“Touch her again,” Will growled beside me, sounding furious. “I fucking dare you…”
I didn’t dare look at him, not with Luke bearing down over both of us, yet I could feel Will, feel the anger radiating from within him, burning up the oxygen between us.
In answer, Luke barked out a loud, cruel laugh, not in the least bit intimidated. “You rich boys never know when to keep your hands to yourself, do you? This is my wife you’ve taken, and you’ve got no clue what I do to people who steal from me.”
“No!” I screamed. “Luke, no, please, don’t!”
Will didn’t know, but I knew. I had seen firsthand exactly what Luke did to people who stole from him, and that was what he saw this as, me with Will: it was theft. He didn’t seem to realize that it was I who’d run from him, run from him because of what he’d done, and how much he’d terrified me. All he could see was that I’d left, and now Will had me.
My God, my heart was aching, grieving over every damn decision I had ever made. I regretted marrying Luke so young, and subsequently never really having the chance to explore who I was. I regretted going to the warehouse that day, regretted telling Luke that I’d seen what he’d done. Most of all I regretted running away. I should have never run. How many people had been killed because of me, and how many more people were still to die? This was all my fault.
“Shut up,” Luke bellowed. “I told you, Anna. Didn’t I tell you not to go?” He pointed a meaty finger into my face and I nodded frantically, praying that he took all his anger out on me and not Will.
“I know,” I sobbed softly. “I know and I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”
There was no love in his eyes when he looked down at me, even as his gaze raked over my body possessively. “I’ve missed you, baby,” he drawled. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
I bit down on my lower lip, trying to control my tremors. “I’ve missed you, too,” I whispered.
He stared at me a moment longer, until the fury creasing his features eased away. Reaching around his back, he brought forth a gun and aimed it at Will. I screamed, short and sharp and full of terror.
“Please, please don’t,” I cried, pulling violently on my restraints.
“It’s okay, Mila,” Will said, his voice hoarse and strained. “It’s going to be okay.”
I turned sharply toward him, finding him watching me, appearing almost…calm. His shoulders were tense, yet his beautiful blue eyes were empty—emotionless, even.
“Don’t you fuckin’ speak to her,” Luke snarled. His gaze flitted angrily between me and Will before stopping on me, and he stepped forward.
I braced myself, readying for whatever he was about to unleash on me.
“Did you fuck him, Anna?” he demanded, the hand holding his gun starting to quiver. “Did you fuck Richie Rich here?”
I stared up at Luke, feeling numb, knowing whatever answer I gave him would only infuriate him more. I could lie, but Luke would know. But if I told him the truth, he’d shoot Will immediately.
“We took vows,” he continued, his fury only growing. “We made promises. Now you answer me. Did you fuck him?”
I nodded slowly, as if the movement physically pained me.
Oddly enough, Luke’s expression stayed the same. “Did you enjoy it?” he asked quietly, an eerie calm in his tone, a small, ugly sneer on his face.
I opened my mouth to speak, but found myself with nothing to say. Luke was trying to humiliate me, to humiliate Will before he killed him. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Realizing I wasn’t going to answer, Luke looked again toward Will and lifted the safety on his weapon.
“Anna,” he said softly, his voice rough and his eyes still fixated on Will. His tongue darted out over his lower lip as his mouth pulled up in a cruel smile. “Baby, did you enjoy being fucked by him?”
Behind him, Davis started to chuckle, and my already churning gut painfully lurched. This was a game to them, a sick and twisted game that they took pleasure in. Again, I berated myself for not realizing sooner that I’d married a monster—that I’d married the devil himself.
Gritting my teeth, I lifted my chin and stared up at my husband, waiting for him to look my way. When he did, I nodded. “Yes,” I spat through angry tears. “Very much.”
* * *
Will should have felt fear. Anyone in their right mind who’d just been kidnapped at gunpoint, learned that the woman they loved wasn’t at all who they’d thought she was, had both their thumbs broken and was now waiting to die at the hands of a madman would have and should have been afraid.
