Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
The rest of his men, though—the ones who walked around with semiautomatic weapons in their hands or slung across their backs—wore all black.
Black, like their souls.
But, of course, they had to match their boss.
Warren Graves was, objectively, an attractive man.
It was my hatred that made him ugly in my eyes.
But he was tall and fit with dark brown hair and eyes somewhere between blue and gray. His face was all angles that were never softened by anything resembling a smile.
Not even when he looked at his son.
“You know why,” Warren said, snapping his fingers, making the maid move toward me.
I wanted her gaze to be apologetic and understanding. But her gray hair meant she’d been working under the overbearing Warren Graves most of her life. He’d crushed anything resembling empathy out of her long ago.
This was a job.
I wasn’t a person with feelings to worry about.
Which made handing over my son to her all the harder.
But it wasn’t like I had any sort of choice in the matter.
Besides, I knew he would be safe. The staff would bend over backward to make sure he didn’t cry for any longer than a moment or two. Because if we came home to find him snotty and red-eyed, Warren would backhand—or worse—anyone around who did not take care of Judah properly.
So the staff would sing and play and ply with sweets. Anything at all to keep Judah from crying, from throwing a fit, from hurting himself.
I knew he would be okay. But I hated to have him out of my sight for even a moment.
These were the rules, though.
I knew them all too well.
If Warren was leaving the house, I had to go with him.
It was another way he enacted control over me. I could not be alone in the house with Judah. Warren believed that, given the chance, I would grab my baby and run for our lives.
He was right about that.
I’d been planning and plotting the escape since the day he’d shown up at the hospital after I’d given birth and we’d been discharged, forcing us into his waiting SUV. Then never letting me leave again.
I couldn’t describe the panic I’d felt as I’d been grabbed around my arm and dragged out of that SUV, my body sore in all kinds of new, upsetting ways, my baby’s carrier in the hand of one of Warren’s henchmen.
Because I knew he would never release us.
It was why I’d worked so hard to hide my pregnancy, to stay out of his sight, out of his grasp.
His name wasn’t even on the birth certificate.
Not that it mattered.
Judah was his.
He knew it.
That was all that mattered.
Warren Graves was the kind of man who, while he didn’t have a fatherly or nurturing bone in his body, believed in heirs and passing on his twisted empire to the next generation.
The scariest part for me was worrying that he could take my sweet, perfect, angel of a child. And turn him into a monster in his own image.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Warren snapped when I turned away from him in the hall.
“To get my shoes,” I reminded him, waving down at my sock-clad feet.
“Be quick,” he demanded, glancing at his phone.
If I wasn’t, one of his henchmen would be in my doorway, leering at me in the way they all did. They weren’t supposed to touch me. But I didn’t really think that Warren would give a damn if they did, so long as I was physically able to continue to take care of our son.
Warren’s house was an immense structure made of all white everything. Floors, walls, tile. The only color, if you can call it that, were the window casements and dividers, which were all black.
Even Judah’s room was all white, save for the bedding and toys I’d insisted on buying, spouting off things about brain development that I was mostly sure were factual. And I didn’t particularly care if they weren’t.
My room was a few doors down from Judah. Though, technically, I never slept there. I slept in the glider in Judah’s room. Or, on occasion, on the floor.
My nearness to my son was my only protection in this house. And I knew, with each passing day, my usefulness to Warren as Judah’s mother was waning.
What then?
A bag over my head?
A shot to the skull?
Or would he want to be really up close and personal for it? To wrap his hands around my throat until his fingers went white, watching me as I struggled for breath, then as the life left my eyes.
He would want to watch me suffer.
Because for just about two years, I have had something that no one else ever had before.
Power over him.
Albeit a small amount of it.
But it ate at him.
We both knew it.
I closed the door behind me, releasing my shaky breath. I wouldn’t let him see that weakness. But I will admit, it was still there.