I scoffed. “But she doesn’t love me, Miles. I told her, I told her I had fallen in love with her but she never reciprocated the sentiment. I’m not enough and my shit life is too fucked up. There’s no fucking point!”
He shook his head. “How can you just give up?”
“Give up?” I shouted, my anger getting the better of me. “I never had it to give up in the first place. She doesn’t want me Miles, accept it. I have.”
I growled when someone knocked on the door. I wasn’t in the mood for company, I had been wishing for Miles to fuck off and leave me alone for days but the bastard refused to go.
I frowned when I opened the door and Jack faced me. He was pale, his eyes as red as the river of blood that had seeped down my back the previous night. “Jack”? Once again I was aware that something was seriously wrong. I was starting to detest the man because all he ever brought me was bad news. However, what I thought was bad news was so very wrong. It was news that fucking terrified me.
“Bea is missing.”
Although my heart was beating through my chest, I managed to voice some sort of coherent sentence. “She’s in Italy.”
He shook his head, the dark circles around his eyes showing off his exhaustion. “She was supposed to be home last week but she never returned. She caught her flight back, we checked with the airline and…”
“And?” I probed as the whole of my body shivered with a chill.
“The police have checked the airport CCTV and Ollie went through it with them this morning.”
“And!” I spat wishing the prick would get on with it.
His eyes filled with tears, one seeking freedom as it burst down his face. “Someone took her, Jay. Someone took her.”
Chapter 19
Bea
I smiled gratefully and sighed with pleasure when he inserted the needle into a bruised vein and poured heaven inside me. My body instantly stopped trembling and the softness of the dirty mattress curled around me and welcomed my drugged mind into its soothing warmth.
“What do you say, Beatrice?”
“Thank you,” I rasped, all I could make my tongue manage when it swelled inside my mouth with the heroin taking me away from the pain.
I’d been here roughly four weeks, wherever here was. My tormenter, as yet, hadn’t revealed himself to me, and surprisingly he hadn’t raped me. The twenty eight days had consisted of minimum amounts of food and water and a gentle progression of drugs poured into me.
However, things had changed in the previous two days, he had limited the quantity of heroin he’d been forcing into me and for the last twelve hours I had been in the hell of my own mind, my body vibrating with need as my teeth trembled. My body had been twitching with the things that had crawled under my skin and I had spent the last two hours begging on my knees for him to stop the torture tearing through my veins.
He had relented after I had taken his hands in my own and kissed his palms, my tears finding his soul and my pleas reaching his heart.
“Such a good girl,” he whispered as his hands stroked my hair back from my clammy face.
He left me to drift into the beautiful images in my mind.
***
“Please,” I begged, my sobs frantic and loud as snot streamed from my nose and my tears burnt the sore skin around my lips. “Please, just a little bit, please. Please, I can’t do this without it. I need it. I need you. Please.”
I looked up at him and pierced his eyes with my own pleading ones, the only things behind the mask that I was witness to. Taking both his hands, I kissed at them, my mouth doing my bidding and praying that it was enough for him to back down with his refusal to feed my craving.
Softly, he cupped my face, his eyes showing his love for me. “I haven’t any reason to give it you, Beatrice. What is in it for me?”
“Anything,” I begged, confused by his sudden request for payment.
“Is your love enough, my sweet girl?”
“My love is everything, everything. I love you, you know I do. I’m yours to do with as you wish but please, I need it, I can’t breathe without it, my mind is torturing me. Please.”
My sobs were hard and desperate, my heart cramping in my chest without the stimulant of drugs to keep it going. My mind taunted me with horrific pictures of my parent’s death, their twisted and mutilated bodies grieving my imagination until I couldn’t bear to close my eyes anymore. But the agony in my soul hurt my eyes, the lids shutting after the exhaustion of the last few weeks caught up with me and plunged me back into the depths of the nightmare in my head.
“But I can’t afford food and your medicine Beatrice. Which is it to be?”
