33

33

KADE

Afist drives into my gut, and I’m knocked to the floor, a cough spluttering from my throat.

I clench my teeth and try to push up, but someone kicks my head with steel toe cap boots, and I’m down again.

“When I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it. No questions, no refusals, no fucking cheek.”

On my hands and knees, I spit blood on the ground, my entire body shaking from the beating from her four guards. I try to stand, but a heavy boot lands on my back and shoves me back to the concrete floor of the basement. “Stay down, boy.”

Bernadette’s shoes click as she walks around me, the sound vibrating in my ears. Her husband smacks her ass as she scrapes her nails across his chest. “How do we make him compliant?”

“He’s a troublesome teenager,” Archie says, pressing his boot harder into my back. As much as I want to stand up and punch the fucking smirk off his face, they injected me with something that’s making me weak. “We could add more of an incentive. Maybe a family member?”

She clicks her tongue, and the boot vanishes from my back. I push up, falling and stumbling, until I grab hold of a pipe attached to the wall and stand tall. But with the damage to my leg, I struggle. The red-haired she-devil grins at me. “You have an order, Kade.” She points a manicured finger at the man strapped to a chair in front of me. “Kill him.”

I shake my head. I’m not going to kill someone. The fuck is wrong with these people?

One minute, I was looking at a file she’d retrieved from her office about my dad’s case, another appeal that’s due to fall through, then something sharp stabbed at my neck, and when I tried to grab Bernadette and push her off me, Archie shoved a knife in my leg. Some time after that, I woke up beside Bernadette with a condom still attached to my dick, and I’ve been trapped here ever since, hating my own skin.

They’re evil rapists.

She stresses each word as she walks towards me. “Kill. Him. Now.”

“Fuck you,” I manage, gripping the pipe to stay standing as my leg spasms. I notice the stab wound has started bleeding again.

Bernadette narrows her eyes then looks at her husband. “Archie, bring up the live footage we have of little Luciella Mitchell.”

All the blood drains from my face when he shoves an iPad at me, the screen showing my sister walking with Stacey and Tylar in the mall. They’re laughing together, but my gaze is on the face I see every time I close my eyes.

It’s been two months since I left her and beat up my brother. I haven’t spoken to either of them.

How can I be so mad at her yet hang on to every memory of us like they’d keep me alive?

“Kill him, or I’ll make sure your sister and her friends don’t make it home.”

I gulp, picturing Stacey fighting for her life while my sister and Tylar lie dead beside her. Even the thought of them being harmed has me seeing red flashes behind my vision.

She obviously doesn’t know Stacey is my ex, or she’d threaten me with her instead.

“Leave my sister alone,” I grit out.

“Then kill him.” She places a gun in my hand, and the metal is so heavy, so fucking deadly, that I drop it as if it’s burned my skin.

She chuckles and looks at her husband. “It seems our pet doesn’t know how to fire a gun.”

“Such a pathetic little boy.”

I want to rip this motherfucker apart, but my mind is blanking, and I can barely stand with how much the room is spinning. I don’t know why they’re doing this. Or why me.

My attempt to escape this morning was pointless. Archie stuck another needle in me and pulled my trousers down while I clawed at the carpet until I passed out.

For the first time in a long time, I want my dad. I want Ewan and Jason to find me. Even my mum. If they knew where I was, they’d fight tooth and nail until they saved me. But with security everywhere, and how brutal they are, I doubt I’ll be rescued anytime soon.

Will they be looking for me?What if Stacey needs me?Who will walk and train my dogs?

I stand back, glancing at the terrified man with black tape over his mouth and eyes. He’s shaking in the chair, his hands bound behind him. “How?”

“You can choose,” she says, crossing her arms and popping her hip out as her shoe taps the ground. “But hurry up. We have a party tonight, and I need your wound tended to before you meet your first client.”

I frown. “First… client?”

She smiles, the lines around her eyes crinkling. “You’re going to make me a lot of money, Kade. And if you’re a good boy and do as you’re told, your family will be safe.” She shrugs. “I’ll even give you a percentage, so you’ll have some benefits.”

Archie shows me the screen again, and my heart stops when I see two guys in suits following my sister and her friends through the mall. “The next shop they go into, they won’t come back out.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Bernadette’s eyes darken, her fake smile slipping.I sigh and close my eyes, then look at the thrashing man in the chair again.

Each limping step I take towards him has bile rising in my throat, and I want to apologise, to say I don’t want to do this, but I need to keep those I love safe. When I wrap my hands around his throat, making him still in shock, I shut my eyes for a second.

I apply pressure but nowhere near enough to kill him.I’m shaking.

Archie chuckles like I’m pathetic. “Tighter.”

