by Darcy Rose
Then I become aware of another feeling. Warmth. I’m so warm and… naked?
My eyes blink open, and I take in my surroundings in shock. Last night’s events come crashing down on me like a landslide at the bottom of a mountain.
“Good morning, tiny dancer,” Cash greets, his voice gravely and laced with sleep. His arm is draped over my midsection like it belongs there. To make matters worse, his brother is on my other side, his hand resting on my hip.
I can feel my cheeks burning and know he can see. He probably thinks it’s funny that he made me orgasm last night. What would he think if he knew that was the first time I’d ever let a man touch me that way? Not that I had a choice, not really.
But I wanted it, too. My face burns even hotter. What does that say about me? I didn’t even try to fight him off, him or Kane. I opened my legs wider to give him room to touch me. My body ached for him, for both of them. If they’d stopped, I might’ve cried.
Who am I? A murderer, and now a depraved sex maniac.
That doesn’t make it easier to lie here, exposed and helpless.
“Good morning.” It sounds stupid and weak.
Kane stirs at my other side, and his fingers dig a little deeper into my hip. “I slept like the dead.” His choice of words makes me flinch, and to my surprise, he notices. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. The guy didn’t want to take no for an answer. He got what he deserved.”
Warmth surges in my chest, I want to believe that. So much. It would mean I didn’t do anything so terrible last night.
Cash’s arm tightens around me, but only for a second. Instead of pulling me to him, he gets up. “Come on. I’m starving. I got a phone call last night, and it sorta made me forget dinner.”
I’m hungry, too. He’s not the only one who didn’t eat last night.
Is this even happening? Here I am, scurrying out of bed and hurrying into my clothes. Grateful they didn’t try to do more to me last night. Wondering why they didn’t. Are they waiting for something? What happens when they’re tired of waiting?
Men like them don’t like being denied. But I didn’t want to deny them last night, that’s for sure. It’s all too confusing.
The smell of bacon fills the air by the time I’m finished dressing. My stomach clenches, and my mouth waters. I didn’t expect they’d actually cook. I figured cereal would be as good as it got. I’d be grateful for that.
Instead, Cash is tending bacon in a skillet while Kane beats eggs in a bowl. “We’re not gourmet cooks or anything, but we don’t starve.” Cash tips his head toward the round table behind him. “Sit down. Relax.” Right. Like that’s possible.
What happens next? This has to end, right? Why do I have the feeling they’re lulling me into a false sense of security? The other shoe is going to drop. It has to. What happens to me when it does? If I had half a brain, I’d run out of here.
They’d catch you, stupid. Yes, but I could at least try instead of letting them lead me around, telling me the way things are going to be. I could at least try to fight my way out.
Right, and they could turn me over to the cops. Been there, done that, no thank you.
By the time Kane slides a plate of food my way, I know there’s no use. I have to eat, anyway. Once there’s food in my stomach, and I can think clearly, I’ll try to come up with a way out of the trap I got myself into.
We’re halfway through our food, nobody talking much, when the front door opens. My heart is in my throat as I turn halfway around in my chair. It’s the other brother, the one who also came when I called.
He looks like them, all right… but something’s different. The hardness in his eyes is enough to make my skin crawl. I want to hide from him for some reason.
His voice is cold when he speaks, staring at me while leaning against the counter near the stove. “I cleaned up her mess.” He takes an extra slice of bacon still resting on a paper towel and munches it, still eyeing me.
“The body?” Kane asks.
“Nobody will ever find it. Believe me.”
They’re so damn casual about the entire thing. It’s like they’re discussing the weather or something instead of a man’s life. Not much of a man, but still. He’s dead, and they don’t care.
No. They do care. They care enough to clean up what I did. I can’t shake the dread this stirs up in me. They’re going to want something in return. Nobody goes that far without wanting something for their trouble.
Whoever this brother of theirs is—Myles, if I remember correctly—he doesn’t like me. I can’t say I like him very much, either, even if he did me a solid by cleaning up after last night’s mess. I don’t even want to know what that meant. Or just why nobody will ever find Matthew’s body.
“See? Everything will be fine.” I wish I felt as confident as Kane sounds.
“He got what he deserved,” Cash reminds me yet again.
“He jumped in front of my car.” I had to say it. “Just in case anybody wants to know. He followed me to work. He must’ve waited for me to leave. And when I did, he pounded on my car and shouted at me. He wanted me to… you know.” Even now, I can’t say it. Not without remembering what it was like, on my knees with his dick and balls in my face. He wasn’t the sort of guy who kept himself neat and tidy, to put it mildly.
My stomach threatens to force breakfast back up. I have to stop remembering.
“You don’t have to explain a thing to us.” Cash nods slowly when our eyes meet, and I find myself believing him.
“He might as well have put a gun in his mouth, the stupid sonofabitch.” Kane actually sounds gleeful. Can that be possible? I get the feeling neither of these men thinks it’s cool to abuse women, but still. There’s a difference between disapproving of or even hating an abusive bastard and almost giggling over their death.
