Cruel Control by Candace Wondrak

Chapter Fourteen – Markus

I’d sent Jaxon to find him, but the boy came back empty-handed after hours, so it was up to me to search for him. I knew Bennet’s hiding places in this house, and I was on a fucking mission to find him. Find him, and give him a job that would make him quite happy.

Me? I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t fucking happy at all. In fact, I was more enraged than I’d been in a very long time. Why? Because that girl had tried to run. She’d tried to run, and she ended up hurting herself.

What a fucking idiot. What a moron. I’d told her she wouldn’t be able to run, and I’d meant it because I would send an army to find her—but she’d proved me right herself, being unable to climb over the gate. I wanted to strangle her.

And then I wanted to lock her up so she never ran away from me again.

I stormed through the house, walking past Doc’s office. His door was open, and he saw me walk by. I groaned to myself when I heard him get up and call out for me, but I didn’t stop. I had a rogue Scott to talk to. This little mission of mine would probably make his fucking day.

“Markus!” Doc called, chasing after me.

I pushed outside, to the patio. The sunlight was harsh, and I scowled. I scowled even harder when I felt a hand on my arm, and I turned my scowl to the doctor himself. Theo Ward. He was not a Scott, not even close, but we had his loyalty, and that’s all that mattered.

Still, touching me was a little much, wasn’t it? Especially right now, when I felt like I could tear his arms off without even trying.

I must’ve looked like I wanted to kill, for Doc quickly pulled his hand off my arm and took a step back. He did not, however, give up on whatever it was he was trying to get my attention for. I wished he would take the hint and leave me alone, let me do what I had to do.

But we didn’t always get what we wanted in this world, did we?

“What are you planning?” Doc asked, bold, considering he was only the family fucking doctor.

I cocked my head, taking an aggressive step towards him. “And how the fuck is that any of your business, Doc?” My voice came out more like a growl; I sounded like an animal. Like a pissed-off, enraged, furious animal who wanted to tear someone apart.

I felt like I was losing control.

“Juliet—”

The moment he said her name, I didn’t let him finish. I didn’t let him get out anything else, actually. “Juliet is none of your concern,” I told him. “She’s mine, and she needs to be punished for trying to run away. I will not let her indiscretion go unpunished, so don’t tell me that I should. You know me better than that.”

“I do,” Doc admitted, “but I also know Juliet. She’s not like you. She’s not like any of you. She didn’t spend her childhood learning how to torture and kill. She’s just a girl who lived her whole life in a house because her father never let her out.”

My hands curled to fists at my sides. “I’m well aware of where the girl came from, and I don’t see your point.”

“My point is,” Doc paused, staring at me from behind his glasses, “you already traumatized her by showing her that video. If you do more to her you might just break her—”

I grabbed him by the shirt, heaving him closer to me as I hissed out, “Good.” Not saying a single thing more, I shoved him away, turning and resuming my walk to one of Bennet’s favorite hiding places.

Doc didn’t follow me. His point was made, and he knew I would not hesitate to hurt him should he continue to barrage me about it. I left him on the patio as I walked around the pool, stepping into the garden further out.

Past the garden was sprawling acreage. Our estate sat on the outskirts of Midpark, the largest there was. We never made our money in the stock market or by creating patents and owning companies. No, our money had always come from one of the oldest professions in the book, and that wasn’t prostitution.

It was killing.

It took me longer than I wanted to reach the line of trees in the far back. The house looked almost small; that’s how large our property was, and the entire thing was lined with a huge fence and cameras everywhere. Again, you could never be too careful when your dealings were always in blood.

I found Bennet sitting in one of the older trees on the property, laying down, a leg hanging over a branch, his hands folded on his stomach as he either napped or stared up at the branches and leaves above him.

“Bennet!” I called out for him, unable to hide my annoyance. Why was I paying for Hillcrest University when he skipped his classes damn near every day? The fool was so desperate to be a part of the family… but the fool also was exactly that because he didn’t listen.

And when you did what we did, you had to listen. You couldn’t go off on your own. No benders allowed. Bennet wanted to be what Lincoln was to this family, but he was even more unstable than Lincoln himself—and that was saying something.

Bennet was slow to sit up, turning to face me, dangling both legs off the thick branch. His shoulders were hunched beneath the black shirt he wore. His blue eyes, eyes he shared with Lincoln, narrowed when he looked at me. “What the fuck do you want, Markus?” He was never happy to see me, mostly because I was firm in denying him the place in the family he wanted.

