Free Heat Vol. 4 (Heat: Master Chefs #4) by Kailin Gow

line over my breast.  “I want my money.”
    “Your
idiot father thought he could bring Madeline the fortune she so deserved,”
Godfrey said, ignoring Constantine.  “He thought he had enough entrepreneurial
blood in him to make a success of his silly, little endeavor.”  He let out a
loud laugh.  “I wouldn’t trust him to manage a hen house.”
    A
hard, calloused hand ran up my thigh.
    “Stop
that, Constantine.  This isn’t the time for fun and games,” the ever familiar
voice of Godfrey said.
    “But
she’s all grown up now, not like when…”
    “Constantine!”
    He
pulled his hand away.  “What the hell is the harm?  She’s done for anyway.”
    I
gagged and my mouth filled with the last bites of the dinner I’d been enjoying
with my father and the people I loved the most.
    “Yeah,
this chick is done for, because we’re not doing it like last time.” Constantine
said.  “You made the mistake of releasing her after Cooke had made a paltry
payment on his loan.  That’s what got us into this shit in the first place.  If
we’d held onto her back then, we’d have gotten our money a long time ago.”
    “Don’t
worry.  I have no intention of repeating that mistake.  The girl will pay for
her father’s sins.”
    Warm
liquid trickled between my thighs and soon I was sitting in a heated puddle.
    “Ah,
shit,” Horace said as he pulled away from me.  “You fuckers scared the shit out
of the girl and now she’s peed herself.  And this is a fucking new car.”
    The
last time…  The words rang in my ears, as did Godfrey’s familiar voice, as did
his hateful laugh, as did the increasingly familiar sense of panic and fear. 
We’d been through all this before.  I’d been through it all before.  Slowly,
the fractured segments of memory seeped in and they were more horrifying than I
could have imagined.
    Through
the darkness of the cloth bag, I saw the dark and filthy room where they’d kept
me for months on end, feeding me inedible scraps of food and giving me dirty
water to drink.  I’d been cold and afraid, and they’d been hard and heartless. 
I’d been only a child, but that hadn’t mattered.  They’d remained callous
throughout the ordeal, never offering a shred of warmth or reassurance.
    “Too
bad, Lilly,” Constantine whispered in my ear, his hot, pungent breath piercing
through the cloth.  “I would have given you one last great thrill.”
    His
voice, perverted and murderous, brought another flood of memories I wanted to
immediately erase; the dark, the cold, the hunger and fear.  I remembered the
shouting as my father brought them that first payment, the warning shots from a
pistol telling him he’d better make good on the remainder of the loan.
    “Where’s
my girl?” my father had cried out.
    “Be
on the Tourel side road east of Paris at eight tonight and you’ll see your
darling daughter.”
    That
night, the heartless men who’d held me captive had thrown me out of the car,
barely slowly down before opening the door and letting me fall to the ice and
snow that had covered the streets.  The pain suddenly stung my hands as I
remembered crashing to the ground, the ice so cold, it burned.  Dropping me off
well over an hour before the rendezvous time they’d set with my father, they’d
ensured I suffered all the more.  By the time my father arrived, it was already
too late.
    Catatonic;
it was the word I’d heard the doctor use in a rare moment of lucidity.  I’d had
no idea what it meant, but knowing the meaning wouldn’t have changed anything. 
I was gone.
    It
was the last clear memory I had before arriving at the convent.
    Rial
had been wrong all this time.  It hadn’t been our break up, or my father’s
insistence I remain in my room that had traumatized me to the point of losing
all memory of my childhood.
    It
was the time I’d spent with those men… the very men who now threatened to kill
me, no matter what my father did.
     
     
     
     
    This is