Page 159 of Reckoning

Before I can do anything, he slaps some fabric over my mouth, and I choke, I splutter, my body goes slack and I slump into his arms.

* * *

My head hurts.No, not hurts exactly, just feels heavy, really heavy. I groan, trying to shift to a more comfortable position only my hands don’t move. Neither do my legs.

My eyes snap open. I jerk in the chair but all it does is creak in protest.

“Now, now.” A voice says gently. “No need to get so worked up.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” I whimper staring at the man in front of me. Staring at those blue eyes.

He smiles back, leaning forward to sweep my hair back from my face. “It’s good to see you too, Sofia.”

“What, what do you want?” I gasp.

He steps back, tilting his head, his jaw tightening for a second. “I want what I’ve always wanted. What your father stole and failed to return.”

What the fuck does that mean?

My eyes dart about, to the white blank walls, to the heartrate machine beside me. Am I in a hospital? Is that what this is? Why the fuck would I be in a hospital?

I’m not attached to anything, I’m not connected up, but that doesn’t mean much. I shudder, remembering the Barn, how it looked, how it felt before Roman torched the place.

Blue eyes holds up his fingers, clicking in front of my face and I realise I’ve zoned out.

“I, I don’t know anything.” I gasp. God, haven’t we been through this before?

More footsteps echo. I crane my neck and see Martin walking in, pushing a metal gurney with a tray neatly placed on top of it. “She’s still spouting on about memory loss.” He says like I’ve been putting it on this entire time.

My eyes dart between them and I hate how it’s only know that I notice the similarities. The turn of their noses, the eyebrows. They could be brothers. How had I not seen that before?

“It’s true.” I cry. “I don’t know…”

Blue Eyes’ hand slaps over my mouth. He shoves something inside and I try to push it out with my tongue but he tapes it in place. “I’m done playing games, Sofia.” He says so calmly. Like this is all some simple misunderstanding.

I try to argue but everything I say now is muffled.

Martin starts laying out instruments. Scalpels, what looks like an actual saw. Christ, are they going to torture me again? What good will that do if they’ve essentially gagged me?

“It took me a long time to work this out.” Blue Eyes states. “Of course, it was simple really. Logical. What else would your father do, considering the options he faced?” He pauses, picking up a pair of scissors and he starts cutting away at my clothes, cutting right up the middle so that my entire chest and abdomen are exposed.

“He wasn’t going to tell Darius where it was, not after their falling out...”

I stare from him to Martin. Desperately pleading. I know this isn’t going to end well. I know however this goes down, they’re going to hurt me. I just don’t understand why.

Blue Eyes slaps me across the face. “Pay attention when I’m talking to you.”

I glare back at him, only that makes him smirk.

“Oh, you do have your mother’s defiance, don’t you?” He murmurs, like he knew her, like they were intimately acquainted.

“I always thought Otto wanted you simply because of what you were worth. For the Montague fortune, only that wasn’t it, was it, Sofia?”

I gulp, trying to calm myself, trying to figure out some way out of this. Surely Koen’s men will know I’m missing? How the fuck did Martin even get me past them in the first place? There’s no way he killed them all. That’s not possible. It can’t be possible.

I glance across at him and he’s smiling, like he’s been imagining whatever’s about to unfold for months.

Blue Eyes, grabs my jaw, yanking my face so that I’m forced to look at him. “You don’t have a clue, do you?” He says. “You don’t realise what your father did all those years ago?”