Briar Valley: The Complete Duet

1. Willow

CHAPTER 1

WILLOW

MARS - YUNGBLUD

TEN YEARS LATER

Staring into the woman’s empty eyes, I feel absolutely nothing. Not even a scrap of sadness for her death in all its brutal cruelty as blood gushes from between her thighs.

I should be screaming.

I should be running.

I’ve learned that neither works.

My husband, the notorious Mr Sanchez, thrives on two things—fear and control. He demands compliance in all aspects of his life, from his successful real estate business to his disgusting depravity in the bedroom.

Laying here, immobile and utterly silent, is the only power I have left in this world. Depriving him of my terror starves the beast. He loves the nights I sob and beg him.

I’m not always the one getting hurt. Like tonight, he sometimes enjoys an audience and brings a plaything along to bear witness to his sick desires. We suffer together.

“Stupid whore. I thought you’d last longer,” Mr Sanchez sneers, wiping blood on a handkerchief. “Must be a new record. What do you think, Willow?”

Fighting the urge to flinch, I stare up at the panelled ceiling, lit by a black chandelier that casts an oppressive light into his playroom. He keeps it dark in here, full of shadows and curling cigar smoke.

“I can’t hear you!” he shouts viciously.

“Yes, Mr Sanchez.”

“Don’t disobey me, wife. You know what happened last time.”

I battle the urge to throw up. My body is still healing from the last time I defied him and was beaten within an inch of my life. That’s why silence is safer.

“I have a new whip. Perhaps we can play with it later.”

Casting a final disgusted look at the woman’s still-warm corpse lying broken at his feet, Mr Sanchez tosses his bloodstained handkerchief aside. She’s just one in a long line of faceless sacks of flesh to him.

I’m handcuffed in my usual position on the bed, restrained and deliberately placed to have the perfect view of the room. He likes me to watch as he abuses these women to teach me a lesson when the beatings fail to inspire my obedience.

This wing of his vast mansion is my least favourite. Through endless, echoing halls pathed in polished marble, velvet and gold, my husband’s playroom awaits in the quietest corner.

None of his staff come into the playroom—only Pedro, one of Mr Sanchez’s personal bodyguards. He is actually a good man, trapped in the devil’s lair.

Pedro hates seeing me like this and tries to avoid entering this room now. He usually unlocks the door for the cleaner and keeps his eyes averted to ignore the blood stains.

“She was weak, breakable. Unlike you, chica .”

Mr Sanchez saunters over to the bed, trailing a finger along the silky sheets to reach my restrained legs. His nails bite deeply into my skin, leaving bloodied welts.

“You’ll have to finish off what she started, won’t you?”

“N-No, please. I’m still r-recovering?—”

“Did I say you could fucking speak?”

Slapping me hard enough to burst my crooked nose with his solid-gold wedding ring, I sob through a river of blood running down my face. Not again.

It’s barely healed after he broke it last month. I’ve lost count of the times he’s done this to me, leaving the bone permanently crooked. Every time I look in the mirror, I relive each blow.

“How dare you defy me,” Mr Sanchez spits.

“I’m s-sorry, please…”

“You’re sorry?” he utters. “That means jack shit to me, darling.”

Punching me in the stomach, I scream through the sickness battling to expel from my throat. My black and blue ribs howl in pain with each blow, loosening my tongue.

“Good, because I didn’t mean it!” I yell at him.

“Is that so? I see how it is.”

Striking me in the face, the cut on my eyebrow reopens. Hot, copper-scented blood streams down my face, painting the room in violent shades of red.

The beating continues. On and on. Blow after blow. Punch after punch. When Mr Sanchez halts, he’s panting and sweating hard, watching me sob with wild eyes.

“You continue to defy me, even after all these years.”

My emotions flare, desperate and ugly.

“Because you’re a monster!”

Kneeling on the mattress, he reaches beneath the bed. “Time to teach you another lesson, darling wife. I thought you’d have learned after all this time.”

My left arm burns at the thought. The bones never quite set properly after he shattered two of them a few years back. They ache and grind together, especially in the winter.

