Chapter 51
Fallon
Ican’t feel my fingers.
I glance down and see they’re curled in my lap, but they’re pale. It’s Christmas day, but I feel like anything but merry and bright.
My father’s living room is cold, even with the fireplace roaring. It’s just my stepmother and me sitting together on the velvet sofa that Rhys sat on yesterday. Hours ago, I believed he loved me.
But he left me…
Now there’s a cardigan over my shoulders, and I’m wearing a soft green blouse tucked into black pants. It’s all stuff I don’t recognize. Boring, stiff clothes they shoved me in after I was dragged from the cell down in the basement.
Where is my sweater with reindeer stitched across the chest? Where are my candy-cane leggings? My red plaid skirt?
Boxes wrapped in silver paper lie at my feet. Some are opened with the same ugly clothes spilling out.
“Where’re the gardening gloves I asked for?” I manage, my throat dry.
“We bought you appropriate attire to be Kosta’s wife,” Roxy says with a brittle smile and whiskey on her breath.
“I don’t want to be Kosta’s wife,” I whisper.
“Look at the expensive pearls he bought you.” She lifts a jewelry box with an extravagant necklace inside.
“Kosta loves women in dresses, silk stockings, and high heels. As his wife, you will be expected to look expensive. You will have the best of everything, just like these pearls.” She yanks my shoulder.
“Pearls are fancy shackles,” I murmur, pushing her greedy hands off me.
“What?” Her thin brows arch over her eyes.
“Pearls are—”
“I heard you and all your other remarks. How ungrateful. Look at all this.” She shoves more boxes of delicate gold chains, a dainty diamond watch, and onyx earrings under my nose.
“I want my star earrings. Rhys likes it when we’re in bed, and I scratch down his back during sex wearing those and nothing else.”
She slaps my face, stinging my already sore cheek. “Stop saying things like that. If you talk like that in front of Kosta, he will hurt you worse.”
“Worse than this?” I point to my face, although I’m not sure I remember what I look like since I’ve not been allowed to look in the mirror.
“You betrayed him.” Roxy starts packing up the boxes. “Consider his reaction a lesson. A warning. I had to learn, too. Your father gives me plenty of lessons.”
I’m at the dining table now. I don’t remember walking here, but here I am, slumped in a chair. A smelly cooked duck glistens on a white ceramic platter. Steam curls from bowls of vegetables. Oh look, the carrots are dancing. But my stomach heaves just looking at all the food.
My head spins like a carousel, but with no pretty fiberglass horses. Just mean faces. Like Kosta sitting across from me, ignoring me.
No one speaks to me. Daddy and Kosta chat about weapons and warehouses. Their voices are flat and dull. No accent.
I stare at the poinsettias and mouth: Help me!
They don’t answer. None of these plants do, and the dead quiet is killing me.
These meds silence everything I care about around me. That’s why I don’t take them. But with these people, I don’t have a choice.
A tremor runs through me. I miss Rhys so much. But he walked away.
By the time I blink, the table’s gone, and I’m climbing the stairs, except my legs aren’t working very well. A housemaid supports me, her arm around my waist. I think I hear music somewhere.
Caroling? Church bells? It could be the blood rushing in my ears from the meds.
In my room, for some reason, I find myself seated on the edge of the tub when another set of hands I didn’t see coming are on me, cold and clinical. They pry my jaw open and force more bitter pills down my throat.
I gag, but they waterboard me with a bottle of liquid until I swallow. The world tilts sideways, and I slither off as the tile floor rushes up at my face.
I wake up on the floor, cheek pressed to the cool tile. In my blurry line of vision outside the bathroom door, I see two housemaids dart around the bedroom, packing suitcases, stripping the bed I didn’t sleep in. One is shoving my fun, colorful clothes into black trash bags.
The fog in my head has cleared. The meds have worn off. But someone will come back soon with more. I can’t let them drug me again.
The bedroom door opens, and my father strides in. “Why is she on the bathroom floor?” he asks, disgust dripping from each syllable. “Has the nurse been here?”
“Yes, Mr. Black,” one maid says quickly.
No, she hasn’t.
