Delivered (The Monster Trilogy Book 3) (7 page)

The hairline fracture opened like a gaping maw, and the side of the tank fell away, hitting the floor, narrowly missing Monster’s toes. He jumped away just as a flood of water like a wave spilled from the tank and onto the floor.

Not allowing himself to think, he fell to his knees and pressed his mouth to the tiles, but already the pool of water had dispersed, leaving him licking wet tiles, all concerns for germs and hygiene long gone.

He wanted to cry. Licking the water from the tiles hadn’t quenched his thirst. If anything, it had made it worse.

Monster didn’t care anymore. With the knees of his pants wet from the tank water and clinging to his skin, he crawled to the toilet. Leaning over the bowl, as though he were about to be sick, he scooped his hand into the water. The porcelain was reasonably clean—his father’s staff would never allow the place to become dirty—but as he lifted the water to his mouth, he had to fight the multitude of voices in his head telling him about all the invisible particles of shit and piss he was about to ingest. He closed his eyes, blocking out the sight, and slurped down the water. It had a faint taste of toilet cleaner, but otherwise it was fine. His eyes opened and he scooped another palm-full, and another. He drank until the water sloshed around in his stomach, but he felt better almost immediately. The dizziness vanished and strength returned to his limbs.

Drinking the water meant his hunger returned with ferocious demand, but there was nothing he could do on that front. He just needed to wait things out now. He wasn’t going to die; he was just going to suffer some more until his father decided he’d learned his lesson.

No longer thirsty, Monster took back to his bed.

Another twelve hours passed before his father eventually let him out again, and with each hour he waited, Monster’s hatred for the man grew.

Six

Lily was taken
back to her room, Marco pushing her along the hallway as she walked. She knew she’d angered Rodriguez, but at that moment she didn’t care. She was furious at what had happened to Jess, but there was nothing she could do about it. Rodriguez said anything she did to displease him, Jess would be punished for. That evening it had only been a spanking, but she knew things would get worse for both of them. These men wouldn’t be happy with a little light punishment. Things would escalate fast.

Marco shoved her from behind again, sending her stumbling. “I’m walking just fine,” she snapped over her shoulder.

He gave a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Shut it, bitch, or you’ll get a lot worse than a little shove to complain about.”

Lily faced forward, trying to ignore the bully behind her. She hoped Jess had run back to their rooms. She assumed she had—after all, where else would she have gone? If Rodriguez had any inkling she might have tried to run away, she was sure he would have sent one of the other men after her.

They reached the bedroom door. Marco leaned past her and swung it open. Another shove against her back sent her flying forward in the expensive dress. She heard a tear from somewhere along the seam as she fell. The moment she hit the floor, the door banged shut behind her and the lock clicked into place.

Lily remained on her knees for a minute, forcing herself to take deep breaths to keep it together. What she really wanted was to leap to her feet and tear the room to pieces, to punch walls, and scream, and kick at the door, but there was a fragile girl in the room beside her, and Lily knew if she lost it, Jess wouldn’t have anything to grip hold of. Lily needed to be the anchor for both of them. If she went down, they’d both be lost.

Blinking back tears of anger, fear, and frustration, Lily tugged her torn dress up her thighs and shakily got back to her feet. The anger hadn’t left her—far from it—but she felt she had control over it now. Raging over inanimate objects wouldn’t do any good. She was already weak from lack of food and everything she’d been through, the drop in adrenaline now sapping the righteous energy that had been coursing through her body only moments before.

She looked toward the bathroom. The door which separated Jess’s room from the other side of the facilities was closed, and she hadn’t heard any sound emitting from behind the shut door. She must be in there. There was nowhere else she could be, but for just a fraction of a second panic rose inside Lily that something else had happened to Jess.

Spurred by her alarm, she hurried through the bathroom and pushed the adjoining door open without bothering to knock.

She exhaled a sigh of relief. Jess was curled up on her side, facing the wall. Her body shook with silent tears, and she didn’t do anything to acknowledge Lily had entered.

Lily crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. She lifted her hand, wanting to place it on the other woman’s shoulder as comfort, but wasn’t quite able to bring herself to do so, so her fingers hovered, mid-air, instead.

“Are you all right?” she asked in the end.

The crying stopped and Jess’ body went rigid.

Lily held her breath, waiting for a new outpouring of sorrow, but instead, Jess sat up and faced her.

