Roxanne pushed herself up to sitting. Her jaw throbbed where his fingers had dug in. Her wrist ached where he’d grabbed her. But she didn’t curl up and refused to cower.
Just t his eyes with sothing that looked almost like contempt.
"You know where Phei lives," she said quietly. "The Sovereign Tower. That’s where Sierra went. You’re her father." Her lips curved into sothing that wasn’t quite a smile.
"Why don’t you go get her back? You’re all-powerful, aren’t you? Head of the second most powerful law firm in the world. Senators cower when your na cos up. Judges recuse themselves at the sight of your lawyers. Go use all that power and bring your daughter ho. What’s stopping you—"
The slap cracked across her face like a gunshot.
Her head snapped to the side. She fell all the way down this ti, her cheek t the carpet in a sickening crunch, stars exploding behind her eyes, the taste of copper flooding her mouth where her teeth had cut the inside of her cheek.
She didn’t cry.
It hurt like a bitch. The pain that demanded tears clawed at her throat and tried to escape as sobs. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction but she had stopped giving him that satisfaction years ago.
"You think this is funny?"
Jonathan’s voice slid into sothing ice-cold and razor-sharp, the last fragile shards of his mask shattering as he finally stopped pretending. He was done holding back. He was simply going to break her, slowly and completely, until nothing remained but the ruin he intended to leave behind.
"Not only are you hiding things from ... you’re mocking too? You?"
His open palm cracked across her face with savage force, snapping her head sideways in a burst of white-hot pain, and before the burn could even crest, his fist followed like thunder, knuckles slamd into her temple, exploding stars across her vision while fresh blood flooded her mouth from where her teeth shredded deeper into both cheeks. The tallic taste choked her as she gasped.
"Twenty years," he snarled, seizing a brutal fistful of her hair and yanking her head back so violently her neck cracked. He forced her eyes up to et his, his grip unyielding. "Twenty years you haven’t learnt your place, bitch?"
He hurled her down. Her skull bounced hard against the carpet with a sickening thud that sent fresh lightning through her brain, but never hard enough to grant the rcy of unconsciousness.
Then his polished dress shoe drove rcilessly into her ribs. Bone bent under the crushing impact. Air exploded from her lungs in a wet, guttural rush as agony detonated through her chest like shattered glass grinding into every nerve.
She curled instinctively, arms wrapping tight around her midsection, but he was already moving, stalking toward the closet with deadly purpose.
She knew what was coming. The drawer rasped open. The heavy buckle jingled. And then the thick gala belt whipped free, the sa cruel leather that left welts for weeks.
"I haven’t been rciful enough to give you everything. A house."
The belt whistled through the air and lashed across her back in a line of liquid fire, forcing her spine to arch in helpless agony.
"Money."
Another strike crossed the first, carving a burning X of raw, flayed flesh between her shoulder blades.
"Status."
The belt wrapped viciously around her side, the tip snapping against her stomach like a venomous bite that ripped a choked cry from her throat.
"A daughter."
She tried desperately to curl smaller, to shield herself, but he knew her body too well after twenty years. The belt rained down across the backs of her thighs—once, twice, three, four—each rciless lash layering fresh hell onto bleeding skin until her legs felt skinned alive, blood trickling hot down her flesh.
Broken whimpers escaped her despite every effort to stay silent, small animal sounds of pain that only seed to fuel him more.
"And this is how you repay ?"
He switched to his feet without pause. His shoe slamd into her lower back, right over the kidneys, detonating white-hot agony through her core in crushing waves that stole her breath and blurred her vision.
Another devastating kick tore into the back of her thigh, ripping muscle deep inside with a sickening tear that made her vision white out.
"Lying to ."
"Helping my daughter run off with that piece of shit?"
The belt ca down again and again—across her shoulders, her ass, the backs of her arms as she raised them desperately to protect her head. Every brutal crack of leather on bleeding flesh echoed through the room like dark applause for the performance only he enjoyed.
She was making wet, broken sounds now, leaking out with every impact, twenty years of endurance crumbling until she was nothing but a trembling, sobbing wreck curled on the carpet around the endless pain he kept feeding her.
He grabbed her hair once more and ripped her up to her knees. His palm exploded across her face—forehand, backhand, forehand again—whipping her head back and forth like a ragdoll.
Blood sprayed from her split lip, splattering across his crisp white shirt. He stared at the stain with pure disgust.
"Filthy bitch," he hissed, throwing her back down. "Ruining my shirt with your filthy worthless blood." He hissed as if her blood was diluting his Superior bloodline even thoruhg the shirt.
His shoe crunched into her shoulder blade with an audible crack of bone. She scread—a raw, guttural sound torn from the depths of her soul—and he laughed, low and warm, almost affectionate.
"There it is," he murmured tenderly. "There’s my wife."
The belt whistled down again, wrapping around her ribs. The heavy buckle smashed into bone with a dull, sickening thud that made sothing inside her shift wrong. Every shallow, desperate breath now felt like jagged knives twisting between her ribs.
His foot slamd into the back of her knee, making the joint spasm violently.
"You think I don’t know what you’re doing?" Another brutal kick drove into her stomach, collapsing her diaphragm completely. For three endless, terrifying seconds she lay frozen with her mouth open, lungs locked, vision fading to black while panic clawed through her.
"You think I can’t see you laughing at behind that blank fucking face?"
And she was.
She was.
Mocking him. Mocking every single Legacy patriarch who had ever looked at Phei and seen only a threat to crush. Because for all their power, all their money, all their generations of carefully cultivated authority... they were nothing next to the boy.
Not when he was that strong.
Not when his power made their precious Legacy bloodlines look like pathetic children’s tricks.
She was holding onto that... he will save her daughter from this monster.
She’d put all her faith. He was her hope!
His shoe drove rcilessly into her hip, grinding down with his full weight until bone creaked and flesh bruised to the marrow.
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