Delivered (The Monster Trilogy Book 3) (15 page)

But it wasn’t okay. Something had happened with the arrival of the car, and though they hadn’t told her what it was yet, she had a horrible feeling she’d find out soon enough.

Monster (Present Day)

The darkness had
started to retreat, and Monster felt closer to the surface now. The memory of what had happened had returned to him in full, and yet he still couldn’t quite manage to wake up. He needed to be alert, hating feeling so utterly defenseless while his enemy stood over him, laughing.

The voices again, talking, cold humor in their tone. A man and a woman, at least, possibly more. Was the woman Sophia? She seemed relaxed, happy, even. Was that all part of the plan, for Rodriguez to trust her? He wouldn’t trust her if she was on edge and acting suspiciously.

Monster needed to open his eyes. His gun was strapped to his ankle, and all he needed to do was sit up and grab it. He could tell Rodriguez was close. Monster needed to reach the gun before Rodriguez did and shoot the son-of-a-bitch. But he still wasn’t in full control of his body, wasn’t sure he could even feel his legs. Sophia had told him to bide his time as he went through this process of regaining consciousness. He needed to make sure he didn’t react too soon, when he wasn’t ready, or he would blow the whole plan.

A man’s voice came again from above him. “Isn’t he awake yet? How much sedative did you give the son-of-a-bitch?”

Then the woman’s voice, caught mid-sentence. “… painfully easy. You’d think he’d have some serious trust issues after what his father did to him, but the phrase about candy and babies comes to mind.”

Male laughter.

Uneasiness swirled inside Monster’s gut. He hadn’t liked this plan from the start, and now he was in the middle of it, just waiting, he liked it even less. He guessed he should be thankful Rodriguez hadn’t killed him already. How long had he been lying here now? It felt like days …

Monster’s right arm jerked involuntarily. Panic rose up inside him, but then he reminded himself what Sophia had told him—that this would happen, and that she’d warn Rodriguez about it as well. Did the movement mean he was creeping closer to the surface, though? He wanted to try to open his eyes, but didn’t want to act too soon. If he only managed to get his eyelids to flutter, but was still unable to move, he’d have lost the advantage of surprise.

He felt himself growing stronger, his connection with his surroundings solidifying. Where before the other people in the room had felt like ghosts, and he’d only caught snippets of their conversation, now everything was clearer. He tensed as he made sense of what the people around him were saying …

“—sent Marco out to scout the grounds. He can’t be trusted around her. Of course, I understand what he finds so irresistible, but I can’t have one of my men taking liberties like that.”

The woman spoke and this time he did recognize the voice as belonging to Sophia. “I’m interested to meet this woman. She must be a rare beauty to have all you men risking your lives just so you can get in her panties.” Her tone was snide, and a ripple of worry washed over Monster.

“She’s beautiful, yes, but it’s not just that. She has something about her—a vulnerability, but strength, too. I’m not happy about what Marco has done to her face, but somehow even seeing her beaten and bruised still makes me want to own her.” He paused and then said, “Yes, that’s it. I think it’s the combination of wanting to protect her, fight with her, and fuck her all at the same time that makes her so beguiling.”

Sophia snorted. “She’s still just a woman.”

Monster snapped his eyes open and lunged upward, sitting to reach down his legs and grab the weapon strapped to his ankle. The world turned a dizzying circle from the sudden movement, and nausea swam over him, but his fingers landed where they were supposed to, on the holster.

It was empty.

Further confusion swept over him. Did he get the wrong leg? Had he strapped the gun to the other one? But no, the holster was still there. With horror, the truth dawned on him. The weapon was missing.

His stomach plummeted.

Laughter sounded and he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, taking in the rest of the room.

Rodriguez stood in front of him, Sophia at his side. He appeared to be sitting on the surface of a large mahogany table, which he assumed he’d been laid out across while he’d been unconscious. A couple of other people were also in the room, but Monster didn’t risk taking his eyes off Rodriguez to assess them.

“Looking for this?” Rodriguez said, holding up the gun.

He couldn’t lie.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice a croak. “I was.”

His mouth was already dry from the side effects of the drugs, his head thumping. They must have searched him when Sophia had brought him in and found the weapon. It didn’t mean the end, it just meant he needed to try something else. Monster looked toward Sophia, hoping she would give him some kind of signal about what their next step might be, but she just stood at Rodriguez’s side, a strange expression on her face. She looked … smug.

That expression worried him even more than the missing gun. What was going on?

“Welcome to the Rodriguez household, Merrick,” Rodriguez said, sweeping out an arm around him. “I’d rather we hadn’t met under these circumstances, but so be it. Sophia has been telling me all about how you planned on breaking in, killing me, and stealing the woman who is now mine.”

Monster’s gaze darted to Sophia in confusion.

She gave a shrug. “Oh, and he killed Andres back at the house, too. I tried to stop him, but there was nothing I could do.”

Rodriguez’s lips thinned. He looked to Merrick. “That’s how you thank me? I get one of my men to take you somewhere your gunshot wound would be treated, and you repay me by killing him? I could have left you to die—that wound wasn’t even caused by my hands—but instead I take care of you, and now you’re here to kill me?”

