Chapter 19 Ophelia
OPHELIA
“Deal with her,” Sly tells Ethan, checking his watch before heading to the exit where a man in a suit stands, hands clasped in front of him. He’s looking straight ahead and nothing.
Ethan glances at me, hesitates, then looks back to his dad. “Dad.”
Sly looks back at Ethan, eyebrows raised.
“I don’t think we need to punish Phee.”
“No?” Sly spins on his heel and stalks back into the room. He advances on Ethan, but I’m the one to take a step backward. “You don’t think she needs to be punished? You’re fine with another man fucking your fiancée?”
“No. Of course I’m not.”
“I thought not. Deal with her, or I will. Just make sure she can walk. I want her back out on the dance floor in ten minutes,” Sly says, before giving me a glacial glance and leaving.
Ethan turns to the man in plain clothes. He must be security of some kind. “Wait outside the door. No one enters, not you, not anyone, no matter what you hear,” he says.
The man nods and steps out of the room, closing the door behind him.
I open my mouth to speak but my throat is a desert.
Ethan releases my wrist, and I stare down at that ring back on my finger. I understand what he meant now. The albatross. This ring is that. An anchor around my life. Pockets full of rocks in a raging, angry river.
My mind returns to what just happened. The fire. Our house is gone?
I look up at Ethan and for one sliver of a moment, I see what I think is regret on his face, but that slip in time is gone. He seems to steel himself, drawing in a deep breath, and his expression as he takes me in, naked, wrapped in a dusty old sheet, turns repellant. He’s disgusted with me.
No. It’s worse than that. He hates me.
“You didn’t waste much time, did you?” he asks.
“Get away from me.” I tug at the ring, but he catches my arm and rips away the dust cloth so I’m standing naked before him. What had felt beautiful just moments ago feels dirty now. Dirty and low.
I cover myself with my free arm as Ethan looks me over. He moves one hand to his belt, undoes it, eyes flat on mine.
Panic takes hold of me as I process what he’s doing. When he releases me, I take a step backward. “Ethan.”
He snorts, understanding my panic. “Don’t worry,” he says, and pulls the belt from its loops, taking a menacing step toward me. “I wouldn’t touch that bastard’s sloppy seconds.” He doubles up the belt and tugs on it, then slaps it against his thigh. It makes a hideous sound and I jump, gasping.
Ethan has never been violent with me. He’s never hurt me apart from maybe gripping me too hard on nights he’s in a bad mood. He barely touches me, really. But now, as he raises his arm, my brain slowly processes the rage on his face. The years’ worth of it.
“It’ll be me or my dad, and trust me, you want it to be me,” he says, bringing the belt down across my hip and stomach.
I’m too stunned to make a sound. My body curls in on itself.
But when he strikes again, I scream and turn my back.
The next blow lands across my ass, and another follows quickly.
I run to get away from him, but there’s nowhere to go.
Nowhere to hide as he raises his arm and lands a blow low across the fronts of my thighs.
“You humiliated me tonight! You give me back my ring and not twenty-four hours later, I find you fucking Silas Cruz!” he screams as the orchestra’s renewed music muffles the sound of us from the party goers.
I run from him. When he catches the backs of my knees, they buckle, and I go down, landing on all fours.
Ethan stands over me whipping my back, my ass, as I try to crawl away.
Finally, with the pain too much, the belt wrapping around my belly too sharp, I drop to my stomach.
When I try to roll away, he presses the bottom of his shoe to the back of my neck, and he brings his belt down over and over and over until the whole of my back, my ass, the backs of my legs are on fire and I’m sobbing, unable to breathe, to even catch my breath to scream for help.
When the door finally opens, Ethan spits at the man to get out, his rage hot.
“Your father, sir. He just sent a message. He needs you both downstairs.”
I catch the man’s eye and he very clearly sees what’s happening, what’s happened, and he doesn’t even flinch. I realize then the kind of power the Foxes wield. They own Sinistral.
“I’m not finished yet. Get out,” Ethan tells him with a determination I have never heard from him.
The man hesitates only momentarily but closes the door.
When the door closes, he moves his foot off my neck and rolls me onto my back, keeping hold of one wrist as he drags a low stool over.
“Don’t move,” he tells me as I roll onto my side.
He lifts my legs, tugs me toward the stool and sets them on top of it.
That moment with Sly when he demanded Ethan punish me and Ethan seemed hesitant, did I get that wrong? Did I misunderstand? Because the look on Ethan’s face now, it’s not remorseful, not remotely so. It’s not someone wielding the belt out of obligation. He’s doing it with zeal.
“Ethan… please…”
He moves to stand at my feet.
“Don’t fucking move, Phee. If I have to tie you down to take it, it’ll be a thousand times worse.”
“What—”
“I’m going to make sure you feel me with every step you take. I’m going to make sure you know who owns you,” he says, tone arctic.
I only understand what he means to do when he raises his arm and brings that belt down across the bottoms of my feet. I writhe, barely able to catch a breath before he lashes me again and again and again.
I’m bleeding before it’s over, before he finally stops. I curl onto my side, sobbing, my entire body on fire.
“His come is pooling out of your cunt,” Ethan says, tugging the bench beneath my feet away, my legs dropping to the hard floor.
I watch as Ethan looms over me, threading his belt through the loops of his pants, hate on his face—which is red with the exertion of beating me.
“Get up.” He nudges my hip with the toe of his polished shoe. “Get up and get dressed.”
I can’t move though. Even as I try, I can’t move.
“I said, get up!”
He grips me by my hair, and I scream as he hauls me up. He thrusts me toward the chaise, and I stumble into it, falling to my knees, my chest against the cushion.
“I said, get dressed,” he orders, and I reach for the dress on the floor.
It takes time but somehow, through the pain, I get the dress on but can’t reach back to close it.
I’m still on my knees when Ethan roughly zips it and lifts me to sit on the chaise.
I cry out as soon as my body makes contact, but true agony only comes when he pushes my heels onto my bloody feet with a sneer on his face.
He puts my mask on my face but leaves my hair down.
“Stand up!” He doesn’t even wait for me to try but tugs me up and I cry out, needing to lean on him because I can’t put weight on my feet.
He takes a look at me, eyes hard as he slips his own mask into place. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t… I can’t walk.”
“No? Well, maybe you should have thought of the consequences before you fucked Silas Cruz. Move.”
“I can’t. Ethan, I—”
“Let me give you one more motivator, then. Imagine how much worse it could be if you don’t show up downstairs right now.
Imagine if my father had to come up here and get you.
Because believe it or not, I don’t enjoy hurting you, but if there’s one thing you don’t want, it’s Sullivan Fox taking his belt to you. So, get it together and fucking walk.”