Vicious Scars, page 11
Gathering his strength, he lifted his head off the floor to look at her. A visual scan didn’t show any obvious wounds, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hurt or even that she wasn’t badly hurt. Internal injuries could be every bit as serious, often more so. “How bad?”
“Just pushed me around a little.” Although she said the words strongly, she wouldn’t meet his gaze, and he knew she was downplaying it.
“You have to get out of here.” Anger was providing him with a temporary burst of strength that he had to ride out as long as it lasted.
“Can’t.” Tallulah nodded at her ankle, and he saw that she was cuffed to a pipe. A glance down his own body showed he was similarly restrained.
“Break my foot.”
“Huh?” The pixie’s brows turned down in the most adorable little frown.
Damn.
He was really messed up if he was thinking about how cute Tallulah was when all he should be focused on was a way to get her out.
“Break my foot,” he repeated, attempting to focus his mind when all it wanted to do was memorize every detail about his pixie so he could carry it with him as he crossed over to what lay beyond this life.
“I’m not breaking your foot! Are you insane? Why would I even do that?”
The truth was because he wasn’t making it out of there alive, and he wanted to give her every chance of surviving that he could. Adding a broken foot to the chest wound wasn’t going to slow him down any more than he already would be, and he was still sure he stood a chance at taking out at least a couple of O’Riley’s men and increasing the odds of his pixie escaping.
“Need to get you out of here, pixie.”
“That’s not the way,” she said gently. “I think the bullet might have glanced off your ribs. I don’t think you lost enough blood for it to have hit your heart or punctured a lung. I mean, I’m not a doctor or anything, but I think you’d be dead already if the wound was fatal. That means if I can convince them to let you go, that you’re just another bounty hunter, and since they already have me there’s no need to kill you, then I think you can make it.”
Stupid pixie.
Why did she even care?
Had she forgotten everything he’d done to her?
Could she really accept that he’d done it as part of his job and that he felt bad for scaring her?
“Sorry, pixie. For drugging you, kidnapping you, keeping you cuffed. Taunting you.”
“You did that to keep me distracted.” She gave him a wan smile and then determination filled her pretty face. “I won’t let you die for my choices.”
The stubborn set to her chin told him it was going to be hard to talk her out of it, but before he even had a chance, a door opened somewhere in the building, and multiple sets of footsteps moved toward them.
“I’ll do everything I can, I promise. Thanks for trying to save me,” Tallulah whispered before she stood bravely to face the man who wanted nothing more than to punish her for trying to bring him down.
Rage brewed inside him, and Tank assessed how he could best take out any of the men surrounding them. Even one increased the pixie’s odds.
That first strike hit him harder than it did his pixie.
Her small grunt of pain, contained for his benefit he knew, threw him back in time two decades.
Awakening at the sound of broken glass.
His mom rushing into the room, grabbing him and his brother.
Although there were enough bedrooms for them to have their own rooms, the two of them were only eleven months apart in age, Irish twins, and very close. They had insisted on sharing a room and loved their late-night talks after their parents tucked them in.
That night, their mom had ushered them into the walk-in closet, where there was a hidden panel that led to the attic.
She’d told them not to come out no matter what they heard.
Easier said than done.
Their parents’ insistence that their sons weren’t home had caused their final hours to be filled with pain.
Those muted screams still haunted him to this day.
Something he would never forget.
They’d endured horrible agony and then death to protect him and his brother.
A debt he could never repay.
A debt he’d been trying to pay back ever since.
But every life he saved didn’t bring them back.
And the one life he wanted to save the most he couldn’t.
He was going to lie here and listen to her die just like he had his parents.
If they didn’t kill him when they were done with Tallulah, then her final hours would haunt him as his parents’ did.
Pain continued to pulse through him, and he gave into the call of unconsciousness, unable to bear a single second more of listening to his sweet, big-hearted pixie suffer.
April 21st
3:27 A.M.
How much longer could she last?
One glance at the man lying still behind her, and she knew the answer.
As long as it took.
Whatever she had to endure, if it meant she might stand a chance at getting Gabriel through this alive, she’d take it.
Deferring to him while they were running through the forest for their lives was one thing, but this was no time for that alpha nonsense he’d tried to pull on her earlier. This might have started out as a job for him, but they’d become teammates now. That meant they had to rely on each other.
Right now, Gabriel was weak and vulnerable. He needed her, and she couldn’t let him down.
Stay strong.
Tillie knew she was going to have to say those words to herself over and over again, and in the end, they weren’t going to help her get away.
There was going to be no knight in shining armor riding in on a white horse to save her.
Her big, burly, muscled would-be savior hadn’t stood a chance against the sheer number of bounty hunters and mercenaries out to get the one-million-dollar reward for finding her and turning her over to the man who wanted her dead.
