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FAWN

I t had been seven days since Otis had found a knife sharp enough to sever the rope from around my wrists. Seven days without Eddie’s taunts and demands. Without his fingers on my body, his touch unwanted.

Seven days of bliss in some ways but terror in others.

Otis smiled freely. He ran around the house like a regular five-year-old, playing games he made up in his mind and getting dirty in the yard without fear of reprimand from his father. Watching him warmed every part of my heart, and I prayed his father was dead in a morgue somewhere, never to return.

But at night, when I looked into the refrigerator, searching for something to make for dinner, the fear set in. A week without Eddie had meant no food, and we’d had little to begin with. Eddie had never kept much in the house, always making sure I knew exactly how reliant I was on him for everything.

This week had been a cruel reminder. I hadn’t eaten at all since the day before, sacrificing my own rations to make sure Otis had more. My stomach growled painfully, but no matter how many times I opened the cabinets, no extra food appeared.

I left Otis sipping a tasteless soup I’d made from frozen chicken bones and dragged my chains back to the living room. For the hundredth time, I tried to pry the harsh metal cuffs off my ankles, but Eddie had welded them on, and without the right tools or the key to remove them, I was fighting a battle I logically knew I couldn’t win.

I’d had no luck with the safe either. There would be a phone inside. Keys for Eddie’s car and my locks. Money. Guns. Everything I needed to escape was right there, inside of a steel box.

But no matter how many times I threw it against the floor, no matter how many knives and screwdrivers and hacksaws I tried to open it with, none of it made a dent. I’d tried every number combination I could think of, spending days trying different ones, until numbers swirled behind my eyes at night, along with an all-consuming agony that whispered I was never getting out. Never going to beat him.

Just like he’d promised, I was going to die here, chained up like a dog, and my son was going to die with me. Animals made noises outside at night, confirming Eddie’s warnings about sending Otis out there alone to try to find his way to help.

I had no idea where I was. For all I knew we were a hundred miles away from the nearest neighbor, and sending my child out there on his own was unthinkable.

I swallowed hard, silently berating myself for giving up. I didn’t get that luxury. I had a son to think about. Ophelia would have never given up. My older sister was as badass as they came, she and I as different as night and day.

I was glad she couldn’t see me now. She would have been so ashamed of what I’d let happen.

Eve too. The owner of the strip club I’d worked at before Eddie tracked me down had been the mother I’d always wanted, even though she was only about ten years older than me. She’d taken me in when I was on the run from Eddie and distancing myself from my family, leaving my parents and siblings to try to make a life for myself.

For a tiny moment in time, I’d been happy. Dancing at the club at night to make my money. Studying during the day. Being accepted into the family I’d made for myself and planning a life where I was happy and free.

I should have known my past would catch up with me eventually. If only it had been my family who had found me first.

But instead, it had been my ex. A man I’d once been in love with, back when I was a stupid teenager just wanting the attention of any man who’d give it to me.

Be careful what you wish for.

I’d gotten mine.

I had all of Eddie’s attention. Every miserable second of it.

An engine rumbled from somewhere outside, the first noise that had disturbed the peace since the night Eddie had been whisked away in an ambulance. I snapped my head up, peering through the windows at the front of the house. I didn’t recognize the shiny blue truck, or the driver with a baseball cap pulled low on his head, but dread filled my veins anyway. Eddie sat in the passenger seat.

Otis came running from the kitchen. His big brown eyes, that had sparkled with happiness for the first time this week, were back to the dull brown color I was used to, fear sitting behind them. “Should I go hide, Mommy?”

There wasn’t time. He couldn’t get into the box and close himself in without my help. I shook my head. I needed to get the safe put back where it had been, and to stash the tools I’d had Otis bring me from the shed. “Go outside and welcome your father home. He’ll expect that. Don’t stand too close. Say welcome home, and then nothing else unless he asks you a direct question. You hear me, Otis? Nothing else. Please.”

He nodded his little head quickly and then put his arms around me, squeezing me tight. “I know what to do, Mommy.”

I knew he did. He’d been trained, every day of his life, in how not to set Eddie off. It was the only way we’d survived.