But he wasn’t. At least not anymore. Somewhere in between his broken thumbs and Luke’s mind games with Mila, Will felt a kind of calm fall over him. An acceptance of sorts, he supposed. It wasn’t that he’d given up hope, because he hadn’t—not in the slightest. It was more like he’d come to terms with whatever was going to happen, a feeling that only strengthened while watching Mila stand up to her husband.
Soon, he thought, soon he was going to stand up—while praying that the ties around his ankles didn’t send him flat on his face—and tackle Luke, wrestle the gun away from him, with broken hands no less…
And then what? That still didn’t take care of the man standing behind Luke, who just so happened to be holding a gun aimed directly at his head. But there was nothing he could do about that. He’d just have to follow through with the shoddy plan he had, his only course of action, and hope it worked.
Any moment now, Luke was going to lose control. By this looks of him, shaking with rage, it would be sooner rather than later. And when the man did snap, when he was entirely distracted by Mila, that’s when Will was going to make his move.
“Whore! Dirty fuckin’ whore,” Luke spat, and raised his hand, backhanding Mila across the face.
She yelped in pain as her face swung right, but almost immediately lifted her head, raising her chin in defiance as a trickle of blood mixed with tears slid down her pale cheek.
Nostrils flaring, Luke reached for her. Gripping her shoulder, he bent down before her and brought her roughly forward, bringing them eye to eye. Even trembling, tears streaming down her face, Mila didn’t shy away from him. Instead, she met his angry glare head-on and lifted her chin even higher.
“You remember what I told you?” he hissed angrily. “Till death we do part, Anna.” Spittle flew past his lips. “I think it’s come to that time. I think—”
Will jumped to his feet and lunged for Luke. The chair still attached to his ankles hindered his momentum, but also helped him as well. He was a dead weight as he fell forward, toppling directly on top of a startled Luke and sending them both sprawling to the floor.
Someone was shouting and someone was screaming, but Will wasn’t paying attention to any of it. He was fumbling with all his might with the barrel of the gun in Luke’s hand, trying desperately to rip it free from his grasp, even while his thumbs didn’t want to work and the pain shooting through both his hands and up his arms was damn near crippling.
Desperate for leverage, Will arched his neck back and slammed his forehead into Luke’s with a loud grunt. Stars swam in front of his eyes as Luke’s grip loosened on the gun, yet still he continued fighting. Luke’s free hand flew to Will’s throat, gripping and squeezing, blocking his airflow. Wheezing, desperate to breathe and in the midst of a tangle of limbs and testosterone, Will finally managed to pull the weapon free, and almost instantly Luke’s hands fell away from his throat. Clenching the cool steel in his broken grip, his hands shook with pain as he attempted to right the weapon.
Those wasted seconds cost him dearly. One second he was trying to turn the gun on Luke, and the next a meaty fist had slammed into the side of his face, knocking him off balance. He lost his precarious hold on the gun, as well as his ability to see clearly.
“No!” he heard Mila shriek, just as something hard and heavy sucker punched him in the gut. He barely had enough time to shout out his newfound pain when an explosion w
ent off dangerously close to his head, rendering his ears all but useless.
The ringing was incessant, the pain radiating from his hands and his head all-consuming. Still, he tried with all his might to move, to right his body and to see past the blur of his vision.
“Mila?” he shouted. “Mila!”
Another explosion shocked him into stillness and silence, this one not nearly as close as the first. A few moments of panic followed, and then there were hands on him, grabbing at him. He flinched and jerked, trying to move his body away from the threat.
“Will! Will, can you hear me?”
Richard? Thank God… Thank God…
“A little,” he croaked out hoarsely, blinking repeatedly until he could see a blurry outline of his friend. “Mila? Where is Mila?”
“I’m here,” Mila called out, her voice strained and sounding far away.