“My medicine, please. I don’t need food, I’m not hungry.”
“Very well,” he whispered. I gazed up at him, my eyes hungrily focussing on the contents of the syringe when he prepped it. Taking my arm, he softly traced his finger along the damaged vein, the love he had for me evident in his touch. Then he plunged it straight inside my soul and took me to a better place.
***
“I need your love Beatrice,” he whispered as he softly stroked my hair when I sobbed into his chest. “I need you to prove that you don’t just need me for your fix.”
“Of course I love you,” I wept, shaking my head at him. “I do, you know I do.”
“Then you need to show me.”
I looked at him in bewilderment, unsure of what he wanted from me. “How, tell me how.” I was urgent, my yearning for oblivion driving my desperation to a higher level, a much higher parallel than ever before.
“Show me how grateful you are, my sweet girl. Show me how much you love me.”
My mouth fell open and my eyes widened when he unzipped his trousers and pulled out his cock. His hand pressed into my shoulder as he gently pushed me to my knees. For a brief moment my stomach vaulted and the emptiness of my belly curdled with sickness. But when he slipped his other hand out of his pocket, the medicine in his palm making my mouth water hungrily, I leaned forward and took him to the back of my throat, the tears that fell from me soon absorbed by the nectar he granted me when I swallowed his cum and showed him my love.
Chapter 20
Jay
“There has to be something!” I shouted at Mason when he looked at me sadly.
“I’m sorry, we’ve tried everything,” he sighed angrily. “There’s no footage that’s clear enough for us to get a good image of who took her.”
“But it’s been eight weeks! Surely someone somewhere in your circle knows something!”
“Jay,” my dad tried as he placed his hand on my arm. I turned to him, my eyes narrowing on his misery. “You have to let go.”
“Never!” I hissed, “Never. Did you ever let go of my mother? No you didn’t so don’t ever ask me to!”
Ava’s expression was hard as her eyes bore into me but she smiled and took my hand in hers. “Don’t ever let go, Jay. She’ll find her way back, I promise.”
“Ava,” Mason warned but she shook her head and glared at him.
“Are you telling me when Dane had me that you gave up?”
“What? No, but it was different for us, Ava. I knew who had you, I was able to hunt for the bastard!”
She snorted, shaking her head as she laughed without humour. “And did your hunt unearth anything?”
He looked as though she had slapped him for a moment, his shock at her words burning deep down inside him with shame and guilt. “I tried, Ava. I tried!”
“I’m not saying you didn’t,” she argued, “But what I am saying is that in the end, it was me who managed to get free. Who is to say Beatrice won’t find her way home?”
I nodded firmly in agreement, my heart praying that Ava was somehow magical and could see into the future. Although I wholeheartedly agreed with her, there was still something deep down inside me that had given in, my mind playing evil tricks and telling me over and over that Bea was dead.
My phone rang and I whipped it out of my pocke
t. For a long moment I stared at Jack’s name scrolling across the screen, then snapping out of it, I answered, bracing myself for more heartache.
“Jay?”
The tone of his voice made my heart stop beating, the blood in my veins stilling as I prepared myself for his news. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Jay…” he choked out, his sobs breaking something inside me. “She’s home. She’s home.”
My legs gave way and I stared at the others in the room, my heart still not beating as my soul hovered on the edge of the cliff it was desperate to jump over. Mason, aware of my shock, took the phone from me and spoke to Jack. He listened silently for a while and then nodded grimly, squeezing his eyes closed before he ended the call and he looked back at me.
“Ollie’s taken her to hospital. He found her on his front door step this morning.”
“Oh thank God!” I choked out, the skip in my heart literally strangling my lungs.
“Mason?” Ava queried hesitantly, her narrow eyes full of question when she read her husband’s sombre expression.
He crouched in front of where I had collapsed. “Jay, you need to listen to me.”
