by Lannah Smith
To her.
“Skull!” Hannah blocked his way as he was grabbing his suitcase. She stood on tiptoe and held his face, her eyes worriedly searching his face. “What happened?”
His eyes wildly landed on hers.
“They found her.”
Her face tightened. “April?”
“Yes.”
A long, slow sigh burst out of her lips. Her gaze searched his face some more. Impatiently, he wanted to tell her to back off so he could leave but she let his face go before he could and fell on her heels.
“Go,” she told him, moving to the bed to fold his clothes. “We’ll take care of your stuff.”
Will was already on the phone, calling the valet to get his car ready. “Your car will be out front soon,” Will informed him. “Go.”
Christopher stared at the couple for a few seconds.
“You said you wanted a commercial building for your wedding gift,” he told Hannah. “How many floors do you want it to have?”
Hannah smiled and shooed him off with her hand. “Just go, Skull.”
He crossed the distance between them to kiss the side of her head. Then he gave Will a tight squeeze that made the other man grunt.
He almost stumbled slipping his feet hurriedly into his shoes.
Then he was gone out of the door.
Chapter 7
“I won’t tolerate your defiance any longer, April. And if it means beating some sense into you every day, then so be it.”
The door slammed shut. The locked turned, the sound echoing across the pitch darkness.
I passed out and it took a long while before I could wake up again. The pain pulsating through my body was so intense, I almost fainted again. Even trying to sit up was so unbearable that I collapsed against the sheets of the bed, feeling helpless and defeated.
Staring at the dark ceiling, I tried not to cry.
My father didn’t treat me with even an ounce of kindness or pity as he had me dragged back home. To the city where most of its residents hate me. To the house where no one was on my side.
From the moment we cleared the doorway, he had turned on me, knocking me down my knees on the carpet with a powerful blow on the face again.
“I should hand you over to Lucca,” he hissed, causing me to look up. “Since you’d been shacking up with Grant, you’d know how to please a man, don’t you?”
I gritted my teeth so hard I was surprised my jaw didn’t snap.
“Don’t,” I glared venomously up at him. “Say his name with your mouth.”
Another blow made my ears rang. A long time and many beatings ago, I would have cried and begged for his forgiveness.
“You’ve probably let every boy in this city have you,” his face was livid as he growled down at me. “The club would be a perfect place for you now, I supposed. They could make use of your promiscuity.”
“And I’m not going to whore for you,” I muttered, trying to keep myself from fainting from the pain.
“Then do as I say!” he bellowed. “Do as I say and you can have your life back.”
“I don’t want this life.”
A shaky breath escaped me when he pulled up my head back violently by my hair. “Don’t be an ungrateful bitch,” he coldly muttered, his face inches from me. “Don’t be like your mother.”
Then he let me go and straightened, adjusting his suit. Angrily motioning at Oscar to pull me to my feet, he took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands.
“Take her upstairs.”
“Yes, sir.”
I expected to be jerked up again. But Oscar held my shoulders and gently lifted me to my feet. I didn’t need him to be gentle. Not when Dan’s blood was on his hands too. He knew that. Which was why he stepped away, grimacing.
“I won’t have you ruin me any longer, April. I’ve been generous to you. I’ll give you one more chance to be my daughter again. I advise you to take it.”
Funny.
He’d never taken so much interest in me and didn’t think I had much value when I was a child. But the moment I turned sixteen, it was like I’d suddenly amounted to all the money in the world and began to watch over me closely.
“And what if I don’t?” I dared to ask.
Furious at my continuous impudence, he slapped me with the back of his hand.
"You dared to make me lose my temper," he muttered, looking like he regretted his violence when I knew he didn’t. "You have no one to blame but yourself for this, April.”
He motioned towards Oscar again. Then they took me upstairs and locked me in this room.
When I came to again, the room was bright. Sunlight streamed through the gap between the heavy curtains covering the balcony French doors. There were particles of dust in the air but the bedroom didn’t have that musty scent of being closed and abandoned for so long. They must have regularly cleaned it while I was away.
This room used to be my bedroom.
And everything looked exactly the same and familiar. Other than the picture of my mother on the dresser where I remembered it to be, everything was just how I left it and it surprised me that my father didn’t burn all my things when I left eight years ago.
Every muscle in my body ached as I struggled to get up. But room started to spin so I laid back again and closed my eyes. I felt feverish from the pain all over my body and I hoped I was. I hoped I was ill. Truly ill again. That way I’d die. I’d die and leave this fucking life behind.
