by Danielle Fox
Bound
by
Her
Danielle Fox
Copyright © 2013 Danielle Fox.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First edition: July, 2013.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-9576583-2-5
Cover art by: Torrie Cooney
Cover image: © istockphoto.com
ebook formatting by EBooks by Design
www.ebooksbydesign.co
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Chapter One
“I’ll get her to call you as soon as she wakes,” I promised as I escorted Samantha and Maia to the door.
As much as I knew Samantha’s fussing and constant nagging was all with good intent, I struggled to hide my irritation at her as I smiled as politely as I could manage. Samantha had insisted on taking Maia home for the day to give Emily some time to think straight without having a fragile three year old to take care of, for that I was grateful to her. Samantha wasn’t all bad, just a tad irritating most of the time. But, being Emily’s cousin and closest friend, I suppose she thought she had the right to interfere in every aspect of Emily’s life.
“Look after her, Julian,” Samantha warned, raising a single brow at me as if this was somehow going to make me feel threatened. I had to fight against the grin that was threatening to reveal my amusement at what I was assuming was her most intimidating glare.
“I will,” I assured her before bending to kiss Maia goodbye, and then swiftly closing the door after their exit.
Exhaling loudly, I made for the kitchen and searched through the small top cupboard on the far left side of the space for the box of painkillers that I knew were in there somewhere. I was usually quite tidy and organised, as far as men go, but this was one space that was crammed with shit that probably didn’t need to be there. In fact, shit that definitely didn’t need to be there, I realised as I pulled out what looked like an old and used Christmas napkin. No idea how that ended up in the junk cupboard.
The thought of Emily being in pain caused a twinge in my chest. It physically hurt when I imagined the pounding that would no doubt be attacking her injured head when she woke up, just as it had with my own. My wound wasn’t a deep one, but a lump underneath the gash seemed to have grown from nowhere overnight, and that hadn’t felt particularly pleasant when I had stood from the bed this morning, far too quickly. I began knocking the irrelevant items out of the cupboard and onto the counter in an attempt to find the painkillers as quickly as possible. With a bit of luck, I could get them to her before she had even managed to sit up.
An urgent knocking distracted me from the small squared box that my large fingers were struggling to open. Placing the tablets on the counter top, I hurried to the front door, eager for the banging to end before it woke Emily.
“Good morning, Mr Scott. We need to go over a few things with you,” a tall lanky looking male police officer stated.
“You’d better come in then.”
I led the two officers to the living area and invited them to sit with a simple gesture of the hand.
“Can you run us through last night’s events please, sir?”
“The whole night’s events, you mean, or just the part where a number of socially retarded delinquents attacked myself and my staff and then proceeded to burn my building down?” I tried to keep my face free of any expression as I spoke. This was easy, there was no reason for anyone to suspect any wrong doing but, of course, the police had already informed me of their findings in the club - my club, so there was now the small matter of confirming the facts of how this came about. This should be easy.
“Just the latter, please,” the lanky one replied. He must be the superior officer, I concluded, he was the talker. The slightly too rounded female hadn’t spoken a single word yet; she had simply nodded her head as a greeting as she passed me in the entrance.
“Well, I’m not sure where to start,” I began, “I was enjoying a quiet drink with my fiancée upstairs and left her alone whilst I went down to the bar to order champagne. While I was there, a severely intoxicated male, of whom I didn’t recognise as one of my members, sexually assaulted one of my female bar staff.”
“You haven’t seen this man before?” the lanky one rudely interrupted as the female scribbled on her tiny black notepad, her hand seemingly moving far too quickly to be writing anything of any sense.
“No, I haven’t, like I said!” I entwined my fingers together on my lap and pressed my palms firmly together, trying my damned hardest not to give in to the urge to ball them into fists. “Anyway, security were called and I escorted the individual outside whilst awaiting their arrival. Once outside I was greeted by a further four men who hadn’t turned up for a chat, let’s put it that way.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, if you shut the fuck up and stop interrupting my flow, I’ll tell you,” is what I wanted to say, but, of course I didn’t. I sighed heavily and leaned forwards, resting my elbows on my slightly parted thighs. “They were all very well sized, dressed in t-shirts with no jackets, in November? One of them was wielding a crow bar, or something of the like. And the intoxicated assaulter no longer appeared to be intoxicated as he lunged himself at me, shortly followed by the other four, I assume.”
“You assume?”
“Yes, I assume!” I snapped. “Only I was too busy trying to protect myself from numerous assaults to have a good look around me!” Did these people seriously get paid a decent wage for asking such mindless, idiotic questions?
“And where does Miss Natalie Fowler come in to this? I understand she was also assaulted in the brawl?”
