by Brook Wilder
I clenched my jaw as I stood as well, putting my game face on. While he was trying to make light of the situation, this was some serious shit. In all the years I had been under Jack, I had never seen the unease in his eyes, the worry lines that were starting to appear on his forehead. He was concerned about this war, and if he was concerned, then I should be as well.
My mind drifted back to Nat, who was currently safe in her father’s house. Maybe I should talk her into staying where there was around-the-clock security, just in case the shit went south, and they targeted my house. If I wasn’t there, she would have nothing else to protect her, except herself, and I couldn’t go through what I went through today ever again.
I couldn’t lose her.
Chapter 19
Nataliya
After Fox left, I went up to my room to take a long, hot shower and change out of my dress, realizing he had not taken his leather jacket back when he left. I was super worried about what was going on and feared for his life. If the Cazadores were going to start a war, Fox would have to be in the middle of it, and I wasn’t prepared to lose him.
I couldn’t lose him.
Choosing a pair of leggings and an oversized shirt, I threw them on, starting to prepare a bag to take to Fox’s. It was funny how at one time I thought this suite was my oasis, when really it was nothing but a gilded cage. My heart, my peace was with the man I loved, and there was no doubt in my mind that I loved Fox.
Screw the money. No matter what my father said, I didn’t care if he ever released my grandmother’s legacy. Sure, I would have to do without, but I could learn to love not wearing designer clothing or getting my nails done every week. In hindsight, I did those things because I was so miserable with my life, hoping to find some sort of joy in material things.
But I had found it in Fox.
Sighing happily, I pulled out a drawer, grabbed a few things from it, and stuffed them into the bag. I would come get the rest later. I was glad that he had been the one to rescue me earlier, to show my father that money wasn’t everything. While my feet were a bit cut-up from the rocks and concrete, I really wasn’t all that roughed up, but I knew it would take some time for me to be alone again. Even in this suite, with all my father’s armed security and the alarms, I still felt vulnerable, like I could be taken again.
I hated it. I wasn’t a weak person by any means, but just the mere thought of having this weakness both terrified and angered me. Even though they hadn’t molested me, they had caused some distrust in what I assumed was a safe place for me.
So, why was I leaving a supposedly safe place for Fox’s? Because I couldn’t stand to be apart from him any longer. Was this what true love was really about? I liked to believe so. Every waking breath now, I thought about him and our future together. I wanted to be the person that shared in his laughter, his tears. I wanted to be there for his mother, and if by some chance my father granted me the money, I would put most of it into Fox’s mother’s treatment. I would make him pay Fox for his time here as well, maybe even make a private donation on behalf of our family.
After tonight, I imagined my father would do whatever I asked.
My mother, on the other hand, I wasn’t so sure about. She had been clearly devastated that I wasn’t marrying Bryan, and I doubted she would understand my reasoning for not doing so. But I wasn’t going to turn around and immediately marry Fox either. I wanted us to learn about each other. I wanted us to have some fun first, to fill in the blanks, before we jumped at marriage.
Now, there wasn’t a bone in my body that wouldn’t marry him at a moment’s notice. I would be stupid not to.
I just wanted to be his, however that looked for the future.
My door opened, and I turned, frowning when I saw Bryan standing in the doorway.
“What do you want?”
He walked in, eyeing the bag.
“You going somewhere?”
“Of course I am,” I answered evenly, noting his words were slurred and his gait was unsteady.
“What are you doing here, Bryan?”
He shoved a hand through his hair.
“I can’t believe you are leaving me for that asshole. We were perfect together, Nat, perfect.”
I laid my hand on the bag, taking a few breaths.
“Were we, Bryan? Or were we trying to just make it work?”
He reached my bed, his hand on the frame.
“I love you.”
Sighing, I looked up at him.
“But I don’t love you. Go find someone that can love you the way you should be loved.”
I knew I had.
His expression changed and his face hardened.
“You fucking slept with him, didn’t you? You fucking cheated on me?”
I held up my hand, a frisson of fear sliding down my spine.
“I’m not doing this with you, Bryan. Leave, or I will call for security.”
He let out a harsh laugh, shaking his head.
“You did. You whore! You’ll open up your legs for anyone, won’t you?”
I pushed away from the bed, starting toward the intercom to call for help. I wasn’t going to deal with him berating me, nor was I going to apologize for what I had done. Sure, it had been wrong, but I wasn’t going to explain any details to him. I had already told him what he needed to know, and all I wanted for him to do was leave.
Bryan grabbed my arm and hauled me back.
“You’re not going anywhere. We aren’t done with this, Nat.”
“Yes we are,” I yelled, attempting to shake off his grip. “Let me go you asshole!”
He pulled me closer to him, until I could smell my father’s whiskey on his breath.