“No, I’m not all right! What a stupid fucking question. Would you be all right if you’d just been exposed and spanked in front of a group of strange men?”

Lily reared back and shook her head. “No, of course not.”

“Well, then, what makes you think I’m going to be?”

“Nothing. It was a stupid thing to say. I just wanted to …”

Make sure you were okay.

She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Jess was right. Of course she wasn’t okay. They’d been taken and were going to be used as slaves to entertain power-hungry, abusive men. Neither of them should be okay.

And yet Lily felt stronger—far stronger than she’d been after Monster had taken her. Fear no longer held her its captive. She knew what she was capable of now, and that was far more than she’d ever given herself credit for.

A knock came at the door.

Lily frowned. Who would bother to knock?

She exchanged a glance with Jess, and then got to her feet and crossed the room. “Yes?” she called out.

The lock clicked open, and one of the women who’d been working in the kitchen opened the door. She carried a tray which held two identical bowls, plastic cups of water and spoons. The woman didn’t make eye contact with them, but did a little dip, as though she were of servitude to them.

“Master told me to bring your meals to you,” she said in a quiet voice, thick with an accent. “I must bring back the tray.”

“Yes, of course,” Lily said, trying to give the other woman a smile while she lifted the bowls and cups of water off the tray and placed them on the dresser. “Thank you.”

But the woman had already backed out of the room and locked the door behind her.

Lily checked out the food and wrinkled her nose. “Not exactly filet steak,” she said out loud, but not to anyone in particular. The meal appeared to be a watery porridge. She lifted one of the plastic spoons and took a mouthful, trying not to grimace. Yes, watery porridge was exactly what the food was. No sugar or cream to add flavor. The meal was as plain as you could get.

Even so, her stomach growled with hunger. Holding back on her own desire to shovel food into her mouth, she lifted the other bowl and spoon, and carried them over to Jess, who still sat on the bed.

“Here,” she said, setting them down on the bedside table. “Eat. It’ll make you feel stronger.”

Jess pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t be stupid. You need to eat.” She lowered her voice. “If an opportunity arises where we can get out of here, how are you going to feel if you’re too weak to run?”

“We’re not getting out of here,” she said, resolutely. “I wish you’d stop saying that.”

“I have someone on the outside. He’ll be looking for me, I’m sure of it.”

But was she sure? What if Monster decided this was too big a problem to get involved with? Though she didn’t want to doubt him, she couldn’t help but worry. She hoped Monster would come for her, but she wasn’t going to rely on him. She would need to save herself, and Jess, too, if things came down to it.

“He might be dead,” Jess said suddenly.

Lily’s head snapped around. “What?”

“He was shot. I saw he was hurt. He might be dead.”

A flood of hot, followed by cold, rushed over her. “No, he’s not dead. I’d know somehow. I’d feel it inside me.” But those were stupid, romantic notions. How would she know he was dead? Wasn’t the truth simply that she was lying to herself?

“Just eat the food,” she said, walking back to where she’d left her own meal. She picked up the bowl and glass, and carried them back to her room. She couldn’t stand to be in the same space as Jess right now for suggesting such a thing. Though she wanted to help the other woman—felt responsible for her, for some reason—she couldn’t allow Jess to bring her down, too. Already she could feel the depression clawing at her limbs, and weighing on her heart, as though it were a living being that literally wanted to drag her down to the floor.

She pulled the door partially shut behind her and took the bowl to sit on the side of the bed. The food was tasteless, but warm and filling. She ate quickly, and in less than a minute she was scraping the bowl clean.

Exhaustion swept over her, weighing down her eyelids. She hadn’t slept at all the previous night, and she needed to rest.

Placing the bowl beside the bed, she curled up on her side, her hand beneath her head.

Within seconds, she was asleep.

Monster (Present Day)

Someone was shaking
his shoulder.

After the shaking, the pain made itself known, throbbing through Monster’s collarbone and down his arm. He forced himself awake and tried to focus, though the memories that had been resurfacing of his childhood clung to his thoughts. Why had his father been so insistent Monster should have been taking care of their ‘property’ and treating it with respect? He’d never been a man to give a shit about respecting women before, or even people in general. Had his father’s reaction been more to do with Sophia’s mother than anything else? Sophia had said she’d believed her mother to be in love with his father, so was it possible his father had thought of Sophia as a daughter—a beautiful child to replace the hideous one he had locked away in a bedroom? Was that why he’d sent Sophia and her mother to belong to the Gonzalez family instead of just casting them out, or having them killed? After all, he knew his father was perfectly capable of killing women he didn’t want to keep around. Wasn’t that exactly what he’d done to Monster’s mother?

