Page 26 of Cruel Love
Next to me, on the couch, were Willow’s journals. Some were open,the words she’d written displayed in her elegant handwriting. Others were closed, and strewn across the couch.
I rubbed my throbbing head, my gaze landing on the empty bottle ofwhiskey I’d plowed through. As I stared at it, I tried to recall the events of the day before.
I remembered being furious at discovering a vase was missing fromthe drawing room - a room I rarely used - confirming Willow’s accountthatmy staff had stolen from me.
NotthatI thought my mouse had been lying.
The vase wasn’t the most expensive antique I owned, but it was afamily heirloom which made it fucking priceless.
I had phoned Jackson, telling him to find out what he couldabout the two men known as Butch and Mack, and to see if he could locate where the fuckers had taken the vase so I could get it back.
Jackson got straight onto it, but with nothing to do but wait for hisresults, and for reasons I’d never know, I’d picked up one of Willow’s journals and flicked through it. Before I knew it, hours had passed, and I had become absorbed in her writing, fascinated with the words on the page.
Willow may not have spoken much, but her writing did. With everypage I turned, every journal I read through, I was giving an insight into her mind and her emotions.
She poured her heart and soul into every character she created, regardless of whether it was the heroine in a fantasy world who had to find the courage to defeat a dragon, or if it was through the eyes of a dog, walking the streets to find its forever home.
Journal after journal was filled with different stories, and Iremembered picking up one and finding a story about a girl who was being abused by her uncle after she’d lost her parents in a car crash.
It was atthatpointthatI hit the bottle, something about the story waspainfully familiar. I read through it in hopes it would give me a clue as to what happened to Willow before she arrived at Peartree House.
I wracked my brain, trying to remember how the story ended, but the whiskey must havekicked in atthatpoint because what happened next was a complete blank, aside from an image of Willow in her bedroom with my hand wrapped around her throat.
I tried to recollect if I’d gone to her room in the middle of the night and fucked her, but if I had, I didn’t remember.
My gaze landed on the closed journal next to me, and I reached out topick it up, intent on reminding myself what had happened in the rest of her story. But as my hand hovered over it, I paused, an alarm bell ringing, telling methatWillow was messing with my head.
She was getting under my skin where she had no right to be, and thisweird obsession to find out what had happened to her before she arrived at Peartree House was getting uncontrollable.
I had bigger fish to fry, namely two staff members who had theaudacity to steal from me, along with a looming deadline to get my wife pregnant so my cunt of a cousin didn’t take everything from right under my nose.
Standing abruptly, I stretched my arms above my head, my spinecracking from where I’d slept in an awkward position, and made a vow to myselfthatI wasn’t going to think about Willow’s past anymore.
“Well?”I snapped, storming into my office where Jackson waswaiting for me, and taking the chair behind my desk.
I’d been in the foulest of moods for the last two days which I blamedon recent developments with my staff believing they could help themselves to my property rather than what wasreallyat the heart of my mood.
My wife.
Shereallywas a mouse, scurrying through my veins, and any timeI tried to ignore her, she burrowed deeper into me.
Butch and Mack had been dealt with, they were no longer in myemploy. I didn’t kill the fuckers, they didn’t deserve to die for a crime of theft, but it was safe to say their lives were ruined for what they’d done.
Butch was paralyzed from the shoulders down and would spend therest of his life in misery. As for Mack, he was in a coma,thatif he woke up from, he’d be feeding through a straw for the rest of his life.
I hoped lessons had been learned.
Of course, Butch and Mack weren’t the only ones to bear the brunt ofmy anger. Willow was an outlet for the rage growing inside me with every passing day, butthatonly added to my mood. The more I fucked her, the more Icraved being inside her. There was something addictive about her cunt, and the way she barely moved or uttered a word when I pounded into her, no matter how hard or rough I was.
Still, I kept my promise to not delve any further into her past, sothatwas something.
“When are you going to introduce me properly to your wife?”Jacksonsaid, amusement in his tone.
I scowled at him.“I’m not.”
“You can’t keep her locked up forever,”he said, slumping back in hischair.
Why he was so keen to see her again was beyond me. He’d mether when he collected her from Peartree House, what more did he want?
