Read Joseph Fallen (The Estate Series) Online
Authors: M.S. Willis
Arianna woke up slowly.
Her arms burned where they felt like they were being pulled from her shoulders
and her wrists felt like the skin had been ripped from the bone.
Her head swiveled on her neck, and the
room blinked in and out of focus while she struggled to wake up.
The tops of her feet brushed across the floor, but she
placed them both down firmly, pushing up on her weak legs to decrease the
pressure to her arms.
The metal of
the chains above her rattled with her movement and when she was finally able to
fully open her eyes the room came into view.
With a quick glance it looked like the spare bedroom she’d
decorated; but closer inspection revealed the filth on the floors, dried blood
ground into the grout between the stone tiles.
A fetid smell permeated the walls and
air and the bed stood in the center, disheveled with stained blankets.
She fought not to get sick, her already
sensitive stomach contesting the putrid scent.
She was alone in the room and she quickly surmised that she
was chained to a wall, left hanging by whoever had placed her there and left
alone to wake up.
She remembered Joseph
choking her, and that his guard, Emory, held her while she lost
consciousness.
The
chilled air against her skin told her that someone had removed her clothes and
she trembled at the thought of what was to be done to her.
Arianna didn’t know who’d be walking through the door of the
room.
She couldn’t believe it, but
she actually prayed it would be Joseph.
She couldn’t stand the thought that Emory would be allowed to touch
her.
Her prayers weren’t realized,
however, and within the hour, Emory entered from the hall.
“Oh, good.
You’ve woken up.
We can get
this started finally.”
Emory’s
voice had the tone of a man diseased.
Arianna’s body grew cold, sweat breaking out on her skin
from fear of being left alone with Joseph’s guard.
“What are you doing?
Where’s Joseph?”
Emory snickered, his laugh as disgusting as his voice.
“He doesn’t want you anymore, told me I
get to play with you now.
Aren’t
you excited?”
Approaching her, one hand came up to rub along her stomach
and breasts, while the other moved between her legs.
Her body retched and she attempted to
move away from him despite the chains that bound her to the wall.
“Oh, yes.
This
will be so sweet.
I’ve been wanting
to fuck you for years, Arianna.”
He
chuckled.
“I just didn’t want to
take the chance of ending up like your boyfriend.
I knew Joseph would eventually grow
tired of you.”
“Emory, you need to stop.
I’m pregnant…it’s Joseph’s child.
You have to go get him so that I can
tell him.”
Arianna begged with
everything she had.
She hated
lowering herself to the sick man that stood before her, but she had not choice
if she was going to save her life.
Sadly, Arianna didn’t care if she lived or died, but when
she remembered the two boys she’d left in the music room, she knew she had to
fight – for them.
Her
heart felt like it broke into slivers at the thought that Aaron and Xander
would have no one if something were to happen to her.
She couldn’t stand it, the thought of
never hugging them again, playing music with them or watching them play.
“Oh, God, Emory, PLEASE go get Joseph…he needs to
know!”
Her voice creaked out around
the pain Emory’s touch was inflicting on her body.
She begged and screamed for him to stop,
but his hands, his mouth and his teeth explored every inch of her skin, forced
sensations through her that made her want to die where she stood.
“Please….”
Emory laughed, the heat of his breath moving over her skin
before he stood up to look her in the eye.
Reaching for his belt, Emory licked his lips.
“I won’t be telling Joseph anything
except for how good it felt to fuck you as you died.
Trust me, baby, after a few hours, you
won’t be pregnant any longer.
I
intend to enjoy myself tonight.”
Arianna fought against the chains while screaming out for
her husband.
She was desperate for
him to hear her, to come in the room so she could tell him why he couldn’t let
Emory do this.
But it was no
use.
After a few minutes, her
throat became raw and she could barely squeak out a sound.
Emory stood watching her silently, his
eyes turning an impossible black he reached for his pants and unbuckled them to
let them fall to the floor.
“You’re screwed, Arianna.”
A evil laugh rumbled through his
chest.
“Literally.”
Grabbing her hips with his hands, he turned her so that her
face was pressed against the wall.
He lifted her towards him, shoving inside her so forcefully, that her
nose bled from where it impacted with the wall.
It didn’t take long for him to finish
and start again, ripping apart the sensitive flesh of her core and her ass.
She could feel blood trailing down her
legs within minutes and she screamed for Joseph the entire time despite the
pain in her throat.
When Emory had finished he stepped away from her.
Taking his cock between his hands, he
looked over the blood and laughed when he raised his red hand to show her the
stain.
“And to think…that’s just
the beginning.”
Emory moved quickly across the room and opened a drawer of a
dresser and started pulling out tools and instruments.
Arianna’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened
when she saw the knives, pliers, razors, and medical instruments he pulled from
the drawer.
She couldn’t help
herself and she threw up, the vomit trailing over her body adding to the
horrendous smell of the room.
Emory looked over and smiled to see that she’d gotten
sick.