My pulse claws at my throat, but I stay limp. Pretend to be out of it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch my African Violet on the dresser. Her leaves flutter, and I see the signal.
‘Be a good girl,’ Violet whispers.
My lungs seize. “I can hear you.”
“I’m standing two feet from you, you better hear me,” my father scoffs, standing in the bathroom doorway.
‘Rhys will come for you,’ the plant murmurs. ‘Let him rescue you. It’s what he’s built for. It’s his job. He loves you!’
“What?” I let the word blur like it’s just drugged confusion.
My father looms over me now, his cologne sour and sharp. “What the hell are you mumbling about?”
“What… What is happening?” I fake a slur, wobbling my eyes in the sockets.
“You’re getting married today,” he says. “I told you that.”
Wait. What? I don’t remember that.
“No.” The word claws its way out of my throat before I can stop it.
My father’s hand clamps around my arm, and he hauls me upright.
He steers me into the bedroom, shoves me into a chair, and hisses, “Keep it up, and Kosta will spend all night teaching you a lesson.” His eyes flick down my body.
“And since you bragged to your stepmother about having sex with that Quinlan, you’d better not lie there like a cold fish for Kosta like the first time.
You will be a good wife and keep him satisfied. ”
Bile surges in my throat, and I lean forward to vomit on the rug.
“Fuck.” My father jumps back. “You,” he shouts to one maid. “Clean up this mess. And you…” He points to the other. “Get her into the shower.”
The maid’s grip on my wrist is an iron clamp as she drags me across the carpet and back into the bathroom. I have to stay limp. I have to pretend to be drugged.
“I got this,” Roxy says, appearing in the doorway.
My clothes are torn from me, the treasured garb she forced on me now a dirty inconvenience. Skin bare and cold, I curl into a ball and shiver. But seconds later, I’m dragged into the shower stall, and then the water comes.
Scalding.
Roxy scrapes a brush across my flesh with soap that smells like chemicals. Harsh bristles scrape at my skin like she’s trying to erase who I really am. I bite down hard to stop the screaming as my skin turns red and raw. If they are to believe I’m out of it, then I cannot react.
I’m dried off, face painted, and my hair slicked into a punishing bun. The mirror shows a stranger who is not me. A me I never want to be. Not the woman Rhys wants.
Roxy dresses me in a cream silk dress and those damn shackle pearls. I remain mute and pliant as I’m led down the stairs unsteadily on six-inch stiletto heels. I feel like a dog on a leash.
Outside, the property is covered in glistening snow. But three black SUVs idle in the courtyard, pumping their exhaust and making everything smell bad.
Kosta steps out from one of them and greets my father. “You think that Quinlan dog will cause trouble?”
My father snorts. “He’s happy to be rid of her. She’s been a nuisance to him. He said so himself.”
I don’t react, I just stare and pretend to be out of it. That will only last so long when a team actually does their job at the next dosing.
Roxy stands on the steps, saying goodbye to my father, who gets into the lead car. She’s not coming. This isn’t a wedding. It’s a sale. And my father is only coming to properly sign me over.
Kosta folds me into the back of the last SUV, and the door slams shut with a heavy thud. He sits next to me but growls into his phone, “Make sure Irina is available later.”
Irina is his mistress. I have a shred of hope that means he’ll leave me to rot somewhere in his penthouse. Then I will try to escape.
Violet said Rhys is coming to rescue me. But he’s not. If I’m to get out of this, I have to rescue myself.
Westchester slips by my window. Snow-dusted trees on the side of the road melt into highway signs above the long, gray, slushy stretch back toward Manhattan.
The trip to ruin my life.
I lean my forehead on the cold glass, watching other cars blur past us. The sky above is gray. Gray road, gray everything. Even the snow looks dirty. Kosta’s cologne chokes the stuffy car interior, and every breath I inhale leaves me nauseated.
There’s nothing I can do. Beyond the skyline, Manhattan waits with an open jaw where a judge will declare me Kosta’s property.
I practically pass out from the drone of the tires until a thundering whoosh whoosh whoosh fills the air all around us.
“What’s that noise?” Kosta yells to the driver.