XV: (Fifteen) (War of Roses Book 1) Read online

  “Bring her.”

  Those two words snap me back to the present. Unfamiliar hands grab my shoulders, cinching the soft silk of my blouse. Briar’s blouse. She dressed me in it lovingly, remarking on how the color complemented my eyes. Our eyes, the same shade of light blue.

  “Move!”

  A tug on my shoulders hauls me upright and unseen hands shove me forward. Every sound echoes. Four footsteps, including mine. The biggest man takes the lead, I suspect, his gait rhythmic against creaking floorboards.

  In contrast, the men holding me dig their nails into my skin and scurry toward an unknown destination. A rusty squeal seconds later conjures the image of an old door opening, and the footsteps trail off.

  “Move!”

  Something rams into my side and I stagger for balance until my cheek strikes a hard surface. It’s warm. Human.

  “Get her on the bed.”

  Those harsh hands return to my shoulders to fulfill the command.

  “Sit her on the edge…like that. Cut her hands free.”

  A metallic hiss sends a shiver down my spine—then pain! Fire courses through my fingertips as circulation returns to them. I long to flex each one, but I know better. Instead, I keep them close, settling them onto my lap.

  These men kept my skirt on, at least. Her skirt. The hem comes down past my knees, and I’ve never been so grateful for four inches of satin. It will buy me more time.

  Ten hours. I’ve already lasted ten minutes. You can do this, the courageous part of my soul whispers. But then that voice dies in the wake of two more words uttered in that guttural cadence.

  “Leave us.”

  The two smaller men scatter in the direction we entered—but it’s all wrong. No. No. I don’t smell Robert, and he’d never leave me alone with another man. Not his lackey. Not even his own father.

  Most alarming of all, this man certainly is no Winthorp. His voice isn’t familiar and this house doesn’t smell like any property on the familial grounds.

  They took me from the motorcade…

  Fire sears through my skull as memories return in snatches. The clearest one is of her face. Briar. So beautiful, dominated by that pure, sweet smile. “I want you there,” she insisted. “We’re sisters, after all.”

  Sisters. I cherished how that word sounded in her soft cadence, tucking that moment inside myself like one of the trinkets hidden in my secret cache. Love was more precious than a button or rock I’d stolen away. Those four words meant everything. I want you there.

  But the memory of that moment serves as a weak antidote to the terror paralyzing me now. More bits and pieces come back.

  I was in the car—the beautiful limousine for once, instead of one of the servant vans that took up the rear. For part of the way, I was even sitting beside her while she braided my hair. “We look alike now,” she wistfully remarked, beaming at our reflections in the polished windows.

  We look alike. The phrase haunts me. As if I could ever look like Briar, with her lighter ringlets and her creamy skin. The only feature we truly share is our eyes. Our mother’s eyes. Large, round, and blue. In every other respect, she takes after her father, with a beautiful aristocratic nose and a graceful neck. Every Winthorp possesses the same subtle characteristics—markings of the blood, they like to claim. Good blood. Blue blood.

  I take after my father, whoever he is.

  Briar loves to tout our tentative resemblance anyway—especially to her benefit. I am the one the maid saw sneaking out back two summers ago. I am the one who scurried out of the room of that visiting businessman one winter.

  And now…

  We look alike.

  “Take off the blindfold.” That voice…

  I swallow hard, uneasy. Robert has found a new monster to play with. Someone who shares his flair for the dramatic. But where is he? My tormentor always relishes this part of the game. How he enjoys savoring my fear as I try to piece together where I am. Admittedly, it wasn’t this hard before; he never strays too far from the property.

  His favorite lairs are the boathouse, or the deserted crypt, or the east wing. I could always hear the bluebirds chirping throughout the grounds, no matter which corner of the estate he deemed my chosen cell.

  My ears strain, searching for that faint, familiar song. This time of year, they’re nearly deafening, able to be heard in even the farthest reaches of Winthorp Manor.

  Two seconds. Three.

  I hear nothing.

  “Take off the blindfold.”

