Page 124 of Voracious

“You killed my daughter and raped me. That’s not love.”

He stays silent, hands falling to his sides.

I keep going. “I was going to have a beautiful baby girl. And you took her away from me. You robbed me of my daughter.”

“The baby was his. I wanted you to havemykid.”

“You’ve preyed on me since I met you, even when I was underage. I was aminor, and you still watched me shower with your dick in your hand. You still forced your way into my bed and made me hold you while we slept. You beat me for not loving you, for not wanting to love you, and then you took every ounce of happiness I had.”

His brows narrow. “But you wanted me to watch. You wanted me to come to your bed. You told me you loved me.”

“Youforcedthose words out of my mouth. I was scared, Chris. I was fucking terrified because I was only fourteen and had a new older stepbrother who told me he was going to take my virginity and strangled me when I refused him.”

“You were fifteen then.”

“That’s not the point!” I take another step to the lodge and stop, my lip trembling, but I refuse to let any tears fall. I feel the sting behind my eyes as I take a deep breath. “What would you have done if I actually wanted you, the baby was yours, and someone beat me up because it wasn’t theirs and it died?”

His eyes turn dark. “I would kill them.”

I nod. “I should’ve told Kade what was happening. He would have protected our child – that’s on me. But I can’t wait until Kade gets his revenge on you. You took his daughter from him, and even if he doesn’t care about me anymore, he’ll torture you for that. I hope he puts you through hell.”

“Let’s assume Kade does get his hands on me,” he says as he follows me with our bags. “Would you help him, Stacey?”

I throw my head back and laugh. “He’s the son of Tobias Mitchell. He doesn’t need help.”

36

STACEY

Chris has always been smart when it comes to technology, but as I stare at all the computer screens and flashing lights on boxes I’ve never seen before, I think I may have misjudged just how brainy he really is.

Not that I want to praise him or anything – he’s still a horrible human being.

After a week of annoying me, asking me every two seconds if I’m okay, he’s finally exhausted and has fallen asleep on the couch. He’d lose his shit if he saw me in here. I tried to come in yesterday, but he pushed my face into the wall and told me that if he saw me trying to go in again, I’d regret it.

Being the loose cannon that I am – and apparently stupid – I’m standing in the middle of the room, staring at all the equipment and pictures decorating the walls.

Chris said a few days ago that he wasn’t scared. Looking at this room, it’s clear he lied.

He’s trying to track Tobias and Kade. He has images of them on the wall, with a red string tracing Kade’s movements, and a blue one highlighting Tobias’s. The former’s is considerably longer, with sightings all over the States, Russia, Spain and back to Scotland.

I narrow my gaze on an image dated the day Chris came for me that shows Kade fixing a scarf or snood to his face. He’s wearing the same uniform as others who raided my place. His hair is longer – and for some reason he looks taller.

Maybe that’s because I haven’t seen him in nearly a year. Since he fucked me then threw me away.

The most recent sighting is of him leaving a black SUV and holding his hand out to the blonde. Written below the photo in messy handwriting is:Edinburgh, 6:09 a.m., Cassie Sawyer – aged 23.Fiancée? Potential blackmail?

There were only a couple of sightings of Tobias before the trail went cold – him wearing a cap and sunglasses at Barry’s house and then him getting into a car at a gas station.

It’s likely he’s with Barry then. If so, I hope Lisa and Eva are hidden. I also hope Tobias is okay. I hope so much that he’s on his way to find his son.

My hands shake as I lift up a plastic folder filled with pictures of me and others. Some of them are from my old phone – images of me and Kade, me and the dogs, me and my friends. Chris has crossed out everyone’s faces aggressively except for my own.

I open one of the laptops, and my blood runs cold as the screensaver pops up – it’s an image of me sleeping. I slap it closed and back away from the desk.

CCTV fills all the screens on the right-hand wall. Some of the footage is from the lodge, and I can see Chris asleep still, and some are from random areas around our town, the path that leads to the lodge. Three are around Nora’s estate, and the rest are somewhere I don’t recognise.

I stare at the screen nearest me, which displays a black-and-white image of a room with sterile-looking furniture and a four-poster bed with two people sleeping in it – a man and a woman. He has his arms wrapped around her, and my eyes widen. I recognise his face. He was the one who approached us on the pier a year ago and made Kade freak out when he took a picture of me. He was there that night I killed those three guys.

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