Grabbing hold of both his arms, Richard pulled Will into an awkward sitting position and began fumbling with the ties around his ankles. Immediately Will locked eyes with Mila. Still tied to her chair, tears streaming down her red cheeks, her body shaking violently, she met his gaze, her beautiful face a picture of misery and sadness. He broke their contact only briefly, scanning the room, finding two prone bodies lying on the floor. Luke was lying only a few feet away, his eyes closed though Will could make out the soft rise and fall of his chest. Closer to the door, face down, the other man lay unmoving, a large puddle of blood pooling around his body.
“How?” he managed to ask Richard.
“I was in the damn trunk,” he muttered angrily. “They thought I was dead. Didn’t even take my gun.” Pausing, he patted the two holes in his dress shirt, exposing the bulletproof vest beneath. “Told you my vest would come in handy one day. You rich fuckers have too many enemies.”
Still feeling what he hoped was just shock and not a case of insanity, Will suddenly could do little more than stare at his friend, feeling a myriad of emotions while Richard proceeded to reach into his pants pocket and pull forth a pocketknife. After Richard rid him of the plastic ties and the chair affixed to his ankles, Will shot straight to his feet and all but fell on top of Mila. Whimpering, she dipped her head and pressed their foreheads together, nuzzling him.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, straining her bound body, attempting to be closer. “God, I am so very sorry. This is all my fault. All my fault, Will. I’m so sorry…”
Richard must have freed her hands while they’d embraced, because suddenly her arms came around his shoulders and her hands went to his hair, gripping two handfuls tightly and using it to pull him closer. Under any other circumstances, Mila attempting to rip his hair from his scalp would have been somewhat uncomfortable. In this particular situation, it was a welcome relief to all his other aches and pains, and was even somewhat grounding him from breaking down entirely, something he felt he was precariously close to doing.
Because if it hadn’t been for Richard…
“Shhh,” Will whispered, lifting his face and finding her lips. He pressed an urgent kiss to her mouth and held her there, not moving for several moments, just relishing in the warmth of her when every part of him felt suddenly ungodly cold. Eventually he pulled away and looked into her eyes.
Mila stared back at him, her expression pleading. “I want to explain,” she whispered. “I want to tell you everything. Everything and—”
“I really hate to break up the party,” Richard interjected, his dry tone sounding uncommonly pained, “but I’d really like to get to a hospital. Pretty sure I have a few broken ribs…”
Chapter Twenty-One
The next couple of hours were filled with noise. Sirens and shouting, and endless questions. So much noise, and yet the shock of the evening had settled into my bones, permeating me, leaving me only able to recognize the silence that had befallen the three of us: Will, Richard, and me.
“Fifteen-car pileup on the GW!” a woman in scrubs called out as she raced past my bed.
Seated inside an emergency room, wearing a hospital gown, I blinked dazedly as she tore by me, the half-closed curtain before me swaying with force of her speed.
Shirtless, his chest wrapped in white gauze, Richard was holding his chest as he frowned down at Will.
“Thank you,” Will said hoarsely. Lifting one of his bandaged hands, he reached for Richard’s forearm and grasped it. “Thank you for everything.” His voice was hoarse, a husky whisper of what it normally was. Recalling Luke’s hand around his throat, I angrily swiped away a fresh wave of tears.
“You saved our lives back there,” Will continued.
“Just doing my job, sir,” Richard answered with a wan smile.
Will returned the smile. “I told you not to call me that, asshole.”
More tears fell as I watched them trade jokes. Both of them had been injured worse than I had. While I sat here with nothing but cuts and bruises and a broken heart, they’d been shot, strangled, bones had been broken…
And the guilt I felt—knowing that none of this would have ever happened to these two good men if it hadn’t been for me—was so utterly consuming that I could barely find the strength to breathe.
“You’re going to be fine,” the doctor who’d examined me had said, gazing down at me with sympathetic eyes. He’d felt sorry for me—me, who’d escaped a deadly situation in perfect health, while Will and Richard had nearly died.
