29. Derrick

CHAPTER 29

Derrick

There’s something pulsing through my head as I mold Raleigh to the shape of my own body. At first, I think it’s her humming with pleasure, or maybe the sound of my blood pounding through my ears. Whatever it is, it’s getting louder. The room around us is getting brighter. The bed is getting bigger, pulling Raleigh and I apart-

I force my eyes open, then close them against the bright morning sun streaming in through the window. The pulsing I heard in my dream is just the insistent vibration of my phone, lost somewhere at the foot of the bed in a pile of my clothes. And Raleigh-

Raleigh is sleeping soundly at my side, her back to me. The bare curve of her shoulder tempts me to kiss it, to knead it with my hands. If my phone weren’t still ringing, I’d bury my face in her wild black curls and fall right back to sleep with her body pulled into my chest.

But my phone is ringing, and god knows how long it’s been doing that. Slowly, so I don’t wake Raleigh, I slip off the bed and fish my phone out of my pants.

The face of my phone displays a number, but no name.

I grab one of the blankets off the bed, sling it around my waist, and step outside the room. At the top of the stairs, I head into the attic to answer the call.

“Hello?” I say, pitching my voice low so it doesn’t carry.

“Good morning, Derrick.”

The sex-sated, sleepy looseness in my body vanishes. I’m awake, no matter how much I suddenly wish I wasn’t.

“Hello, Mr. Warwick,” I hear myself say.

“Come now,” Thomas Warwick’s voice says from the other side of the phone. “We agreed to speak on a first name basis last time, didn’t we?”

Last time, when he crouched on my chest and beat my face to a bloody pulp for betraying him.

“So we did,” I say, and have to swallow to wet my throat. “To what do I owe this pleasure, Thomas?”

Is it obvious I’m keeping my voice low? Does he know I’m with his sister? There can be no other reason for this call after six months of radio silence.

“I thought I’d let you know that I’m back in town,” Thomas says. “I decided to cut a very enjoyable honeymoon short in order to check in on things. Imagine my surprise when I realized you’re not even here.”

Anger and dread course through me in equal measure. He’s building up to a threat with the quiet certainty of a predator circling cornered prey, and I have no choice but to wait for the reveal.

“And neither is Raleigh.”

There it is. He knows.

“Not to worry, though,” Thomas continues. “We located you both almost immediately. That’s a beautiful little farm your mother has. Very… picturesque.”

Every muscle in my body tenses. I look out the window to my left, half expecting suited men to walk out of the trees beyond the fields at the back of the house.

I don’t see any, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

My feet start moving me toward the staircase to the attic, where I left my tool belt and gun yesterday. I can’t imagine Thomas would start a fire fight in a building he knew his sister was inside, but I’d rather be armed than find out the hard way.

“Still with me, Derrick?” Thomas asks pleasantly.

“Just tell me what you want,” I snarl. I don’t care if it’s an unwise tone to take with my former benefactor. This man has held himself over me for months, and now he’s threatened my mother in a haven I’ve lost blood, sweat, and tears trying to keep secret and safe.

Thomas’s tone cools. “I want you to bring my sister back to me before the day ends. If you don’t, there will be nothing left of that house when the sun rises tomorrow.”

I find my tool belt buried in the drawer, and close my hand around the grip of my gun, as useless as it is right now.

“And if I do?”

“Then you’re the only one who has to die.”

The line goes dead. I throw my phone across the attic and don’t even care that the screen explodes when it hits the wall.

My phone.

Raleigh’s phone.

It was dead the last time I saw it on the floor of my room before we even left the city. Did she get a hold of a charger somehow? At what point did she tip off Iris to her location? And why the fuck didn’t she say a thing about it to me?!

No- I’m jumping to conclusions. Last night, Raleigh showed me the last of her truths. Thomas found me, found this house, but that doesn’t mean it’s Raleigh’s fault. I saw the way she looked at my mother, the way her eyes went glassy when she received her warmest hugs. Would she still call for help even when she felt so happy? And from her brother no less, when she was desperate to escape him as much as she was to escape… me?

My stomach sinks.

How many times has she told me that she wants to leave; leave me, leave the country, be anywhere but here? And she’s already proved how reckless she’ll be in the service of her attempts to run. My Corvette can’t be used as a witness, but if that car could talk, would it tell me that she was relieved as soon as she left the shadow of my house?

Was last night a surrender to her feelings for me, or resignation that she had to get her brother’s help in order to escape this time?

Doubt worms its way under my skin and into the cracks in my thoughts. When I asked her to let me keep her and our baby, she challenged me to take her instead.

God… how could I be so stupid?

How many times can one man fall for one woman’s pretty fucking lies?

Well, last night was the last time. The very last time. Making a fool out of me is one thing.

But threatening my family? I will never forgive.