Billionaire’s Captive: A Beauty and the Rose Box Set

by Black, Stasia

  But the monster always comes, doesn’t it?

  I’ll never be able to escape. It was stupid to ever think I could.

  I can calculate how long I’ve been here by the length of stubble on Logan’s face. One, maybe two days?

  I open my cracked lips. “Water…”

  He offers me a cup with a straw and I sip gratefully. Not so long ago, I cared for my father this same way. When he was on his deathbed. What goes around...

  “Where?” I rasp as soon as I can get the word out.

  “New Olympus General. The closest hospital to Thornhill was a shithole, so I had them medivac you here.”

  “Ah.” I let my head roll on the pillow. I can imagine Logan yelling on the roof of a hospital, loud enough to be heard over the helicopter blades. I want to smile but the muscles of my face feel weak.

  “How long?” I ask.

  “You’ve been here thirty hours.” He captures my hand and brings it to his face. I twitch a finger against his bristly jaw and find the strength to smile. None of this is his fault. He had no idea what he was getting into with me.

  “You...need a shave.”

  “Daphne. Fuck.” His big hands swallow my fragile one. For a moment he presses our twined fingers to his forehead, hiding his face behind our hands.

  I swallow. The sand is mostly washed from my mouth. Time to ask the hard questions.

  “How long?” I ask again.

  He raises his head. His eyes are rimmed red. “I just told you—”

  When I shake my head, he falls silent.

  “How long...do I have left?”

  He presses my hand to his face again. “The doctors...fuck.” His voice is muffled. “They don’t know. They say it’s your third relapse.”

  “Yes.” I remember the first two quite vividly.

  “I read your medical history. Daphne…” He bows his head almost to the bed. His voice comes muffled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I set my right hand on his head and stroke his thick hair. Each movement is painful, like my very bones and blood protest.

  “It was in remission.” The inside of my mouth tastes bitter. I hate talking about my disease. My old adversary. So many battles lost and won. “I wanted to forget I was ever an invalid. I didn’t want to live like that.”

  It’s more than that, too, though I’m not even sure if I can explain it. I take another long sip of water before trying again. He deserves an explanation. “And it’s like, when I’m healthy, I can forget this part of me even exists. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism or maybe I really believed in my heart I was done with it.”

  Logan’s face is still pained, though. “But everything that we did...everything I did...I hurt you, Daphne. The games we played...”

  “No,” I say fiercely. Is that what he’s thinking? “I don’t want you to ever regret our time together. I don’t.”

  It doesn’t take away the agony in his dark eyes. “What have I done to you?” he whispers.

  “Not you. I was born this way.” This was always my destiny. Doesn’t he get that? The course of my life was written in my DNA before my heart’s first beat.

  Battleman’s. The disease that took my mother’s life. It lives in me now, waging war in a million of my cells. My body is a battlefield. It always was. And now I’ve gone and dragged the person I love most into the trenches with me.

  I drop my head back to the pillow and close my eyes.

  A male nurse comes in to fuss over me, and Logan retreats to the corner. I’ve had a thousand visits from nurses over my almost thirty years, but never with a dark presence brooding in the shadows. My skin prickles with awareness as the nurse checks my vitals, asks me questions, and prompts me to eat.

  “She’ll eat,” Logan interjects, making the man jump. The nurse must have forgotten Logan, but I didn’t. I feel Logan’s gaze like a touch. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  The nurse still has his hand on my bare back. Logan glares at it until the man snatches it away.

  “The doctor will be in soon,” the nurse assures me, and scuttles away.

  “Did you have to scare the poor man?”

  “He liked touching you.” Logan prowls back to his seat by my bed. He carefully replaces my gown and plumps my pillows—all the little chores the nurse forgot in his rush to get away.

  I laugh softly. As if anyone would want me like this, a frail bag of bones. “He’s just doing his job.” I sigh as I relax back onto the pillows.

