Chapter 26 #2
Sadly I find nothing to use for a weapon here and no escape. I don’t need to pee, and there’s no point in cleaning up all the blood caked to my skin. Forby, there’s no mirror.
When I emerge from the loo, my assaulter grabs my waist and reaches into my dress, squeezing a breast and pinching a nipple. I scream from the excruciating pain. He does the same to the other breast, and it’s even worse.
He shoves me toward my prison by the window. “You may be even more valuable to us than I thought.”
The front door flies open, a series of cracks pop around us, and he pulls me against the wall. “Get down!” he shouts.
Tick-pop. Tick-pop. Finn and Dalziel dive for the floor as they whip their pistols out.
* * *
Leith
Bullets fly as we storm the house. Seeing Iona through the windows, I instructed everyone to aim away from her and the man holding her, who I assume is Leavy. At this stage, no one else would be desperate enough to cling to their victim.
We blew the lock off the front door and busted the door in.
Darroch, one of Chance’s captains, shoots a second man in the shoulder, making him drop his gun. The third man panics, jumps up, and starts running toward the door, but Keith, Malcolm’s soldier, buries a round in his upper back.
I zero in on Iona and Leavy, who points a gun at her temple and the tip of a knife at her belly. Flames rage inside me, and all I see is blood-red.
“Shoot me, and you’ll kill three people,” he taunts. “First I’ll carve her baby from her stomach, then I’ll blow her brains out.”
I only vaguely register what he’s saying, I’m so focused on Iona.
My eyes flick slightly above him as Draven approaches him from behind with a bludgeon.
Draven cold-cocks him at the base of his head, and as Leavy buckles, his arm flies up, giving me a chance to shoot the gun from his hand.
He cuts Iona’s belly through her dress with his other hand, and I tackle him on the right, wrestling the knife from his hold.
The knife goes flying, and the three of us go over on top of Draven.
Someone picks Iona up while I beat Leavy to a pulp, starting with his face, then moving to his solar plexus and genitals.
I feel almost nothing in my fists as I slam them into his jaw, nose, eyes, belly, and balls.
When he’s beyond unconscious, they finally pry me off of him, and Draven handcuffs him, pushing him out the door toward one of the cars.
Wiping my bloody knuckles on my shirt, I look around for Iona. She flies from Keith’s arms to mine, flinging her arms around my neck.
“Did they hurt you?” I band an arm around her waist, pulling her flush with my body and inhaling her lavender scent.
“No. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” I pull back to take her in. Haggard, sleep-deprived, and pale, she’s never been so gorgeous. Then I see all the cuts and blood and narrow my eyes. “They did hurt you.”
Swallowing, she shakes her head. “Only surface wounds. They’ll heal.”
I grind my molars to a fine dust. “I’ll put them to a slow torture that’ll make them wish they were dead long before they die.”
A deep, troubled shudder convulses her frame. “Can we get out of here?”
I sweep her up into my arms and carry her to the car, where Draven joins us a minute later. Laying her head on my lap, I smooth her hair and soothe her softly. “Go to sleep, wee Flame. When you awaken, we’ll be home.”
A few hours later, Leavy and the other two kidnappers have been deposited in rooms in Declan’s cellar, and I carry Iona into our bathroom. Drawing a bath, I drop bath salts in and undress us both. Then I gently lower her into the water, settling her back against my chest.
She seems comatose, incapable of speech, and deathly tired. So I clean her as quickly as I can, towel her dry, and pull one of my T-shirts over her head before tucking her into bed.
“Drink this.” I tip a glass of water toward her lips.
She drinks the whole glass, and I place a full jug on the nightstand for when she next feels thirsty.
Soon after, I join her in bed, wrapping my arms around her as she lies on her side and spooning her from behind. Now I have everything I need in this world, right here in my arms. No one can ever take her away from me again.
* * *
I return from school, walk into my room, and find my sweet macaque Rover missing.
Calling for her, I search everywhere, especially in the cars, where she likes to play at traveling places, sometimes sitting in the driver’s seat and pretending to turn the wheel.
Increasingly frantic, I look in the kitchen cupboards, the wardrobes, and even the wine cellar.
But it doesn’t make sense. She normally stays in my room while I’m gone. Someone must’ve let her out.
Or taken her.
With a sinking feeling I run to my parents’ home lab. I crack open the door and watch as Da force-feeds something down Rover’s throat while Maw and a lab assistant hold her down. I scream, throwing open the door and rushing in to stop them.
