The Blood Debt

Chapter 9

Roman

She doesn't say a word on the car ride back to the club. She doesn't even look in my direction, but a few times she leans forward into the open window, and at first I think she's just enjoying the freedom of being outside for the first time in months, but when she falls asleep before we get to Queens, I realise she was trying to stay awake.

I watch her sleep, slumped against the door. The redness on her cheek is finally paling to a soft blush, and I can't help but feel like I'm seeing her anew when I look at her on the drive home. I realise I've underestimated her. I thought a Park Avenue princess like her would be broken after a week, driven mad by the mind games I play with her, locking her up in the apartment for days on end, depriving her of time and light, but here she is three months later, still standing; still resisting, and the more she fights, the more intrigued I become.

When mother insisted on meeting her, I knew exactly how their little rendezvous was going to go. I knew the kind of hate she'd been harbouring.

Warmth and kindness aren't exactly words that  spring to mind when you think of my mother. Growing up, the woman had about as much warmth as a black mamba. She was always angry, because just like Ayla Moore, it was hakmarrja, not love that bound her to my father. It was a marriage of convenience orchestrated to end a blood feud between warring clans, and while she dutifully fulfilled her responsibility, and produced three sons for a man she never wanted to marry - a man she never loved, she was an absent mother; one that fate had hardened and made cruel like the life she'd been forced to lead. The only love I ever saw her show for anyone was toward Esad, and as a kid I remember trying to get her to see me the way she saw him, but she never did and I learnt to get her attention in other ways. More often than not, it was my defiance that caught my dad's attention, not hers, and more so his belt's. The enigma of her love for Esad, something I'd long stopped trying to figure out in my teens, was finally answered in his autopsy report of all places. In the end it was his blood type that gave it away. I knew enough science to know that there was zero chance of Esad being my father's son with a type B blood group.

So the only thing that didn't go to script today was the heiress. Manolya played her role exactly as I expected her to, but the heiress didn't even flinch. I expected that she might make some feeble attempt to run; not that that's possible with the kind of security that protects the Brookvile house, but at least plead with Nora or Emina to help her get away, or even if she didn't do any of that, cry in the kitchen when the initial shock of what happened had worn off. But there was nothing; not a single fucking tear. She didn't even look Nora in the eyes while she examined her, the one person she knew was an outsider and who could possibly help her.

As I pull up in front of the club and watch the defenceless way she sleeps, the twisted son of bitch in me wants to keep pushing her until I finally make her crack. I know she's in there somewhere close to the surface, denying me the satisfaction out of spite, but the last time I tried to really push her with the feeding, she stirred something in me that made me beat off in the shower for weeks, and the last thing I want, is to start thinking about fucking her again.

I slap her cheek not so subtly.

"Hey sleeping beauty, we're home," I tell her.

She jumps like she's just woken from a nightmare.

She walks through the club with her head down, like she thinks the embarrassment of the afternoon is somehow visible on her face for all to see.

"The boards are off for as long as you behave yourself," I say pointing to the windows in the apartment.

"Do anything stupid and they'll go right back up. Understood?"

She nods.

"Words Vengeance. Remember Rule number three."