Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
She was pushing buttons I didn’t know I had.
My fist tightened at my side as I tried to get a grip on my anger.
“He’ll find me.” Her voice quavered, as if she wasn’t sure anymore.
“Oh, I’m sure he will eventually. But will it be in time? What bad things can happen to you before he does? Will there be anything left of you to find?”
When she broke eye contact, I knew I had won.
Why didn’t that make me feel better?
“Now get in the kitchen and make dinner. I have cameras all over this house, and the doors and windows all have alarms. I will know the second you try to escape, and will drag you back by your hair, then chain you naked to the bed. Do you understand?”
She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t even look at me until I grabbed her face by her jaw and made her.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know how to cook?”
At her age she should, but clearly, without a mother in the house, Lucian Manwarring, Sr. had failed to teach his daughters anything of use.
“Of course I can cook.” She kept her gaze trained on the floor.
“I expect dinner properly plated and on the table in an hour.”
CHAPTER 10
OLIVIA
Marksen left me standing in the living room in a huff.
For a second, I thought I’d gone too far when I mentioned his mother leaving him, but he’d gone the mother route first.
A line from an old Disney movie came to mind.
A lady never starts fights, but she can finish them.
Even if she did finish the fight, a lady would have never said what I did.
Should I have said that? It was harsh, and I may have hurt his feelings. But why should I care about his feelings when he clearly had no regard for mine.
If he wanted a lady, he should have treated me like one. A gentleman wouldn’t talk to me the way he had. They would never have insinuated the things he did. And they never would have flipped a lady onto their lap, lifted her skirt, and spanked her.
Not to mention, a gentleman would have never kidnapped me in the first place.
I was a lady, and I would demand to be treated as such.
Then again, in our world, a lady would have never started her own business. A lady would not have been turned on by his manhandling, and a lady would have admitted she had no idea how to cook, let alone properly plate things.
That last part wasn’t true. A lady would know how to cook. Maybe not a five-course, Michelin-star meal, but she would at least know the basics so she could direct her hired cook in menu planning. It would be an expected part of her duties in running a large household. I assumed they would also know what having a meal properly plated meant. I was clearly not a lady. No matter how hard my teachers at my all-girls’ academy worked to turn me into a well-behaved societal bride, it just didn’t take.
I didn’t get my mother’s grace or good manners.
I got the Manwarring fire.
I got the need to control my own empire and an attitude that told me there was nothing in this or any world that I couldn’t do. That, apparently, included cooking a meal for my kidnapper.
It couldn’t be that hard though, right?
Even children could cook for themselves. I had never before wished I had taken my home economics class more seriously. Maybe my journalism degree wasn’t as smart as I had originally thought. Of course, at the time, I hadn’t factored getting kidnapped into my future career’s skillset plans.
I considered going to find Marksen and admitting I had no idea how to cook.
Maybe he could order something…unless he’d taken me so far from civilization that ordering something wasn’t an option.
What would he do to me when he found out I really was useless?
Or worse, what would happen if I fed him something and he got food poisoning and died?
Would a judge still consider it self-defense? Probably not.
Though I was sure the family lawyer could spin it in some way where I only got probation. The headlines would do more harm than anything else. I may have been a wealthy, privileged woman, but I was still a woman, and the double standards would end me.
My brother could kill someone on purpose, in self-defense. He would be a hero and the headlines would say that. If I accidentally killed Marksen with E. coli or salmonella, the headlines would be salacious.
Evil Manwarring whore murders man after she seduces him.
DuBois Prince attempts to woo a drunken heiress and she murders him.
Manwarring slut drinks too much at a party and kills a man willing to give her the attention she was clearly asking for.
As a woman in journalism I was working tirelessly with my magazine to even the playing field, but I hadn’t made enough changes in the never-ending boys club for this not to take me down.