by Tijan
Though, for a prison, it was a nice one.
It was an entire apartment, really. Sleek and modern with black countertops in the kitchen and a dark oak dining table. The couches in the living room were black leather, sitting on a white rug, in front of a television that looked more like a small movie screen. The bathroom had an oval drop-in sink of black glass, with the same hints of gold from the entrance. A chandelier hung high over the kitchen table.
A doorway led into a room past the living room, and I could see the corner of a bed there. A sheepskin had been laid across the edge, creating a scene that could’ve been photographed for an interior design magazine.
Two of my guards stood to the side of the door, and the other two positioned themselves outside.
I didn’t ask questions, and none of them said anything.
I felt it in my bones: I was waiting for Kai Bennett.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to find an escape route from the apartment. But I still looked around to get my bearings.
Inside the bedroom was a king-sized bed, and a wrap-around deck beyond two sliding glass doors. As I stepped out onto it, my heart sank.
There was nothing for me to climb onto if I wanted to make my way down. The fall could’ve fit a thirty-eight-floor hotel, and I could see rocky terrain at the bottom. It was a rock-climber’s dream, or challenge, but not mine.
“Gonna jump?”
I jerked, my hands clenching the railing as his smooth voice slid down my spine. It awakened all my nerve endings, and I gritted my teeth, hating how I reacted to him. Those were the first two words he’d spoken to me in fourteen years, making four in total now.
I didn’t know this guy. Why did I react to him this way?
Turning around, I found Kai standing just inside the bedroom doorway, his head cocked to the side as if he found me a puzzle.
I’d seen it before, but his presence was like a punch to my sternum. He’d been devastatingly handsome at sixteen and he was even more so now, and that set my teeth on edge.
Dressed in a business suit, the shirt unbuttoned and the ends pulled loose from his pants, he had bare feet. He looked as if this trip to see me was the last thing he had to do before relaxing completely, as if I were an afterthought.
Then he shrugged off his suit jacket and shirt, catching the collars of both and tossing them on the bed. He turned to the closet behind him, which opened to showcase an array of men’s clothes.
My mouth dried.
This was his bedroom.
Was it?
I glanced to a second closet, wondering if I’d find women’s clothes in there or more of his.
He brought out a T-shirt and pulled it on. It molded to him, revealing broad shoulders and a lean waist that had been trimmed down to a core of solid muscle.
His hands dropped to his belt buckle, and I pulled my gaze away and turned around.
Reaching out to steady myself on the railing, I heard his pants drop to the ground. My fingers clutched the steel railing, my nails digging into it.
“So are you?”
I hadn’t heard him move, but his voice was closer. I turned again to find him fully clothed, wearing a pair of dark gray sweatpants that molded to his bottom half the way his shirt did to the top.
He motioned to me. “Come on. I’m tired, and I don’t want to have this talk worrying my little sister’s dear friend might jump to her death.” He snorted to himself. “She’d really be furious with me then.”
There was a twinge in his voice. Exhaustion? I heard it now. I followed him, at a reluctant pace, as he went to the bedroom’s far wall and pushed a button.
Two doors slid open, revealing an entire bar built into the wall. As he poured a glass of bourbon, I saw the slope in his shoulders. There were bags under his eyes, and a tired softness around the corners of his mouth.
I really was an afterthought for him. He’d been somewhere else, doing something else, and whatever it had been had tired him out.
The power and charisma he exuded was still there; it was just slightly diminished. Slightly.
He was dangerous. I felt zapped by his energy, and as I moved into the main room with him, that zap just grew. He sucked the air out of wherever he was—so much that my insides started to feel his same exhaustion.
“Are you going to speak, or do I need to test your vocal chords a different way?” he asked, swinging his heated eyes my way. His nostrils flared as his hand tightened on his glass. “Hmm?”
Make them underestimate you.
My Hider training kicked in, and I lowered my gaze.
I didn’t like the storm inside of me. I was all over the place—feeling enraged, then heated, then other things, but rounding back to hate. I needed him to view me as submissive, timid, so even though my neck tightened so much I could barely move, I forced myself to look at the ground.
The goddamn ground.
This guy—he didn’t deserve having me look down before him.
I knew he’d had thousands killed for the Bennett family. He’d murdered his older brother. And Brooke had never said anything, but I didn’t believe for a millisecond that their father had died in his sleep. Kai had killed him too.
He was a murderer, and he was behind so many girls being trafficked, behind millions of dollars of drugs moving through his territories—he didn’t deserve anything from me.
He deserved to be killed. And if he was the reason for Brooke’s disappearance, I was going to be the one to do it.
I would cut him from dick to throat, in that direction too.
He snorted again, this time with a twinge of genuine amusement. “Don’t kid yourself, and don’t insult me, Riley Bello. You don’t have a timid bone in your body. If you did…”
He started for me, and I couldn’t help myself. I raised my head, and I couldn’t look away.
“You wouldn’t be a Hider for the 411 Network,” he finished softly.
My worst nightmare.
