Absolution (Sacrificial Duet Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Thank you

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Riley Ashby

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address:

  [email protected]

  Cover design by Diana, Triumphbookcovers.com

  Editing by Editing4Indies

  This book contains themes that may not be appropriate for those sensitive to sexual assault or self-injury.

  www.rileyashby.com

  Maddie

  When Meyer took me home in the back of his car the night of his thirtieth birthday, I had thought things couldn’t get worse. He held me in his lap and ran his hands over my body the entire time, cataloging every bruise and cut, pressing his fingerprints into the blood staining my skin. I hadn’t known then that he was imprinting himself on my soul. He probably didn’t know it either. I thought he wanted to hurt me, but later I came to realize the truth. In our time together, Meyer sought out the sources of my suffering, every place I ached in the effort to make it hurt less, because he knew what it was to be beaten and left alone to heal.

  His father cared not one bit. If I’d ever had any doubt of how polar opposite they were, those doubts were scattered to the wind faster than than they dragged me down the hallway, away from the last place Meyer knew to find me.

  I kicked and struggled down the hall to the elevator only for Joshua to hit me hard across the head, sending my ears ringing and stars through my vision. My stomach clenched and then rolled, bile falling from my lips as he flipped me and tossed me over his shoulder.

  “Let’s move,” Conrad said, warning in his voice. “We don’t need anyone coming out and seeing her like this.”

  The entire elevator ride I prayed for someone to call it to their floor. I bit back the taste of vomit in my mouth and swallowed past my swollen throat, sinuses still inflamed from my hours of crying.

  He will come. He won’t leave me. He’ll come.

  I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  The elevator reached the garage without incident and I was dropped back on my feet. My knees buckled at the impact and I fell halfway, palm slamming against the rough carpet. The pressure in my head, which had steadily grown as I hung upside down over Joshua’s back, suddenly rushed away and I was left with searing pain that seemed to explode from the center of my brain. Joshua grabbed my hair and pulled my head up to look me square in the eye. “Can you walk?”

  I nodded gingerly, his fingers tugging too hard at my hair, but he released me and allowed me to make my way to the car unassisted. But my brain kicked into overdrive as we approached the car, unsure what to do. If I left with them, would we go somewhere Meyer knew to look for me, or would I disappear into the black vehicle never to be seen again? What was coming next for me if I allowed myself to be thrown into the car like a willing victim, accepting my fate as easily as I’d let Meyer walk out on me just a few hours earlier?

  This might be my only chance to run.

  I didn’t look anywhere except straight ahead, tried to give no indication of what I was going to do until I took off sprinting toward the door at the far end of the garage. My head throbbed, and something in my knee didn’t feel quite right, but I pushed every ounce of pain or discomfort to the side as I took the longest strides I could manage.

  He didn’t even bother to tackle me.

  Rough hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to a stop, halting my forward momentum and throwing me back against a hard body.

  “A valiant effort,” Joshua muttered in my ear. He wrapped his arms around my chest, pinning my arms to my sides before swinging me around and guiding me back toward the car. Conrad stood next to the open trunk, scrolling through his phone.

  “I expected nothing less from you, my dear,” he said. His voice was flat, as if he didn’t care. He shoved his phone back in his pocket and looked at me once more, then gestured to the car as Joshua released me. I stumbled forward and stopped just inches from the trunk.

  “I’m not getting in there.” My voice shook, but I tried to keep my shoulders straight. I didn’t want them to beat me yet.

  “Did I ask what you wanted?” He grabbed the back of my head and pushed me down so my face ground into the rough carpet, and then my legs were hoisted into the air. My feet kicked wildly and were met with a satisfying thump, but of course the men forcing me into the trunk of this car with the intent to torture, rape, and kill me were unfazed. I rolled with the rest of my body into the small space.

  “Please don’t,” I gasped, voice thick as I started crying again. I couldn’t fake it anymore. “I get claustrophobic.”

  “But you’ll survive.” Conrad grabbed my hands and held them out for Joshua to swiftly bind them with a zip tie, the hard plastic cutting into my skin. My hands began to tingle immediately from the loss of blood.

  “Conrad, please, I’ll—”

  He slapped a length of duct tape over my mouth, and then there was nothing left to say as the trunk closed and I was left in complete darkness.

  Nausea gathered in my belly once more as the car flew backwards and I rolled to one end of the trunk, bumping against the wall. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to lose my stomach again lest I drown in my own sick. The car changed course and I was rolling again, this time as we flew forward. My head hit one of the walls as it jerked to a stop, and I thought I could hear laughter from the front of the car. Were they purposefully torturing me, making the ride as uncomfortable as possible? I wedged my legs against one side as tight as I could, and when we took off again, I didn’t roll so violently.