  The harsh rasp of syllables steals my breath away. I know anger on Robert. On Robert Sr. Even on Briar. They stutter. They shout. They scream.

  None of them ever exude their impatience to the point where I can sense it in the air. Or taste it: copper on my tongue. This man isn’t a Winthorp.

  The realization coaxes my body into action. My sore fingers finally contort, trembling after what must have been hours of captivity. Whoever tied my blindfold snagged bits of my hair in the process and every tug on the knot at the base of my neck rips tiny strands loose from my scalp—comparable to my pathetic hopes being ripped from underneath me one by one.

  I don’t hear the bluebirds.

  I can’t smell Robert’s favorite cologne.

  When I finally get the knot loosened enough to uncover my eyes…

  I see hell.

  Mother used to say it was beautiful, forsaking the teachings of the local priest. “Hell is a rose,” she used to murmur, her gaze turned inward, wistful and distant. “A flawless one, with all the life sucked out of it. The thorns have become knives. Its leaves have swallowed up the stalk. It’s grotesque. It’s deadly. But never forget that, underneath the violence, it’s still beautiful.”

  He is beautiful. Or he was once. Blond hair draws my attention first—a sun-kissed gold in places, darkened with age in others. It’s been clawed back from his face into a ponytail longer than mine was before Briar trimmed it. His eyes are that dangerous color between blood and brown. Like a flame, they catch the light filtering in through a sloppily boarded-up window beside him. His face is angular. Chiseled. Stone. Every feature is sculpted to convey just one emotion: determination. The way an owl might watch the mice scurrying underfoot in the stables. Or the way Robert used to look at me.

  The way the devil looks, I presume, as if he has all the time in the world. More than ten hours.

  An eternity to torture me.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Say your name.” As the stranger issues the command, he lowers his eyes to fully take me in, and the coldness in them unsettles my every nerve. “Your name.”

  It should be a simple question with an even simpler answer. I’m Ellen. Just Ellen. I work as a maid in the Winthorp household—on paper. But papers can be forged, identities erased. Or mistaken.

  I can’t get Briar’s last words to me out of my head: We look alike.

  Wherever I am, I don’t think she’s here with me. This room must have been a bedroom once. Behind the man stands a rickety dresser, lopsided with age and disuse. Hanging on the wall above it is a mirror caked with dust. Only the hint of my reflection is visible, but the woman staring back at me is a stranger. Her brown hair is neatly coifed, half coiled into a braid and the rest cascading down her shoulders. Her blouse is silk, and—though it isn’t visible from this angle—her burgundy skirt is satin. Her shoes are worth more than a Winthorp servant earns in a year. Her lips are a soft shade of pink.

  “We look alike,” Briar told me shortly before leaving the limo and taking another car to the airport. “I need to make a detour,” she said. “We’ll meet up later. I’m going to make sure you have the best time in London! You’ll see.”

  Only London has never felt farther away. My chest has never felt so tight. This room is airless—I’m suffocating. For all her indifference to me, Briar has never played along in one of Robert’s games before.

  “I won’t ask you again, Little One.” The man strokes fingers caked with mud across my cheek, and I fli
nch. There’s no gentleness in his touch. No malice, either. “Say your name.”

  “My name is…” My voice fails me as my gaze returns to the mirror and I finally identify the woman staring back at me. “My name is Briar Winthorp.”

  The man doesn’t laugh at the admission. He doesn’t squint as if to make out the pauper hiding behind these fancy clothes. He nods once, his eyes narrowing. “Your father has enemies, Little One.”

  I inhale sharply as more memories trickle back.

  I was in the motorcade…

  “I have to run an errand,” Briar said. She left, only the procession continued as if she were still there beside me. The security remained, as did the four-man bodyguard detail lurking on either side of the main procession.

  We look alike.

  “Look at me,” the stranger snaps, demanding my attention once more. He’s closer now, but I still have to strain to take him in fully. He’s tall, taller than Robert. Gray fatigues and a dark jacket shroud most of his frame. Muscle shapes him down to his massive hands. He cracks the knuckles on each finger one by one, aware of me watching. He’s no businessman from the Winthorp industries. No, he’s something else, a title that takes my brain nearly a minute to define. Soldier. Mercenary. Murderer.