This man.
Mac O’Riley.
He stood before her now in an expensive black suit with a crisp white shirt and a bright blue tie that matched his eyes.
The Irish crime boss would be a handsome man if there wasn’t darkness lurking in those eyes. It was obvious the moment you met him, an evil he didn’t bother to hide. On the contrary, he seemed to relish in it, take great pleasure at having people cower in his presence, and bow to his will.
Well, she wasn’t going to bow down to him.
At this point, she had nothing left to lose. O’Riley had already decided he was going to make her suffer before he killed her, there was no way her bowing to him was going to improve her situation, and no way refusing to was going to make it worse.
She was sure Gabriel would disagree, tell her to do whatever it took to keep herself alive and in as good a shape as possible, but for what reason?
There were cuffs around both of their ankles, chaining them to the floor. Even if he was free, Gabriel was in no shape to fight or even to run, despite him seemingly thinking differently. They were outnumbered, they were on O’Riley’s turf, and nobody was coming for them.
When you couldn’t fight, and you couldn’t fly, the only option left was to hold onto what you could.
Pride some might call it, but whatever name you wanted to ascribe to it, Tillie knew that the only thing she had left to hold onto was her beliefs.
What she had done was the right thing. Naïve definitely, maybe even stupid, but O’Riley’s little boy hadn’t had anyone in his corner, and no adult should stand by and allow a child to be subjected to the horrors that little boy had already lived through in his short life, let alone what he would still endure. All in the name of molding him into the perfect heir to take over his father’s crime syndicate.
The child deserved better.
All children deserved better.
Innocence and curiosity wrapped up into tiny bundles of energy, children were as close to perfection as existed in this world. Anything hurting them was her limit, and she knew even though it had signed her own death warrant, she had done the right thing and nothing could take that away.
Certainly not whatever was coming next.
Looking her over from head to toe, O’Riley’s gaze paused to linger on the bruise on her cheek, then the tear in her oversized sweater from where she’d tried to fight off the men when they dragged Gabriel’s limp body into the truck. His men hadn’t hurt her badly, a few hits to rough her up but nothing she couldn’t handle.
Yet.
It was coming though.
She didn’t even need to see the sneer on O’Riley’s face as his gaze lingered on her sock-covered battered feet then lifted to meet hers.
“You’ve caused me a lot of trouble,” he said. His cultured voice with the slight Irish accent had an ice-cold quality that told you this was a man with money and power who was used to having his every whim catered to. What he couldn’t exhort through fear he bought.
Since there was nothing she could say to that which would be the right thing, she simply said nothing.
Just stood there, keeping her spine straight, her gaze direct, and her expression neutral.
A man like this would pounce all over weakness, and while she was utterly and completely terrified out of her mind, for herself and for Gabriel, she did her best to conceal it. Years of practice hiding her emotions from a world that had already made up its mind about her made it easier.
“Cost me a lot of money.” O’Riley took a step closer. It was to intimidate her because she knew he wouldn’t dirty his own hands by beating her up himself. That’s why he had an army of henchmen standing around.
Whatever he’d spent to pay off judges, cops, and child protective services, and offered as the reward to whoever captured her and brought her to him was nothing but a drop in the ocean compared to how much he was worth. This wasn’t about her costing him money or even about his image, this was about her daring to go up against him instead of cowering in fear.
She’d dared to mess with him, and he wanted to make her pay for it.
“How are you going to make up all the time, money, and effort I’ve wasted?” he asked. A leering gaze settled on her chest, and she had to stiffen every muscle so she didn’t attempt to shrink in on herself to hide.
That was what he wanted.
Would he sexually assault her?
Maybe.
But it was giving her the fear that he might that would give him that rush he craved.
“Get down on your hands and knees and crawl to me, beg me to spare you,” he ordered like it was already a foregone conclusion that she would do it.
“No.” The word came out with more force than she had anticipated, surprising herself as well as O’Riley.
His eyes narrowed, and she expected him to say something, order her again to do what he’d told her, or yell at her for disobeying.
Instead, he nodded at one of his men who moved around and grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.
“There is one lesson my father taught me that I always found particularly enlightening. In life there are two roads. The easy road and the hard road. I always encourage those I encounter to take the easy road, but I must admit I find a certain enjoyment in watching them choose the hard road. You, my dear, have chosen the hard road. One thing you should remember is both roads will wind up in the same location. You will crawl on your hands and knees and beg me to show mercy.”
Over her dead body.
She would never beg this man for anything.
Not for any reason.
Although that was a whole lot easier to think in her mind than it might be to do in reality when the man holding her grabbed her right wrist and held out her hand palm up.
Mac O’Riley calmly removed his belt.
The first strike stung.
The second hurt.