  Logan grunts but doesn’t argue. He spends an inordinate amount of time smoothing my hair from my brow. His touch is featherlight on my forehead, brushing my hair back from my face, applying salve to my chapped lips.

  The look on his face makes my breath catch. Concern mixed with tenderness mixed with heat. At least there’s still one man who finds me attractive, even like this.

  But when he leans down to press a soft kiss to my forehead, his lips are careful. Chaste.

  “The hospital should hire you,” I try to joke.

  “Daphne.” Logan looks more serious when he takes a seat. “I want to take over your treatment.”

  I blow out a breath. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “Please, I’m close to a breakthrough. You’ve studied Battleman’s, you know—”

  “All my life. And I’ve gotten nowhere.”

  “You’re close. I can take your research—”

  “My father’s research. The patents you stole—”

  “It was my research from the start.” He forces himself to lower his voice, visibly reining in his temper. “Look, I don’t want to fight. I just want to get you well.”

  “It’s like my mother and father all over again.” Tears spill from my eyes.

  “No. I’m not going to let you...fuck, please. You’re not going to—” But he can’t finish the sentence.

  I look away from him and out the window, the grayscape hallowed in anemic light. “It was always going to be this way.” And now I’m just supposed to accept that Logan is going to be a casualty with me?

  “Don’t say that—”

  “Logan.” Just a whisper is enough to make him fall silent. “This has always been my life. Every time I walked into the lab, I knew I was fighting for my right to live. For my next breath. Battleman’s has been a part of me since I was a baby. If it wasn’t for the disease, I wouldn’t have even been born.”

  “What?” he asks, but he’s smart enough to piece it together from what I’m saying. Stunned horror spreads across his face.

  “It was my father’s plan all along,” I rasp. “He knew if they had a child, there was a good chance that child would carry the disease. My mother didn’t want to have kids because of it.”

  Logan shifts in his seat and the chair groans like it’s dying. Hospital furniture is way too rickety for a man of Logan’s size—he could look at it the wrong way and it’d fall apart.

  I want to make a joke to lighten the mood, but Logan’s calling my name. “Daphne. Are you saying—”

  “My father wanted a second chance to fight the disease. To harvest stem cells, run tests. To try new treatments.” I push my cheeks up into a hollow smile. “He didn’t want a child. He wanted a tissue donor.”

  Logan’s broad chest rises and falls rapidly, his lungs like bellows. His left hand holds mine gently while his right fist presses against his mouth. “That fucking fuck,” he growls, probably hoping his hand muffles the insult.

  Now my smile is real. “That’s my dad you’re talking about,” I say lightly. “Don't speak ill of the dead.”

  He lowers his fist. “If he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him.”

  “It’s done. It’s past.”

  “Did he tell you? That you were only born as a guinea pig he could experiment on to save your mother?”

  “Not in so many words. That would’ve made it easier.”

  Instead, my father’s actions told me the truth. Every time he led me to his lab. Every time he threaded a needle in my vein to
draw blood. Every time he injected me with a treatment that had a chance to heal me and my mother—or make me worse.

  I learned my father loved me less than the results on a lab print out. Results he excitedly shared with my mother.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me, Logan. I had a better life than most. And my mother loved me. She was furious with my father for what he was doing. But most years, she was just too weak to stop it. And he hid the worst from her.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Logan kneels next to the bed, gripping both my hands in his huge ones. His anger is still there, but he’s pushed it to the back burner. “You have to know...you’re not just a lab rat. You’re more than what your father tried to make you. You’re smart and perfect and beyond beautiful. You…” his voice chokes. “You are loved. So loved.”

  “I know I am.” I stroke the raven-black hair from his forehead, wanting so badly to kiss him. “As soon as I was old enough to realize what my father had done, I had you.”

  “What?”

  “You were his student, so on fire. You said you were going to cure Battleman’s.” My voice softens. “And you were always kind to me. I was your teacher’s skinny daughter. But you were still so nice.”

  “Daphne...I didn’t know. I never even guessed you were sick.”

