I’m falling in love with my husband.
Conflict works through me; how could I love him? He took my choices away, threatened my family. My sister is the only family I have left, and he would have taken her too if I didn’t agree to marry him. It makes everything that happened to her seem small, not important but it almost destroyed her.
It feels disloyal.
I should call her. I pull my cell from my purse and bring up her contact information but before I can press the button, the staff door opens. I’m expecting one of my employees but it’s two men who enter the hall.
“Sorry,” I lock my phone again, “You can’t be back here. This is a staff only area.”
“Olivia Farrow?” The one on the right asks.
“That’s right.”
The two men exchange a look and then they’re coming for me. I stumble back, dropping my purse, along with the phone which they step on, crushing it.
Shit.
I turn and I run, heading straight for the office. If I can get there first, I can lock myself inside.
I’m pulling on the handle when arms come around me, dragging me back from the door.
I let out a scream but a hand slams across my mouth hard enough, my teeth cut into my lip and I instantly taste blood on my tongue. He lifts me off the floor and begins to drag me toward the door that leads back to the offices. There’s a fire exit that way and no one to see them.
I can’t let them get me there. I fight in his arms, kicking out with my legs and landing a blow to his shin with my heel.
“Bitch!” He hollers, dropping me. I land hard on my knees but I’m up a moment later, and sprinting as best I can with the lengths of the dress and my heels. I need to get to where there are people, where someone can see me, but the door is so fucking far away. My mouth is still bleeding and my knees ache, my hand throbbing anew.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
A hand grips my arm tightly, stopping my forward motion. I’m yanked back once more.
“Knock the bitch out!” I hear the other one say.
“Help me!” I scream before he can quieten me. A hand strikes me across the face and bright light burstsbehind my eyes, stunning me enough I feel my body go lax in the arms that hold me.
Fuck.No.
But I feel useless, like I can’t fight even though my mind is telling me to. My body doesn’t listen, it does nothing.
“She’s still awake,” I hear them say, the voice like an echo inside my head.
He’ll hit me again. Any second now.
I feel my spine hit the wall, hands holding me up but my head rolls to the side, eyes flicking to the door.
“Pretty little thing,” he says, grabbing my cheeks in his fingers. My lips pucker as my teeth bite against the inside of my cheeks. “Be a good girl and go to sleep.”
He jerks my head forward and then slams it back, knocking my head into the wall.
Fog drifts into my vision but still, I look to the door. To safety that’s just too far out of reach.
But then it opens, and a body fills the frame.
My vision is too dark to make out who it is but there’s something so recognizable in the way they stand and then they speak, in a voice filled with murderous intent, the roar filling the space all around me.
“Get your fucking hands off my wife!”
Chapter Forty-six