A sob escaped me and a tear fell from my eye. My hands clenched the sheets tightly.
And when I do, I hope I get to see Dan in the other side. To tell him I’m sorry. To tell him how sorry I am because he wouldn’t be able to see his child.
But then that probably still wouldn’t be possible.
Dan was in heaven.
And I was definitely going to hell.
My father blessedly left me alone in my bedroom the whole day. But I didn’t doubt that he posted guards outside to guard me. I was not given food nor water. He must be thinking to further my punishment by starving me. It was laughable. He was stupid. He didn’t know I was already prepared to die.
I slept restlessly throughout the day and night, plagued with nightmares. When I woke up the next morning, a wet, cold towel was pressed gently to my cheek. My eyes fluttered to an open. It was hot. I was blazing hot. I glanced down on myself and noticed that I was under the sheets and out of my dirty clothes and in a night gown. A middle-aged woman sat next to my bed, rinsing the red-stained towel on a bowl of water on the night stand.
I’d forgotten.
There was one person in this house that was still on my side.
Regrettably.
“Rita,” I whispered.
She almost dropped the towel in surprise. Her gaze jerked to me.
“April,” she whispered with tears in her eyes.
“Don’t,” I mumbled. “Please don’t cry. They’ll kill you.”
She swallowed and nodded. Tugging on my shoulders, she helped me up and put a glass of water on my lips for me to drink. Then when I was tucked in bed again, she silently continued cleaning my face, taking care not to rub too hard.
“Who let you in?” I asked her.
“Your father gave orders to take care of you.”
My eyes drifted to a close. “He shouldn’t have. He should have just let me die in peace.”
“Don’t say that,” she hissed down at me.
I clenched my jaw. “I wish I was dead, Rita. Because of me, he killed an innocent person. Because of me, Dan’s dead.”
“I lost your mother, April. I’m not going to lose you too.”
My eyes flew open and I looked at her. Her face was tight with pain and loss and I almost regretted my words. Rita used to be my mother’s personal staff until the day she died. They’d also been close friends.
“Is that why you didn’t leave?” I was almost afraid to ask. “Because of me?”
She didn’t say anything. Looking brokenhea
rted, she set the towel away and picked up a bottle of ointment.
“Rita, you should have just left.”
“I made a promise to Adeline that I’d take care of you no matter what. I continued to work here because your father wouldn’t give up his hunt for you and I was afraid they’d find you. I prayed they wouldn’t. But...” She couldn’t continue. She looked away, trying to regain herself.
I wanted to hold her.
I wanted her to hold me.
But my father’s men could look in at any moment and I didn’t want Rita to get hurt because of me too.
When my mother died, my father had the entire household staff replaced. Mostly to keep the true cause of her death a secret. Partly because he wanted to punish me for my mother’s death. I’d learned not to form any attachments by the third time he had everyone replaced. It would only put them in trouble and out of jobs.
Riley had been my first lesson. She was the new cleaning lady’s assistant and eight years older than me. She was funny. She made life in the house without my mother better. But my father learned of this and had fired the girl. But Riley needed money, as her grandmother who was raising her, was ill. My father gave her work again but in a strip club that he owned. The last thing I heard, Riley got hooked on cocaine and was selling her body to anyone who would have her.
For some reason, my father kept Rita. Rita had taken charge over running the house after my mother was buried. It must be because she ran the house perfectly without fail and made sure to keep everyone in line that he let her stay and work. As long as she didn’t give me any interest or attention, he let her stay.
“You should think about your family, Rita,” I whispered urgently to her. “If anything happens to you, your husband and children will be devastated.”
Her hands moved to cup my face. “You’re my daughter too,” she whispered back. “I love you like you’re my own daughter, April.”
Tears hit my eyes. “Then think about what I’d feel if I’d lose you because of me too,” I begged.
“Don’t worry about me,” Her hands went back to her lap and her back straightened. “Now let’s think of a plan to get you to escape.”
No way.
No way was I going to let someone get killed to give me freedom.
I turned my head away from her and closed my eyes.
“I feel sick,” I mumbled and I wasn’t lying. The blazing fire in my body had turned scorching.
Her cool hand touched my forehead. “You’re running a fever. I’ll go get some medicine.”
I swallowed back my plea for her to just let me die. My head was pounding raggedly and I focused on the pain instead. I felt her leave my side and the door opening and closing. There were some murmurs outside my door and then I heard the lock click.