“The brawl?” I repeated, actually shocked by the officer’s choice of words. “By that, I’m assuming you mean the attack? The completely unprovoked attack!” I inhaled deeply through my nostrils and released the breath heavily through my parted lips. Fucking prick!
“Sorry, the attack,” the rounded female finally spoke.
I turned my attention to her before speaking again. I liked her, she looked as if she was trying to be intimidating with her butch appearance and scraped back hair, holding a blank but stern expression, but she didn’t fool me. I could read women as easily as I could read a road map, and there was nothing menacing about this one. Her dark eyes were soft and kind, and almost sympathetic.
“Natalie followed me out and saw me being attacked. She tried to put herself between myself and my attacker and she got slapped hard across her face. By a grown fucking man!” I recognised the familiar pounding of my
pulse, inside my ears and hard against my chest, as I recalled the unwelcome image of my sister, my baby sister, being knocked to the ground as if she was nothing more than a tatty old rag doll.
“And what happened next?”
“My security team arrived and the men were escorted off the premises.”
“As simple as that?”
“Not quite as simple, but pretty much, yes,” I lied. Well, I wasn’t about to tell him that I had completely obliterated the man who had knocked Natalie to the floor before ordering the rest of my team to beat every one of the bastards to within an inch of their sorry lives.
“What about Miss Emily Braxton? Where does she fit into this?”
“I went back upstairs to tell her we were leaving and found her on the ground, bleeding heavily, with a man on top of her.” My short fingernails dug into the flesh of my palms as every inch of my body tightened, the disgusting image filling my head once more. Just as it had for the entire previous night as I lay in bed next to her, watching her sleep, unable to close my eyes without the sickening picture returning.
“He was on top of her, how?”
Was this fucking guy for real? Yet another idiotic question.
“How do you think, officer? He was trying to fucking rape her!” I snarled, unable to control the anger that seeped from my every pore. My fists clenched even tighter. I pushed these fists back into the security of my lap and propped an ankle up on the opposite knee to give them a little privacy from the accusing eyes of the dick head officer.
“I’m just trying to establish facts, sir, we can’t work on assumptions.”
“It wasn’t a fucking assumption! He had her pinned to the fucking floor with her skirt around her waist!” I roared, before quickly realising the volume of my voice and trying to restore it to its original state, before it woke Emily. “He was trying to tear off her underwear when I got to him, I’m pretty sure that’s an act of intended rape. Definitely not an assumption.”
I had known from the moment Emily told me about what Jay had done to her that I would kill him. I would find him, and I would kill him. But, as soon as I entered that room and saw his filthy hands on her, saw her struggling desperately to free herself as she cried, as I heard her scream out in pain as he struck her face, I knew in that instant he was dead. There was not a single doubt in that fact - he wouldn’t leave that room alive. I had warned Ryan already - when we saw the CCTV image of Jay in the club - what my plan was, if he were to turn up again. I just wasn’t expecting anyone else to be harmed in this plan. And I certainly wasn’t expecting Emily to witness a single part of it. I still couldn’t figure out why Emily had felt the need to lie about Jay. I had known before she saw the image on my laptop screen that it was in fact Jay in my club. I had done my research, and I knew his face like the back of my own hand, it was him alright. The way Emily had held her expression so taut and controlled as she saw him looking back at her, told me that she also knew it was him. So, why would she say it wasn’t?
“We will need to speak to Miss Braxton about that matter but, please, carry on.”
“That’s about it, really. Of course I pulled the leech off my fiancée and swung at him a few times, what man wouldn’t?”
“So, how did the fire start? We understand it started in the top room when yourself and the other we’re in there?”
“Yes, that’s right. I left him to leave,” I said, putting on my best poker face that never failed to convince anyone, “the next thing I know, he had pulled something out of his jacket, a bottle of some sort, I think, and held it to a candle. Then he threw it in my direction and the flames started. Must have been a petrol bomb, I suppose?”
“He threw it in your direction, you say?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“So, how did you manage to get out so quickly, yet he didn’t get out at all?” he asked with a sigh, his eyes narrowing as he studied my reaction carefully.
“What is this, a statement or a fucking interrogation? I have no idea how; I wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.”
“You didn’t think to check that he had gotten out before you left?”
I felt the air rush from my lungs as anger began to take over my every emotion. I closed my eyes and took a long breath as I tried to calm myself. When I opened them again, I knew they were burning with fury, I could feel it. I could feel the skin around them, tensed and crinkled. If looks could kill, I was confident that this complete dick would have crumpled to the floor in less than a second.
“He had just tried to rape my fiancée, and then thrown a petrol bomb at me. No, I absolutely didn’t give a fuck if he didn’t get out, if I’m being perfectly honest,” I sneered through my teeth.
