Roxanne pushed herself up to sitting. Her jaw throbbed where his fingers had dug in. Her wrist ached where heâd grabbed her. But she didnât curl up and refused to cower.
Just met his eyes with something that looked almost like contempt.
"You know where Phei lives,"
she said quietly. "The Sovereign Tower. Thatâs where Sierra went.
Youâre her father."
Her lips curved into something that wasnât quite a smile.
"Why donât you go get her back? Youâre
all-powerful,
arenât you? Head of the second most powerful law firm in the world. Senators cower when your name comes up. Judges recuse themselves at the sight of your lawyers. Go use all that power and bring your daughter home. Whatâs
stopping
youâ"
The slap cracked across her face like a gunshot.
Her head snapped to the side. She fell all the way down this time, her cheek met 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 didnât cry.
It hurt like a bitch. The pain that demanded tears clawed at her throat and tried to escape as sobs. But she wouldnât give him the satisfaction but she had stopped giving him that satisfaction years ago.
"You think this is funny?"
Jonathanâs voice slid into something 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 me... youâre
mocking
me 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
slammed
into her temple, exploding stars across her vision while fresh blood flooded her mouth from where her teeth shredded deeper into both cheeks. The metallic 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 meet his, his grip unyielding.
"Twenty years you havenât 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 mercy of unconsciousness.
Then his polished dress shoe
drove
mercilessly 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 same cruel leather that left welts for weeks.
"I havenât been merciful 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 thighsâ
once, twice, three, four
âeach merciless 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 seemed to fuel him more.
"And this is how you
repay
me?"
He switched to his feet without pause. His shoe
slammed
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 me."
"Helping my daughter run off with that piece of shit?"
The belt came down again and againâacross 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 faceâforehand,
backhand
, forehand againâwhipping 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
screamed
âa raw, guttural sound torn from the depths of her soulâand he
laughed
, low and warm, almost affectionate.
"There it is," he murmured tenderly. "Thereâs my wife."
The belt whistled down again, wrapping around her ribs. The heavy buckle smashed into bone with a dull, sickening thud that made something inside her shift wrong. Every shallow, desperate breath now felt like jagged knives twisting between her ribs.
His foot slammed into the back of her knee, making the joint spasm violently.
"You think I donât know what youâre 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 canât see you laughing at me 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 childrenâs tricks.
She was holding onto that... he will save her daughter from this monster.
Sheâd put all her faith. He was her
hope!
His shoe drove mercilessly into her hip, grinding down with his full weight until bone creaked and flesh bruised to the marrow.