Chapter Two

Claire

"Get your shoes," a voice barked, making the smile fall from my face and my back stiffen as I turned, holding my son a little more tightly to my chest as I looked at the monster who'd fathered him.

It was hard to believe as I would sit in the rocker in his room at night, running my fingers through his silky curls, looking at his chubby cheeks, seeing how he smiled so freely in his dreams, that this angel's father was as evil as they came.

"Why?" I asked, watching as the maid came in the room past her employer, wearing her drab gray uniform dress with the white apron, and her pristine white sneakers.

That was the uniform for all the female staff.

There was a butler who wore an exact replica, but with slacks and a damn pocket watch on a chain.

The rest of his men, though—the ones who walked around with semiautomatic weapons in their hands or slung across their backs—wore all black.

Black, like their souls.

But, of course, they had to match their boss.

Warren Graves was, objectively, an attractive man.

It was my hatred that made him ugly in my eyes.

But he was tall and fit with dark brown hair and eyes somewhere between blue and gray. His face was all angles that were never softened by anything resembling a smile.

Not even when he looked at his son.

"You know why," Warren said, snapping his fingers, making the maid move toward me.

I wanted her gaze to be apologetic and understanding. But her gray hair meant she'd been working under the overbearing Warren Graves most of her life. He'd crushed anything resembling empathy out of her long ago.

This was a job.

I wasn't a person with feelings to worry about.

Which made handing over my son to her all the harder.

But it wasn't like I had any sort of choice in the matter.

Besides, I knew he would be safe. The staff would bend over backward to make sure he didn't cry for any longer than a moment or two. Because if we came home to find him snotty and red-eyed, Warren would backhand—or worse—anyone around who did not take care of Judah properly.

So the staff would sing and play and ply with sweets. Anything at all to keep Judah from crying, from throwing a fit, from hurting himself.

I knew he would be okay. But I hated to have him out of my sight for even a moment.

These were the rules, though.

I knew them all too well.

If Warren was leaving the house, I had to go with him.

It was another way he enacted control over me. I could not be alone in the house with Judah. Warren believed that, given the chance, I would grab my baby and run for our lives.

He was right about that.

I'd been planning and plotting the escape since the day he'd shown up at the hospital after I'd given birth and we'd been discharged, forcing us into his waiting SUV. Then never letting me leave again.

I couldn't describe the panic I'd felt as I'd been grabbed around my arm and dragged out of that SUV, my body sore in all kinds of new, upsetting ways, my baby's carrier in the hand of one of Warren's henchmen.

Because I knew he would never release us.

It was why I'd worked so hard to hide my pregnancy, to stay out of his sight, out of his grasp.

His name wasn't even on the birth certificate.

Not that it mattered.

Judah was his.

He knew it.

That was all that mattered.

Warren Graves was the kind of man who, while he didn't have a fatherly or nurturing bone in his body, believed in heirs and passing on his twisted empire to the next generation.

The scariest part for me was worrying that he could take my sweet, perfect, angel of a child. And turn him into a monster in his own image.

"Where do you think you're going?" Warren snapped when I turned away from him in the hall.

"To get my shoes," I reminded him, waving down at my sock-clad feet.

"Be quick," he demanded, glancing at his phone.

If I wasn't, one of his henchmen would be in my doorway, leering at me in the way they all did. They weren't supposed to touch me. But I didn't really think that Warren would give a damn if they did, so long as I was physically able to continue to take care of our son.

Warren's house was an immense structure made of all white everything. Floors, walls, tile. The only color, if you can call it that, were the window casements and dividers, which were all black.

Even Judah's room was all white, save for the bedding and toys I'd insisted on buying, spouting off things about brain development that I was mostly sure were factual. And I didn't particularly care if they weren't.

My room was a few doors down from Judah. Though, technically, I never slept there. I slept in the glider in Judah's room. Or, on occasion, on the floor.

My nearness to my son was my only protection in this house. And I knew, with each passing day, my usefulness to Warren as Judah's mother was waning.

What then?

A bag over my head?

A shot to the skull?

Or would he want to be really up close and personal for it? To wrap his hands around my throat until his fingers went white, watching me as I struggled for breath, then as the life left my eyes.

He would want to watch me suffer.

Because for just about two years, I have had something that no one else ever had before.

Power over him.

Albeit a small amount of it.

But it ate at him.

We both knew it.