“I’m gonna do to you what I should have done from the beginning. I gave you a chance, Nat. I gave you every opportunity to fall in with my plans, and you and your boy-toy fucking screwed it up.”
My blood froze in my veins.
“W-what are you talking about?”
He laughed maniacally, a crazed look in his eyes.
“You want to know who’s behind your little ‘incidents’? Yeah, it was me. Everyone thought I wasn’t smart, but I did it and fooled all of you.”
I quit fighting Bryan’s grasp, a new realization hitting me.
“You hid the animal in my bed? That was you?”
He nodded, looking proud of himself.
“And I poured the blood into the wine. I thought that would be enough to scare you, to have you running into my arms. But no, you are a tough bitch, more than I gave you credit for.” Then he chuckled.” Hell, I even got the Cazadores to kidnap you in the hope that I would be the one to rescue you. If that damn biker hadn’t gotten in the way, I would have been a hero – a hero, dammit!”
“Why?” I asked, surprised that Bryan had gone to great lengths in his attempt to prove his love. “Why would you do those things?”
His smile hardened.
“Because, I only wanted the money. You… I was going to make you go crazy thinking someone else was attempting to kill you and then get you on the damn meds. You know, those that make you a zombie? I was going to make you forget who you were and… Well, I think you know the rest.”
“You were going to kill me,” I filled in the rest, horror radiating from every pore.
All this time I had thought Bryan was really in love with me. I knew he wanted the position and everything that came with it, but never in my wildest dreams did I think he would stoop that low, be the evil person he was confessing to be.
He gave a shrug.
“Maybe. Depends if I could have gotten you committed or not. Well, it doesn’t matter now. I’m gonna have to kill you anyway.”
I pulled against his grip, but he held tight.
“Do you really think you can get away?”
His lips grazed my temple, and I shuddered, pushing against his chest hard, panic starting to rise.
Why wasn’t I screaming for help? I opened my mouth only to have it explode in
pain.
“Don’t you dare,” he said harshly, his mouth close to mine. “I will kill every fucking person in this mansion if you scream.”
I tasted blood in my mouth, the throb of my cheek where he had struck me, but I remained silent. I couldn’t afford to not believe Bryan at this moment. I couldn’t put my family’s lives in danger.
“Good whore,” he growled, throwing me to the floor.
I fell hard on my left hip, the pain jarring through my body, before he kicked me hard in the side, pain shooting in my ribs. I cried out softly, grabbing at my side with my hands. Why had I survived the Cazadores to have this happen?
Would I see Fox again?
“You were the perfect choice,” Bryan said as he kicked me again, grunting this time. “I would have made you happy, much happier than that fucking asshole you are whoring with. We would have been perfect together. Perfect!”
I started to crawl away, biting my lip against the explosion of pain in my side. My ribs were likely broken, but I was not going to die there on that floor. I hadn’t come this far to die now. He was going to have to do a lot worse than this for me to give up.
“Where do you think you are going?” he asked with a laugh, grabbing a fistful of hair in his grip, pulling hard.
I cried out, kicking my legs as he drug me back toward the bed, my heels digging into the plush carpet, but not getting enough traction to stop his pull.
“Come here, bitch. I think I want one more taste of you before I kill you. No, I think you owe me a taste after what you have done to me, how you have embarrassed me.”
I scratched at his hands and arms, fighting every inch of the way, before he threw me on the bed, climbing on top to straddle my hips.
“You used to want it,” he growled, slapping me hard on the face. “You used to beg for it.”
“I hate you,” I spat, blood running down my chin, my eyes flashing.
I was in so much pain, but I wasn’t going to let him see that. He could rape me, beat me unconscious, but I wasn’t going to show him that he had won.
He chuckled, running a hand down the front of my shirt, squeezing my breast painfully.
“Good! Makes it all the more interesting.”
I clenched my jaw, my face starting to swell, my breath coming in short gasps, my vision starting to blur. Any minute, I was likely to lose consciousness.
And when I did, I wouldn’t wake up.
A dull roar hit my ears, and Bryan was suddenly gone, the sound of someone crashing into the furniture filling the room. Dizzy with the lack of oxygen, I pushed myself off the bed to see Fox throwing Bryan against the wall, hitting him in the stomach hard. Bryan groaned and doubled over as Fox rained down blows until he had Bryan slumped against the wall.
Fox was here. Fox had come back.
“Fox,” I said weakly, forcing myself to slide off the bed. I had to get his attention. “Fox.”
He stopped and looked over at me, hitting the intercom panic button on the wall, his eyes wide with panic and concern as he started toward me.
“That bastard. I’m going to fucking kill him.”