I watched him run outside and stand at the side of the driveway, making sure he wasn’t too close to the car or its occupants.

“There he is! My boy. Come here, kid.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away, Eddie’s voice sending chills down my spine and confusion into my heart. He never greeted Otis like that. His friendliness was a ploy. A disguise for something more sinister. I just knew it. In a frantic hurry, I shoved the tools beneath the couch and fit the safe back where it had been in the wall. I cringed at the new scratches I’d put in the paint and prayed Eddie didn’t notice them.

But I already knew he would.

Eddie noticed everything.

Except perhaps how much I hated him.

Or more likely, he just didn’t care.

I brushed my hands off on my dress, tugging at the hem self-consciously. I was rarely out of the chains. Eddie didn’t trust me. Rightfully so. But normally he undid them long enough for me to shower and change clothes. While he watched every move I made, his leering gaze lingering on my breasts and the juncture of my thighs.

But I hadn’t had that luxury since he’d left.

Dirt and sweat clung to my skin.

I realized the men outside were silent and I hurried to the window, peeping out again with my heart thumping, gaze centering first on Otis, making sure he was okay.

He stood beside his father, Eddie’s heavy hand on his slim shoulder. I balked at his expression. It almost looked like pride.

I couldn’t see the stranger’s expression, but he stared at my son, his gaze finally jerking up to meet Eddie’s. “Where’s his mother?”

The stranger’s voice tickled something in the back of my mind. But if I knew the man, I couldn’t place him from his voice alone.

Eddie ignored his question. “Just wait here a minute. She’s picky about her house, and I didn’t tell her I was bringing a guest home. Just let me give her the heads-up and I’ll come back out for you.”

Confusion pulled my forehead into frown lines. Eddie had never given me a warning he had friends over. The house was always spotless, him being away hadn’t changed that. I still cleaned it religiously, knowing I’d be punished if he got home and anything was out of place.

The screen door opened with a protesting creak, and I plastered on a fake smile. The only kind I could ever muster when Eddie was around.

Just like I’d instructed Otis, I quietly murmured, “Welcome home.”

He hobbled through the door on crutches, not bothering to return the greeting. I kept one eye on the stranger outside, fear coiling around my insides over my child being out there alone with anyone Eddie deemed a friend. But the man had crouched to Otis’s height and was nodding at something Otis was explaining in a voice too low for me to hear.

I was so busy watching them I didn’t notice Eddie open the safe and pull the keys for my locks out until they hit me in the side of the face. I winced at the shot of pain, but Eddie didn’t apologize.

I would have been checking for flying pigs if he had.

I picked up the keys but then looked at him expectantly, not knowing what to do with them.

He glared at me. “Has my time away made you even more stupid than normal? Undo your locks.”

I knelt quickly, confused, but not as stupid as Eddie always told me I was. I didn’t understand why I was suddenly getting a reprieve, when Eddie having friends over had always meant quite the opposite. Eddie was always so paranoid I’d lure one of his friends into bed or trick them into taking me with them. Or one of his other deluded paranoias.

When it came to me, he’d always had many of them.

Eddie’s friends all knew how he treated me, and not one of them had ever cared. In all the years we’d lived here, not one of them had ever helped me. Eddie didn’t hang out with men who had empathy.

I undid the locks, trying not to weep in relief as the cuffs fell away, exposing my bruised skin.

Eddie was already gathering up the long chains that tethered me to the house. It reached every room, but no farther.

I didn’t question what he was doing, just watched him shove it into the safe and shut the door, the locks engaging automatically once more.

I knew better than to ask questions, even though they burned on the tip of my tongue.

He headed for the door again, but I stared at the floor, trying not to set him off. It didn’t save me from him grabbing my arm roughly before he went back outside though. He smelled distinctly of hospital, something between disinfectant, bad food, and that unpleasant odor sick people just seemed to have.

He hauled me in, and I fought the urge to wrinkle my nose.

“I love you,” Eddie whispered, his voice more a hiss than a caress of kind words. “You love me. Remember that. Remember how much I’ve done for you. Given you this home that you’ve never had to work a day for. We are a happy fucking family, and you’ll show it.”

