Page 47 of Submit
I have to turn to watch her leave, and seeing Millie standing there in the doorway, dressed in the red coat I bought at the airport, does things to my insides that I wish it didn’t. But the sight of tears in her eyes, the green gems rimmed in red and wet with moisture, brings down the walls I built as I drove last night.
I can’t speak, that lump is in my throat again. All I can do is wait for her to come to me, her steps slow and deliberate as if I may reach out and strike her. But when I don’t, she leans on my front, putting her head on my chest as she cries, violently.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t have a choice. He said he’d kill her if I didn’t do what he said.” She sobs, her hands coming up into fists that she hides her face with. “He’s had her for months. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You could have told me.” I squeak out past the boulder in my trachea. “I would have helped.”
“Would have?”
“Bunny, why? Why did he involve me?”
“Because he saw me looking at you in Kelly’s.”
“Seriously? That’s it? Just because you looked at me?”
“Well, I may have accidentally screamed your name one night when we were there. The night you were caning that beautiful red head, and he made me watch then threatened to do it to me.”
“He did cane you.”
“Yes. But not how you did her. You did it with care, with an almost loving touch. He’s barbaric and horrible. You’re not the same.”
“So he’s punishing me because you want a real dom and not a sadist. Great. The fucker.” I sigh, kissing her crown, finally wrapping my arms around her. “But I still don’t get it. Why take your sister?”
“It forced me to be with him. It’s always been his obsession with me. I refused his advances, he scared me…”
“And rightly so.”
“I said no, so many times that I stopped going to the club on the nights I knew he was there. But he wanted me so bad he took my sister just to trap me. Then when I slipped and said your name, he got so mad.”
“Tell me what he did.”
“He beat me bloody. Threatened to kill you and her. He showed me pictures of her all tied up and bruised. Adrian, I haven’t seen her in months, and I haven’t heard him mention her in weeks except to warn me I’ll end up like her. I don’t even know if she’s still alive or if he’s killed her.”
Her sobs are turning to wails that could rival a banshee with how she cries so hard. Her knees are buckling, and her body sways, making me hold her to me harder, pressing her face deeper into my chest that hurts already with each breath.
It's breaking my heart and angering me at the same time. No one deserves this, to be forced into a relationship with a sadist, and possible killer just because he wants her. It’s rape, sex forced by coercion, and it’s fucking wrong.
“I’ll get her back. And I’m going to kill him. But you need to go back to him. He needs to think that I’m out of the picture and that he’s won.”
“I don’t want to go.” She cries loudly, grabbing my shirt with her little fists, holding on tightly. “Please don’t make me.”
Her sobs are breaking me more and more every second. But instead of feeling like I’m crumbling like I was before, the breaking is my shell chipping away, the shell that surrounds and hides the monster within me. The monster that’s only been out to play a few times but is now clawing his way back out.
Tyler is going to meet the monster, and I’m ready to salivate at the thought of him dying violently at my hands for harming the woman I love.
Yes love.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Sleeping alone at the hotel is miserable. I want Millie in my arms just like she was in Miami, and the thought of her in Tyler’s grasp is killing me. Sending her back to him is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it needed to happen. He needs to think that I’ve written her off. I almost had, but when she explained what happened, and when I took her back in my arms, I just couldn’t. As obsessed as Tyler is with her, so am I, and I will win. I always do.
Daniel is covering for me in the office, and Ashley is routing all important calls to my cell, so I can focus solely on the task at hand. Getting Millie’s sister, Angela, back and ending the reign of terror Tyler has caused them both.
Surveillance is the first step, watching and learning his patterns and routines. Following him, knowing where he goes and who he goes to. I want to know every time the asshole sneezes and shits, and I want to know where he does it.
I could hire a private investigator, but that would only involve someone else and leave a trail of evidence for pre-meditation. So stalking him is my new hobby.
