Page 3 of The Beast's Captive Bride
I'm left alone again, the lamp still clutched in my hands, my heart beating too fast. I should be screaming, beating on the door, trying to escape. Instead, I find myself sitting slowly on the edge of the bed, my mind spinning with confusion.
My captor is a stranger with familiar eyes. A monster with a beautiful face. A man who hates my father enough to steal me away, but who looks at me like... like I'm something that hurts to see.
And the strangest part? Despite everything—the fear, the confusion, the danger—something deep inside me whispers that I've been waiting for him my whole life.
two
. . .
Cullen
I slamthe door behind me and press my forehead against the cold stone wall, breathing like I've run ten miles uphill. My hands are shaking. My hands, which have broken men twice my size, which have built empires from nothing, which never, ever betray weakness—they're trembling like leaves in a storm because a slip of a girl with honey-blonde hair looked at me and asked my name. Pathetic. Fifteen years planning this revenge, and I'm coming apart at the first hurdle.
"Get it together, Blackwood," I mutter, pushing away from the wall.
The key to her room feels heavy in my pocket, a tangible reminder of what I've done. What I'm doing. Kidnapping. Imprisonment. The kind of crimes that end with men like me in concrete cells for decades. But justice requires sacrifice, and the legal system failed me long ago.
I stride down the hallway, my footsteps echoing off stone walls that have stood for over a century. This place—thismausoleum of a mansion deep in the northern woods—has been my sanctuary since everything fell apart. Since Richard Lockhart took everything from me and left me for dead.
And now his precious eighteen-year-old daughter is in my house, wearing clothes I provided, breathing air I allow her to breathe.
It should feel like victory. Instead, there's a knot in my chest I can't identify.
I make my way to my study, the one room in this massive house that feels truly mine. Dark paneling, shelves of books I've actually read, a desk that belonged to my grandfather. I pour three fingers of whiskey into a crystal tumbler and knock it back in one burning swallow.
Her face swims in my vision. Those wide blue eyes. That stubborn lift of her chin when she asked if I was going to hurt her.
I wasn't prepared for her to look like that—so delicate but with steel underneath. In all my planning, she was just a pawn. A means to an end. Richard Lockhart's beloved only child, his Achilles' heel. In the photographs I'd collected, she was pretty in that bland, privileged way of girls who've never known hardship. Easy to objectify. Easy to use for my purposes.
But in person...
"Fuck." I slam the tumbler down so hard it cracks. I don't care.
The plan was simple. Take the girl. Make Lockhart suffer the way I suffered. Force him to sign over what he stole from me. Make him watch as I dismantled his empire brick by brick, the way he dismantled mine. Then, maybe, let his daughter go—damaged but alive, the way I was left damaged but alive that night fifteen years ago.
My hand rises unconsciously to the scar on my neck. Fifteen years, and I can still feel the bite of the knife, still taste thecopper of my own blood, still hear Richard Lockhart's voice: "Nothing personal, Cullen. Just business."
Just business. As if betraying a partner, stealing everything I'd built, and leaving me to bleed out in an alley was nothing more than a footnote in a quarterly report.
I grab the bottle and pour another drink, ignoring the crack spreading through the tumbler. The whiskey burns, but it doesn't touch the cold at my core. Nothing has, not for fifteen years. Not until I saw her standing there with that ridiculous lamp raised like she planned to fight me.
It was supposed to be simple. I took precautions—had her room prepared with everything she might need, made sure the chloroform dose was carefully measured, carried her myself rather than trust any of my men to touch her. I even found that modest nightgown for her to wear, directing my housekeeper to change her while I waited outside the door.
Everything meticulously planned, except for my own reaction to her.
I expected screaming. Hysteria. Begging. I was prepared for all of that, had rehearsed my cold responses, my intimidation tactics.
I wasn't prepared for her to look at me like she'd been expecting me all her life.
The intercom on my desk buzzes, pulling me from my thoughts. My security chief, checking in.
"Sir, the perimeter is secure. No activity from Lockhart's men yet."
"He doesn't know she's missing," I say, voice rough from the whiskey. "It'll be morning before her father realizes she didn't come home."
And then the real game begins. The panicked calls. The police reports. The dawning horror as he realizes who might have taken his precious girl and why.
"Should we prepare for company tomorrow, then?"
