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“He orders the hits, you carry them out.”
I don’t answer. He’s not making any sense.
“Should I be worried?”
“Yes.”
“I think you’re right. I have captured something very valuable, Charlotte.”
He walks over to me and runs his hand over the length of my torso. “Your husband is going to come looking for you, and it isn’t going to be pretty, I’m afraid.”
He backhands me. “You’ve put me in a very difficult position.”
I stare at the floor, keeping my eyes fixed on one spot. The more I refuse to meet his gaze, the more submissive and defeated I will appear. He kneels and parts my thighs. “I don’t think you are the kind that one just simply lets go.” I feel his tongue graze me, working its way from my inner thighs to the core of me. He is not inexperienced at cunnilingus, and I find it surprising to feel my body responding to his technique.
My head lulls backward. I fix my eyes on the ceiling. If I react positively it will be over sooner and it just might earn me favor. “How does it work, exactly? He orders the hits, you carry them out?”
My head snaps into its rightful position. “Michael is not in the business.”
He stands and takes a fistful of my hair, forcing my eyes on his. “First rule, my darling. No lies.”
“It’s not a lie.”
Releasing my head, he takes a step backward and gives me the once-over. “Do I look stupid to you?”
Before I can answer, he gut-checks me. The force of his blow knocks loose every ounce of breath I have in me. He kneels once more to kiss my stomach in the spot he hit me.
Finally, my knee connects solidly with his face. He falls back onto the floor. Incensed, he comes at me again, and this time he strikes me with a closed fist directly beneath my chin. I taste fragments of bone in my mouth, my tongue overwhelmed with the taste of blood.
“So you like to fight,” he says. “I do too.”
As he positions himself behind me, I spit blood onto the floor. I stare at the door, and he enters me with a brutal thrust.
Sweaty and gasping for breath, he leans forward and nibbles my ear. I clench my jaw on impulse. “Your husband is molesting your oldest daughter.”
Chapter Thirty
Charlotte
It is a lot to take in, the news that JC Warren delivers. Not that I need reminding, but he is a psychopath. It is in his nature, and undoubtedly it’s a goal of his to unhinge me. He has certainly done that.
I tell myself it can’t be true; Michael could never, he would never, behave inappropriately toward Sophie. At least I don’t think. Would he?
Whether or not what JC Warren says is true, I don’t know. What I do know is that his revelation makes me question my whole life. Like any mother would, I pore over the details of our daily lives, I think back on the years, searching for signs. Looking for anything amiss.
Nothing stands out at me. Sophie is a moody teenager. But aren’t all teenagers moody? I know I certainly was. She’d rather get a ride home with her crush, rather than her father, but there’s nothing surprising about that. Michael has always loved Sophie. From the minute she was born. But has he loved her too much?
He attends all of her basketball games, helps her with her studies, cares for her when she’s sick. The same as he does for Hayley. I’ve never been able to tell the difference between his actual daughter and the one he has always treated like his own. It makes no sense. I track and kill predators for a living. Is it possible I could have missed one in my own home?
I’m not sure. But all I am left with is hours to mull it over. Nothingness that spans out in front of me for an eternity, until eventually, like the majority of women who are abducted, I die.
I refuse to die without knowing the truth, and so I decide that JC’s attempt to unsettle me will also be the very thing that sets me free.
It may take a while to make it happen. Considering that I haven’t eaten. Considering that the longer I am confi
ned to this bed, the more my muscles will atrophy.
Last night, JC came in and stuck a needle in my vein and ran an IV line. After that he inserted a bladder catheter. He gives me a play by play, and although there’s a fair amount of fight in me, I realize it is useless. This, and with all those fluids in me, it will be best not to have to lie in my own piss. He says he learned all of this on YouTube. Said it’s amazing the kinds of things you can learn online. After I kicked him in the face, he wanted me to know that he’s researching a technique that will sever my spinal cord, taking the use of my legs, but that will leave other sensations. Last thing he wants is to have to change my diapers for the rest of my life. And he’d like a baby. Before I get too old. He wants to see the pain of childbirth etched into my features and fall in love with me all over again.
