Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
The guard had let him pass. I’d pled for help, but the man, he didn’t listen, he didn’t care, the same as Jarek.
Monsters who looked at me like a possession.
Treasure or waste.
Whatever their pleasure.
Jarek pushed me into the front seat of his car.
I’d screamed for Papa. Prayed for him to come and save me. Or maybe he would stand aside and allow Jarek to ruin me.
Maybe I really was nothing to any of them.
Jarek had groaned as he’d gotten into the driver’s seat, his hand pressing on the wound before he’d hit me with his gun again.
“This is your fault, you cunt.”
I was so disoriented when he’d begun to drive. Blood ran in heavy streams down my face. My skin was busted open, throbbing and swollen.
Consciousness had come in and out of focus.
I was almost relieved when I realized we were at the Costa physician. He was the one who repaired gunshots and stab wounds and the evidence of beatings when my father’s men couldn’t be seen at the hospital.
He would help me.
He would help me.
But Jarek tossed me into the room, grated, “Get rid of it.”
It’d taken one look at the coldness on the physician’s face to understand what Jarek had meant.
I’d lost all sanity.
All sense of prudence gone.
I had raged, flying across the room to the locked door.
“No!” I’d screamed as I’d pounded my palm on the unforgiving metal. “Please, someone help!”
I jerked from a hand that grabbed me by the upper arm, and I ran through the room, tossing trays and supplies onto the floor.
They’d crashed.
The clanking metal piercing and loud.
The panic so fierce.
I had to get away.
I had to.
A needle was stabbed into my arm.
I fought for coherency.
I’d fought, Logan, I’d fought.
But I should have known it from a young age.
I was a possession. Property. Inanimate.
I never had a chance.
I’d awoken the next day with my father sitting beside me where I lie on an unfamiliar bed, my sight partially obstructed by a swollen eye. It took half a second for me to come to awareness. To the gutting, horrified recognition.
Still, my hands flew to my stomach.
To the emptiness that would forever ache within me.
A wail climbed from the depths. So deep and severe I’d thought it would rend me in two.
“Foolish child,” my father had said. But it was soft, his fingers brushing through my hair.
Everything hurt. My broken face and my beaten body and my shattered soul.
Another sob ripped up my throat and banged from the walls.
A grief so deep I’d thought I’d perish right then.
“I warned you not to do something so foolish. Something that would force me to do something I would regret.”
My father had the audacity to let tenderness fill his voice.
“Is Logan dead?” The question cracked, so thin and brittle. I didn’t know if I would survive the answer.
“It seems he and his entire family have fled. But we will find them.”
It was the smallest fraction of relief.
A shooting star that passed in a blink through the sky.
“You cannot hurt him, Papa,” I’d begged.
“He betrayed me, mia vita. He took my brother.” His own sorrow wound with his words. “Betrayed me. Stole from me. Touched you.”
“I love him, Papa.”
Even after what you’d done. Even after what you’d cost.
Everything, everything.
I still loved you.
“You must not.” It was a demand. “You must fulfill your duty. To me. To Jarek.”
Jarek.
Sickness clawed through my consciousness.
I began to weep. Guttural cries that came and came.
“Please, Papa.”
Pain.
Intense.
Unending.
“He will be held accountable for his actions.”
Yet my father sat there and looked at me with the evidence of what my tormentor had done. This was the man he’d intended to be my husband, and he sat there and looked at me as if it were my fault?
At the realization, my broken spirit split apart.
“I will die if you have him killed.”
“Blasphemy.”
I didn’t know if in that moment it was true. It must have been because I was sure my father saw the truth of it in my eyes.
Frantically, I grappled to take hold of his hand. “I need one thing from you, Papa, please, grant me one thing. I need him to live.”
“Aster Rose,” he’d warned, torment in his voice.
My hand had grasped at his. “I’ll do anything, Papa. Just promise me you’ll spare him. Promise me, and I’ll do what you demand.”
He’d wavered, but in it was a glimmer of the humanity I prayed he possessed. His lips had thinned then he’d said, “Okay, mia vita. I will spare him and his family, as long as he never shows his face here again.”
Two months later, you came. You stood in our spot after what you’d caused.
I was so angry.
So angry.
Depression had come, dark, eternal rage its partner.
So lost. So sad. So empty.
“The baby.” It was the first thing you’d said.
The impact of it nearly knocked me to my knees.