Page 57 of Like An Animal
He knows about Lottie. How the hell does he know?
“Do you think there is anywhere you could go that I wouldn’t find you, little ghost? You owe me a penance and I’m here tocollect. Don’t worry. The child isn’t here. She can’t hear any of this.”
My blood boils from his words. Lottie is gone and he fucking took her.
I push off the stairs and ram my body back into his. He stumbles as I push his back into the wall and snap around, digging my fingers into his jacket.
I don’t give a fuck who he is. No one messes with my daughter.
“Where is she?!” I yell in his face with all the rage I have before punching him straight in the nose. “What did you do to my daughter?!”
Out of nowhere, the back of his hand connects with my cheek, sending me to the ground. Pain vibrates through my face, all the way down to my jaw bone.
Jeremy used to hit me a lot, but it was always in bed and I liked it. I liked the pain he gave because it always came with pleasure, but this is different. He didn’t use that much strength before.
Sure, I hit him first, but his hit sets a completely different tone for this than what I was used to when dealing with Jeremy Borza.
I knew he wanted to kill me, but to have the evidence of it staring me in the face hurts way worse than his hand did.
That’s something I would never admit out loud.
“Don’t worry. The brat is safe. Xavi is taking good care of her and the mutt.”
Just fucking great. Not only do I have to deal with Jeremy, but Xavi as well.
Jeremy just guaranteed my cooperation because he took the one thing that matters to me. My child.
Wrapping his fingers around my throat, he pulls me up. My fingers dig into his wrist as I stand on my feet, scowling at him.
“If anything happens to her, you’ll wish you killed me sooner,” I warn, not caring if he squeezes the life out of me.
He throws his head back laughing before looking back down at me, slowly shaking his head. “Oh, no, no, little ghost. I’m not going to kill you. Where’s the fun in that? No. What I’m going to do is deliver a never ending torment as payment for what you took from me. You will never be able to move further than my leash allows you to. If you thought I was suffocating before, you don’t know the meaning of the fucking word. I will be your worst nightmare that you have to face every single fucking day. You can bank on that.” Then he drags me against him and steals my mouth in a rough kiss, using his teeth to dig into my lip until it bleeds down our faces.
The pain slicing through my lip feels like nothing, especially considering the kind of torture I’ve been put through in my life.
It doesn’t bother me.
His words do though.
He wants to be my worst nightmare and that means he has some pretty big shoes to fill. I’m not scared of much. The cult I escaped succeeded in that. Plus, I didn’t realize how much I liked him constantly watching me and making sure no one so much as looked at me until he was no longer there. Like the saying goes, you never know what you have until it’s gone.
However, I’ve survived so long without it, I know it will feel so suffocating to have it again. I became truly independent without Jeremy constantly watching my moves.
He plans to strip it all away.
“Now, do I need to drag you in there or will you walk like a good little bitch?”
I scowl at him. If he didn’t send my daughter off with his lackey, I would knee him in the balls for calling me that, but my hands are tied.
“You’re a fucking asshole.”
“This is me being nice. You don’t want to see how much of an asshole I can be, Bronwyn.”
CHAPTER 25
THE GHOST
With his hand gripping the back of my neck, Jeremy guides me back into the living room and pushes me onto the couch, my chest pressing into the cushion. I guess when he said he could be more of an asshole, he wanted to prove it.
