by Riley Ashby
“Isn’t that attitude what got you here in the first place?”
“Excuse me?” I glared at him. “Conrad Schaf got me here. I am not responsible for any of this.”
“Of course.” He held up his hands, placating. “I just mean, grudges are what got this business started. I know you feel like you have every right to seek retribution for what you’re going through. But at some point, someone has to end this.”
“And you think it should be me?”
“I think it could be.”
I closed my eyes, trying to focus on my breathing. I wanted to throw myself across the table and throttle him. The beating I would surely get if I tried it would probably be worth it if I could get in even one hit. Since Meyer wasn’t here for me to take out my aggression on, he was next best thing.
I hid my unsteady hands in my lap. “This family is focused on destroying mine. I’m really not interested in burying the hatchet.”
He sighed deeply. “Meyer and Conrad don’t share the same grudge.”
What does that mean? “Even if that were true, what does it matter? Their endgame is the same.”
“I think it matters quite a bit.”
I didn’t want to hear any more cop-outs. I picked up the fork and started eating; once the first bite of food hit my lips, I couldn’t stop. I shoveled the food into my mouth like I was starving, which I realized wasn’t too far off base. It had been just about twenty-four hours since I had last eaten.
“Where are my parents?” My voice was stiff like granite. I bit down too hard on my fork.
“Somewhere they won’t do any more damage.”
“Are they safe?”
He glanced up from his phone. “They will be if they can follow instructions.”
I tensed. “Is that a threat?”
He looked at me seriously. “It’s a promise.”
I was wound so tight, tied up in barbed wire cutting me deeper every time I breathed.
“If someone hurt my parents …”
“They were intact when they left last night. If they behave, they won’t suffer.” He reached across the table and tapped my hand twice before I jerked away. “The same goes for you.”
“I’m suffering just by being here!” I stuck more food in my mouth to avoid talking more. My appetite was disappearing rapidly, but I needed food in my stomach. “You could help me. Right now. Put me in a car and get me out of here.”
“If Meyer didn’t track you down, Conrad would. And then he’d kill you.”
I was going to be sick. My fork clattered against my plate, and I put my head in my hands.
“Madeline.” Joshua ducked his head down to peer at me. “Stay in control.”
My breath came too short for me to get any oxygen. I gasped deeper, but I still couldn’t fill my lungs. The chair jerked underneath me as Joshua pulled me away from the table and then pushed my head down between my legs, running one large palm over my back.
“Just focus on your breathing.”
“I’m going to die here.”
“You don’t know that.”
God, he couldn’t even promise me I wasn’t going to get murdered.
“Just kill me now, Joshua, and get it over with.”
“Meyer would destroy me.”
I rocked back and forth in the chair, shrugging off Joshua’s hand. My skin felt like it was boiling off my body, and my tongue was too big for my mouth.
I screamed.
I screamed out all my frustration of the past two weeks, the horrific treatment I’d suffered at the hands of grown men who took advantage of my physical weakness to inflict physical punishment that may have left permanent damage on my body.
I screamed because I allowed myself to think I could have carved out any kind of happiness with the man who held me.
I screamed at myself for being so naïve and stupid, and now it was going to kill me.
*
I thought I would be restricted, imprisoned, but I was pretty much allowed to do whatever I wanted. Joshua still prevented me from opening a few doors, but I had nearly as much freedom as I’d had before, despite the fact that I tried my hardest to make Joshua’s life difficult—breaking plates, locking doors, demanding different food than what was placed in front of me. He took it all with stoic acceptance, cleaning my messes and making me whatever I demanded to eat. But when he threatened to take the doors off their hinges, I had to relent. I got what I needed anyway.
I passed the week watching TV, reading, and walking the horse, all the while with Joshua at my side. He was never so far away that I couldn’t reach out and touch him if I wanted to. Not that I wanted to. I wanted to shove an ice pick into his skull. I wondered if I could trick him into walking behind Her Majesty and spook her into kicking him. But he remained the same respectful distance from the mare that Meyer had.
During the weeks I had been held, the weather had started to turn. Green leaves became tipped with orange and red, seeping color into my forested prison. In my mind, though, everything felt so gray. I needed comfort and found myself leaning on Her Majesty. She let me sag against her body, nudging my hands with her silky snout when she sensed I was slipping too far into my own head.
Unsure whether my outdoor access would remain when Meyer returned, I stayed outside as much as possible. Joshua insisted on sunscreen after I woke up one morning red and tender, but otherwise, he left me alone.
I put Her Majesty on a lead every day, first walking her through the fenced-in pasture and later through more of the open land, along well-worn game trails and on the shore of a lake hidden within the trees. I started packing food for myself to take on these walks, pointedly ignoring Joshua. He never complained, only insisting we returned to the house when his cell phone battery ran low. I wondered how many details of my day were being communicated to Meyer. Did he even care what I was doing? Or did he just expect me to be waiting for him to return, healthy and happy to welcome him home?