“Press your thumb into his carotid artery,” Bernadette says beside me. “And tighten your grip. Make sure he can’t breathe.”

I do as she says, and the man struggles for breath, doing everything he can to fight against me. But he’s tied up and useless. He can’t see me – can’t see the look in my eyes as I strangle him.

“That’s it. The blood flowing to his head is reducing,” Bernadette says, moving closer. “The brain is being starved of oxygen and nutrients.” She walks around the man, ruffling his hair as I keep my eyes on my hands. “Watch his skin change colour, Kade. Watch how you rob him of breath, of life. Take him away from his daughter, his wife and the future they should be having.”

A tear slips down my cheek, but as I loosen my hold to let him breathe, I think about Stacey and what could happen to her and my sister if I don’t do this.

I push forward hard enough to make the chair tip back, and Bernadette moves out of the way before the man crashes to the ground, likely dislocating both his shoulders. I lock my elbows and put all my weight into my hands as I climb over him and press as hard as I can against his neck.

“I’m sorry,” I say, spit falling from my mouth as I keep repeating those two words. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He’s not conscious anymore.He never will be again.

“Good boy – that’s it. Hold him there until he’s dead. He’ll be the first of many.” Bernadette crouches beside me and grabs my chin, making me look at her as I keep all my weight on his neck. “You are mine. You’ll always be mine. You will follow every order, and you’ll come to my bed whenever I say.”

“No,” I croak.

“You have no choice.”

She licks a tear from my cheek then takes my earlobe between her teeth. I want to vomit everywhere when she slips the strap of her dress down, her other hand sliding up my thigh as I take this man’s life.

“You can stop now. He’s dead.” Bernadette’s voice changes to something softer, and there’s a slight panic in her tone as she presses against my chest. “Kade. Stop.”

My hands grip tighter around the man’s slim throat.

“Kade!”

I blink, and Stacey is beneath me.

“Fuck.” I throw myself back, releasing her throat, and climb off the bed, putting as much distance between us as possible until I knock into the wall. I screw my eyes shut and slide down it. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I thought you were… Fuck. He was…”

There’s no knife wound in my leg. I’m not in the basement. Bernadette isn’t here.

Stacey coughs and holds her throat, which I had my murderous, dirty fucking hands around. “It’s okay. You were having a nightmare. It’s okay, Kade.”

My eyes fly open. “It’s not fucking okay! I just strangled you. What if I didn’t wake up?”

“You were sleeping.” She gets to her knees on the mattress and reaches a hand out to me. “Please. Come back to bed. I’m fine, I promise.”

I drop my head between my parted knees and try to calm my breathing, my heartbeat, to banish the fucking image of her struggling beneath me. If I hadn’t woken up, if I hadn’t snapped out of it, I could have really hurt her – killed her.

“Hey,” she says, lowering herself in front of me. She’s still wearing my top, and it’s so large on her small frame that it slides off her shoulder. “Look, I don’t have any new marks. You didn’t do it hard enough for that.”

I open my eyes. She’s pulling her hair over her shoulder to show me her throat. “I promise you didn’t hurt me. Come back to bed. Please.”

She’s right, there aren’t any new marks – but the ones from earlier are there. I was gripping her so tightly…

“You’re the last person in the world I’d ever want to hurt,” I tell her, taking her hand and pulling her towards me. “But I’m scared I do. Why won’t you run from me?”

“The only way you could hurt me is if you pull away from me again.” She straddles my lap as I straighten my legs out, her arms wrapping around my shoulders. “I don’t know why we’re still here or why the police haven’t blown into the manor, but we should make the most of every minute we have.” Her forehead settles against mine. “Come back to bed.”

“There’s no doubt I’ll be arrested,” I say, glancing outside through the balcony door, which is slightly ajar. “It’s been a few hours. I probably won’t have long until they come for me.”

I snake my arms around her, and I wish I could stay here forever. With my girl in my arms. “I’ll go willingly. What will you do? I can get Barry to take you and the dogs out of the country.”

She shakes her head. “I’m staying here. We’ll wait for you.”

“I’ll be in for life, Stacey.”

“Then so am I,” she replies, chewing her lip, and I want to take it between my teeth as I palm her ass and pull her closer to me. “If you try to push me away or force me to leave you, I’ll hate you.”

“So you’d still be my girlfriend even if I’m in prison forever? That’s not a life you deserve.”

She grins, her cheeks going a lovely shade of red. “I don’t believe we’ve crossed that bridge.”

I pull a brown strand from between her lips. “What bridge?”

“The one where you ask me to be your girlfriend again.”

Something swells in my chest, and the tip of my nose touches hers. “Will you?”

