My eyes widen in horror at what he’s suggesting. “Your solution is to drag me home and rape me until I get pregnant?”
Jesus fucking Christ.
I thought Andrew was a few screws short of a full crayon box, but I didn’t realize he was an actual psychopath. He discusses sexually assaulting and impregnating me so casually that I shudder to think what else he has planned for me.
He crosses his arms and begins tapping the toe of one of his brown Italian leather oxfords. “That was always the plan, birdie. What do you think happened during Marcus’s and Wren’s ‘honeymoon’?”
“I don’t know.”
Wren came home from their honeymoon different. Changed. Hollow. It was like all the life and passion and joy were sucked right out of her.
She refused to ever talk to me about their honeymoon. After seeing how distressed she was each time I brought it up, I eventually stopped asking.
I knew nothing good happened that week, but I’m starting to realize I didn’t understand anywhere near the full extent of it.
“That week was all about breaking your pathetic older sister,” he sneers. “Marcus was impressed she lasted a whole week. But, in the end, she was as feeble as all women are. I highly doubt it’ll take me more than a few days to break you. You always were weaker than Wren.”
His comments about “breaking” me are lost amid the growing horror of what I’m realizing must’ve happened to Wren.
“What do you mean, breaking her?” I ask carefully, needing to hear him say it.
He sighs, like he can’t believe I’m this dense. “Marcus took Wren by force over and over again for an entire week until that little fire burning in her was snuffed out. He told me how satisfying it was to watch her struggle at first, then realize she couldn’t make it stop and begin crying out for that boy Cooper before eventually lying there silently and taking it.”
My heart shatters into a million pieces, hearing what happened to Wren and the fact that none of us were there to stop it.
I already knew Marcus forced himself onto her throughout their marriage, but I didn’t realize how often it happened at first. Or how cold and calculated it was.
The devastation I feel for what my big sister went through quickly turns to an all-consuming anger. My vision turns red and hazy, and all I can think about is making the people pay who did this to my sister.
“You fucking monster!” I scream as I launch myself at him. I don’t have a plan, other than to rip Andrew apart piece by piece. Then I’ll find his older brother and do the same to him.
I crash into Andrew with more force than he expected as he stumbles back a couple of steps. I rake my nails down his face and punch what I hope is his solar plexus with my other hand.
But that’s as far as I get before Andrew grabs me by the throat and rips me off him. He whirls us around before slamming me into the wall he was just in front of, hard enough to dent the drywall.
I’m too dazed from the impact and his hand crushing my throat, making it hard to breathe, to do anything more than blink up at him.
The haze could also have something to do with the fact that my concussion is only barely healed. I’m pretty sure theimpact of my skull crashing into the wall reinjured my already recovering brain.
If I can’t get my thoughts together, I’m going to be in serious trouble. I’m not strong like Wren was. I know I won’t survive going back and being broken further by him.
If Andrew manages to overpower me and take me home, it’s over for me.
CHAPTER 26
LARK
“Uh, uh, uh, birdie,” he taunts with an infuriating smirk. “Not so fast. You know you could never overpower me. Maybe if you used your logic instead of the emotions that rule women, you’d have come up with a better plan than this.”
I don’t know what his deal is with thinking women are inferior to him. It’s weird and uncomfortable.
It also makes me wonder how the hell I missed this in the year we were dating and the few months of our engagement.
At one point in time, I thought I loved Andrew. He was handsome, charming, the perfect gentleman, and everything I wanted in a future husband.
Nothing raised red flags about him until the night he discovered I wasn’t a virgin.
And the most embarrassing part of this is that I probably would’ve gone back to him if Wren hadn’t died that night. I would’ve brushed his almost strangling me to death under the rug. And still married the man who planned to break me, violate me, and probably kill me when I was no longer useful.