On what I assumed must be Friday—I had made no real effort to keep track of the days—I was eating lunch by the lake. Her Majesty was several yards away, grazing contentedly on the untamed grass. The water that day was like glass, absolutely still except for when a box turtle would raise its head for a breath before submerging once more. The air vibrated with birdsong. It should have been calming.
“I’d like to be alone,” I said, controlling my temper as a body settled down on the blanket. When I received no response, I looked up to find Meyer next to me. I concealed my surprise by taking too big a bite of my sandwich. He was dressed in his suit as though he had come straight from his office. The day was cool, but we were seated in the sun, and he took off his jacket and loosened his tie. There was the shadow of a bruise on his jaw, and I smiled at the thought that my father might have been able to land a blow on him after all.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was choked.
“For what?” I asked between bites, not caring how rude I seemed. “For kidnapping me? Assaulting me? Tearing me away from my parents?”
“For leaving you. After.”
Of all the things he’d done to me, that was what he felt bad about? “I don’t care what you do, Meyer.” I threw the crusts of my bread into the water. Tiny turtle mouths appeared after a few moments to steal them below the surface. “I don’t think there is any possible way you could hurt me any more than you already have. In fact, you did me a favor with your disappearing act. I got to be on my own, more or less, without you breathing down my neck. At least Joshua has never come onto me. And I realized how fucking delusional I’ve been by thinking something was happening between you and me.”
I expected some retort, a reminder that I had nearly kissed him the last time we saw each other, but there was nothing. He leaned forward on his knees, running a hand through his hair. I wouldn’t turn to look at him full on, but I could see from the corner of my eye that he looked thin. Drained. Faded.
“Can you trust that I’m doing what I think is best?”
Was he being serious? How could he think I would ever trust him? “How fucking stupid do you think I am?” I finally had the nerve to face him. It hadn’t taken long for him to anger me at all. “Nothing you have done since I came here has been in my interest. I can’t even imagine what you think you’ve done that you think I should be grateful for.” I stood, yanking at the blanket so he had to scramble to his feet. I shoved it into the tote bag I had found hidden at the back of a closet, not bothering to fold it. “You know, you did yourself a favor by taking off. Because for three full days, I thought I was going to slit your throat the next time I saw you.” I looked up at him, the bag on my shoulder. It wasn’t a trick of the light—his eyes were drawn, bloodshot. He looked sick. “In fact, I still might. You should tie me up again if you want to be safe.” I walked past him, bumping him with my shoulder as Her Majesty ambled back in my direction. “And let’s not even talk about how Joshua drugged me.”
“You were hysterical.” He had to hustle to catch me, giving the horse a wide berth. “I was afraid you would hurt yourself.”
“If you didn’t want me to get hurt, you should have let me leave with my parents. Or taken me home the night of your birthday. Or not let your psychotic father kidnap me in the first place.”
He reached out for my arm, and I exploded.
“Never touch me again!”
He released me as though I had burned him. “This isn’t the way I wanted things to be, either.”
I pulled at my hair. “I can’t believe this. You’re supposed to be some tough as nails businessman. You literally deal in death. But you have let your father turn you into a sniveling coward because of a grudge against his former slave.”
His face hardened. “Never say that again.”
“You don’t get to give me orders anymore.” I walked as quickly as I could toward the barn, wondering if I could sleep in the stall with Her Majesty. I had no desire to follow Meyer back to his bedroom, or anywhere else, ever again. I wouldn’t be drawn in again by his beauty. “I can’t believe how stupid I was. That I thought we could turn this around.”
“We still can, Mads.”
“Don’t call me that!”
Her Majesty jolted at my raised voice, and Meyer took a few steps further away.
“Never call me that again. My parents call me that. People who love me call me that. You can call me Madeline or nothing at all. I’d prefer the latter.”
I let Her Majesty off the lead in the pasture and began setting out food. There had been someone coming by to perform the daily stable maintenance tasks, and she didn’t need to eat, but I couldn’t face going into the house with him yet. At least he gave me space when I was near her.
“Things could be different. We could make this work.” He was pleading, begging. What happened to him when he was gone? When did he decide to grow a heart, show me empathy? I looked at him in the full sunlight now that we were out of the trees. He must not have gotten any sun where he went; his already pale skin looked nearly translucent. The blue of his eyes looked muted somehow, like the color of stirred-up water.
Another time, I would have felt hope at his words. I would have let the stars in my eyes blind me to the danger I was in, to the irreparable damage being done to my family, in the hope that Meyer and I could both come out of this alive. But everything had changed. In his pain, I only saw opportunities to wound. To weaken. I wanted to revel in his misery, but I couldn’t, not yet. It wasn’t enough.
He was leaning against the fence, watching me. Feeling bold, I walked right over to him, shrugging off the hand he put on my shoulder.
“Let me make this clear right now. I hate you, Meyer Schaf. Your father tried to destroy my mother, and now you’re destroying me. I will do everything I can to tear down your entire empire for as long as I am alive. I will stop at nothing to dismantle your relationships with whatever friends you think you have. And I will uncover every dirty secret your father is hiding and expose it to the world for everyone to see.”
