Liam.”
As we walked away, I could feel his eyes boring a hole through the back of my skull, but Ciara gripped my arm and -whispered to keep walking
“Most of them are like that,” she said. “As soon as you turn around, they’re bound to start staring at your ass. I’ve spoken to a few of them about it, but at this point, I’m just fucking tired ”
I nodded simply, and we walked to the end of the hall, where I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of Marcus walking towards us.
Time seemed to stop still as I looked at him, and something sharp and painful pierced through my chest at the sight of him. He looked exactly as I remembered, with his hair slicked back and wearing a crisp black suit that
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hugged his arms in just the right way. A tiny bit of my heart melted as I looked at him, knowing all too well that a little part of me still found him attractive, I wanted nothing to do with him, but there was no use denying the fact that he was an attractive man. And the worst part was that be knew it, so he wore his attractiveness like a badge of honour.
As soon as he saw me, a wicked smirk curled onto his lips, and I could have sworn that he stood up straighter. His eyes seemed to glow even brighter, and as he strutted towards me, I swallowed hard and stood my ground. Beside him, a slightly older man in a charcoal grey suit was walking towards us as well, and I guessed that he was Bernard, Marcus’s lawyer.
“Well,” Marcus chuckled as he came to a stop in front of me, “look what the cat dragged in.”
“Mr Reynard, please refrain from speaking to my client outside the courtroom,” Ciara said, stepping between us. “We will do our talking in the courtroom, in the presence of the judge.”
“Oh, feisty,” Marcus said with a smirk. “That’ll make this even more sweet when I destroy the two of you in the courtroom.”
He turned to me with a sadistic grin, and asked in a cold, empty voice, “Did you miss me?”
“Fuck you, Marcus!” I spat.
I saw the vein ticking in his forehead, and the way he looked like he wanted to punch something I knew I was playing with fire, but I didn’t care. At this point, I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. The fire in my veins was dulling out any trace of fear, and I looked him dead in the eye as I squared my shoulders and stared him down.
“I’ll reserve my comments,” he said. “My Jawyer tells me that we will fight our battles in court. But it’s nice to see you again, Liv.”
As both he and his lawyer walked away, I released the breath I’d been holding ever since I saw him. What unsettled me even more than seeing him was the fact that his lawyer hadn’t said a single word since we saw them. He had simply regarded me with a cold, detached look that sent a shiver down my spine. Whatever evil plan he had in mind, I was surely going to face the repercussions in the courtroom.
“They’re just trying to get into your head,” Ciara told me. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. Just cast it out of your mind and focus on what we came to do here today. Understand?”
I nodded absentmindedly, but I knew it was a waste of time, Marcus was already in my head, and I was suddenly feeling jittery as we walked down the hallway. I barely paid attention to my surrounding, even when we stopped outside Room 3 and Clara suggested that I should wait outside. I just sat there and replayed our conversation over and over again in my head, remembering the satisfied grin on Marcus‘ face. No one would confidently smile like that unless they had something up their sleeve. It was the smile of an assured man, who knew that things were going to go his way. Whatever it was that he had in mind, I knew for a fact that it wasn’t going to be good.
Ciara had told me that today’s appearance was just a formality. It was simply to get the ball rolling, especially given the fact that the case was getting so much media attention. Judge Sanders was apparently an old man who didn’t like to let cases drag on for too long. He would want both parties to reach a settlement, and that was exactly. what I was hoping for. The sooner we got this over with, the better.
I stood up and headed back down the hallway, where we’d passed the bathrooms a few minutes ago. I doubled back and headed into the bathroom, where I proceeded to splash some water on my face.
“Alright, get it together, Liv,” I whispered to myself. “You’ve got this.”
I stared at my reflection, and I almost didn’t recognise myself. I looked like I’d aged a hundred years in the last few weeks, and my eyes were sunken in so deep. My clavicles were jutting out prominently, and my hair was at mess. I’d tied it into a neat bun before I left the apartment earlier today, but now it was looking fuzzy and frayed, like I’d stuck my finger in a wall outlet and the hair was standing on end.
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“Great,” I groaned. “Now you look like a freak.”
“Actually, you just look like you’re having a bad day.”
I whirled around in shock to find Marcus leaning against the door, having snuck into the bathroom silently. My heart immediately dropped to the pit of my stomach, and Immediately began to tremble.
