The ground seemed to thunder louder than my screams as Carter staggered back, gasping for breath, before he crumpled with a strangled cry.
My throat burned with a scream as I clawed my way towards him, desperately trying to reach him, as red seeped onto the ground beneath him, but no matter how hard I fought, I couldn’t seem to get any closer.
I begged, offeredeverything, powerless as Taggart loomed over the man I still loved, threatening to end it for good.
“Now, now, let’s not be hasty, Taggart. No use in starting off on a bad foot.” Samuel Mortarulo murmured. One of my father’s friends… why wasn’t he helping us? I begged him, but he wouldn’t even look at me.
“You’re right.” Taggart twitched as he checked his watch. “We have a flight to catch.”
“Sara—baby, it’s going to be okay.” Carter frantically rasped. “I’m going to come for you. There’s nowhere they can take you that I won’t find you—look at me, baby.” Carter pleaded, panic saturating his gentle voice as he crawled towards me, a streak of red dragging behind him. “I’m going to find you.”
Taggart had shot him so many times, and Carter wasstillcrawling, reaching for me as I fought to get to him,was I hallucinating this too?Carter was saying all the things I wanted to hear, butthatwasn’t real. I’d given him—us, my all, and it still wasn’t enough. He’d thrown me away like it was easy. Moved on in two seconds flat, because blondes hadalwaysbeen his type.Thatwas real. If the sight of him dying in front of me wasn’t so horrifying,I might have smiled, relieved I’d caught the nightmare red-handed. I was going to wake upany minute now, and what a relief—because if thiswasreal, if Carterwasbleeding out in front of me…I’d never survive it.
Taggart lingered because his ego was wounded, and this was just another one of my nightmares, so of course he did. “Can you picture it?” He motioned, waving the gun between us. “Little mini me’s withourgenetics running around. You could have had that, Kensington, and you almost did, but you ran away instead.” Tag panted wiping his face with the back of his hand, “Which is lucky for me, because after all these years, she’s finallymine, and I don’t want you to forget for a single second what that means.” Carter’s eyes shuddered as he panted and dragged himself another inch, and Taggart leaned in with a menacingly soft whisper. “She’smyprized mare, and I’m going to bend her over and fuck her like one too.”
Carter’s screams were in my ears as I dizzily looked at Taggart. “Don’t worry, I’m not a savage.” He threatened psychotically. “I won’t breed you until after I’ve ma?—”
“You’re not going tobreedmeat all!” I cried, throwing an elbow at his groin that barely landed because he yanked me back, laughing sardonically. “Oh, you bitch, you and I are going to have fun. I’m gonna take real good care of you, SarafinaCaldwell.” My head snapped to the side, and the room went sideways as I hit the ground in a crumpled heap, light dancing behind my eyes.
Carter might have been screaming for me as I sank further into that cold marble floor while Taggart loomed over me.
“Just think, if you play nice, your father gets off the hook. Scotch free. Debts paid.” Taggart threatened. “But if you don’t play nice, Sarafina.” He gripped my cheeks, forcing me to look up at him as he went in and out of focus. “Don’t forget I own you now. If you break the agreements of his contract. You’re both dead.”
“I’m begging you!” Carter’s voice was growing quieter in the distance. “I’ll do anything!”
“My father?” I murmured, confusion washing over me as it hit me like a freight train, all at once.The note.Had my father done this to me? I blinked as darkness started to close in.
“Sara, I love you!”
Why wasn’t I waking up?
CHAPTER 53
Good Little Wife
SARAFINA
“You will do what is required of you when the time comes, or there will be consequences.” Taggart threatened as he leaned against the wall next to the door, arms crossed over his wide chest.
“You think you can threatenmeinto submission?” I barked. “You tried that once before, and it didn’t go so well.”
“Youwillmarry me.” He said simply, tilting his head as if he could still feel it, what I’d done to him. “Despite your little stunt, you don’t have a choice, and you never did.”
“I won’t, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.” I practically spat.
He hummed, cruel amusement twisting his handsome face like cyanide poison. “I don’t think you have any idea what I’m capable of.”
“What’s the matter? You couldn’t get yourself a real wife, so you had to buy one?” I demanded. “What the hell do you want with me?”
He murmured arrogantly, “All will be revealed in good time, wife.”
“I’m not your fucking wife.”
“You will be.”
“You always did have a big ego.” I laughed humorlessly, thesound coming out too thin as I tried my best to hold my ground. “You know what they say about men with big egos.”
I screamed as he launched across the room, shoving me into a wall, his fingers digging into my cheeks as he roughly grabbed my face. “You are a crude little thing, aren’t you?” Taggart bristled with a smirk, reading the fear in my eyes as he threatened quietly. “We’ll see how small you think I am when I finally shut that bratty mouth of yours up.”
