Monster (8 page)

Eden felt a piece of herself wither further when she finally slipped into the cream colored dress he’d purchased for her.

It was designer, delicately embroidered lace that hugged her curves and stopped about mid-thigh. Stepping in front of the mirror, Eden was faced with the reflection of her old self; the expensive, well bought girl who’d feared destitution like the plague and had willingly sold her soul to the devil for a life that had turned out to be less than ideal. It was difficult looking at the girl, looking at exactly what sort of person she’d been a little more than a year ago.

For just a moment, that shallow girl, along with her insecurities and fears, threatened to overshadow the self-reliant, courageous woman Eden had worked so tirelessly to become. But Eden was quick in nipping it in the bud. She would be damned if she allowed that snake to strip away her self-worth. God, she couldn’t believe it had come down to this! All that planning and all that saving just to end up back at square one! Right under Dominic’s thumb. Despite the direness of her current predicament, Eden refused to concede defeat. There was still fight left in her. Self-preservation thrived at her core, made her carefully evaluate the situation and strategize accordingly.

Eden made sure to remain in the suite for as long as she possibly could before James’s persistent knocking had her walking to the door. By the time they made it to the restaurant, it was well past the allotted hour, but Eden was beyond caring. If she had to endure him back into her life, she sure as hell wasn’t going to make it easy. Once was she safely ensconced inside the cossetting interior of the sleek, black Rolls Royce he’d sent for her, they were off. The ride was surprisingly brief, but it afforded Eden enough time to gather herself and try not to act like a complete moron when she finally faced him. She scrounged up some much needed bravado and fueled it with renewed ire. She was however taken
slightly aback when she alighted from the vehicle and found herself facing a high-rise rather than the restaurant she had been expecting. Puzzled she turned to James who silently stood at her side.

“Where are we?”

“There’s been a slight change of plans, Mrs. Armstrong.”

“I can see that, but why?”

“Please, ma’am, Mr. Armstrong has waited long enough for your arrival.” With a steady hand on her lower back and an arm indicating that she should walk forward, James urged her towards the entrance of the building. Blood rushed to her head, her heart was beating too fast now, and sweat began to pearl against her skin. Everything was a blur to her, even the elevator ride to the very top floor of the high rise didn’t seem to register in Eden’s current state. She hadn’t anticipated this. She could’ve handled the restaurant—the buffer of the patrons would’ve made it easier for her to fend him off—but it was just them now. Eden’s heart lurched painfully in her chest, warning of an incoming panic attack. She told herself to breathe, even as they drew nearer to the place where she least wanted to be. Turning back however was no longer an option when the door flew open before James had the opportunity to knock.

He stood there like the devil incarnate, the tautness of his features and the barely restrained hold he had on his fury put the fear of that devil at Eden’s core. He looked murderous.

“That will be all, James,” came the terse dismissal, and he failed to give his bodyguard anymore mind as he wrapped a hand around Eden’s wrist and brusquely tugged her inside, closing the door soundly in James’s face.

Eden struggled to free herself from his unyielding hold as he dragged her behind his unforgiving frame. When he finally stopped it was to shove her onto the leather couch that thankfully broke her fall. His unnecessary brutality sparked Eden’s rage again, and she shot to her feet facing him with a glare of her own. “How dare you—”

“Sit down.”

“Like hell…”

“Sit. The. Fuck. Down.” His naked fury was terrifying; his dark green eyes gleamed and his mouth compressed in a hard line. The aggression radiating off of him smacked into Eden instantly, pushing her back down on the couch. He loomed over her, a great big shadow of a man with a snarling face. “Listen to me very carefully,” he breathed, barely containing himself, “do not mistake my tolerance for patience. I can only be pushed so far.”

“And how far are you going to push me?” she fired back, hands balling into fists at her side, refusing to stand down. “What is it going to take for you to leave me the hell alone?”

“You are my wife!” he roared as though that was the answer to everything.

Eden laughed without humor. “Do you honestly think that’s what I am? Do you honestly believe this joke of marriage is anything other than a well-dressed act of prostitution? I wasn’t your wife, Dominic, I was a very well paid sex toy, and you were the sad and pathetic asshole who paid for it.”

