Page 43 of Savage Rule

“Because, I belong to him.”

13

SCARLET

“You belong to him.” Gunn’s jaw tenses so hard I’m concerned his teeth will start to crack. “What the fuck does that mean?”

I’m confused by his reaction. “It means I belong to him.”

“As in, you’re his lover?” He pushes me back onto the mattress and hovers over me, his eyes narrowed. “Are you fucking sleeping with him?”

I laugh. “Are you jealous?”

“I don’t share what’s mine.”

It takes me a while to reply to that, mainly because the possessive tone in that statement has me breathless. He’s claimed me, leaving no room for argument. I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t make every feminine part of me sing.

There’s another part, however, the reasonable one that reminds me I can’t be his. It doesn’t matter how much I like the way it sounds.

But I’m not one to listen to reason.

I cup his cheek. “It’s loyalty, Gunn. I’m indebted to him.”

Because he still looks like the boy who’s being forced to share his toys, I decide to tell him about Gideon and me and the things that happened when I was a kid. I want to keep it simple,nothing he can’t find for himself anyway. But before I know it, I’m telling him everything, far more than I intended, unable to stop the details from spilling.

“A couple that couldn’t have kids of their own adopted me. Some might consider it a blessing. But Roger Stanton was a wife beater. He beat my adoptive mother black and blue at least once a week. He’d find any reason to call her a whore—she put on a pretty dress, put on lipstick, looked in a mirror.

“I’m not sure why she never called the cops. I mean, she actually defended him. I was only fourteen, so I believed her when she said he didn’t mean it and that he was a good man and took care of us.”

Gunn tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear as he peers down at me. “The system should have caught that.”

I nod. “The Stanton’s were good at hiding that kind of shit. On the outside, they looked like the perfect loving couple. Behind closed doors was another matter. I wonder if that’s why Lisa couldn’t have children? She did mention to me once that she’d lost babies.”

“Did your father cause these?” Gunn prompts, his fingers hovering over the scars on my back.

“He wasn’t my father,” I correct him. “My father was Travis Johnson. A good man. Roger was a piece of shit.”

For a moment, Gunn is silent. He lets his palm drop onto my back and I stiffen, but he doesn’t remove his hand. “Did Roger do this?” he repeats.

I hesitate, but eventually answer, “No. Yes. He did the fist ones.” I shut my eyes and sigh, desperately trying to control my response to the memory. “When I tried to defend Lisa. I thought I was big enough. I wasn’t. Until that day, Roger hadn’t laid a hand on me. But this time, I attempted to come between them and he took it as some sort of betrayal. He backhanded me so hard it knocked me out. When I came to, my wrists were tiedhigh on one of the rafters in the basement, the back of my shirt ripped apart.”

Gunn’s breathing pattern changes. “Did he rape you?”

A tear forms in my eye but I catch it before it has a chance to escape. “No. That, he saved for Lisa. I was fortunate to only get lashes. Seven lashes for every month he’d fed me, he said. He nearly killed me, then left me to bleed on the dirty basement floor while he took care of Lisa. When he was done with her, he left with an order for her to be cleaned up when he returned. And she did. She got me off the floor and bandaged me. Then she went and showered.”

“She didn’t call the police?”

I shake my head. “WhenItried, she cut the lines.”

“Fuck.”

“Lisa was very sick. I knew it. She was so sick that no matter what Roger did, she wasn’t going to go against him. She wasn’t going to allow me to either. So, I made a plan. I asked him for forgiveness and to show him how sorry I was, I took a knife from the kitchen and made another scar next to the ones he created. Then, when Roger came closer to inspect, I sliced the blade across his neck. Lisa finally called the cops, but it was for them to drag me away. As you might have figured, I ran before they did.”

Gunn’s eyes widen. “You called them notches.”

“Because they are.” I roll onto my stomach so that he can finally get a good look at the lines he’s been wondering about. I touch the first one I ever made myself. “When I made this, Roger thought it was my way of accepting that he’d disfigured me. But it just meant I’d made up my mind to kill him.”

“He deserved it,” Gunn’s tone is laced with the same hatred I feel whenever I think of Roger.

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