I was too slow to respond. I knew it before he gave me a sharp shake, his eyes narrowing.

“You’ll show it, or I can make this house so fucking unhappy you’ll beg me for your chains back. You hear me? Don’t try anything, Fawn. It won’t work, and it’ll just mean I have to punish you and the boy. You know I hate doing that.”

I was quicker to nod this time, the threat to Otis one I was never willing to play fast and loose with, even if sometimes I did with my own life.

But I didn’t know this game. Didn’t understand what we were playing, so I needed to abide by his rules until I worked it out. “Okay,” I whispered.

He nodded. “Then come and greet our guest like a good woman should.”

I jerked my head sharply in his direction, not understanding what that meant. When he told me to be a good woman, it generally meant getting on my knees for him. But surely that wasn’t what he wanted me to do now with this stranger?

Eddie had done a lot of bad things in his time, but he’d never pimped me out to his friends. His jealousy could never. It ran a mile deep and a mile wide.

I was Eddie’s woman. His property. His plaything.

Nobody else’s.

He hobbled through the door then held it open for me. I schooled my face into something neutral, even though I was surprised. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d bothered to hold a door open for me. He was more likely to slam them in my face than to act like a gentleman.

The surprise turned to pure confusion when he laced his fingers between mine, holding my hand gently and leading me over to his friend, rather than dragging me by the wrist, which was more his usual style.

The way he held me now had me flashing back to when we’d first met. When he was charming and sweet. Back when he’d bothered to hide the jealous, possessive nature that had sat just below the surface, waiting for a stupid young thing like me to fall into his trap.

Oh, how I’d fallen. I’d fallen so hard, the first time he’d hit me I made excuses for him. And the second time, I’d blamed myself.

By the third and fourth time I’d felt so stupid I hadn’t even told my sister. I hadn’t wanted to see the look of disappointment in her eyes when I told her a man was abusing me.

Ophelia was smart. Strong. A wicked fighter who could take a life without remorse, well trained by our parents to do exactly that.

And yet I had always been the black sheep of the family. Too weak to even take care of myself, let alone anything else.

I’d never been like them. Too sweet. Too soft.

And after falling for Eddie’s lies and the trap he’d set, we could add too stupid as well.

Eddie squeezed my fingers in a way that might have looked affectionate to a bystander, but his grip was viselike, crushing my already bony knuckles together painfully.

“Smile,” he murmured. “Happy family, remember?”

I forced expression into my face. One that didn’t meet my eyes.

“Mommy!” Otis called. “Did you know I have an uncle?”

I froze as the man with the baseball cap turned around, his green-eyed gaze meeting mine.

Shock rippled across his expression, his eyes widening, his full lips parting on a rushed exhale of air. “Fawn?”

I’d met Eddie’s brother as a teenager. He and I had been the same age when I’d started dating Eddie. He’d been almost as tall as Eddie but skinny and gangly with youth. Quiet. Kind. He’d been sweet to me.

But the last time I’d seen him had been years later, when he’d helped his brother hold me captive.

He’d been there the day Eddie had tried to kill me, pushing me over the staircase railing.

He’d done nothing to stop him.

The kind, quiet boy I’d known was as big a monster as his older brother.

Worse maybe, because he’d made me think I was his friend.

When we were anything but.

Another squeeze of Eddie’s hand reminded me of the performance I was supposed to be putting on. I lifted my head and drew my shoulders back as best I could, though the thick keloid scar that ran down my back pulled painfully. “Hello, Zane.”

The words rolled off my tongue with a near visible frost.

Eddie gave a pleased chuckle, though I had no idea why.

Otis looked from Zane to Eddie to me, completely missing the animosity in the air between the three of us.

Zane stared at me like he’d seen a ghost. “I thought you were—”

I cut him off with a sharp look at the little boy, watching and taking in every word.

He didn’t need to hear Zane had thought me dead.

To him, I was.

Zane pressed his lips together and nodded, but his gaze never left my face. It flickered all over me, skimming across my hair that he’d only ever seen blond. My eyes. My nose. His gaze lingered on my lips long enough I noticed, before sweeping down my body.

