Chapter 34

THIRTY-FOUR

DOMHNALL

“Brooke,” I call again when she keeps walking away from me, grabbing my jeans off the stage and shoving my legs into them.

What the hell is going on? It’s like she just flipped out when I told her I loved her. She had to know, didn’t she? She’d just said it to me and hearing it out of her mouth was everything I always wanted to hear. I only realized once she was saying it. But obviously it freaked her out to hear it in return.

Still, we can fix this. We’ve already been through so much already. A safeword is meant to be just that. I’ll make her feel safe and we can start again. We don’t have to do scenes. Dammit, I knew it was a bad idea to come here tonight.

This is just a little hiccup. This is nothing.

I jog to catch up, managing to shove my dick back in my jeans and button them right before I reach her. She continues acting like she can’t hear my voice, and I get worried. Maybe something else is going on and she’s still in subspace or something. Professor Roberts said different things might trigger her. Shit, I knew this was too soon!

I shove past some club members until I get around in front of her, planting myself in her path and grabbing her arm when she keeps trying to step around me, still not looking my way.

“Hey. Brooke!” I give her a gentle shake, trying to jog her back to herself.

She finally looks at me all right, her eyes full of scorn. “That’s not my fucking name and you know it.” Her tone is venomous. “I expect the full sum will be in my bank account now?”

I can only blink at her, so confused about what the hell is going on.

Just then, though, Quinn pushes her way up to us. Right as Brooke yanks at my grip on her. “Let go of my fucking arm.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Quinn demands, grabbing my wrist in some sort of jiu jitsu wrist hold that immediately makes me go weak with pain right as my fingers were loosening to let go of Brooke, anyway.

“You’re not needed,” I snap at Quinn.

But Brooke suddenly cowers behind Quinn. “Don’t let that bastard touch me again. He’s had me locked in a dungeon all week. He beat me and made me eat from a dog bowl.”

Brooke looks me right in the eye as she says it. “I assume our little public performance fulfilled the terms beyond a reasonable doubt? I expect my fucking money in the specified bank account I gave you when I signed that fucking contract now . I want to get the fuck out of this town and never look back. You cunts have done enough to me.”

Her words punch me in the guts, and I stagger a step back. Oh fuck. The last two days she’s been playing me to make sure I let her go.

Because I’m the monster in this story.

She’s been trying to escape me any way she could. She’s smart. When I caught her in the picture room, I was angry. I wince as the smashing whisky glass against the wall replays in my head. I was violent.

I’m a billionaire and she knew it. She probably thought that if she tried to escape then, I’d have like, fucking dogs chase her down or some shit. A hand drags from my hair down my face and I keep stumbling back, feeling sick.

She survived the only way she could, waiting until she could escape me publicly. Probably the same way she survived her father all those years. The same way I survived her father.

She gave in. She played a part. All the while loathing me inside. She played a better game of chess until she could outwit me and escape.

I stopped playing chess that night with the pictures when I learned the truth, but she didn’t know. I’d already trained her by then, after god-knows-what that sick fuck did to her over the years and— oh fuck, I’m going to be sick.

Because in her head, I’d essentially just forced her to have sex with me.

Mads, what have I done to you?

I run for the men’s room but don’t make it, dropping to my knees and losing my dinner in the big fake plant Caleb’s decorator used to hide the trashcan.