C2, PT. 6 (Patreon)

“I won’t hurt her. You have my word, I’ll never use whatever it is against either of you.”

He sounded like he actually meant it, but she’d been duped too many times.

“I can’t,” she said, her voice filled with painful regret.

“You mean you won’t.”

“Right. I won’t.”

The weighted silence was awful, like nails on a chalkboard. She paced away from him and stopped in front of the window. She couldn’t see out. All she could see was her reflection.

“What did Warren say about me?”

She stiffened. “What makes you think he said anything about you?”

“What was it?”

“Nothing.”

“And this?”

She looked over her shoulder. The last thing she expected to see was her mother’s ruby heart ring she’d worn to the Trentham Ball in his hand.

“This ring had enough sentimental value that you wore it even though it didn’t match the other jewelry, but by the end of the night, you hated the sight of it? You want to explain that?”

This was the first token Elena ever picked out. I still remember what she did to earn it. Warren’s smug tone replayed in her mind, making her stomach roll. How ironic that she wore that ring as a source of comfort, only to discover it was a token her mother earned through sexual favors from the man who, years later, would rape her sister. And Warren expected to have his turn with her, too.

“Did Warren say something about your mother?”

Her heart sank. Roth was too clever for his own good. Too discerning and quick to put the pieces together.

Roth’s voice hardened. “Did he?”

She ignored his questions and asked one of her own. “Do you have a file on her?”

She didn’t need a verbal yes. His silence was answer enough. She pressed a hand against her pitching stomach. How thorough had his investigation been? Did he know of the connection between her mother and Warren? Did he know how many men her mother had serviced? Who the father of her unborn baby was? And Warren said, You’re a carbon copy of her.

She lost the battle she’d been warring against her nausea. She clapped a hand over her mouth and raced past him to the bathroom. She tipped up the cushion that disguised the toilet and retched. Her nails dug into the plush leather so hard that one of her nails snapped off. She didn’t notice.

She didn’t realize Roth had followed until she felt her hair shift. Like Colette had just a few hours ago, Roth held her hair as she vomited. She didn’t feel any gratitude, only shame that he was witnessing how weak and vulnerable she was. She wasn’t cut out for this game. If she had the ability, she would have ordered him out of the bathroom and locked the door, but she could do nothing more than hold on for dear life as her body tried to cope with the extreme mental and emotional stress.

When she had nothing left, she rested her clammy forehead on her arm, and closed her eyes as she tried to get her breath back. Roth clasped her nape.

“Leave,” she whimpered.

He pulled down the cushion so she wasn’t hanging over the bowl and moved away. She stayed on her knees as the water came on. She assumed he was washing his hands before he left. She started when he cupped her chin and lifted it. The bathroom lights turned the inside of her eyelids orange. As a warm, damp cloth carefully moved over her skin, her lips trembled.

“I can do that,” she said, blindly reaching to take the rag from him with her eyes still closed.

He grasped her wrist. She felt his beard a second before his lips hit the center of her palm.

“Give me a chance to make this up to you.”

She tried to jerk away, but he was prepared for that and hung on.

“I’ll make them pay.”

Tears trickled down her cheeks.

“You can trust me.”

Her eyes opened. With the bright lights shining down and him standing over her, his face was in shadow, but it didn’t matter. All she wanted was for him to see she meant it when she said, “No, I can’t.”

When she pulled away, he let her go. She forced herself to her feet and braced her hands on the vanity until her legs stopped shaking. Roth stood off to the side, strangely inanimate, as she rummaged in the cabinet and found all the toiletries she’d need. She didn’t look in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. She was tapping her toothbrush on the counter when there was a knock on the closed bedroom door.

“What?”

Roth’s deafening roar made Jasmine jump.

There was a pause and then, “We need to prepare for landing. If you and Mrs. Roth will take your seats…?”

The flight attendant started off strong, but her voice warbled at the end.

“We will,” Jasmine called when Roth didn’t speak. “Thank you.”

She snatched several tissues and tried to walk past him, but he gripped her waist.

“This isn’t finished,” he stated.

She didn’t respond, she just stared at his chest. His hand came toward her face, but he stopped himself, let out a savage growl and released her. He stalked across the bedroom and wrenched open the door before he prowled through the eerily silent cabin.

She ambled in his wake with her jacket crisscrossed over her front to conceal her bra and the fact that about a third of her shirt was missing. Even though she needed clothes, her feet wouldn’t take her to the front of the jet, where her bag was. Instead, she glanced around and made her way to an empty seat beside a guard she had never seen before.

The men didn’t say a word, but the already tense environment became stifling. She hunched over as she belted herself in before she rewrapped her jacket around herself and closed her eyes.

They would be landing soon. In the near future, she could lock herself in a bedroom, bathroom, or closet. She desperately needed to be alone.

The sound of metal seatbelts being simultaneously undone made her swollen, itchy eyes crack open to see Roth striding toward her. Before he reached her, every seat in the lounge had been vacated as the men relocated to different parts of the aircraft.

She closed her eyes, ignoring his presence, until something heavy was draped over her front. Automatically, she clutched at it when it started to fall and saw it was Roth’s wool coat. It was so large, it was more like a heavy blanket than something another human would wear casually to keep warm.

Roth settled beside her. If she had the energy, she would have changed seats to make a point that she didn’t want to be near him, but that was beyond her. She stiffened when Mo and Johan claimed seats in their section. She wasn’t sure if they had been forced to the back lounge because the front was now full, or if they wanted to keep an eye on them. Either way, she turned toward the window, unable to make eye contact with any of them.

**This is a raw draft of Bitter Sins. Please do not share or distribute.

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