Chapter 2
Jolie–present day
The bright sun above shone through the car window and into the back seat where I lay, and it woke me with a kiss on my eyelids. Long dark lashes tickled the top of my cheeks as they struggled beneath their heaviness to open.
Was it all a bad dream? I could only hope.
A throbbing feeling followed a pain in my neck. My fingers wandered, searching for the cause. The needle tip was still lost in my skin, its contents shifting through my blood, making me drowsy.
Clearly, his chloroform hanky wasn’t enough to keep me down.
I had no idea what he injected me with. I barely remembered the struggle as I fought against it.
The weight got too heavy and my eyes closed. They stayed closed for minutes, maybe hours, maybe days. . . maybe longer.
I blinked as water splashed my face. I awoke to a new space–a fancy hotel room, modern and chic. Music blasted from the next room.
My pupils shuffled into smaller circles. The drug wearing off as I took in the image in front of me–the most perfect face, sparkling with many faint scars. A devil dressed in an angel’s skin—sat on the ledge of the bed where I lay.
His long fingers were dipped into a cup. A big yellow bear wearing a crop top covered most of the ceramic. I focused on him to avoid looking at the person in front of me.
“There you are, you’re awake.” His voice wasn’t full of enthusiasm. It was riddled with exasperation.
The look on his beautiful face made me feel like he never wanted me to wake up. He sat at my side like an attentive lover, or like the complete opposite. His hand sat on my stomach with a placid touch. An alien touch. False and unloving, but not painful like I remembered.
My heart stuttered in my chest. Touch terrified me. His touch terrified me.
I forced my eyes to rove over him, inch by inch. He was wearing a shirt and slacks, checkered and sophisticated, screaming of a wealth he hadn’t previously showcased.
His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing parts of a body I was familiar with, but showing off parts of him I’d never seen. Tattoos that didn’t match his pretty-boy image. His body was a little bulkier, but he was still lean, though he seemed more powerful. No longer a boy, now a man.
A more dangerous kind of monster.
His hand moved over my body, exposed by his open jacket. Fingers roved over my depleted curves. He squeezed, his big hand swamping over my small breast. He stopped at my heart, flattening his ivory palm to my skin.
“Your heart is racing.” His southern drawl lingered in my ears, reminding me of how much I once loved his sound.
“Racing for me.” He smirked, his lip lifting into a hypnotic smile with the power to dazzle any woman .
. .any other woman. His other hand moved to his throat, massaging the ever-present swelling dwelling behind his prominent Adam’s apple.
I struggled to speak, my words caught in my throat, locked there with the fear I’d kept trapped for years and years–fear he’d forced to the surface by returning to my life.
My anxiety held me pinned to the firm mattress. My breath got locked inside my lungs, making me feel claustrophobic in my own skin. I felt wetness, warmth, then I felt cold.
His eyes scanned my body, taking note of my changing expressions. Gazing down between my legs, he took in the image of the bedsheets, darkening with proof of my distress. I tried to stop the water leaking from me, but there wasn’t enough space inside me. . . my fear was taking it all up.
“Ah. . . you dirty girl. That’s going to cost us both, you know.” His dazzling smile was back, a light-hearted laugh slipping through perfect-looking lips.
A meek effort of a cough slipped from my mouth. My hair bounced with my lungs, lifting from my face where it had stayed for many years, hiding me from the ugliness of the world.
Many said it was the opposite, said I was hiding my ugliness. And that was partly true.
I was scared. Damaged. I no longer looked like the girl I once was.
My hand moved quickly, concealing my scars behind my many strands of dark curls.
Tears stung my face, slipping out from the corner of my eye. I twisted my head, in disgust for him and embarrassment over my own image and actions. I was ruined, in so many ways. . . many of them, his fault. He didn’t get to smile down on me while admiring his handy work.
“Are you not talking to me, Jolie?” his fingers, again, pushed on his throat as he spoke, just like they often did, like he was guiding lost words in the direction of his mouth.
My mouth opened, but no words left my lips, nothing but a heavy breath.
“You look so much like I remember you. And yet, so different.”
“Wha. . .” I choked on a painful sob as tears flooded, fast and furious.
