AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I peer at him through the haze that’s clearing as quickly as it came. “What are you talking about?”
“Why did you run?”
Oh. That. I quickly glance at the door separating us from Willow. “It’s not safe here,” I whisper. Something protective coils inside my chest, and I meet his hard stare with my own. “You… you trapped me. You trapped us.”
“You did that yourself, Clara.” He folds his arms across his chest as he glares at me. I’m trying my damned hardest to ignore the way his muscles ripple and bulge. “What did you think would fucking happen? You threw my brother in prison. I’m just disappointed I missed seeing the look on your face when you figured it out.”
The kind man I knew last night is gone. There’s a monster using his voice and working his face like a marionette. That’s the only possible explanation here.
And—Oh, God…
Isleptwith him.
I slept with him, and I put my daughter’s life in his hands.
“Are…” I swallow hard. “Are you going to kill me?”
He doesn’t answer.
He is. He’s going to kill me.
Demyen suddenly sighs. The sound almost makes me jump. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m not in the business of destroying families and ripping them apart. That’s your thing.”
I take a step back. “If you’re not going to kill me, then… then why am I here? Why bring my daughter into this?”
His jaw clenches. There’s a vein in one side that pulses as he continues to glare at me. Actually, the hardness has softened in his eyes just a bit, but it’s all the same to me.
It won’t change what comes next.
I feel the tremor start in my bones. I close my eyes tight and hug myself tighter, willing it to go away before he sees me visibly shake. It’s bad enough he can see how easy it is to keep me hostage—worse yet, how easy it is to use Willow as a bargaining chip against me.
The tremor settles into my limbs. I’m shaking, and I know he can see it.
So I close my eyes so I don’t have to see him seeing me shake like a rattlesnake tail.
The shaking is something that started years ago, back when I was a little girl and my father took out his anger and frustrations on me. Sometimes, all it took was for him to walk into the room after a shift and I’d start quivering.
On good nights, just seeing me tremble was enough to make him laugh and walk away. But most of the time, it only irritated him. And then he’d slap me. Pull my hair. Throw me across the room until I stopped shaking because I was too busy sobbing.
The only time I really remember my father being kind to me was when he found me in that warehouse. I’d been kidnapped, stuffed inside the trunk of a car, and thrown inside a crate while men fought with each other and I was forced to listen.
When the police finally showed up, my father pulled me out of that horrible crate and cradled me close. I was shaking harder than I ever had before, but he simply shushed me and promised that everything would be okay. All I had to do was be a good girl and tell the truth.
So I did. I told them the truth.
I told them about how a man had grabbed me from behind, hurt my face when he clamped his hand over my mouth. He stuffed me into that musty trunk, then drove me to the warehouse where he threw me inside the crate. My body was riddled with splinters, and I couldn’t stop shaking or crying.
I told them about how someone opened the crate. A different man—except he wasn’t old like the first one. Not like my dad. He reached for me, told me I was going to be okay…
And then slammed the crate shut again.
My father interrupted my story to ask if it was the same man I saw holding the gun over Uncle Mike’s dead body.
I didn’t remember seeing Uncle Mike there. I might have heard him? Maybe he came to save me?
Yes, that was it. Daddy said so. Uncle Mike was there to save me from the kidnapper. And the kidnapper was the one who checked on me in that crate. The kidnapper was the one who shot and killed Uncle Mike and tried to do bad things to me.
When they showed me pictures, I recognized the face that had peeked in on me and asked if I was okay.