  I focused on my breathing as we wound through the city streets, stopping abruptly more often than was necessary even for city traffic and taking off so quickly the tires squealed against the pavement before we shot forward. Eventually we must have gotten on a highway because the ride evened out, though I could tell we were flying down the road. Too soon, the car slowed again and we began to take sharper turns, until we finally rolled to a stop and the engine turned off.

  I scooted to the back of the trunk, not that it mattered when Joshua’s long arms reached into the void and yanked me into the night. Cold air assaulted my nose, constricting the blood vessels further, and I gasped as the duct tape was finally ripped from my mouth.

  “Enjoy your ride?” Conrad sneered at me, giving me no chance to answer as Joshua flung me over his shoulder once more.

  “Where—” I paused to clear my throat, swallowing around tears. “Where are we?” I couldn’t see much in the low light, but I didn’t think we had gone too far out of town.

&
nbsp; “My home,” Conrad said simply. “I don’t see any reason for us to go anywhere else. Meyer won’t be coming.”

  Fresh tears stung my eyes at the fear that he might be right. But at the very least we were close. If I could get out, I could run to Meyer’s house. I had clothes there, I could get dressed and run off. But that was all assuming I was able to escape in the first place, which wasn’t looking good with my numb hands and aching head.

  “You can’t do this, Conrad. At some point you’re going to have to answer for your actions, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

  I breathed a little easier as we stepped out of the cold and into the warmth of the house. I braced to be set on my feet, but Joshua continued carrying me through the home and up a set of stairs. From what I could see, the house was a stark contrast to Meyer’s. Everything looked aged, antique, as if Conrad wanted to flaunt old wealth instead of admitting he had gained this all during his life time by exploiting the military industry.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You sure ask a lot of questions.” I could barely hear Joshua’s mutter.

  “You’re kidnapping me.” My voice cracked. Don’t fucking cry again.

  Conrad patted my face, and I couldn’t do much to move away. “You’ve been kidnapped this entire time. This is no different.”

  Joshua carried me through a door into a room no larger than the bathroom at Meyer’s house—while it wasn’t small, it was much smaller than any other room in the house. He dropped me on to a hard mattress, and I fell back against the wall. I was pushed into a corner. Grabbing my arm, he lifted my wrists into the air and sliced away the zip tie. Tears finally fell from my eyes as I cried with relief, blood flowing back to my hands as the tingling began to subside.

  “I need to deal with some things, but I expect you to behave yourself in here. Your mother earned her privileges by obeying my rules and doing as she was told. If you do the same, you can have many happy years here.”

  My heart leaped to my throat in my anger, stopping my breath from coming. I couldn’t lose consciousness, not when I was already at a disadvantage. Taking a deep breath, I pushed down the urge to claw out his eyes. “I will never be happy with you.”

  “We’ll see about that.” He tilted my chin up with one finger, mimicking his son’s identical gesture the first day I woke up as a prisoner of the Schaf family. “Your mother suffered for far too long before she learned to be compliant. Save yourself the trouble, and be a good girl for me. Joshua will bring you some food.”

  With a final apologetic look over his shoulder, Joshua followed Conrad out of the room. The door slammed, then a thud announced a heavy lock being turned on the outside. I jumped immediately and ran to the door anyway, yanking at the handle to no avail. It didn’t even rattle.

  Spinning around, I took a look around the small room. Had he purposefully modeled it on a prison cell? The walls were an odd grey-green color, and the thin mattress on top of the wire twin bed frame was covered with a threadbare sheet that was worn almost transparent in some places. Another door on the side wall opened into a tiny bathroom. I could see the toilet directly next to a cubicle shower, barely large enough for me to fit in.

  And in the corner across from the bed … was a crib.

  Shaky legs carried me forward. This is impossible. Why would Conrad hold on to such a thing? Was he really so diabolical, so calculating, that he would have kept this on hand just in case he needed to intimidate the daughter of the woman who had already raised his child in it? I placed my hands on the wood of the rail, peering down. My heart jumped at the sight tiny shape cocooned within, and I stumbled backward across the room. That was not possible. With my hand pressed against my chest to try and still my racing heart, I crept back across the small space and forced myself to look into the eyes of a tiny baby. No, not a baby. A doll. Blue-tinted glass eyes, unblinking, peering past me but seeing nothing. It was covered by a white blanket patterned with stems of baby’s breath flowers held by teddy bears. Pinching it by the edge to avoid touching the doll, I drew it from the crib and brought it to my face. The fabric was still soft even after so many years. What could have compelled a man such as Conrad to hang on to this memento? I inhaled deeply, imagining I could smell the cedar and whiskey that always told me Meyer was near, though he certainly wasn’t wearing such cologne as a toddler.

