a neurosurgeon in Chicago. I know they divorced when you were eight, but they both still provided you with enough money for you to have everything you could ever want.”
“Shut up!” she shouted with sudden fervor. The hint of fear I’d sensed in her had been overwhelmed by rage. I’d hit a nerve. “You don’t know me at all.”
She shoved back from the kitchen island where we’d been eating and got to her feet. Without a backward glance at me, she stormed out of the room.
I caught up to her before she got to the foyer. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I wrapped my hand around her slender arm when she didn’t stop walking. She tried to jerk away, but I held her fast.
“Away from you!” she burst out. “Let me go.” She shoved me. When that accomplished nothing, she beat at my chest with her fist.
I didn’t even bother catching her wrist to stop her. I simply started walking, keeping my grip on her arm. I was careful not to hold tight enough to bruise, but she had no hope of escaping me.
She was forced to follow, even though she continued to twist her arm in my grip.
“Let me go,” she demanded again.
“No. Stop struggling, or you’ll hurt yourself.”
“You’re hurting me,” she shrieked. She was getting dramatic again. I didn’t find her quite as cute anymore.
“No, I’m not. Calm down.”
I started leading her toward the stairs.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I’m putting you to bed.”
“What?” she spluttered. “You can’t do that. I’m not a child.”
“You clearly can’t behave like a rational adult. If you act like a brat, you get treated like a brat.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Stop acting like that.”
Her teeth closed with an audible snap, and she glowered at me in sullen silence. She also stopped trying to get away from me. She wasn’t exactly meek, but she’d definitely gotten the message.
Good. Between her hysterics and Joseph’s melodrama, I was ready for this day to be over.
When we got to my room, I finally released her, but I kept her fixed in my stern stare.
I gestured at my overturned bedroom. “I expect this mess to be cleaned up by this time tomorrow,” I informed her.
Her jaw dropped, as though she couldn’t believe the way I was treating her.
And maybe she couldn’t. I was sure she’d been coddled and given everything she’d ever asked for in life. If any girl had ever needed structure and discipline, it was Ashlyn.
She belongs to Joseph, I reminded myself before I got any more ideas about disciplining her.
I closed the door, hiding her from my view. I needed to put distance between us, or I might do something I’d regret. I made sure to lock her in before I went back to my media room. I didn’t want my little captive to try to escape when I wasn’t watching her.
Chapter Seventeen
Joseph
“Do you know what your friend did to me?” Ashlyn fumed as soon as I opened the bedroom door. She sat on the bed, her arms crossed. She didn’t appear to have been engaging in any activity other than stewing over whatever was making her angry.
Marco had told me he locked her in the room over an hour ago. She’d had a lot of time to get worked up.
“He said you were angry after dinner, so he brought you back up here.”
She slapped her hand down on the mattress beside her. “He didn’t bring me back up here. He put me to bed. Like I’m some sort of naughty child. He keeps calling me a brat. He’s a misogynistic prick.”
“He’s not,” I corrected her, maybe a touch more sharply than I should have. Marco loved women. In his own way.
She glowered at me. I didn’t like when she looked at me like that: like I’d betrayed her. Like she hated me.
I lifted the shopping bags I’d brought with me, a gesture of contrition. “I got some clothes for you in the city.”
Her frown eased, and her eyes sparked with interest. She wanted the clothes. I wasn’t sure if she simply liked new, pretty things, or if she was desperate to change. She’d been wearing the same clothes since Marco had abducted her last night. That had been over twenty-four hours ago.
I decided I didn’t care what the source of her interest was. If she was excited for me to buy her new things, I was happy to give her anything she wanted.
She pointed at the foot of the bed. “You can leave them there,”