Chapter 64: Isabella

Fog swallows my view, filling my surroundings fast. So fast, so thick.

It’s so thick I could cut through it with a knife. The grayness started to rise like smoke, rising like it’s coming from the last of the burning embers, and all that is left is ashes.

Then I see it—the stairs. I’m on the stairs again in the house in Russia.

It’s like I’m watching a film of myself now and I know what to do.

Walk.

Walk so that what is to happen next will happen.

I can’t leave this plane of nightmares until I do. So, I walk.

I walk then run when I hear the scream.

Mama…

I stop short when I get to the living room and see my mother lying on the ground. My father is kneeling over her stabbing her in her stomach over and over again.

A scream tears from my lips and I scream again when her head rolls to the side, and I see the way her eyes look.

She’s looking at me, but she’s not looking at me like she can see me, and she’s not moving.

Blood is everywhere. On the floor, on my father, everywhere.

“Mama!” I cry, and that’s when I see the shadowy figure of someone behind my father.

A shadow … then a face. A face I’d almost forgotten.

It’s a man. As I look closer to see who he is, the fog swallows my surroundings, and everything fades to black.

Then out of nowhere, a hand grabs my throat and starts squeezing hard, squeezing the life from me, killing me. Dmitri’s face looms before me. He growls like a wild animal revealing the monster he is—a demon straight from hell.

When he squeezes tighter, I see the sledgehammer in his hand. This time he’s not going to use it on Eric. He’s going to use it on me.

He raises it…

I jump out of my sleep and leap off the bed with my hand at my throat. My legs cave, and I fall to the ground moving back on my hands. It takes me a moment before I realize Dmitri’s not here.

Here…

I look ahead of me, and my gaze lands on the sea crashing against the rocks off in the distance.

My heart is hammering so hard in my chest it could explode, and for a second, I think it might, but a sarcastic laugh falls from my lips.

This is sarcasm and irony at its finest indeed.

No. Dmitri’s not here, but I’ve been kidnapped, and I don’t even know where here is.

It’s another day: Day two. Yesterday was awful. When Tristan came back to badger me again for my father’s location, I just kept my mouth shut. Much to his fury.

I thought it was best to say nothing. Just sit still and look at him. Why waste my breath when my answer will fall on deaf ears? The ears of a man who will most likely kill me before the week is out.

God… I prayed I could escape my father, and this is where I ended up. It’s a cruel joke the universe must be having at my expense. Another kick while I’m already down, rolling in the dirt trying to get the fuck up.

I hug my knees to my chest and try to calm down. That nightmare took its toll on me. They’ve never been so dark and vivid. Real. I’ve never reacted this way. Then again, life just got worse with each year that passed. For a long time, I only had my mother’s death to contend with. Then Eric’s came almost a decade later.

The reoccurring nightmares I used to have, though, just featured either my mother’s death or Eric’s. Not a blend of both.

And as for the nightmares of my mother? Well, that one was different.

Just now, there was a man’s face. He’s never appeared before. I try to remember what he looks like, but I can’t. He still appears in my mind like a shadowy figure with a face I can’t quite make out. Literally like I’m trying to see through thick fog.

After I witnessed what my father did, he told me what I saw didn’t really happen and tried to get me to believe the same crock of shit he told everyone else. I almost believed him until the day he threatened to kill me if I spoke. I remember I was crying so much, then I just stopped.

Ten years old and being threatened with death? I believed him. I had no reason to doubt he wouldn’t do it. After all, I watched him kill Mama. I didn’t want him to stab me too, so I did what he said, and I tried to forget. He had all kinds of doctors come to see me, and they told me sometimes children make things up.

I pretended to believe them and acted like I did, although I never spoke. But I always had the truth locked away in my nightmares, locked in my head.

My heart races again when the door opens, and Tristan comes in with a tray of breakfast.

I push to my feet, wishing I had underwear on, but more so wishing he would just let me go.

He walks in with that air of coolness, assessing me. I can see it in his eyes; he thinks I’m lying. He thinks I’m lying to protect my father. He’d never know that’s the very last thing I would do.

My father would never need the likes of me to protect him because he’s given me nothing that would give him away—nothing at all—not even a clue.

“I’ll be getting some clothes for you soon,” Tristan says.

I don’t answer. What am I supposed to say? Thanks? I’m not saying thanks, and I’m not going to act like I’m grateful, although I am.

“I brought you breakfast,” he adds.

“I don’t want it,” I reply. I don’t want anything. Eating is the last thing I want to do. It’s not that I’m not hungry. I am. I just don’t want to eat.

“You will have it.”

“No, I won’t,” I throw back.

This is just the second day, and he already looks like he’s had enough of me. He actually looks like he’s ready to kill me.

“Isabella, do not push me,” he threatens.

Or what?

That’s what I want to say. I want to ask him what will happen if I do, but I think better of it. I don’t want to enrage him and find out my fate sooner than planned.

As I stare back at him, I find I have the same fucking problem as I did yesterday. Every time he comes in here, I ask myself how I could have gotten my assessment of him so wrong.

I keep remembering the way he was when we first met, and that’s not helping me because it’s obvious he’s anything but the kind stranger I mistook him to be.

Maybe a part of me is looking for something to hold on to, especially when that was a day where his words helped me get from one minute to the next. It was so awful having Dmitri breathing down my neck, but I got through it on the words of a man who well and truly tricked me. The memory comes to me now and pulls on my heart.

I shouldn’t get myself so worked up. I guess I’m still pissed he played me for a fool. He’s just like everyone else who thought they could treat me like shit.

I was right to say he wore a mask. He did. He truly fooled me, and I guess now I’m in the situation I’m in, I’m going to have to disagree with him about death.

“You were wrong,” I whisper.

“About what?”

