Callan left the room a moment later, the lock clicking into place with the snap of triumph and finality.
My body broke into sobs a second later as I lay down and buried my face into the scratchy blanket of the bed.
I wasn’t sure what the Rose mansion had become. I only knew that over the past ten years, my gilded cage had become something darker.
Lisbeth
There’s no telling how I slept that night. Maybe it was exhaustion from trauma and crying. Or maybe I’d worn myself out with the pathetic fight I’d put up against a man I had no hope of defeating.
For whatever reason, I passed out not long after Callan locked me in this room the final time, waking to my nightgown being dry again, the white silk stained pink with blood.
He’d used me as a human mop.
A mop.
Of all the indignities he could toss at me, that one hadn’t been a consideration. Not in my mind, at least.
Who uses another person as a cleaning tool? A psychopath, that’s who. Someone who cares little about the world around him and only knows how to hurt and maim to get what he wants.
If that hadn’t been bad enough, he’d introduced me to the seedy underbelly of the mansion, had given me a glimpse of a dungeon I didn’t want to think about because it only made me scared for those poor women chained up and abused.
Were they abducted? Was Callan trafficking women to keep the family afloat?
What would my father think if he were alive today to see what had been done to the family name? He’d put a bullet in Callan’s head and bury him six feet under. That’s what.
It was too bad I couldn’t do the same.
Still, despite all that, my dreams (or should I call them nightmares?) were filled with whiskey eyes and a deep voice. Except in my mind, he had been talking to me instead of about me like I was some object that didn’t have thoughts or feelings. He had been whispering dirty words that sent chills down my spine and forced heat to bloom between my thighs.
My skin had burned in those dreams, every place he’d touched set aflame. My heart stopped to see the line of muscle in his bunched biceps, only to sputter to life with a painful thump when I understood the sheer strength of Callan.
He’d picked me up like I weighed nothing, like I was a throw pillow you’d fluff before tossing on the couch.
How could I possibly fight against that?
Callan’s brand of violence had a seductive undercurrent that stole the breath from my lungs. It had happened so fast that I didn’t consciously take note of all the details, but something deep inside me remembered.
Like the scent of him that I couldn’t escape, a deep musk that was a mix of exotic lands and foreign spice. I felt wrapped in its temptation while fear crawled in my belly. But that didn’t matter because, as my mind recalled the notes of his scent, my mouth went dry, my body becoming so painfully tight that I needed his touch to unlock it.
Callan was no longer a whipping boy happy to take my abuse. He’d changed in ways I couldn’t wrap my head around, had been born again in devious ways while I wasn’t looking.
He’d become a force of nature I couldn’t hope to survive.
Yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
My brain was a fucking traitor, apparently. Just like the rest of my family who were selling me off or welcoming me home with open arms while lies slid off their forked tongues.
Why had I come back to this place? What the hell had I been thinking?
The door popped open as I sat there despising myself, and I lifted my head at the familiar sound of clicking shoes. Gretchen rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue, her perma-scowl in place.
“You should be in uniform, Miss Rose. Or did you not learn from yesterday?”
Uniform...Right.
I glanced around for it, eventually discovering it was balled up in the corner between the mattress and the wall, a small section of it sticking out from under the blanket I’d flipped aside when I woke up.
Before I could reach for it, Gretchen snatched it up and held the fabric between two disgusted fingers, the white and black dress wrinkled, her scowl deepening as our eyes met.
“I’m going to assume this was done yesterday during your tantrum. But since we’ve learned our lesson after some