been fucking another man behind my back and using him to play a game on me.”
He takes a step forward, and I scrabble for the phone, my body sliding off the bed to the floor where my fingertips touch it and it spins away farther. Diving for it again, I pretend I’m doing what he says, my thumb moving over the screen as if scrolling to the top. Really, I’m going against instinct and reaching out for help.
Help me.
I type the message as fast as I can, delete it before Grant can cross the room and grab the phone from me. His fist swings down and catches me on the side of my head, my body falling to the ground from the force of it.
Grabbing me by the hair he pulls my body up, slams me against the side of the bed and shoves the phone to my chest.
“Read the fucking texts, Adeline, and for every fucking one you two sent, I’ll show you exactly what I think of them.”
He’s going to kill me before this is over. I can sense it, can feel the loss of control that rolls off him in waves.
And I can’t fight. Not drugged like I am. Not while blood is already leaking from where my skin was split when he threw the phone at my face.
Lips shaking, I beg. “Please, don’t do this.”
Wrapping my fingers over the phone, I take it from him.
“Read them. One by one. From the beginning.”
Grant’s voice is so cold it freezes me to the bone.
I don’t want to die...
I haven’t even lived yet...
Scrolling to the first text, I clench my eyes shut as tears roll down my face. Grant crouches in front of me, waiting.
His fist tightens in my hair, and I cry out from the pain, my eyes snapping open again, the tears obstructing the words that glare from the screen. I blink them away and open my mouth, the knot in my throat so large I can barely talk around it.
“What will it take for me to convince you to leave me alone and stop toying with my fucking life?”
The last word isn’t fully out as Grant backhands me, his knuckles cracking against my jaw, my body falling as the phone flies from my hand.
It spins where it lands, the room so quiet that I can hear the plastic scraping over the marble floors.
And then Grant’s footsteps as he moves to grab it. He brings it back to me. “Read his response.”
One after the other, I read the texts, only for Grant to hit me again after each one. I make it through the first day I bought the phone, my eyes swelling almost shut by the time I’m done, my lip split, blood dripping down to dot the floor beneath me.
Grant looks at me calmly, not an ounce of guilt for what he’s doing.
“You know, I would have believed my wife was being blackmailed if the conversation had ended there. I would still hate you, but I would have hated him more.”
He pauses, rubs a thumb over one of the areas where my skin is split, wipes the blood on his dark pants before gripping my face so hard the inside of my cheeks are being shredded by my teeth.
“But it didn’t end there, did it, Adeline? Give me his fucking name.”
“I don’t know it,” I whisper, unable to add any strength to my voice.
“Liar.” Another punch, this one to the center of my chest, my head snapping forward and back against the side of the mattress. “Read the rest.”
Sucking in a breath, I try to focus on the screen, but it keeps fading out. My body can’t take much more, and the drugs are dragging me into sleep.
Oh, God. I don’t want to read this one, my mouth opening and closing as Grant stares down at me with flared nostrils and bloodshot eyes. The tendons in his neck push out white against his skin, his fingers curling slowly into a fist as he waits for me to read aloud the proof I’d worked with Ari to deceive him.
After several attempts, I’m barely able to get the words out, my voice shaking, skin bleeding, my head pounding where it swells.
“The coast is clear. Y-Your husband is as a-annoying as ever and d-doesn’t notice you’re gone. I would have noticed. Just so you know.”
His hand wraps around my throat to drag me to my knees, his other backhanding me so hard, my neck wrenches left. I hear