Injuries sometimes buy me a brief reprieve, until he grows impatient with letting me heal and drags me in here by my hair. The prostitutes only keep him sated for so long.

He likes to save his sickest games for me. Mr Sanchez flourishes a long, metal pole from beneath the bed, setting my teeth on edge. He twirls it in his hands, smirking to himself.

“N-No, not the s-spreader… p-please.”

Punching me again in the face, I howl in pain, unable to hold it in. After a few too many brutal beatings as of late, my strength has waned into insignificance. I can’t take this for much longer.

“As much as I love to hear you beg, I’m in no mood to play games with you tonight.” He attaches the spreader to the restraints pinning my legs open. “Open wide. Let me see your cunt.”

With the click of a button, he extends the bar to its maximum length. My legs are spread so far open, it makes my joints sear in pain. I hate this thing so much.

With no panties on, he can see every inch of my bruised and aching core. There’s no hiding from his stare as he removes his shirt, still drenched in another woman’s blood.

“Scream, Willow.”

“Fuck you,” I shout instead.

Striking my heavily bruised ribs, I let loose a blood-curdling scream that rips apart my sore throat. Mr Sanchez leers, practically drooling as he drinks in my visible terror.

“More, chica . Don’t make me bring Arianna in here too.”

I lose all sense of self-preservation. He can do whatever the fuck he’d like to me. Beat me. Rape me. Bruise my skin and break my bones. But no one threatens my daughter.

“Leave her out of this, you bastard!”

“She’s my daughter,” he insists. “And you are my wife. That means you will both do as I say or face the consequences.”

With no choice but to accept the torture, his twisted games last hours. My mind returns to its safe place. Empty nothingness. I let that deep pool of water suck me into its depths.

When he’s too exhausted to continue, Mr Sanchez grows tired of toying with me and settles for another brutal violation. This time, when he tells me to scream, I oblige.

Not for my own sake.

For hers.

Once his men arrive to smuggle the prostitute’s corpse to a watery grave, Mr Sanchez drinks himself into a stupor and staggers back to his private quarters to pass out.

For a long time, I lie motionless on the bed, trickles of blood staining my inner thighs. The tears silently fall as I ease my stiff joints from the unfastened restraints and pull on my robe.

It takes a long time to put myself back together into a fragile persona after washing the blood from my skin. I have to pretend, even to myself. Arianna needs me. I can’t be weak.

Limping down the dark, marble-lined hallway on trembling legs, I hug my midsection. I shouldn’t be up or even attempting to walk in my state.

The entire world is spinning and threatening to disappear on me. But I have to see her. I have to know that she’s safe from the monster beneath the bed.

Once inside her generous suite that’s lit by glow-in-the-dark stars and the ever-present nightlight on her bedside table, I pad over to my daughter’s sleeping form beneath the covers.

Neither of us cares for the opulence around us that barely conceals the reality of life inside this mansion. Mr Sanchez has hit her enough times when he grew bored of hearing my cries.

I’ve always thrown myself between them, sacrificing myself first, but I’m ashamed to admit that he’s still managed to get to Arianna on occasion. She’s taken those blows too.

“Mummy?” Sitting upright in bed, Arianna’s ringlets stick up in all directions. “Why are you standing there?”

Crawling between the pale-pink, flower-spotted sheets, I snuggle against her tiny body. She’s very small for a six-year-old, but so beautiful it makes my heart ache.

All angelic blonde hair and doe-like blue eyes, Arianna looks just like her father. She inherited his stunning good looks, but thankfully, not the impenetrable darkness within him.

“Are you crying?” she asks sleepily.

“I’m fine, my sweet girl. Go back to sleep. I’ve got you.”

Her face nuzzles into my neck, breathing in my scent for comfort.

“I’m s-scared. I had a bad dream again.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Ari.”

“It’s the dark,” she whines. “I don’t like it.”

“That’s why we put the stars up, remember?” I breathe in her sweet scent. “No matter where you are or what sky you’re looking up at, you’re never alone.”

“Really?” Arianna whispers.

“Of course, baby. Even if Mummy isn’t there.”

