Chapter 20 #2
"I'm patient." He corrects me without heat.
"Patient enough to wait five years. Patient enough to watch you struggle and suffer and sacrifice everything to protect a family that had no idea what you were enduring.
" His gaze flicks to my mother and sister, huddled against the wall with matching expressions of horror.
"They know now, of course. I've explained everything while you were sleeping.
The payments. The threats. The night I wrapped my hands around your throat and told you exactly what I would do to your sister if you didn't comply.
It was beautiful to watch their expressions morph from awe, to fear and finally settle on the same exact horror you see in their eyes right now. "
Gemma lets out a sob that tears at my heart.
"They know about the wish, too." Victor continues, relentless.
"The desperate plea you dropped into that box at Scarlet Thorn.
The contract you signed with Drake Moses.
" His eyes glitter with malicious pleasure.
"Your mother was particularly devastated to learn you've been whoring yourself out for protection. "
"That's not what happened." The words feel weak even as I speak them. "Drake never forced me. He’s not the monster you are. The choice was always mine with him. With you, you think you own everyone and everything."
"A choice." Victor laughs, soft and cruel. "The choice between his bed and my establishments. Some choice that is." He shakes his head slowly. "But it doesn't matter now. Whatever arrangements you made with Drake Moses ended the moment my men put him in the ground."
He is lying. He has to be lying. Drake cannot be dead. He cannot be gone from this world.
But the doubt creeps in anyway, cold and insidious.
"Here is what happens now." Victor rises from his chair and begins to pace, his footsteps echoing against the concrete like a metronome counting down to my doom.
"You're going to work in one of my establishments.
You'll start as entertainment for my more discerning clients.
Men who pay premium prices for women with your particular combination of beauty and defiance. "
My stomach revolts. I swallow bile and force myself to keep listening.
"Your sister will join you." His gaze slides to Gemma with a hunger that makes my blood freeze. "She's younger. Prettier, perhaps. And untouched, I imagine, given your family's prudish tendencies. Men pay extraordinary amounts for that kind of freshness."
"Don't you touch her." The words rip from my throat, raw with a fury that burns hotter than my fear. "Don't you dare touch her." There’s not a damn thing I can do to enforce my words, but I still throw them into the space between us.
"Or what?" Victor spreads his hands, amused. "You'll fight me? You're tied to a chair, Katriana. Naked. Helpless. The only power you have left is the power to accept your fate gracefully."
He moves toward my mother, who cowers against the wall with silent tears streaming down her face.
"As for this one..." He cups my mother's chin with deceptive gentleness, tilting her face toward the light.
"Too old for my establishments. Too broken to be useful.
But I'm not without mercy. She can watch while her daughters learn their new roles.
Or she can have a tragic accident. The choice is yours, Katriana. "
The choice is no choice at all. He is stripping away every option, every hope. The bastard is boxing me into a corner where the only path forward leads through his twisted vision of my future.
But I am not the woman I was five years ago.
I am not the terrified girl who let him wrap his hands around her throat and accepted it as the price of survival. I am not the victim who paid his blood money month after month and prayed for a miracle that never came.
I am Katriana Bellrose. I survived five years of his threats. I signed a contract with a dangerous man and fell in love with him anyway. I gave my body to someone I chose, on my terms, for my reasons.
And I refuse to let this monster win.
I think of Drake. Not the man who might be dying in a warehouse somewhere, but the man who held me in the darkness and promised me a future.
I think of Persia, who walked through fire and came out the other side with a ring on her finger and a baby in her arms. Trust builds in a thousand small moments.
I think of Jane Eyre, who walked away from the man she loved because staying would have cost her too much of herself. And who came back on her own terms.
I will not break. I will not surrender. I will stall and scheme and wait for my moment, and when it comes, I will take it with both hands.
"You talk too much." The words come out steadier than I feel. "If you're going to destroy me, get on with it. But don't expect me to beg. I've spent five years refusing to give you that satisfaction, and I'm not about to start now."
Something flickers in Victor's pale eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or a grudging respect that makes my skin crawl.
