Breaking (Fall or Break #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand off his dick. He kept his eyes closed but resistance was futile. Mrs. I’m-not-going-to-take-no-for-an-answer would do what she had been contracted to do regardless of whether he wanted it or not. The irony that he was paying her to harass him wasn’t lost on Conrad. She didn’t yet know it, but this would be her last day. He’d had enough. He just wanted to be left alone to stew in his misery.
    The door creaked as it opened.
    “Good morning, Mr. Black. It’s another lovely day.”
    Her voice aggravated him. The fact that it was a lovely day aggravated him. He kept his eyes closed. Maybe she’d think he was dead and leave him in peace.
    “Sit up for your breakfast. There’s a good boy.”
    I don’t want any breakfast. I’ve never been a good boy. And I’m fucking thirty-six not six. It was only because he’d made the previous housekeeper cry that he kept those thoughts in his head.
    “You need to keep your strength up.”
    Why? What do I have to look forward to apart from battering you to death?
    “The physiotherapist will be here in half an hour.”
    Oh joy. Conrad was also paying to be tortured by a succession of brutes who in their former lives must have trained the Gestapo.
    “Up you get,” the woman said. “No use pretending to be asleep.”
    Why not? While he lay in bed with his eyes closed he could imagine his life wasn’t shit.
    Actually, he couldn’t.
    “I wasn’t pretending,” he muttered. “I was coming around slowly.” To another relentlessly boring, fucking predictable day. To think he’d thought being here would be better than the convalescent home he’d been advised to go to.
    “Sit up and have your breakfast.”
    Conrad opened his eyes hoping beyond hope this was some vile dream and he was not where he knew he was. But no, the mistress of hell, a red-haired fifty-year-old in a pink flowered dress and yellow apron emblazoned with a smiley face had flung back the curtains to let the sun pour in, and now the treadmill and exercise bike stood taunting him. She bustled around picking up his clothes from where he’d let them fall the night before, tsking as she gathered up everything he’d dropped and ignored because they were too much trouble to retrieve.
    “Need a hand sitting up?” she asked.
    “No,” he snapped.
    He reached for the strap on the hoist hanging over the bed and after taking a deep breath hauled himself into a sitting position. Pain flashed down his spine, slithered around his hips and tightened like a boa constrictor before shooting down his legs. He gritted his teeth. Jesus. If another fucking doctor told him feeling pain was good, he’d butt them in the head and show them it wasn’t.
    Whatever-her-name-was plumped up the pillows behind him and he eased back against them.
    “Thank you,” he said dutifully but with no small amount of resentment.
    “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
    Sitting up or saying thank you? Both were equally difficult. She rolled the tray holding his breakfast in front of him. He had little appetite but he swallowed a few mouthfuls of muesli and half a banana because he knew she’d nag if he didn’t and the less she said to him the better. The sooner she left, the better.
    “Shall I get you your tablets?”
    “No.”
    “You ought to take them with your breakfast.”
    Since when have you been my doctor?
    “I don’t need them this morning.” Which was a lie.
    She tsked some more, left the room to do whatever it was she did to put his place back to rights, and he heaved a sigh of relief.
    When he’d asked to interview candidates for the position of bully aka part-time cleaner and cook, the owner of the agency said all her employees were warm and chatty personable individuals. Conrad hadn’t wanted warm, chatty or personable. He’d wanted silent, morose and efficient, but apparently WE DO 4 U were all out of those. He’d now tried five of them and they’d all driven him crazy in different ways.
    He’d rather manage without