The tears rolled down my cheeks as Fox’s gentle hands touched my swollen face, his face blurring. It was starting to get harder and harder to breathe.
“I-I...”
“Come on you bastard!” Bryan forced out from behind Fox, pushing himself to his feet and swinging wildly. “I’m not done with you yet.”
“Hold on baby,” Fox said softly before turning around and launching himself at Bryan with a roar.
He caught Bryan off guard, and they both stumbled back, crashing through the window that faced the front of the house.
Someone screamed as they both disappeared, and I realized it was me screaming before multiple people started to pile in the room. I started toward the broken window, feeling as if my heart had just been ripped out of my chest, but ended up clutching the wall instead, unable to catch my breath.
“Miss Zebrovskaya,” one of the guards said as his face swam before me. “Are you alright?”
“Fox,” I forced out, dark edges to my vision starting to swim in.
He couldn’t be gone. Not now, not when we had just found each other.
“Not Fox!”
“What?” he asked as I fought to keep my eyes open, feeling drowsy and warm. “Who did this? What happened here?”
“We got two in the bushes,” another voice echoed in my thoughts, sounding like he was screaming through a tunnel. “Get an ambulance!”
“Fox,” I cried weakly, attempting to sit up.
I had to see if he was alright. He couldn’t be dead. I had just gotten him back and now… Now he could be taken away from me again.
It wasn’t fair.
Pain lanced through my body, and I lost my vision for a moment. Gentle but firm hands forced me back to lie down.
“Stay still, help is on the way.”
I tried to form the words, but they wouldn’t come out, my tongue suddenly thick in my mouth. I was losing consciousness, and I couldn’t get to Fox.
I was going to lose the love of my life.
That was my last thought, before the light winked out, and I fell into the void of darkness.
Chapter 20
Fox
I grabbed the soda from the vending machine before walking back down the hall, wincing as I stepped wrong on my foot. I felt like I had been hit by a truck, with bruises and bumps all over my body, not to mention the cuts from the glass on my back and arms. Jack had said that it looked like I had bathed with a cheese grater, and that was what I felt like.
But I was alive. The doctor had said that I was a damn miracle in itself, falling out of the second story window. Asshole had broken my fall, along with a row of shrubbery that could withstand more weight than they thought.
Of course, having been in a coma, all of this was told to me two days after it had initially happened. It had been Jack’s ugly face that I had seen first, the relief palpable as he had welcomed me back to the living. My brothers had been there too, and even my mom had come from her own hospital room to mine a few times, crying over my body and praying that I would wake up.
And I had finally done so. Two days after crashing through that window, I opened my eyes. While my body had taken the brunt, I could still remember all the things that had happened leading up to it, telling the story time and time again, first for the police and then for Nikolai, who had nearly blown a gasket when he realized what asshole had done to his daughter.
Nat had been the first thing I had asked for, but hadn’t gotten. She too had been in a coma, now on day-five, and as soon as they would let me, I had gone to her bed, crying at her bedside at what I saw.
Her face was swollen and bruised, her lip cut where he had backhanded her. She had four broken ribs, one that had punctured her lung, in which they had placed a chest tube to keep inflated.
But she was alive, and she could recover from this. I was going to be at her side every step of the way.
Walking back into her room, I drew in a breath, the sound of the beeping machines no longer an annoyance. The sun was setting in the distance, another day that Nat had not awoken, with the exception of a brief period of time so they could remove her breathing tube. I had been at her bedside when they had done so, and there had been the merest flutter of her eyelids before she had drifted off once more. The doctor had said that her body as well as her brain was trying to recover from the brutal beating and she would wake up when she wanted to.
For us, those waiting for her to do so, it couldn’t be soon enough.
Easing into the chair, I opened my soda and took a long drink. Surprisingly, asshole was alive in a hospital across town. He was under heavy police guard and would be charged with attempted murder and kidnapping as soon as he could be discharged. Zebrovskiy was calling for his head on a platter, and I would be right there, handing him the knife if I knew we could get away with it.
I imagined asshole wouldn’t survive
his first month in prison if the Russian had anything to do with it.
Rubbing a hand over my face, I winced at the bruising and cuts that burned from simple motion. I wanted to go home, to have Nat in my bed, and neither one of us to move for about two weeks. Hell, it was hard enough for me to walk down the hallway as it was, and truthfully I probably should have still been in the hospital.
Reaching over, I touched Nat’s hand, rubbing my thumb over her soft skin. While her father visited every day for several hours, her mother had only come once or twice, crying each time as she viewed her daughter laying in the bed. I knew that she was embarrassed that the man she had thought was perfect had turned out to be a monster, but also that Nat had chosen me over him to begin with. I would never tell Nat she couldn’t see her mother, but it was going to be a hell of a long time before I started to even remotely like her.