Page 18 of Kinks of a Billionaire
My fingers dug into his arms, and I swallowed painfully.Finally, I was safe.
“I… had nowhere else to go…” Panic overtook me again when I realized that wasn’t exactly right. “Don’t… don’t let my parents see me like this.”
And then the darkness whisked me away.
Chapter 8
Royce
After my unsuccessful attempt to find Willow at the hotel, I came back home to find her stumbling toward my front gate, beaten and bruised.
The sight had rendered me speechless—I couldn’t remember a time I’d felt so viscerally angry. She sported a swollen eye, split and weeping blood, a bruised cheek, and a fat lip. Someone had hit her. No—not just hit her. She’d been beaten, attacked.
I paced the length of my bedroom while Willow slept on the bed, her body a canvas of bruises. I got in touch with a doctor, and twenty minutes after the taxi pulled away, he was finally wrapping up his examination.
She’d been falling in and out of consciousness, but she’d yet to say another word.
I waited with bated breath for the doctor to give me his diagnosis.
“She’s been brutally assaulted,” Dr. Rodrigues stated, and I had to grit my teeth, fighting the urge to snap at him for stating the obvious.
“Anything else?” I gritted, every sick and twisted possibility flashing in my mind. My chest squeezed as I ran a hand throughmy hair, squashing my irritation and ignoring the revulsion in my stomach. This was no time to behave like a Neanderthal.
“No obvious signs of sexual assault.” The doctor must have read my worry. “But there can be no guarantee until we speak with her.” He shifted on the bed and leaned over her. “I must ask you for privacy so I can attend to her injuries.”
Oh, fuckinghellno.
“Not happening.” My expression turned dark and I locked eyes with the doctor. “She’s family.”Practically.
Dr. Rodrigues’s eyes lit up. “In that case, let me proceed.”
He took off his gloves, declaring there weren’t any injuries that would require surgery, but that he would be monitoring her condition over the coming hours and days. He applied a cream to the cuts on her face and moved on to her clenched hand. He had to peel her fingers open to extract the card that was clutched in her palm.
My brow furrowed as I reached for it and read it aloud. “Kian Cortes. Security.”
Willow’s eyes fluttered open, and the card was immediately forgotten. I dropped to my haunches and took her hand in mine.
“Royce.” Her voice was weak, her lips barely moving.
“I’m here, baby.” The raging possessiveness I felt toward her spread through me like wildfire. “Tell me what you need.”
“M-my parents—” She licked her bottom lip and winced. “Don’t let them see me like this.”
That might be hard considering her wedding was tomorrow and her parents had plans to see her in the morning. But if the suspicion in the pit of my stomach was correct, she’d marry that bastard over my dead body.
“Who did this to you?” I demanded softly.
The doctor cleared his throat, reminding us he was in the room. “Miss, I’m Dr. Rodrigues.” Willow nodded, hesitantly. “I wanted to discuss the extent of your injuries with you.”
Willow’s eyes shifted to me, her bruised lip trembling, and my heart twisted like a knife had been edged into it.
“Royce, can you give us some privacy?” She reached down to draw her patient gown tighter across her chest, and the fury bubbling through my veins burned hotter. She must have picked up on my assumption because her eyes widened and she rushed to say, “No, not for that reason. I wasn’t… No one touched me like that.”
Relief washed over me like ice on a hot summer’s day, but it didn’t ease my thirst for vengeance. Nobody touched those I loved and got away with it.
It took everything in me to grant her her privacy. She deserved it, so I pushed my raging need to be in her presence down into the pit of my soul. She didn’t need to witness me punching walls right now.
I pressed a kiss to her bruised knuckles. “If you need me, I’ll be right outside the door.”