“Oh, sweetie,” he chuckled, “why the long face? Shouldn’t you be happy to see your dear husband?”
“Marcus-”
In an instant, he closed the gap between us, and grabbed my shoulders painfully. I wanted to scream, but he’d already dragged me away from the sinks and slammed me against a wall, then he used his hand to cover my mouth.
“Don’t make this so difficult for anyone,” he said coldly. “We both know how this is going to end.”
I was th
trembling from head to toe, and I was so terrified that tears were already pooling in my eyes.
you know what your problem is, Olivia?” he whispered as his free hand came to rest firmly on my waist. “It’s the fact that you believe you’re better than everyone else. I don’t know what it is about you, but you truly believe that you have some sort of moral high ground above everyone else. And what’s worse, you think this makes you smarter than everyone else.”
He pressed his entire body against me, and the heat was so intense that it was suffocating me. I could t think straight, and I couldn’t even look up at him as I desperately tried to push him away.
“Nice work with the camera, by the way” he chuckled. “Emily and I weren’t even aware that it was still functional until you brought it up. And then we had to take some drastic measures to make sure that you didn’t get your hands on the footage. But in the end, it was worth it.”
“Marcus, let me go,” I begged. “Please.”
“Shut the fuck up and listen to me,” he growled. “You’ve lost this battle before it even began, Liv. You’re way too naive, and far too stupid for your own good. I’ve seen ten steps ahead of what you’re going to do, and I should let you know that you’re wasting your time. Everything you think you’re doing now, everything you hope to achieve, all of it is still a part of my plan. You’re still walking along the lines of my strategy, and the funny part is that you don’t even know it.”
I desperately tried to push him away, but he was way too large and way too powerful. His hand crept under my gown and pulled it up, and his other hand muffled my scream as he dipped his fingers into my underwear and slid two fingers inside me. My eyes nearly bulged out of my head as I fought with all my strength against him, but his sadistic laugh remained.
* “I’ve missed this,” he whispered in my ear, his fingers working brazenly as he forced my legs apart. “I’ve missed
this part of our relationship. Maybe that’s what was missing this entire time. Thank you for bringing back the spark.”
It was utterly humiliating, and so demeaning that I couldn’t fight my own tears. I sobbed uncontrollably as I kept trying to push him away from me, but it was to no avail. He was enjoying the torture, the way he was bending me to his will. He loved doing this to me, and his sadistic side was on full display as I whimpered against his hand.
“Oh, but don’t worry,” he said. “This will be over soon. And maybe to celebrate, I’ll take you on a cruise in Hawaii and we can fuck like we used to all those years ago. Wouldn’t you like that?”
He inserted a third finger, and by this time I was starting topanic. My body was betraying me, and even though I was trying to fight it, a wave of emotion was coming over me and I couldn’t breathe. I was a mess, and Marcus was thoroughly enjoying himself.
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But then, quite suddenly, he stepped away from me and let me sink to the floor. My knees buckled underneath me, and I landed with a thud as he turned to the mirror and started to wash his hands, barely paying any attention to
- me.
“I guess I’ll see you in court, my lovely wife,” he said. “I just hope you’ll clean up a bit before you walk in there. Weak as your case may be, you’re not going to stand a change if you walk in looking like that.”
I couldn’t move a single muscle, and I just sat there on the bathroom floor and cried my heart out. I cried as if the tears would somehow remove all my anguish and make me feel whole again. I cried like I’d never cried before, and all through that, Marcus didn’t glance over his shoulder even once. He simply walked out of the bathroom without a backward glance, as though he hadn’t just assaulted me right here.
I’d never felt so helpless in my entire life like I did in that moment. The reality of how easy it was for him to do this to me without any consequences was like a slap to the face, and the knowledge that he would surely get away with it was more painful and heart wrenching than anything else. It wasn’t fair; he didn’t deserve to be this nonchalant about things while I was having a mental breakdown in the bathroom of a courthouse. In what universe was this fair? I felt like a cheap item of clothing that he’d used and thrown away when he didn’t need it anymore, and I didn’t even feel like a human being anymore. I was just an object to him, something to keep him amused until he grew bored of me.
And in that moment, I just wished that I would die and be done with all of this.
Chapter Fifteen