The bedroom door slammed, startling me, and I twisted around in my seat to see a teary-eyed Emily standing in front of it. Fuck! How much of that had she just heard? Had I just forced her to relive her ordeal through my eyes? Had I succeeded in upsetting her, again?
“Emily, baby, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” I gushed as I leapt to my feet and strode quickly towards her.
She looked tired, drained. Dark circles surrounded her telling eyes. I had never seen such beautiful eyes. They were like marbles. The brightest of blue marbles that almost seemed to reflect the light as they danced around the room in front of her, scanning myself before switching to the two officers behind me.
“Miss Braxton, I assume? We need to ask a few questions regarding last night,” Dickhead announced as he stood from his seat on my sofa and approached the two of us.
“Okay,” was her only reply as she walked past me and seated herself opposite the female officer, tucking her feet up underneath her perfectly taut backside.
“I assume you are aware that we found a body in The Lounge,” he stated. His dark, narrowed eyes flicked briefly to mine before returning to Emily’s once more.
There was me thinking that he wasn’t working on assumptions, that’s two clearly stated ones in the last thirty seconds. Fucking hypocrite!
“No, I wasn’t aware of that.” Emily’s eyes widened and her petite forehead crinkled up in surprise. Her gaze shifted uncomfortably to me. As brief as her glance was, I read the uncertainty in her eyes. She had no idea what to say, and I silently cursed myself for not pre-warning her of the impending police visit. All she had to do was keep quiet, act oblivious and they’d go away, satisfied that what happened was indeed an act of violence from a sadistic fucker. That sadistic fucker not being myself.
I rounded the sofa and lowered myself gently next to her, placing my hand on her knee as an act of comfort to her - I hoped. Her leg trembled beneath my hand so I pressed more firmly, trying to calm the movement before one of the officers noticed and took her shaking as a sign that she was lying.
“We suspect the body to be that of Mr Jay Maguire. Do you know of him?”
I felt her body stiffen at my side at the sound of his name, and I swear, I could have throttled the bastard in front of me for making her feel like that, police uniform or not.
“I’m sure you’re fully aware that I know of him,” she replied sternly, although I could hear the ever-so-subtle shake in her voice that never failed to reveal her nerves.
“Who’s he?” I asked, trying desperately to make it clear to Emily that I apparently had no idea of who her attacker was.
Emily shot me a questioning glance before she turned her attention back to the officers.
“Would you prefer to talk in private, Miss Braxton?” the female asked, no doubt noticing her awkward expression.
“No, it’s fine. So, what do you need from me?”
“Just your account of last night’s events. We’re trying to figure out how it came to be that Mr Maguire ended up dead, in your fiancés club.”
“He’s already told you. I was waiting for Julian to return and Jay just walked in. He practically threw me across the room and I hit my head, hard. I was aware of him on top of me, pinning me to the floor and clutc
hing at my underwear.” She trailed off and rubbed at her eye with her fingertips. “I couldn’t breathe; he was smothering me with his mouth. I protested but he wouldn’t stop.”
Bastard! I briefly wished I could kill him all over again. That I could smash my fist into his twisted face again and again. But I couldn’t. Unless I was going to start breaking into morgues now, which I was certain wouldn’t go down too well with the law.
I glanced at Emily and saw a single tear slowly rolling down her pale cheek. I lifted my hand to wipe it away with the pad of my thumb. “Do you really need to know all of this right now? You’re upsetting her.”
“I’m afraid we do, Mr Scott. In your own time, Miss Braxton. What happened after Mr Scott came in?”
I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t sit there and watch her hurting so badly, or listen to the events through her eyes - her terrified eyes. My chest ached unbearably. It felt as though my heart was being crushed, squeezed tightly against my rib cage. My breathing became shallow, my throat tightening with every breath.
“I’ll make you some tea,” I whispered before marching out of the living area.
“Just as I’m sure he’s told you. I was aware of someone pulling Jay off me, and then I was taken from the room, I have no idea what happened between the pair of them,” I heard Emily explain as I spooned the sugar into a cup.
“Was Mr Scott aware of your background with Mr Maguire? Did he know who he was?”
Fucker! As soon as I left her side he was trying to pin it on me. My knuckles whitened under their forceful strain as I gripped at the edge of the counter, desperately trying to calm my anger as I counted each deliberate, slow breath.
“No, I haven’t told him anything of my past, he had no idea who he was. He reacted to what he saw in front of him, which was a drunken man trying to rape his fiancée.”
As soon as I had showed the officers out, I rushed to Emily’s side on the sofa and pulled her into my lap. Holding her close against my chest, I pressed a kiss against her forehead. Her slender frame fit perfectly against my broad chest. Her head rested against my shoulder before she raised it and pressed her delicate mouth against my neck. I involuntarily sucked in a sharp breath in response to her soft and warm contact, and I noted her increased blood flow as her cheeks reddened.
