Closer (A Dark Romance, Book 1): The Closer Trilogy

by M. C. Vann

  “I’m going to say it one more time,” he warned sternly, his deep voice suddenly closer to me. I didn’t realize it, but he was already standing next to me, his height towering. “Go. Get. Changed,” he ordered, emphasizing each word.

  I stared up at him completely speechless. His brows were low in vexation as his gaze never faltered from mine. His eyes pierced right into mine fearlessly. I thought I could challenge the intensity in his eyes, but I surrendered myself into the closet to change.

  As I shut the door behind me, a breath expelled from my lips. The tension in the room with Henry was too much to bare.

  Honestly ... What was going on?

  I wasn’t surprised to see a suitcase full of new women’s clothing in the corner of the closet. All of which were my size — it had to be Henry’s doing. I grabbed whatever was on top, a pair of black jeans and a white blouse, and changed quickly. I took my hair out of the elegant bun the stylist had done and let it free fall down my shoulders. I hung my wedding dress up on a hanger and admired it for just one second before returning to the other room.

  Henry was leaning on the wall opposite of me, patiently waiting for me to finish. I noticed right away he had taken off his tuxedo jacket and his tie. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his elbows and a few buttons were undone exposing a portion of his chest.

  Before I could say anything, he snatched my right arm by the wrist and urgently led me out of the room down to the hotel lobby. I asked in many desperate attempts where we were going, but he ignored me.

  Parked in the hotel driveway, Henry’s car was waiting. He opened my door with his free hand and carelessly pushed me into the passenger seat. Once he released my wrist, I rubbed my hand with the other. A dull pain slowly replaced his grip. My eyes darted from the outline of his hand on my skin to a stoic Henry treading his way to the driver’s side.

  The ride to wherever we were headed was dead quiet. I didn’t ask him again where he was taking me nor did I want to, knowing he would continue to ignore me. From time to time, I glimpsed over at him with his jaw clenched and his eyes focused on the road.

  When we arrived, it only took a second for me to realize it was the airport. After Henry parked the car, he silently stepped out from his side to mine. He opened my door and I remained in my seat, refusing to move, no less leave the car, until he told me what was going on.

  “Get out,” he demanded coldly.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “No. Not until you tell me what’s going on. Why are you acting like this?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  Before I could come up with a comeback, his fingers clenched around the same wrist and dragged me out of the car to the waiting plane nearby.

  “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Pearce,” Bob said. He was clearly the same gentleman from last time. Nothing has changed. At least, that was what I naively assumed.

  “Evening,” Henry greeted him.

  I gave the man a meek smile, and he returned one before we entered the cabin.

  Once we were free from an audience, I shook off his grip and seated myself as far as possible from him. I didn’t even want to look at him. If he wasn’t going to answer my questions, I was never going to speak to him.

  The entire flight was also silent. We were in the air for a few hours before the plane descended. Henry didn’t mumble a word, and the idea of striking a conversation up with him was the last thing on my mind. After disembarking from the jet, we went straight to another car waiting nearby. I looked around, studying my surroundings, but there weren’t any signs telling me where we were.

  “Can you please tell me what’s going on?” I begged nicely, breaking my vow.

  He remained silent and kept his eyes on the unlit road.

  “Henry ... please, you’re scaring me.”

  He was scaring me. His sudden change in behavior. His reckless handling of me. Everything that had led up to now. I was doing my best to hold in my state of panic.

  He chuckled eerily. The sound I so dearly loved to hear wasn’t the same as this one. It was mocking — his laugh. “But we’re just getting started.”

  I swallowed the rock forming in the back of my throat while trying to hold back my tears. I didn’t understand anything. I didn’t understand why he was doing this.

  In the middle of the forest, Henry pulled up to a two-story cabin house. When he opened my door this time, I used the same strategy as before. I wasn’t budging this time.

  “You can’t stay in there forever,” he said, noticing that my seatbelt was still buckled.

  “Where are we?”

  “Must you be so annoying,” he spoke harshly. “Always asking so many damn questions.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you like that,” I said. His words offended me.

  Seeing that I wasn’t going to move a muscle, Henry leaned in front of me to unbuckle the seatbelt. My hands instantly threw themselves at him, swatting around sloppily as I struggled to push him out. When he surrendered, I thought I had made progress …

  But I was wrong. With a smug smirk on his face, he leaned in once again, more forcibly this time.

  “What are you doing? Stop Henry!”

  He pulled me out of the car and threw me over his shoulder with ease. Though I kicked around and attacked his back with my fists, it was useless. I was only wasting the small amount energy that I had.

  When we got to the front porch, Henry pressed his hand against a scanner, unlocking the door while his left arm still held onto me. He let me go once we got inside and I ran a few paces ahead of him. When I turned around, he continued to stand there with his head slightly tilted to one side and that smirk still on his lips.

  “Henry, please don’t do anything stupid,” I pleaded with him. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I know,” he said, slowly walking toward me. Every step he took, I took one step back until I felt my back hit a wall, stopping me from going any further. “You already told me.”

  Just as I was about to dodge him, both of Henry’s arms raised against the wall to cage me between them.

