Chapter Ten
Drake was starting to worry when he couldn’t find Camila. He finally found the gardener and asked if he’d seen her.
The man had pointed and told him she’d passed by him a while ago.
Drake started down the path and caught a glimpse of movement between some bushes. His first look at her made his stomach tighten in both anxiety and fury because he just knew her sisters had said something to make her look so devastated.
He was surprised when she wouldn’t tell him and tried to make him believe that she was just tired. She forgot that he knew her better than anyone and could tell her distress had nothing to do with her being tired.
He tried coaxing her to talk, but it was like she shut down, and he didn’t know how to get through to her. Several days passed, and it seemed her sadness and depression was deepening, and it was scaring him.
On the fifth day, he called Mandy, her friend. She was the only person, besides him, who had been able to get past the walls Camila had built around her.
“Hello, Mandy, this is Drake.”
“Oh, hi. Is everything okay?” Mandy asked.
“No.” Drake went through everything that had happened since her sisters’ arrival at the ranch. By the time he was done, he could tell Mandy was as worried as he was.
“Would you consider coming for a visit. Maybe she’ll open up to you,” Drake said.
“Absolutely. I’ll talk to my employer and then come to you guys. Expect me in the next day or so.”
Drake relaxed, relieved. “That’s great. Thank you.”
He decided not to tell Camila, but to surprise her.
After dinner, he took her up to their bedroom and stripped her. “We’re going to take a bath and then bed.”
Camila’s eyes widened. “Drake, it’s only 7:00.”
“Who says we’re going to sleep?” he said and grinned. He loved how a flush of desire instantly rose on her face. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she still turned to him whenever he wanted her and was as passionate as she’d always been, he would have been going crazy.
Mandy showed up a day later, and he was glad he had some time to talk to her before Camila found out she was there.
He hugged her and grabbed her bag. “Let’s talk in the office before we find Camila.”
“Sounds good,” Mandy said and followed him into the house.
He closed the door behind them and sat behind his desk while Mandy sat in one of the chairs placed in front of it.
“Has there been any change?” Mandy asked.
He shook his head. “It’s like her depression or whatever it is, deepens every day, and no matter what I do or say, it doesn’t help.”
Mandy sighed. “I’ve been racking my brain, and all I could come up with is that it definitely has to do with her family. I don’t think it has to do with her uncle’s will, though. The only other time I’ve seen her like this was after the last Thanksgiving she’d been at her parents’.”
Drake’s brows snapped together. “I’ve not heard about this.”
Mandy stiffened. “She hasn’t said a word?”
He shook his head.
Mandy looked down. “God, I’m not sure it’s my place to tell you.”
“It sounds like it was pretty bad. Bad enough that she didn’t want me to know. I always thought she’d told me everything.” He didn’t like the fact that his sub was withholding information from him.
“It took her a long time to open up to me about it.” Mandy shook her head. “I hope I’m doing the right things.”
“You are,” he said. “There is nothing you can tell me that will affect the way I feel about her.”
Mandy sighed. “Her mother demanded she come home for Thanksgiving. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wanted to know if they had changed. She hadn’t been home to see them in years.
” She took a breath. “She told me that she’d been drinking wine her mother had handed her, and it wasn’t long before she started feeling really tired, and it was hard to keep her eyes open. ”
Drake got tenser the more she told him.
“She woke up once to find her sisters and mother undressing her on her bed. She wanted to fight them, but she was paralyzed. She couldn’t even talk. God, I would have been terrified,” Mandy said.
Drake nodded.
“Camila couldn’t remember most of it, but she did remember hearing two male voices she didn’t know.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Mandy nodded. “This is how sick her family is. When she woke up the next morning, she ran, and she hadn’t seen or talked to them as far as I know until the two bitches showed up here.”
Drake sat quietly for a moment. “Why in the world didn’t she feel she could tell me?”
“No matter what I said, she felt ashamed. Deeply ashamed, as if the incident had broken or chipped at her soul. She came to the conclusion that the men had ... raped her. I asked her how she felt in her privates, but she just said she felt raw everywhere. I hated them before this, but after. I could have easily shot every one of them.”
Drake sat back and closed his eyes before looking at her again. “I wish she had told me this. I could have told her she hadn’t been violated. She was a virgin when she came to me.”
Mandy’s eyes brightened. “Really?”
He nodded.
Mandy looked confused. “But she would have known she was still a virgin, right?”
“Not necessarily. We didn’t talk about it, and now I know why.
Our first time, I had her so far gone she didn’t feel anything, but I felt the barrier.
After, I cleaned her when she was half asleep, and so she didn’t see the blood I wiped from her.
” He felt a bit uncomfortable discussing such a personal matter.
“How do you want to go about this?” Mandy asked.
Drake wiped his hand down his face. “Fuck. I want her to tell me, so maybe you can encourage it.”
“I could tell her you already know her family did something horrible to her. What are you going to do about them?”
His face darkened. “Don’t worry about them. I’m going to do everything in my power to destroy their world.”
Mandy smiled and nodded. “Good. They deserve everything you do to them.
“I’ll have someone take your bag up to the room you used last time if you want to find Camila. She’s down at the C stables,” Drake said.
“I’ll go find her.” Mandy stood and walked toward the door, but stopped when he called out.
“Hey, Mandy, thank you for coming.”
She smiled at him. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for your wife.”
“I’m glad she has you.”
Drake turned to watch her walk down to the barn. When she disappeared, he turned and made a call.
“Richard, this is Drake. I need you to find out everything you can about my wife’s family.” He went on to tell him about the night her family turned on her. “I want the names of the men they brought into the room. Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible, and I’ll do whatever needs to be done. That’s so fucked up. I wouldn’t do something like that to an enemy, much less a family member. Especially to someone as sweet as your wife.”
“I agree. I’ll send you the information I have on them. The majority of what I’ve accumulated is the family’s finances. They’d tried on several occasions to take out a loan or credit card in her name.”
“I want to make their lives miserable,” Richard said.
“I do, too.”
“I’ll call you when I have something.”
“Thanks, man.” Drake leaned back and closed his eyes. He would do whatever he could to ruin them and enjoy every bit of it.