by C. M. Marin
“I don’t know what you want, but you have to stop this, Malcolm. You can see that, right?” I softly ask him, even if he’s manifestly blind to what he has done.
The only indication he gives me that he actually heard me is his gaze finally straying from my breasts to settle on my face again. But that doesn’t keep him from not acknowledging my plea in any way.
“I must admit that I wasn’t certain my plan with the letter would work. I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when it worked so well.” This time I feel vomit in my mouth as I choke slightly with sickness. My stomach roils as another wave of shudders racks my body. Malcolm doesn’t seem to notice my profound agony as he continues with his little story. “I was worried about the writing, obviously, but I’ve always been able to reach perfection in everything I set about learning, so…” he trails off, bragging like the arrogant ass he is, and I want to puke even more.
The letter wasn’t from Jayce.
This time, I close my eyes. I can’t help it as tears burn in them again. But I open them right back and another whisper escapes me on a shaky breath. “When did you even see his writing?”
Just as I speak, the image of my notebook lying around in my yoga room crosses my mind.
“At your place, of course. You know, those letters he used to write you. Before he threw you away like trash, obviously. You remember that, too? I’m curious to know what letters you liked the most. Was it the romantic ones, where he said that he wanted to make love to you at sunset, or the filthier ones, where he said he wanted to fuck you against the wall until you come? I’ve imagined you on your bed reading those letters sometimes, your legs spread wide and your fingers deep inside of you. Is that the kind of things you like? Being fucked like a cheap whore?”
Oh God, I can’t do this.
“Please, you have to let me go. Just… Please, Malcolm,” I plead with him, hoping that he’ll eventually see that he’s gone too far.
But again, it’s like I haven’t even spoken. “Really, those letters were interesting, and I won’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy myself on your bed.”
“How were you even able to break into my place?” I ask, but again, it’s more of a thought to myself.
“Alexia, Alexia, Alexia…” He makes an obvious show of forcing a sigh, belittling me, and saying my name with arrogance that I once again just want to punch out of his voice and face.
In Dallas or here in Twican, Liam put two locks on my front door in addition to the original one.
“I’m just like my father,” he goes on, his tone pouring with the same pride. “When there is something I want, I eventually get it. A locked door can’t stop me. You’d be surprised to know what money can buy.”
Those words coupled with his smugness piss me off more than his obvious mental problems scare me. Someone should have given a try at properly raising the boy he used to be, instilling in him some principles and values instead of spoiling him with countless gifts and raining dollars. Maybe they would have avoided me ending up in this situation.
“Just in case your intellectual abilities haven’t helped you figure it out, my boyfriend is as rich as your daddy is, if not more. I know exactly what money can buy. I also know what it can’t buy. Love and loyalty. Both things you know nothing about because you’re just an arrogant ass who can only get a girl by bribing or kidnapping her.”
The very moment I’m done with my outraged outburst is the moment I realize my mistake.
With anger now burning on his face, he suddenly looks just like another CJ. As dangerous and unpredictable as a Spider. His lips are pursed as he practically bares his teeth at me, and his eyes narrow to slits as he lunges at me in an instant, triggering a reflex of my own. My body startling backwards, I jump off the bed. But only one of my feet can meet the rough-looking carpeted floor before Malcolm reaches me after he literally jumped over the bed and crossed it in a flash. While one of his hands closes around my forearm with painful strength, the back of his other smashes into the right side of my face, hitting my cheekbone with no restraint whatsoever. My head swivels as a loud, hoarse cry finds its way out of me, and the next thing I know, my back is pressed against the wall behind me and Malcolm has a hand around my throat. He keeps his grip loose, but air can’t get to my lungs anyway. I’m too terrified to even breathe. He isn’t as solidly built as Jayce is, that’s undeniable, but I’d still be too weak to ward him off if he decided to increase the pressure of his hand on my neck until I couldn’t breathe any longer.