  “Look at me,” Henry ordered.

  I forced myself to look him in the eyes and noticed how bloodshot they were.

  “Henry,” I muttered his name under my breath. “I am begging you. Please don’t do this. Please don’t—”

  He pressed his index finger gently to my lips. “Shhhh.”

  I shuddered at his touch.

  His eyes darted down to my lips before glancing back at me. I felt him lean in and I turned away from him just as the tip of his nose brushed against my cheek. Henry pinched my chin harshly between his fingers and forced me to look at him. He leaned in once again.

  “Please stop!” I shouted as I pushed him off me.

  Before I could make a run for it, Henry swiftly grabbed my arms and easily threw me over his shoulder again. I struggled to free myself as he carried me up to the second floor to another room.

  He threw me onto a mattress violently. I immediately tried to move to the other side of the bed on my knees, but he grabbed both of my ankles and pulled me closer to him. He forced himself on top of me, using one of his large hands to hold my arms down by the wrist. His knees tightened at my waist.

  For the first time, I found myself absolutely terrified of this person — this man who I thought I knew. There was no lust in his eyes. No compassion. No love. Nothing … but pure darkness.

  “Don’t do this, please,” I begged him once again, tears welling in the corners of my eyes. “Henry, please …”

  The fearsome man wasn’t moved by my words nor my tears. Instead, his lips sloppily kissed my neck. The sensation was anything, but intimate. I wriggled relentlessly underneath his heavy body, trying to push him off me, but it was to no avail. My arms were locked tight, and the more I resisted, the more drained I became.

  He finally raised himself up onto his knees, lifting me coercively up with him. Our
faces were merely inches apart, but I was too scared to look at him. I kept my gaze to the side, staring at some painting on the wall. But that wasn’t enough to draw my attention away from his warm breath fanning against my cheek. He lifted my chin with one finger, more gently this time, bringing our gazes back together.

  “Don’t be scared,” he whispered. A devious smirk pulled at his lips.

  “Please stop, Henry. Please …” I pleaded for him to release me. Tears now spilled down my cheeks. “If you love me, you wouldn’t do this.”

  He raised a brow. “Love? … Oh, I think you’re mistaken.”

  “What?”

  “I would never love a person like you.”

  What was he saying? He would never love a person like me?

  My eyes flitted back and forth between his. I prayed that what he said was a joke. That all of this was part of some sick joke. Maybe this was all a nightmare and I was dreaming.

  But when I closed my eyes and reopened them, his face still remained in front of me, taunting me. How could such a handsome, harmless face do something like this?

  “But you … You said you loved me,” I said, my voice nearly breaking.

  “I have never said that to you,” he sternly asserted.

  “But you did. I remember you said …”

  My words trailed off as I realized my mistake. Not once did Henry ever tell me that he loved me. He didn’t tell me it the countless times when he dropped me off at my apartment. He didn’t tell me when we were staying at his grandfather’s vacation home nor on the hotel rooftop. He didn’t tell me when he proposed nor when he spoke his vows. How could I be so foolish?

  “You see now,” he said, reading my mind. “You were mistaken. Delusional.”

  “Henry, why ... why are you—”

  “Doing this?” he spoke, finishing my sentence. “You don’t have to know. The only thing you need to know is that this is only … the beginning.”

  He pushed me back down onto the bed roughly and climbed off. I watched him storm out of the room as he slammed the door behind him. I let out a few stalled breaths in shock as tears streamed from my eyes. Completely defeated, I remained in the same position that he left me.

  The next morning, I woke up to the sun shining through the blinds into the cold room. My head was heavy — it probably resulted from all the crying last night. My body ached as I slowly shifted off the bed. I walked to the window and peeked through the blinds to see an endless forest of pine trees.

  Where were we?

  I had a sick feeling in my stomach, the kind that warned you something was really, really wrong. I needed to get out of here. I thought to look for my phone but realized I never brought it with me. I didn’t have time to bring anything since Henry dragged me here with nothing but the clothes on my back. I assumed the closet would be filled with tons of clothes, but I didn’t feel like changing into anything. The growling in my stomach was hard to ignore, but I was hesitant about leaving the room — I didn’t want to see his face.

  I slowly made my way over to the door, pausing for a long moment as my hand hovered over the knob. Henry’s haunting expression from last night flickered in my mind, and I decided I shouldn’t. I couldn’t go out there, not yet. I turned around toward the untidy bed until I heard footsteps approaching the door. My first instinct was to hide, but there was no good hiding place. Plus, I’d look even more foolish if he had found me.

  His eyes found me instantly sitting in the middle of the bed when he walked into the room. My legs folded close to my chest as I observed him coming toward me. I noticed he carried a tray of food, and I scolded myself for being human.

  “Eat,” he flatly ordered, standing beside the bed.

  I looked away from him, signaling my rejection. His lips pressed into a hard line, not amused with my stubbornness.

