Chapter 6 Teach Them A Lesson
The best way to silence a billionaire about to reveal his secret identity is to pretend your internal organs are staging a violent coup.
Chloe is looking at Alistair with wide hopeful eyes.
She hopes he’s lying. She hopes he’s a poor wretched man who would make me miserable. She hopes that these guards are just a fluke and that he’s bluffing. She hopes he’s not actually a billionaire that can save me from all the cruelty she has planned for me.
She couldn’t be more wrong.
But I can’t let her know that. Not yet. So just as Alistair’s mouth opens to reply Chloe’s question, I double over.
I grab my stomach, the fabric of his expensive overcoat bunching under my fingers. A sharp, ragged cry tears out of my throat, one I don’t have to fake entirely because the bruises on my ribs are very real. I sink my weight against his chest, making sure my head drops so I don’t have to look at the wreckage of my parents’ faces.
"The baby," I gasp. The word is a wet, desperate sound. "Alistair, it hurts."
I hear a low rumbling sound from his chest before he moves. He hooks one arm under my knees and the other behind my back, hoisting me up as if I weigh nothing more than a handful of feathers. I press my face into the crook of his neck, catching the scent of rain and cold sandalwood that makes my heart race. My skin tingles from our proximity and I find myself cuddling closer to him.
He turns toward the door, but stops just long enough to look over his shoulder at the three people huddled in the corner of the ruined living room. His voice is calm and quiet.
"If a single hair on her head is harmed, or if this child suffers because of what you’ve done, you won’t just be poor," Alistair says. "I will personally see to it that you don’t have enough left of your lives to warrant a funeral. You’ll pay with everything you are."
Thomas looks like he’s forgotten how to breathe. Lydia has slumped against the wall, her hands trembling so hard she can’t even point that accusatory finger anymore. Alistair doesn’t wait for a response. He strides out of the house, his bodyguards forming a human corridor that leads straight to a obsidian-black SUV idling at the curb.
The moment the door thuds shut, sealing us in the leather-scented silence of the cabin, the tension in my body snaps. I don’t pull away immediately. The car is warm, a luxury I haven’t felt in three days, and Alistair’s chest is a solid, steady presence beside me. He starts to reach for a phone, his movements frantic for a man who looks so composed.
"I’m calling a private ambulance," he says, his voice tight. "We’ll meet them at the hospital."
"Wait," I say. I sit up, slowly untangling myself from his arms and pulling his coat tighter around my shoulders. My voice is still a bit raspy from the thirst, but the "dying" quality is gone. "I’m okay. I mean, I’m not okay, but the baby is fine. I was faking the cramp."
Alistair freezes. His hand is halfway to the console, his gray eyes narrowing as he looks at me. He studies the dried blood on my lip, the purple shadow blooming across my cheek, and the way I’m shaking despite the heat in the car. His brows crease a little and he tilts his head.
"Why?" he asks.
"You were about to tell them who you are," I say, leaning my head back against the headrest. I close my eyes because the world is still tilted. "If they know you’re the Alistair Wolfe, they won’t be afraid. Well, they will be, but they’ll see it as an opportunity. My father would try to sell you a failing factory before you could even finish a sentence. Lydia would start making a shopping list. They’re like leeches, Alistair. If they find a vein, they don’t let go until they’re full or the host is dead."
I open my eyes to find him watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. He looks at my battered face with a grim, focused energy.
"You’re protecting me from your family?" he asks. There is a strange, dark humor in his tone. "I think I can handle a few leeches, Emily."
"It’s not about you," I say, my voice hardening. "It’s about me. I want them to be afraid of the man I married, not the bank account he carries. I don’t want them using my name to open doors in this city. I want them to think I married a monster who happened to have enough muscle to break their door down."
Alistair stays silent for a long moment. He reaches out, his thumb hovering just inches from the bruise on my jaw before he pulls back, clenching his hand into a fist on his knee. He turns his head as his phone buzzes in the cup holder. The screen reads ’Lead Assistant Jackson’. Alistair hits the green button.
"Report," he says.
Since the car is quiet, I can hear the man’s voice through the speaker. "Sir, I’ve confirmed the details from the staff," Jackson says. "They locked her in the basement storeroom for seventy-two hours. No food. No water. The stepmother and sister were active participants in the physical assault. The father sanctioned all of it."
Alistair’s jaw sets so hard I can see the muscle jump in his cheek. He looks out the tinted window at the Vance estate, the place I was just held prisoner. From this distance and in the comfort of Alistair’s car and his commanding presence, the place looks small and pathetic.
"I want you to teach them a lesson," Alistair says while clenching his fists. "I want them to understand the concept of a debt. I want them to see what happens when they mess with me or someone I care about."
