Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
He laughed. “I’m well aware of that, but don’t you see, my dear Henri? While I enjoy your forced obedience, it’s nothing like true submission. That strength inside you? That violence? It turns me on…for now. I enjoy the hunt, and I enjoy the thrill, but there will come a time when your stubbornness will grow tiresome. I am not you, mon ami. I do not enjoy a jewel to withhold their true feelings or harbour hatred toward me. I don’t want a fight every time I want a fuck. I want to feel the shattering of your soul. So…consider this your first warning.”
Grabbing me around the nape, he pulled my face toward his crotch. “Kiss me under duress tonight, but soon, you will suck me because it pleases you to please me. You will moan as I fuck you because nothing else will exist in your mind apart from how best you can serve me.”
Letting me go, giving me back control where every cell begged to grab a fork and jab it as far as I could in his bowels, he spread his hands and winked at his tenting trousers. “I’m waiting.”
Rachel sucked in a gasp at the table.
Ily cried out on stage.
Even Peter grunted in misery.
There was no end to this.
No one coming.
No help on the horizon.
Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to keep behaving.
Eventually, Victor would kill Ily to break me.
Eventually, we would all die anyway.
But today, she was alive.
And I had no choice.
Forgive me, little nightmare.
Don’t watch.
I beg you…don’t watch.
With hands that didn’t shake and a soul that turned into snow and sleet, I unbuttoned the trousers of the man I hated most in the world. I unzipped the monster I would one day murder. And I pulled out the erection of a dead man.
Ily’s sob echoed in my ears as I bent over his lap—
“Behave, Henri…” Victor purred. “My one and only warning.”
I pictured Ily being hurt because of me.
I pictured her beautiful breasts hacked off her gorgeous body and slapped onto a plate because of me.
I pictured her dying because of me.
And I shut down the final pieces, the true pieces, the last good and true pieces…
…and kissed him.
Chapter Eight
………………………….
Q
“EH, MAÎTRE?”
I stiffened as I stepped over the threshold of my home. “What is it, Suzette?” Wiping my hands with the damp towel Franco had given me to clean up with, I hoped she wouldn’t notice the pink bloodstains.
Not my blood.
Blood of the men who’d tried to take my son.
Three men were left. Imprisoned in the abattoir at the back of my estate for the past few weeks, slowly giving me information.
That didn’t include the eleven men I’d already dispatched.
They were rotting in a canal somewhere.
In pieces.
Glancing at the blood beneath my nails and the bruises on my knuckles, my housekeeper nodded with comradery and held out the phone. “A call for you. The number is blocked.”
My heart fisted as fury poured through me. The last phone call I’d received from a blocked number was the reason all of this fucking mess began in the first place.
I should’ve killed him the moment he appeared on my doorstep.
He was the reason my wife barely let me out of her sight, and my son had grown up far faster than I’d wanted. Tess had slaughtered two of the men who’d abducted Lino before I could stop her. The darkness in her returned with a vengeance. Whatever her kidnappers made her do when she was stolen lurked behind her grey-blue eyes, and it fucked me off that all her healing, all her happiness, had unravelled the moment evil tried to harm us again.
At least this time, I’d been ready.
We’d won.
But I still didn’t have the man responsible.
Henri fucking Ward.
“Is it him?” I balled the dirty towel and bared my teeth. “That cocksucker of a brother who’s responsible for Lino’s abduction?”
“It doesn’t sound like him.” Suzette pulled back the phone. “I’ll tell whoever it is that you’re not—”
Snatching the receiver from her, I snarled, “What the hell do you want?”
Some man inhaled sharply. “Is that Mercer? The man related to Henri Mercer?”
If I could slaughter someone just by speaking to them, I would slaughter this bastard for ever linking that name to me. “He’s not a Mercer. He’s fucking dead.”
“Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve been on the line for too long. Just…Henri—”
“Where is he? Tell me so I can—”
“He’s gone too far,” the man whispered. “We can’t stand by and let him continue—”
“What’s he done now? Who’s he hurt? Tell me, and I’ll—”
“Henri mentioned you tracked him by cufflinks.”
“They’re useless. He’s in an untraceable—”
“Check again.”
The line went dead.
Chapter Nine
………………………….
Ily
“NO. STOP. LEAVE HIM ALONE!”
I screamed as Victor laughed and tossed Henri onto the table exactly like Henri had tossed me the night of the treasure hunt. Crockery went flying. Glass went shattering. Rachel dashed out of the way of falling cutlery, and Victor merely grinned.