“Either way, we better hope nobody thinks to look too deep into what happened to him.” Myles isn’t laughing. He doesn’t sound like he thinks this was a good thing.
I feel like I need to speak up if only to ease his mind so he won’t hate me even worse. “I don’t think he had a lot of friends. He wasn’t a nice person. I doubt they’ll have any of those stories about him where people cry over all the good things he did.”
“Still, you never know what people are capable of when somebody they know or maybe did business with drops off the radar out of nowhere.” He snaps his fingers. “They start asking questions. If this guy owed money to people, they’ll want it.”
That brings me up short. I want to tell him such a thing isn’t possible but really, how do I know? Matthew clearly wasn’t the most upstanding guy. Would I put it past somebody like him to owe money to shady characters? I mean, how could he afford to waive my fees in the first place?
Now I’m wondering, and there’s a pit in my stomach.
“I’m just saying,” Myles continues, wiping his hands on a dishtowel but always with one eye on me. “We can’t afford more enemies. We better hope this didn’t earn us any.”
He doesn’t have to continue. I get the point.
If they end up with more enemies, it’ll be my fault.
And something tells me they’ll want to be repaid for the trouble.
8
Kane
I can’t stop thinking about her. We dropped her off at work only hours ago, and already I want her back. I want her here with me. With us. It already doesn’t feel right to have her out of the apartment.
What the fuck is happening here? How did my life change overnight? Since when do I obsess over a woman, any woman?
Simple. I met a woman worth obsessing over.
Now, I can’t get her out of my head long enough to do anything. I have to do something. There has to be some way of channeling my constant thoughts of her—the feel of her skin, the sound of her moans, her soft breathing when she sleeps. It finally occurs to me after what feels like hours of pacing my bedroom, and honestly, I would’ve come up with it much sooner than now if I could think clearly
.
I sit down in front of my laptop and start a routine background check. It’s as natural as breathing and something we’ve all become accustomed to doing over the years. In our line of business, there’s no room to take chances on who a person might be and whether they’re dependable.
I doubt someone like Payton would have anything to hide, though. She’s about as pure and sweet and perfect as anybody I’ve ever met—though when I consider it, that’s not saying much. I haven’t met many pure, perfect people. Madison’s different, I’ll admit that, and I can see why my brother fell for her.
There I was, thinking she was the last of her kind. Maybe I was wrong.
Though a little digging into Payton’s background has me second-guessing my second-guessing.
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t even hear my brother come into the room. I was so busy scanning the results for anything worthwhile. “Christ, give a guy warning before you sneak up on him.”
“I wasn’t sneaking. I could’ve been beating on a drum, and you wouldn’t have noticed. Don’t change the subject.” He points over my shoulder toward the screen. “What are you doing?”
“Easing my mind if that’s okay with you.”
He throws his hands into the air, looking murderous. “Why? Why do you have to dig into her life?”
“Because I had to know, okay? Myles made a point. We can’t afford new enemies. We have enough already.” I jerk a thumb toward the laptop and realize my heart’s sinking. I feel sick to my stomach and don’t know why. “And what I’ve found isn’t easing my mind at all, let’s put it that way.”
Some of the anger on his face melts away. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying she might as well have not existed beyond two years ago.” I lean back to give him a better look. “See for yourself. Unless something’s seriously fucked up, she’s a non-entity beyond the past two years.”
“That can’t be right.” He reads, squinting hard as things stop making sense.
“Right or not, that’s how it is. There’s something off about her. Damn it, I should’ve seen it.”
“Hold on, just… just breathe.” He doesn’t want to believe it. That makes two of us. But the evidence is right here.
“I’m breathing fine, thanks.” I elbow him out of the way and try again, but the same results come up. Her driver’s license was issued two years ago, and it’s clean. There’s nothing else. No previous addresses, no parents’ names, no siblings. Nothing about where she went to school or past phone numbers associated with the name. Just… nothing.
Cash is the one pacing now, his fists clenched at his sides. “What’s it mean?” I don’t know if he’s asking me or talking to himself. Maybe both.
“It means she’s hiding something.”
“Come on.” He doesn’t look at me, choosing to stare at the floor. “It doesn’t have to mean that.”
“You know it does.” I stand suddenly, blocking his way. “I don’t want to believe it, either, but the proof is right there. The girl gave us a fake name.”
“She didn’t give it to us. It’s on her license.”
“Fine. She has a fake license in her purse, and you found it. Congratulations.”
He sneers, “Don’t lay this on me, okay? You didn’t put up a fight on bringing her here. And I’m not the one who broke into her apartment. This means as much to you as it does to me, so let’s not play games.”
“Fine. Let’s not.” I fold my arms and face him head-on. “Let’s not try to blame each other, either. We both played a part in this. We can’t waste time bickering over it. What do we do now?”
He shakes his head, brows knitting together. I can feel his worry, his fear, and the beginnings of what I know will turn into an explosion of rage before very long. I know it because I feel the same stirrings deep in my core. Like I’ll kill the fucker who put her in our path.
