Chapter 22 My monster
RORY POV
“You’re late for work Aurora.”
I couldn’t even process what had just happened. I couldn’t hear Mr Smith’s screams properly because I had been yanked outside before my brain had finished catching up with my body.
I think I entered a trance or something. I barely blinked. It was as if my brain had simply stopped working, like a machine that had been given too much information at once and chosen to shut down rather than deal with any of it.
I pinched my cheek hard, the sharp sting forcing me back into my body.
I blinked furiously and found Alexander standing directly in front of me. Looking completely calm and collected like he hadn’t just cut off a man’s five fingers with a knife approximately thirty seconds ago.
“Do you want a knife to your throat to make you talk?” His voice was hard and completely serious.
“Y — you just cut his fingers,” I said.
“That I did.”
“Why would you do that? He did nothing to you.”
My voice was rising and I couldn’t help it.
“He was touching you,” he said simply, one shoulder lifting in a half shrug, like the question barely deserved his attention. “No gentleman would stand and watch a woman get harassed.”
Gentleman. He was calling himself a gentleman.
Gentleman my foot!
“That doesn’t give you the right to cut off his fingers,” I said. “You made him useless. You can’t just — that’s not—”
Alexander's expression didn't change in the slightest.
“Be glad he still has the other five,” Alexander said. “Next time he breathes your way his head will be gone.”
The cold seriousness in his tone made me stagger back.
I was starting to think Steve hadn’t been exaggerating. And that thought scared me more than anything else had today.
“I h — have to go,” I said.
I barely took two steps before his voice stopped me completely.
“Get in the car.”
I turned and looked at him. The height difference between us should be a sin. Standing next to him I looked like a child. More specifically like a fat child who had no business being in this man’s orbit.
“I’m sorry Mr Miller,” I said. “I know I promised to be Liam’s nanny but I can’t. Not after what happened yesterday.”
He raised a brow. “What happened yesterday?”
Was he joking? Was he genuinely standing here pretending he didn’t know exactly what I was referring to?
“About replacing your dead wife,” I said, looking everywhere except his eyes. On top of everything else the last thing I needed was to be near this man after what happened with Mr Smith. What if he decided to chop off my fingers the next time I annoyed him? He clearly didn’t like me. He had made that abundantly clear from day one.
“I never gave you an option,” he said. “You’re going to be my wife Aurora Hale.”
Why did consent mean absolutely nothing to this man? He could not be standing outside a bar with people watching telling me I was going to be his wife like it was something he had already scheduled in his calendar.
“Mr Miller you can’t just say that,” I said. “Marriage is between two people who love each other. I don’t love you, not that I dare and you don’t love me either.” I paused. “Or do you?”
I regretted it the moment it left my mouth. I should have swallowed it. Shoved it back down and kept it there. The look he gave me confirmed that immediately.
“Bold of you,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly, “to assume you have a space at the back of my head.”
Right.
That answered that.
"Well then that solves the problem," I muttered.
"You should find someone you actually love."
The way he looked at me made me feel strangely small, like he was trying to decide whether I was genuinely this slow, like I was the stupidest person he'd ever met.
"Like I said, I didn't give you an option. You're going to marry me. The moment you leave here with me, you're never coming back to this dumpster. And if you refuse..."
He stepped closer, his shadow falling over me like a shroud.
“And if I refuse?” I said.
He looked at me for a moment, and I knew right there whatever was about to come out of his mouth won't be good.
"I'll carve your father's heart out while it's still beating and hand it to you as a souvenir."
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
"I'll go to the hospital, I'll reach for your mother's life support, and I'll watch the light leave her eyes while I describe to her exactly how you failed her."
My breath itched. I could feel my insides turning. I couldn't say anything.
“And if after all of that you still want to say no,” he said, “I’ll kidnap you. Force a ring on your finger. And if you ever try to escape--” he paused, just briefly, just enough. "I’ll rape you until your lungs give out. And if you somehow survive that.” Another pause. “I’ll kill you.”
I staggered back, my body hitting the side of the car. My body began to shake with a violence I couldn't control.
I didn’t need him to repeat it. I didn’t need proof or context or time to decide whether he meant it.
He meant every word.
Every single one.
I tried to speak.
Nothing.
I tried to scream, to yell at him, to tell him he was a demon-but my voice died. My throat locked, my vocal cords twisting into a knot of silent agony.
I was drowning in my own throat.
This was what my doctor had warned me about, the moments when the shock was severe enough that my body simply refused. I could feel my vocal cords twisting as I tried to force something out and got nothing back. My vocal cords twisted painfully with the effort.
So I did the only thing I had left.
I lifted my hands and signed.
"Why are you so cruel to me?"
He looked at my hands. Then back at my face.
Like I had briefly lost my mind and he was waiting patiently for me to find it again.
He couldn’t understand sign language.
I was signing to a man who couldn’t understand sign language because my voice had abandoned me and I had nothing else.
I felt defeated in a way I didn’t have words for. Because I had no words. I had nothing.
“Get in the car Aurora,” he said.
I looked at him for a long moment.
The man who had cut off five fingers without blinking would certainly kill my parents without a second thought.
I climbed into the back seat, my spirit breaking with the click of the door. If he wanted a wife, I'd give him one. But I would make sure every second he spent with me was a living hell.