it not?” Fallon’s soft tone crashes through the chaos in my head. I meet his eyes. A barren coldness stares back at me. He leans forward, and my anxiety ratchets up a notch. “Do you know why they took you?”
I swallow. “They said something about revenge.”
Reaper’s warning earlier pulses through my thoughts, swirling with all my doubts until I’m so confused, tears brim my eyes. I brush them away, a skittering sensation crawling under my skin.
“You may have seen pictures of what your father is capable of,” Fallon says like he can see each thought flashing through my head. “But you don’t know the level of depravity he will sink to if he thinks you’ve turned on him.”
I lick my lips, gathering my thoughts. “He won’t find out.”
“Let’s hope,” he says. “Rune is sick, possessive, and paranoid. Remember, he will not think twice about resorting to violence against his own blood if he believes you’ve been compromised.”
“I won’t fail.” Even I hear the doubt in my voice.
Doubt about everything.
I glance again at the doorway. Was this Fallon’s intent? Create a divide between us? Because he sees that shift happening in them? How the men protect me against him?
“My son thinks he’s clever, but I know why Reaper wanted you and the Julian girl.”
My head snaps in his direction. He runs a thumb over his bottom lip, and for a millisecond I’m struck at how it’s shaped exactly like Reaper’s. When the corner quirks, turning cruel, my heart skips.
He leans forward, placing his palms on the small table, making sure I’m looking directly at him. “I think, Delilah Gavin, my sons took you both so they could watch you fuck Cora like the little whores you were in your daddy’s club.”
His words crash into me, and I rear back, not just at the crass words, but at the way his eyes glimmer. Like he’s enjoying being so openly vile.
“Are you going to tell Rune what shameful things you did with his second daughter?” he whispers.
I grind my teeth. “You leave her out of this.”
“Tell me, Delilah, how easily did she spread her legs for you?”
My cheeks flame as my eyes fly to the doorway. Reaper said he controlled the video footage their father saw, but the man owns them. Is Reaper lying? Did he let Fallon watch me with Cora?
Is all of this a lie? So they can use me?
My chest squeezes, my eyes burning. I use the sleeve of my sweater to brush away the tear slipping down my cheek.
“Is what my son said true?” he asks and stands upright, inching in closer to me. He brushes his fingers over my hair as he leans over far enough that his mouth grazes my ear. “Do you have sex with your sister?”
Fallon backs away as my hands fist and I catch that fucking smirk. A pain stabs like a knife in my chest as I stare past Fallon at the closed white door. Why are they letting him say these things? Are they even out there?
“Rune would never talk to me this way,” I say to Fallon. “He would never speak about Cora like this. It would give away what he does to her.”
The second the words slip from my mouth, I cringe back, realizing my mistake.