The Devastatingly Beautiful Series by M Dauphin

quickly dispensed into a totally empty room. I have to pee. I can’t believe that’s the first thing on my mind, but I’m about to piss myself if I can’t go. My hands are still tied, though, and I don’t see a bathroom anywhere.
    “Brian?!” I yell. I keep yelling until someone opens the door to the cave I’ve been thrown in.
    “I need to pee,” I say, not taking my eyes off of his.
    He curses and grabs my other arm. I’m going to be so bruised after this, asshole! He pulls me down the hallway and dumps me in the bathroom. He cuts the ties around my wrists. As he does so the knife catches my right arm and slices deep. It fucking hurt and I instinctively haul around to punch him. The look in his eyes stops me cold, though. He meant to do it. Of course.
    “Oops,” he deadpans before slamming the door.
    Inside the bathroom, I rinse my arm and wrap it with toilet paper to try to get the bleeding to stop. My adrenaline must be racing because it doesn’t really hurt, but it is so deep it won’t stop bleeding. For what feels like hours, I stand there applying pressure to my arm, trying to get the bleeding to at least slow down. My head starts to swim with everything that’s gone on these last few days. How did I get into this mess? Why can’t things just be normal in my life? I married a man who obviously wasn’t telling the truth about anything, but that was years ago. Lifetimes ago. Why can’t they just leave me be in my small town halfway across the country? Sighing, I change the toilet paper wrapped around my arm, tossing the blood soaked piece in the trash. After relieving myself, I open the door to a very menacing looking man. Re-tying my hands behind my back, the zip ties cut into my skin. Asshole. He shoves me to walk, but we don’t walk back to the cave. He takes me past it and into another room. Unsurprisingly Brian is waiting for me with a drink in one hand and the other on the table, waiting for me I assume.
    “Molly,” he states, like this is a normal meeting. “We need to have a little chat.”
    “I don’t have any words for you, Brian. Or is that really your name?” I’m not playing his games.
    “You can call me Brian if you wish. People around here call me ‘boss man’ though. See, I’ve got a lot of people looking after things.”
    I glare at him, waiting. He is so full of himself. What happened to the man I married?
    “You need to tell me where the money is, Molly.”
    “Fuck you.”
    “Going to be difficult, huh? I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case, but as you wish.”
    He nods and a man comes out of the corner. He is currently wielding a pair of scissors, but I know there has to be more. This is it. It’s my death by torture for unknowingly being married to an evil man. He walks over and cuts the ties around my wrist. Instinct kicks in. I can’t die. I have to find Tatum and tell him how I feel. I start throwing punches and kicks, trying to stop the man from doing his job. It’s a useless battle, however, as he had a weapon and was easily 50 pounds heavier than I. He stabs my left arm in his attempt to grab my flailing body parts. Dammit that hurt! Wincing from the pain gave him just enough time to grab my arms with one hand and hold a knife to my throat. When the hell did he get that?
    “Why, Brian? Why are you doing this? Why did you do what you did? I don’t understand any of this!” I scream. I’m becoming hysterical and don’t care. I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about, or why he’s still alive, or why my baby had to die, but he got to live.
    “If he releases you, will you behave?” The low growl that comes out of him silences my panic. He’s pissed.
    I nod.
    Brian tells the man to let me go and waves me over to the chair. I really want to take a drink from the glass that was waiting for me, but I don’t trust him. He notices my hesitation and grabs the glass, taking a sip and swallowing, showing me it’s just plain water.
    “I guess you do