Page 36 of Bathed in Blood

“If you try to take her from me, I will—”

“Enough. I don’t plan to wrestle the woman from your arms.”

The room swirls for a moment, my eyes narrowing on his dark ones before dropping lower. “Her file.” I gesture to the manila folder tucked underneath his arm. He’d had me blocked from the initial report. Of course, I’d just fed what information we had to my own sources, but his were faster. Perks of being the scariest man on the East Coast. For now.

His graying hair is swooped back with the same pomade he’s always used, a single clump curling forward on his forehead. “This is what you really want? What you’re willing to risk your position as the family head for? Some broken fucking girl from Virgina? God, son, have you any clue what the Sullivans did to her?” He shakes his head. “She was agoodgirl, worked hard for her brother, her mom…” Each word strikes deep as intended, anger bubbling so hot in my chest, I wait for the skin to melt, bubble, and pop. “They had cameras all over that fucking house. They streamed it every single time they raped her. I don’t even know if she’s aware. Her every moment since that first day was streamed for anyone willing to pay. Hell, the way those bastards would take her, I wouldn’t subject a goddamn animal—"

“Enough,” I spit, my chest heaving.

“There is no fixing that, Christian!”

“I don’t care! I’ll wipe out their fucking line, all of them! I’ll hunt down every last Sullivan, every fucking man, woman, andchild if that’s what it takes to stop her pain! I’ll make it fucking even if I can’t make it okay. I don’t give a rancid fuck what it costs me. I don’t care how long she cries or if her scars never heal! She chose me! After all those years of pain, it was me she chose to trust, and I will not betray that again. Not for you, not for anything.” The last words leave my throat in a growl, all the worst emotions bulleting my chest like wasps, demanding carnage.

My father lifts his chin just as I drop mine, a delicate, shaky hand clenching the front of my jacket, pulling it tighter around her. Lana’s eyes are wide, filled with so much fucking pain that it knocks the breath from my lungs. She didn’t know. Fucking hell, of course not. I spent the last year of my life dedicated to her, and evenIdidn’t find those streams.

I don’t look away from her, or her from me, until the sound of my father’s cane squeaking on the hardwood forces my eyes to him. He doesn’t speak, no small amount of uncertainty there, but when he passes, he smirks, shaking his head as he all but shoves the envelope into my chest. “Whatever you do…”

“Family comes first.”

His dark green eyes settle on my princess, but she’s beyond seeing again, her pretty golden eyes swimming with unshed tears as she stares at the vaulted ceiling.

“I don’t care, Lana. I don’t fucking care if you’re broken. You’re mine.”

All at once, it makes sense why he collects the broken ones.

They bend so beautifully.

18

Jacket

Lana

His jacket is huge on me, my fingertips barely poking out of the ends of the sleeves as the room fills with steam. I feel smaller than I have in years. Tiny.

I used to have a dream before the Sullivans, where I would find a man who loved me. He’d be a good husband, sometimes even a father, but I’d get sick. So sick. He’d take care of me, feed me by hand and soothe my failing body. He’d look at me with so much love and adoration, so much sadness, that I would always wake up in tears with the oddest warmth in my chest. I can’t count the times in those early years before I was given books or trinkets to fill my time that I sat on my bed, telling the dream to myself out loud, like maybe that would make it something obtainable. That I would die loved.

How many times had someone listened to my story? Watched me cry into my pillow? How many times had I muttered Mom's and Lewis’ names out loud?

My eyes look dull. When Christian appears behind me, I nearly jolt, time having slipped at some point.

He’s gentle as he frees me from his suit jacket, the fine gray fabric soaked through with blood. I clutch it without thinking, not ready to feel bigger than I am right now. His moss green eyes find mine in the mirror as I cling to it, tears bursting to my eyes with an intensity that makes my mouth gape in a plea I can’t give voice to.

Christian lets me keep it.

He’s silent as he leads me to the shower, his hands gentle and soothing as he lifts the jacket in places he wants to get wet using the nozzle instead of just taking it off me. The way he washes me mollifies the intense burning on my hip. It’s no different than the way Vince and Anton would.

Methodical, soft, thorough. Yet I can’t seem to look away from his nude body, the way water drips from his hair to his cheek. He doesn’t wipe it away, focused on cleaning me. I almost do, but my arms won’t listen. They stay limp at my side as he maneuvers me. My chest aches, but it’s a dull, throbbing kind.

I long stopped believing in God, but when my tears break free, I beg him to take me.

Dr. Lamaison, I’ve decided, is a good man. His thickly accented voice fills the gray room as I lay crumpled on my side, the soaked and bloody jacket now replaced by a hoodie I’ve never seen before. It smells like Christian, so I clutch it harder in the moments I forget to breathe. I’m exhausted, my eyes heavy, but neither sleep nor God ever take me. My hip is cleaned and bandaged again, stinging like mad. Dr. Lamaison curses quietly. The word fuck seems so out of place on such a proper man, likehearing your pastor drop the f word during mass. He gestures to me, bits and pieces drifting in.

“…shell shock. She’s suffering…”

Christian almost looks worried, his deep green eyes keep drifting towards me as he runs his hands through his wet hair, displacing it in a way that looks intentional but isn’t. He’s just so damn handsome, though, that it doesn’t matter. His chest is bare, showing off every chiseled plane. Freckles cover his chest and back. It’s cute. I try to find the birthmark that looks like a cloud, but he keeps moving.

“You flayed her skin…”

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