“Careful with your mouth now,” he warns me, his voice eerily filling the small space between our faces. So small that I can feel his breath skimming across my skin. “You’re going to make me regret the fact that the bullet I hit you with by mistake didn’t kill you.”
Long seconds of silence pass before a gasp springs from my mouth despite me.
The gibberish running through my brain doesn’t have time to come out in the form of questions before his hand is gone from my throat, and he moves away from me.
As though he didn’t blow a fuse a second ago, his deep laugh resonates loudly through the mostly empty room. I can’t move. Maybe I should use his inattention to attempt an escape, but again, I’m too terrorized to so much as glance at the door. Rushing across the bed would take too much time. And even if I got to the door, maybe even got to open it, I have no idea what’s waiting for me outside. I don’t have the smallest clue about where I am.
When Malcolm’s attention locks on me again, he points a finger at me. “Those bikers’ idiocy rubbed off on you, apparently,” he shakes his head as if he was exhausted with some kids’ behavior. “You all were so busy whining about that other stupid club that you’ve been nothing but blind idiots.”
The Spiders? But how does he even know about them? I don’t understand a thing of what’s happening.
This is a nightmare.
“You shot me,” I blurt out.
I can’t get past this. All along we thought that I had been caught in the crossfire of a war the Spiders wanted to declare on the Chasers.
“I did. I also shot your car. Only the driver side, though. Well, mostly…,” he trails off as he seems to be remembering that day. “Anyway, I also ran your boyfriend off the road, but his dumb friend slowed down for some reason, so not much damage was done.” He explains all this casually. Like someone would tell their family about their day after coming home in the evening. “Like I said, you weren’t supposed to get hurt. That bullet wasn’t meant for you. But what can I say? It’s your friends who are the professional criminals here.”
Says the guy who shot me, kidnapped me, and has planned whatever it is he has planned to do with me. Psychopath. I can’t believe he was behind all this. From the beginning, we were wrong.
But something still doesn’t add up.
“How did you even know I was leaving the club that day, when you shot the car I was in?”
Does it really matter at this point? Probably not. But I need to keep him talking. As long as he’s talking, he doesn’t do anything else.
“I put a bug in your bracelet,” he answers as a matter-of-fact, one corner of his lips lifting in a dark smirk of smugness.
While I battle against my fear of losing sight of him, my eyes carefully glance down at my wrist.
My mom’s bracelet is an elegant yellow-gold chain inlaid with a beautiful amethyst in the middle. And it’s not adorning my wrist anymore. It’s gone.
“Where is it? What did you do with it?”
“I took it off to get the bug out of it. I won’t be needing it from now on. But I’ll give you the bracelet back, don’t worry.”
He’ll give it back to me? When? Before or after he gets rid of me?
“What do you want from me?”
I practically spit the question, and the laughter vanishes from his eyes as this twisted glee shines out of them. Directed straight at me. I wish I could swallow back my words, but it’s too late. I don’t dare make the slightest movement. I just wa
it for him to talk, and I just listen to him when he does.
“What do I want?” he repeats, his head cocked on the side as though he’s studying me. “You know…” he starts and pauses to let out a sigh. “The problem with girls like you, is that you’re all talking loud about how you want a job and to be independent and all that shit, but at the same time, you want a nice, obedient lapdog to pander to your every whim.”
What he’s saying doesn’t even make sense. Doesn’t he realize that? It just doesn’t make sense. I went on a few dates with the guy, for God’s sake. What did I ever say or do to make him hate me so much? Maybe I didn’t say or do anything. Maybe it’s all in his head. The guy must be genuinely sick, that’s it.
Despite my best efforts, tears leak onto my face again. I just want to go home. I want a hug from my brother, and I want to curl up with Jayce. I want to feel home and safe. That’s all I want.
“Please, just… Please, let me leave, Malcolm.”
