Page 74 of While You Sleep

The car sped off, leaving him behind, while I screamed.

* * *

I lay on my side in Cillian’s bed, the gag in my mouth and my hands still bound with his belt. My feet were tied as well now, and I could do nothing but lie here terrified for him, and for Tommy. Cillian said he wouldn’t get hurt, but what if he got caught in the crossfire. He must be so scared.

I don’t know how long I’d been lying here, but my hands and feet were numb, and the room was slowly growing lighter. It had to be the early hours of the morning.

The door opened suddenly and Cillian walked in.

His shirt was off. His bicep was bandaged. He’d been hit, but it can’t have been bad. Relief flooded me as he shut the door behind him. His gaze sliced down me, bound and gagged and helpless on his bed, and he said nothing. He kicked off his shoes and socks, then his hands dropped to the front of his pants and he undid them, shucking them so he was only in a pair of black boxer briefs, then closed the space between us.

He took my chin in his hand and leaned in close, staring into my eyes. “You had me fooled, pet. That won’t happen again. I don’t care if you hate me, if you want to run from me, because, wife or not, you are mine, and I will never let you leave me again.”

He meant it as a threat, but the terror I felt wasn’t from fear, it was from the thought that he’d never believe me. That he thought I didn’t love him anymore or never did. He had it wrong. He thought I’d betrayed him, yes, but he still wanted me, that’s all that mattered. I’d make him listen. I’d make him hear the truth. I had to.

He scooped me up, and the heat of his skin, his scent, calmed the terror inside me—then he tossed me to the other side of the bed, got under the covers, and closed his eyes.

I lay there staring at his profile. He didn’t look at me again, then finally his breathing evened out as he fell asleep.

The next thing I was aware of, was pain radiating through my hands and feet.

It was full light now. My restraints had been removed, but the gag was still in place.

Cillian was up and dressed, and he stared down at me dispassionately while I writhed in pain.

“You’ll be fine once the blood gets flowing again,” he said as he finished doing up his tie, then started for the door.

My hands were hot with pins and needles, and extremely weak, but I managed to drag the gag from my dry mouth. “Cillian, wait,” I choked, my voice nothing but a husky rasp.

He paused but didn’t turn back.

“P-please, I need you to…” I coughed. “I—I—”

“Drink, Sophia,” he growled out, finally turning back to me.

There was a glass on the bedside table, and I snatched it up, chugging it, water dripping down my chin in my haste. “I d-didn’t leave you, not willingly, you have to believe me. I—”

“How did you know your father would be outside?” he asked.

I scrambled out of bed, nearly falling over, and was forced to lean against the wall. “When I went to see Tommy, he said he was going to have our marriage annulled, that he knew someone that could do it, that he—”

“When I came home, after you’d seen Brennan, why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. There was no emotion in his tone, not even anger.

“Because…” I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to know the truth. “Because he said you were going to kill him, that you’d come after Celeste and Tommy, that you’d…kill them too—”

“And you believed him,” he said, not an ounce of surprise on his face.

I hated it. After watching him slowly become more animated—smile, laugh, stare at me in a way that made my heart race—seeing that cold, emotionless expression again was unbearable. Guilt hit me. “He seemed genuinely afraid. I’d never seen him like that. He said he betrayed you, that he was doing deals in your territory again. That you’d kill him. You said yourself, that first night in his office, that you’d take his life for an offence like that.” I shook my head. “But the more I thought about it, the more I doubted him. Something seemed off.”

“Yet you chose not to tell me about it, left our bed and went to your father anyway. You were seen running off into the night, without anyone’s gun to your head, pet, right before my house was invaded. You truly expect me to believe you had no idea what was about to happen?”

“I didn’t. I just wanted to talk to him. I wanted proof of what he said. I wanted to find a way to stop all of this, to find out what he really had planned. And if I had told you he was trying to annul our marriage, you would’ve gone after him. I just wanted to try to talk sense into him, to defuse the situation before it got out of hand. I never planned to leave with him, and then Paolo came and forced me into the car…” I stumbled toward him on shaky legs. “I didn’t want to leave, Cillian, I promise. I just wanted—”

“Proof. Proof that the O’Rourke monster planned to murder your traitorous father, that I was capable of putting a bullet in your baby brother’s skull?”

“I knew you wouldn’t hurt Tommy, I never believed—”

“And if I did kill your father, what then, pet?” His lips curled up in an awful imitation of a smile. “You may have told yourself that you never planned to leave, but the fact you needed proof says it all, doesn’t it, Sophia? Or maybe everything you just said to me was a bunch of lies, maybe you’re not so different than me. Maybe you’re good at pretending as well and the only true version I’ve seen of you was when I first brought you here. You said you’d find a way to leave me, remember, whatever it took?”

---