He stepped back. I could almost feel the fury and conviction pouring off me like fog off the ocean, spurred forward by an incoming tide, a surging swell that would rip trees out of the ground by their roots and shake buildings from their foundations. I was done with being kind, or forgiving, or trying to see the best in this cesspool of a situation. There was no silver lining unless it was that I would come out of this more powerful than I had ever known myself to be.
I didn’t care about anything. I was fearless. More than that, I was fearsome.
I had become the one to dread.
“That is the truth of our relationship, Meyer. We are enemies. Until the day I die.”
*
Something had changed in him while he was gone, but I couldn’t be bothered finding out what. He was different. Gentler. The orders came with less authority and more suggestion as if he really cared about my opinion. I knew better now.
Before I went to bed, I wrapped my hand tightly around the shard of porcelain from the plate I’d broken earlier in the week. The one Joshua had cleaned up without a word of complaint. It was sharp enough, I knew that. I’d tested it on myself; the angry red line running across my calf was proof.
I knew Meyer still wanted me. He’d told me time and time again. So I would offer myself to him.
And when he came for me, I’d take his life.
Meyer
I didn’t know why I expected anything other than her unrelenting anger. When I spoke with Joshua before I left to stay at the office for the week, I was standing by the bed helplessly as he showed me her ragged fingernails and the bruises along her hands and arms from pounding on the door. I could barely breathe myself for the pain encircling my torso. My jaw ached as if broken. All I could focus on, however, was the woman before me, the fury still evident on her face despite a level of sedatives in her system that was enough to knock out someone twice her size. I reached forward to try to smooth away a wrinkle on her forehead, leaving behind a smear of my blood.
“Shit,” I muttered and picked up a damp washcloth. Did she know that the way she felt when she woke up on my floor the day after my birthday was how I woke up every day for years? Aching and bruised from head to toe, unable to think past the pain?
Probably not.
I didn’t want her to.
“Here’s some rubbing alcohol,” Joshua said, and I took it from him before kneeling at the bedside, placing one of her small hands in mine and dabbing at the cuts on her fingers with a soaked cotton ball. She hummed a little and tried to pull her hand away, but her muscles were too disconnected from her brain to do much. When the cuts were clean, I clipped away the frayed edges of her fingernails, then smoothed a moisturizing ointment over her hands and up her wrists. The process was rote memory by now. I just wasn’t used to doing it on another person.
“You shouldn’t let her see you like this. It will undermine your authority.”
“I know that,” I snapped, rising to my feet and wiping my hands on a towel. “I just … she’s my responsibility.”
Joshua nodded solemnly. “That she is.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, wincing at the pain it caused before dropping my hand. “He doesn’t come here. Throw her over your shoulder and camp in the woods if you need to.”
Sighing, I took once last look at her before leaving the bedroom with Joshua on my heels. “I’ll be downtown. Just tell her I went somewhere on business. I’ll be back in a week, maybe less.”
“You should take the time to heal. You’re no use to her incapacitated.”
I resisted the urge to hit him.
“Keep her alive until I get back.”
Grabbing my bag, I ran to the garage and pulled out too fast, kicking up dirt and rocks with my back wheels as I sped toward the exit. As I passed the main house, Anita leaned against the gate, smiling and waving at me as I blew past her onto the open road.
Now that I was back and felt the brunt of her ire for myself, I thought I hadn’t felt h
alf as powerless as I did the day I drove away from her.
*
She ate dinner with me, but only because I commanded it. She was silent the entire time, clattering silverware and chewing with her mouth open. I didn’t say a word and just let her be angry. She’d get over it eventually.
She went to bed right after dinner, excusing herself as I poured pure whiskey into my glass and drained half of it in one go. I turned to watch her walk up the stairs, admiring the way she swung her ass as if trying to taunt me. She probably was. But she turned the corner, and a moment later, a door slammed, and I was on my own again. Joshua watched me worriedly from the doorway, but every time he tried to sit with me, I shooed him away. I wasn’t interested in conversation with him. I just wanted to forget I’d ever given her the phone and go back to the barn when we were moments away from connecting on a level deeper than I’d ever dared myself to hope was possible. Whatever chances of that happening were, they were gone now. I didn’t doubt she’d never forgive me.
It was after midnight by the time I stumbled to my bedroom, falling through the door onto the carpet. It didn’t seem so scratchy to me; what was she always going on about? I pushed myself to my feet slowly, willing the liquid in my stomach to stay there and not spill all over the floor, and looked at the woman who was doing more to destroy me than my father ever could.
She was lying in my bed, her bare back turned toward me, and one arm underneath her head, hand stretched underneath her pillow. In my drunken state, it didn’t occur to me how strange this was; that she would profess to hate me in the afternoon and then turn up nearly naked in my bed at night. I leaned against the doorframe and took another drink of my whiskey, admiring the play of moonlight across her skin. There was a scar across the right side of her back, between her spine and her shoulder blade. What had caused it? An injury? Surgery?
