Page 40 of Deposed

My heart froze, and ice ran through my veins. If anything happened to those cameras, they might never track me to this featureless room.

“I didn—” He released my hair and slammed his fist into my belly. Pain battered through my insides, and I doubled over with a groan.

He lowered his face to mine, his heavy, excited breaths tickling my ear. “I could go on all day, but something tells me you can take a beating.”

My heart slammed against my ribcage. If he threatened to cut my face or something equally as hideous, I might not be able to hold out until Tom and the interns found me. I gasped out a sob. Where were they?

“They tell me you’ve been fucking those three boys.” His large, calloused hand stroked my stinging cheek. “That true?”

“No,” I said through clenched teeth.

The janitor’s rough, thick-fingered hand skimmed my neck in a parody of a lover’s caress. Disgust rippled up and down my gullet, and I wanted to hurl the contents of my stomach into his face.

I jerked away, but he shuffled onto his backside, and wrapped an obscenely strong arm around my back, holding me in place.

My bound hands automatically rose, to cover my breasts with my forearms, but he slipped his fingers underneath them and wrenched at my nipples. I shuddered and tried shrinking away, but that arm tightened around me, bringing us closer.

“I’ve always wanted one of these model types,” he crooned.

“I’m Edward’s girlfriend.” Hysteria laced my voice, making my words so high pitched, they sounded like a scream. “Don’t you think he’d be upset with what you’re doing?”

“Mr. Edward didn’t lift a finger to help me when I was on the run from the cops, so he can go fuck himself.”

My eyes shuttered closed. Mr. Carbuncle must have outrun them the day we’d caught him with that red-haired girl in the year above. Tears stung the back of my eyes. How could the police have been so incompetent? If I didn’t think fast and talk my way out of this… I wouldn’t let my mind venture into such dark territory.

He ran his nose up and down my cheek in a sickening rhythm that dragged those rough, stinking bristles over my skin.

“S-sir, so far, you’ve just hit me,” I said. “That’s not a big deal. B-but if you go any further than this, you could get into a lot of trouble.”

His fingertips moved up to my collarbone.

“How about you tell me what evidence you handed over to the police, and I won’t smash your face in,” he growled.

My muscles tensed in anticipation of the inevitable blow. At any moment, he would hit me again, but he would do worse if I told him that I had given the Saturday Correspondent the recording of Alice’s accounts of what he did to girls. It was my fault he was blackmailed into setting up cameras, my fault there was so much evidence in his lodge against him, and my fault that Mr. Chaloner kicked down his door and let in the police.

“Th-that day, I’d just left Elder House, and I saw the police, Mr. Chaloner and Mr. Jenkins. I was curious, so I followed them. You saw the rest.”

“But you knew about my filing cabinet.”

“It was the only other piece of furniture in the room apart from your desk. I got curious, after seeing you with that girl. There’s nothing more to it.”

The hand stroking my collar bone wrapped itself around my neck. “That’s all?”

“Y-yes.”

He slammed me down onto the parquet, sending bolts of pain shooting from the back of my head. “Fucking lies!”

“N-no!” I cried out.

He slid his hand under my tank top, wafting cool air over my bare stomach and lifting my top to my armpits and exposing my bra. “I suppose I’ll have to fuck the truth out of you. I’ll bet those wet-behind-the-ears boys haven’t taken you up the arse yet.”

Panicked, I thrashed out with my bound arms. He jerked his head back. I kicked out with my bound legs and hit him in the shins.

“Little bitch!” he snarled.

“The only way you’ll get to touch me is after I’m dead.” Every word was a struggle, and I fought against the ache in my jaw and in my rapidly swelling lip to speak. “My dad will have you extradited to California, where they have the death penalty. Would you like that, Mr. Carbuncle?”

“Stop,” said a man with a cultured voice. He stood in the doorway with his back to us.