Worse, I wasn’t going to be fine. Not as long as Luke still lived. And he did live. Even shot in the chest, his face half hidden behind an oxygen mask as the paramedics had wheeled him from the motel and into the ambulance, he’d managed to find me, to pick me out of the small crowd that had gathered in the parking lot and give me a hateful look, promising retribution.
“Mrs. Anna Drummons?”
Hearing my married name caused a wave of nausea to course through me, one that I quickly staunched as I raised my eyes to meet the gaze of the two police officers standing at the edge of my bed. Back home, Luke had the local police department on his payroll, and I had to repeatedly remind myself that we weren’t in Tennessee. This was New York, and Luke had no sway over this city. Luke had no control here.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Only one of the officers stepped forward. “We’re going to need you to come down to the station and make a formal statement, ma’am. When you’re ready, that is.” He sounded as apologetic as he looked, and I felt guilty all over again. Everyone felt sorry for me when they shouldn’t. This was all my fault. All of it. I had lied to everyone, Monica was dead, and I had almost gotten two innocent people killed. How could anyone ever view me as the victim here?
“Of course,” I whispered pitifully, tears blurring my vision.
“Mila!” The familiar shout pierced through the haze of my thoughts, and as I was craning my neck, attempting to peer around the half-closed curtain, Nikki appeared beside the policemen. She paused for a moment to survey the situation with wide eyes, glancing briefly at the cops and then at Will and Richard, who were now looking our way, before coming back to me. She took in my face, bruised from Luke’s slaps, covered in tears, and her panicked expression crumbled into sorrow.
“Oh, Mila,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
My own eyes filled all over again, and as a sob bubbled past my lips, I reached for her with trembling arms.
Nikki came forward, engulfing me in her arms, filling me with warmth, giving me the comfort I so desperately needed in that moment.
“Shh,” she soothed, rubbing her hand up and down my back. Though she herself was crying, her mere presence was all I needed. I sunk into her embrace with a relief-tinged sigh, feeling, at least for the moment, that I would get through this.
“You’re safe now, Mila,” she promised me softly. “You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
I wanted to believe her—I needed to believe her—but even as much as her words gave me comfort, as I looked up over her shoulder, past the police officers watching me
with warm, pitiful gazes, I found Will also watching me. His expression was pained, full of exhaustion and sadness…and something else. Something unreadable.
Nikki was wrong. Luke could still hurt me. He was still hurting me. And if I lost Will because of this, Luke would have succeeded in hurting me for the rest of my life.
* * *
“I demand to know why you aren’t in a private room!”
Will wished he had the use of his hands, simply to rub his temples and help ease the headache his family was causing him. As much as he appreciated their prompt arrival and obvious concern for his wellbeing, just them being there was a thorn in the side of everyone within a mile radius.
“They’re not admitting him,” Richard dutifully supplied. “He’s going home once they’ve discharged him.”
“Home!” his mother shrieked, causing everyone in the room to cringe—everyone consisting of his mother and father, and his brothers Bryan and Michael, each of them still dressed in their charity gala finest.
“You cannot possibly go home in your…your…condition!” she sputtered, looking more unraveled and upset than he’d ever seen her before. “And you!” his mother seethed, turning her glare on Richard. “How could you have let this happen? How could you—”
“Mother!” Will shouted. “The man was shot twice and stuffed in a trunk! He somehow managed to break free, and he’s the only reason I’m still alive!”
Elise promptly shut her mouth and turned away, though her body language and tight expression signaled she was anything but calmed. Sighing, Will shot Richard an apologetic glance that Richard returned with a tired smirk.
“I can take it,” he mouthed silently. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”
Snorting, Will grinned at his friend—that is until he looked beyond him and found his father watching him with nothing short of disgust wrinkling his expression.
“The police have informed me that it was this husband of hers that took you hostage.” Clasping his hands behind his back, William Townsend narrowed his eyes at his son, his disapproval and his displeasure with the entire situation a palpable thing, thickening the air in the small, sequestered space. “And your sister’s charity gala has been ruined, thanks to you and this…woman.”
Shut Up and Kiss Me Page 20