"Magnus, I'm not going to let you leave this room until you agree to either speak with me or someone else about this entire situation."
She just stared blankly at him; she couldn't talk to him. He was her employee, true she had hired him for his psychological training to help with the behavioral issues of abnormals, but she hadn't ever intended to utilize him herself. Yet, honestly, where else was supposed to turn. Normally she would have talked to James about this—he had known everything about what had happened. But James was dead.
Will watched her carefully, and picked up on the sad thoughts running through her mind, the depression that flitted through her eyes and he undoubtedly knew she was thinking of her closest friend. "We don't have to talk about this tonight, but it does need to happen. I really do not want to have to invoke Article 9 again because of your refusal to emotionally and mentally take care of yourself."
She nodded curtly in agreement and clenched her fists together tightly. Taking a deep breath, she decided she might as well get this over with now and tell him something to keep him entertained for a while and she would be allowed to escape back into work and ignore the issue once again. "John wasn't always a violent man, William, you must understand this." She lowered her eyes to her legs, letting them become unfocused and glide into memory.
It was the first night she truly understood how violent he could be. She and James had been working late the previous evening and John had waited impatiently for her in her bedroom. He had said nothing at that point, only made passionate love to her until the wee hours of the morning. The following evening her father was hosting a dinner with a few fellow doctors and patrons who might support his nightly work. John and James had been invited as well as Nigel: Nikola had been left out due to his inability to hold his tongue. The conversation had been traveling on well until the subject of chemistry came up and a particular chemical equation that some of the good doctors were having issue with.
Helen had interjected with an idea, even though she knew the answer was incorrect, but it did change the parameters surrounding the current method of thought. John had interjected in the middle of her explanation, "Helen, my love, you almost failed chemistry each semester we took the class. Had you not cheated off poor Nikola then you would not have passed. Leave this talk to the gentlemen."
Her cheeks had turned bright red and her heart beat furiously. The man and his audacity, how dare he insult her in her father's home? His voice had been so placating and demeaning there was nothing she could do. Helen sat silently until everyone had left, playing the doting hostess and mistress of the home and, unfortunately, doing exactly what John wanted her to do, which was for her to play the woman.
He had found her in the hallway later that night after she had slammed a few doors and ripped the pins out of her hair in anger. She was on her way to find a cup of tea that might soother her as she was in no mood to deal with his antics. He shoved her against the corridor wall with only fingers wrapped around her neck. "Helen, my love, have I not told you to hold your tongue in front of company?"
He wasn't squeezing hard enough that she could breathe, yet, but with her pale demeanor she would not doubt be wearing high collared dresses for weeks. "John, stop it, you're hurting me." That only seemed to have the opposite reaction she was looking for. Instead, the gleam in his eye only gave her an instant of warning before his fist pummeled into her ribs. Helen keeled over in pain and he ripped her head back by her hair. He took his other hand and ripped the top portion of her dress down to reveal her breasts covered only in a corset. John licked his lips and bared his teeth before bending down and biting hard enough to draw blood from the plush mound he found now exposed.
Magnus cried out in pain and Will covered her hands with his, creating a contact to bring her back into his world: the current world and beyond the ones of her thoughts. "Magnus…" he waited patiently until he knew she was back with him. "Where did you go just then?"
The tears were now uncontrollably streaming down her cheeks. "London."
"I always wondered why you didn't visit there more often."
