False Security (31 page)

Pain. There was
so much pain. Every breath she took intensified the burning until it was almost
more than Rachel could stand.

The first time the whip cracked
across her skin, goosebumps covered her entire body in an instant and her eyes
bulged with the force of the pain. It took some time before her voice reacted,
and she screamed louder than she ever believed possible. Her binds cut into her
skin around her wrists and ankles, and numbness claimed her back.

When the whip didn’t immediately
connect with her back again, she thought Donovan realized he crossed the line.
Then he stepped over to her and touched her back with his fingers, running them
along each side of the wound. He wasn’t rethinking his actions, but admiring
his work. Then the whip came down again, over, and over, and over.

At some point she passed out,
but she wasn’t sure for how long. When she woke up, Donovan spoke to her, and
then the whip had its say. She screamed until there was nothing left, and then
her absent voice scraped like razor blades against her raw throat. Every so
often, he would stop and watch her, half-naked and bound to the bed with her
skin ripped open. Whenever he stopped to examine her back, she thought the pain
would finally end, and then he unleashed his fury on her again.

After he released the binds from
her hands and feet, he raised her limp head from the mattress and kissed her
like never before. He left the room with the bloodied whip, and she passed out
again with the pain.

When she woke, Paul tended to
her wounds. He gave her antibiotics and a shot of morphine. He tried to cover
her body with a sheet, but she cried out in protest, the pain too much to have
something touching her back. Day after day, he changed the dressings on her
skin and gave her the maximum amount of morphine he could without her overdosing.
For Rachel, it was never enough.

At the end of the first day, she
pleaded with him to accidentally leave a bottle of pain pills in her room.
Though he refused, she continued to beg him for it when he came to see her. She
wanted nothing more than to die. She willed her body to shut down on its own,
but she continued to wake from every sleep.

Still breathing, still burning.

Despite the overwhelming desire
to die, she would never kill herself. Even if Paul gave into her requests to
leave the pills in her room, she would only take the amount he dictated. She
was not coward enough to take her own life, no matter what Donovan did to her.
The pain would end, and this period of time would be nothing more than a
horrible memory, a nightmare she could pretend never happened.

During the lucid times, the
painful times, her thoughts alternated between suicide and killing Donovan. He
had hurt her like never before. His temper was never welcome, but she always
tolerated the random beatings. This time, he reached an inexcusable level. She
had to ensure it would never happen again.

Murder was not a foreign action
to her, but there was a difference between killing a stranger and killing the
man she had loved for so many years. She knew that when the time came, she would
never be able to go through with it.

When she was medicated, her
thoughts incoherent and jumbled, she blamed herself for his actions. She had
done something wrong, and she deserved every crack of the whip. All he ever
asked of her was love and devotion and she had betrayed him. She allowed
another man to kiss her and she enjoyed it, an unforgivable act.

She chastised herself, and
thought of all the things she should have done different. She wished she could
return to the place where she had strayed from Donovan’s arms. She told herself
he was right to punish her, and he had only done so because he loved her, like
he told her. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, so he exercised
control over her to keep her with him. He branded her so no other man would
ever want her and she would never forget where she belonged.

After six days of drifting in
and out of consciousness, six days of listening to the dueling voices in her
head, she found the middle ground that silenced them both.

She would leave.

It wasn’t an easy option. She
couldn’t pack her bags and walk out the front door, promising to send a
postcard. No one left the estate on their own accord, especially not her. As
soon as her parents died, she was sentenced to spend her life at the estate.
Donovan would never allow her to walk away.

A few days later, the solution
presented itself when Paul told her to come to the conference room for a
meeting. He helped her up despite her protests that she was fine. It had only
been a day since she could put clothing on over her wounds, but the healing
process seemed to be well underway.

She went into her bathroom,
pulled her hair back, and splashed water over her face. As she dabbed it dry
with a towel, she studied her reflection. Her face appeared worn, like a child
had used her skin for modeling clay. Lines appeared around her eyes and mouth,
ones that had not been there before. It seemed ridiculous, as no one aged in a
matter of days. She ran her fingers over her cheek and tried to brush the lines
off like dirt, but the lines clung to her skin.

Rachel threw the towel at the
mirror and walked upstairs to the conference room, where the others waited for
her. She stood by the wall behind Paul’s chair. If she sat down, the back of
the chair would press too hard against her still raw wounds.