He droned on, sounding almost bored, “You were recruited into their network when your father murdered your mother. Six months after I pulled Brooke from Hillcrest, they told you your mother was missing, but you knew. You knew what happened to her when you went home the next day.”
I was frozen.
“You went to her funeral. You sat beside your father, but you knew the whole time he’d killed her, because that’s what he did. He hurt her. It’s why you were sent away, so he wouldn’t hurt you too. Am I correct?”
I felt sick.
“Their recruiter agents approached you when you were shopping. It was the day after you’d buried your mother in an empty casket. You were at the mall with two of your friends, or two girls your father had deemed appropriate for you. You didn’t even know them, but they were daughters of his colleagues, and you didn’t like them. Am I correct?”
I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t stop listening. I couldn’t do anything as he stripped my world right in front of me.
He knew everything.
How did he—Brooke. Brooke must’ve told him.
He tossed back the rest of his drink. “That was the day you decided to leave, not because he killed your mother, and not because you knew you’d be next, but because they told you the real truth.” His eyes flashed at me, an unnamed emotion there. “Your mother was still alive.”
I couldn’t even swallow.
“How—” I managed to say. “How do you know this?”
“I’m not done, little girl.” A glint of cruelty gleamed at me from his eyes. “Your father did beat your mother,” he sneered. “He did believe he’d killed her. He did order her body to be disposed of, but it was a 411 agent he sent to do it. He believes your mother was thrown to the bottom of a cliff and her body swept out to sea, when instead, she was hidden by the 411 Network. And when they asked you to join them that day in the mall, you said yes so fast you never stopped to think what would happen to anyone you left behind.”
My gut twisted.
A flame flickered
to life.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
He yawned—he goddamn yawned—and went over to the cupboard to pour himself a second glass of bourbon.
He spoke with his back turned to me. “You haven’t checked in with your father recently, have you?”
I narrowed my eyes. What was he talking about? Blade would’ve—
“Your friend Blade never told you…”
A knife plunged into my chest, hearing him say Blade’s name.
Kai turned back around, holding his glass in front of him. He leaned back against the wall, his eyes locked on mine. “…because he didn’t want you to leave your location, and he knew you would.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your mother had family.”
My aunt. My cousin. I had an uncle too.
I shook my head. “But they—”
They hated my father. They blamed him for her death. I knew they did.
“You had a cousin. Do you remember her? She’s your age, Brooke’s age.”
Tawnia. I didn’t know her that well. My mother had kept us away from her family, more for their safety than ours.
“No. What are you saying? My aunt hated my father.”
“She did. But she didn’t convey that adequately to your cousin.”
Was he…no. No.
I didn’t want to think about what Kai might be inferring. There was no way.
“My aunt would never allow that,” I hissed.
“Your aunt is dead.”
He said that in the same tone he’d used when he told me to leave Brooke alone.
“She’s fine.” “Your aunt is dead.” Both statements meant nothing to him.
“Fuck you.”
He shrugged. “Maybe later.” He drank from his glass. “I brought you here for two reasons. One, a trade. You tell me where my sister is, and I’ll help with your cousin.”
Fuck. Seriously. Fuck. He was serious.
“What exactly are you saying about my father and my cousin?” I eyed him warily.
He finished his drink and set the glass beside him on the counter. “Your cousin didn’t believe your father murdered his wife. She believes your father lost his wife because she ran from him. She believes his daughter was so distraught at being abandoned that you got drunk and caused the car accident that supposedly burned your body to oblivion minus the few traces of DNA left behind. She believes your father is someone to feel pity for, and that he is loving, and kind, and softhearted, and rich. Your father preyed on your cousin, and I’m sure he enjoys the close resemblance she bears to his daughter and wife.”
My father was a monster, but so was the man standing in front of me. He was just as much a monster as Bruce Bello.
“You’re sick. You and him both.”
He stared at me, not moving an inch. An uneasy feeling traced up my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I felt as if I had baited a cobra.
But Kai just nodded toward the door.
“Enough. We’ll continue our talk tomorrow.”
No one else was in the room. I hadn’t noticed the absence of guards until now. But as he spoke, the door opened and Tanner walked in.
“Take her to her room,” Kai told him. “She’s to stay there until I come for her.”
My lips parted.
The way he said that, I felt a bolt of fear slice through me, but then Tanner was next to me. He took my arm, leading me out as I stumbled over my feet, feeling numb.
I hadn’t felt this emotion for a long time, not since my father.
“Wait.” I had to know. Just as Tanner was about to walk me out of Kai’s apartment, I turned back. “How?”
How is he going to help with my cousin?
A glimmer of a smile taunted me. “I’ll have him killed.”
CHAPTER NINE
They knew.
They knew it all.
They knew Blade, the Network. My father. My mother. They knew she was alive. Of course I’d known the Bennetts found me, but I hadn’t thought about it. I hadn’t wanted to.
Tanner pulled me down a flight of stairs, and I tripped again, almost falling, but he caught me and steadied me.
