Page 8 of Wed to the Devil

The bedroom has a tiny space heater, too, and I crank that on, more worried about how freaking cold it is right now that I am about conserving any kind of power. Grabbing my bag, I rifle through the contents and change into a pair of yoga pants and a basic black sweatshirt with the name of the college that Olivia works at on the front. Olivia, God bless her, remembered to stick thick socks in the bag. I hustle into my new outfit and then hurry to the bathroom, thinking all the while about how badly I have to pee. I do my business and then wash my hands in the freezing cold tap water, leaving the tap running just a bit.

Thinking about the fact that I should leave the kitchen sink running as well, I move to the door. There is a rectangular mirror on the door, one of those cheap ones that you can find at any dollar store. I catch a glimpse of myself and stop, staring at my reflection. I turned to the side, slowly shaping my stomach with my hands. I swear, I didn't notice it before. But there is decidedly a noticeable little poof right below my belly button. And I don't mean it looks like I had too much to eat…

I have a baby bump. Lifting the sweatshirt, I move my body side to side, trying to figure out if I am going crazy or whether I could be showing so soon. By my calculations, I am only three and a half months pregnant… That's way too soon to be showing, isn't it?

I dropped the sweater back over my stomach and smooth it down, swallowing hard.

As if I needed another reminder that I carry the child that the Morgan clan would kill each other for. I definitely don't want to think about the lengths that Dare and Burn will go to if it means ascertaining their victory with their awful grandfather.

I make it out of the bathroom just in time to hear the sound of falling snow hitting metal. Padding over to the front window, I look out. I realize that I can't see anything at all. But I hope that sound was simply the snow falling off the roof and hitting the hood of the car. My mouth pulls down at one corner. I am definitely stuck here, whether I like it or not.

I head over to the groceries and make myself a peanut butter sandwich, scarfing it down once I realize how starving I am. At one point, I pause my sandwich making to check out a noise I heard that sounded like the house breaking and splintering in the corner. But when I go to check, it's just a noise.

It's funny, I have lived in the Northeast for my entire life and yet I don't think I've ever been so freaked out over every little noise as I am today. Maybe because I'm so keyed up, maybe there are just more odd and unexplained sounds now.

Moving the sheets and blankets to the bedroom, I sit on the couch and eat my sandwich. All the while, I am just coming to terms with the fact that I am leaving Dare. Leaving a Morgan man will not be easy. He will definitely demand repayment of his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars sooner rather than later. And then I will be on my own again, all alone, pregnant and not a little bit frightened. Aunt Minnie and Olivia made it clear enough to me that I wasn't choosing between marrying Dare or homelessness. But having a roof over my head won't really pay Aunt Minnie’s loans. And I am not sure how well her loan shark will take it when I tell him that I need him to give the money back.

Do they even do that? Frankly, I don't know.

My eyelids grow heavy. The wood stove is putting off quite a bit of heat now and I’m quite certain that this is the first moment that I have not felt cold all night. Closing my eyes and resting my head on my arms, I drift off to sleep. As I fall, I can only think of how I am stuck between a rock and a hard place in my life.

ChapterThree

DARE

“And? Where is she? Where is my wife?”

The private investigator glances nervously around the coffee shop where he agreed to meet me. He looks nothing like what I imagine a private investigator looks like. He's young, extremely gaunt, with a shorn scalp, dark eyebrows, a lip ring, a tight black hoodie, and the honest to God tightest pair of black jeans I've ever seen. He looks at me and swallows.

I lean forward, almost leaving my seat, and snarl at him. “Where is Talia? Tell me right now or get the fuck out of my face.”

This new investigator, the fifth that I have talked to in the last day and a half, leaps to his feet and backs up, putting his soft leather chair between us.

“Hey man, I'm sorry that your wife left you. But that's no reason to be a dick.”

I get to my feet, my anger filling every inch of my being, crackling around me as I glare at him. He gulps and turns tail to run out of the coffee shop. I clench my fists and look at him as he runs around the glass walls of the coffee shop. He is a fucking idiot. But so were the four investigators that I talked to and fired before I came to talk to him.

“Sir?” A young barista asks me. “Are you okay?”

I glance over at her and she smiles coquettishly at me. She's blonde and thin, her big tits pushed-up in a tight little shirt that she wears under a blue and green apron. She's pretty, in an alternative, indie rock kind of way. Normally I would spend a few minutes here, talking to her, seeing how she feels about taking orders and spending a few hours in my bed.

But just now, I don't have time for her. There is only one pretty young girl on my mind, and her name is Talia fucking Chance.

No.

A shiver runs through me as I think of her new name.

Talia Morgan.

She will be back under my control very soon.

I flop a hand at the barista and stride towards the door, pulling my cell phone out. I check my text messages and see that Rob has finally gotten back to me about Talia's little friend Olivia. She is surprisingly difficult to track down and who I have yet to talk to about Talia's disappearance.

The text just reads ‘found her home address…’ Followed by an address on the other side of Harwicke, just down the street from Talia's old house. I walk straight out to my waiting chauffeur, climbing in the back seat and giving him the address. My heart beats fast and I can't keep the smile off my lips.

If Olivia knows where Talia is, I am about to break her.

I wait in Olivia's darkened kitchen until she gets home at ten thirty. The room is tiny, the worn flowered linoleum on the floor peeling at the corners, the paint on the cabin has gone gray with age, the ugly green countertop chipped and warped. It's not a nice place to wait, but at least it's quiet enough to do some thinking and hatch a plan for what I want to say to Olivia.

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