“Fuck.” He sits on the bed with a thud, bending at the waist, holding his head in his hands. “It’s all so obvious when you look at it from outside. Her running into us, playing the damsel in distress—anybody who knows us would know we’d be suckers for that. And then the phone call. More distress. More need for us. Like we wouldn’t come running.”
When he puts it that way, I feel like the world’s biggest asshole. We walked right into a trap. There’s the rage, burning in my chest, fighting to make its way out of me before I burst into flames. I thought it was tough to think straight before this? It’s almost enough to make me laugh now.
“So this was a set-up.” I look at the laptop, where the past two years of Payton’s life are laid bare. “It makes more sense the longer I think about it. How the fuck does a teacher get a job when she has no past, no references, no education? She must work under her real name.”
“Right. For all we know, somebody set her up with this new name ages ago and have been using her against other families the same way they’re using her against us.”
“But why? That’s what I wanna know. We’re not well-loved, but we’re not in a war right now, either.”
“Who fucking knows? All I know is, she’s not who she pretends she is, and that’s more than enough reason to treat her the way we treat liars.” He looks up at me, and I know this is tearing him apart the way it’s doing to me. But what has to be done has to be done. That’s how we live and the entire reason we’re still alive. We can’t afford to take risks.
And no matter how much we want to believe somebody—no matter how beautiful or defenseless they are—we have to put the family first. If we fucked up and let her get too close, there’s no choice but to put a stop to it now. While there’s still time to undo any damage that might already have been done.
I thought it was agony before now, waiting to see her again? Trying to find ways to fill my time?
Every minute that ticks by might as well be a century. By the time we get in the car, the tension is almost enough to choke on. We don’t say a word on the way to the school. It’s not until we park outside with a chain link fence separating us from the playground and then the building beyond that I turn to him. “What do we do with her?”
His face is a mask of dark rage. “I wish I knew. I don’t have the first idea what to think or what to believe. If she’s who we think she might be—a spy, a plant, somebody dangerous—then we both know what has to happen.”
I nod, though inside, it’s a different story. I can’t quite bring myself to imagine her screaming, bloodied, pushed to the point where she tells us the truth. Everybody has that limit, don’t they? Where they can’t stand the pain anymore, and all that matters is making it stop. A person will tell you anything you want once they reach that place.
Do I have it in me to take her there? Do we have it in us?
Only one way to find out.
9
Payton
I can tell something is off the moment I see Cash and Kane waiting for me in the school parking lot. They are both leaning against the side of the car, arms crossed in front of their chests, eyes dark with a glint of danger.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, my voice sounding just as small as I feel right now.
Instead of answering me, they just stare, neither one giving anything away. Dread pools in the center of my chest, there is a tiny voice in the back of my mind telling me to run, and if I wasn’t sure that they would catch me in a heartbeat, I probably would.
Cash moves first. Opening the backdoor for me, he ushers me inside. When I buckle up, I notice that my hand is not only shaking but sweaty as well. My body goes into full-on panic mode as the doors shut me in and the guys get into the front. Kane pulls out of the parking lot, and the pit in my stomach goes from deep to endless.
I’m not sure why they are upset, only that this can’t be good. A tiny slither of hope dances in front of my eyes as I wonder if they are not mad at me at all. Maybe there is something else bothering them?
I clear my throat. “I did as you said. I told everyone my c
ar was in the shop.”
The hope that was barely in my grasp slips away completely when Kane glances at me through the rearview mirror.
My mouth goes dry, and my pulse picks up. His eyes only briefly connect with mine, but it’s clear that his stare promises one thing… pain.
The rest of the drive is spent in silence as the tension in the cab grows, and my mind spins with a plan to get away. I know the chances are slim, but I need to at least try to get away. Fuck! I knew this was bad. I knew they were dangerous. I knew, and my stupid ass still called them.
Kane stops at the gate in front of the driveway and rolls down his window to punch in the code. Just as the heavy iron gate starts to move, I rip the door open and make a run for it. No matter how futile, I need to at least try.
I push my legs as fast as I can, my feet pounding against the pavement, carrying me down the road back to where the other houses are. I don’t make it twenty feet before someone grabs my arm from behind and pulls me back. I stumble, nearly falling flat on my face.
Another hand grabs me, and I try to shake them off. “Let me go! I wanna go home!” I don’t care how desperate I sound right now. I just want to leave.
“It’s too late for that. You did this to yourself.” Kane’s gruff voice sends a shiver down my spine, but my fear doesn’t peak until he grabs me roughly and throws me over his shoulder.
He doesn’t put me back in the car. Instead, he walks the rest of the way. His fast pace has me bouncing on his shoulder, and I grab a fistful of his shirt in hopes to steady myself.
With Cash right behind us, Kane walks me to the bedroom and drops me unceremoniously onto the bed. I bounce over the mattress like a flat rock over water before scooting all the way up to the headboard.
“Stop trying to get away,” Cash growls. Grabbing my ankle, he pulls me back toward him.