“Please, just let me go.” I'm beside myself with fear now.
“What were you really looking for?” It’s the first time that Deacon Walsh speaks, and the cold sternness in his rough voice makes me shiver.
“I was looking for this cottage. That’s all. I wanted it to be true so I could put my mom to rest. She believed in fairytales. I shouldn’t have stepped inside. I’m so sorry. That was never what I was meant to do.”
“And you want us to believe you when we know who your father is and who he works for?” Mason asks.
“What? What does my father have to do with this? He’s a lawyer. That’s all. He doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“It’ll be easier for you if you come clean, Livia. We know everything about you already, so lying or stalling is only going to make it worse for you,” Callen says, and there’s a reasonability about his deep, smooth voice that makes me want to confess to anything he wants me to.
“It will be the difference between having you in our bed or in a cell.” I whip my gaze up to Deacon. Both the options he’s given me have me rattled with deep apprehension.
“I don’t know anything. I’m doing this because of my mum—” I stop talking abruptly, as if my words singed my throat, and now I can barely offer a squeak. My eyes widen as they start to remove their jackets and ties. I’m frantic when they start rolling up the sleeves of their shirts to reveal an array of tattoos on their forearms.
I try to creep further away from them, as the power in their forearms makes it clear what they can do to me. I want the bed to swallow me into another dimension. I want this nightmare to end.
Chapter Fourteen
Livia
What are they going to do to me?
I yank at the cuffs on my wrist, and the rattling chains sound like mocking laughter in my ears.
“So you’re not here because your father works for your boyfriend?” Callen asks conversationally.
“What? My father is a lawyer—”
“And you’re not here to steal our painting for your boyfriend?” Mason adds.
“Please, I don’t know what painting you’re talking about. You have to believe me. And I’ve never had a boyfriend in all my life.”
Are they confusing me for someone else? Relief starts to build in my stomach. I have to make them see that I’m not the person they think I am.
“My name is Livia Daniels. I’m a law student. My father is a lawyer and owns a small firm. Please believe me when I say I’ve never had a boyfriend before. Not once. You’re mistaking me for someone else.”
“Are you saying you don’t know Kirill Yenin?”
A different kind of coldness sinks into my bones at the sound of that name. How do they know about Kirill Yenin? More importantly, why does it matter to them?
“I… I don’t know him. My father just told me I had to marry him.”
Except he didn’t just tell me. He emotionally blackmailed me into saying yes by bringing up my mom. He made me feel such immense guilt on her behalf. He took me back to when she died. He also let me know how my mom ruined his life, and because of her mental illness, he was unable to grow his law firm and achieve his goals.
He spent his whole marriage taking care of her, then taking care of me and all it did was ruin him financially and now he was on the brink of losing the house. He said he had an opportunity to bring in a lot of money and clout to his law firm, and he emphasized again how much he deserved that and how my mom and I had robbed him of it previously
He put the onus on me to fix his life. And he used my mom against me to do it. I couldn’t let the house I grew up in be owned by someone else. It was my lifeline. And yet how could I do what he wanted me to do?
But then he called me his beautiful daughter and hugged me, and he said things would be better between us. And so I said yes, I would marry Kirill Yenin, whom he was bringing in as a partner at the law firm.
“You’re not going to marry that son of a bitch anymore,” Mason says lightly, bringing a frown to my face.
“Because you’re married to us,” Deacon says as Callen pulls out a rolled-up sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket, which he’d left on one of the other beds.
Callen shows me the sheet of paper, holding it just outside of my reach, but it’s as clear as day as I stare at the document in horror. It’s a marriage contract with my name on it.
I sputter and choke on air when the signature on the document could have easily been done by me but wasn't, and more shockingly, I can’t tell the difference between the fake and my real signature.