Tsking he made his way back
over to her and ran his finger through the mess, forcing it back between her
lips.
“You dropped something.”
She spit out instantly and he pulled his finger away
laughing.
“If you are trying to
sicken me so I won’t touch you, you’re going to have to do a lot better than
that, bitch.”
Her head fell against the wall, tears forcing themselves
from her eyes and the flood of emotions through her body crippling her legs
below her.
Uselessly she swung on
those chains, but she couldn’t find the strength to push herself back up.
Her thoughts drifted to the past;
memories of Connor, of laughing by the stream, the sunlight heating their skin
in a place where they could escape their lives.
She thought of the boys, of their
laughter, their cries.
She imagined
both of them as they grew; heartbroken to know that she would never see them
become adults.
Absolute loss
consumed her, but even with the intensity of that pain, it was easily shadowed
by the pain of knowing her babies would be left to the will and instruction of
a madman, that their lives would be drowned in the black pit that existed
within Joseph’s Estate.
She thought
about the boys faces as she left the music room and she died inside knowing it
was the last time they would see each other.
Life wasn’t fair.
The fairy tales and stories she’d been told as a child were nothing more
than fantasy, a dream that could never become true.
There was no prince that arrived on a
white horse, no frog that turned into the perfect man when kissed by the
princess.
No.
Her life was anything but fair, an
illusion of a future that she would never know, a light that was extinguished
by the man she married so many years before.
And now, she hung on a wall, given to a
madman, a soulless bastard who reveled in pain, in blood, in death.
She hated that he was the last person
she would see, would know.
So she
closed her eyes, tried to go to a place where she could escape the room where
she was trapped.
She thought of her
family, her old friends, but mostly she tried to see what awaited her when she
died, wondered if Connor’s soul was washed clean of the murders he’d committed
when he’d given up his life trying to save hers.
She heard Emory when he moved back to the dresser and she
opened her eyes when he selected a small blade.
She didn’t want to see what was coming,
she wanted to stay in the place of beauty and light she’d just imagined.
But she couldn’t look away. Sliding back
to where he took a position in front of Arianna, he smiled and held up the
blade.
“Do you know what I’m going
to do with this?”
In a singsong
voice, he added, “I bet you don’t.”
Another sick laugh and he dragged the tip of the blade along
her inner thigh, before resting it over the opening to her body.
Looking deep into her eyes, he pressed his forehead to
hers.
His rotten breath trailed
over his face and she closed her eyes trying to hide the fear that she
felt.
He laughed.
“Ready for me bitch?
We’re about to have a really fun time.”
Joseph stood proud looking at the fire that consumed his
wife’s body.
Over the years and
many deaths in his house, he’d found it easier to burn the remains than bury
them.
He’d had a field cleared down
to the sand and a space erected to hold the corpses while they were turned to
dust.
His hands folded at his back, he looked upon a thing that
should have brought him great satisfaction.
But instead, his heart sank into an
abyss as the last bit of humanity he’d had left him was ripped from his chest.
He had to admit the bitch had claws.
It was irritating against his thoughts, the fact that even
in death, she’d bested him.
The evening that she’d been dragged away, he’d sat in his
office, allowed a whore to suck him off while the bloodcurdling screams of his
wife echoed through the halls.
He
didn’t know what Emory was doing to her and he didn’t care.
He felt gratification in the sound, it
was a pleasurable music – one that fed the violence his soul craved.
By the time he’d bent the whore over his
desk, he’d released himself three times.
But it wasn’t the whore that excited him; it was the screams.
The morning hours approached, and she’d grown silent. He
wondered if Emory had finally ended her life.
Curiosity got the better of him and he
ventured down the corridor to the room where she’d been taken.
Opening the doors, he found her chained
to the wall, stripped bare, blood dripping from almost every orifice of her
body.
He’d seen Emory’s work before
and it never failed to impress him, just how demented his guard could be.
When he looked over Arianna’s limp body, her arms stretched
above her head and her legs hanging lifelessly on the floor, he felt
nothing.
No pain, no remorse, none
of the emotions he’d assumed he’d feel through the years if she’d died.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he stepped
into the room.
He approached her slowly - couldn’t stop looking over what
she’d become.
Reaching out he went
to move the hair from her face, and when she coughed, when blood sputtered from
her mouth to the floor, he jumped back, surprised to find that she was still
alive.
“How was it, beautiful?
Did he treat you as well as the other guard?”
Her one eye looked up at him, the white surrounding the blue
made red with broken blood vessels.
Her other eye was missing.
She spit out more blood from her mouth, and struggled for air.
He expected tears, expected her to beg
for him to release her, but when she smiled around the multiple cuts in her
lips, his eyes narrowed.
“You should have listened to me, Joseph.”
Her voice was barely a whisper.
She’d been held in that position for too
long and had been beaten so thoroughly, it was cutting off her ability to
breath.
But even still, while
slowly suffocating, she somehow found the determination and strength to state
her final insult, a statement meant to mock her husband.
