Pure Vengeance

Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

Natasha

Although I wanted to stand under the hot water forever, I rinsed and turned off the taps. I tried not to look at the sumptuous bathroom while I dried off, but almost burst out laughing when I spotted a hairbrush on the sink vanity.

I most definitely did not look at the mirror. It was bad enough to know the brand on the outer curve of my ass was there, as were the piercings in my tongue, nipples, and clit hood. I didn’t need to see them or my bald head.

It would serve no purpose to get used to such luxury, so I resolved to enjoy it as a one-off experience. Lachlan would move me back to the kennel soon enough. I glared at the tail resting on the sink vanity, wishing I could throw it out the window.

Not that I would. Oh, no. I’d washed the fucker instead, knowing it would be back in my ass before I crawled to my cage.

There’d even been a razor next to the expensive bath products. After gazing at it for several seconds, trying to decide if I could break it apart for the blades, I left it alone. Lachlan didn’t seem to care that I looked like a sasquatch. My pussy and head were the only places Lachlan didn’t want hair, and after multiple laser treatments, I doubted my pubic hair would come back anytime soon.

Honestly, not having to shave every other day was about the only good thing to come from being married to him.

And Dante too.

I wouldn’t let myself forget him. He’d deserved so much better than me. I sent up a silent prayer, hoping Lachlan didn’t hurt him when he…

Squeezing my eyes shut against tears, I took the robe from the hook on the back of the door and put it on. The silk robe would have been the height of decadence to past Natasha. Present Natasha, who hadn’t worn clothes in weeks, shuddered under the heavy, scratchy weight of unfamiliar fabric.

Knowing I couldn’t delay any longer, I opened the door and crept from the bathroom.

Funny, I’d expected his private space to smell like brimstone, but all I smelled was laundry detergent and lemon furniture polish mixed with his spicy cologne—just as it had on our wedding night.

Lachlan occupied one of the chairs near the wet bar, and there was a bottle of wine on the table in front of him, along with a tray of snacks. My mouth watered, but I didn’t look at the food. It wasn’t as if I’d get any of it.

“Come sit, Natasha. I bet you’re hungry.”

How long had it been since the last time I heard my own name?

My toes curled in the thick gray carpeting, but I trudged toward him and perched warily on the edge of the chair facing him, keeping my hands in my lap and my head down.

I heard the rasp of porcelain over wood and hid a flinch when he said, “Eat.”

Glancing up just high enough to look over the edge of the table, I saw a serving platter filled with a variety of cubed cheese, olives, glistening purple grapes, and whole-grain crackers, along with slices of what looked like Parma ham and cured salami. I caught the lower edge of a stemmed wineglass and lifted my gaze higher to find it filled with white wine.

“Help yourself,” Lachlan said before tossing a grape into his mouth.

Whatever he was planning wouldn’t end well for me, so I decided to take the offer. At least I’d get a decent meal before I went back to the kennel.

Willing my hand to remain steady, I ate a piece of cheese, and almost moaned. The rich, slightly salty Manchego was like heaven after weeks of eating unseasoned ground chicken cooked with peas, chopped broccoli stems, and lentils. For all I knew, it was the same food Dante ate.

I fucking hated peas.

Belatedly, I wondered if Lachlan had poisoned the food, but he was eating from the same platter. Of course, I hadn’t seen him pour the wine.

Fuck it. I lifted the glass to my lips and drank several swallows of a wonderful pinot grigio. Despite knowing I was about to be the recipient of yet another mindfuck, I was going to carpe the shit out of this diem. After all, I had good reason to celebrate. The price would be painfully high, but my father was finally dead.

Lachlan didn’t eat much past that one grape, but kept my wine refilled while I devoured everything in sight. When the platter was finally empty, he divided the last of the wine between our glasses and lifted his in a toast.

After so long without a drop of alcohol, the wine went straight to my head, erasing my sense of self-preservation along with my silence. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but Lachlan seemed different somehow—like maybe he’d actually listen. Touching my glass to his, I asked, “What are we drinking to?”