"Defiance." He releases my mother and turns back to face me. "I've always admired that about you, Katriana. It's what makes breaking you so appealing."
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a phone. My phone, I realize. The one Drake gave me. The one with his contact at the top of my favorites list.
"Would you like to call him?" Victor's smile is serpentine. "Say goodbye? I'm sure his voicemail would love to hear your last words."
He is taunting me. Twisting the knife. Savoring every moment of my suffering like a fine wine.
But his arrogance is his weakness. His need to monologue, to explain, to make me understand exactly how thoroughly he has won.
Every second he spends talking is a second I am not being loaded into a van.
A second my family is not being separated.
A second Drake might still be alive, might still be coming, might still be the rescue I cannot let myself hope for.
I need to keep him talking.
"How did you know?" I let my voice crack slightly, playing into the fear he expects. "About the airport. About my trip. About any of it."
"Your boyfriend's brother was quite forthcoming once I made him the right offer.
" Victor settles back into his chair, clearly pleased by the question.
"Jonah has harbored resentment toward Drake for years. All it took was a little push in the right direction. A promise of revenge, of money, of the chance to prove himself better than the brother who always overshadowed him. He’s got a mole in Redthorne. It was very helpful."
There is a limited number of people who know about my trip. Persia, the men of course. Then there is Sienna, Damaris and then me.
My stomach drops. There’s only one name in that group of people it could be.
"What did Jonah promise Sienna in return?"
“That her family won’t suffer the same fate as yours. She has a sister too. Lies, of course, but it worked.”
I swallow thickly. Acid burns the back of my throat with the implications of his words.
“How did Jonah convince Drake to go to him?”
He dismisses my question and continues.
"While Drake was walking into an ambush at a warehouse, my men were collecting you from the airport. Elegant, don't you think? The Moses brothers destroy each other while I reclaim what was always mine."
"I was never yours."
"You've been mine since the day your father signed his name to my contract." Victor's voice hardens. "Your debt. Your labor. Your body. All of it was promised to me long before you were old enough to understand what you owed. I've simply been waiting for the right moment to collect."
My father. The man I loved, the man who read me bedtime stories and made me believe in happy endings, the man whose gambling addiction destroyed our family in ways I am only now beginning to understand. He sold me to a monster before I even knew monsters existed.
I hear what he is not saying. “My father used me as collateral for his loan.” My voice goes flat.
“Bingo.”
The betrayal cuts deeper than Victor's slap. Deeper than Jonah's gun in my face. Deeper than anything I have felt since the day I found my father's body surrounded by betting slips and loan documents.
But I cannot afford to fall apart. Not now. Not with my mother and sister watching. Not with Drake possibly fighting for his life somewhere in this city.
"So how exactly does this work?" I force the question through numb lips. "You drag us to one of your establishments and put us to work? Force us to service your clients until we're too broken to be useful anymore?"
"Something like that." Victor tilts his head, studying me like a specimen under glass. "Although I have special plans for you, Katriana. You've embarrassed me. Made me look weak in front of people who matter. That requires a more personal touch."
He rises and moves toward me, his footsteps slow and deliberate. My body tenses against the ropes, every muscle screaming for flight even though I have nowhere to go.
"I'm going to break you myself." His voice drops to barely above a whisper, intimate and obscene.
"Personally. Over weeks, perhaps months.
I'm going to strip away everything you think you are until nothing remains but a hollow shell that does exactly what it's told.
" His hand brushes my cheek, and I jerk away from the touch.
"And then, when you're finally empty, I'm going to sell you to the highest bidder and use the money to buy something pretty for my wife. "
The casual cruelty of it steals my breath. Not just the threat itself, but the matter-of-fact way he delivers it. Like destroying women is just another business transaction. Like my humanity is nothing more than a line item on a ledger.
Sounds filter down from somewhere above us. Thumps. Crashes. The distant pop of what might be gunfire.
Victor's head snaps toward the ceiling, his composure cracking for the first time since he emerged from the shadows.