Page 66 of Fractured Loyalties
“You can make this easy,” he says, his voice shredded. “Or you can make it hard.”
I spit in his face.
He backhands me, a hard, stinging slap that rattles my teeth and blurs my vision. The room tilts. He yanks one of my arms above my head, pinning my wrist with one fist, and with the other, he tears the blanket down to my waist.
The cold air stings my skin.
He leans in, pressing his lips to my ear. “You don’t want to end up like your mother, Ivy. Trust me. Youwantto be good.”
I jerk my head back, trying to slam his nose, but he sees it coming and moves aside. I get one more scratch in, this time across his neck. He grits his teeth, squeezing my wrist until I’m sure the bones will break.
“I can break you, Ivy,” he says, voice all gravel and hate. “No one will stop me. And it won’t be like it was with Roman. It won’t be like that because I don’t love you.”
He drops and then slides his hand up my thigh, the pressure bruising and invasive. I twist again, trying to bring my knee up, but he’s braced against me.
My whole world shrinks to the heat of his palm and the raw, buzzing pain in my cheek as he slaps me again.
He’s about to win. He’s going to take what he wants from me.
And then, from somewhere far away, I hear the front door slam and the eerie chimes through the whole place. It’s followed by heavy, hurried steps that thunder down the hallway. The doorknob rattles once, twice, and then the door bursts open, slamming against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
Robert looks up, startled.
Roman stands in the doorway, panting, his eyes laced with hate. Behind him is a woman I have never seen before—but she looksjustlike him.
For a full second, nobody moves.
Robert’s weight is a mountain pressing me into the mattress, my wrist going numb from the force of his grip.
He ignores them. His breath is hot against my cheek, his teeth bared and his spit flecks my skin. The blood from my scratches beads on his face, bright and wet, and his hand is still on my thigh, squeezing so hard I think he might snap the bone.
“I guess you came to enjoy the show,” he says back to them over his shoulder. “You’re trespassing in my house,” he says, and the words are a growl.
My entire body is still frozen, but my mind is racing, mapping all the possible escape routes at once. I can’t move, but my blood is molten, and my muscles are tensed to snap.
The girl behind Roman leans in the doorway, terrifyingly casual. “You really gonna let him keep touching her?”
Roman launches himself.
He covers the distance in half a heartbeat, grabs Robert by the collar, and rips him off the bed with a sound like tearing paper. Robert is huge, but Roman is pure hate and adrenaline.
They slam against the dresser, shattering the urn that holds my father’s ashes—navy fragments of earthenware skitter across the floor and powder the carpet with gray ash. I scramble backwards and hit my head against the headboard. The room tilts with the impact. I watch Roman’s hands as they close around Robert’s throat, his thumbs digging into the tendons on either side.
Robert’s face purple instantly.
He tries to fight back, landing a fist in Roman’s gut, but Roman doesn’t even flinch. He bends at the knees, lifts Robert up, and slams him onto the bed where I was just pinned—the springs shriek.
“Get out, Ivy,” Roman shouts at me, his voice a ragged snarl. “Now.”
But I don’t move. Ican’t.
Robert bucks and throws a wild punch that glances off Roman’s ear. He tries to claw Roman’s face, but Roman catches his wrist and twists it. The sound is obscene, a pop, then a wet rip, and Robert screams, a high and inhuman scream.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
The girl in the doorway finally steps in, still so calm she seems out of place. She plucks a fountain pen off my desk, flips it in her hand, and tosses it to Roman.
“Use this. He’ll go out faster.”