I slept without dreams this time.
But the next time I open my eyes, it was in a bedroom that wasn’t mine anymore.
Chapter 8
The screens on all the monitors went black.
Christopher’s gaze cut to the man who turned it off.
“Put it back on,” he ground out through his teeth.
Alec straightened up from the controls and shook his head. “Let’s just stop here, sir. You’ve already seen it anyway. Seeing it again will only—.”
“Put it back on.”
“I seriously think—.”
Christopher didn’t let him finish.
“Put the fucking monitor back on,” he ordered in a low, angry tone that bode violence if his orders were not followed.
Alec pursed his lips. His expression was grim. All of the men in the room had grim faces after they had finished watching the CCTV footages on the monitors, after seeing such brutality play out.
The man sitting in the chair at the bank of the monitors swallowed visibly at the tension that permeated the room. His eyes shifted nervously from Christopher to Alec. When Alec nodded stiffly, he immediately turned to the controls and hit some buttons, turning all the monitors on again.
Christopher stood still and forced himself to watch.
One monitor showed a footage two nights ago of a dark street where a woman with strawberry blonde hair could be seen being transferred from another car to a van parked at the side of the road. The two men holding her arms looked like they were half-carrying her limp body and when they passed under the street light, Christopher saw her face clearly.
Bottom lip split. Swollen eyes. Bruises on her cheek and jaw and dried blood on the side of her face and the edge of her chin.
And the sight almost made him lose his mind right there and then.
On another monitor, the same two men were dragging the same woman into the building of a small private airport in Canada. When the woman struggled, the man leading them turned and hit her viciously on the face, making her head snap to the side. Then they dragged her inside and into the runway where a private jet was waiting for them.
The other monitors bore the same brutality that these men did to the woman. How they dragged her from one place to another. How, whenever she tried to resist, she’d get beaten. How she got weaker and weaker until they had to carry her from the car and into the house, she had escaped from eight years ago.
Christopher had seen a lot of acts of violence but he’d never seen anything like this. He’d never seen a woman being treated like an animal like this. Never treated a woman like this. Made sure all the men who worked for him know that he’d strangle the fucking life out of them with his bare hands if they treat women like this.
A monitor cut out on a close-up video of the woman’s damaged face and her dull, defeated gray eyes and Alec bent down on the controls to turn everything off again.
“I never would have thought he’d lay a hand on April Locke,” Alec was muttering. “I’ve seen her back in high school and I had never thought a stuck-up bitch like her would suffer such violence from her beloved father.”
Christopher too had never imagined that Edward Locke would do this to his own daughter.
“The way he hit her,” Alec pointed at the monitors, “the way she looked like she expected every blow, fuck, don’t you think she’s fucking used to it?”
She was. Her face was blank as a doll whenever he hit her.
fuck.
Christopher’s gaze didn’t leave the monitor when he asked, “Her father?”
“Back home. Looking for her. They haven’t found out yet.”
Good.
Alec hesitated before he got closer. “Skull,” he muttered low, calling him by his nickname in consideration of their friendship. “I know you’re angry. I know you want to tear that fucking bastard apart. But you’re aware that what we did, this could end up in war. Don’t you?”
Oh yes.
He was aware.
Christopher just didn’t give a fuck.
“Where is she?” Christopher had asked Alec as soon as he got into his car outside the airport, having just arrived from Chicago.
His right-hand couldn’t meet his eyes. Giving the signal to the man in front to drive, Alec leaned back on the soft leather and let out an angry sigh.
“Alec?” Christopher prompted. This was unlike his friend. Alec, like him, was sensible and level-headed one, slow to anger. But something was definitely got him riled tonight.
Alec turned his head around, finally meeting his gaze and held it. “First of all, I need you to promise me something,” he began.
Christopher’s eyes narrowed at him. “Promise you what?”
“Promise me that you will not lose it.”
His gut tightened.
That didn’t sound good.
fucking hell, that didn’t sound good.
“What happened?” he asked quietly.
“Promise me first.”
He didn’t let him finish. “I’m not fucking playing around, Alec. Tell me. Did something happen to her?”
“She’s alright,” Alec assured him. “But our people, they said that her father...” he hesitated for a b
rief moment before saying, “her father was really pissed at her.”
The knots in Christopher’s gut tightened even more.
“And?” he prompted again when Alec didn’t continue.
“They beat her,” Alec let out an exhale, his hands clenching into fists on his knees. “They beat her, Skull. We saw everything on the footages.”