Theirs To Take(24)

Gabriel turned away, rubbing his hand over his mouth. He took a deep breath in before turning his gaze back to the bound girl who whimpered quietly at the pole, her bottom already marked with thick, red welts. “Fuck.” He handed the strap over to Syn and would have walked away, but Eva turned then to meet Gabriel’s gaze.

“They’re looking for me. If you know who I am then you know they’ll find me, Arthur will find me. He won’t stop.” She began to cry and wiped her face against her arm.

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Eva,” Syn said, trying to end this before it began. Gabriel wasn’t in a good place. He never lost his cool, not since what had happened to Laney. Eva was poking a bear she did not want to fuck with.

“He will. He loves me.”

Gabriel stopped and took two steps back to stand directly in front of her. “No, honey.” There was no warmth in the endearing term Gabriel used, even when he gently pushed the hair from her face. “He’s the one who put you on that truck to be sold like an animal.” His tone was angry, but his anger was misdirected. Gabriel must have known it too. He had to.

“That’s not true,” she said, her voice small.

“You don’t know what your fiancé is capable of,” Gabriel said.

“It’s not true. You’re lying. You’re the liar!” she said more loudly.

“Enough, Gabriel!”

Gabriel shrugged Syn’s hand from his shoulder, but remained silent, his eyes boring into the girl.

“Go, let me finish this.” Syn watched Eva’s face, her expression confused, hurt.

“It’s very true and the sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be,” Gabriel continued.

“I said enough!” Syn said loudly enough to make Gabriel stop, to make him look at him instead of at Eva. “She doesn’t deserve that.” Then, so only Gabriel could hear: “She’s innocent, like Laney was.”

Gabriel glared at his brother, the wound of Laney’s hopeless predicament as if still bleeding, still raw, still burning in his eyes. Tightening his lips, he glanced once more at Eva who stared at them from over her shoulder, her eyes widening. Without another word, he walked away.#p#分页标题#e#

Syn watched him, letting him go, shaking his head. He missed Laney too, missed the Laney he remembered, but there was a difference between himself and Gabriel. Gabriel carried the weight of what happened to her like a noose around his neck. As the eldest of the three, he’d always blamed himself for ever letting Laney get involved with drugs. By the time they’d found out how far gone she had been, it had been too late to save her. But Gabriel needed to remember that she was Syn’s sister too. He loved her, felt her loss just as much as Gabriel did. Syn had just become more successful at shifting his focus, at funneling that anger, that hate.

He turned to the girl now bound to the stake and found her eyes on him, watching everything, seeing everything. Gallaston’s sins did not belong to Eva. He would punish her for lying now, but he would not punish her for what was not hers.

“Face forward, let’s finish this. I’ll count.”

She stared at him for a long moment, but turned to face forward.

Syn whipped her. He whipped her through her pleas, through her whimpers and screams, covering the flesh of her ass and thighs in angry crimson welts, delivering every one of the thirty his brother had promised the girl, taking her right to the edge but not beyond. Finally, it was done, and he handed the strap to a waiting guard, wiping the sweat from his forehead, turning to find Gabriel watching from behind the window of the RV, his expression closed.

“It’s over,” he said to Eva, collecting his belt from around her waist and looping it through his pants.

She whimpered quietly, hanging by her wrists, her weight supported by her restraints.

“I’ll get you some water,” he said, walking toward the RV.

“Wait.”

He stopped, but didn’t turn back.

“What he said, it’s not true. It’s not, is it?”

The last part of her sentence ended in a sob and he had the feeling she knew or at least suspected the truth, even if she couldn’t yet face it.

He looked over his shoulder at her but couldn’t bring himself to answer. He wouldn’t lie. As much as truth could wound, Syn told the truth. Always. But this wasn’t the time. Bidders would be arriving for the auction shortly. Once that was over and they could return home, then he would tell her. He would tell her all of it.

“I’ll get you that water.”





Chapter Nine