An unwanted feeling stirred inside me. Something that was dredged up from deep inside, a faint memory of what it felt like when a man looked at you with honest desire instead of leering greed.

But it disintegrated the moment Zane’s gaze lifted back to meet mine.

His eyes were filled with pity…and something more sinister.

Disgust?

I dragged my thin cardigan tighter over my chest with the one free arm I had, the other still gripped by Eddie. I didn’t need to see myself to know why Zane stared at me like that.

Hair unkempt. Hadn’t showered in days. No makeup. Ratty clothes and half starved.

I was a far cry from the pretty blond stripper I’d been when he and his brother had snatched me from my home.

But I refused to hide. I held his gaze, mine burning with embarrassment but also a will to be seen.

He’d done this to me, just as much as his brother had. He might not have been the one to carry me into the back of a blacked-out van. He might not have been the one to lock me in a basement and hold me prisoner.

But he’d been there. He’d heard my cries. He’d listened to me beg for help.

And he’d done nothing but walk away.

He’d gotten to live his life for the last five years while I’d slowly healed from injuries that should have killed me. He’d probably been going to concerts and birthdays and hanging out with friends and flirting with women, while I was chained in the house of horrors his brother had created.

Whatever friendship there’d been between us was long gone. As dead and buried as the person I’d once been.

Even still, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I’d barely gotten a glimpse of him five years ago, when he’d been there with his brother, holding me captive in a blacked-out room. All I really remembered from those days was his green eyes amongst all the darkness.

But he’d changed from the teenager I’d known best. Approaching thirty, he’d lost the slimmed-out appearance he’d once had, and gangly limbs had been replaced by muscled biceps and strong thighs.

The laborer’s workpants and the shirt reading AP Concrete and Earthmoving probably explained the new physique. His skin was deeply tanned and even from here, I could see the dirt beneath his nails. He could have stepped right off a jobsite.

Eddie drew me under his arm and kissed the top of my head. “How about we go inside? I had Zane stop and get some groceries. Maybe my sweetheart here could whip us up a nice lunch. What do you think, Peach?”

I wanted to cringe away from his touch and tell him he and his brother could shove their meals up their asses. I wanted to scream at him and remind him that while he’d been eating three square meals a day at the hospital, his son and I had been slowly starving.

The very thought of making Eddie and Zane a meal had bile rising in my throat and venom sitting on my tongue, ready to spit.

Eddie’s fingernails dug into the fleshy part of my upper arm.

A reminder he was in control here. And I had no say in the matter.

I was so sick of having no voice.

But just like he always did, when my thoughts of rebellion got too loud, Eddie reached for Otis.

And that was enough to get me to instantly blurt out, “Of course. I’ll make us all something right away. Just let me get the groceries. Are they in the back of the truck?”

Eddie snorted. “Where else would they be?”

I gritted my teeth and moved to the truck bed, dropping the tailgate and peering beneath the expensive hard-top cover for the bags of groceries. I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, knowing I needed to get myself under control. It was dangerous not to. I wrapped my fingers around the plastic bag handle, forcing out the ideas of wrapping one over Eddie’s head and suffocating him with it.

Zane came to my side. “Let me help.”

I froze at how close he was.

Knew I’d pay for it later if Eddie saw. “I don’t need your help.”

Zane paused, not looking at me.

It gave me a moment to breathe him in. And though he smelled about as good as I did, there was something familiar about his scent that my body remembered. Something that reminded me of the kindhearted teenager who’d sat with me when his brother was being a drunk, obnoxious fool at a party instead of paying attention to his girlfriend. Something that reminded me Zane hadn’t always been just like Eddie.

“I want to help,” he said quietly.

I glanced at him sharply, our gazes connecting. For a tiny second I thought there might have been a hidden meaning in his words.

But fear swallowed up any notion of that idea in an instant.

Zane had already shown me who he was once.

I’d trusted him, and it had blown up in my face.

I wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

I gathered all the bags and lifted them from the truck. Despite the weight cutting into my palms, and my shaking, wasted biceps, I moved past him without turning back.

The same way he’d done to me, leaving me at the bottom of a stairwell for dead.