have been told that as soon as your lawyers manage to
open your wayward daughter’s trust they will be paid back for all of their
missing items. Which, by the way, were never sold by Meghan and I can prove
that as I bought some of the items and have the name of the man who sold them,
at your behest.”
Meghan stared up at him. She had kept
every single thing she had ever stolen, and had told her father where she had
hidden them. She had been confused by the legal jargon and terribly frightened.
She had honestly believed that once she had given everything back it was going
to be okay. She had had no idea that she had even had a trust fund, she could
not fathom what Danny was saying but the effect of his words was obvious on her
family.
Her father had gone pale and her mother
had stepped back, her eyes darting through the crowd that was gathered there in
her home. “Get out of my house!” she said in a hard whisper, ‘And take that
little tramp with you!”
“I am going,” Danny said softly, “But
know this; I am going to bring you down. I am going to make sure that you know
exactly what it is like to be out on the street and broke. I am going to make
sure it is your turn to suffer.”
“She is not worth it,” Gloria snarled,
her teeth rising up to reveal her beautiful little white teeth.
“Who says I am doing it for her?” Danny
asked cruelly. “I have all of your assets and shareholders in my pocket. I have
enough evidence to have you convicted on several crimes, not the least of which
is stealing your daughter’s money, money left to her by her grandmother. Trust
me, I am going to enjoy making you suffer.”
Meghan could not breathe. Tears stood out
in her eyes and she managed to whisper, “You took my money?” before she was
being propelled back down the hall and into the cool night air.
Danny put her in the limo and gave his
driver the order to drive away before he spoke to her.
“You belong to me. Do you understand? You
belong to me. That means you will be loyal, you will obey and you will serve.
In return I will protect you. I keep what is mine, and I keep it safe. You are
safe with me.”
Tears soaked her face and she looked out
the window at the shrubbery that marked the boundary of the property that she
had grown up on, for some reason those well clipped hedges made her think of
the fence that had surrounded the jail.
“I have something for you.”
Meghan blinked at the solid silver cuffs
that Danny dangled in front of her face, “Will you take these? Will you agree
to be mine?”
“Yes,” she whispered and held out her
slender arms.
The right cuff locked down, then the
left. There was no chain between the two; to a casual observer the twin cuffs
would have looked like a very lovely set of bracelets, but for the tiny little
locks that hung on the underside of her wrists.
It was strange but she had the
unassailable feeling that he had somehow managed to free her by taking her
prisoner.
~ * ~ * ~
Danny watched the night sliding past the
windows but his thoughts were far away. He had known that Meghan’s parents had
not cared about her, and that her burglaries had provided them with an easy way
to excise her from their lives so that they could legally take the trust set up
for her. The trust had been ironclad; it could only be opened if Meghan herself
caused a financial burden of catastrophic proportions. Her grandmother had
seemed determined to protect her, though why she had felt that need was still
something of a mystery to him.
He had studied the Lowry’s ever since he
had been a kid. He knew everything about them. Just reading through her files
had given him a strong sense of kinship with Meghan and knowing her personally
had made him feel that bond again. He had been unloved and disregarded as well,
and while he knew she had suffered in that manner he had not expected the
almost palpable amount of hatred her family held for her. He had not known that
their resentment
Eric J. Guignard (Editor)