He wouldn’t look at me, though. His jaw was clenched, and his hand dug into my arm. It’d leave a bruise there later.
“How long?” I rasped. It seemed the only way I could talk since they’d taken me. “How long have you known?”
He didn’t answer, a vein bulging in his neck. We turned a corner, and there was another door in front of us. He banged on it, stepping back until it opened from the inside. More guards came out. There were always guards.
He motioned inside. “If you need food or anything, ask the guards. They’ll get it for you. This is your room until Kai wants to see you again.”
I stepped inside, but turned to him. “Tanner, how long?”
His eyes flicked up, and I saw remorse there.
“Since the beginning.” His lips pressed together. He looked as if he had more to say, but thought better of it. He shook his head and barked out, “Lock her in.”
The door slammed shut, and a whoosh of air hit me in the face. I barely blinked, everything in me going into shock.
They knew about the 411 Network, which wasn’t good. In fact, it was really bad. The 411 Network was an organization that hid people who couldn’t survive otherwise—those women and children, and sometimes men, who aren’t protected by the legal system, by cops or whoever else, so we step in. We hide them, sometimes making it look like they’re dead.
The “errands” we run are to pick up people who need transport somewhere else. We handle anyone needing to get into Canada—any survivor who needs help. We don’t discriminate, and most of the time, we aren’t told their names or situations.
We’re given coordinates to go to, pictures of who we’re looking for, and directions on where to take them. We pass along files and packets with their fake passports or ID or whatever else they need for the leg of our trip. That’s all.
In the ten years since I’d been operational, only once did my team have to fight an abuser.
But I knew there were times it happened.
I was proud of this part of my life. I was proud of 411’s mission, of what we stood for, and now the Network was being threatened. The Bennett family couldn’t know about us. I’m certain they were the ones we hid people from sometimes.
My heart raced. My palms were sweaty.
My vision blurred.
I was panicking, like earlier, but this was on steroids. I couldn’t breathe. The room was spinning.
I was feverish. I was cold.
I was falling.
The ground rushed up at me until arms caught me instead. I looked up, and though the room still rushed around me, I saw a firm jaw and corded neck muscles.
Tanner had come back for me…
He carried me out of the room, through a hallway, and up a flight of stairs.
Tanner was taking me to his room…until no. We went back through that same set of doors I’d entered earlier. Black and gold swirled around me as I tried to see where we were. We went into a back bedroom, and he laid me down on that shaggy sheepskin blanket. Recognizing the glass balcony doors behind him, my teeth started clattering.
Tanner hadn’t come for me. Kai had.
As if hearing my thoughts, he looked down. Those dark and almost soulless eyes stared right into mine. He didn’t blink. Nothing showed. No irritation. No concern. Not even surprise.
I grew warmer by the second, and began shivering.
He felt my forehead, pushing my hair out of the way. His eyebrows pulled together. Confusion showed for a second before he turned and said something to someone behind us. His voice droned in my head, vibrating in a deep baritone. It sounded like I was underwater and he was above, talking to someone on a boat near us. There was a buzzing sound, like an engine.
I wondered again what was going on… And then there was nothing.
<
br /> CHAPTER TEN
I woke in a bed with the softest sheets I’d ever felt, and drool. So much drool.
It took a second for me to catch up, but once I did, I bolted upright with a gasp.
It was pitch-black outside.
Glass doors. The same modern bedroom with an entire apartment just beyond the doorway and the soft glow of a light on in the other room.
I was in Kai Bennett’s room, in his bed.
Could I close my eyes, go back to sleep, and wake up in Oz? Was that an option? I’d take it in a second if so.
The sound of a page turning came from the next room. Then I heard a chair push back.
Soft footsteps came until he stood in the doorway.
The light was on behind him, casting him in full shadow, so I couldn’t see any details except his very trim and toned silhouette.
Why’d someone so evil have to be that good looking?
“Why’d you take me?” I shifted to a sitting position, pulling the sheets around me and noting that I was in a different shirt and wore boxer briefs over my underwear. He’d changed my clothes.
That was low on the list of problems, but… “Where are my clothes?”
He let out a soft and tired-sounding sigh. “You stumbled going into your room and hit your head. My brother didn’t notice the blood trickling down your back, but my guards did. They alerted me.” He nodded. “Your clothes were bloody. They had to be changed.”
Now that he mentioned it, my head was pounding.
I touched the back of my head and hissed, feeling a large bruise. The fact that I hadn’t noticed that spoke volumes. I was too consumed by everything else.
And speaking of that, on to my second question. “What do you know about 411?”
He answered without hesitation, crossing his arms over his chest and propping one shoulder against the doorframe. “I know they helped hide you and your mother. I know they’re relatively new, but they’re effective. They have heavy funders backing them, and I know they set up one man for murder, who is now in prison. I know your employers might mean well right now, but they are dangerous.”
I blinked a few times, taking that in.
I winced on the inside when he mentioned the frame job. That had been an operative who went rogue, but no one fought to defend the guy.