  “Your fiancé as well,” he continues. “He has enemies. Can you tell me why that may be?”

  Fiancé? He must mean Daniel. Briar’s fiancé, a man who, to his own merit, has amassed a power almost comparable to Robert Winthorp Sr.’s.

  “Answer me, Little One.” The stranger strokes my hair this time, snagging loose strands as he does.

  Robert used to touch me the same way—back when he still relished the thrill of hunting me down like cattle. Lately, he’s been lazier in his endeavors, cornering me without even half the cunning he once employed. But that brief respite has made me weak against this method.

  It’s remarkable how much can be conveyed through someone’s fingertips. Robert’s are soft and maliciously manicured, and they bruised when he struck me too hard. This man’s skin is callused and rough. From work. From brutality. From abuse. Scars mark him down to the base of his wrists, like the kind Briar disguises with long sleeves and silk blouses.

  “I will warn you now.” The stroking touch becomes a manacle of fingers latching onto my skull and forcing my chin upright. “Speak. Obey.”

  “He…he’s a businessman, Daniel is,” I stammer as his thumb grazes my lower lip, capturing each word.

  “A businessman?” The stranger laughs. “That is one way to put it, Little One.”

  One way to put it. Criminal is another—a word only the most brazen of journalists dare to use in their headlines.

  “What…what are you going to do to me?” I croak.

  “Do to you?” His gaze roves downward, settling over the high neckline of Briar’s blouse. Once again, he resembles Robert.

  I know that look. You can survive ten hours, a part of me whispers. But it’s cold comfort—this time, I’m lying.

  “I am going to punish you, Little One,” the man tells me, his tone a grating hiss. “Your father. Your lover. They took something from me.”

  Without warning, I’m shoved backward, my fall broken by the rickety mattress.

  “I will take something from them.”

  The soles of his boots strike the floor in tandem. Closer. Closer. I can’t make his expression out from this angle—just a circle of blackness where his face should be. His body doesn’t disguise his intentions, however. His hands move to his belt. Leather kisses leather with a telltale hiss, followed by the hum of a zipper being undone.

  Zzrrrippp…

  I’ve heard that sound a million times before, yet it never ceases to steal my breath away.

  “You will suffer,” the man tells me, deftly undoing the front of his slacks, revealing a sliver of gray boxers underneath. “Unless…” He pauses, hovering on the edge of a question. Something vital. My answer will determine the next phase of this nightmare. “Unless you tell me what I need to know.”

  I nod. It’s instinctive: a desperate jerking of my chin even though I know that salvation is a lie. I’m stalling, and he’s merely prolonging this part of the game. Robert’s decided to use a stand-in tonight—that has to be it. Cuckholding me wouldn’t be the worst thing he’s ever done.

  I can survive. I can…

  “Answer me, Little One. Believe me when I say that I do not want to hurt you.” The stranger’s voice deepens on the edge of a dangerous note. It’s soft, almost like a whisper. Like a plea: Don’t fuck with me. “Where is your father running to?”

  My father? Oh. I blink, fighting to remember. Briar’s father. Where is he running?

  “I-I…”

  Wait. Robert wouldn’t write this script. There’s no begging. No salacious words he likes to force me to say. No stripping me bare to give me a “taste” of what being his favorite saves me from.

  And never, ever did he mention Robert Sr.

  I read once that fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself. In that case, the mere mention of his father must terrify Robert. He even avoids being called his full name. Bobby, he prefers his minions to whimper.

  “I-I…”

  “You do not have long to answer.” The stranger cocks his head as if catching wind of a far-off noise. A slow smile shapes his mouth, chilling me to my very core. The hands at his waistband shift, and every deliberate movement makes my chest feel tighter, my heart beat faster.

  “I don’t know,” I insist. “I…I don’t know what you mean—”

  Too late. The rotting floorboards broadcast his advance. My throat is too dry—I can’t speak. I can’t scream. I can only watch his hand descend before it snatches at the hem of Briar’s skirt. The garment was made especially for her from a designer in France—and he tears it right down the middle.