“I have a job for you.” My words, though short and sweet, instantly caught his attention, and he heaved himself off the branch, landing hard a few feet in front of me.

He dusted his pants off, eyeing me up suspiciously. “What kind of job?”

“A job you’re going to like,” I said. “I need you to get someone for me. Someone the world won’t miss. I need to make a point, and it’s a point that can only be made with blood.” The more I spoke, the more interested Bennet became.

“Really?” He started to grin. “Anyone at all?”

“Someone the world won’t miss,” I repeated, emphasizing it.

“Right now?”

I nodded, and Bennet said nothing else, pushing past me. I turned to watch him go, and within a few moments, he’d broken out into a run. Oh, Bennet was excited. He probably thought that this was the first step in me allowing him into our inner circle, so to speak, but he would be disappointed.

The reason I sent him was because he was more expendable than most around here, but of course I would never say that aloud. My father would hate the idea of any Scott being expendable, but wasn’t that what some of us were? I had sisters who were too unstable to be of any use, so they were tossed out into the world, sworn to secrecy. Sometimes they self-destructed, but other times they had families.

Take the Fitzpatrick twins, for example. They had inherited the scheming, maniacal minds of the Scotts from their mother, and their mother paid dearly, as did quite a few other people before they left Midpark. I kept eyes on them, watching them, for they were still family… just as I kept watch on Oliver Fitzpatrick, the patriarch of the family, a man who just couldn’t seem to catch a break.

I stood there, in the silence of the trees, for a while. I knew it would take a few hours, at least, for Bennet to find someone. If the boy was smart, he’d go out of Midpark and out of Hillcrest, to some small neighboring city, where the average household income wasn’t so large.

Mostly, I remained there by myself to try to calm down. I would succeed in doing nothing while I was furious. I had to get control of myself. It was just so fucking difficult when all I wanted to do was punish Juliet for daring to run.

You did not run from fate. Once it had you in its grasp, it never let you go, and I was her fate. All these years… everything I’d done, I’d done for her. She thought she knew the whole truth? She was wrong. She was so fucking wrong. I’d gone above and beyond what I normally would’ve done. I let transgressions pass that I would usually nip at the bud.

The things I let her father get away with…

No more. No more. Fred Osborne would either come to heel, or he would never get his daughter back. That was a promise to him, to myself, and to Juliet. Sooner or later she would realize there was no running from this house.

No running from me.

Bennet returned at nightfall, and just by the look of the man he’d brought along, I knew he’d chosen well. Dirty clothes, long, semi-grey, unkempt stubble. A smell of alcohol that meant the man had been drinking for quite a few hours already. Definitely not someone from Midpark, judging him based on his looks.

I had Bennet take him to the basement, told him which block to put him in. It was almost time for another wave of marks, but we weren’t quite there yet, so I had the entire basement to choose from.

Juliet should count herself lucky I was not forcing her into a block, not tying her body to a chair, not taking a knife to her smooth skin and cutting deep. She should thank me for choosing to enact my rage upon someone else.

But she wouldn’t. I knew the girl wouldn’t.

Doc was worried I’d break her, push her past a point of no return, cause her to have a psychotic break or something, and you know what? I didn’t care. She had to know that I would not sit back and let her defiance run free. I was in control here, not her. Never her.

Once it was all set up in the basement, I went to her room, and I found her and Will together. They both sat on her bed, though at least Will sat at the foot of it, rather than beside her. I did not like seeing them together, but in all honesty, I kind of wanted Will to go a little nuts on her. Force her to open her eyes to the realization that no one was good here.

What happened to the good men of the world, you ask? We killed them. We killed them all.

Will met my stare when I walked in, but Juliet didn’t. She refused to look at me, which only caused me to grow angrier. I saw the uneaten food on her nightstand, and I spoke, “A pity. You should’ve eaten, Juliet.”

Well, she probably would throw anything in that stomach up, but still. It would’ve given her body at least some nourishment, because the punishment I had in store for her would not be over tonight. No, it would last, dragging out, and it would only stop when I was satisfied, when she was repentant to me for what she’d done.

She said nothing to me, which was unsurprising, and I stood at her bedside, grabbing the sheets and hauling them off her. Will got up, watching and not saying a single word as I grabbed Juliet by the arm and pulled her to her feet.

So small beside me. So utterly breakable. We’d see how she would handle this. My guess was not too well.

“Where are you taking her?” Will broke his silence.

