Torn:Dark Legacy Duet, Book 2
By: Natasha Knight“Fuck.” It’s Gregory and my mind flashes back to the boat, to how the man lit a cigarette after dropping me to the boat floor. After shoving me aside with the toe of his shoe like you would a piece of trash, something you don’t want to touch.
But it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Gregory. I know the way his hands feel. I know his scent.
And I know he wouldn’t have done that to me. I know.
Don’t I?
“Holy fuck,” Sebastian says.
Something light as a feather touches my back, my side.
“Helena, can you hear me?” He’s crouching down close to me, touching my face. I feel his fingers at my neck. He’s checking my pulse. I’m that far gone.
“We need to get her out of here. Get her to a doctor.”
I feel him then. I feel him lift me up. I feel his arms around me and my head rests against his chest and I cling to him, wrap myself around him with the last little bit of strength I have.
And when I open my eyes to the tiniest slits, I find Gregory watching us.
Watching me.
3
Sebastian
Helena sleeps for three days. I have a doctor and a nurse on the island and I’m keeping vigil over her. She was so dehydrated that if we’d been even hours later, she wouldn’t have made it.
They left her down there, underground in that forgotten level of our building.
As beautifully restored as the upper floors are, so is that space the opposite. Uninhabitable.
I didn’t even know Lucinda had a key to the chamber she locked Helena in.
Her body was ice cold and she could barely open her eyes. Covered in vomit, piss and something I don’t want to think about, she was left there for four days without water or food.
She was beaten without mercy and left in that pitch-black hole and every time I think about it, I want to kill Lucinda. I want to wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze until her eyes pop out of her head. I want to choke her and watch as life drains out of her.
I’m standing at the window, looking out at the water, at the dock where one boat is missing.
The sun is breaking the horizon, but I can’t enjoy its beauty. I’m still anxious. And I can’t get the image of Helena lying there out of my head. I can’t get the feel of her wrapping her arms around me, clinging to me, clawing into me, out of my head.
“Fingers and toes accounted for.”
She’d joked about that.
Well, not quite joked.
I turn back to look at her. She’s lying in my bed, looking smaller than before, lost under the thick duvet, and all I can think is she could have died.
I’m an idiot for not seeing the extent of Lucinda’s hate.
Going to her with my offer, wanting to spare Ethan the pain and confusion of finding out he isn’t who he thinks he is, it backfired. And it could have cost Helena her life.
A movement beneath the heavy blankets has me holding my breath.
I go to her as she lets out a small groan. She’s been heavily sedated up until now while they rehydrated her, fed her through a tube, dressed her wounds. I didn’t want her awake to feel the pain she must have been in down in that room.
Those marks will take time to heal and I know there will be scars. Lucinda broke skin this time. Too much of it. In comparison to this beating, she’d been gentle that first time.
Helena blinks open her eyes and I exhale. She looks up at the ceiling and I see the moment recognition returns and she startles, her eyes going wide as she jerks up to a seat, wincing, clutching the duvet to her.
She looks at me for a moment, it’s like she doesn’t recognize me.
Like she’s afraid of me.
Silence hangs heavy between us and I’m holding my breath. I think she is too. Her eyes fall to the bandage around my upper arm and I see her confusion.
“Sebastian?” she asks. Her shoulders slump and her forehead creases.
“You’re safe, Helena.”
She looks like she doesn’t believe me. She shudders, draws her knees up and hugs the blanket closer.
“Where are they?”
“They’re not here,” I say, I know she means Lucinda and Ethan and I need to ask her one thing, but I don’t want to. I don’t know if I can take the answer. “Lucinda and Ethan aren’t on the island. You’re safe.”