By the fifth, it felt like her hand was on fire.
By the tenth, she was biting on her tongue hard enough to draw blood in her attempt not to scream in pain.
By the fifteenth, blood coated the tender skin of her palm.
When he finally stopped at twenty strikes, she could no longer hold back the tears that streamed down her cheeks.
There was no reprieve.
The man holding her released her right wrist, grabbed her left, and the process started all over again.
Tillie lasted until the fourth strike on her left palm before she could no longer just flinch and whimper at each lash of the belt.
A muted moan turned to a cry and then a sob and then a scream as blow after blow struck her hand.
Although her body attempted reflexively to pull away each time the swish of the belt flying through the air signaled the coming pain, there was nowhere to go. The man holding her was like an immovable rock, his grip on her steady and unbreakable.
Just make it to twenty, she silently pleaded with herself.
Then she’d get a break.
A moment to rest.
Recover.
Rebuild her mental strength for whatever came next.
But her exhale of relief when the twentieth lash came turned out to be premature.
The man holding her shifted her, turning her sideways, arms still pinned to her sides, and before she even had a chance to think about kicking out, another man was stepping up to grip her ankles.
As the blows began to rain down on her knees, Tillie wondered why life never seemed to offer her two choices. Seemed it was always the hard road and nothing else.
Chapter
Twelve
April 21st
4:10 A.M.
Was there a more satisfying sound than that of someone shedding tears?
To Mac O’Riley there was not.
Raised by his father to take over the O’Riley empire from the time he was born, he had loved every lesson he’d learned at his beloved father’s knee. Everything from how to run a successful legitimate business to keep up the façade, to how to manage the dirtier side of the business world.
Extortion, blackmail, threats, he was more than willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted just as his father before him had done, and his father’s father before that, and his grandfather’s father who had created the O’Riley empire from scratch. Built it into something now known—and feared—around the world.
Continuing that legacy was paramount.
After his wife failed to give him an appropriate heir—three daughters were useless as anything other than chess pieces to further extend his family’s empire by strategic partnerships—he had turned to a mistress and finally been given the son he craved.
A son the woman crying on the floor at his feet had tried to take from him.
It was well known that his family thrived on corruption within law enforcement and the government. Using it to grow, reach out more tentacles, and expand across the globe until he had connections in every government and every law enforcement branch in every country.
Was there such a thing as too much money?
Too much power?
Mac thought not.
But all the money and power in the world was utterly useless without an heir.
The only key to immortality was through your offspring. No one in this world lived forever, and raised as the Irish catholic boy he had been, he believed in the afterlife but knew it played no part in this world.
A child was your only way to remain alive, part of this world, even after you passed over.
Not just any child.
A son.
Almost forty by the time his boy came along, he’d already begun to feel that strength that came from immortality. A new purpose, a new focus, conquering the business world had gotten old and boring. His failure of a wife was insipid at best, and something better left locked away in his Irish estate along with the three useless daughters she had provided him.
There were plenty of mistresses to fulfill his needs for rough sex, and there was always someone that needed to be beaten into compliance to cater to his need for dominance and inflicting pain. But he lacked a purpose.
Until his boy came along.
Mac O’Riley V.
His pride and joy, the center of his universe, the reason he had worked so hard and expanded what had already been an impressive empire to begin with.
Nobody messed with him, and trying to mess with his son?
That was a surefire way to get yourself to the top of his torture and kill list.
Only now, as he looked at the woman, he realized he might have been premature in making his plan.
She was beautiful in an innocent sort of way. Huge turquoise eyes framed by long lashes, perfectly sculpted lips, and long silky blonde hair. Her frame was tinier than he usually liked, her breasts definitely on the small side, but it was her attitude that had captivated him from the moment they came face to face.
Even trapped in this abandoned warehouse as she was, chained to the floor with no hope of escape, her back had been straight, her gaze steady as she watched him approach.
That attitude would be such fun to break.
It had been a long time since he had undertaken breaking an innocent woman. A way to pass time as a teen and in his early twenties as his father slowly increased the amount he was allowed to participate in the business. Once his father had died when Mac was only twenty-six and he had taken full control, there was no more time for such pursuits.
But now … and with this woman …
He was sure he could find the time.
Would be a good lesson for the boy as well.
The child had disappointed him when Mac learned he had told private O’Riley business to the too-nosy-for-her-own-good social worker. What went on in their home was not to be repeated to an outsider, especially a do-gooder one with no concept of how the real world worked.
Threats to her boss hadn’t worked, nor had repeated calls to his connections within the police department. Not even threats directly aimed at the woman had stopped her.
But when she’d witnessed the murder of the maid who had made the initial call to child protective services, claiming his boy was being abused, he knew she had become a real problem. One that wouldn’t be so easily swept under the rug.
