Seduced by the Vampire Billionaire - Book 1

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Tiffany came out of her sleep slowly, feeling as if her head was stuffed with cotton. Her mouth was dry; there was a dull, throbbing pain in her leg, in her shoulder, in her side.

Flashes of the night before came back to her.

“Don’t make me hit you again, bitch.”

“I don’t think it’s the best advice to bring her into the car.”

“I know you’ve no reason to trust anyone right now, but please believe I have no intention of harming you.”

The voices were accompanied by fleeting images; the sight of Ralph, looming over her, something in his hand that came down against her ribs with a thud and a crack, sending a shock and flash of hot and cold pain shooting through her body. The limousine screeching to a stop before she fell unconscious. A man, pale in the light of the street lamp, his dark hair swept back from his face. The same man next to her, his voice quiet—a faint accent she couldn’t trace, a gentle touch along her wrist. His eyes had been dark too, his skin almost like pearls in the dim light. His voice had been like cold water against her skin, blue and green all at once.

Tiffany opened her eyes; she looked around, feeling a new flash of low panic. She remembered telling someone about Ralph, but the specifics eluded her—she didn’t know whether she had mentioned her husband by name, or even herself. Ralph would be looking for her. He was smart enough to know she would have gone to a hospital if she could have. He might not know how she ended up in a hospital—Tiffany wasn’t entirely sure she knew what had happened herself. But he would be calling around, looking for her. He might have found her already; even a city as large as New York only had so many hospitals. She knew from experience just how he would play it. He would call around, pretending to be a deeply concerned husband, telling everyone he asked that they’d gotten into an argument and she’d stormed off, he had no idea where she had gone, he was so worried about his beloved wife. And when he found her, he’d keep up the pretense—at least until she was allowed to leave.

But when he got her home, it would start up all over again. He’d wait until she was recovered enough to move around, but all the time he’d be simmering in anger, waiting to pounce on her. She could hear his hissing voice in her mind. “What did you tell them? What did you say? Bitch, you better have told them you didn’t see who did this to you.” It would start with just a few punches. After a hospital visit, Ralph was more careful—bruises, sure, but only where they weren’t easily seen. But eventually his rage would get the better of him, and he’d knock her down the stairs in the middle of a shouting match, or push her into the wall, sending her tumbling down onto her ass, or her knees.

Tiffany was terrified of Ralph finding her. She looked around the room; the pain had subsided enough that she could get out of there. As long as she kept moving, she thought, he might not find her. She knew that there were resources for women like her, but she had never really given herself enough time to find out what they were—where they were. She spotted a small rectangle of paper on the table next to her bed and reached out for it. Daniel Lawrence, CEO Fisher Industrial, it read, with an address below it.

Tiffany tried to take stock of her situation. There was an IV in her arm; she was in a papery hospital gown, but her clothes were clean and folded on the chair nearby. Tiffany looked longingly at the IV for a few moments, thinking that it would be nice indeed to be able to trust that she could spend as much time recovering as she needed. But the longer she stayed, the greater the chance that Ralph would find her. She gritted her teeth and reached down, peeling the medical tape that held the IV in place off of her skin and then carefully extracting the needle. She sat up awkwardly, feeling the throb of her multiple injuries. At least, she thought, she was recovered enough that she could possibly argue her way out of the hospital.