Chapter 5
The second the doors slammed shut, Samuel's subservient posture vanished. A sadistic grin spread across his face.
"Michael told me to take you home," he said. "But honestly? You know way too much. You were eavesdropping outside the study yesterday, weren't you? I found the earring you dropped.
"Every man for himself, Nora. I can't let you ruin my life. So, I'm going to tie up this loose end permanently. Blame your own damn curiosity."
He walked over to the car and took out the wooden stick he had ready.
Two of his thugs grabbed my arms, slamming me face-down onto the concrete.
I didn't even have time to scream before the bat came down. He shattered my kneecaps and my hands. I was left a crumpled heap on the floor, gasping for air like a dying dog.
When I finally regained consciousness, it was pitch black. I had been dragged back to the warehouse where I was originally raped. A heavy iron chain was padlocked around my neck, tethering me to a rusted pipe.
For days, Samuel's only entertainment was torturing me mentally. He would prop up an iPad, forcing me to watch live surveillance footage of Michael and Claire.
I watched Michael, the ruthless billionaire who treated me like a disposable incubator, transform into a hopelessly devoted servant.
He carried Claire's shopping bags. He knelt to strap on her heels. He personally cooked her meals and read bedtime stories to her son, swearing on his life that he would heal her son.
At first, I watched with an eerie calm. Then the numbness set in. By the end of the week, my tear ducts were completely dry.
Having thoroughly broken me, Samuel finally got bored. He tossed my cracked, blood-stained phone onto my chest, a cruel act of faux mercy before he finally ended me.
He loaded me onto a speedboat heading for international waters, a route that lay directly in the path of Michael's corporate shipping lanes.
His cover story was bulletproof: The disgraced, cheating wife couldn't handle the shame and threw herself into the ocean to end it all.
I didn't fight back. I just painstakingly nudged my shattered hand toward the phone, used Face ID to unlock it, and dragged my tongue across the screen to send my GPS coordinates to Ray.
Samuel and his thugs didn't even notice. To them, I was already a corpse. Watching me twitch and drag myself across the deck was a pathetic comedy act.
When we hit international waters, they grabbed me by the broken legs and hurled me over the side.
The freezing, suffocating weight of the ocean swallowed me whole. I closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me. Suddenly, strong arms grabbed me, hauling me up into the blinding light of a massive yacht.
The person who came to save me placed me on the boat, took my water-soaked phone that wouldn't stop ringing, answered it, and handed it to me.
"Nora Sutton, I am giving you one last chance," Michael bellowed through the speaker. "If you drag yourself back here right now and get on your knees to apologize to Claire, I will let this go. I will come home, and we can raise the baby together."
The metallic taste of my own blood mixed with the stinging saltwater in my throat. I let out a raspy, demonic laugh. "Michael Sterling," I rasped. "In the afterlife, I hope we never cross paths again."
My phone hit the water and disappeared. Beneath me, everything turned a sickening shade of red.
*****
On the other side of the city, Michael dropped his phone. It hit the marble floor with a sharp crack.
He rubbed his temples, trying to steady the violent hammering in his chest. He bent down to pick it up, opening his mouth to yell a threat, but all he got was the robotic drone of a disconnected line.
"Fuck," he spat.
A suffocating sense of panic gripped his throat. After thinking, he grabbed his trench coat and headed for the bedroom door.