Page 7 of Married to My Master

As she looked up at him, she realized how shitty and sad her life had been. Sure, she'd gone to college and gotten her master's degree. She was one of the few female pharma CEO's in the world. But what else did she have? No love life to speak of, no one to share her bed, besides the vibrator she kept in her nightstand. She'd never traveled, unless it was on business. All she did was work talk to people she thought might be able to help her with her career or in her business.

What kind of fucking life was that, anyway?

She'd wanted to be loved by someone—to be held, to be told things were going to be all right, to have someone support her, even if they weren't going to get something out of it at the end of the day, and to be loved by a man who wasn't threatened by her position, or by her strength.

Instead, she didn't even have a dog or a cat. Shit, she could barely even manage to keep her pathetic excuse for a garden alive.

Dane Bishop could murder her, or cut her body into a hundred parts, and the only people who'd notice she was missing were colleagues from work. Could he do that? Could he cut her up into a hundred parts?

Of course he could. Look at what his identical brother had already done. And to his own family!

Still, even as the despair began to take over, she didn't cry. Her nose sniffled a little, and she felt the tears of panic and fear begin to well up in her eyes, but she didn't let them loose. Her mother never would have forgiven her if she had. No. Instead, she looked straight ahead, out the windshield, and awaited whatever fate faced her.

It was because of her staring straight ahead, that she didn't even see the pistol butt coming down on her temple.

Pain just exploded behind her eyes, and the whole world faded to black.

Chapter Four

Emily

She awoke sometime later, disoriented, her head throbbing like her brain was trying to crawl out and go for a manic run around the block. She looked around, her brain trying to comprehend what had just happened , and where she was.

She was in her garage, she realized. It was her garage, at her house. She glanced over at the GPS in the center console and realized Dane just used the HOME button to send him back here.

“Dane?” she asked, her mouth dry and her throat scratchy. “What are you doing?”

“We're at your house,” he said, his voice as devoid of emotion as hers had been earlier.

“I've given it some thought,” Emily said, as she realized how far gone he was, “And I think I could take your complaints directly to the board of directors, Dane.”

She knew she was grasping at straws, but maybe he'd believe her.

He just shook his head and barked out a short burst of hard laughter. “Yeah, lady, don't try to bullshit me. Besides, we're way past that point.” He got out of the car before she could reply, slamming the door shut behind him.

She looked around, knowing that she had to move. She had to react. She tried to get out of the car, but realized the seat belt was still across her, locking her in place. She reached down, unsnapped the belt, and went to get out of the car. She had to get away from this man.

Dane came around to her side, a frightening glower painted on his face, and threw open the passenger side door the rest of the way, ripping it from her hands.

Frightened, she tried to backpedal to get away from him.

He grabbed her arm, though, and turned, pulling her along to the house.

She tried to fight him, but her reaction time was so slow that she couldn't even figure out what was going on. Distantly, she knew she had to get away, but she couldn't decide what her first plan of action should be. Besides that, his hands and his pull were so strong that there was nothing she could do.

As her vision blurred and her eyes unfocused, she stumbled a little. That's when she realized she was drugged. He must have found the injectable sedative she carried in her purse.

“People like you,” Dane said, as he dragged her around the car and up to the door leading into the house, “you're all the same. You think you can just brush aside the little people when they become inconvenient. Think your suits and your money protect you, up in your high castles. I saw how afraid your employees were of you, but I'm not, Emily. I'm not at all.”

“What—”

“Don't,” he spat, as he dragged her into the house and locked the door behind them. “Just don't. You have to listen now. I get to speak now for all the lives you've ruined. Not just my brother's, but every other person who ever had a complication from a medication, then was just swept under the rug by your legal department—by every fucking legal department out.”

She walked in a daze. She could feel how tightly his hand gripped her forearm and knew that she was going to have bruises from how hard he was squeezing her. But she was numb to it, like she was looking at someone on TV, in a dramatic movie of the week.

He pulled her through the mud room and out into the kitchen. “I'm going to show you what your medication causes and make you realize what it did to Benton. You're going to feel every ounce of the burning in his brain that he described to me and his wife, and you'll be begging for me to make it stop by the end.”

“Dane, I—”

---