I closed my eyes and found my courage there in the darkness.
Hell’s smile kissed my skin as the whisper of someone else entered my ears. “You can do this, baby.” My dad. He was cheering me on, like always.
The tranquility in his tone overpowered the fear that laced my blood whenever Hell spoke.
I often zoned out into a space within my memories whenever Hell got too close.
. . my dad’s voice became my float, every time the assaults rained down and tried to drown me.
But he was slowly slipping away, stolen from me by the Heavens and not the one above–the ones who belonged in hell.
Woodrow Heaven—my Hell, and the monster who created him.
The men who owned my nightmares.
When my dad’s voice didn’t call me from my purgatory–the nightmare I lived while desperate for death—I’d slip away into a wonderland that wasn’t real. An alternate reality, where I was different, where I was loved. A place where Woodrow was always loving, and this entity never took him over.
I faked courage, opening my eyes to face the man–no, the monster—in front of me. “What am I doing here, Hell?”
“I’m glad to see you recognized me.” He smiled like it meant the world to him. “Family are meant to stay together, Jolie.” His eyes moved back to my face, ignoring the mess I made of the sheets.
“We are not family.” Those words were easier to voice.
“I thought you might say that.” His touch lifted as he moved from the bed where I lay.
I sat up, trying hard to disguise the vibration in my limbs, caused by my trembling nerves. But it was impossible. I was almost bouncing off the bed with tremulous fear.
I didn’t move from the bed as Hell stood in the window, his tall stature and dark aura blocking out any sunlight as he watched me watching him.
A concealed outfit rested on a chair at his side, the bag zipped up to the hanger. He pulled on the zipper, his eyes still on me as he moved his arm to reveal a dress.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for my answer. “Beautiful, black, beguiling. . . just like you.”
His words would be soothing if they were spoken by any other human, or without such hate lingering on each vowel.
I shuffled with discomfort, moving upwards and away from my wet patch.
My hands tried to rub the chill from my icy skin, but I was colder than ever, despite the stuffiness of the room and the heat from the bright sunshine outside.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. As I said, family should be together.”
“And as I said, we aren’t family.” I faked more courage to voice those words.
“The hard way? I guess you’ve missed the discipline; I was told you rarely caught attention back at your previous housing. Always so well-behaved.” He paused for a moment. “It’s just my hands you like on you, huh?”
I remained silent, having nothing to say to a man who didn’t deserve my words.
“We aren’t family,” he repeated. Walking towards me, the dress in hand. “Yet. We will be by tonight, my darling bride. Now, put on the fucking dress. Don’t make me tell you twice. I wouldn’t want any more bruises put on your body before the wedding pictures.”
Hell shoved the dress into my chest, his touch caused me to gasp. My legs rushed me back until I hit the giant headboard.
“Wedding pictures!” I think my heart stopped for a whole minute when those words registered.
“Wedding pictures not something you’d want?”
“I don’t want the wedding!” I spat my hatred around the room, unable to keep it inside now that I knew his plans.
Jumping to my feet while my knees still shook, I rushed for the door on unsteady limbs, tossing the ugly dress, that probably wasn’t that ugly, to the floor.
It had been years since my running days; years since I’d barely moved, at all. I spent so much of my time with my head bowed, praying to the gods of hell who owned my tortured soul, never to be sold or even touched again.
I got to the door, proud that I’d moved so quickly. It was hard after suffering a knee injury at eighteen—one that never fully healed.
My fingers were quick to wrap around the golden handle.
I released the latch, and my shaking fingers pulled back the wood. My heart raced in my ears, preventing me from hearing anything else. I didn’t hear him rush behind me; I didn’t hear the laugh that left his lips as he slammed the door shut while my fingers were still holding it.
I heard nothing until my scream pierced the bubble of hope I had floating around me.
His hand wrapped around my mouth, around my face, large and overpowering, and silencing me.
He could feel my scars. He could feel my pain as my wracking sobs echoed from my chest into his, where they’d have plenty of space to roam in the heartless cavity, and plenty of company because he harbored so much of my pain already, treasuring it all like his greatest memories.