Page 41 of To Have and to Hold

Connor: get out of there now

I blinked. It was pretty fucking obvious I was coming to see her, but how did he know? He’d left. But not willing to risk it, I kissed her once more before turning for the door. A hundred pounds of weight seemed to settle in my gut as my hand landed on the doorknob.

“I’ll be back for you soon,” I muttered, then paused, pulling out one of her favorite snacks from my pocket. Without a word, I placed it into her hands and wrapped her fingers around it. Her eyes were grateful, but pained. “Don’t give up hope. Keep pushing. I’ll come back.”

She didn’t reply, and when I glanced at her, her eyes were shut, the bar pressed to her chest. With one final squeeze of my heart, I left her.

Connor caught me as I descended the stairs, a frown on his face and his phone in hand. The party had ended at some point, no more voices or music drifting in the halls. How long had I been in there with her? And I’d watched this bastard leave.

“What?” I demanded, shitty now that I’d abandoned her again.

“She good?” he asked, looking past me and up the stairs, like he could see her from here.

I nodded. “She’s fuckinggreat,Connor,” I muttered, damn near snarling. “Loving all the horrifying abuse.”

His jaw tensed, and he slipped his phone in his pocket before crowding into me, pushing me against the wall and not stopping until our bodies were flush.

I saw the mafia boss in him then, the heritage he shared with my domineering father, the leader he told me he was. It made me shudder, I never wanted to look at my family like that.

“You know,” he drawled. “Rafe passed out about thirty minutes ago.” He nodded his head towards the parlor, where theparty had drifted to as people left, winding down to a handful of men smoking cigars and guffawing over their expensive liquor. “He’s still unconscious now.” Connor sighed, grabbed my jaw, and tilted my face as if to study me. I felt… I didn’t know what. Scared? Something. “I decided to stay after all, thought it might be nice to catch up with my niece, so, about fifteen minutes ago, I wandered on up.”Oh, shit.“Violet sounded absolutely fucking fine. Wonderful, in fact.”

“You don’t—”

He hushed me with a squeeze of my throat.

“I can smell her on your breath, on your skin, little nephew,” he growled. And for a moment, I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Hurt me? Make me confess? Fucking high five me. His eyes didn’t give it away, his body language stayed harsh, cold, tight on my throat. “You’re lucky I had the wherewithal to slip a little something into Rafe’s drink, or he’d have found you before me.”

Oh shit, oh shit.

For once in my life, for the smallest, most miniscule second, I was grateful for Rafe. He grunted something from down the hall, shouted something out, and Connor stepped away from me, breaking the tension. He'd risked a lot in drugging Rafe, maybe his entire plan. If he got caught, found out…

“This isn’t done,” he said, pointing at me harshly before disappearing towards Rafe. I took a steadying breath and followed, hoping I hadn’t fucked everything up for her now he knew what I’d done. What we’d done together.

He wouldn’t be the first family member I’d killed to save her.

Fuck.

Chapter 22

Violet

Forasplitsecond,the tiniest moment of hope, I fooled myself that the bedroom door swinging open hours later was Theo coming back for me, returning my white knight to rescue me, throw me over his shining armor and sweep me to safety. Into the bloody sunset with unicorns flouncing and bunnies hopping about and all manner of stupid magical things frolicking and glistening and—

But of course it wasn’t my brother. No. It was a very drunk Rafe, barging into the room like a raging, three-legged bull, his eyes zeroing in on me. I'd watched him drink tumbler after tumbler of whiskey as people celebrated his birthday, stood dutifully by his side as he grew sloppy and mean – meaner than usual, loud about it in front of his guests. When I'd been allowed to leave, it was a relief to be away from him. But now he was back, and the tiny flame of hope Theo alighted in me snuffed.

The duvet felt like protection, pathetic, but still a barrier between us, so I yanked it up higher until it gathered under my chin. He chuffed a laugh and stormed over, yanking the duvet off without a shred of concern for me, my security gone in one tug from him.

“Get naked,” he demanded, voice slurring even more than it usually did after he'd spent the night drinking. “Now.”

I had no fight left in me with this man, so I immediately pulled my nightgown over my head, exposing myself with a flush of nerves and embarrassment. He looked satisfied, lazy, hooded eyes studying every inch of my body like it belonged to him. He didn’t know it didn’t. That it was all pretend. That each time he touched me, I was thinking of all the creative ways I could kill him. My body would never be his, nor my mind. He could use it, abuse it and hurt it, but never,never, would I truly submit.

I submitted with my body because I had to, but in my head, I was attacking him, slamming his skull into the concrete until it exploded. In my mind, I was ripping his cock off and feeding it to a little kitten to gnaw on and bat about. But outside of my head, as he reached me and grabbed my hair, the pain was real. I was submissive, quiet, and easy to control.

He directed me into his preferred position, holes up, face smushed into the mattress, and stepped back for inspection. If my pussy wasn’t still full of his cum, the punishment would be swift and brutal. I didn’t dare even go to the bathroom before he came for this nightly check, in case I wiped any of hisessenceaway. Though, this time, I smiled into the pillow when his fingers swiped through Theo’s leaking cum, a wicked smile, the kind that promised nothing good. Rafe couldn’t see it, so I gave him the whimper he wanted and thought of Theo. He couldn’t know I was no longer truly afraid of him. I was playing a game too, waiting, biding. Trying to, anyway.

I was finished pretending, faking who I was. Theo was mine, my brother, the other half of my soul. What we’d done together was wrong, but I didn’t care. It couldn’t be more wrong than this. This was a mockery, a falseness that defied what millions of people believed, it was an abuse of someone else's faith to control women, to control an entire group of people desperate to be in the orbit of the one orchestrating it all.

Something shifted in us the moment Theo touched me on my wedding night, and I never wanted it to go back. I thought he didn’t, either. He kept coming to me, finding me and making me feel good, reminding me of who I am, what I can be. The audacity Theo had to suck Rafe’s cum from me and replace it with his own showed me that I needed to be brave, wait a little longer.

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