Donovan sat across the room from
her, yet she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Vague memories came to mind
of him coming in and out of her room while she was heavily drugged. The first
time he came to see her, he knelt beside the bed, took her hand, and cried. He
cursed himself for hurting her, for losing control and punishing her like that.
Between the alcohol and what Eric told him, he fell victim to his own temper.

After his tears stopped, he
pulled a sheet over her back to hide the evidence of his abuse, stroked her
hair while talking to her, and told her how much he loved her. He visited her
several times a day, sometimes talking, sometimes crying and begging her
forgiveness. That he hadn’t abandoned her after that night comforted her, but
she still could not look directly at him. Not yet.

“We have two jobs tomorrow
night,” Donovan said at the start of the meeting.

Rachel was taken aback. She knew
about the Pierson job, but had not heard about a second one.

“Paul, Rachel, and I will take
Pierson. It’s pretty standard, quick in and out with only the security alarm to
bypass. We’ll leave at eleven-thirty for that one. Tony and Joe, I want you to
leave by ten o’clock for the Thomas job.” Donovan’s eyes burned through her, and
she held still, not daring to blink. She didn’t want to give a reaction of any
kind.

“It shouldn’t take long to get
into the house,” he continued. “Tony will go in and do it. I want you on the
grounds no longer than forty-five minutes.”

He spoke for another fifteen
minutes, further detailing the Pierson job, but Rachel stopped listening.
Jonathan was going to die because of her. There had to be a way to help him.

Everyone stood to leave the
room, the meeting over. She turned to go when Donovan called her back. She shut
the doors to the conference room and braced herself to face him.

He looked as he always did, the
same enchanting amber eyes and smooth, handsome face, but there was a
difference when she looked at him. During recent years, he had pushed her to
the point where she was slightly afraid of him, afraid of his temper, of his
lashing out at her. Now, she was no longer afraid. She was terrified.

He moved over to her and touched
her arm. She recoiled at his touch, and her heart raced. He put his hand on her
face and she trembled beneath the heat of his palm. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I never
meant to hurt you like I did. I don’t know what came over me. There’s no excuse
for my actions, and I can’t express how sorry I am that I hurt you that much. I
love you more than anything else in this world.”

She met his eyes and could see
his words were true. Had he lied about his remorse, leaving would be much
easier, but the tears welling in his eyes mirrored her own. Though his apology
was sincere, from his actions that night she knew he was excited by the idea
that he had branded her. As long as those wounds remained visible, she belonged
only to him. No one else would want her, which was his desired outcome.

Donovan kissed her and his
fingers tickled the skin around her mouth. She didn’t know if she was upset
because the man who savagely beat her kissed her, or because her body responded
to his touch. Her love for him had not died as she thought it would, but
instead, she loved him as much as she always had.

Rachel broke the kiss. “I love
you, Donovan,” she said. Despite her mind crying out for her to retain sanity,
she meant the words. She couldn’t rid herself of such a strong emotion
overnight, and part of her wanted to stay with him forever. There had to be a
way to make him not want to punish her anymore.

She wanted to tell him about her
plan to leave him and promise to stay if he stopped hurting her. The pain in
her back flared, and she stopped herself from saying a word. If she stayed,
there would be nothing holding him back from using a whip on her again, if not
doing much worse things to her. She had no choice but to leave.

When the idea came to her, she
almost didn’t recognize it, but when she did, she acted on it. She pulled off
his jacket and kissed his face and neck, ignoring the severe pain that shot
across her back every time she moved.

“I love you so much,” she said,
reinforcing her feelings in both his mind and hers. Nothing she said was a lie,
and she was determined to prove it to him. Her mouth teased his with light
kisses, and she tugged his shirt out of his pants. While she worked on
unbuckling his belt, Donovan raised her shirt over her head and tossed it to
the floor.

She unbuttoned his shirt and
pushed it over his shoulders. His mouth found her neck, and his hands wrapped
around her waist. Pain mixed with desire, and Rachel bit her bottom lip. Her
hands traveled across his chest, while his mouth nuzzled the crook of her neck
and his fingers fiddled with the button of her jeans. Her eyelids fell and, for
a few minutes, she enjoyed being close to him.

“I’ve really messed up lately,”
Rachel said. “I want to make it up to you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked,
the words escaping with shallow breaths.

“I want the Thomas job. I want
to kill him for you.”

He stopped kissing her. “You
would do that for me?”

She stared into his eyes and
touched his face. “Of course I would. I love you, Donovan. I’m yours, and I
want to show you that I know where I belong.”