Again, he ignores my plea entirely as he leans lazily against the wall at the foot of the bed and keeps talking as if I hadn’t stepped in. “And should I even bother mentioning your obsession with that biker? It’s just the same thing there. You want to prove to the whole damn world that you’re perfectly capable of having your own career and providing for yourself, and at the same time, the guy only needs to snap his fingers and you’re back to lying on his bed, legs spread wide and waiting. Just unbelievable,” he snorts angrily.
The guy is a misogynistic sick prick. That’s the only thing that makes sense.
His salacious gaze shifts down over my body again, and I resist the urge to throw up. Even more so when he pushes away from the wall. Bile gets closer to the surface again. For just a second, I let myself hope that he’s going to leave the room. But that hope doesn’t last long. He walks toward me instead. There’s no rush in his steps, and I’m pretty sure that he’s moving slowly on purpose. He thrives on the fear he knows he ignites in me. He loves it.
My eyes don’t leave him. The last thing I want to do is to look at this man, that I now wish I had never even considered meeting, but I can’t stop. Even when he’s back to standing closely in front of me―though this time his palms are both opened on the wall behind me and not on me―I don’t look away.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask again, hoping that he has it in him to answer a question with words that make sense.
I don’t even know why understanding this situation is so important to me, and I don’t expect him to answer anyway. But he does on a shrug. “I always get what I want, Alexia. And you’re what I want.”
Simple. Logical. He believes in what he’s saying. To his crazed mind, there’s nothing wrong with what he’s doing. He convinced himself of that a while back, and there’s nothing I could do now that would make him change his mind.
At my sides, my fists clench instinctively, and when one of his hands lets go of the wall and his fingers drop onto my shoulder to skim my skin and trace a path on my collarbone, every single muscle in my body goes even more tense than it already was.
“What, then?” I manage to croak out through the thick knot of disgust and terror stuck in my throat. “You’re just going to rape me and kill me, so you can say that you had me?”
I taste the puke in my mouth just saying the words, but that’s what he has in mind. There are no more doubts in mine. If I had slept with him back then, he would have gotten obsessed by having me. He’s not used to be told no by anyone, and he hates that I didn’t want him.
“Who said anything about such extremities, Alexia? Why would I kill you? If you behave like you’re supposed to and agree to be mine, why would I even hurt you?” he asks me as if I was the one being irrational, and apparently forgetting that he has already hurt me. Several times. And that he still has his fingertips on my bare skin even though I more than clearly don’t want them there. “As for raping you… I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. What I intend to do, is to make you feel so good you’ll like it,” he adds with such casualness that another shudder of disgust racks my insides. “You’re going to scream my name in such pleasure that you’ll beg me for another orgasm right away. So, tell me, how is that rape? Once I have you in my penthouse in Dallas, you’ll be like a queen, believe me. It’ll be an improvement to go from a filthy biker clubhouse to the luxury of a penthouse.”
My gut clenches with sheer horror. I’m scrounging my brain to find what I could say to save myself from what’s happening, but there’s not a single word that pops up. And I don’t know if Malcom takes my silence for a clue that this conversation is over, but he seems to decide that he’s done talking. Bone-chilling terror keeps me paralyzed at first as his fingers outline the swell of my breasts before exploring the skin of my stomach until they reach my panties.
That’s when I snap out of my terrorized haze and writhe away from him while pleading as fast as I can, as if it’d make a difference. “No, don’t do this! Please, don’t do this!”
But he doesn’t listen any more now than he did before. And he also liked it better when I wasn’t moving, because a couple of punches land straight into my ribs and my stomach. Then he goes back to touching me as I’ve fallen silent again, air difficult to find around me and tears blurring my vision.
Chapter 28
Jayce
“No, don’t do this! Please, don’t do this!”
Alex’s voice is clogged with fear and tears, trembling all the way to the end of her desperate imploring. Even with the last door that separates us closed, I can hear her every syllable shaking with pure fright as she begs that son of a bitch. Every drop of blood that flows in my veins pulses with such a violent fury that my heartbeat thumps in my ear as loudly as Alex’s plea for that sleazy fucker to leave her alone.