“Well then,” he bit out, tearing his shirt out of his trousers and raising a hand to undo the remaining buttons, “seeing as I am still paying for it, I might as well get my money’s worth.” With the shirt hanging open, he was exposed to her now from throat to navel and a little further down, a point where she absolutely refused to look.

The implication of what he was about to do hit Eden squarely in the face, and she regarded him with a mixture of disbelief and resentment. “I hope you’re prepared to rape me, Dominic, because that’s the only way you’re going to touch me,” Eden said gravely, feeling completely unhinged by the situation and Dominic’s menacing form.

He took a staggering step back from her the instant she uttered those words, and then another as if suddenly faced with a two headed monster. Shock turned his face noticeably pale, and Eden was glad to see that she’d finally struck that boundless ego. “I wouldn’t…” he trailed off, abandoning whatever he had been about to say, and lanced Eden with his narrowed stare instead. “You are not to leave here until I return,” he ground out. Turning away from her, he marched out of his penthouse without a second glance.

Dominic heard a noise, one that made his heart jump and had him out of his bed in record time. He hastened to the door but stopped instantly, his hand outstretched towards the knob. He knew he shouldn’t. He was told to stay in his room; she hated when he disobeyed, and the last time he’d failed to do as he was told, she’d gotten incredibly angry and had locked him in that dark place. He’d been good since then, doing everything she asked without complaint. But the noise…he heard it again. Louder this time. Was someone in the house? Was she in trouble? Pressing his ear to the door, he listened carefully. There it was again! The loud thud had him blowing caution to the wind and yanking the door open. The hallway that led from his bedroom to hers was a long one, blanketed by darkness.

He hesitated again, this time standing at the threshold and staring into the gaping nothingness in front of him that frightened him like nothing else. It reminded him of that place. Dominic shuddered at the thought of having to walk through the darkness. But what if she needed him? What if she was in trouble again? The man from last time had hurt her very badly because Dominic had been too much of a coward to do anything about it. He’d hated seeing her in pain days after, even when she’d taken her anger out on him. The innate need to see that she was alright jostled him forward and before he knew it he was running down the stretch of foyer that seemed so infinite, but couldn’t have ended soon enough.

“Mom…” He was at her door, hand on the doorknob, turning it even as he heard the muffled voices inside. “Mom,” he called again, with his heart racing he heard the pained moans and entered her bedroom. “Mom, are you okay?”

“Fuck.” He heard the expletive in his search for her and found movement coming from her bed. There was some rustling of sheets before Dominic was faced with her scowling visage and that of a man he did not recognize. The man had been the one who’d whispered the obscenity. “You didn’t tell me you had a kid.” He stumbled out of the bed, nude except for the chain he wore around his neck as he frantically searched for his clothes. He found his jeans strewn on the floor a few feet away from where Dominic was currently standing. While he slipped them on, giving a small hop to get them over his hips, he looked at Dominic, who bemusedly retuned his stare.

“No, baby, don’t worry about him…” his mother tried to soothe, and with little regards to her own nudity, she chased after him.

“Jesus, Sheila, I’m not fucking you while you’re kid’s in the next room. Look, I’ll hook you up with this stash, but have my money by next week.” Having found his shirt seconds prior, he rustled a hand through Dominic’s hair on his way out.

“Come on, Randy, don’t leave. He’s a stupid little kid; he doesn’t even know what’s going on. He’s a little slow. Let me just put him in his room and we’ll party.”

“I think you’ve partied enough for the night, and I’m getting pretty tired of fucking you as payment. Free ride ends tonight. Don’t call me unless you have money to pay for it.” Dominic jumped again as the front door slammed shut behind the man who’d been in his mother’s bed.

It wasn’t too long before he felt the repercussion of his actions. She came at him with an open palm across his face. “You stupid little boy!” she screamed, anchoring a hand through his hair and tugging his head back to look into her sneering face. “God, I knew I should’ve killed you when I had the chance!” She dragged him behind her by his hair and Dominic raised his hand to hers to lessen the pain.

“Mom, I’m sorry…” Panic began to settle in when he saw exactly where they were headed. This was worse than the closet. “Mommy…Mommy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” he pleaded with raw desperation as she thrust open the basement door, and tugged him down the stairs. “Mommy…Mommy, please!”