He smiled at me—and it wasn’t one of the nasty smirks he usually gave me either. Weird, but probably just more gaslighting to encourage me to let my guard down. Even stranger, he didn’t comment on the first words I’d spoken to him in weeks.

“We’re drinking to questions asked and truths exchanged.”

Lachlan

“Huh.”

I didn’t stop her while she finished the last of the wine. After drinking most of the bottle, I doubted she was entirely sober, despite the food she’d eaten. Of course, I wanted her that way. Alcohol tended to loosen reluctant tongues, and I wanted her to speak without measuring her words.

There were some truths I wouldn’t ask about. I already knew how wet she got when I took her for walkies and made her squat to relieve herself in the grass where everyone could watch her. I’d heard her breathless whimpers as her bowels filled when Jerome administered her daily enemas. She dripped liquid heat every time the bell attached to her clit piercing chimed, and I knew what she sounded like when she came.

Natasha would deny how much her body loved being degraded, and I wanted deeper truths.

“Huh?” I asked.

“I’m just wondering who should go first in this little game, and what the rules are.” She frowned at her empty glass, then added, “It’s probably one of your mindfucks anyway, so I guess the rules don’t matter.”

Hiding a smile, I cocked my head. “You’re being very brave right now.”

“I’m being very drunk right now,” she retorted. “I might as well get some enjoyment out of the game since I already know how it ends.”

“Oh? How does it end?”

“It ends with a tail in my ass, and me sleeping on concrete in a cage.” She lowered her head but lifted it almost as quickly. “It ends with you torturing me for something my father probably did, and then you’ll sleep like a baby in that big, comfortable bed without a care in the world.”

“Well—”

“So, I’ll go first with my question. Now that he’s dead, will you let me go?”

“We’ll save that one for later,” I countered. “Why have you lost so much weight?”

Her cheeks turned pink, but she didn’t avert her gaze or try to hide herself. “You’ve been feeding me the Keto diet from hell for over a month, plus two or three hours of cross training every day. What did you expect?”

“That’s fair.” And it explained why she’d devoured the snacks. She must have been starving for the fat, salt, and carbs.

Before I could formulate another question, she asked, “Are you going to let me go?”

“Again, tabled until later. I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

“Fine.” She toyed with her empty glass. “What did my father do to you?”

It shouldn’t have surprised me that she suspected the reason behind our marriage. “Twelve years ago, he paid to have my older brother murdered when he signed a contract to buy a piece of property your father wanted. Jerome’s son, Ben, died as well.”

She winced and her hand moved across the table toward mine, but she pulled back before touching me. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need your pity. I?—”

“Stop right there,” she interrupted. “I’m sorry he did that, and I’m sorry for your loss, but don’t you dare attribute me with an emotion I’m incapable of feeling for you.”

I didn’t know why her words made me so angry. I didn’t want or need her pity, and I certainly deserved her animosity. My hands clenched, but I forced myself to remain still instead of taking my belt to her ass.

After all, I’d wanted her to speak.

“Fair enough. How do you feel about your father being dead?”

“Relieved.” She rose to her feet and went to the sideboard, then returned with a bottle of my best scotch. After breaking the seal, she poured a few fingers into her wineglass and sipped it. “Also, sad, but not for him.”

I resisted the urge to rub my hands together. Although it was probably the booze, I’d managed to relax her enough to start giving me the information I truly wanted.

By all accounts, Natasha was a devoted daughter and her father doted on her. I needed to know why she hadn’t shed a tear over his death, and why Steve had talked about her as if she was something he scraped off his shoe.

“Why are you sad?”

“Tabled for later.”

Her retort came too quickly, and I decided not to push—at least for now.

“Okay. Why didn’t you go to college?”

“Also tabled for later.”

“All right.” I studied her for a moment, then said, “It must be hard to lose your father, especially so violently.”

“Nope.” She scowled at the scotch in her glass, then went to the wet bar for water. After adding a few drops to her scotch, she said, “It was easy as pie, and very satisfying to watch.”

I poured scotch into my glass but didn’t drink. Instead, I asked, “Where did the bruises come from, Natasha?”

“Which ones?”