My gun is raised and aimed blindly when I kick open the old wooden door. The fragile, used wood breaks easily under the impact of my forceful boot, and the scene I’m met with is so sickening that my deepest craving is to unload an entire magazine in that bastard’s back. Even though my vision is blurred with rage, and despite the fact that I keep my eyes on Wellington, I can see Alex right next to him, hunched forward. My finger doesn’t even twitch to pull the trigger. The risk of hurting her in the process is way too high. But that doesn’t mean I won’t take care of him very soon.
Enticed to turn around by the sound of shattering wood, Wellington freezes as a dumbstruck expression shortly draws itself on his face before it shifts into a rightly fearful one, once he realizes whose company he has. The piece of shit doesn’t even twitch as he watches me cross the bed to launch at him, and his anguished gaze has barely enough time to dart down to my gun and back up to my face before I have my hand fisted around his throat. I lift his sorry ass and pull him away from Alex with a rage that grants me a five-fold increase of strength. He tumbles off the bed when I let go of him, and I enjoy the sight of his useless body crashing violently to the floor before it keeps rolling, only stopping all the way across the room, when it hits the wall with a satisfying thud. The loud gasp slipping through his lips tells me that he had the air knocked out of him at the impact, and I look at him as he doesn’t move for a moment. Both contentment and disappointment hit me as I think that maybe he’s already dead. Maybe I squeezed his throat too hard and broke his neck. But maybe he’s just passed out like the fragile pussy he is. I hope he is. I want this to last.
As if God heard my prayer, his head raises after a short moment, though it doesn’t look like he’s willing to make any attempt at standing up. His eyes are sending both fear and anger my way.
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised, Wellington,” I snarl darkly. “You’re in med school but you’re not smart enough to know that hospitals have fucking cameras?”
Not that I want him to answer. I sure don’t want to hear the sound of his voice. I’m enraged enough as it is. But more importantly, I’m not here to talk. I’m here to kill. Even more so now that Alex’s frightened whimpers fill the silence
of the room behind me. Despite craving it, I don’t turn around to look at her, just like I didn’t put my eyes on her when I first barged into the room. One look at her now, and I’d go to her, take her away from this place, and shield her from this fucked-up world until I knew she was safe. And that’s what I’ll do soon, but first I need this fucker dead. He has to die, and he has to die by my hand. I don’t have to see it to know that Liam is right beside her anyway, taking care of her, so I do what I have to do and let the monster in me come alive.
Crunching sounds, breaking bones, spilling blood… I focus on that as I throw as ruthless a kick as possible into his body. I focus on my duty and the deep-rooted satisfaction it brings. Reveling in the pain I inflict on the bastard is easier than dwelling on the blame that’s been eating at me since Wellington’s face appeared on the screen of my phone. Alex is in this room because of me. Simple as that. I don’t know what happened before we got here. I don’t know what she went through in here. But there’s one thing I do know. She went through it because of me. She’s here because I was too much of a pussy to own my fuck ups when I finally woke up from my year-long daze last summer. Instead, I kept her at arm’s length. For weeks that turned into months, I convinced myself that she was safer without me in her life. That it would be selfish to keep her close to me. I let her go back to Dallas, and I let her date this obsessive son of a bitch, even though I knew deep down that one word coming from me would have been enough to make her stay in Twican. She was waiting to hear it, and I didn’t say it. But now I forget all about it, and I kick. For every day I pushed her away, I stick my boot into random parts of his body, unleashing the beast in me. Violence is ruling me, and I gather more of it in every new kick I happily punish him with.
I haven’t even used my fists yet. And I probably won’t, since the pathetic shit hasn’t even tried to get up once. It’s a piece of cake to put up a big man show in front of a woman, but his balls shriveled up in a blink when met with the man that he isn’t. And never will be.