I closed the door behind me, releasing my shaky breath. I wouldn't let him see that weakness. But I will admit, it was still there.

I lived in absolute terror, day and night. I might do a good job pretending I wasn't for Judah, who deserved a happy mom, and in front of Warren, because I wouldn't let him see my fear.

But I was afraid.

All the time.

My room was much like the rest of the house. Oversized. All white. From the walls, floor, window treatments, and bedding, to the dressers and the bathroom. Though, I rarely ever went in there. I chose to shower in Judah's bathroom. Close to him. Safe with him.

It was a sad state of affairs when you only felt safe because of your toddler child.

It wasn't forever, I reminded myself as I slipped into my shoes, and made my way into the bathroom.

I wouldn't make him wait long, but I would make him wait. A game, of sorts, that I knew I wasn't likely to win with each passing day, but one I still played. To let him know that he hadn't completely cowed me, that my spirit wasn't broken.

I washed my hands, scrubbing at a bit of marker from the coloring we'd been doing before we'd been interrupted. Judah, mostly just bright slashes of color all over the pages. Me, images of a smaller house. Where we would both be safe. Before I colored over the whole thing with black, removing any traces of my hopes, of my plans.

My gaze flicked up to the mirror.

I was still me.

Kind of on the tall side, with my lob of brown hair around my square face with my full lips and slightly golden undertone to my skin. Makeup wasn't accessible to me, since I refused to have to ask for it, so there was no mascara to darken the lashes around my brown eyes, no lipstick to make my lips stand out more.

It was me.

Yet… not the same one I'd been looking at before meeting Warren.

It was there in the tightness around my eyes.

In the weight I'd lost because I was often too nauseated to eat. Especially now that Judah was weaned, and I wasn't being force-fed by Warren to produce the exact right ratio of nutrients for the baby.

I was a shell of my former self.

And I was looking forward to a day when I could look in the mirror and see the old me.

Or, rather, the new me—because I could never go back now—but happier, less stressed.

My son deserved that version of me.

And I was going to give it to him.

I was just biding my time.

Casting a glance toward the door, I reached into my drawer in the sink cabinet, finding the little razor blade I'd carefully pulled out of my disposable razor before disposing of it in an old tampon box.

I had two of them.

One in my bathroom.

And one in Judah's.

Carefully hidden, but easy to grab.

For exactly this purpose.

Grabbing and tucking it in a pocket on days when Warren was taking me somewhere with him. To use on him, if this was it. The end. The day he was going to finally get rid of me because I'd outlived my usefulness.

I'd just managed to pull my hand back out of the pocket when the door flew open.

"I don't have all fucking day, Claire."

God, I hated how my name sounded in his voice.

I was starting to hate my name, period, because of him. Enough that I would find myself sitting and fantasizing about new names.

Carmen.

Clara.

Cassidy.

I figured C names would be the best bet. Familiar. Easier to remember.

I bit back a retort, knowing he wasn't above smacking me, grabbing me, choking me. All sorts of punishments for anything he saw as an offense. And as much as a part of me liked pushing back at him, I knew that he took pleasure in hurting me. I didn't want him to get that.

So I moved through my room, snagging a sweater off of the chair in the process, then silently following behind him as we walked out of the front door, two of his henchmen right behind me.

They would sit with me in the backseat on the drive as well, meaty arms and shoulders taking up all the room, making me need to squeeze into myself to avoid brushing against them the entire drive.

Still, when the car turned suddenly, I would find myself plastered against one of them, and would have to watch the sneers they would shoot each other because of it.

Warren was in the passenger seat, clicking away on his phone as Denny, his second-in-command, a man only slightly less vile than Warren himself, drove.

I had to force my gaze down to my own hands in my lap to keep from glaring at either of them, knowing Denny would see it in the rearview, then relay it to Warren.

Better to just play the part of the demure baby mama. Sitting in the backseat, flanked by heavily armed men as they ran goddamn errands.

I knew they weren't necessarily errands. Each stop would have Warren, Denny, and one of the men in the back heading out, talking to people. Likely collecting money or issuing threats. Then climbing back in and doing it over again.

I missed the days when my aching, leaking breasts would allow me to force Warren to take me home earlier, insisting that Judah needed to nurse.

But those days were behind me now.

So I sat.

In silence.

For long enough that, apparently, they started to forget I was even there at all.

Because Warren and Denny started to talk.