Someone he cares about? The sentence makes my chest warm up a little but I try not to dwell too much on it.
"But you have to do it without telling them who I am. Let them wonder which shadow is coming for them."
"Understood, sir," Jackson replies. He switches the call to a video call and Alistair and I watch Jackson’s face on the screen for a few seconds as he sets up the camera in an angle where we can see everything.
Jackson stands in the center of the living room wearing a suit that doesn’t belong in a room with shattered glass and overturned furniture. He doesn’t look like a thug, which makes the way he pulls a matte black pistol from his holster even more jarring. He walks straight up to Chloe and presses the cold barrel of the gun against the center of her forehead.
Chloe makes a sound like a wounded bird. Her knees give out, and she slides to the floor, her hands raised in a useless, shaking gesture of surrender. Thomas and Lydia are frozen, their faces pale and slick with sweat.
"Mr. Wolfe is a very particular man," Jackson says in a light voice. "He doesn’t like it when his property is mistreated. And he especially doesn’t like it when people forget their manners."
He looks at Thomas and Lydia. He gestures with his free hand for them to stand closer to each other.
"The two of you," Jackson says. "You seem to enjoy using your hands for violence. Let’s see how much you enjoy it when the target isn’t a starving pregnant woman. You’re going to slap each other. One hundred times each."
Lydia gasps, her hand going to her mouth. "What? No! I won’t—"
Jackson clicks the safety off the pistol against Chloe’s head. The sound is tiny, but it carries enough implication to make a tear roll down my sister’s cheeks.
"Every slap must be audible," Jackson continues. "If I think you’re holding back, if I don’t hear the skin hit skin, we start the count over from one. Do I make myself clear?"
Thomas looks at his wife. He looks at the gun pressed against his youngest daughter’s skull. His eyes are wide, filled with a frantic, selfish kind of survival instinct. He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t hesitate. He swings his hand and catches Lydia across the face.
The sound is a sharp, wet *thwack*.
Lydia screams, more in shock than pain, but then her own eyes turn hard. She swings back, her rings catching Thomas’s lip.
"One," Jackson says, his voice bored. "Ninety-nine to go."
They fall into a rhythm of desperation. Thomas slaps Lydia. Lydia slaps Thomas. The sounds fill the room, a rhythmic, sickening applause for their own greed. By the time they reach fifty, Lydia’s hair is a wild mess and Thomas’s nose is bleeding. By eighty, their faces are swollen, their eyes puffed and red, their cheeks the color of raw steak. They aren’t crying for each other. They are crying for themselves, their arms heavy with exhaustion, yet they don’t dare stop.
When the hundredth slap finally lands, they both collapse onto the floor, sobbing and gasping for air, unable to even look at one another.
Jackson turns his attention to Chloe. She is shaking so violently her teeth are actually chattering. She looks up at him, more tears rolling down her cheeks.
"You’re next," Jackson says. He nods to two of the bodyguards standing by the door. "One hundred for her as well. Use your palms. Make sure she remembers why she shouldn’t kick a pregnant woman."
Chloe breaks. She falls forward, her forehead hitting the carpet as she wails. "Please! Please don’t do this. I didn’t hit her that hard."
"A maid said you particularly aimed for her stomach."
The memory sends chills down my spine and my eyes sting. Then a warm hand covers mine and the fear disappears.
"I would make sure no one ever lays a finger on you again," Alistair says. His voice is a mixture of anger and something...soft. I try not to overthink it and nod. We turn our attention back to the screen.
The bodyguards don’t show emotion. They step forward and begin the count. The sound of the slaps on Chloe’s face is different. It’s harder and faster. She doesn’t have the strength to fight back. She just absorbs the blows until her face is a distorted, unrecognizable mask of pain.
When the final blow lands, the room is silent except for the sound of three people weeping on the floor. Jackson puts his gun back into his holster and adjusts his tie in the mirror of a hall stand that somehow survived the carnage.
"Now for the final lesson," Jackson says. He looks at the maid who had dragged me out of the basement earlier. "Open the storage room."
The bodyguards haul Thomas, Lydia, and Chloe up by their arms. One guard picks up the phone so we can watch as they drag them down the stairs, past the wine cellar, to the same cold, mildewed room where I spent the last three days. They shove them inside, the three of them stumbling over each other in the dark.
"No food," Jackson says, standing in the doorway. The light from the hallway casts a long, sharp shadow over the three of them. "No water. Not a single drop. You’ll stay in here for exactly seventy-two hours. If anyone tries to let you out, they’ll find themselves in there with you."
He reaches for the heavy wooden door.
"Enjoy the dark," Jackson says. "It’s amazing how much you can think about when there’s nothing else to see."