He smiled and put his hands
under her arms. Being careful not to touch her back too much, he lifted her
onto the table. He slid his hands under her thighs and pulled her hips toward
his. His mouth landed on hers and she put her body on automatic pilot, her mind
in another place, focused on the task of killing Jonathan.

She opened her eyes and glanced
over Donovan’s shoulder at the clock on the wall. She had a little over
twenty-four hours to make this work.

Twenty-four
hours later, Paul barged into her room. “What the hell do you think you’re
doing?”

Rachel continued lacing her
boots and avoided looking up at him. She didn’t want to see Paul before she
left the estate, knowing it would make it harder to go through with her plan.
“I’m going on the job.”

“You’re doing the Thomas job?”

“Yes.”

“Rachel, that’s insane,” Paul
said. “Your back isn’t even close to being healed. You’re in no condition to do
this. I even objected to the idea of you going with us for Pierson.”

She finished tying her boots and
rested her hands on her knees. “Donovan thinks I’m capable of handling Thomas.”

“Of course he does, Rach,” he
said. “Sending you is the perfect revenge on Thomas.”

She lifted her eyes to look at
him. “It wasn’t Donovan’s idea. I requested this job.”

“What?” Paul took a step back.
“Why would you volunteer to kill Jonathan Thomas?”

“Because it’s easy. A hell of a
lot easier than the Pierson job will be. If I do this one, I don’t have to do
the other.”

“Who’s going to do your part for
Pierson?”

“Tony.” She stood up and met his
gaze. “Are you done lecturing me? Can I go now?”

His expression softened.
“Rachel, that day when I left with Donovan to check out the job...” He paused
as he formed his words. “Were you going to tell me about Thomas? Was that why
you were so upset after your rounds?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me now what happened.”

“I don’t know, Paul. It all
happened so fast. He came to the estate to meet with Donovan. He must have
snuck out the back, because he found me while I was on rounds. I tried to get
him to leave, but then he kissed me. I guess I kind of let him do that. I
shouldn’t have, but things were so confusing and then Eric saw us kiss and—”

“Wait.” Paul held his hand up in
the air. “Thomas kissed you? That’s all?”

Lead pulled her heart down into
her stomach, and the realization came over her that something was terribly
wrong. “Yes, he kissed me. That’s all.”

Paul covered his face with his
hands.

Already knowing what his
response would be, she asked, “What is it, Paul?”

He dropped his hands in front of
him. “That’s not what Eric told Donovan. He made it sound like a longstanding
affair. He said he saw you in the woods with Thomas, and that he watched
everything. The things he said about you and Thomas were...” Paul hesitated. “I
told Donovan we shouldn’t believe Eric, that after being tortured for so long,
he was saying those things to get out of his own mess. In the end, Eric was so
convincing that I even started to believe what he said.”

Rachel bowed her head and closed
her eyes, her mind spinning. Eric had won. He knew he was going down and he
succeeded in dragging her as far into hell with him as he could. She opened her
eyes when she heard Paul speaking again.

“Eric’s story destroyed Donovan.
We came back and he hit the bottle hard. I’ve never seen him like that, drinking
straight out of the bottle. I left him alone, thinking he would pass out from
how fast he was drinking. I didn’t know—”

Rachel touched his hand. “Don’t
go there, Paul. It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

Paul lowered his head for a
moment. “When you and Joe return from the Thomas job, the rest of us will still
be gone for Pierson. We’ll be on that job for quite a few hours.”

She blinked. “It had crossed my
mind.”

“I brought some part-timers in
from the security company to patrol the grounds tonight. George and his crew
were inexplicably unavailable to cover for us. Tonight’s crew has never been
here before, and I don’t think they’re competent.”

Her eyes darted around the room,
digesting the meaning behind Paul’s words. “That’s too bad about George,” she
said, despite her elation. She had been concerned with getting around George
and his sharp-eyed crew when the time came to leave. “Anything else I should
know?”

“Joe has a couple beers every
night.”

Rachel looked at Paul. “I know
this.”

“If you decide to drink a beer
with him I sure wouldn’t take any pain medication. Taking three or four of
those with alcohol would probably knock you out good.”

“I bet it would.” She smiled,
grateful to have Paul in her corner.

Paul reached into his pocket. He
took her hand, and pressed a bag of pain pills against her palm. “I trust you
to do the right thing with these.”

Her hand tightened around the
bag. “I promise,” she said. She shoved the small bag into her front pocket.

“Good luck with Thomas,” he
said. He planted a kiss her cheek.

She fought the tears that
threatened to fall. “Thank you, Paul,” she whispered.