Staking Her Claim...: Book 1 in the Patricks' Brothers series by Natasha Thomas Page B
Authors: Natasha Thomas
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the Dallas city limits.
I didn’t much care where I lived as long as the house was clean, there was enough food to eat, and the people were decent. It’s not a lot to ask for, but more than I usually got.
The Fitzsimmons couldn’t have kids, or that’s the story they fed the department anyway. The truth of the matter was; the woman was vain enough to openly admit she wouldn’t allow a child to ‘destroy’ her body, and the man didn’t want to deal with the ‘interference’ to his lifestyle that having a pregnant wife and baby would cause.
Yeah, they were assholes of the highest order. And that’s not overstating it. Within days of being placed with them, they said as much, to my face. Not that I cared, it wasn’t like they were my real parents or anything so I shrugged it off and filed it away in case it was something I could use against them later. I was good at that. Stockpiling blackmail information that is.
From the outside looking in, I’d have to agree that their outward appearances made them look like the perfect couple. That’s what they were hoping to achieve after all. A façade reliable enough to hide the atrocities they committed behind closed doors.
Raquel was a stunning woman with long dark hair that was always meticulously styled, never a strand out of place. For all intents and purposes, she’d be described as slim, but with subtle curves in all the right places. A woman with satin soft skin, perfect porcelain in color. She dressed in all the latest fashions or so she claimed, and she spared no expense making sure she kept up with the Joneses. But the one feature of hers that still to this day haunts me the most are her eyes.
For the life of me, I will never in this lifetime forget her eyes. Dark, soulless orbs capable of witnessing unspeakable torture. Fuck, her eyes are the thing that still wake me from my daily nightmares.
Her eyes were so expressive that you could tell her mood and the depth her depravity would stoop to each day. What I never understood was how a woman so beautiful on the outside could be so rotten on the inside. How could a woman with such small, dainty hands inflict the kinds of horror she could in the blink of an eye? All questions that will remain forever unanswered, but that’s probably for the best seeing as the world is finally free of the cruelty she possessed.
Phillipe, her husband, wasn’t much better than his wife if anything he was worse. Much worse. As a photographer by trade, he was surrounded by beauty day in and day out.
His expectations stretched to include his wife too. And it wasn’t uncommon for him to slap her around a little if she didn’t meet his standard of perfection. Not that he’d ever tell her what that was, she was just expected to know. Their issues weren’t my problem, though, and, for the most part, I was glad when he took his anger out on her. That signaled I would be in the clear for a while.
How the world viewed, Phillipe was what he traded on. That and his name. A name he told me he’d spent years making a household brand. There were times I wanted to inform him that he couldn’t be all that successful seeing as though I’d never heard of him. But I thought better of it, ending up keeping it to myself. I won’t lie, it did make me laugh how full of himself Phillipe was. I’d never met a man with an ego the size of his.
Phillipe often lectured me, telling me that his business was perfection. The world of modeling didn’t tolerate anything less, and he was inclined to believe the same. It didn’t matter if I was sitting around watching TV or eating dinner at the kitchen counter I was relegated to, I was expected to be dressed in a button-down, collared shirt and dress slacks.
I fucking hated dressing like a yuppie hipster, but it was his house, his rules, or so he decreed on a daily basis. There were so many times I’d sized him up and wondered what it would take for
I didn’t much care where I lived as long as the house was clean, there was enough food to eat, and the people were decent. It’s not a lot to ask for, but more than I usually got.
The Fitzsimmons couldn’t have kids, or that’s the story they fed the department anyway. The truth of the matter was; the woman was vain enough to openly admit she wouldn’t allow a child to ‘destroy’ her body, and the man didn’t want to deal with the ‘interference’ to his lifestyle that having a pregnant wife and baby would cause.
Yeah, they were assholes of the highest order. And that’s not overstating it. Within days of being placed with them, they said as much, to my face. Not that I cared, it wasn’t like they were my real parents or anything so I shrugged it off and filed it away in case it was something I could use against them later. I was good at that. Stockpiling blackmail information that is.
From the outside looking in, I’d have to agree that their outward appearances made them look like the perfect couple. That’s what they were hoping to achieve after all. A façade reliable enough to hide the atrocities they committed behind closed doors.
Raquel was a stunning woman with long dark hair that was always meticulously styled, never a strand out of place. For all intents and purposes, she’d be described as slim, but with subtle curves in all the right places. A woman with satin soft skin, perfect porcelain in color. She dressed in all the latest fashions or so she claimed, and she spared no expense making sure she kept up with the Joneses. But the one feature of hers that still to this day haunts me the most are her eyes.
For the life of me, I will never in this lifetime forget her eyes. Dark, soulless orbs capable of witnessing unspeakable torture. Fuck, her eyes are the thing that still wake me from my daily nightmares.
Her eyes were so expressive that you could tell her mood and the depth her depravity would stoop to each day. What I never understood was how a woman so beautiful on the outside could be so rotten on the inside. How could a woman with such small, dainty hands inflict the kinds of horror she could in the blink of an eye? All questions that will remain forever unanswered, but that’s probably for the best seeing as the world is finally free of the cruelty she possessed.
Phillipe, her husband, wasn’t much better than his wife if anything he was worse. Much worse. As a photographer by trade, he was surrounded by beauty day in and day out.
His expectations stretched to include his wife too. And it wasn’t uncommon for him to slap her around a little if she didn’t meet his standard of perfection. Not that he’d ever tell her what that was, she was just expected to know. Their issues weren’t my problem, though, and, for the most part, I was glad when he took his anger out on her. That signaled I would be in the clear for a while.
How the world viewed, Phillipe was what he traded on. That and his name. A name he told me he’d spent years making a household brand. There were times I wanted to inform him that he couldn’t be all that successful seeing as though I’d never heard of him. But I thought better of it, ending up keeping it to myself. I won’t lie, it did make me laugh how full of himself Phillipe was. I’d never met a man with an ego the size of his.
Phillipe often lectured me, telling me that his business was perfection. The world of modeling didn’t tolerate anything less, and he was inclined to believe the same. It didn’t matter if I was sitting around watching TV or eating dinner at the kitchen counter I was relegated to, I was expected to be dressed in a button-down, collared shirt and dress slacks.
I fucking hated dressing like a yuppie hipster, but it was his house, his rules, or so he decreed on a daily basis. There were so many times I’d sized him up and wondered what it would take for
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