Monster’s eyes flicked back at Sophia, and understanding dropped on him like a bag of bones. “You betrayed me? You told him everything?”

She laughed. “You didn’t think a few occasions spent in your company when we were children would change my affiliation to the family who took me in and raised me as their own? They saved us after your warped father threw us out. If this woman you’re here to reclaim is with Rodriguez now, I bet she’s in a much better place than when she was with you.”

Any hint of affection or feelings he’d been harboring over all these years crumbled like a sandcastle hit by a strong wave. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid as to think she would have helped him. Why hadn’t he questioned the fact she’d been living at the house, unguarded, that she hadn’t wanted him to kill the other man who worked for Rodriguez? He’d always prided himself on being cool-headed and ruthless, and yet he’d allowed a few memories and a pair of pretty blue eyes to screw up the one thing he had going for him.

Sophia continued, “Rodriguez and I grew up side by side. We married for a few years, but it was never going to work out. As I’m sure I told you, he liked to fuck other women too much, and to be honest, we always had a strange relationship. After growing up together, we felt more like brother and sister than anything else.”

Rodriguez put his arm around Sophia’s shoulder. His darkness to her honeyed light. “You’re the best baby sister I ever had,” he said with a smile. He pulled her in and kissed her full on her mouth, hard and with ownership. Monster caught sight of Rodriguez’s tongue pushing between her lips. The sight churned his stomach. To think he had trusted her. What an idiot he’d been.

“So what now?” he said, the feeling returning to his legs with a rush of needles and pins. “Are you going to kill me?”

Rodriguez shrugged. “Probably, yes. I’d hoped we’d be able to continue to do business, Merrick, that you would have accepted the loss of the woman as a normal business payment, but it appears this is not the case. So now I have to put an end to you, but I think I might have some fun first.”

“Fuck you, Rodriguez,” he snarled.

“You don’t mean that, I’m sure. Does that mean you don’t want to see the woman you’ve fought so hard to get here for?”

His heart lifted. Lily? Was Rodriguez really going to let him see her? Surely he wouldn’t make it so easy? “Have you hurt her?” It was the only thing he could think of, that she was so badly hurt Rodriguez knew it would destroy him to see Lily if she was badly beaten and had been raped. Just the thought made him want to tear himself into a million pieces and explode in a rage of hatred and fury.

“Hurt? No, I haven’t hurt her. I mean, she may have suffered a few knocks for her disobedience, and I’m afraid one of my men got to her when I wasn’t paying attention and smacked her around a little, but she’s still in one piece.”

Monster clenched his teeth at the idea of someone hitting her. He hadn’t expected any less, but to hear it said out loud still hurt him in a sickeningly painful way. Still, he was desperate to see her. If Lily’s face was the last thing he saw in this world, he would die happy.

“I have been enjoying her company, though,” Rodriguez continued. “Perhaps not as much as I would have liked, but I’ve gotten a taste of her sweet little pussy, and I’m looking forward to more.”

Monster let out a growl, his fists clenched. He lunged across the shiny mahogany at Rodriguez, but the flash of several gun muzzles made him pause. A couple of Rodriguez’s men, including Rodriguez himself, now pointed weapons directly at his head. Though the idea of Rodriguez touching Lily intimately made him want to rage, and wail, and break things, he wouldn’t be able to do anything if he was dead.

What Rodriguez said went back through Monster’s mind.
Gotten a taste … hadn’t enjoyed her as much as he’d liked to.
If he’d fucked her already, wouldn’t he have said? Wouldn’t he have enjoyed rubbing that in Monster’s face? Even though he hated the idea of Rodriguez touching her, he prayed she’d somehow managed to avoid being raped by Rodriguez and his men.

“Does she know I’m here?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“Not yet, but she will. The little bitch she was brought here with has managed to slip through our net, though she must be in the grounds, and so we’ll find her. Lily has been under lockdown until her friend shows up.”

Friend? Was the friend he referred to the same one they’d rescued from the plane? He sought his memory for her name. Jessica, he was sure. How had she managed to escape?

Monster had one hope left, and that came in the form of Sean and Chapman. Had the two men tried to get into the property yet, and been captured or killed by Rodriguez’s men? He was frustrated about his lack of knowledge about how much time had passed. They would have needed a little extra time to get everything organized—time Sophia wouldn’t have been aware of, but he was surprised neither Sophia nor Rodriguez had mentioned the two men yet. Sophia must have told Rodriguez the whole plan—or at least what she knew of it.

He prayed they were still alive, and that they’d be able to achieve what Monster had planned.

Fourteen

Lily had managed
to make it to the bathroom to run one of the towels beneath the cold tap and press the homemade compress to the worst of her injuries, her cheekbone, which was swollen and so painful she wondered if it was fractured, and the pain in her back where she’d been kicked. The cooling effect of the wet towel helped a little, but she’d have given anything for some pain medication.