I stared up at him but couldn’t take the grin off my face or stop the tears of happiness that flowed from me. I nodded, laughing and crying at the same time.
Ava came to sit beside me as she took my hand. I frowned at them all, what the hell was their problem? Bea had come home. Why weren’t they happy?
“Jay,” Mason pressed. “Listen to me. Beatrice is… she’s in a bad way.”
The joy inside me ceased when I finally saw the look of dismay on his face. “Is she hurt?”
“Not physically, no.”
I regarded him closely, the happiness within me crumbling with every passing second. “What do you mean not physically?”
He gulped and closed his eyes for a brief second. “She isn’t the Bea you know anymore, Jay.”
I laughed a little, frowning at his stupid statement. “Of course she’s Bea. Who else would she be?”
“She’s just... She’s been through a lot and from what Jack says, she’s… different.”
“Different?”
He shook his head, unable to say more before looking away.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea that you go.”
I flew for him, my fists digging into the material of his shirt as I thrust my face to his. “I’ll decide what’s best! Where the fuck is she?”
“St Luke’s,” he revealed quietly. He snatched Ava’s wrist when she picked up her bag and shook his head slowly. She blinked up at him, her body freezing when she caught his expression.
I didn’t have time to wait for them to argue it out and I left them silently watching me leave their house as I headed into the depths of a hell so horrific, my previous nightmares had been dreams compared to what was coming.
***
I heard her furious screams as I moved further down the corridor. Her language was beyond anything I’d ever heard leave a woman’s mouth and when I caught sight of her through the room window, her face was red and her enraged verbal assault was accompanied by a round of spit and venom. She was struggling in Ollie and Alex’s hold while her feet kicked out at Jack. But none of those things were what made my heart sink, it was the loss of her curves and the way her cheekbones stood prominent on her pretty face. Her ribs appeared to stick out through the loose hospital blue scrubs as she writhed about and the closer I got to her, the more her haunted eyes displayed the last two months of whatever hell she had been in.
“GET THE FUCK OFF ME!” she screamed at Ollie as I pushed open the door and made myself step into the room. A doctor stood to one side, his hands out to Bea as he tried to calm her down. “HE WILL KILL YOU IF YOU DON’T LET ME GO!”
“Who will kill me?” Ollie asked. I was surprised by how calm he seemed, his voice a mere rasp but his composure was resolute as he stared his sister out.
“He will,” Bea spat back with a hatred that made my blood chill. “He will be here soon. He wouldn’t just leave me. I need my medicine!”
It was clear to me exactly what medicine she was talking about. My once gentle and beautiful woman was now a drug addict, the gauntness and hollow of her eyes exposed every single ounce of her dependency.
Jack, finally seeing me stood watching turned to me with such a wounded expression that my heart went out to the whole of Bea’s family. However, they weren’t my concern, Bea was.
“Jay,” Jack winced, his eyes flicking from me to Beatrice. Although I had told Jack there was no relationship between me and Bea, he knew, he could read it in me. “You should go. I told Mason to keep you away. You shouldn’t…”
“Jay!” Bea choked out. The look of hope on her face made my gut churn. She was still so very beautiful but the fraught look on her face took away her gentleness, her once silver eyes now a drab grey as her blonde locks lay limply over her shoulders. “Help me, Jay, they won’t let me have my medicine. I need it, I’m going to die without it.”
I nodded, giving her a sad smile. “I know, sugar,” I whispered as I took her hand. She calmed instantly, her wet eyes lifting to mine. I could see the love in her gaze, but it was supplemented with a new yearning, a craving for something other than me.
I turned to the doctor, “Does she have something to get her through the withdrawal?”
He frowned at me. “I have just dispensed a prescription. May I ask who you are?”
I scoffed, ignoring Ollie’s glare when I reached and snatched the pharmacy bag from him. “I’m the man who is in love with her and I’m the man who is going to get her through this shit.”