  Weak, I flex my fingers at my sides. Not to cover myself, but to brace. Towering above me on a mass of sculpted muscle, this man will crush me. Experience warns me to arch my back as much as I dare, giving my lungs enough leverage to fill before he does.

  Instead… The brunt of his palm grazes my upper thigh and my thoughts dissipate. Ice shoots through my veins, rendering me frozen. It’s not his touch that alarms me. It’s his expression. There’s no lust. No fire. No thrill at the game.

  Just anger smoldering in the thumb he draws across my right knee.

  To tease?

  No. To feel: the ropey length of a scar. One of the many Robert left behind.

  My neck aches as I crane it in order to watch in horror as his touch continues to roam. He rakes his hands over them all. The cuts. The bruises. Some healed. Some not. He takes one of his fingers, long and callused, and traces a fresher cut along my hip. My belly roils at the slow, deliberate appraisal, and I can’t swallow a gasp. Robert gropes me. He…studies me?

  When I look up at his face, I’m forced to reckon with the realization laid bare over the harsh features. Within an instant, the hard veneer of a soldier is stripped away, revealing something much more terrifying: disgust. Then rage.

  Tilting his head back, he seeks my gaze out and devours me whole. “Who the hell are you?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Run! It’s a new impulse, something I’ve never felt around Robert. He’d never let me escape, but this man…

  He waits until I’ve rolled onto my side, flailing for the edge of the mattress, before he lunges, seizing a handful of my hair. One hard yank rips me from the bed, forcing me to my knees. I land hard, tasting blood but too stunned to scream.

  “Who?”

  The grated question rings out unanswered. With a hiss of irritation, he finds the truth himself by bunching the sleeves of my blouse and pulling. His first attempt knocks me forward and only my palms save my face from a nasty meeting with the floor. His second yank strips me bare. I’m not wearing a bra and instinct drives me to hunch over, which displays my back to the creature pacing behind me.

  My face may have fooled
him, but my body does not. Years of abuse betray me. Hissing his rage, the soldier is forced to admit the ruse.

  “Fuck. Vanya!” The door opens seconds later and two men race inside, stopping just short of where I’m kneeling.

  “Look,” their leader commands, his tone casual. As if this really were a game. Hide-and-seek, maybe? Only he’s lost the round. “Does she look like an heiress to you?”

  Air lashes my back as he moves. Seconds later, his fingers are in my hair and he tugs my head back, forcing my gaze to the ceiling. My eyelids flutter, shrouding the shape of him hovering on the outskirts of my vision.

  “Her face is convincing,” he declares begrudgingly. “But this bitch is no Winthorp. I know the mark of Robert’s whores when I see them. She was a decoy.”

  He shoves me aside and I wind up facedown, tasting dust. This bitch is no Winthorp. Some small part of me snickers at that. It’s like knowing a secret no one gives a damn about. A tiny, little detail that makes his statement a lie.

  Not that it matters.

  “Get out.” He’s not talking to me. No… This man and I are not through with our game.

  His boot strikes my hip, knocking me onto my side. Blurred vision gives me a few seconds of reprieve. And even though I can’t see his face, my imagination has no trouble conjuring an expression to match his coarse tone.

  Eyes like fire and a fearsome scowl.

  “I would have shown mercy to Briar,” he admits while his shadow looms above, lacking all definition. “She did not ask for this. But you…”

  He stoops to clutch my shoulders and drag me up to his level. I taste vodka on his breath, which perfumes the air as his features come back into focus.

  “You. How much money did he offer you, hmm? What was your soul worth?”

  My soul? Sluggishly, my brain pieces together what he means. Bought. He thinks Robert Sr. bought me to be his daughter’s double. He thinks the man would be that kind. That generous.

  The truth is much crueler. You don’t buy a sacrifice.

  “Whatever it was,” the man continues, “I hope every penny was worth the pain you will suffer in her place.” His nails graze my skull as he lets me go and stands. “Tell me what you know and I’ll consider making your death quick.”