About the ‘docks' and something coming in a shipping container. From the sound of things, whatever it was inside of it, it was worth a fortune.

"And those fuckers think I'm sharing it with them," Warren scoffed, getting a hearty laugh from Denny as I sat there, trying not to decipher the meaning. Because it didn't matter. I didn't care. His business was the very thing that had made me run and hide the second the stick turned blue.

The seven sticks, in fact. Because I was horrified at the idea of bearing that bastard's child, and I kept taking and taking them.

Until, finally, when the digital one printed out the word Pregnant on the screen, I knew there was no more denying it.

I was going to have his baby.

And he would never stop trying to come for him if he knew.

It didn't take long.

And two and a half years later, we were both still under his thumb.

I was zoning out, lost in my own memories and hopes for a different future, when something Warren said made me suddenly snap back to the present.

"… And then I'm gonna put a bullet in that bastard's head."

With that and nothing else, he climbed out of the car, making me realize we were home.

I barely resisted the urge to shove one of Warren's henchmen out of his door, so I could climb out, and speed walk back into the house, kicking out of my shoes, then rushing into Judah's room.

To find him red-eyed, and the maid panic-stricken.

Not the older lady who'd taken him, but the new, younger one. One who'd likely never spent any time with a child before, let alone one as attached to his mother as Judah was to me.

But judging from the fear in her eyes, she was told what would happen to her if Warren saw that his son had been crying.

I rushed forward, scooping him up, and plastering him to my chest, holding his head against me, and starting to immediately sing to him.

"He's sleeping," I told Warren as he came into the doorway, then swayed faster, hiding any movement on Judah's part.

"You need to stop holding him all the time," Warren chided me.

"He's a baby," I insisted. "Babies need to be held. It's important for emotional regulation," I told him, speaking out of my ass, because I had no idea if that was true or not.

One small perk to Warren was he never seemed to actually think about Judah unless he was actually looking at him. It also meant he never thought to research the things I told him about babies and development.

"He won't be a baby much longer," Warren said, shooting the maid a look that made my skin crawl, then walking out, closing the door behind him.

"I'm so sorry!" the maid said in a hushed whisper. "I tried so hard."

"I know," I said, nodding, and releasing Judah to shower his face with kisses. "He can get inconsolable when I'm not here." Then, because there was a chance she would be forced to watch him again in the future, and we might not luck out with me getting in the room ahead of Warren, I added, "When all else fails, ice cream makes him happy."

And, sure, I hated the idea of my child being plied with sugar endlessly when I was away, and I despised the idea of the staff being beaten for his unhappiness more. Or, in this young, pretty blonde maid's case, maybe worse than a beating.

Lord knows, I was horribly aware of how sadistic Warren could be. Especially with women.

"Okay. I won't let it happen again," she assured me.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Sadie," she told me, lower lip quivering, like she might think I was still considering tattling on her to Warren.

"Sadie, how long have you been working here?"

"Just two days," she admitted.

What awful twist of fate had her coming to work for such a twisted dickhead of an employer?

"Can I give you a small piece of advice?" I asked, but it was really more of a warning.

"Of course."

"After nine at night, make sure you are busy with a task that keeps you out of any of the main areas of the house. Especially Warren's wing."

The stricken look on her face let me know that she immediately knew what I was warning her away from.

"For example, mine or Judah's bathrooms might require cleaning," I added, knowing that in a twisted sort of way, our rooms were the safest place in the entire mansion for her. And I was always in Judah's room. I could insist Warren leave so he doesn't wake up his son. Before he could even realize Sadie was there.

"Thank you," she said.

"But if I were you, I'd find a new job and never look back. I wish I'd had someone to tell me to run before it was too late," I added, looking down at Judah who was toying with the cross around my neck.

Sadie gave me a frantic nod.

And two days later, she was suddenly gone from the house.

One less person for me to worry about.

It was on the third day that Warren brought the older maid back in, taking my son from my arms, and making my stomach twist.

Another outing.

But this time… at night. When I was supposed to be putting Judah to bed. And he was fussy and whiny when he was tired, but also in that phase where he was fighting sleep tooth and nail.

There was no way he wouldn't be screaming his head off while we were gone.

My heart ached as I followed Warren toward the SUV.

It wasn't until he turned in his seat to face me that I realized this wasn't a normal trip.

Because in his hand were a pair of handcuffs.