Sophia’s voice, hissing at him, dragged his attention from the past. “I can hear movement from upstairs.”

Monster grunted and sat up. “What?”

“I think our friend upstairs is awake. What are we going to do?”

He shook off the last residual cobwebs of sleep and rubbed his hand across his face. “How long have I been out?”

“About eight hours. Your shoulder is looking better.”

He nodded. He felt better, though guilt filled him at the idea he’d been sleeping all this time when Lily had been in danger. If something awful had happened to her in that time, he’d never forgive himself. “Are you sure you know where Rodriguez will be keeping Lily?” he asked Sophia.

She nodded. “It’s always the same place for his new pets, as he likes to call them. It’s a place out in the desert where he knows they can’t escape.”

A creak of floorboards came from upstairs, and they both glanced toward the ceiling.

Monster got to his feet, testing out his limbs. He needed to know he was stable enough to be able to fight if needed.

“Here,” Sophia said, pushing a glass of water toward him. The color was cloudy, and he frowned in suspicion. “It’s just a combination of salts and vitamins, to help rehydrate you, and some pain medication for your shoulder. It will help, I promise.”

He didn’t have much choice but to trust her. After all, she could have killed him, or simply let him die, any time over the past day, but she hadn’t. And part of him still felt like he knew this woman. Even though years had passed since they’d last spoken, she didn’t feel like a stranger to him.

Monster drank the concoction down in a couple of large gulps, and set down the glass on the counter.

More movement came from upstairs.

Sophia snatched up a set of keys, which he assumed Rodriguez’s man must have left, and then tugged a light-weight, zip-up jacket from the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Here, put this on. We need to go!”

The floorboard creaked again, and Monster took the jacket from her and carefully pushed his injured arm into one sleeve, tugging it up to cover the bandage over his shoulder. He hooked it over his back and slid his other arm in, before pulling the two sides together and zipping the jacket up.

He knew Sophia wanted to go, but he wasn’t about to run from some guy who probably had a raging hangover. The idea of leaving someone behind who would immediately either take after them, or else contact Rodriguez and tell him they were coming, just didn’t sit right with him. He wasn’t a coward, and he wasn’t afraid of death—either his own, or someone else’s at his hands.

Footsteps fell heavy on the treads of the staircase, and Monster knew he had to make a decision. He didn’t have long. His gaze flicked to the countertop, where a block of knives sat.

“We can’t leave him here,” he said. “He’ll inform Rodriguez.”

“No, he won’t. He’s just one of Rodriguez’s monkeys. He’s barely got the brains to think for himself.”

“Monkeys can be trained. I don’t like leaving loose ends.”

She caught his hand to tug him toward the front door, but he pulled free and made for the counter instead.

Her eyes flicked toward the staircase, wide and desperate. She opened her mouth as though to call a warning, but then shut it again. A thread of confusion ran through him. Why did she want to protect this man?

“Let’s head out the back,” she hissed. “He won’t see us then.”

Monster nodded, but didn’t move. He couldn’t just walk out and leave this guy to hunt them down. Loose ends weren’t working so well for him at the moment.

He jerked his chin toward the door. “Go! I’m right behind you.”

“No, what are you doing?”

“Just go!”

The footsteps had reached the bottom of the stairs. They were slow and sluggish, most likely the result of the half a bottle of liquor he’d consumed before crashing. Monster wasn’t fully fit himself, but he would use the other man’s hangover to his advantage.

Moving as quickly as he could, he snatched a knife from the block—a slender, sharp blade used for filleting fish, and stepped back behind the door. The footsteps had reached the bottom of the stairs now. Monster held his breath, wondering if the man would make his way to the front door, which could spell disaster if he had to take after him on a public street with a knife in his hand, but then the footsteps turned toward the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Sophia whispered, her blue eyes wide.

He didn’t speak, but jerked his chin toward the back door again.

