Total pages in book: 227
Estimated words: 220940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1105(@200wpm)___ 884(@250wpm)___ 736(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 220940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1105(@200wpm)___ 884(@250wpm)___ 736(@300wpm)
“I don’t want this,” I whisper.
“You don’t want me?”
“Yes, I want you,” I say, remaining in his neck, the smell of him, his heat, soothing me. “I don’t want everyone put at risk because of me. I love you all too much. Give me back to him.” I feel Brad’s body solidify. His chest expands.
“Didn’t you hear him, Pearl? Virginity intact. So even if that was an option and, to be crystal fucking clear, it really fucking isn’t, it’s not happening.” I close my eyes. “I took your virginity, Pearl.” He pushes his face into my hair, and I hear a collection of quiet gasps behind me.
“I gave it to you,” I grate. “He’ll never know.”
Brad pulls me free of his body and cups my cheeks, getting his face close to mine. “What did I tell you?”
“That you love me?” I ask as he looks into my eyes, his thumbs stroking across my cheeks.
“I do love you, but not that.” He pushes his mouth to my forehead and breathes onto my skin. “I told you no one else would ever touch you again.”
Such glorious words. I want to believe them. A huge part of me knows that if there is anyone in this world who can keep me safe from that monster, it’s Brad. It’s these men. But at what cost? He’s taken Nolan. Blown up the spa. “If you run,” Brad says. “I’ll bring you back, Pearl.” He looks up over my head, and I stare at his rough neck. “Take her back to the house.”
“And what about you? What are you doing?”
“Take her.”
Urgency pumps into my blood. “No.” I don’t like this. “What are you going to do?” Brad releases me, and I feel so pathetic without him holding me up. Holding me at all.
“Pearl, come on,” Beau says, encouraging me away. Short of clinging to Brad’s suit and begging him, I have no choice but to go. “It’s going to be okay.”
How can she say that? How? I search Brad’s face as I’m guided back to the car. It’s no longer soft. There’s no love.
Only hate.
And I am the most terrified I have ever been.
I drop into the back of the car and stare at the head rest.
Pumpkin.
* * *
I feel his rough hand rest over my nape, holding me, as I stare at my mother’s coffin being lowered into the ground. Birds tweet. The leaves on the trees rustle in the breeze. It’s a sunny day, whereas it feels like it should be raining. Dark. Desolate.
Like how I feel.
Why did she do it? How could she leave me?
“Don’t be sad, pumpkin,” he says, his cigar smoke making clouds before me. “She’s with your daddy now.”
“And what about me?” I ask, almost scared to know. For three years, Mother protected me from him. She was the barrier between him and me.
And now she’s gone.
“Now,” he says, directing me away from her grave by my nape, “I look after you.”
I reach for my neck, feeling at Mother’s necklace, hating that this is all I have left of her.
55
ROSE
* * *
Esther is on the steps when we pull through the gates, waiting, Doc by her side. I get out and unclip Maggie’s seat, passing it to Tank. Esther meets him at the bottom of the steps and takes over, and Tank returns to help Fury with Ella.
I’m reeling. The information I have is sketchy, but I am completely reeling. A virgin. She was a virgin. Was being the operative word here because Brad took her virginity. But more shocking than that, he loves her. And he didn’t mind who heard him say it.
This is serious. Not just Brad and Pearl’s situation, but the whole situation. My question is, though, who does she belong to? Because that’s what this is. Ownership. Someone, the man who called all of our cells, owns her. Controls her. And he wants her back. And if my obliterated spa and Nolan’s kidnapping is anything to go by, he’ll do anything. I shudder. She’s been here for over six months. Praying to never be found. Or found out. Did her naïveté put us all in danger?
Pearl gets out of the other side of the car, her face vacant, her movements robotic, as if she’s going through the motions. I glance at Beau, just as she glances at me. I can see we’re both thinking the same thing and, frankly, we have a nerve to think it. But Pearl has got to pull herself together. Curling up into a ball of anxiety isn’t an option in our world.
I go to her, slipping an arm around her shoulders. “I know you probably won’t believe me when I tell you this,” I say gently, “but it will be okay.”
She looks at me, and I can see clearly that I’m right. She doesn’t believe it. “What if they don’t find Nolan?” she asks. I have no answer for that. I just hope for everyone’s sake they do, because I would not want to be in Brad’s way. “It will be because of me.”