In all honesty, the title “girlfriend” seems minuscule and immature considering what we have. I’m madly in love with her, and she’s made it clear she feels the exact same way. If we were in a different position, and I wasn’t about to be arrested and taken away from this life, then I’d marry her and put an army of kids in her.

I’d burn the universe just to see her smile at me the way she is now.

She’s my entire fucking world.

“Your girlfriend?” Her nose scrunches as she fake grimaces. “Ew. No.”

She squeals as I shove her so she’s on her back and I’m on top of her. I cup her cheek in a palm as her legs wrap around my waist then swipe my thumb over her plump lips.

“So much patience for someone who left you at your lowest point. I’m a scumbag who doesn’t deserve you.”

She rolls her eyes and bites my thumb, sucking it into her mouth and making my dick twitch. Against my thumb, she says, “You can make it all up to me by coming back to bed and watching The Greatest Showman with me.”

My lips curl as she releases my thumb, and I slide it down her chin. “As long as you promise to sing, Freckles.”

She giggles and presses a gentle kiss to my lips, smiling as she replies, “Every single lyric.”

As soon as her mouth is on mine, I let it all out in the way my lips smooth over hers, the way I kiss her like I haven’t in a long, long time – I take her bottom lip between my teeth and suck and bite, and let my hand travel from her hip to her knee, squeezing.

There are no voices, so I listen to her breaths and focus on how soft her body feels beneath me.

She gasps into my mouth, and I take that opportunity to taste her tongue with my own, tilting my head to slant our mouths.

Her legs tighten around me, and I grow harder against her.

“Is this okay?” she whispers against my mouth as she rocks her hips, rubbing herself up and down the underside of my cock.

I nod and thrust my tongue into her mouth again, tasting her as my hands dive into her hair, tugging her head to the side so I can suck on her pulse. I feel it fluttering on my tongue as I rock my hips into her.

Through my sweats and her underwear, I can feel how warm she is, and I know if I drop my hand between us, her panties will be soaked.

I pull back and stare down at her, taking in the way her dark hair covers the floor, her dilated pupils, how her chest rises and falls. My hands splay on her torso, under my top, and her back arches as I grab her tits and caress them while rubbing my dick against her covered pussy.

“I don’t understand.”

She tilts her head, breathless and spasming as I pinch her nipples. “Understand what?”

“With all the shit I’ve done, how I’m lucky enough to have you.”

She blushes, gasping as I drop one hand between her legs, feeling her drenched panties as I shove aside the material and sink two fingers into her pussy. She crushes my fingers, tight and fucking mine.

I bite my lip and wonder if I should just fuck her, no condom, no birth control, with such a slim chance of being here if she falls pregnant. Is it bad that I’d happily tell her not to bother with the morning-after pill today? I was inside her already – it’s not impossible for her to fall pregnant from that alone.

Her back arches as I fuck her faster, and she moves her hips in time with my fingers, grabbing at the hand that’s groping her breast.

I already know what she looks like with a small bump. I know the way her tits feel when they’re heavy, how much she glows and the way she smiles talking about becoming parents. I could fill her with my cum, impregnate her and she’d be tethered to me forever.

Fuck, I shouldn’t be thinking about any of this. Not in our position.

“Why are you staring at me?”

I blink, three times, and I calm my breathing when my fingers twitch on her breast. My fingers have stopped inside her, and I must’ve zoned out. I kiss her and curl my fingers, swallowing her moan as her cunt flutters around me.

“Tell me you’re mine,” I demand against her mouth, sinking my teeth into her bottom lip. “Tell me you’ll always be mine, Freckles.”

“I’m yours,” she moans. “Always.”

I look at her, keeping myself steady as I blink unevenly again. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I trust you,” she says, and it’s more than enough to slow my rampant thoughts.

I don’t want my body to fail me when we’re having such a close-connected moment. My arms tremble. If I seize right now, I’ll be so pissed.

I flinch as she moves her hand to my sweats but nod when she silently asks for permission to touch me. She reaches inside them, and as soon as her hand wraps around me, my eyes fall shut. I add a third finger as my thumb rubs her clit, eliciting another moan against my mouth.

“You aren’t on birth control, and I don’t have any condoms.” I hate myself as I thrust into her hand anyway. “But I want to feel your cunt wrapped around my cock.”

Her throat works on a gulp. “I’m going to take the morning-after pill. Just… fuck me.”

“That’s probably the most irresponsible thing you’ve ever said.”

She shrugs. “Do you disagree?”

“No.”

I groan and grit my teeth as she swipes precum from the tip with her thumb. “But I don’t know if I can.”

Annoyingly, she lets go of my dick and grabs my wrist, stopping me from fingering her. She’s not mad at all; her voice is soft. “We said we’d go slow, so just go slow until you’re comfortable. Even if that means waiting until we’re in a private room after your sentencing.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea. Go back to being irresponsible and let me fuck you.”