“You’re just like him!” she screeched, battling to pick him up as he struggled to free himself. But as much as he tried, his seven-year-old body was only capable of so much. “You’re horrible, just like your father!” She shoved him in the crawl space and yanked the metal door shut just before he could run out. “You ruined everything. You ruined my life!”

“Mommy, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I won’t do it again! Mom! Mom, it’s dark! It’s too dark!” Dominic sobbed, banging futilely against the metal door. He couldn’t breathe. He was suffocating. He banged and scrapped his nails raw, bleeding and crying into the enveloping, stifling darkness until finally he succumbed to the darkness itself.

* * *

“I believe the last time you were here we came to the agreement that the sum of money we gave you would take care of the little issue, thereby permanently removing you from our lives.” Winston Virgil Armstrong stared his imperious nose down at the haggard woman standing unsteadily in front of him. She oozed of degradation; the stench of her addiction permeated the air in his office. She was someone he’d believed he’d dealt with years ago. One of his son’s proclivities having spun out of control, he’d written a substantial check to the woman who’d come crying rape because Gregory had gotten a little
too physical. Winston had done so to keep their family name out of the papers, but mostly to preserve his son’s future. He and his father and his father’s father had toiled for far too long to build their enterprise.

The name Armstrong was synonymous with trust, respect, and upstanding family values to the thousands upon thousands of consumers who purchased their products. To have had such a scandal threaten to tarnish that good name would’ve been mayhem. Furthermore, with ’Gregory’s impending nuptials to Millicent Wentworth, heiress to one of the largest cosmetic lines in the country, the scandal would’ve shattered that possibility. The union presented a lucrative opportunity for a merger between their companies; it’d been quite imperative that nothing interfere with the wedding. Therefore, Winston had dealt with the problem in the manner befitting. Unfortunately, it appeared he’d been foolishly optimistic in believing the situation could’ve been so easily rectified.

“Well, I didn’t get rid of it.” She sniffed indignantly, folding her tattered cardigan over her emaciated form.

No, she certainly had not. Winston’s gaze drifted down to the gangly child at her side. He could no more deny the child’s paternity than he could ignore those unmistakable sharp, green eyes that were an inheritable trait in his family .Although he would have a definitive answer before the day was out. Then there was also the fact that the boy bore a startling resemblance to Gregory when he’d been that young. Much as he wanted to, Winston knew that the boy was his grandchild. His brow furrowed further as he carefully assessed the child. There were bruises covering his pale face, and the clothes he wore hung off his disturbingly slight figure. He looked malnourished, the gauntness of his features making him appear close to death.

“What will it take to get rid of you permanently?”

“How much is the child of a rapist worth?” she countered nastily, shrewd, despite the glassiness of her coal black eyes.

“You’re willing to part with him?”

“You can have him and my silence, for a price.”

“Name it.”

“Two million dollars.”

“Done. In turn, you will never step foot on this property again. If you return, make no mistake, I will have you shot for trespassing.”

He cut her the check and the instant she had it in her hand, she stepped away from the boy, who quickly reached out to grab her sweater. “Mommy…” he called softly.

“You’re not my problem anymore,” she said coldly, wrenching the little bit of her sweater he held in his small hand. She turned her back to him and walked out the door, leaving Dominic behind in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar faces.

* * *

He’d seen Sheila Swanson only once more after that when he’d been eighteen. She’d been a shell, more so than what he’d remembered her to be, and Dominic had been grateful for his upbringing in that his indifference had been able to help him cope with her perpetual contempt for him and the unforgettable way he’d been conceived. When he’d finally heard of her passing some months later, an overdose or some such, he’d already shut himself off from everything and had barely given her a thought until this evening. He raised a hand to the bartender for another shot, his fourth now, but Dominic had only just begun to drown the memories. God, he hadn’t gotten this drunk in quite some time now, but it seemed his demons were in quite the mood, gnawing away at Dominic’s soul with avaricious frenzy.

I hope you’re prepared to rape me, Dominic, because that’s the only way you’re going to touch me
.

