For the second time in the same day, I barge into Nathan’s room.
He startles, dropping the towel he was using to dry his hair. For a moment, the sight of his naked torso, still damp from his shower, enraptures me, and I let my gaze trail over his golden pees and tight abs leading down to the muscular V that disappears into his-
“April
It all comes slamming back to me, along with the anger and nausea.
“You have to do something,” I whisper, closing Nathan’s door.
He frowns. “Do what?”
I swallow down the bile. “He’s doing it again, Nathan.”
The creases between his brows deepen, and he moves towards me, taking my face in his hands.
“God, you’re shaking, baby,” he murmurs. “What happened?”
I close my eyes, soaking in his warmth. Being with Nathan always brings me peace, and I reach out for that feeling, letting it ground me.
“Lucas,” I whisper, and I feel Nathan stiffen. “He-”
I think of Lucy in my bed, sobbing softly as I tucked her under my sheets. I made her go to the bathroom, made her take out the vibrating clamp Lucas had made her wear all day.
The infernal thing is currently buzzing under a wash bowl in my bathroom, neither of us knowing how to shut it off.
God, it’s all so…nasty.
“He’s doing it again,” I say to Nathan.
His voice is strained when he asks, “Doing what?”
I open my eyes and look up at him, grabbing his forearm. “What he did to Sarah and the other maids.” My voice wobbles. “He’s doing it to Lucy.”
Understanding dawns on Nathan, and I watch his expression shutter, like someone draws curtains behind his eyes. “Oh.”
I blink. “Oh? Oh? That’s it?”
Nathan’s hands drop from my face, and he backs away, heading into his closet.
I stand there, stunned for a few seconds before my feet move.
“Nathan.”
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Chapter 150
He has his back to me, and again, my brain momentally short–circuits when I get an eyeful of his delectable ass being fitted into black briek.
The fact that I can have a conversation with a naked Nathan while he changes–and it’s normal- is a rush.
But that’s beside the fucking point.
“What do you mean ‘oh‘?” I demand.
Nathan grabs a pair of navy blue sweatpants and slides into them before he turns to me.
His Tace is a mask of indifference, but I know him well enough to tell that he’s struggling to keep his emotions in check.
“I told you, April,” he says in a resigned tone. “This is what he does. He’s a fucking monster.”
“Then stop him,” I snap. “Someone has to stop him.”
“April-
“Lucy is in my bed–and she’s a wreck. She’s in pain because he made her stick a vibrating clamp up her cunt the whole fucking day!”
Nathan winces, and even I’m surprised by my crudeness, but I’m so mad, I can’t quite think straight.
“Baby,” he says, calmly, gently. Patronizingly. “I’m so sorry she’s going through that, and I wish there were something I could do—”
“There has to be something you can do! This is assault. What is it with the men in your fucking family and assault!”
He flinches, and I know I’ve cut him, but he needs to see that the way his father hurts him with his fists is the same way Lucas hurts
these girls with his depraved dick.
I try to resist Nathan when he wraps his arms around my shoulders, pulling me to him. But his chest is so warm, and he’s fresh out of the shower and smells like heaven, and I have no willpower when it comes to him.
He rests his chin on my crown. “My family is a shit show,” he says lowly. “My father beats me, and my brother sexually assaults people
beneath him just because he can.”
A sob lodges in my throat.
“And I…” I feel his heavy intake of breath against my cheek. “I’m a fucking coward who can do nothing but watch it happen.”
–“You could report it,” I whisper.
He scoffs half–heartedly. “One tried–her name is Olive. She ended up getting sued for slander. She’s going to be in my family’s debt till
she dies.”
“What the fuck?” I whisper in horror.
“I’m sorry, baby.”
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Chapter 150
He does sound truly sorry, truly regretful that there’s nothing he can do about the situation. But that’s not good enough. It’s just not.
Try it I didn’t care about Lucy like I do, Lucas is a beast on a rampage, and he has to be stopped.
It’s with this conviction that I make the split–second decision, and my mouth spills the words without properly thinking them through.
“He tried to do it to me.”
Nathan turns to stone against me.
“What?” Low, strained.
I step out of his embrace, wanting to see his face as I clarify. “What Lucas is doing to Lucy, what he did to Sarah and Olive and all those other poor girls–he tried to do it to me too.”
Nathan doesn’t move. Not a single muscle. He stands there, calcified, just staring at me.
1 keep talking. “He groped me during the ball, and then when we danced, he flat out asked me to be his ‘plaything.“” I shudder at the thought. “When we went camping, he cornered me in the forest, and if Peter hadn’t shown up right at that moment, he would’ve r-”
My jaw locks, unable to say that awful word in Nathan’s presence.
“He needs to be stopped,” I repeat instead, pleading. Hoping that now that Nathan knows what his brother is capable of, he’ll help me
stop him.
“Nathan?” I ask softly.
In the blink of an eye, Nathan’s mask of indifference shatters, revealing fury so potent that I stagger back from the force of it.
When he speaks, his voice is unrecognizable–low, gravely, dark. Scary.
“I’m going to murder him.”
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