I shot him a look and said, “We are going to the basement. All of us.” That meant Will would be tagging along too. I needed him, just in case, by some miracle of miracles, she got the better of me and tried to run again.

And he would be the perfect one to hold onto her while I did what I had to do.

Juliet tried to fight me, but she was so weak compared to me. So tiny. It was effortless to pull her along, and she stumbled on her feet to keep up with my quick pace. I took us down the stairs, to the first floor, around the main hall and down another hall that held a keypad and another stairwell behind a locked door.

It was not a stairwell just anyone could waltz into, and it only went one way—and that was down. Down into the pits of hell… also known as the basement of this house.

I held Juliet off to the side, blocking her from seeing the combination with my body. Once the door buzzed open, I pushed her into it, and together, with Will on our heels, we headed into the abyss.

Juliet had to be scared. She had to be, even though she sought not to show it.

I never claimed to be a protector. I was not a knight in shining armor. Kindness, gentleness, compassion… I did not know what these things felt like, nor would I ever. I was not that kind of man, and I never would be. I did not get to where I was today by being weak.

Did I want to hurt her? Yes. Yes, I did, I wanted to hurt Juliet because she dared to run. I wanted to hurt her because I could. Because I had her. I wanted to make her mine in every way—every single fucking way—and those were feelings I’d never had before.

So, no, I was not conflicted about what I was about to do. Whether or not it would break her did not matter. Right now, she’d pissed me off, so she had to deal with the consequences of it, and when it came to me, the consequences were never pretty.

It took us a few minutes to get down to the basement. The stairwell here was narrow; we had a more business entrance on the one side of the property, a garage not attached to the house that went straight down, which was good for when we took in new marks. This one served its purpose well enough.

We emerged into a dimly lit hall, and I heard Juliet whimper. The soft, fragile sound made something in me twist, but still I pulled her along, Will just behind us. “This,” I said, “is all because of you. Because you tried to run. I hope you understand that, Juliet.”

We stopped before a large window, a window that overlooked the small block of a room Bennet had brought our victim to. Juliet saw the man fixed to the chair inside the room, and she immediately started to struggle more, which made me smirk.

“Tell you what,” I said, pulling her inside the room with me. Will remained outside, watching, not saying a single word. No one else was nearby, save for the unconscious man in the chair. “If you do it, I’ll let you walk out of here right now.”

Juliet’s blue eyes turned up at me, fury and fear behind their color. They widened somewhat when I said that, but she did not move those lips to speak.

I tugged her to the side of the room, where a vast array of instruments sat, all shiny and clean, ready to be used. My fingers dug into her arm roughly, and I grabbed a thin knife, clutching its handle hard. Within the next moment, we returned to the man.

“Kill him, and I’ll let you walk out of this house,” I told her. “I won’t stop you, and I won’t send anyone after you. Kill him, and you’ll walk free of me and never see me again.” My words came out harsh, acidic, fueled by anger. “That is what you want, isn’t it? To get out of here? To return to your dear daddy and pretend everything is fine?”

She said nothing, just as I knew she would. Juliet was not a killer, and she never would be, but still, I could not help but toy with her. It was almost too easy, and the psycho in me thought it too fun.

I guess I wasn’t so different from my brothers after all, huh?

“Come on,” I egged her on, “what are you waiting for?” I released my hold on her arm only to take her hand and curl it around the knife’s handle, my hand holding hers to it. She was not strong enough to turn the knife on me, so I wasn’t worried about that. I wasn’t worried about anything, really.

Juliet tried to pull away from me, to get her hand off the knife, but my grip around her palm was steel, much like the knife itself. I brought us closer to the unconscious man, lifting the knife to his neck. His head was held back by a strap around the forehead, his ankles bound in a similar fashion to the chair, along with his wrists. Even if he woke up, he would not escape.

He would only scream.

“Kill him,” I said, holding the knife just inches away from his neck. “Kill him, and I’ll let you walk out of here, Juliet. Isn’t that a tempting offer?” Her back leaned against my front, the girl trying to pull away from the restrained man, but my body held firm. When she was silent, I went on, “No? Really? You’re going to turn this down? Fine, but remember my offer when you start to regret it.”

I pulled us both away from the unconscious man, and I peeled the knife out of her hand. She let it go without a fuss, and with the knife in one hand, I dragged her into the hall, where Will stood.

“Hold onto her,” I ordered. “Make sure she watches.” I threw her at him, and then I went inside the room, prepared to do what I had to do.

To make my point, I’d need to get messy.