Ah yes, there it was again. He noticeably shuddered at the statement that continued to replay unendingly in his mind. Dominic closed his eyes, but there was no finding peace there as eidetic memory detailed the gravity of her solemn expression when she’d uttered those damning words. The irony of the situation was not loss on him he realized as he tipped another shot down the hatch. He couldn’t fault her for thinking he was capable of such a reprehensible act. But being a product of that act himself and being so unknowingly reminded of it sickened him. Dominic was many things, his vices were quite numerous, and he was the first to admit he was his own worst enemy, always toeing between that line of what was appropriate and what was not. But even he had limits. There weren’t many, but physically accosting a woman, using brute strength to force himself on her, was something he could not do.

But then his father had been such a man, hadn’t he? His mother, as twisted and loveless as she’d been, had certainly not been the first. Just another on a long list of paid off names. Dominic had never been close to his father and while Gregory was instructed to mind his new wife and the impending family that would come, Dominic had been sent abroad to boarding school and had rarely seen his father. Growing up in his grandfather’s home, it’d been Winston and the mansion staff who’d welcomed him when he’d chosen to come home for the holidays. His grandfather had been the one to raise him, and even then, that relationship had been subpar at best. When Winston had finally passed, Dominic had finally been forced to go live with his biological father. But not before he’d discovered the truth about the things his grandfather had covered up for his son. In the documents he’d hidden in his safe behind the Degas in his office, there’d been documents detailing Gregory Armstrong’s felonies, countless as they’d been Dominic had been sick from learning the truth.

When he did finally meet his father, it’d been with a very low opinion of him, one that had only plummeted in the ensuing years. Gregory had been an ornery, egotistical brute who had not only relished pitting his two sons against each other, but had made it a point to completely disregard the increasingly repressible behavior of the youngest, while continuously lambasting the eldest. Dominic had always been the outcast, the black sheep…the bastard. He’d learned very early on to stop seeking validation from Gregory, who had seen him as nothing more than a constant reminder of his mistakes. Dominic was far past the age of begrudge his father or even the cards that fate had dealt him. But what did bother him more was the increasing concern that he’d somehow predisposed to behave as his father had. From the moment Dominic had made those discoveries, to his own gradual descent into immorality, the question of whether he was like his father had never been too far from his mind.

I hope you’re prepared to rape me, Dominic…

No. He certainly had not been prepared to force himself on her. God, but the avowal had shaken him to the core, and to think, it’d all began because she’d once again dared to defy him. He’d been punctual; arriving at the restaurant with renewed focus, Dominic had been ready and willing to return a morsel of what he’d taken from her. He had even foolishly asked his personal assistant to pick out something from Eden’s favorite jeweler. He had examined the diamond tennis bracelet with an appreciative eye on his ride over and had surmised that she would like it. Dominic had waited and waited and waited, his ire meanwhile had only grown increasingly worse as the restaurant staff and patrons alike subtly looked on, spectators to his humiliation. After two hours of waiting, he’d angrily marched out of the restaurant, practically scalding James’s ear off when he’d gotten him on the phone. It had been that same anger that had pushed him to act so irrationally. But then rationality always seemed to elude him when it came to Eden. She’d made a sport out of getting under his skin, he thought morosely.

“Another, sir?”

That question penetrated through his muddled brain, and he knew another shot would put him over the edge; another shot would serve no purpose but to have him embarrass himself further, and suffice it to say, Dominic had been humiliated quite enough this evening to last him a few years. Raising a hand to indicate that he’d had enough, he rose to his feet and was grateful that he only wavered a bit. James, trusty bodyguard that he was, would handle the tab. Dominic did not wait for him as he began a measured pace towards the private elevator. Luckily for him, there was no one in the immediate vicinity
to witness his attempt at walking in a straight line. He was quite coherent, but he was more relaxed now. The demons had been quelled, resting once more in the shadowed recesses of Dominic’s mind. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the metallic elevator wall behind him and exhaled deeply. What exactly was he going to do with his wife? And she was still his wife. Regardless of her immediate thoughts on the matter, Dominic had no intentions of granting the divorce. That was one thing he absolutely would not do; the why of it still managed to elude him, but he was adamant on the matter.