“You mean my grandmother.” He drew back to hit her again and she stood up. One thing she’d learned that day…he hated that she was taller than him. “You touch me again, and so help me I will take you down.”
It didn’t matter what she said. He hit her again, over and over until she could no longer see straight. But she’d gotten in a few licks of her own…a kick to the groin, a chair over his head. She might have even gotten away from him had her father not chosen that moment to come and check on them. His hit had knocked her out.
Two days later it was in the paper that she was to wed Joel Delaney, and no amount of talking to the paper to get them to retract it or begging her parents would change any of that. She was fucked. And the fact that her grandmother was out of the country at the time this all was arranged had not helped her one bit. Three days before her birthday, her grandmother had returned, and with her, a hell like no other had ever seen.
“You love him?” Addie told her not only did she not love him, but that she loathed him, and her grandmother had nodded. “I’ve talked to your father. A stupider man I’ve never known. He won’t budge either. And I told my daughter that I was done with her too. You know what she said to me? ‘One gets used to it after a while.’ She’s as dumb as he is, I think.” Addie laughed, but it was short lived as well when she realized she had nowhere to turn.
“I won’t marry him.” Grandmother nodded. “I mean…I just won’t. He told me that I’d never see you again either, even if he had to have you committed and then killed to keep us apart.”
“We’ll see about that. I’ve been around a good deal longer than that little pisser, and I plan to be around a good deal longer.” Her grandmother put her hand on Addie’s chin. “Did he do this?”
“Yes.” Grandmother nodded but didn’t say any more. “He’s going to do it again if he finds out that I’m here. And you should see the guards that he has on me when I go out. May has been fired too. I’ve known her my entire life, and now he has this woman that he’s picked out to take care of my needs. I don’t have any needs that she can take care of…she wants to dress and undress me. Fuck that crap.”
“He is old school for such a young millionaire. And a moron.” Grandmother dismissed the woman in the corner of the room with them. She didn’t want to go, but Grandmother got what she wanted even if she had to use force. Bentley, her best friend and butler, had forced the woman out of the room bodily when she wouldn’t go. “This will cost you too, I would imagine. So you have to think quickly and move on it. But don’t tell me. I don’t…when you go, just call me to tell me you’re gone so I know that no one murdered you.”
When she handed her a card with a number on the back, Addie had had a feeling it was going to help her. Her grandmother had kissed her on the cheek and held her just a little longer than she normally would have before telling her how much she loved her. Addie had a feeling that her grandmother knew that her days within this house were numbered too.
Going to the bank the morning of her birthday had been difficult, and she might not have been able to pull it off had the clerk in the wedding shop not been on her grandmother’s payroll. As soon as she was put into a room to try on the dress that Joel had picked out for her to wed him in, Addie was shown to the back of the place, where a cab was waiting for her. When Addie asked the woman if she’d be all right, she told her that she was going to be if Addie got away. Smiling, she handed Addie a letter from her grandmother and told her to go to the bank. It was arranged there too.
The sound of screaming had Addie going to her little window that looked out over the yard. The barn wasn’t as bad as she’d first thought, and it afforded her a perfect view of the yard and front door to the house.
Addie had been living in the house until a few days ago when a couple of men had shown up. They were talking about bringing back some equipment and some ghost hunting items to the house. Addie still found it hard to believe that anyone would be stupid enough to think that dead people wandered around like they showed you in the movies.
The man stumbling out of the house covered in blood made her glad that she’d moved to the barn as soon as the men had left the first time, and not waited to see if they’d return. Addie stared at the macabre scene below her in a kind of horrific stupor.