“The ones you had on our wedding day.”

She snorted and laughed bitterly. “As if you don’t know.”

“I don’t. Answer the question, please.”

“Huh. That explains why you kept asking.” Her brow wrinkled into a frown. “You’re apparently too slow on the uptake to figure it out, but my father beat the shit out of me when I refused to marry you.”

Fucking bastard.

I should have known—especially after Steve tried to kick her in the face. Before I could think up a reply, she said, “Look. I’ll give you all the truths you want, but I truly don’t care about yours unless they involve you letting me go.”

“Natasha—”

She ignored the warning in my tone. “I got accepted to Stanford to study biochemistry. Dear old Dad found my acceptance letter and broke three of my ribs, then beat me again after I got out of the hospital.”

“Jesus.”

“You’re so cute when you think a leash and public humiliation is going to break me.” She laughed and rolled her eyes. “When I was six, I had a kitten. She was just a little stray that found her way onto the property. I called her Floof because she was light gray like a dust bunny. My father eviscerated her in front of me and laid her on my breakfast plate the morning after my teacher reported the whip marks he’d left on my legs. He said it was all my fault because my uniform skirt wasn’t long enough to cover them.”

“Natasha, stop.”

“Spare me the crocodile tears, Lachlan. You asked the fucking questions, so now you get to hear the answers.” She pinned me with a derisive glare. “When he was feeling particularly lazy, he'd have his guards whip me instead of doing it himself. This will sound familiar to you, so listen up. The housekeeping staff we used to have looked the other way and pretended they didn’t hear me scream because he would have hurt them if they tried to help.”

My throat worked as I attempted to swallow the bile filling my mouth. Maybe I was as bad as her father, but the thought of someone touching a child made me sick. “Did they… Did the guards touch you?”

If they had, they’d be dead before they knew it. Knowing Natasha had been abused so horribly was bad enough.

“No. They all said I was too fat and ugly to fuck. Besides, you knew I was a virgin when you married me.” She waved a dismissive hand at me as if she was brushing off the abuse she’d suffered. “The teacher’s name was Mrs. Price. She had a new baby and a husband who picked her up from school. The day she reported the whip marks on my legs was the last time I saw her. I’m pretty sure my father had her murdered because we had a new teacher the very next day, and nobody at school mentioned Mrs. Price’s name even once. When I was eight, he did the same thing to the gardener’s puppy after he caught me playing with it. I was in middle school when the cello I used to love ended up in the fireplace along with my favorite teddy bear. He fucking toasted marshmallows over it, even though I never practiced where he could hear me.”

“Stop.” I held up a hand to cut her off, but she wasn’t done. It didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t want to hear any more. Shame ate at me from the inside. I might have lost Darragh, but she’d suffered a lifetime of systematic abuse at Steve Ashland’s hands.

Instead of saving her, I’d continued Steve’s despicable work and destroyed an innocent soul.

“Every single thing or person I paid even the slightest bit of attention to ended up destroyed or dead. I didn’t dare make friends, much less try for a boyfriend, so you don’t get to be surprised about me being a virgin on our wedding night.” She leaned back in her chair and studied me with emotionless eyes. “I don’t have any proof, but I’m willing to bet he murdered my mother too. So, when you ask me if I’m happy he’s dead, the answer is a resounding yes. I want to spit on his fucking grave.”

A slow, insidious thought intruded into my brain and I almost gasped when I realized she’d spent nearly two days with a dog who should have terrified her, and according to Jerome, had watched his training for at least two weeks.

Hoping to catch her off balance, I asked, “What’s Dante’s cue?”

Her lips bowed into a faint smile, but I didn’t miss the satisfaction gleaming in her brown eyes. “How should I know your dog’s cues? I’m just thankful he’s a good judge of character.”

She was lying. Somehow, she’d figured out Dante’s cue to attack, and managed to whisper it at just the right moment.

Fuck, I thought I was the cold-blooded one.

“Natasha, I am so?—”

“Didn’t we agree to no pity?” she interrupted. “I will give you one more truth, and then I want your answer about when you’re letting me go.”