If they hadn’t ruined her before I found her.
“It’s time to go,” I heard him say, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
If I did what I was told, I wouldn’t be punished . . . as much.
No matter how hard I tried to follow every rule Adrik made, I was always punished for some invisible misdeed. It may have been small, or it could’ve been as bad as when I spent a week in the hospital, but I was for sure ‘disciplined’ daily.
Closing my book, I stood from the bench and wiped down the back of my skirt before I started to walk back to the house. It was dark outside, and the closer we got to the house, the louder the sounds from the party became. There was some big meeting happening between the families, and I feared my ‘family’ would be in attendance.
No matter what, I struggled to be polite and kind to them, as Adrik instructed. My father damned me to hell, all for his selfish gain, and if it’s the last thing I did, I’d make him pay for his betrayal. I was his daughter, his youngest, and almost the spitting image of my mother, but that didn’t matter to him. All he cared about was what he could get out of any situation and how much power and money he could gain.
Even if I escaped, I would still be alone. My oldest brother, Lucian, was just as bad as my father, from all the rumors I heard whispered through the years, and my brother, Devlin, apparently killed the man he worked for and seized his empire. I knew they would turn out like our father, and I hated that there wasn’t anyone who cared enough to save me.
Just as I stepped off the grass and onto the back patio, I heard a loud commotion and, instantly, I stopped walking. Hawkins came up behind me and pushed me forward with his meaty hand, forcing me to enter the house. When I walked in, I saw something that would stay with me forever.
There was a young blonde girl, probably not even fifteen years old, standing with a dagger in her hands, trying to cover her nakedness with her free hand. She had blood between her legs, tears flowing down her face, and at least five of Adrik’s guards approaching her from all sides. There was a man lying at her feet, and at a glance, I could tell it was Petra, one of the cousins who worked here. He seemed to be breathing, but she wasn’t letting anyone get close enough to check on him.
I tried to turn away, only to have Hawkins snatch me by my upper arm and hold me in front of him as the horrible situation unfolded before us. My eyes grew watery as I watched her struggle against the encroaching guards, knowing once they had her, she wouldn’t be alive for long.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Adrik yelled from the other side of the room and the trembling started deep inside me.
He had a glass of whiskey in one hand and his gold-plated gun in the other. Just seeing it in his hands shot fear through me, and when I tried to tug my arm away from Hawkins, hoping to be out of Adrik’s eyesight before he got to the carnage in the room, he gripped tighter onto my arm and whispered, almost silently, “Stay still.”
One of the guards slipped behind the girl and wrenched her off her feet, causing her to drop the dagger as Adrik approached. He glanced in my direction before turning his full attention to the struggling girl being held off the ground by the guard. She tried to kick her feet out in a futile attempt to escape, and I wanted to yell, ‘There’s no escape,’ but I kept my mouth shut.
“What the fuck happened to him?” Adrik asked one of the guards who had rolled the cousin over and was checking his wounds.
“She stole Petra’s knife and stabbed him with it. I think he’ll be okay, but the doctor needs to check him out,” the man responded as he helped Petra to his feet.
“Handle it,” Adrik barked, and another man stepped in and helped walk a wounded but very much alive Petra out of the room.
The silence was deafening as Adrik stepped in front of the crying girl, who had lost most of her fight. I could tell from the look in her eyes that she’d given up, and my brain was screaming to run.
The guard placed the girl on her feet, and she fell to her knees, crying and covering her face with her bloody hands. The shaking was growing in intensity inside me as I watched the guard step back and Adrik step closer to the girl.
She lifted her head up to look at him, and without a word, he pointed the gun at her and pulled the trigger. Blood and brains sprayed out the back of her head, landing on the floor and wall behind her.
At that moment, all sense of self-preservation left me and I screamed into the room, drawing his attention to me. Hawkins kept his firm grip on me as I cried for the lost girl who no one would ever find. Adrik turned his head and lifted one cheek in an evil smile as he snapped his fingers in the air.
The music started playing again as the guard dragged the girl’s bloody body from the room. Fearing Adrik’s next move, I stared down at my feet, trying to become invisible. Luck always fucked me over, and the next thing I saw was his expensive shoes step in front of me.
I lifted my eyes to him, knowing his rules about showing him respect. The first slap snapped my head to the left, then the backhand jarred my head to the right as Hawkins kept his hold on me.
“You’re late for dinner, Lilith.”
“I’m sorry,” I returned in a small voice, and his evil smile grew in intensity.
“Take her to her room and I’ll be there in a minute,” Adrik said, and I was pulled away from the scene and dragged down the corridor to the bedroom I shared with him.
He started called me Lilith shortly after he kidnapped me, and it took almost a year for him to explain. He said that I was his Eve, until I’d betrayed him and had another man’s baby. That my betrayal caused him to care for a bastard child, showing him that I wasn’t Eve but Lilith. He taunted that I was a demon in his paradise, and if it was the last thing he did, he was going to cure me of my ‘whoreish ways’.
He was the only man I’d ever been with, and no matter how hard I’d protested, he refused to listen. So, Stella became Lilith and I died inside.
When we got to my room, Hawkins opened the door and tossed me inside, resulting in me falling to the ground. My leg and wrist still hurt from Adrik’s unique brand of sexual pleasure, so I had great difficulty getting myself off the floor without help. Hawkins stood with his eyes locked on me and his muscled arms across his chest. He watched as I struggled, and just as I was able to push myself up to my knees, I heard Adrik’s voice from behind him.
“It’s no good, Lilith. You’re not what does it for him, so offering yourself to him will do you no good.”
I lifted my gaze up to see Hawkins step to the side as Adrik clapped him on the back and walked up to me. He squatted in front of me and gripped my chin with his powerful hand, causing pain to shoot through my jaw.