Jess hadn’t been brought back yet. Lily worried about what would happen to her when the men caught up with her, which they surely would. Lily didn’t think Jess had it in her to get beyond the walls of the house, and the most she could hope for was that the girl had found somewhere to hide. From what she’d been able to tell from the little she’d seen, the property seemed big enough to get lost in, so she hoped Jess had managed to secrete herself away in a little nook. She prayed with all her soul that Jess was safe, but at the same time she missed the other woman. Lily felt utterly alone now, tormented by her thoughts and fears. At least when she’d had Jess to focus her attention on, she hadn’t had as much time to worry about herself.

Though Lily still hated Rodriguez with every bit of her heart, she was relieved he’d walked in when he had. The thought of being raped by Marco for some reason felt even worse than when Rodriguez had put his hands on her. Rodriguez at least attempted seduction, whereas Marco would have just taken what he wanted by violence, and not the sexy kind with promise of pleasure at the end. His was brutal and unforgivable, the kind that had no real desire for the woman, but was all about control and bullying.

The sound of movement came at the door, the jangle of keys and then the door unlocking. Lily froze, her eyes filling with tears. She didn’t think she’d be able to handle another encounter with Marco. Her strength only went so far, and right now she was on a precipice. If someone so much as blew on her from the wrong direction, she would topple right over the edge.

Still sitting on the floor of the bathroom, she leaned out slightly, peeping from behind the doorframe to see who had entered the room. A man she didn’t recognize was standing, scowling, in the doorway, his hands on his hips as he looked for her. He spotted her and strode over.

Lily cowered away, her hands held in front of her.

“You’re coming with me,” the man said, reaching for her.

“No, leave me alone.” She pedaled her feet to push herself up against the pedestal of the sink, as though she could take shelter beneath the hard white rim. “What do you want?”

“I already told you, you need to come with me. There’s a surprise waiting for you.”

She assumed the surprise wouldn’t be a good one. Her mind raced with possibilities. Had they caught Jess? Was this going to be the start of a new kind of punishment? Had they murdered her, and now they were taking Lily to display the body to her? Or did this have something to do with the car that had been spotted earlier?

But no, too much time had passed since then. She was sure this was about Jess.

The man towered over her, making her feel tiny and insubstantial, before he leaned down and grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her to her feet. Pain shot up through her spine and she gave a groan, clutching at the spot where Marco had kicked her.

Despite her discomfort, Lily pulled back against him. “Let go of me!”

He yanked her forward, almost pulling her off her feet. “Stop fucking around. You’re going to get me in trouble.”

“Good! Serves you right for working for that fucking bastard anyway.”

The man gave her a shake like she was a naughty puppy. “Shut your mouth, before I shut it for you.”

She didn’t want to cry, to show any kind of weakness, but yet a sob burst from her lips as he pushed her from the bathroom and toward the open doorway. She found herself being hustled out of the room and down the hall. She fought against what she was being thrust toward because she was terrified of what she would see. The thought of coming across Jess, badly hurt, or most likely dead, would be far more than that gust of breath she’d been worrying about pushing her over the precipice. It would be a two handed shove down a cliff face.

She recognized the hallways now, the direction in which he was taking her. It was back to the dining room where they’d first been made to serve the men. This wasn’t a good omen, and her conviction that this had something to do with Jess deepened. She dragged her feet, wanting to delay the moment, but her whole body hurt, her cheekbone throbbing so badly it felt as though her entire head had some kind of pulsing beacon inside her skull that was threatening to implode. But the man pushed her down the wide, white corridors, and she no longer had the strength to fight back. What was the point, anyway? They would win in the end.

She was pushed farther down the hall, toward the open doorway of the dining room. The man shoved her through and she was met with the broad backs of three men, and the more slender frame of a woman.
Jess,
she thought instantly, but then she realized it wasn’t. The other woman’s hair was too long, soft, golden waves down her back, and her hips were far curvier than Jess’s narrow frame. Plus, she stood, side by side, with Rodriguez, leaning into him slightly with an intimacy she knew Jess would never display.

Obviously hearing the footsteps from behind, heads turned to look at her as she was forced into the room. There was another man she didn’t know, who appeared military—similar to the one who had brought her from her room—and then the younger man who’d been at the table that first day, plus Rodriguez. The woman turned to her as well, and the look in her eye made Lily’s insides jolt in a way the men’s contemplation of her never had. Lily had always known exactly what the men wanted—they were easy enough to figure out—yet this woman was looking at her as though Lily was the one who needed to be worked out. Though she was strikingly beautiful, with large blue eyes framed by thick lashes a couple of shades darker than her hair, creamy skin, and full lips, there was a hardness to her features, and her eyes remained cold as glacial ice. But she smiled at Lily, her lips pressed together so her cheeks rounded, yet the expression never reached high enough to filter through to her eyes.

She knows something,
Lily thought, prickles of fear running across the back of her neck. Her view of the room beyond, and the table where the men had all sat when the women had been forced to serve them was still blocked by the men, and Lily knew what lay beyond was something she wasn’t going to want to see. Would Jess be lying raped and dead on the polished wooden surface? Her thoughts turned to the blonde—how could another woman be involved in something like that?

But then the men parted, revealing the dining set. The chair at the end of the table wasn’t empty, and Lily’s eyes widened in shock and surprise.

Sitting, with his hands tied behind his back, was Monster.