“No! No!” she shouts, thrashing in my arms. “I don’t want the stars. I want you. Please don’t leave me on my own.”

Hushing her cries, I stroke her face and murmur reassurances. Arianna clings to me with surprising strength, her little fingers bruising my skin with the ferocity of her love.

“I’ll never leave you, Ari.”

“Do you promise?” she demands.

“I promise. We’re going to go on a little trip when everything is ready. I need you to be brave for me. Can you do that? Be a big, brave girl?”

“Where are we going? What about Daddy?”

She’s such an inquisitive child. I have no idea how this damned place hasn’t scared that curiosity out of her, but on many levels, I’m grateful that it hasn’t broken her too.

I make myself speak calmly. “Daddy isn’t coming. I can’t tell you where we’re going because it’s a surprise. But soon, okay? We’ll go somewhere fun, somewhere nice.”

“Will there be ice cream?”

“Yes, baby. You can have all the ice cream in the world.”

Chewing her lip, Arianna’s striking blue eyes lift to meet mine. It’s like staring back at a living embodiment of the demon that’s controlled the last ten years of my life.

But instead of the revulsion my husband inspires within me, I feel nothing but love for my daughter. She isn’t his. Arianna is my girl, my baby.

I’ll give her the entire world, even if I have to burn it to the ground to make it perfect just for her. She’s seen and suffered through far too much for such a short life.

I want to give her everything I never had. No one loved me or protected me as a child, and I promised myself the day she was born that I’d never allow her to feel the loneliness I did growing up.

“Deal, but I want sprinkles and fudge sauce too,” she declares.

I press my lips to her temple. “Me too. Mint chocolate chip and strawberry ice cream, I think. What flavour do you want?”

“I don’t want that toothpaste ice cream. Yucky!”

“Mint is not yucky.”

“It is too. I want bubble gum.”

“Deal. Go back to sleep, Ari. We’ll have ice cream soon enough.”

It takes a while for her to drop off, but she eventually goes limp in my arms, snoring lightly. I hold her against my chest, stroking every inch of golden-blonde hair falling down her back.

Every part of my body is pounding with agony, and I can still feel the warmth of slick blood running between my thighs. He was brutal tonight, borderline murderous.

This isn’t living, not really. I’ve spent a decade pretending that I could survive here, but I can’t do it anymore. I’d rather die trying to escape than remain here for another second.

It’s taken years of careful planning and stolen whispers, preparing our grand escape. Pedro sourced the British passports that should get us both home, far from this mansion.

We’ll have new names, new lives. A fresh start. One free from this hell. I never had a parent to save me, but Arianna is my everything. I won’t let her die here with me.

Repositioning her sleeping body, I tuck the covers up to her chin and force myself to return to my nearby bedroom to take some painkillers and continue preparing.

Next to my open fireplace, the loose ceramic tile in the wall prises away easily. Inside the secret spot, two fake passports reside, along with a wedge of stolen cash.

Months of stealing and sneaking around have allowed me to collect enough to buy aeroplane tickets for me and Arianna to get across the ocean, to a life I left behind when Mr Sanchez stole me.

Pedro has promised to get us out, no matter what it takes. He’s the only friend I’ve ever had, but his family is here. He can’t come with us. We’ll have to find our own home.

I can’t remember what England even looks like; it’s been so long since I was there as a struggling sixteen-year-old girl. But I have one thing—a breadcrumb trail.

The faded, dog-eared letter has somehow survived the last ten years. It’s the one possession that I’ve taken care to hide from Mr Sanchez and his destructive rage.

Please come home, Willow.

Briar Valley is waiting for you.

Written and delivered a decade earlier and discarded in my youthful arrogance, it tells the tale of a long-lost family that I had no intention of meeting back then.

If I had taken that leap and gone to these relatives when I had the chance, it might have turned the tide on the worst ten years of my life. Instead, I ran straight to the Devil.

Well, no more. I won’t watch Arianna cry herself to sleep in fear for a moment longer than I have to. It’s time to take a stand. It’s time to run.

Into the arms of who, I don’t know.