Page 109 of The Dearly Departed

With a deep inhale, I did as she’d said while a disgusting churning began in the pit of my gut. She closed the door behind me, and the sound of the lock clicking into place rang like sirens.

She was going to have her way, and there was nothing I was going to do about it.

I was unarmed but knew I could still kill her. I could do it easily. Break her bones before she had the chance to fire her weapon, wrap my hands around her neck, and choke the life out of her until she fell limp from my grasp.

But it was the aftermath I feared.

Gerald's wrath.

What he'd do to me, my brothers, the business Leonard and the people who had come before him worked so hard to build.

There was no telling what lengths he'd go to in order to avenge the deviant he’d married.

Maybe he'd hurt Dean, his wife, the two little girls we'd rescued from Marco’s house.

Maybe he'd even hurt Analise.

No, I didn't have a choice but to let Virginia do what she wanted with me.

I had forfeited every right to have a choice of anything having to do with my own life the moment I attended that damn party.

Virginia Seint-Crowley held the pistol in one hand as the other lay against my chest and smoothed over the material of my suit jacket.

"Hmm … very nice," she complimented before looking up at my face. "Remember, if you protest, if you fight me … I shoot. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” I murmured.

“Would you like something to … make this easier for you? A drink perhaps?”

I swallowed against a wave of nausea and shook my head. “No.”

She pushed the jacket off my shoulders, tugged the sleeves off my arms, and let it drop to the floor. My throat worked against my gag reflex, fighting off the need to heave and expel what little was in my gut.

I was a child again, standing in this room, frozen and unable to do anything but let her have her way. She'd manipulate my body and make it work against me. She'd tell me I wanted it, wanted her, and if she told me enough, maybe I'd start to believe it, if for only a little while, to endure.

"At least you got laid," I remembered one of the other kids in the foster home saying when he'd found out I'd lost my virginity to the woman of the house.

But I'd been thirteen, and she'd been old enough to know better than to seduce a boy, let alone one in her care.

Now, at thirty-four, I wasn't as powerless as I'd been then. I was taller, stronger. But standing there as she worked the buttons of my vest and shirt open with deft fingers, with a gun pointing at my stomach, I felt no different than I had at thirteen. Confused and disgusted, with a painfully clear idea of what right and wrong was. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want her hands on me, undoing my belt and unzipping my pants, but when did what I wanted ever matter?

My life has never been mine, I realized, and that realization alone was enough to break my heart into a million jagged pieces.

"On the bed," she ordered. "Lie down."

With a sigh, I did as she’d said.

She nudged the barrel of the gun toward the wrought iron headboard. I followed her line of sight to see the handcuffs hanging there from the black iron. How long they'd been there, I couldn't say. I never noticed before, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been there. How long had she prepared for this, waiting for the right opportunity to strike?

"You know what to do," she said, authority in her voice.

I looked at the gun, considered my options one last time. But all I could see was the trouble I'd bring to my brothers if I fucked this up.

So, I reached up, attached one wrist to the first pair of cuffs.

"I can't do the other one-handed," I said, my mouth dry.

She rounded the bed, pocketed the pistol, and secured my wrist.