Monster A Dark Arranged Marriage Romance - Vanessa Waltz Page 0,41
think I’m a reckless asshole, don’t you? You think I went too far?”
“No. I’m just glad I’m not the only hothead.”
He made a noise of assent.
“I had it coming. Just say it.”
“That’s too cruel, even for me.” He paused for a moment, his mouth thinning, and then it burst out of him. “Why do you keep going there? Are you visiting your ex?”
“He’s not my ex.”
“Then why were you in his room?”
“Because I wanted a private conversation.” My chest swelled with nerves as we approached the topic I’d been dying to bring up. “We’re married, but you tell me nothing about yourself. It frustrates me, Tony. I don’t know what we’re doing or where we stand as a couple. You ignore me most of the time and when you don’t, we’re either fighting or fucking. I thought I could fix things between us by learning more about you. Nobody would tell me why you hate the club, so I asked Ghost.”
He blew a ragged sigh. “You couldn’t call me?”
“So you could say it’s none of my business?” I struggled to find words, my voice thick with tears. “Look, I don’t blame you for keeping it to yourself. I understand now. Ghost showed me something. There’s a video…of you and-and a few bikers. In a basement.”
The fist squeezing my heart clenched. An eternity seemed to pass before Tony finally spoke.
“They abducted me. They tortured me. The end.”
“Stop that. Stop deciding what I can and can’t handle. I grew up surrounded by a bunch of jaded criminals. Nothing can scare me away.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not busy.”
Again, he stayed silent for a full minute. His hands resumed their stroking of my back.
“It was a Sunday,” he forced out. “I stepped outside for a jog with Comet, my husky. An Escalade rolled up to the curb. The doors opened. Men in leather cuts spilled out and grabbed me. They shot my dog. Threw me into the car.”
How horrible.
I pictured a dog dying on the sidewalk, Tony pushed into the van, my insides clenching with every disturbing image.
“They brought me to Crash’s house. You’ve heard of him?”
I stiffened. “He’s dead.”
“Unfortunately.”
“You’d rather him alive?”
“I’d have liked to be the one to kill the bastard, but I can’t complain about how he went.”
My throat bobbed. “So…he took you captive. Then what?”
“Beat me. Starved me. Shoved me in a crawlspace.”
He listed them as though he recited items from a shopping list.
It blew my mind.
“Why you?”
“I asked myself that a lot. I didn’t understand. At first, I thought Dad had overstepped with the club. I figured they’d rough me up to send a message to my father, and release me. As weeks passed, I realized he had no intention of letting me go.” Tony’s grip bit into my waist as he spoke. “Crash had a vendetta against my cousin Michael, and I was easy pickings. The drug-addicted son of the mafia don.”
“I’m so sorry, Tony.”
He said nothing.
I was bursting with questions, but I couldn’t overwhelm him. “What happened next? Your family found you?”
“No.”
“Did your dad pay him off or were you able to escape?”
“No to both.”
I frowned, searching his blank face. “Then…how did you get out?”
“I didn’t.”
That swept through me with a biting chill. A bleak silence settled between us. Tony’s hard-eyed glare seemed to look through me, at some distant target in his past. Did he mean metaphorically? Before I asked more, a bell chimed.
Fuck.
I glowered at the wall. “Who the hell’s that?”
Tony pushed me aside and leaped off the bed. He grabbed a robe.
“Evie, I want you to stay here.”
“Why—what’s going on?”
The relentless chiming became a banging that echoed through the apartment.
He knotted the robe to his waist and blazed out of the room. The door opened and then slammed shut, reverberating through the walls.
“What are you doing here?” Tony’s gritty tone blasted inside, and an even darker voice answered him.
“We need to talk.”
Dad!
My throat closed. I ripped the sheets back and scrambled for pants, but couldn’t find any. I seized a men’s shirt from the walk-in closet, running out after I’d buttoned it.
Dad stood in the living room in full biker regalia, glowering at my husband. I rushed to greet him but stopped at the disgust curling his lip. His beetle-like eyes stripped me up and down.
“Dad, is this about Ghost? It’s my fault. I hit him first. Tony doesn’t deserve to be—” I broke off, thrown by Dad’s accusatory stare. “What?”
Tony’s arm hooked my waist. His grim features rippled with sunshine. He offered me