Before my father can object, Kosta delivers another blow to my jaw with his fist. My ears ring, and I gag on the blood filling my mouth.
My father lunges, catching his arm as he lifts it to strike me again. “Stop. If Quinlan sees bruises on her face, he will come back with that entire fucking empire and kill you. They do not approve of hurting women. Them and those O’Rourkes they are aligned with.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” Kosta snarls, trying to wrench free. “I will set the Bratva on them. Kirill is itching for a new fight. I will marry this little slut the day after tomorrow in City Hall before that empire can properly mobilize. After that, I will lock her in my penthouse.” He crouches down and grabs my face. “And I willforcemeds down her throat to make her behave.”
“I will never behave for you.” I spit at him. I don’t cry. I won’t give them that satisfaction. “The only man I will kneel for is Rhys Quinlan.”
Kosta wipes the spit from his face and sucks it off his tongue with a smile. “Keep it up, hellcat. I will enjoypunishing you as my wife.”
My father shakes his head. “I’ll send the nurse to make sure she takes an extra dose of meds tonight.”
He and Kosta both leave me on the floor. The door shuts, and the lock engages with a soft click. From the outside. They locked me in!
I lie still on the scratchy carpet until I hear their voices fade down the corridor. Then I move.
My hands are shaking, but my mind sharpens with cold fury. They are not stuffing me full of meds.
I tug on my boots and coat with clumsy fingers, then open a window. The frozen winter air knifes through my lungs. Crap, it’s cold. I climb out one foot at a time, heart hammering. The roofline is slick with ice, and my boots immediately struggle to get a foothold. But just as I balanced to get from my apartment to Rhys’s, I waltz along the narrow ledge.
But halfway across, my foot slips. My stomach drops, and the stars above spin. I lose track of their position. Next, I’m falling. The impact below is a white-hot bite. The snow swallows me like a plush bed. Cold explodes through my body as my head cracks against something hard beneath the drift.
The world blurs, dimming around the edges of my eyesight.
And then there’s nothing at all.
Chapter 47
Rhys
I’m brought back to the guest house and shoved inside.
“You leave at first light,” a guard tells me, and struts away like all of this is perfectly normal.
Someone threw a few hefty logs in the stone fireplace and got a blaze going. Even with roaring flames behind the grate, it does nothing to thaw me or my rage.
Or soften my pain.
Pacing the length of this cottage’s main room, I notice the efforts they’ve taken to make it comfortable in here for me. Too comfortable. A fire, a bottle of my favorite whiskey on the kitchen counter, and the sheets on the bed are turned down like this is a five-star casino and I’m a high roller.
I know better.
This comfort isn’t necessarily a trick. It’s compensation for my troubles, as they see it. Black made it clear, he doesn’t want Quinlan Empire as an enemy. It’s Ares he has a problem with for ordering the hit on David Sinclair. Maybe he wants Lourdes for his fifth wife!
That complication for Ares is not my concern. Especially with the image of Fallon’s tear-stained face burned into my skull. The way her father spoke to her. About her. Like she was property, not his goddamn flesh and blood.
And then I made it worse by lying to him and to her.
I press the heels of my hands to my temples, grinding them there to stop the screaming in my head. The thought that she’s alone in that house, afraid and broken, while I’m out here, makes me sick.
A knock on the door cuts through the crackle of the fire, and I stop pacing. “Go the fuck away,” I yell.
But the knock comes again, more urgent. My breathcatches thinking maybe it’s Fallon. I jog across the room to crank open the door. “Fallon? Baby?”
A woman stands there, the swirl of falling snow behind her. Dark hair, full lips painted wine red, and a white fur coat held together by slender fingers with long, pointy nails.
Notmy Fallon.
David Sinclair’s whore.