“As I have advised Mr Havers, her brother,” the doctor continued, “Beatrice really needs to be transferred to a special unit. She’s very malnourished and she has an extreme addition to heroin. She really needs expert help.”
“What she really needs is some love and comfort. You needn’t worry, Doctor, I know what I’m doing.”
He regarded me questioningly. “You have experience with withdrawing addicts?”
I smiled, not answering him before I tugged on Beatrice’s hand and led her from the hospital, both of us silent as we both disappeared into the comfort of our own minds.
Chapter 21
Bea
I was struggling to breathe as I banged on the door again. I was sweating, the loose sports clothes Jay had changed me into doing nothing to cool the raging heat across my skin. “JAY!”
The bastard had brought me here - and then nothing. He had promised me he would get my medicine but he’d lied to me, again.
“HE WILL COME FOR YOU AND HE’LL KILL YOU!” I screamed through the door as I banged and banged. “I’m his special girl. If he knows how you’re treating me he will be so fucking angry. I need my medicine, Jay! I need it… please, I’ll do anything, anything! Please Jay, please.”
He didn’t answer me. I knew he was there, I’d heard his body hit the door hours earlier and then a whoosh as his back had slid down the wood.
I spun round, my vision blurred through the river of my tears. I was going mad. I needed my medicine so bad that my body couldn’t function properly. My gut bubbled and my stomach twisted so violently that I bent over and forcefully vomited across the stone slabs in Jay’s torture room. The heaves became so urgent that I started to choke on the upsurge of bile that had once coated my sore belly. Although I knew I should be hungry, I wasn’t. All I needed was a small amount, just to ease the incessant things from scurrying under my skin and put a stop to the vicious trembles raging my bones.
I fell to my hands and knees as the sickness worsened and I couldn’t keep up with the cruel hurls. “JAY!” I screamed when I felt my bowels start to join in the fun. “PLEASE!”
Crawling across the floor, I hated the shame that coursed through me as I hoisted myself onto the bucket Jay had thrown into the room after I’d bit and scratched at him, the vehement words I’d spat at him more hurtf
ul than anything physical I gave him. I hated the way I brought his own shame into the argument but I was desperate, craving for something with an agony that grieved my soul as much as my tender body and I wanted to hurt him as much as he was hurting me.
“JAY!”
The door eventually unlocked and I squeezed my eyes shut as humiliation floored me. After I’d called for him, I now didn’t want him watching me at the lowest point I’d ever been.
“Get out!”
He ignored me and walked towards me.
“GET OUT!”
Without saying a word, he scooped me up and carried me through the house where he gently lowered me into the bottom of the shower cubicle, switched it on and then left me, the loud bangs resounding through my skull as he housed numerous bolts into place on the outside of the door.
I spent the next twenty four hours in there alone as Jay spent them alone on the other side of the door, both our souls linked and both our hearts just as broken as the others.
***
“Why hasn’t he come for me?” I sobbed as I huddled on the floor by the bath. “He told me he loved me. Why? Why?”
After the horrific explosions my body had gone through in the last several days, my emotions were now haunting me. He’d told me he loved me so where was he? Why hadn’t he come for me?
The locks on the door moved and then Jay appeared in the doorway. His eyes were as red as mine, the bags underneath as heavy as my own. He appeared to be exhausted. I couldn’t understand why, he was obviously relishing in my pain or he’d have gotten me exactly what I needed.
I looked up at him with a hatred that mirrored the rage in my heart. “What?”
He blinked at the loathing in my voice and the anger spitting from my eyes. Passing me a bottle of water, he sighed. “He isn’t coming for you, Bea,” he hissed quietly, “Whoever the fuck he is!”
“He is!” I hissed back. “He promised me! He promised me!”
“And what exactly did he promise? Hmm?” he asked with a passion full of rage and revulsion. “Or should I ask what exactly it was that you promised him?” The way his eyes roamed my body in a heated look made me laugh.
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