My clothes are torn from me, the treasured garb she forced on me now a dirty inconvenience. Skin bare andcold, I curl into a ball and shiver. But seconds later, I’m dragged into the shower stall, and then the water comes.
Scalding.
Roxy scrapes a brush across my flesh with soap that smells like chemicals. Harsh bristles scrape at my skin like she’s trying to erase who I really am. I bite down hard to stop the screaming as my skin turns red and raw. If they are to believe I’m out of it, then I cannot react.
I’m dried off, face painted, and my hair slicked into a punishing bun. The mirror shows a stranger who is not me. A me I never want to be. Not the woman Rhys wants.
Roxy dresses me in a cream silk dress and those damn shackle pearls. I remain mute and pliant as I’m led down the stairs unsteadily on six-inch stiletto heels. I feel like a dog on a leash.
Outside, the property is covered in glistening snow. But three black SUVs idle in the courtyard, pumping their exhaust and making everything smell bad.
Kosta steps out from one of them and greets my father. “You think that Quinlan dog will cause trouble?”
My father snorts. “He’s happy to be rid of her. She’s been a nuisance to him. He said so himself.”
I don’t react, I just stare and pretend to be out of it. That will only last so long when a team actually does their job at the next dosing.
Roxy stands on the steps, saying goodbye to my father, who gets into the lead car. She’s not coming. This isn’t a wedding. It’s a sale. And my father is only coming to properly sign me over.
Kosta folds me into the back of the last SUV, and the door slams shut with a heavy thud. He sits next to me but growls into his phone, “Make sure Irina is available later.”
Irina is his mistress. I have a shred of hope that means he’ll leave me to rot somewhere in his penthouse. Then I will try to escape.
Violet said Rhys is coming to rescue me. But he’s not. If I’m to get out of this, I have to rescue myself.
Westchester slips by my window. Snow-dusted trees on the side of the road melt into highway signs above the long, gray, slushy stretch back toward Manhattan.
The trip to ruin my life.
I lean my forehead on the cold glass, watching other cars blur past us. The sky above is gray. Gray road, gray everything. Even the snow looks dirty. Kosta’s cologne chokes the stuffy car interior, and every breath I inhale leaves me nauseated.
There’s nothing I can do. Beyond the skyline, Manhattan waits with an open jaw where a judge will declare me Kosta’s property.
I practically pass out from the drone of the tires until a thunderingwhoosh whoosh whooshfills the air all around us.
“What’s that noise?” Kosta yells to the driver.
Chapter 52
Rhys
If I doubted what kind of impact I made on the O’Rourkes in the short time I was a guard for Eoghan, I was dead wrong.
The blacktop soars beneath us. Rotors scream overhead as Kieran O’Rourke’s helicopter banks hard, and we tilt with it as it slices through the frozen Hudson Valley air. I grip the harness straps, my heart slamming against my ribs.
“Fallon,” I whisper to the convoy of black SUVs racing down the highway below us. Sleek, identical, and in perfect formation. “I’m coming.”
The only problem is, I don’t know which one Fallon is in, and that part is killing me.
“Heat signatures are scrambled,” Balor O’Rourke shouts over the headset from his command center back in Astoria. “They’ve got blockers running.”
Of course they do.
Lachlan,theLachlan O’Rourke, stands braced in the open side door like a damn war lord, wind flapping the tail of his long black cashmere coat.
His voice cuts sharply through the comms. “The Bratva loves decoys and sacrifices. There is no doubt that KostaVolkovis in charge down there. He would have insisted on being in the last car. And your woman will be with him.”
My jaw tightens. “How do you know that?”
