Page 28 of Like An Animal

THE GHOST

M y gaze shifts between Jeremy and Kyle, but my thoughts all surround my daughter upstairs. What if she wakes up and comes down here? She does that when she has a bad dream. She likes to self-soothe with a glass of ice water. I’ve caught her doing it so many times over the years.

She’s less likely to come down here if she doesn’t hear anything.

I’ve worked hard to make sure she has had the best childhood without all the trauma I endured. I’ve been successful so far, but all that hard work will have been for nothing if she comes down here.

Maybe if I wait until Jeremy is distracted, I can slip away and get Lottie in the car. We don’t need anything but us. He may have found me this time, but he won’t be able to find me again. I’ll hide under a rock if I have to.

If Jeremy kills me, Lottie will have no one left. Her words from when I got her in the car earlier haunt me as I watch my shadow stalk toward Kyle with murderous intent.

“Mommy, where is my daddy?” she asks while playing with her doll she left in the backseat. My eyes go wide from her question.

“Your daddy? Why do you ask, baby?”

She frowns. “My friends have daddies. Where’s my daddy?”

It’s a question brewed from curiosity, but I’m not ready to answer it. She’s not old enough to understand the truth. All it would do is confuse her.

I can’t explain about the cult we escaped or how I ended up there. I can’t tell her about Jeremy or my father. Even if she understood, it would traumatize her.

“I thought you liked Kyle, baby.”

What else can I say? This is the first time she has even hinted at not being happy with how things are. Maybe she is happy and just wants to understand.

She shrugs. “He’s not daddy.”

Ain’t that the damn truth.

Kyle isn’t her father. He likes her and cares for her, but he will never be the kind of man her father is. That was the appeal behind him.

Kyle is easy to appease and control. He’s docile at best.

All I can think to tell her is a white lie. “Your daddy is a very busy man. I know he wishes he could be with us, but things just didn’t work out that way. Maybe one day, baby.”

She nods and goes back to playing with her doll like that conversation never happened.

She doesn’t have a father. She has a sperm donor. He doesn’t know he contributed to her DNA and I’d like to keep it that way.

Her father is a dangerous man.

I just have to wait and I can get her out of here without Jeremy interfering.

Jeremy walks right over to Kyle as my stupid husband tries to crawl away from him. He looks truly pathetic, especially with Jeremy towering over him.

“Listen, man. It was just a misunderstanding.”

Yeah, Jeremy won’t believe that. Not for a second.

Even if he did, he has never been the forgiving type.

I’ve seen him absolutely destroy someone over just looking at me and Kyle just tried to kill me over money of all things.

The protectiveness that has always resided inside of Jer should be gone from the hatred I’m sure has taken residence in his mind, but based on the tension in his back and shoulders, I don’t think it is.

Maybe it’s one of those “only he can hurt me” type of things. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Lifting his foot, Jeremy kicks Kyle right in the face, hard enough for me to cringe. Then with the crowbar in his hands, he rains hell down upon Kyle’s body. The screams that he releases makes me worry that he’ll wake Lottie and my gaze darts to the stairs.

This would be the time to make my move. Kyle has his attention.

Jumping to my feet, I dart out of the living room, heading for the stairs, hoping that if I’m quick he won’t notice me trying to make a run for it.

The second my foot lands on the stairs, my head is yanked back at an awkward angle and I scream from the pain tearing through my scalp and down to my neck.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He yanks me back into his body before claiming my throat in his hand. This reminds me of stolen moments I would rather forget, ones that only cause heartache.

“Let me go,” I demand, but it falls on deaf ears.

“Do you think you can go up there, grab your bastard child, and run for the hills?” he whispers the lethal words in my ear and sweat breaks out across my brow.

He knows about Lottie. How the hell does he know?

“Do you think there is anywhere you could go that I wouldn’t find you, little ghost? You owe me a penance and I’m here to collect. Don’t worry. The child isn’t here. She can’t hear any of this.”

My blood boils from his words. Lottie is gone and he fucking took her.

I push off the stairs and ram my body back into his. He stumbles as I push his back into the wall and snap around, digging my fingers into his jacket.

I don’t give a fuck who he is. No one messes with my daughter.

“Where is she?!” I yell in his face with all the rage I have before punching him straight in the nose. “What did you do to my daughter?!”

Out of nowhere, the back of his hand connects with my cheek, sending me to the ground. Pain vibrates through my face, all the way down to my jaw bone.

Jeremy used to hit me a lot, but it was always in bed and I liked it. I liked the pain he gave because it always came with pleasure, but this is different. He didn’t use that much strength before.

Sure, I hit him first, but his hit sets a completely different tone for this than what I was used to when dealing with Jeremy Borza.

I knew he wanted to kill me, but to have the evidence of it staring me in the face hurts way worse than his hand did.

That’s something I would never admit out loud.

“Don’t worry. The brat is safe. Xavi is taking good care of her and the mutt.”

Just fucking great. Not only do I have to deal with Jeremy, but Xavi as well.

Jeremy just guaranteed my cooperation because he took the one thing that matters to me. My child.

Wrapping his fingers around my throat, he pulls me up. My fingers dig into his wrist as I stand on my feet, scowling at him.

“If anything happens to her, you’ll wish you killed me sooner,” I warn, not caring if he squeezes the life out of me.

He throws his head back laughing before looking back down at me, slowly shaking his head.

“Oh, no, no, little ghost. I’m not going to kill you.

Where’s the fun in that? No. What I’m going to do is deliver a never ending torment as payment for what you took from me.

You will never be able to move further than my leash allows you to.

If you thought I was suffocating before, you don’t know the meaning of the fucking word.

I will be your worst nightmare that you have to face every single fucking day.

You can bank on that.” Then he drags me against him and steals my mouth in a rough kiss, using his teeth to dig into my lip until it bleeds down our faces.

The pain slicing through my lip feels like nothing, especially considering the kind of torture I’ve been put through in my life.

It doesn’t bother me.

His words do though.

He wants to be my worst nightmare and that means he has some pretty big shoes to fill.

I’m not scared of much. The cult I escaped succeeded in that.

Plus, I didn’t realize how much I liked him constantly watching me and making sure no one so much as looked at me until he was no longer there.

Like the saying goes, you never know what you have until it’s gone.

However, I’ve survived so long without it, I know it will feel so suffocating to have it again. I became truly independent without Jeremy constantly watching my moves.

He plans to strip it all away.

“Now, do I need to drag you in there or will you walk like a good little bitch?”

I scowl at him. If he didn’t send my daughter off with his lackey, I would knee him in the balls for calling me that, but my hands are tied.

“You’re a fucking asshole.”

“This is me being nice. You don’t want to see how much of an asshole I can be, Bronwyn.”