Stacey slaps my chest. “You’re insatiable, do you know that?”

“Only for you.” I force out the words and focus on her. “I’ve been attracted to you since we were fifteen. But why is it that even after all the times we’ve been together, I want more? It makes me crazy. You make me crazy.”

She smiles, and it touches her pale green eyes. “Does it also make you want to take me to the bed? The floor is hurting my back.”

I laugh a real laugh and get up to my knees, tucking my dick away and taking her hand before throwing her on the bed. “Put the damn movie on and stop distracting me.” She reaches for her phone, and I shake my head. “Not yet. Reality can wait.”

Her voice is quiet as she looks down. “Reality scares me.”

“Then ignore it with me. Hide with me until reality slams through that door and takes me away from you.”

She fights against her tears as she nods. “Okay.”

I press my forefingers to the corners of her lips and drag them upwards to make her look like she’s smiling. “Stop being miserable.”

She slaps my hands away and kisses me, then my cheek then lies down. “I’ll try.”

The movie starts, and Stacey rests her head on my chest, probably hearing how hard my heart is beating, getting faster when she hums to the lyrics.

“I thought about these moments,” I tell her. “When I was forced to do things, my mind always brought me back to the times we’ve spent together.”

“What times?”

“I mean, my favourite was when you did your fancy little dance then sucked me off.”

Snorting, she covers her mouth. “You mean the time you nearly passed out?”

“Yes,” I reply, narrowing my eyes at her head. “It was my first blowjob – give me a break.”

I had to take a breather and fell against the wall to stop myself from passing out. To say I was an embarrassment when I was younger is an understatement.

“My favourite was when I realised I was falling in love with you,” she says, taking a deep breath. “We were driving to London, and I kept staring at you and thinking how lucky I was. I knew then that you had my heart. When we split, I missed you. I always came to your room when you were away and cried in your bed.”

My chest tightens, both with rage at myself for leaving and the idea I affected her so much after the split. I thought she didn’t care – that she was living her life like we didn’t happen.

“Can we look in the box?”

She tilts her head. “Yeah.”

I move to the edge of the bed and lean over, pulling the small box out. I unlock it and give it to her. “I know you saw everything sprawled over my floor, but let’s look properly. I kept everything.”

She cries as he picks up the dress. “She would’ve looked like a princess in this.”

I suck in a breath and hold it as I nod. “Like her mother.”

“I hate this,” she says, picking up the five rules I made. “Did you ever break the fifth?”

“I did.”

She smiles weakly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. The rules are void and mean nothing. They shouldn’t exist. Keep looking.”

“The little booties too.” She wipes tears from her cheeks and looks at me when she sees the paper rose I made from a napkin. She wore it behind her ear the entire way home from a dinner we had in Edinburgh. “You really never stopped loving me?”

I shake my head. “Not once. I watched you all the time.”

She keeps going through the box, sobbing when she sees a hospital letter about entering the second trimester. The pictures I drew. Pictures she took. The top she left here that I never returned.

She glances at me as she shuts the box. “You watched me?”

“Probably more than I should have. I, um, beat the shit out of every guy who went near you.”

She sits up straighter, mouth open. “You did?”

I shrug and put the box under the bed again. “You were mine.”

“I thought you hated me, and I was single.”

I drag her to my side, squeezing her ass and hiking her leg over me. “I never want to hear that come out of your mouth again. Regardless of where we were in our relationship, I would have slaughtered an entire room filled with people just to get one minute of this with you.”

“Cute – but a little scary. No more killing.”

I chuckle. “I have one more person to kill, then I promise never to lift a gun or use my hands for anything but pleasuring you for the rest of my life.”

“How do you plan on killing Bernadette if you’re arrested?”

She looks up at me, and I wink. “I always find a way.”

I play with her hair as she settles her head back on my chest, and it’s probably the first time we’ve watched the entire movie without her belting out the words.

She tells me she loves me, and I say it back. She tells me that we’re going to have loads of babies, and I tell her we’ll start right away, but she thinks I’m joking. She tells me that she’ll find a way for me to see the dogs while in prison, and I tell her they’ll keep her warm in bed since I won’t be able to.

Stacey falls asleep on me, and I close my eyes, not sleeping, just enjoying the time I have with her.

I shouldn’t have said my name and showed my face in that video of Archie, but in my reality, I don’t get a happy ending. All I can hope for is that I take the fall for everything and my team, Stacey, and my family walk away.

They could all be arrested too.

I swallow the lump threatening to strangle me, staring outside at the sun rising behind the hills and treetops. I hear voices, probably my team still cleaning up my mess.

Then a knock sounds at the door, followed by one of the manor’s workers announcing that breakfast is ready.