“Shit!” Loki exclaims next to me, dropping his arm from around me and fumbling in his pocket. My heart hammers in panic, my head whipping round to face him, Kai’s grip dropping from me as well.
“What?” I ask, voice breathy and high, my pulse pounding. He brandishes his phone triumphantly.
“Almost forgot the playlist! That really would have been a disaster,” he responds, the sound of another fist hitting flesh loud in the room. It’s so utterly ridiculous that a giggle escapes my lips, my hand flying to cover them as the tension feels like it drains from the room. “That’s the spirit, Pretty Girl!” Loki beams, scrolling, and in the next secondAmerican Boyby Estelle and Kanye West starts blaring from speakers hidden somewhere in the room, drowning out the sounds of the beating that Jax is currently issuing. “Dance with me!” Loki shouts, grabbing my hand, twirling me so that my back is to his front, and pulling me to him.
He moves us as I outright laugh, his hips gyrating with the beat and letting me know how happy he’s feeling right now.
“Loki, you are incorrigible!” I gasp out, his hands bringing my own up and draping them over his neck behind me. I glance over to see Jax hit my–Adrian again, and what looks like a tooth flies from his mouth, skittering along the polished wooden floor.
“Talk dirty like that again, baby, and I’ll show you the meaning of the word,” Loki whispers in my ear, shivers making my nipples harden which is so many shades of inappropriate it’s unreal. “Kai, join us!”
I look up to see Kai step back in front of me, a sexy smile fixed on his face as he moves in as close as my bump will allow. His palms trace the roundness, his hips moving to the beat as we dance while Ash watches on with a softness in his eyes. Jax pauses in his beating to look over, a rare smile lifting his lips when he sees us dancing. The twins and Hunter are standing in the shadows, the latter stoic as he watches us, the former bobbing their heads to the beat. I knew they were our kind of people.
“You are all fucking insane!” Adrian shouts, his voice clear during a lull in the song. Loki doesn’t pause or falter, spinning me so that my back is to Kai, who presses his own hips snugly into my arse, his arousal grinding up against me.
“All the best people are!” I call back, laughing as the boys spin me between them until the song ends.
“Ready to answer some questions?” Ash inquires, bending over slightly as Jax uses his grip on the top of Adrian’s head to lift his drooping head up to face Ash. The older man’s face is a bloody mess, his eyes almost swollen shut, and ruby red liquid drips from his nose and lips.
“Fuck you, Vanderbilt,” Adrian rasps out in a pained mumble, spitting blood into Ash’s face. My husband doesn’t react, and from my position, I see a terrifying grin spread across his face before he straightens up and turns to face me.
“I made you a promise, wife,” he tells me, accepting something from Rowan. He holds them up for us all to see, the blades of the secateurs glinting, and Adrian gives a pained groan, but clearly no longer has the strength to fight his bindings anymore. Ash turns to him. “I promised my wife here that I would cut each and every one of your fingers off for daring to touch her.”
Adrian finds some strength to begin his struggle, but it’s futile, the cable ties too tight and numerous to allow him much movement. His first scream is cut off by a new song blaring over the speakers,Bodiesby Bryce Fox filling the room with the strains of a guitar and the beat.
I watch as Loki engulfs me from behind, his vanilla musk mixing with Kai’s fresh, woodsy scent as the latter wraps an arm around my waist from the side. I expect to feel sick, to feel something apart from a detached sense of numbness whilst watching Ash cut off all the fingers on one hand with the bolt cutters, each one landing at his feet.
But I watch Adrian’s vain struggles with a sick satisfaction running through my veins, enjoying the fact that his screams become more strained and gurgling as each digit falls. Ash pauses, and Jax holds something under Adrian’s nose to wake him up after he loses consciousness. Ash makes a gesture, and Loki lowers the volume so that we can all hear the conversation about to take place.
“P–p–please…” Adrian whimpers, his voice so full of pain that I should feel remorse, but I don’t. I feel nothing as I watch him twitch and shiver in front of us, knowing that he drugged me and touched me without my consent.
“You ready to confess your sins, Adrian Ramsey?” Ash interrogates, the secateurs dripping blood from their now red blades.
“Anything, yes, I’ll answer your questions,” Adrian murmurs, voice laced with agony.
“Why did you take Lilly?” Ash asks, tone hard and unforgiving. I step closer, Loki and Kai letting me go, then following along behind me. I move until I can see the dull light in Adrian’s eyes as he answers.
“Julian wanted to punish her, and I offered to remove her for a time to teach her a lesson. But I was under strict orders not to harm the baby, in case it really is Julian’s grandchild,” he tells us, his chest heaving, his voice grating and raw.
“Why offer?” Kai interjects from beside me. “Why did you want to take her?”
Adrian traces his cracked lips with a bloody tongue just as the song changes toWay Down We Goby Kaleo.
“Because her mother stole something from me, and I was angry. Initially, I planned to just kill the girl, taking what was owed to me as her next of kin. But your fucking father had other ideas and married her off so that I could never get my hands on what belonged to me by rights!” His anger gives him strength, and he levels a venomous gaze at Ash, then moves to me. “It was too late to ever get my shares in the company back, especially after she cashed in the bonds and bought more shares, but I wanted to see you suffer for the sins of your whore mother.”
Before I know what I’m doing, my hand snaps out and slaps him so hard across the face that my palm stings.
“Watch your mouth, or Ash will start on the other hand,” I snarl, dark rage filling my veins at this man and all his revenge plans.
“Not quite like her then, too feisty,” he comments dryly, teeth missing and blood running down his chin, and Loki holds me back from slapping him again as I step forward.
“Why drug me?” I ask, my voice cutting with my disgust at his actions. “How many nights did you climb into my bed, you fucking waste of oxygen?” I can feel my heart racing, my palms sweating at how angry I am that all this really had nothing to do with me.
“You look so much like her,” he replies, his eyes softening, and bile rises to my throat, a sickening thought occurring to me.
“The outdated clothes…you tried to dress me like her?” The room spins, Loki and Kai’s touch the only thing centering me and bringing me back to the library, and the disgusting creature in front of me.
“I loved her, in my own way, and she betrayed me, stealing from me and letting another man touch what was mine,” he seethes, the anger towards my mother still fresh.