  “Oh I wasn’t. Not at that point. The disease was in remission. Not because of the treatments—they all failed—but because my body was young and strong enough to fight.” My father wanted to keep experimenting on me, see if he could poke the disease awake, but my mother wouldn’t let him.

  “You were my light in the darkness, Logan. My reason to live. Even before you knew my name.”

  But the nightmare feeling of thorns wrapping around my flesh and pulling me under the dirt flashes vividly through my head. Because I feel that darkness closing in around me again and it’s so consuming I’m not sure even the most powerful love on earth could keep it at bay.

  Two

  Logan

  You were my light in the darkness. My reason to live. How can she say that to me, of all people?

  I hold Daphne’s hand long after she falls asleep. I have to be careful not to squeeze her fragile fingers too hard. When I finally lay her hand down, her skin looks so translucent, the blue veins are stark against the white sheets.

  I’ve knelt for so long my bones protest as I rise. I grit my teeth. I’ve got to get out of this room, get some air. I hate to leave Daphne, but my stomach is still roiling from what she told me.

  It was my father’s plan all along. He knew…

  What sort of sick fuck experiments on their own child? If he wasn’t dead I would destroy him. Not just his company. They’d never find the bits of him I’d flay from his flesh. I’d lock Daphne in the castle for as long as it took for her to forgive me. After what he did, kidnapping her would be a mercy.

  Guilt churns through me. For all my anger against her father, did I treat her any better? For all I know, my rough play weakened her and brought on this relapse.

  I carefully shut the door to her private hospital room, just barely resisting the urge to slam my head repeatedly against the fake wood. Who the fuck am I kidding? I deserve to have the skin flayed from my back for what I did to her.

  She was fragile and I spanked her. Made her stand in the corner once for hours. Made her crawl on the unsanitary floor…

  My hands clench into fists so hard my nails tear at my palms. I’m a monster. Depraved through and through. My love is twisted. I unleashed all my demons on Daphne, made her pay the price of my obsession.

  She’ll never blame me. She’s too good. Too forgiving. No, it’s up to me to dole out punishment. I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll spend my whole life making it up to her. I’ll cherish her and stay up day and night working until I find a cure.

  Because even still, knowing all that I know now, I’m not giving her up. Even knowing she deserves so much better than me. The gods be damned if they think to take Daphne from me now. No. I won’t let her die.

  She won’t escape me so easily. She’ll have a long fucking life side-by-side with me until we’re old and gray.

  “Sir,” the doctor touches my elbow. I whirl and growl. His hands fly up to show me he’s not a threat. “Sorry,” he squeaks.

  “Shhh,” I hush him harshly. “The patient is sleeping.”

  “I know, I was just—” The idiot goes to open the door anyway. To wake Daphne from her precious sleep.

  I’m gonna kill this guy. He’s gonna be a smear on the beige-tiled floor.

  “Back the fuck off,” I grab his name badge and stand to my full intimidating height. “Dr. Lockhart. Hematologist. Where exactly did you go to school?”

  He babbles something and I sneer, releasing his badge. “Really? Not the butcher’s shop up the street?” I grab the chart he’s holding and scan it quickly, shoving him off balance when he grabs for it.

  At the last second, my free hand fists his collar, keeping him upright. The man teeters before me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows over and over.

  “This is what you call a treatment plan?” I berate him. “You’re barely treating her symptoms and aren’t doing anything to address the disease itself. You don’t know a damn thing about what you’re doing!”

  My eyes continue to scan the chart even though what I see makes my chest cinch tight. Her vitals are stable, but her blood cell counts are bad. The disease is ravaging her system. Fuck.

  “Sir,” snaps a woman in blue scrubs. She’s Daphne’s new nurse, a replacement for the male fuck they first sent. Her eyes are round but she’s got her hand on the alarm button, ready to call security. “You need to let go of Dr. Lockhart. Now.”

  I open my hand and Dr. Lockhart staggers backwards.

  “Happy?” I ask the nurse.