She looked between the door to the hallway and the rear exit, appearing torn between the two, but then she made a small sound—somewhere between a sigh and a sob—and turned toward the back door. She bent and picked up her purse which had been left on the floor nearby.

As she unlocked and opened the door, the man’s voice sounded, so close. “Sophia? That you?”

The interior door opened and the man stepped through. His attention was drawn by the open back door, from which Sophia had just fled, and he didn’t notice Monster in the shadows.

Monster stepped up behind him and caught him from behind by the jaw. Moving quickly, so the other man barely got the chance to cry out, he yanked the man’s head back, exposing his throat, and slid the sharp edge of the knife across his skin.

The man gave a gurgled cry and his hands lifted to clutch at his throat. A sheet of blood cascaded down the front of his body, and Monster stepped back to avoid the deluge. The man’s hands fluttered at the wound in his throat, and he managed to turn to see Monster standing behind him, before his legs gave way and he crumpled to the floor. Blood left his body in pulsing spurts, spreading across the linoleum, and creating a pool beneath him. Monster stood and waited for the light to go out of his eyes and for the spurts to slow down to a dribble, signifying the heart stopping.

Monster wished he felt something, some kind of remorse or even disgust for the man dead in front of him. But he felt nothing. Perhaps his father’s training had worked after all. He was the cold, heartless creature his father had always wanted him to be. All he could think about was the fact this man had played a part in Rodriguez taking Lily from him, and for that alone, Monster was glad he was dead.

He had blood on his hands in a quite literal way.

Though he didn’t want to wait around, he stepped toward the sink. He turned on the faucet, and rinsed any trace of blood from his hands and beneath his fingernails, and then wiped any fingerprints from the knife handle. His DNA was probably all over this place from the treatment of his gunshot wound, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. He also preferred not to leave bodies lying around, but considering what they’d left back at the private airfield, he guessed that ship had already sailed.

Giving the body a wide berth, purely so he didn’t get any blood on his shoes, rather than it being anything squeamish, he strode to the door Sophia had exited from. He stepped out into a small, paved yard, and then rounded the house to the front. Sophia sat behind the wheel of the vehicle he’d been brought to the house in. She was peering toward the house anxiously, the engine already running. Dawn was just starting to bloom in the sky, threading the blue with strands of orange, pink, and yellow. The early hour meant there was no one around to see them leaving, and no one called the alarm.

She leaned back in her seat as he opened the passenger door and slid into the car.

“What the hell were you doing?” she demanded, then she raised both hands, her lips pressed together as she shook her head. “Actually, no. Don’t even tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“I was only doing what had to be done.”

“I hope you haven’t just landed us in a big pile of shit.”

“It’s better this way. He’d only have come after us, and alerted Rodriguez to the fact we were coming for Lily.”

Sophia pulled the car out into the street, her foot on the accelerator as she spoke. “You don’t know that. He had no way of knowing you’d go to Rodriguez. He might just have thought you’d escaped.”

“Then he’d have still alerted Rodriguez. It’s better this way, trust me.”

Though she was staring at the road, he didn’t miss the way she pressed her lips together and gave her head a slight shake of disapproval.

“I don’t understand why you’d want to protect someone like that,” he said. “He helped to kill three of my men, and he played a part in kidnapping two women. You should be happy to see him dead.”

“I’m a healer—that’s my job. I don’t like death or violence in any form, no matter who it’s against. I want to help you, but I can’t encourage you to hurt someone else, even if the someone else was an asshole. “

He shook his head. “Sometimes violence has to happen, even if we don’t want it to. We can have it forced on us, and it shapes the people we become.”

She took her eyes off the road for a moment and glanced over at him. “Did your father hit you?”

He grimaced. “Do you even need to ask?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“The hitting wasn’t the worst of it. I could have lived with that. It was the other things he did, the ways he controlled me. Those are the things that are harder to come to terms with.”

She nodded. “Even though I was only in your home for a short while, I knew exactly what kind of man he was. I guess I was just hoping you’d turned out differently.”

Her words cut him. “You don’t think I’m any different from my father?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I guess I’d just been hoping all these years that you’d escaped this life. That you’d ended up happily married in a regular job, but I suppose those were the silly dreams of a young girl. People don’t escape this life until they’re dead.”

“I’d hoped for the same thing for you,” he said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“That you’d gone on to live a normal life.”

Her mouth twisted. “Normal doesn’t exist for people like us.”