The next thing I knew, he was grabbing my arm, slapping on one of the cuffs, then yanking my arm across the guard to my side and up, clasping the other bracelet to the ‘Oh, shit' bar over the door.

I knew, even before I saw the second car fill up with guards, then pull out of the driveway behind us, that this was the night.

The night they were going to double-cross someone they were doing business with.

The night where Warren was going to put a bullet in a man's head.

While I sat there in the car, helpless.

Possibly set right in the center of a gunfight.

My heart was hammering in my chest, my mind on my son, on him possibly becoming motherless thanks to a stray bullet, left in the care of his wicked father.

"Wait," I said when Denny parked the car, and the men started to climb out.

"What, Claire?" Warren snapped.

"Can you crack the window? It's hot in here," I insisted. Even though there was a cold chill moving over me, goosebumps rising on my skin.

Warren sighed, but nodded his head toward Denny, who climbed back in, and turned over the car for long enough to roll the back window halfway down.

"Now sit there and shut up," Warren snapped as the door slammed, then the locks engaged.

As if I could get away while handcuffed so hard that my wrist felt raw.

I sat there, watching the men slink off into the distance, checking their guns, then tucking them away.

I couldn't tell you how long I sat there.

Then I saw several cars pulling in, their headlights turning away from me as they parked, then climbed out, completely unaware of their fate.

But one final car came closer, the lights flooding the SUV for a moment as it parked a few yards behind me.

Despite my heartbeat hammering in my ears, I heard the door click closed, then footsteps making their way closer.

Before starting to veer off.

I couldn't tell you why I did it.

Why I cared.

When I had so much to worry about already.

But before I could stop myself, the word was rushing out of my mouth.

"Hey!"

The man stopped.

Then turned, gaze landing on me.

And, God.

I wasn't prepared for the unexpected jolt of desire that flooded me as I looked at this stranger.

He was tall and fit in a well-tailored gray suit with black hair that had a hint of gray streaking through at the temples, amazing bone structure, and warm brown eyes framed in thick, enviable lashes.

Handsome.

Almost obnoxiously so.

"Angel, what—" he started as his gaze moved from me to the cuff around my wrist.

"It's an ambush," I rushed out, watching his gaze flick back to me.

"What?"

"It's an ambush. Warren is going to double-cross and kill you," I told him, watching him tense. "What are you doing?" I gasped as he drew closer, making me look toward where Warren had disappeared to, wondering if he was watching.

"I have to get you out of here," he said as I saw his comrades start to walk toward the direction where Warren had disappeared.

"No. You can't. I can't. Get out of here. They're going to kill you," I said, pointing toward his friends.

The man looked back at me, conflicted.

"Go!" I demanded, voice cracking.

Couldn't he see?

This was his chance?

To get away?

To get everything I wished I could.

Why was he still standing there?

It was a gunshot that had him finally turning and running, leaving me to sit there, heartbeat slamming against my ribcage, watching as this man ran toward danger instead of away from it.

I tried not to feel guilt as the gunshots rang out.

I'd done everything I could do.

At personal risk to myself and my son.

Some awful part of me hoped that Warren wouldn't come back, that his men wouldn't. That I could get free, run to my son, and get us out of this mess.

But just as the hope was growing, I watched as Denny half-carried Warren back to the car, both their eyes panicked.

The guards… didn't make it back.

Lord knows I didn't mourn for their loss, but I did shoulder some of the guilt for it by warning the handsome stranger.

"God damn fucking slick Aurelio Grassi," Denny ground out as he got behind the wheel, turned over the car, and peeled out of the lot of the docks.

Aurelio Grassi.

That was his name.

I hoped he was alive.

He seemed like a decent man.

I'd all but forgotten that such a thing existed.

"How bad is it?" Denny asked, looking over at Warren, who was peeling off his suit jacket.

"I'll live long enough to make that motherfucker pay for this."

No one said another word the whole way home.

Not even as Denny backtracked to free my arm from the bar.

No one even followed me inside to make sure I didn't make a run for it.

Everyone was too worried about their king being shot.

As I gathered up my son, ice cream dried all over his shirt, but still red-eyed and splotchy-cheeked, I wondered if this was my chance.

For just a second.

Before the cavalry arrived.

Half a dozen cars pulling into the driveway.

"Not yet, buddy," I told Judah, pressing a kiss to his curls. "But someday," I promised.

Someday.