Page 16 of To Have and to Hold

“You stupid fucking bitch,” Rafe said, scowling down at me. He had my bleeding wrist in his grasp, and rivulets of blood streamed over his fist, down my arm and onto the white bathtub, onto the floor.

“Please,” I gasped, real horror and despair grappling with the pounding of my heart. No, no no no. He can’t have caught me. I was so close. This wasn’t right. I’d already died. But I wasn’t in heaven, no, this was hell. My hell.

Rafe prized my hand open and grabbed the razor, slipping it into his pocket even though it was wet and bloody. All the while, he didn’t take his eyes off of me.

“I was drinking a nice scotch, savoring the fucking drink and shooting the shit with my friends. Celebrating my damned nuptials. Imagine my surprise when one of my men tells me my new wife is up here slicing into her wrists? That upsets me, Violet.” He paused, and I doubted the truth of his words. Not that I was stupid. I was definitely a fool to have not acted any faster, but that he was showing a modicum of care towards me. “Now I’m going to have to punish you, you fuckingdisappointment. After all I’ve done? Bringing you here? Making you my wife? It is a fuckinghonorto be my wife.”

“I’m sorry,” I wailed as he pulled me from the water. Blood still gushed from my wound, making me dizzy, but he ignored my pleading and flung me over his shoulder until we reached the bed. “I’m sorry,” I cried again, terrified.

He breathed through his nose like a bull and chucked me onto the bed. He glared at me for a moment, taking in every inch of my naked body before scowling and turning. For a moment, I felt hope. He was going to leave me here to bleed out.

But he reached the door and turned. “Don’t think for a second you get to die here, Violet,” he said, the venom in his voice heightening when he uttered my name. Like it irritated him to even think of me as a person. “I’ll be back with bandages. Then your punishment begins.”

Punishment. I had no idea what that would entail. But then I knew nothing. Not even how to die.

Chapter 9

Theo

Violetateawayatmy thoughts even more than she'd already been. She’d always been in there, swirling around, haunting me and my decisions, especially over the last few weeks as we built up to her wedding. But now. Now? Every breath. Every blink. Every second of every bloody day, she was right there, screaming in my brain. Taking me over.

I couldn’t let him have her. No one would fucking listen, but I refused to let her go. Not now. Not ever. I never should have. It was fucking sick. When Connor and I first started plotting, we’d researched Rafael’s past wives, and he was a sick fucker. Each one disappeared not long after marriage. The first, when he was just twenty, lasted less than two months before she was never seen from again. And no one mourned her. Not outwardly, at least. Most of their families were a part of the church and accepted the fate of their child with no complaint, it was par for the course, according to Connor. Female sacrifice, daughtersused and discarded. All for what? Money and power? I didn't fucking understand it.

What was this man doing to them? Why did they enter his home and never leave again? Their deaths were presumed, not recorded anywhere. Other women from influential families, but lesser, second or third daughters, never like Violet, not until now. This was bigger, a more impactful merging of families, a more powerful group brought into the church's fold. The baby she could make, the heir she could create, was valuable. Too fucking valuable.

Three dead wives. A fourth hanging on the brink already. None of them were given burials. None of their families showed any grief or called Rafe out for what he’d done to them. No babies, no heirs. If Violet didn’t make him a baby fast, I worried for her chances of survival. He was losing patience if the dwindling length of his marriages was anything to go by.

And I’d let her leave with him, let her leave under a flurry of fucking confetti as they moved through a sea of celebrating faces, most pinched, faking it, but throwing colorful paper and cheering anyway. I’d let her leave with the devil, knowing what I knew about him. Knowing what the wedding night ritual involved.

I tried to steady my breathing as I looked out over the view from the balcony of my hotel room, sucking down a cigarette to calm myself down. Only hours ago, I’d buried myself inside her, and everything changed. But before then, before I’d even had that from her, I should have been trying to protect her. Things never should have got this far. “Shit,” I muttered, my mind racing with all the options before me. Not bloody many.

“Theo,” Connor said, surprising me with his presence and yanking me from my stewing.

I turned to face my uncle, frowning at the man who’d let himself in, shocking no one with his rudeness. He never hadboundaries with me. We’d crossed all those bridges when he had his men kidnap me and make me prove my worth as a fucking rat before he told me it was him behind it. “What do you want?” I asked, watching him sidle out and sink into one of the metal chairs scattered.

That night, he’d had a man hold a gun to my head and demand I spill secrets. And I had. I’d told the man with the gun everything, not wanting to lose my life. I’d bargained for my sisters’ lives, for my own, and then the gun lowered and Connor stepped out from the shadows to tell me our family sickened him. Within days, they had me buried as deep as he was in the scheme to destroy it all. He'd plotted everything, gathered survivors and defectors, wasted years of his life stewing and bubbling.

“What the hell do you want?” I asked Connor, swaying a little as I moved away from the balcony edge, the alcohol coursing through my veins making me sloppy. He was one of the last people I wanted to see. Because he knew, he fuckingknewwhat Rafael would do to Violet, and he had the power to stop it but refused.

My hotel wasn’t far from the beach house where I’d taken Violet’s virginity, the compound it was on vast, almost as big as this town. I could even see the same lake, glittering in the far off distance like some bastard reminder of my depravity. I turned to look at it and snorted, muttering to myself about the farce that was this life. She was just out of reach, getting tortured. It made my blood boil, make me sick with rage. If she didn’t survive the night… I was impotent with it. What the fuck could I do here?

“You’re too pissed to function, little nephew,” Connor said, staring me down when I turned back to him. Even seated, he dominated, his legs spread, his dark eyes heavy. He didn’t look angry, amused, maybe. But he also wobbled, turned into two, then back again. I shrugged and blinked.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s a fucking reason I turned scab for you, you dickhead.” I flicked my cigarette to the floor and stamped on it. “You telling me it’s fine by you?”

“It’s necessary.”

“Fuck your necessary!” I yelled, moving fast and stepping into his space, pointing at him with all that impotent rage bubbling away under my skin. We both knew I’d do nothing. This man had power, too. It felt like everyone was controlling me. Everyone had a pull over me I was powerless to stop. Yet.

When I’d agreed to work with Connor, it had been under the promise of it not taking long, I wouldn’t need to do much. Steal a few files, take a few pictures. That was all. Two years later, and I was even more embedded into both institutions that I’d ever wanted to be. Scab. Informer. Enforcer. Second in line. Burrowed deeper and deeper into both sides of the coin, torn in so many directions, it sometimes felt like I was losing my mind. And still, he wouldn't tell me his full plan.

My head spun. So when Violet, sweet, precious, young Violet, had asked me for something so simple, so stark, the hesitation only lasted a minute. I could do that for her. I had a functioning dick and an affection for her meaning she wouldn’t suffer. The taboo nature of it all had hardly even entered my mind once I pushed inside her. But now, now it was ruining me.

“Fuck your necessary and your greater bloody good!” I spat at Connor, the rage only rolling off me more when he didn’t bother to stand up, so underwhelmed by my fury. “Fuck it all. I’m helping her. She’s more important than every damn part of your damn plan.”

“Theo…” Connor said, leaning forward in warning. He was taller than me, but not by much. And the alcohol pickling my blood only had me more reckless.

“Help me help her, or you lose your best hope of ending this.” My threat was real, and I think he saw it in my expressionbecause his shoulders dropped and his eyes rolled with a puffed out breath.

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