  Backing away from the crib, I turned to the bed that my mother had woken up in the day she realized she had become a slave for a man hell bent on nothing but his own success and satisfaction. Meyer had hurt me more deeply than I ever thought possible earlier, but he was the only hope I had to get me out of this situation. If he didn’t come for me, I didn’t know who else would have the strength and influence to ever set me free. Curling into the corner as far from the door as I could, I tucked the blanket into a ball clutched against my chest, and waited.

  Meyer

  Mondays always suck, especially when they mean going to work for the man who has abused you your entire life, but this one in particular was worse than most. If possible, there were even more cameras waiting outside the building than there had been the day before, and a police presence to boot. Shawn nearly ran over a reporter pulling into the garage, earning us plenty of dirty looks. He started to get out of the car the moment he parked, but I grabbed his arm to hold him still.

  “Give me a minute,” I said. “There could be reporters down here.” Someone else could have snuck in, ready to snap pictures of me or shove a microphone in my face. It was their fault Conrad had realized Maddie was hiding out in my office the day before. Their fault he’d realized I was falling for her, instead of destroying her. Their fault she was back at Shawn’s apartment alone instead of here with me, where she could be safe.

  Not that I should be overly concerned about her safety. She’d been far too happy to see the company I’d worked for my entire life, the only thing that gave my miserable existence any meaning, go down in the public eye. I’d be lucky if I made it out of this with a job. In the span of one news report, I could lose my entire livelihood and way of life. And she just fucking sat there and smiled. What had I been thinking, that we had any future together that wasn’t me completely in control of her? I never should have allowed her any power over me.

  “We have to go in eventually.”

  Shawn’s voice jolted me out of my self-destructive thoughts. “I know that.” Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. I had to suppress a wince at the lance of pain that drove through my broken hand. I had Maddie to thank for the cast that now held my bones in place. Conrad wasn’t to blame for that injury; no, I’d done that to myself. He’d no doubt find that amusing.

  Shawn walked me to my office, but I slammed my door in his face before he could follow me in. I didn’t need him yammering in my ear all day, trying to convince me to go back to her. I had far more important things to focus on, like making sure my company didn’t burn to the ground.

  Still, I needed him to take me home.

  When we left the office hours later, I was in no better of a mood. I wanted to go straight home and fall asleep, but Shawn snatched my phone away when I opened it to call Joshua. With my dominant hand wrapped up, I wasn’t quick enough to prevent it.

  “You left something at my apartment,” he said, eyes narrowed. He’d been pissed at me all day, but I didn’t really care. I was worn out. I was furious at the world. All I wanted to do was to take a few pills—surely I still had a few stashed around the house—and go to bed.

  “I don’t need that anymore. You can keep it if you want.”

  “She won’t stay with me, Meyer. She’ll track you down if Conrad doesn’t get to her her first.”

  “And I’ll toss her right back outside where she belongs.” Of course he would trap me in the elevator before bringing this up. Every time he opened his mouth today I’d glared at him until he shut up, but he was just biding his time.

  “You’re an ass.”

  “S
he knows that. She knew it from the start. There was never going to be a happily ever after for us, Shawn. This was always about revenge. It’s not my problem if she caught feelings in the process.”

  “Is that why you stared at your phone all day like you were waiting for her to call?”

  I reached for my phone, but he held it easily out of my reach. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Conrad will wonder where I was all night. I’m surprised he hasn’t come storming down here himself.”

  “He did,” Shawn replied.

  My stomach dropped to my feet.“What the fuck? Why didn’t he come talk to me?”

  “I told him you weren’t in.” He nodded at my hand. “I didn’t want a repeat of that.”

  “Fuck.” I slammed my hand against my forehead, barely noticing the spasm it set off in my broken bones. The elevator door opened, and I blew into the garage towards Shawn’s car. “You shouldn’t have done that, Shawn. He would have gone looking at the last place he knew I was.”

  “He didn’t know—”

  “He always fucking knows!” Shawn stopped walking abruptly as I whirled on him, my voice echoing through the nearly empty parking garage. A few pigeons fluttered toward the exit, startled, then settled on a ledge. “There was never a chance that he wouldn’t know where I went, Shawn. Maybe he lost me for a few hours, but he would have figured it out.”

  “But you weren’t there, Meyer.”

  “Someone else was!” I turned on my heel and ran to the car.

  “Shit,” Shawn muttered as the realization dawned on him, and then his footsteps matched mine as he ran and jumped into his car. We peeled out of the garage into traffic, narrowly missing a pedestrian crossing in front of the garage entrance. “I told her to keep the door locked.”

  “That’s not going to matter to him.” I picked up my phone from where Shawn had dropped it into the cup holder and dialed Joshua, but ended the call before the first ring was complete. I still didn’t know if I could trust him. “He knows she’s there. And when he figures out she’s alone…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.