  “You need to eat,” he ordered again, more forbiddingly this time as he placed the tray next to me. He waited for my response, but I continued to disobey him. What I was hoping to achieve, I didn’t know. I only knew I didn’t deserve this kind of treatment from him. “Didn’t you hear me? I told you to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  My response seemed to have angered him. The next thing I knew, he grabbed a spoonful of what I noticed was rice soup and grasped my chin tightly with the other hand. The look in his eyes was petrifying, but I wasn’t going to surrender.

  “Open your mouth or I will do it for you,” he threatened.

  I submitted to his demand as that smug grin emerged on Henry’s face again. When the rice soup hit my tongue, I intentionally spat it back out, right onto his face. He jolted slightly, but he kept himself calm which was even more disturbing. I expected him to yell at me in exasperation, but he wasn’t even mad.

  “So, you’re not going to eat then?” he said, more so to himself. “Fine, it’s your call.”

  I thought he was going to leave and give up, but he didn’t budge. Instead, he reached for the bowl and poured all of it on my head. Out of shock, I raised my hand to feel the liquid on my hair. The warm contents of the soup trickled down my face as my muscles froze in place.

  “Come with me!” he commanded angrily. He seized my wrist and yanked me out of the bedroom.

  “Let me go! I’m not going anywhere with you!” I yelled. I attempted to shove him off, but his strength was too great for me.

  He dragged me out onto a backyard pier that reached out to a dark, brown colored lake. The raging man stopped at the end of the pier and flung me forward to the ground. I caught myself just before falling, barely hanging off the edge. Relief washed over me for just one moment before I turned around to find Henry advancing toward me. I backed away from him, but I could barely make it half a step or I’d have fallen into the water.

  “You wouldn’t,” I said. My bare heels hit the edge of the pier. “This isn’t like you, Henry. I know you. This isn’t the person you are.”

  “You know me?” Henry taunted as if to insult me. “You don’t know who I am. You never did, and you never will.”

  As I tried to escape him, he caught my wrist and lifted my weak body in the air.

  “Let me go, Henry!” I cried.

  He knew my weakness. He knew I couldn’t swim. Why? Why would he want to hurt me like this?

  Struggling in his arms, he recklessly threw me into the water. My body plunged deep underneath the surface. Water burned at my nose and down my throat as I struggled to keep myself up. My arms thrashed around desperately, trying to bring myself above the water, but it was no use. Darkness gradually closed in from all sides. I felt myself sinking lower, drowning into a dark world.

  This was it. This was the end.

  I woke up in a dark room, so dark I could barely see my hands in front of me. I attempted to sit up, but the muscles in my arms and legs were too sore for me to move. I quickly noticed that I no longer wore the same clothes as before.

  Did he…?

  No…

  The events of what I could remember flashed in my head. The soup on my head. The water drowning me. Horrified over how Henry had treated me, tears fell down my face. I threw the sheets over me and curled into a fetal position.

  I felt defeated. I felt completely hopeless. I felt lost. I was lost.

  I needed to leave. I needed to get out of here right now and get as far away as possible from here before anything else happened. I rushed out of bed, hoping to make a run for it.

  But just as I reached the door, Henry walked right in. His timing was always precise. His shadow towered over me from the light in the hallway and I backed away from him, quickly wiping away my tears.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked, coming toward me.

  “I’m leaving, and you can’t stop me,” I tried to say bravely. I hurried past him, but didn’t make it very far down the hallway before I felt a hand pulling me back.

  “You’re mine, and you’ll never be able to leave me until I say so,” he t
hreatened. His unbearable grip tightened by the second.

  “How can you say things like that?” I asked. “Have you gone insane?”

  “I guess I have,” he said calmly. He hauled me back into the eerie room and threw me inside.

  I stumbled and collapsed onto the hard, wooden floor. I immediately stood on my feet to run to the door, but I heard him lock it from the other side.

  “Henry! Let me out of here!” I cried. I pounded my fists on the door so hard, causing my bones to feel the impact. “Henry! Please!”

  I turned around defeated until my eyes found another escape route — the windows. But as I tried to pry them open, they too were locked tight. I looked around the bare room but realized there was nothing that I could use to open them. I started to panic as I crouched down into a corner of the room with my hands covering my head. Thoughts clouded my mind. I wondered how the hell this moment had come.

  Henry had this planned out, I thought. He didn’t ask me to do anything in regards to the wedding. He advised me not to worry about anything. He had everything taken care of. What was he playing at?

  —————

  “How are you feeling?” a familiar voice said in my dream.

  When my eyes fluttered open, Henry was sitting on the couch. I quickly got up and used the blanket to protect myself as if it was bulletproof.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked coldly, averting my eyes from his.

  Henry didn’t respond. The habit was somehow less aggravating this time. I guessed I can expect him to never answer any of my questions again. He stood up from the couch and slowly walked over toward me, his eyes never leaving me.

  “Look at me,” he demanded. He sat down on the edge of the bed and I backed away. “Look. At. Me.”

  I gave in and leered at him with the most unfriendly gaze.

  “I know you’re afraid,” he spoke so softly. It was very suspicious. “But there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Why are you doing all this?” I asked. He gave me nothing, but a smile, one that was teasing and arrogant. He rose from the bed and strolled across the room to stare out the window. “I don’t understand why you’re like this all of a sudden … What do you want from me?”