“She’s mine! You can’t take her!” I shout.
“Nothing belongs to you,” Da announces coldly, tipping his head toward a couple of other lab assistants. They grab me and try to pull me back toward the door, but I’ve got superhuman strength, digging in my heels and raising hell with my lungs. “This monkey is ours now.”
“Take Leith to his cage and lock him up,” Maw orders. “We need to finish this experiment. Then we’ll deal with him.”
“NOOO!” My yells are drowned out by the sound of a machine roaring, and I know this is the end of Rover.
* * *
I wake up thrashing about, my heart freshly broken, and my lungs worn out, though I realize I haven’t been screaming aloud. Only in my nightmare.
Iona has rolled over to face me. She wraps an arm around me, rubbing my back.
“Tell me about it,” she invites softly.
Suddenly it all comes pouring out, like the opened floodgate of a dam.
Things I’ve never told anyone, not even Aaron.
How my parents beat, starved, and neglected me.
How they locked me in the same cages they used for the animals they experimented on.
How Rover was just one of a number of animals I befriended and kept, only for my parents to take them away and treat them cruelly.
Through it all, Iona listens and soothes me, never interrupting or looking at me critically.
“Then, when I thought I was free, there was Annand.” I laugh mirthlessly. “I was thirteen and not yet fully through puberty. I was at that awkward in-between stage.”
Her blue-grey eyes and open expression urge me to continue. For the first time I understand the meaning of the word unburthen. In unburthening my past to her, I’m accepting that Iona can take what I unload on her, that she wants and expects it.
“Annand kept coming into my room at night and trying to force himself on me. I always fought him off, but it was only a matter of time before he succeeded.” I shudder, recalling how I’d barricade my door with chairs and tables at night.
But that never deterred him. “I finally decided I needed to stop him or escape. Or both.”
My phone buzzes with a call, and I reach over to the nightstand and swipe up, seeing who it is.
“Diran,” I greet.
“Leith, how are you and Iona?” Even though it’s just after dawn, he sounds fresh and energetic.
“Good.” I decide it’s time to take him fully into my confidence, just as I’m confiding in Iona.
After all, the Lowing trial was supposed to take place seven hours from now.
“I found out the COPFS has been protecting the Royals this whole time. They were scraping the Lowing list clean of all the names associated with the Crown. Since they were determined for us to lose, they did everything they could to distract me from the case. And they protected Iona’s biological father because he knew who assaulted her four years ago.
Her assailant was Dallis Leavy, the Syndicate captain who turned the list over to the COPFS to begin with. ”
Diran explodes a long breath. “So is that it? The trial is called off?”
“Aye. I spoke with Palmer, the Lord Advocate and told him if he gave me Leavy’s address and the Lowing list, and if the COPFS leaves the Syndicate alone going forward, we won’t leak the Royals’ secrets.”
“Well done, Leith. This calls for a celebratory breakfast. Come to Banyan at 9.”
I slide a palm over Iona’s smooth, warm belly. “I’m sorry, Diran, but I need to make sure Iona’s okay first. Can we make that an evening meal?”
“Of course, of course. We’ll have drinks at 6.” He chuckles. “Meantime, enjoy your wife.”
Tossing my phone aside, I coast a palm along Iona’s contours, from her shoulder down to her narrow waist and up along her flared hip, resting my hand on a dried-up cut. “What did they do to you?”
She closes her eyes briefly, and when she opens them, they’re full of pain.
“You said my assailant was Leavy. He was going to assault me again, but he was interrupted by a phone call, then by his associates. He carved me up and smeared my blood all over me, I think to make his mark and do as much damage as he could get away with.”
I examine the bruises on her face. “Did he hit you?”
“He punched me, once.”
Rage pumps through my veins as I trace the shallow incision he made on the side of her belly.
Running her fingers over my Adam’s apple, she goes on.
“Strangely, him attacking me again may have cured me of my fears from the first attack. I was always waiting for him to come back, looking over my shoulder and wondering when he’d strike a second time.
Now that it’s happened, I feel ridden of the worst. And now somehow I’m stronger, braver, readier to face whatever the world throws at me. ”
“Why did he say you were pregnant?”
“I was passing out, throwing up, and screaming when he squeezed my breasts.” Her brows lower. “I missed my last period, so I think he may be right.”