Three Years(12)
He looks pleased. “I’ve got something to ask you,” he says. “And if you give me the right answer, baby girl, you can have as much of the good stuff as your twisted little heart desires.”
I eye him warily. “I don’t believe anything you say, you monster.”
He chuckles. “I might be a monster, baby girl, but if I’m a monster, then so are you. Do you think we’re born like this? A knife in one hand, a gun in the other? It’s life, baby girl. Life happened to me just as surely as it happened to you.”
“You should have protected me then,” I respond bitterly, “instead of taking everything I ever loved.”
He regards me with those deep brown eyes. He doesn’t speak for a long time, and the silence scares me more than any words he could say to me.
“And yet,” he says in that gravelly voice, “you were going to take my son from me. My lover.”
“I’m not my father,” I whisper. “You can’t get to him by hurting me like this.”
He stares at me like I’m the dumbest person ever born. “I’m not trying to get to him anymore,” he says sharply. “He’s fucking dead. He got what he deserved for trying to steal my family from me. Now, this here between you and me? This is personal. It became personal when you tricked your lying ass into my bed and murdered my sons.”
I give him the most withering glare I can muster. “They deserved worse,” I say quietly, “for the things they did to me. The things you told them to do. Monsters, all of you, and I’m going to wipe the rest of you out if it kills me to do it.”
I don’t know how, but the desire to make them suffer—especially Dornan—burns inside me along with the last of the drugs he injected into me. Now that I’m a little more lucid, my brain begins to connect the dots and I guess at what he’s done to me - given me a downer, then an upper, confusing the hell out of my body in the process. It’s a form of torture I’ve read about, but never experienced.
Until now.
Dornan taps his foot impatiently, as he sits perched on the edge of the bed in front of me. “Where’s my money, Julie?”
I roll my eyes. “That shit again? I told you, I.Don’t.Know.”
He purses his lips and I remember how he sucked my blood from me just days ago. The thought makes me shiver in my seat.
“John Portland wasn’t a fucking idiot,” he says, standing and running a hand through his hair. “And neither was that fucking whore, Ana. It’s got to be somewhere.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I keep telling you, I don’t know where it is, Dornan. Do you think I’d be here if I did?”
He snaps his gaze to me, and I can see he’s seething mad. Oh, shit.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I do. I’ve replayed every fucking moment we’ve spent together before I figured out you were John’s bastard, back to get your vengeance on me for whatever you think I did to you.”
My eyes fill with tears. “What do you mean, what I think you did to me?”
He doesn’t respond, just sets his jaw stubbornly.
I blink and a tear falls on my cheek, so salty it stings my skin.
“You were supposed to protect me,” I whisper, almost choking on my own words. I don’t want to show my weakness, I can’t stand it, but these damn drugs make my tongue loose and my eyes water. “And you took me from my mother. You pushed me into a ring of animals and told them to attack. You let them take that from me.” I swallow back tears as I finish my sentence. “And you watched.”
His face stays impassive but I see his fist tighten as his dark eyes remain fixed on me. I wonder what he’s thinking about. I remember the story he told me, of the day I was born, how he was the first person to ever hold me. I weep as I wonder if he’ll be the last one to hold me, too.
Or if he’ll make me die alone.
“How could you watch me come into this world,” I whisper, “and then take my world away from me?”
He stares at his shoes, dark leather dress shoes fit for a funeral. I imagine him kicking me to death with them. It’s something he’d likely take great pleasure in.
He ignores me as I gaze up at him, the most human I think I’ve ever seen him. The mask is slipping, too much death and destruction seeping into every facet of his existence. It’s the first time I’ve ever really seen him look vulnerable. Sure, there was that lapse he had after Chad’s funeral, but not like this. He’s him, and I’m me, and we’re locked in this hell together until one of us cashes out or dies.
He busies himself with the vials of drugs and I watch, unable to tear my eyes away.