I knew I would pay for this later, that the bruising on my knuckles would be unpleasant at best. But I didn’t care.
As I pummeled his face, keeping his body pinned down with my legs, only one thing came back to my mind.
Her.Kiera’s face, over and over. With each crack of this asshole's bones, a clearer picture of her came back to me. Not the adult woman who was occupying my house.
No, the way she looked that night at just twelve. Soft, sweet, innocent. Before they tried to ruin her.
And then my father’s face came with the next punch. That sinister smile of his. The night I confronted him about what he’d done. How his lips curled into pride at my violence despite it spoiling his deal.
I should have seenhim.The one that did it to her. Tried. Fuck I couldn’t even remember how far it went before I found them.
But it’s not him. No, it’s her that keeps coming back to my mind and the bastard responsible for all of it.
Under my fists, my mark fell limp.
Still breathing.
I wouldn’t kill him, not tonight.
I wanted him conscious for what came next.
Grabbing his shirt, I hauled him off the ground and closer to my face. Close enough to spit on his bloodied carnage. “I’ll be watching from the shadows. Everywhere you go. You’ll never be certain that I’m not around every corner. Waiting to destroy you the second you step out of line.”
Through his broken teeth and blood-filed mouth, the man sobbed out, “What the fuck?”
Dropping his shirt, I let his head slam into the concrete before getting off of him and leaving the dark alley behind me.
But as I straightened my shirt, fixing the bloodied cuffs of my button down, my heart fell into my stomach.
She was breaking something in me, something I’d painstakingly locked away. And if I couldn’t keep this demon inside of me at bay, we’d both have hell to pay.
26
KIERA
I stared into the mini-fridge,trying to ignore the skin prickling at the nape of my neck. It was a nice addition to the room — one of many my captors had made over the past few days — but despite the luxury, it just didn’t match up to the selection down in the kitchen.
I shut the door with a sigh, pulling on an old flannel as I headed for the door. It was hard not to feel guilty that they’d hauled this thing all the way up here just for me to choose the food downstairs. But at least it had been funny to watch them haul it.
The lifting wasn’t a challenge — they hardly broke a sweat on the main landing. It was the sharp angles of these old English hallways that tripped them up. Watching Leo and Spencer try to squeeze this thing around a corner was like watching two clowns turning a freighter.
Though I doubted most clowns were built like marble statues.
The mini fridge was mostly useful for the times that I was locked up. But no matter how many books and plush throws andcute candles they added to my room, we all knew that it was a glorified holding cell. A temporary one at that.
Absent-mindedly, I swung the door open. But was abruptly stopped in my tracks at the two bodies in front of my door.
Hands full with moving boxes and trash bags, Spencer and Leo smiled up at me.
Leo’s voice was raspy. “Morning, Princess.”
“Delivery.” Spencer winked.
All I could do was step to the side, my face scrunched up in confusion as I watched them step inside. After they returned with another load of boxes, I shook my head. “What the fuck is all of this?”
“Take a look.” Leo smirked as she gestured to the pile of boxes forming next to the nearly unused closet.
Slower, I moved toward it. I tugged at the knot on the garbage bags, ripping the plastic open as my jaw dropped. Sticking my hand inside, I rifled through the bag. “Where the fuck? How the fuck?”
