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Somewhere in the distance, a rough sound scratches my ears. Only it’s not in the distance at all… Ryan clears his throat, but I don’t bother turning to look at him. I may feel ill, I may feel weak, but that asshole can go fuck himself with barbed wire.
I look down at my plate once again, moving slices of steamed carrot around… that broccoli definitely had enough exercise.
“You better finish that, you’re not getting any more.” Even his voice sounds wrong. Everything about him is just… wrong. I close my eyes and take a deep breath before I turn to him, those muddy irises holding secrets behind that grin. “We have to make sure you fit into the wedding dress I chose for you. Otherwise, we might have to hire another person just to stuff you and the fat on your hips into it instead.”
I ignore the fat comments. I’m used to them by now. God forbid I ever eat a cube of chocolate in front of him. The comments about myfatbody never stop. At this point, I have no idea if what I see in the mirror is his vision of me or my own. I see softness, I see love handles, I see jiggle when I jump, I see a big ass that’s not quite round, a soft pouch on my belly… I see so much, so much that never mattered before. But I pass over those words, because they’re not new.
However, his confidence in his plans… That, I cannot ignore.
I believe there is nothing more dangerous than a powerful man riddled by delusions of grandeur that have seeped too deep into his brain. He’s truly convinced that I will allow this wedding to go ahead, that this insane plan of his will have the end he envisions. This controlling behavior is being taken to a whole other level and the man he used to be has been completely replaced by the mad one next to me.
“You’re completely delusional. You can’t keep me locked in your house forever. Whatever plan you have… it’s going to fizzle out. And when it does…” I trail off, that darkness that lives inside of me is just a bit denser. Subdued fury lives there, and for these last three days, I’ve worked so fucking hard to be rational, when all I’ve wanted to do is slit his throat, cut his head off, and shove it on a spike on his front lawn.
That’s another piece of my imagination that puts a smile on my face.
“Our, not mine—ourhouse.” A tinge of exasperation touches the tone of his voice, and I can’t help but roll my eyes. The next second, a feral sound comes from him, a strange sort of growl, making me stiffen in my chair. That noise matches the madness in his glare.
“You’re such an ungrateful little bitch, aren’t you?! That fucking roll in your eyes will end up getting stuck to the back of your head if you don’t cut this bullshit. There’s only so much patience one can have.” The flare of his nostrils and the look in his beaded eyes make me swallow my disgust.
“Language, Ryan,” his mother calmly scolds.
I turn to her at the other end of the table, watching as she slides another piece of chicken into her mouth.Language… that’s what she’s worried about. Not the fact that her son has kidnapped a woman, the same one he is forcing to marry him, whilst bringing whores into her home. Fucking language.
I stop myself just as my eyes begin their all too familiar roll.
“I’ll speak exactly how I please inmyhouse, mother,” he spits as he cuts into that piece of meat as though it wronged him.
I forget; we’re inhishouse now. Inhislavish dining room, having dinner with his mother for the third night in a row. The mother he allows to still live inhishouse. It hasn’t belonged to his mother since the moment the dirt covered his father’s body.
I hold my fingers crossed that he’ll get pulled away with “business” and he’ll leave me alone. Maybe tonight I’ll manage to sleep.
I can practically feel the bags under my eyes without touching them, my eyelids already heavy and it’s barely seven o’clock. But I can’t let this fatigue get me. Not until I’m sure he’ll be out for the night.
I’ve been lucky the first two nights. He left just after dinner the first one and during it the second one. Two veins bulged dangerously in his temples as he took that phone call the second night, the sinew in his throat dangerously tense. I’ve never seen him quite like that before. Without a word he shoved me in the room he’s been keeping me in, the only sounds coming from the slamming door and the click of the key as he locked me in. Somewhere deep inside I thought that whatever happened was some sort of distraction to get me out.
So I waited… I sat at the edge of the bed, in the light of the moon, staring at that door, for hours.
But no one came…
I never laid on the bed though, even as sleep threatened to take me, I couldn’t allow that vulnerability.
The second night was the same. Only for a few minutes my eyes betrayed me, and I woke up just as my back hit the soft mattress. It was at that moment, when I shot up straight to my feet, that I realized just what this man does to me. What he’s made of me… what he took away.
And as the second night passed, and no one came for me, I understood that I cannot wait for anyone to save me. I will always have to rely on myself. No one else. Because that was the only way to regain my strength in front of this man.
“I think everyone will have an early night tonight.” Ryan looks straight into my eyes. “All of us.”
“Fine by me.” I place the cutlery on the plate and get up with a screech of the chair on the wood floor, his mother hissing at the sound. “Good night.”
Just as I thought I was off the hook, the motherfucker speaks.
“I’ll see you in a minute.”
Something in the depths of my soul stiffens.
No fucking way.
* * *
