Javier raises an eyebrow. “And what will you do for that, little one?” he asks, raising his voice over her pleading. When Isabella doesn’t respond, he grabs her jaw, silencing her as he glares down at her.
I want to fucking kill him. My body is aching from the beating the guards gave me upstairs, my head pounding, and I know it’s only going to get worse. I don’t believe for a moment that Javier is going to pass on the chance to torture me for information, even if Isabella manages to barter for my life.
I’m not even sure that I believe that, in the end, Diego won’t still have me killed once he’s taken possession of Isabella again. I know men like him, and he won’t want to let the man who cheated him out of his wife-to-be’s virginity survive.
He’ll want his revenge, and I’m fairly certain he’ll take it.
“I’ll do anything,” Isabella whispers helplessly, looking up at Javier. Her dark eyes flick between him and me, and Javier shakes her, his fingers digging into her bruised, delicate cheeks.
“Look atme,” Javier snaps. “What isanything, Isabella? What will you do for Niall Flanagan’s life?”
“I mean it,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “Anything. Anything at all. I’ll let you do anything you want to me.”
“What about Diego?” Javier grins down at her. “He’s who you’re here for, after all. He’s who matters. As much as I’d like to fuck you in every tight little hole, I don’t get that pleasure, at least not right now. So what will it be, little one? What will you give your soon-to-be husband in exchange for this man’s life? You don’t have your virginity to offer. What about your submission?”
Isabella looks up at him, and I can’t even see the misery on her face now. There’s nothing but blank hopelessness, and something about that tears at me even deeper than the hurt I’d seen before.
“Yes,” she whispers. “I’ll be a good wife. I’ll go back to him, submit to him, and do anything he asks. I’ll do my best to please him. Just please don’t kill Niall. This is—” Another sob bursts out, choking her briefly. “This is all my fault,” Isabella finishes brokenly. “Please, just don’t kill him, and I’ll go back to Diego.”
Javier grins, showing his teeth like a shark. “You know, if you ever break that promise, if you rebel again, Diego will hunt your lover down like a dog. His life will be forfeit, and it will be your fault, little one, many times over. You should make sure that you mean this promise, before you say it.”
“You don’t have to do it.”
Both Javier and Isabella look at me, and I grimace. “You don’t have to do this, Isabella.”
I don’t know what prompted me to say it. I don’t want to fucking die, that’s for sure. I especially don’t want to fucking die slowly, in pieces, with my cock chopped off, because I fucked the wrong girl. Men like that, men who end up dead because they stuck their dick in the wrong place, they get made fun of where I come from. They’re a fucking punch line.
Deep down, though, I’m not so sure she was the wrong girl. I’m not so sure, even right this second, facing down Javier and his undoubtedly creative means of torture, that I’d go back and change it if I could. Isabella fucked up, that’s for sure; she created a whole hell of a mess of problems. I fucked up by not following my gut in the first place, when I sensed something was off that very first night.
But in the end—we’d made something beautiful together. A few nights where I felt wanted, desired, more than any woman had ever made me feel before, a few nights where I gave her something she desperately needed, too. We’d been two strangers looking for something we craved, and we’d given it to each other. I can’t bring myself to want to undo it.
Not even to get the fuck out of here. Not if it means sending Isabella back to Diego’s tender mercies, keeping her in guilty thrall to him for the rest of her life.
Isabella doesn’t listen, though. I knew she wouldn’t, that she couldn’t stand to have my blood on her hands, not after all of this. I’d ended up here because of her rebellion; she couldn’t let her continued desire to rebel be the reason I ended up dead.
“I promise,” she whispers, her voice choked. “I’ll go back to Diego and be a good wife for as long as I live.”
“There’s no escape, either,” Javier hisses, his hand still clutching her chin. “If you kill yourself to escape or try to, the result will be the same. Do you understand? You will submit to him for all of yournaturallife, or he will be hunted down like a dog.”
“I very much doubt you can get to me back in the States—” My retort is abruptly cut off by a gun butt in my stomach again, shoving me back. I cough as I see Javier finally let Isabella go.
“I promise,” she says again, her voice a strangled whisper. “I promise. If Diego comes to the compound right now, I’ll promise it again to him, go with him, sign a marriage certificate, anything he wants. I don’t care—just don’t kill Niall. Please.”
“Very well.” Javier steps back. “I’ll have someone tell Diego to come here straightaway to hear those words again in person and take you home. Unfortunate,” he adds, with a twist of his mouth. “I was hoping to enjoy playing with you more. But I suppose Niall here will have to scratch that particular itch—albeit in a different way.” He jerks his head to the guards. “Take him downstairs, boys.”
“Wait!” Isabella screams, her face going pale. “You promised—”
Javier grins. “I promised not to kill him. Don’t worry, he won’t die.”
The guards shove me towards the office door, just in time for me to hear Isabella’s strangled cry and Javier’s last words to her before he follows the guards out.
“He’ll just wish he was dead by the time I’m finished with him.”