Heart's Ransom

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “You wretched bastard,” Kitty cried out as the gag was removed from her mouth. “What have you done to Rafe?”

  “You would be wise to keep your tongue still and between your teeth, you stinking bitch, or I will cut it out of your skull,” Cristobal seethed, and she felt his hand close fiercely against her jaw, forcing her head back.

  She said no more, her eyes wide, her breath caught in her throat. She had been taken from Isabel’s house, manhandled and hauled like a sack of grain, tossed into the back of a cart and delivered back to the docks, from the sounds and smells of it. Here, Cristobal had ordered her taken aboard a skiff, and they had rowed out to the ship. There had been no more captain’s quarters or comfortable accommodations for Kitty; she had been dragged below deck and tossed into the hold, a narrow circumference of a cell, framed on all sides by heavy iron bars.

  She was terrified, despite her fierce words and defiant façade. Rafe was gone and she was alone now with Cristobal―a man who had no qualms apparently about hurting his own brother. She did not harbor any doubts that he would not hesitate to do the same to her. That he had not raped her yet astonished Kitty.

  She did not know what Cristobal and Isabel had done to Rafe, but it had been cruel. She understood that with certainty. The men who had trussed her hands in her room had delivered her down the stairs of Isabel’s hacienda, and even from the foyer, Kitty had heard the sounds of Rafe’s strangled, agonized cries. By the time she had been shoved to her knees beside his fallen, shuddering form, his cries had been reduced to hurting groans and feeble whimpers. He had sounded fragile, broken by whatever pain they had brought upon him. She did not know if he was alive still, or dead; her heart seized with dismay to even remotely consider the latter.

  “He loves you,” she whimpered at Cristobal, even as his hand crushed even more tightly against her face, hurting her. “How…how could you do this? You are his brother―all he has. He loves you.”

  Cristobal shoved her, ramming the back of her head firmly against the iron bars of her cell. “English witch,” he said, and she felt his frothy, hot saliva spatter against her cheek. “What do you know about anything? Although…” His hand fell heavily against her breast, his fingers squeezing her nipple painfully through the thin fabric of her gown. “I do know something you know about.”

  Isabel had launched herself at Kitty before Cristobal had ordered her taken from the house. She’d screamed at Kitty in a torrent of furious Spanish, raking her nails against Kitty’s face, slapping and punching at her, ripping at her nightgown and tearing at her hair. The flimsy linen shift was now torn, hanging loosely and with her hands bound behind her, Kitty was helpless to try and cover those portions of her form that were vulnerably exposed. She turned her face away as she felt Cristobal’s breath against her. The wet, thick blade of his tongue slid across her cheek and she winced. His hand moved from her breast, groping between her thighs, bunching the gown up as he forked his fingers against her.

  “Do it, you rot,” she hissed, closing her eyes, trembling with bright terror. “Go ahead. What are you waiting for?”

  Cristobal chuckled, his breath and voice falling intimately against her ear. “I have promised you to someone else,” he said, and he pushed her away from him, making her stumble back against the wall. “Someone who is looking very forward to taking his time with you, breaking you slowly, exquisitely.”

  The tone of his voice, the sinister promise in his low, nearly purring tone, made her skin crawl, and she immediately shrank, drawing her arms about herself to try and hide her state of undress. “Rafe’s crew will never follow you!” she gasped, struggling to force some courage into her voice. “They will know what you have done! They will never let you take El Verdad out of port!”

  “El Verdad can rot in port,” Cristobal replied. “We are aboard La Venganza now―my ship, my helm…” She mewled as he seized her hair unexpectedly, wrenching her head back so that he could breathe against her ear. “…my rules, you rotted bitch. My crew would sail with me to hell and back again, if I give the word.”

  He laughed, turning loose of her again and leaving her to shudder, huddled against the wall. She listened to his footsteps, the squall of the cell gate closing as he took his leave. “Rafe Serrano Beltran is dead,” he told her.

  His words hit Kitty as brutally as any physical blow, and she sank to her knees, trembling, her eyes flooding with dismayed tears.

  “And by the time I am finished with you and your father, you will both beg to join him.” She heard Cristobal limp away, leaving her to weep.