AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even if that was damn hard for me to believe. I just didn’t trust that someone like him, someone with his reputation for callousness and cruelty, could have convinced her to walk down the aisle for any good reason.
I had known her when she was a kid, back when she had been nothing more than Leo’s little sister to me. She had always been super shy, hiding out in her room when we were in the house together, occasionally peeping around the door to see what we were up to. I could still remember those beautiful blue eyes staring at me, and then darting off again as though she knew she shouldn’t have been looking.
I had noticed the woman she’d been growing into; it was impossible not to. There were only a few years between us, and she had already started to bloom into this dazzlingly beautiful creature by the time I broke contact with the family. I would never have done anything about it, of course, given that she was my best friend’s little sister, but I knew it wouldn’t be long till she had the whole city wrapped around her finger, if that’s how she wanted it.
And now she had Gregor as her husband. Was it what she wanted? Was it what she planned? She must have been through hell, losing her father earlier this year—suicide, that’s what I heard, though I steered clear of the funeral so as not to cause any trouble for the family—and now, she was married. Either it was a choice she had made when she was crazy with grief, or …
Or it was something far darker than that.
I had to find out. I leafed through the contacts in my father’s files, trying to remember if he’d done business with Gregor at some point in the past. He must have. Gregor had men in every corner of this city, and I doubted my father could have avoided running into him at one point or another.
I wasn’t even sure what my plan was here. I just knew I needed to see her. Needed to make sure she was really doing this because she wanted to. I might not have been in touch with that family anymore, but if they thought I was going to forget about the kindness they’d shown me so soon, they had another thing coming.
What exactly was I planning to do if I got there and it was clear she didn’t want to be part of any of this? Shit, I wasn’t exactly sure. But I would come up with something. I would have to. I couldn’t just abandon her to this, to a marriage to a man like Gregory that she might not even have wanted for herself.
I had to do something. What it was exactly, that was going to have to wait. But a plan was already beginning to form in the back of my mind, and I started to piece together exactly how I could get to his mansion—and find out if Morgan was really there because she wanted to be.
Or if there was something far, far worse going on that I didn’t know about yet.
Chapter Three – Morgan
I leaned in the doorway of the mansion, staring out over the walled garden beyond; a maze filled the center of the immaculate green grass, zigzagging in and out of itself.
I wished I could get lost in there, and never come out. I had barely been out of the house this last week or so, since we had gotten married. He had been there to stop me every time, Gregor, lurking over my shoulder as though he knew I was going to try and make a break for it at the first chance I got.
"You should get settled in," he’d told me over dinner one evening. I had no appetite, picking at my food, stomach churning as I wondered if this, tonight, might be the night it happened.
"I’m fine," I told him, a little more curtly than I had intended. I knew I needed to be more careful about how I spoke to him, but I just couldn’t stand the way he talked to me, as though I was an idiot, slowing his words down carefully to make sure I understood them. Just because I was younger than him didn’t mean I was stupid, but he didn’t seem to get that.
"You haven’t even unpacked your things in our room yet," he told me. I tensed, toes curling with disgust beneath the table. No, I hadn’t, and I wanted to keep it that way. The thought of having to pull my clothes from the boxes and lay them out in the dresser opposite the bed we were meant to be sharing, it was too much for me. I was still utterly in denial about all of this, doing anything and everything I could to pretend like it wasn’t happening, but I knew I couldn’t keep doing it forever.
I had begged off, headed down to a room of my own for the last few days after telling him that I was tired and sick after the wedding. With how much I had been tossing and turning all night long, it didn’t take much to convince him that I was really telling the truth, and he waved me off, clearly not wanting to deal with me when I was sick. So much for in sickness and in health, right?
But I knew what he wanted from me. He wanted me to sleep with him. To share a bed with him, and give myself to him, give my body to him … Ugh, even the thought of that made my stomach curdle. Even now, as I stared out over the garden, I could imagine it, and I wanted to scream into the cold morning air, let out the tension that had been getting the best of me.
And perhaps I could have, if I hadn’t been sure his staff would overhear me and report back to him about what I was doing. There were eyes in every corner of this place, and no matter what I did to try and escape them, they were always there, peering around every corner, watching me, taking me in like they couldn’t wait to be the one to go back to him with new information. Didn’t they care? Didn’t they see how terrified I was, how much I hated this?
I couldn’t blame them; I knew that much. They weren’t responsible for this. It was him, his doing. They were likely just as terrified of him as I was, and it wasn’t fair to expect them to resist when he would have come down on them with an iron fist, I was sure of it.
I heard footsteps behind me, and I knew who it was before I even turned around. I had become attuned to him already, which I hated. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when he was around, as though he was some horror move villain sloping out of the darkness towards me.
"Hello, sweetheart."
I forced the corners of my lips up into a smile, and then turned to face him, my eyes sliding past him. I couldn’t look at him, not properly, not without giving away how I was really feeling.
"Hello," I replied, feigning happiness. Was it enough? I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I could do to convince him that I was happy here, when it felt as though my heart was being ripped out of my chest every moment I was away from my family. This mansion, this huge, cavernous place, it felt so empty to me—a prison instead of this luxury home it should have been. I would have given anything to be back, sleeping on my uneven mattress in my childhood bedroom, where I’d lived up until this wedding.
My parents hadn’t had enough money to send me to college, not after Leo had gone; my father’s gambling had been so out of control, I hadn’t even had enough to get out and stand on my own two feet. I’d worked a handful of jobs, anything to bring in some money for my mother, but I had dreamed of having a place of my own, a life of my own.
But now, I would never have that. No, I was stuck with this man, in this nightmare, under his thumb for the rest of my life, with no way out of it that I could see.
And, as he slid towards me, I knew it was only going to get worse.
"My bed is feeling very empty without you in it," he told me, putting his hands on my waist. I went rigid, frozen. I wanted nothing more than to push him off, but I knew it would only make things worse.
"I’m still not feeling well," I told him, my voice coming out robotic. "I … I don’t want to get you sick."
"Oh, trust me, it’ll be worth it," he replied, raising his eyebrows at me suggestively. The thought of him, on top of me, inside of me, made my stomach lurch with abject horror. I wanted to slap him right then and there for being so lewd, but he was my husband.
