“I know you would have shot your own son this morning. Your own flesh and blood.”
Lucien scrunches his face in disgust. “Slade Cruz is not my son. He’s the result of a lazy fuck.”
“He’s the result of rape.”
Lucien rolls his eyes. “I knew I should have fucked Rochelle that night. Daniella has only ever caused me problems since but your fucking father just kept getting in the way.”
My jaw clenches. “Don’t you dare speak her name.”
His eyes sparkle with humor and he gets back on track with his little speech. “It’s a real shame your actions have cost your brother his future, but he knows he’s welcome home. He can have a seat at the table. But you, never. You’re too stubborn, outspoken. You’ll do well to zip your fucking lips and learn how to submit. It’ll make the next twenty years a shitload easier for us all. If Marcus knew you had such a rotten mouth, he’d never let us forget it and you’d be as good as dead. You should be thankful that I even set this up for you. Do you have any idea how good you’ve got it? If you would just shut up and do what you’re told, you’d have the fucking world at your feet, but you insist on being an ungrateful bitch.”
I gawk at him, not believing for one second that he did this for me. “You made this deal to line your fucking pockets. You couldn’t give a shit if I ended up in a fucking ditch.”
Lucien shrugs, his eyes darkening, and warning me that my time is up. “Maybe you’re right, but what I do know is if you screw this up for me, I’ll be the one to put you in that ditch.”
I swallow back, not doubting his words one bit.
He looks down at me and I struggle against the handcuffs.
This is it. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to go but to endure it again. His hand reaches for his belt. “You missed this, didn’t you?”
“Like hell,” I spit, trying to kick him away as he gets closer. “You wouldn’t know the first thing about pleasing a woman. Your dick is fucking repulsive. Small and wrinkly. Did you learn your moves by watching cheap porn?”
His hand slaps hard across my face, his thumb hitting my eye and making it sting. “You’ll fucking pay for that.”
I clench my jaw, trying not to show the pain. Instead of tearing up, I look up at him with a smug grin. I figure that if I’m going to go out, then I should at least get in a few hits as I go. It seems someone has a little performance anxiety.
“Daniella and I would sit up at night, laughing about how pathetic you were, exchanging stories, and you know the common thing that kept coming up? How you don’t have a clue about how to satisfy a woman. You didn’t twenty years ago and from what I see, you still don’t. No wonder you have to go around raping women. Is Maria tired of you flopping around on top of her, playing dead fish? You have to get it from somewhere else?”
Lucien’s gaze darkens and he reaches for my shirt but I yank it out of his grip with my free hand, desperately trying to hold onto it. “You know you could just pay for it, right? At least, I know Maria does. She’s been fucking the pool boy for the past two years.”
Lucien’s hand snaps out and he grabs my throat, squeezing it tight. “Shut the fuck up, you little bitch,” he demands, desperately trying to pull his limp dick out of his suit pants.
“LUCIEN? Where are you?” Maria’s voice echoes through the hallway outside my bedroom door.
Lucien’s eyes go wide as they snap down to mine. His hand squeezes my throat tighter and I struggle to breathe, but it’s nothing I haven’t already suffered through. His eyes narrow in warning. “You keep your fucking mouth shut.”
Keep my mouth shut? But I thought he said he sound-proofed my room. Shouldn’t that mean that I could scream all I want and have no one hear me from outside? In fact, should I have been able to hear Maria out there?
I narrow my eyes right back. If I’m going to die here, then I might as well go out fighting.
What have I got to lose?
“HELP” I scream over and over again. “HELP ME. MARIA.”
“Fuck,” Lucien grunts, ripping his hand from my throat and hastily trying to get his dick back inside his pants before his wife catches him moments from raping a minor.
His belt gets done up just as my bedroom door flies open and Maria stands gawking in, staring at me as though she’s seeing a ghost. “Well,” she sighs, pressing her lips into a tight line. “Look who decided to show up.”
Chapter 3
“You have a lot of nerve showing up here,” Maria snaps as she strides into my room, glaring at me while Lucien discreetly takes a step back, making me realize that he’s shit scared of this woman. All this time I thought it was Lucien who wore the pants in this relationship but my eyes are finally open. She may dote on him and think the world revolves around him, but she’s the mastermind here, not him.
The way Lucien darted away from me and shoved his junk back in his pants makes it clear that he doesn’t want his wife to know what dirty deeds he’s been getting up to at night. I wonder how she’d feel if I shared it with her? Hell, I wonder how she’d feel if she found out that the bastard had a son all this time while she had to go to extreme lengths of having my parents murdered and me and Blake kidnapped just so that she could play the perfect doting parent role at the school PTA meeting.
I try to pull myself up to a sitting position and straighten my shirt as I go, knowing how she will reprimand me for such simple things. Old habits die hard. It’s hard shuffling myself around with my hand attached to the bedpost but she glares at me as though she doesn’t even see it.
Unable to help the snide comment on my lips, I let her have it. “Believe me, it wasn’t my choice to come back here. I was kidnapped.”
Maria steps up to the side of the bed and her hand snakes out, slapping me across my face as her anger overwhelms her. My only saving grace is that she hit the opposite side of my face that Lucien has already been targeting.
“Watch your tone. You wouldn’t have the slightest idea of the torture you and your brother have put us through pulling such a ridiculous little stunt like running away,” she snaps. “Now be grateful that Lucien was willing to go all the way out to that godforsaken town and collect the two of you.”
“Two of us?” I scoff. “Unfortunately, my brother was not able to remove himself from the hospital to make the trip.”
“Hospital?” she grunts in question, flicking her eyes toward her husband.
My brow raises as I glance across to Lucien, whose face goes impossibly still. I grin, more than ready to dump him in a pile of shit. “Oh, your dick of a husband shattered his leg and left him in a ditch to die. He was lucky to get out of there alive. His leg is currently being held together by pins. Who knows if he’ll ever be able to play basketball again?”
Darkness spreads over Maria’s face as she turns to face Lucien. “Tell me you did not touch my boy?” she growls between a clenched jaw.
Lucien narrows his eyes at his wife as though they’re about to have some sort of power struggle. “I did what I had to do.”
“When was this?”
“Last Saturday night,” I supply helpfully, knowing he’ll never be honest.