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I enter the room again and find the stack of sheets. They feel thick, and I’m not sure I can rip them without something sharp to assist me. I opt for trying to tie one around my neck and wrapping my wrist in it like a sling, but I miscalculate the knot, my balancing abilities, and my distance to the side table. I don’t see the destruction before it happens, and I go down hard, my wrist smashing into the wood.
Pain shoots up my arm, and a sharp cry escapes my lips before darkness mercifully ushers the pain away.
12
Nic
What the fuck was I thinking? First, by allowing Celia to wander the house at will. And second, by not throttling Lucas when I should have earlier. He’s growing more and more insubordinate by the day. I should’ve known he’d go after her again. And now she’s hurt. I have no one to blame but myself, and I don’t like it.
It’s not like I care about her pain. But if she is battered and bruised before the auction, it’ll mean less of a payment. Like her virginity, my clients will want her skin unmarred, a canvas for their own brutal pleasures.
It’s not her pathetic attempts to stifle her tears that give me reason to check on her. It’s the possibility of her hurting herself. I’ll have to lock her in a padded cell until I can pawn her off on some other asshole. Which will screw with my revenge plans. I need her.
Celia is nothing like her father, at least as far as I can tell. He’d never degrade himself by blubbering. She’s even tried to pry out some kind of connection between us, despite the fact I’ll be putting her tight little ass on a block in front of her daddy’s friends in a few short days.
As long as I can keep Lucas away from her until then. I don’t trust him not to do something rash the closer we come to the event. Maybe I’ll put Soo on him once we get a little closer to the day. He’s dying to knock a little sense into Lucas, even if that means hitting his head into a wall a time or two.
Another sob cuts through the wall, and I huff out a ragged exhale. There’s no way I’m going to get any sleep tonight if she continues with the crying. She didn’t even cry this much on her first night here.
The thought that maybe Lucas hurt her worse than I suspected hits me. I quietly slip out of the room and down to the kitchen for an ice pack. No one else is lingering in the halls. The kitchen staff have already retreated to their rooms for the evening. I find the jar of balm we keep in the refrigerator for cuts and bruises. As well as one of several thick gel packs we keep stocked in the freezer. The balm is our mother’s recipe and works quickly to numb minor pains, and I get a twinge in my chest thinking about using it to soothe Ricci’s daughter.
I wonder briefly what my mother would think of the man I’ve become? Would she be proud? Angry? None of that matters because she isn’t here. She isn’t alive. She was murdered the same day as my father and older brother.
The anger rushing through my veins becomes a slow boil, but when I enter her room and find her sitting on the edge of the bed, my anger dissipates altogether. There’s a faint trickle of dried blood running down from the top of her forehead, and she’s clutching her wrist to her chest, rocking it slowly against her.
I shut the door, closing us inside before turning around. “What the hell happened?”
Hastily, she takes her uninjured hand and wipes it across her face, most likely trying to hide her tears from me. As if I hadn’t heard her crying in here all along.
When her soft brown eyes finally reach mine, they’re rimmed red and glistening with tears. “It’s nothing. I got into a fight with the table. It won.”
Is she seriously joking right now? I hold up the jar of balm and the ice pack. “Let me see it.”
She shakes her head and backs up onto the bed to keep me from getting close. “No, I’ll be fine. I don’t have the energy in me to spar with you, and the last thing I want is for you to touch me. I think you and your brother have hurt me enough.”
I narrow my eyes and stalk forward, sending her to the farthest edge of the king-size bed. “To be clear, I own you. That means I can touch you whenever I damn well please. Right now, I want to touch you in a way that helps you. But if you want to be a brat and won’t come back over here, I’ll tie you down and force it on you, anyway. Then I’ll leave you that way until Sarah comes to get you in the morning.”
