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Chapter Forty-One
Phoebe
My head hurt. From the constant rolling beneath it, I knew there had to be a gigantic knot between my skull and whatever it rested on. Everything felt heavy. My limbs hurt, my head hurt, and no matter what I did, my eyes wouldn’t cooperate and open. I felt stuck between two worlds, fused together by a white haze I wanted desperately to break through. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like sandpaper. I couldn’t move my tongue.
What the hell?
Voices rumbled, and I determined I was moving. The continual bumping and rolling under my head got progressively worse as electric shocks tore through my brain every time we hit a bump. I still couldn’t open my eyes, but I knew I wasn’t in my Infiniti. My other senses may’ve been dulled, but smell wasn’t one of them. The stench curdled what food remained in my stomach. It smelled like a construction worker after spending all day working on hot asphalt in the summer sun.
“You hit her too hard,” a raspy female voice accused.
“So now you’re the expert on efficient daylight abductions? Shut the fuck up.”
I struggled to place the vaguely familiar male voice.
“He wanted her awake.”
“He’ll be happy with what he gets.”
“I just don’t want to make him mad.” The female voice shuddered.
“Well, I don’t give a shit as long as I get my money.”
Why can’t I place that voice?
The answer danced on the edge of my memory, and I almost had it when the vehicle hit a pothole. My head flew up and slammed against the hard floor. Whatever recognition I almost had was lost as I faded back into darkness.
***
“Wakey, wakey, princess. The fun is about to start.”
I took a deep breath and coughed. The warm breath against my ear was rancid—a combination of cigarettes and poor hygiene. I knew it in an instant.
“Are you deaf, girl? I said wake up.”
I grunted as a steel toed boot sank into my stomach. Wheezing from the unexpected blow, I slowly opened heavy eyes to face him. My head still throbbed, but mental clarity returned as I came face to face with the monster of my nightmares. The face that haunted me every time I closed my eyes.
I looked into the cold, dead eyes of my father.
He was much thinner, his salt and pepper hair almost fully gray now. His thick, bushy eyebrows dominated his forehead, hovering over wideset, faint blue eyes. Julian loved my eyes. I hated them. I now remembered why as I gazed into an exact replica; except his were soulless and vacant, without a shred of humanity. But it was his mouth that I instinctively recoiled from. He wore a new scar down his mouth that split into a gruesome grin displaying yellowed and broken teeth.
I shivered, but I refused to look away. When I didn’t answer fast enough, he raised his hand, and my head flew to the side as the back of his hand connected with my cheekbone. I heard a crack, and pain radiated down the side of my face. Turning my chin back to him, I held his stare.
You can’t have my fear anymore.
“Still nothin’ to say? Just like your mama. She always liked getting knocked around too.”
“Where’s my daughter?” I wouldn’t give in to his taunting. He wanted to provoke me. I wanted him focused.
He shook his head. “Never learned respect, did ya, girl?”
“Where’s my daughter?” I repeated as my cheek swelled.
Grinning, he bent down and hovered against my ear again. “You remember what happened to that unicorn, dontcha, princess?”
Memories of canine teeth ripping the stuffing to shreds as growls echoed around me filled my head.
“You son of a bitch! What the fuck did you do to my baby?” I jerked my arm forward to hit him, only to find it bound to the chair behind me. I pulled on my other arm and found it in the same situation. I closed my eyes and screamed in his face. “Let me go!”