“Aaron…I don’t know who fathered him.
You’re correct about that.
But I did give you what you wanted, you
would have been a father if…” She coughed again, red dribble escaping across
her lips to slide down her chin.
She breathed heavily, a loud wheeze present and the recognizable sound
of fluid bubbling in her lungs.
“I’m pregnant, Joseph…. your child.”
She laughed, the sound was disturbing
coming from a person in her condition.
“All this time, all these years; the one thing you’ve always
wanted…destroyed by your insanity.”
His spine straightened and his muscles tightened over his
tendons and bones, when he accused,
“You’re lying…”
“I’m not.
I’ve
known for a week, I was going to tell you, tried to tell you before…” Forcing
herself to look up at him, she weakly said, “Do you remember that day in your
office, the one when you told me that some of the best things are the one we
must wait for?” She choked on a laugh.
“For how much time it’s taken, this child would’ve been special like you
said…
a gift given to you when you least
expected it
.
And you
destroyed it before it was ever given life.”
Her head dropped and her face looked to
the floor when she added, “So much intelligence…so little common sense.”
Another curt laugh before her drowning
cough.
Her head fell, her strength
giving out as her body weakened to a point of death.
A rattle sounded in her chest and he
grabbed her face, forcing her to look at him.
“Tell me your lying, Arianna, tell me…”
But it was too late.
Her one eye still open, Joseph could tell that the light had left
her.
His fingers searched for a
pulse, and finding none he let her body fall back against the wall.
Now he stood watching her body turn to dust.
He hadn’t wanted to believe her, had
attempted to convince himself that she’d lied.
Warring emotions raced violently through
his mind, the idea that he could - that he had finally succeeded in fathering a
child and the nagging belief she’d left with him that he’d destroyed his own
immortality.
His mind fought violently against him.
It couldn’t be true, he tried to force
the thought from his head, but it refused to release him.
He’d never know, never be given the
chance. And the nagging doubt and denial of truth was the last push over the
precipice from genius to madness, the last nail in the coffin for Joseph’s
sanity.
He heard Emory’s footsteps come up behind him.
Twisted satisfaction written across the
face of his guard when he finally took a position at Joseph’s side.
They stood silently watching the flames
dance into the night sky.
Normally
there would be many men standing around the pyre, but on this night, it was a
secret release of the life he’d known before The Estate had started, a silent
disposal of the last person who dared betray him.
“What will you do with the boys?
Have you decided to dispose of them as
well?”
Irritation brushed across Joseph’s mind.
But he made promises to the parents of
those children, had taken from them the thing that had always been denied to
him.
“No.
They’ll remain here.”
“What are our instructions when it comes to them?”
Joseph sighed loudly, annoyed to be disturbed so quickly
after Arianna’s death.
“I want them
educated, trained.
I believe both
of them have the potential to be assets to The Estate.
Aaron is still my son, Emory.
Never forget that.”
“But, his father was…”
“I don’t want to fucking hear about that again.
As far as this network knows, as far as
the child knows, I am his father.
I
can raise him to be like me, to take over this network when I die.
His life will still be a reminder of
mine and that is all that concerns me.
Perhaps I’ll get one of the whores pregnant.
If that happens, then Aaron may meet
with an unfortunate accident.”
Joseph turned to his guard.
“Do as I instruct, Emory, without
question.”
Emory nodded his head and turned to walk back to the
building.
Left alone, Joseph returned his focus to the flames.
His eyes followed the black smoke that
billowed out and covered the light cast by the full moon above him.
When the flames had finally
extinguished, when there was nothing left of the woman who’d torn him apart
from the inside out, he stepped away.
He turned, walked slowly to the mansion lit brightly against
the night sky.
Joseph had gained
what he needed, but it was still a stain, a small spot of imperfection that he
would work diligently to cover up.
He was certain that one day, Aaron would be nothing more than a mirror
image of the man that raised him.
He’d be a charismatic man that would be able to command a room just by
his presence, he’d make Joseph proud and still remind the men of the network
that Joseph had achieved it all.
Approaching the building, Joseph placed his hand on the door
handle of the west entrance and pushed forward into his kingdom – it was
a place that every man feared, a force so strong that it was respected by the
authorities and criminals alike.
And it was his.
He ruled it.
And after him would be his son; a testament to Joseph’s
greatness, to his power and absolute strength.
Joseph had outshone Hell by creating The Estate.
A perfect network, an unstoppable force,
and because Joseph ruled it, he’d never be taken, never be destroyed and he’d
go down in history known as the man who had achieved everything, had destroyed
many, and who should be feared above all else.
Joseph reached his suite, closed the door behind him and
allowed his eyes to fall on the young woman bound at her hands and feet in wait
of what he would do to her.
Laughing to himself, he stalked towards her, his pants growing tight
when he thought of the violence to come.
The End
Other Books
in the Estate Series:
Madeleine
Abducted