“You said death was worse. It’s not. This is. You are. Bastard,” I hiss, and instantly I regret my words when he rushes to me. I should have kept my mouth shut.

I keep talking like I have this bravado, and I don’t. Fear is making me lose my mind, and I can’t think straight half the time. If I were, I know I’d know better than to piss off the man who kidnapped me. A man who knew exactly what to do to not only find me but to find out who I really am, then steal me away from my father.

Only someone powerful could do something like that.

He practically throws the tray down on the bed, and the drink slushes, almost spilling. I try to run, but he’s too fast, and I’m far too slow. The mere seconds it took for my brain to tell my legs to run were the same he used to put the tray down and grab me.

I scream when his grasp tightens around my wrist, and he pulls me to him. Instinct makes me grab the pillow and hit him with it. That, unfortunately, was another foolish move.

With a savage growl, Tristan yanks it so hard from my grasp it rips, and the feather stuffing explodes between us. He casts what’s left across the room and shoves me hard against the wall.

“You think I’m fucking worse than death?” he snarls, getting into my face, pinning my hands to the wall. He’s too close again. I don’t like it.

“Fuck you,” I cry. “Get away from me. Get your hands off me. I’m a person, not a thing.” I scream the words like I’m not just talking to him. As if everyone who wronged me is right here in this room with us, and they can hear me too.

I notice a shift in his gaze like I’ve got his attention, so I continue my tirade.

“What did I do to you? Not a damn thing. You think you can treat me like this because I’m Mortimer Viggo’s daughter? You must have thought I was some kind of a fool when you saw me crying in the park. An easy target.” Self-pity is taking over. I’m at a loss on what I’m supposed to do, and while I don’t want to die, I don’t know what to do to live either. “You took one look at me and thought of me as a thing, a thing that was nothing to you. A thing you could—"

He steals my words away with a kiss.

Literally steals the words and my breath in one swift move, and I’m silenced.

I taste him and recall with clarity how I felt that night when we first kissed.

Shock crashes through me, flooding my mind first then racing through my body. It surges through my being, fueled by the arousal that sings through my veins and the taste of him.

All I can feel is what’s happening inside my body. I can’t wrap my head around what’s happening and what he’s doing because I thought everything he’d done so far was all an act.

I thought he’d fooled me. I thought he played with my emotions to lure me into a trap. The kiss he gives me, however, tells me otherwise. It speaks the truth.

The kiss whispers deep, deep down to the most secret part of me, telling me it was real. He was real, and whether I want to believe it or not, he wasn’t acting when we first met in the park and not at the club.

I still try to resist. The flight or fight feeling comes back to me, beckoning me to do something. No matter how real anything was, I can’t allow this man to confuse me any more than he has.

I want to resume telling him to get away from me, to not touch me, to leave me alone. But, as he devours my lips, tasting me too, I feel myself slipping away, falling into the arms of the attraction I felt when I first saw him. Then he deepens the kiss, sweeping his tongue over mine, and desire makes me cave.

Need paralyzes my mind, and I give in to this man I shouldn’t want.

All that I felt that night I wanted to spend with him unearth, making me want him to be near me, to touch me, to stay with me. My heart pounds as a vicious force of need takes me fanning the flames of this wild connection. I’ve never felt anything like this before, and I know I don’t stand a chance to fight it.

Raw desire, primal and hot, makes me crave the night I thought we were going to have. The night I chose as my last of freedom, and I chose him.

When he releases my hands, I’m able to press against the hard walls of his chest. I slide my hand up, and I rest on his shoulders, feeling the width and power of solid muscles beneath my fingertips.

When his fingers run over my stomach, fire heats me up all over, and as he pulls the hem of my gown up to my hips, I know I’m about to make another mistake with this man and be twice the fool I already am.

He keeps his lips on mine, but I gasp when his fingers slide into my pussy.

I already know I’m wet and ready for him. Now he knows it too, and the knowledge seems to make him kiss me harder.

The clink of his belt buckle sounds in my ear as a signal, a warning of what we’re going to do next. It was a heads up, a chance to back away if only desire hadn’t made me greedy to have him inside me.

He pulls out of the kiss and takes out his cock. I don’t get to see it much before he lifts my leg and hooks it around his, then holds me so he can plunge right into my passage.

I cry out as he slams into me and grab on to his shirt. He cups the back of my head, holding me in place so he can fuck me.

I’m tight. I know I am. It’s been years since I last had sex, and I can feel the effect my tightness has on him. His cock spears me, stretching me to take the width and length, filling me up completely.

Once I’ve stretched to take him, he starts to speed up and truly fuck me. It’s too much.

I come hard moments later crying out from the wildness of his savage thrusts. With that, he presses me into the wall, fucking me harder against it.

“Tristan,” I cry out his name.

This time he catches my face, and he seems to slow. “I’m going to fuck you harder, princess; hold on tighter.”

I barely manage to follow his caution before he gives me the hard fuck he promises.

He starts pounding into me so hard I have to slip my arms around his neck and hold on to him. Tristan holds me to him, and we come together.

Hot cum flows into my passage when his cock pulses inside me, and as it coats my walls, reality slaps me in the face.

We just had wild sex.

Us.

Me. I just had sex with the man that kidnapped me.

I’ve woken up to acknowledge what I just did, but the look of fascination in his eyes catches and holds my attention.

Tristan rests one hand above my head, and just for a few seconds, I almost forget what and who we are. But like the other day, he blinks, and the moment is gone. The silent realization of reality seems to hit him too, and he releases me. He pulls out, and his cum leaks down my thighs.

Fury takes the place of that fascination, and I watch him tuck himself back in his pants. With frustration, he walks out, leaving me stunned against the wall.

Stunned and not knowing what the hell just happened.

Or what it means.