  “No.” The woman meets my stare head on. “Your…the patient—is she your wife?”

  No. Not yet.

  “Yes,” I say confidently. Because she will be. As soon as I can get the ring on her finger. “Her father just died, and her mother is gone. I’m her only kin.”

  “Well, visiting hours are over. She needs to get some sleep.”

  Visiting hours? They think I’m going to go home and leave the love of my life with these idiots? I exhale a growl and hold up Daphne’s chart. “I’d like to go over her course of treatment.” As in, I’d like to actually fucking develop one. “I’m a doctor.”

  “I understand, sir,” the nurse says in a syrupy, condescending tone. “But your wife has been battling this disease since she was a girl. This isn’t her first rodeo. We are the best hospital in New Olympus. You need to back off and let us do our jobs—”

  Back off? Back off and watch my Daphne wither away and die in a hospital bed in this depressing as hell hospital? This is all bullshit. There are so many shady people on this earth and Daphne is one of the best. It’s not fair that she—

  “Fuck this,” I roar, and topple a food cart. Both the nurse and doctor leap back as plates, trash, and trays clatter to the floor at their feet.

  Before they can react, I spin and stride into Daphne’s room. “I’m taking her out of here.”

  I ignore the frantic shouts behind me, “Sir! You can’t do that. Sir!”

  But they don’t know what I’m capable of. I kidnapped her once and I’m doing it again. Right now.

  I stand, brace myself, and all but bare my teeth at the doctor and nurse. “I’m her husband, her only living relative,” I bellow. “And she’s coming home with me right now. Don’t dare get in my way.”

  I was worried about the slightest noise waking her earlier, but when I storm into her room, Daphne’s all but dead to the world. It takes half a minute to rouse her.

  The doctors hover anxiously in the background as I gently cup her face. “Want to go home, kitten?”

  She nods, though it looks like it takes all her energy to do so. “Anywhere but here,” she breathes out before her eyes flicker closed again.

  It’s enough
for me and apparently it’s enough consent for the doctors, too. They let me wheel her out to a private ambulance I arrange so I can take my beautiful Daphne home where she belongs.

  Three

  Daphne

  The scent of roses is my first clue. And then there’s the fresh air that tickles my nose, filling my lungs with sweetness. Outside birds are singing, the sound so loud, a window must be open.

  Fresh air. Birdsong. Roses.

  The hospital would never allow a window to open. So that means—

  I’m not in a hospital anymore.

  I open my eyes. The familiar sight of my castle bedroom greets me. For a moment, a burst of happiness rushes me.

  Home. I’m home.

  Until I realize that the room is only mostly familiar. There’s no antique four poster bed. Instead, I’m in a hospital bed heaped with white pillows and surrounded by medical equipment, including an IV pole standing by.

  It wasn’t all a terrible nightmare. Battleman’s is really back.

  But as I blink more, I take in the Persian rug covering the floor that’s always been there. The same bright sunlight, filtered through the same huge windows I’ve always loved. One of the windows is open at the bottom and birds hop on the sill just beyond the screen. No wonder I can hear them so well. I’m at the castle and the birds are singing.

  A shadow falls across my bed and I startle.

  “Daphne,” Logan looms over me. He looks a thousand times better than when I last saw him kneeling by the hospital bed. He’s clean-shaven and dressed in a crisp white shirt tailored to his wide shoulders. His voice is deep and soothing. “You’re awake.”

  “Logan?”

  “Shhh,” he rubs salve on my lips. I can’t stop myself from licking them—the salve tastes horrible but my lips are all healed. Logan tsks and reapplies the balm. “Are you cold? It got a little stuffy in here, so I opened a window. Spring’s come early.”

  I blink at him, waiting for my thoughts to catch up. “You moved me?”

  If I really think hard, I think I remember something about all the doctors gathered around and Logan telling me he was bringing me home. But it seems like a distant dream. I didn’t necessarily think it was real at the time. I hate nothing more than hospitals, though, so I’m glad to be out of there.