Lydia stood beside the tub wearing only her bra and panties. Flannery had tied her hands and thrown the rope over a tree limb and pulled it taut, so that her arms were extended above her head. He’d also tied ropes to her ankles and secured the ropes to a couple of stone seats. She was crying and begging him to let her go.
“You know better than that, Lydia,” he told her as he walked behind her. He’d removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and held what looked like a riding crop. “You’ve been very naughty and you’ll need to apologize to me for all the trouble you’ve caused, and then you’ll need to be an exemplary wife. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You didn’t have to come. I gave you a choice, and youwantedto come back home.
“Now this first is going to be rough, I won’t lie. Nobody knows you’re here, and nobody is going to see you, so I can leave marks, and I plan to. I need to make sure that you understand what happens when you defy me. You’ve embarrassed me, and that’s just unacceptable. You need to show me you understand, and the only way to do that is to beg me to punish you for your transgressions. I’ve been too patient, too giving, and you took advantage by running away.
I looked at Jen. “Call Mikey. If he doesn’t take you seriously, call Ballard and Jeffers.” The latter two had investigated my mother’s murder. Hopefully Mikey chose to take Jen seriously, as he was already outside somewhere and could be upstairs in the bathroom within minutes.
She withdrew and I dug in my pocket for my phone and handed it to Lorraine. “Lydia is going to need evidence. Get it for her. Record what you can.”
I went back to watching. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell Mikey would get here before Flannery got serious about beating Lydia, and I wasn’t going to watch her suffer just so they could see his violence for themselves. The video would have to be enough. I gritted my teeth. I’d have to let him hit her once or twice so that he couldn’t say he was just playacting or whatever excuse he’d come up with. He already had the cops and his political cronies on his side. Any chance to let him off the hook and they’d take it.
Not on my watch.
I called up my magic, holding it ready and willing Lydia to hold on and be strong.
“I haven’t heard you apologize, yet, Lydia.”
She mumbled something through her tears. He hit her so fast I didn’t realize he had until he’d struck three or four times. He slashed the whip across her stomach and breasts. She screamed and twisted and begged him to stop and broke into a repeated chant of ‘sorry.’ He grabbed her hair and pulled her head up and back, staring down into her face.
“Speak up, wife. The longer it takes for you to learn your lessons, the more it’s going to hurt. I don’t want to punish you, but how else will you learn? I hope you appreciate how hard this is for me. I wish you’d treated me better, so I wouldn’t have to do this. It is what it is, though, so we’ll just have to grin and bear it.”
He bent and kissed her, forcing her mouth open, letting go of her hair and grasping her jaw, digging his fingers into her flesh to hold her still. He finished by biting her lower lip and pulling it with his teeth. She moaned and he let go. Blood dribbled down her chin, mixing with snot and tears.
“Isn’t that enough?” Lorraine whispered. “I can’t take much more of this.”
What did law enforcement need to see, so they couldn’t ignore the situation this time? What would it take for them to put Flannery behind bars? I didn’t know. What I did know was that the news stations would eat this up. Flannery’s political career was over. That was nice, but I wanted more. I wanted her safe. A video might not even be enough, and that left the guarantee up to me and my magic. I knew just the incentive he needed to stay away.
I cleared my throat and walked into the glassed-in garden. “Hello again, Carson,” I said as if he wasn’t standing there holding a whip beside the mostly naked woman he’d been beating.
He went feral as weasels do when they are trapped. “What are you doing here?” he snarled. “How did you get in? I locked the doors.”
I shrugged. “I unlocked them.”
“How? Nobody has a key but me.”
“Is that really what you want to talk about? I don’t. I want to know why you’ve imprisoned your wife and are beating her.” I kept my voice conversational. I wanted to give Jen time to summon Mikey and his cop buddies. Their arrival would feed the scandal of the video when we leaked it. I wanted his political aspirations dead and rotting.
“This is none of your business. It’s between me and my wife, and she’s here of her own free will. Ask her,” he said defiantly.
“Is that true, Lydia? Do you want to be tied up and whipped?”
She went still and then gave a slow nod.
“See?” he demanded triumphantly.
“I do see,” I said. “You stole her cats and threatened to kill or mutilate them. To keep them safe, she’s agreed to let you abuse her however you want.”
I half expected him to argue, but he didn’t see Lorraine recording him. Even if he had, I don’t know that he’d have been able to keep his mouth shut. Some people have no sense of self preservation. Not that I was complaining.
“Personally I could care less about a cat, but Lydia here—” He rubbed the tip of the whip over her collar bone, between her breasts, and then snapped it against her belly. “—Lydia’s got a soft spot for those damned things, and they don’t even belong to her. I bought them for her for her birthday.”
“If you gave them as a gift, legally they’re hers, are they not?” I pointed out.
“Not at all. She belongs to me, and that means everything she calls hers belongs to me, too. I own her clothes, her shoes, her make-up, her jewelry, and the damned cats. I own these tits, this sweet ass, and that tight cunt of hers.” As he spoke, he groped each body part in turn. “She has no right to refuse anything I want. If she does, I’m within my rights as a husband and a man to take what belongs to me. I’m not only within my rights, it’s my duty to put her on the right path.”
“So you’ll rape her.”
“It’s not rape if she’s my wife. She should want to please me. It’s her failure as a woman if she doesn’t.”
