by Ace Gray
She crossed her arms across her chest. Her head snapped down as if she just realized she was naked. Her eyes bugged and her hands shot to cover herself.
I smiled. Her discomfort was delightful. Her fear tasted delicious. And that body...
I reached toward her. Part of me wanted to piss her off as badly as she had me. Part of me finally wanted to feel the skin I yearned for. She shot back, crashing into the corner and jostling a massive, morbid canvas. I smirked as I looked from the artwork to her body and back again.
“Brye,” my father called, the warning thick in his voice.
I jerked my head toward the door. When she didn’t budge I made a sweeping gesture toward the door.
“I can make you.” I arched my eyebrows.
She straightened up and stutter-stepped forward.
“After you.” I couldn’t stop my smile.
Filly stopped right in front of me and looked me over from head to toe. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end when disdain so plain and clear colored her features. The apology was on the tip of my tongue without me ever really having formulated it.
“Get in here,” my father shouted.
We both did as we were told this time, leaving all the unsaid things behind us in the hallway.
“Please sit down, Ms. Ryan.” Dad gestured toward a chair and I moved to pull it out for her.
She folded in on herself before looking around the room. I knew she saw a beautifully ornate and classic dining room with deep, dark mahogany furnishings and silver candelabras reaching for the crystal chandelier. I wondered if she noticed that the carvings were flowers intermixed with destroyed human bodies. Or that the chandelier had a golden rope hanging from it fashioned into a hangman’s noose.
“Sit. Down,” he said each word so sharply she followed automatically.
I pushed in her chair then moved away to my traditional seat, opposite my father. I settled in casually, leaning onto my hand where I propped it on the armrest, my ankle notched on my knee; the pose let me angle just enough that I could watch her every move. She stared dead ahead with wide and unblinking doe eyes. Her arms wrapped tighter around her chest as she crossed her legs, still trying to hide her flesh.
“Where is your father?” mine asked.
She didn’t even acknowledge that he’d spoken, she just swallowed.
“Your mother?” His words got a little grittier.
This time she bit her lip and rounded in on herself a little tighter.
“Horse?”
I tried to catch her eye if only to tell her to answer the questions. That this would be all the less painful if she did.
“Is this your way of telling me, you’d prefer to die?” His voice was so cold that she shivered.
But she still said nothing.
He shifted in his seat and set his hands on the table. In a simple movement, he slid them wide. Just the way he moved was predatory. He seemed larger than life there too. Or perhaps death since that’s what he was—the reaper himself. His fingers flexed and I felt the coil inside him wind up inside me too. All that anger was about to unload on Filly if she didn’t play along.
“Answer him, Filly.” I jerked my chin toward my father.
She finally showed a little life, turning toward me and narrowing her gaze.
“No,” she said simply.
“If I am dark, then he is the void behind the black itself. Tell him where they are. Paris? Mexico?”
Her whole body changed when I used our dinner conversation against her. She straightened up and her hands reached to clutch the table, hard enough to turn her knuckles white. The skitter of her chair cut the silence in the room as she rose the slightest bit. I smiled as her breasts swayed.
“How dare you.” Her voice had a venom that impressed even me. “That was private.”
“You told a complete stranger sensitive information. Your fault, not mine.” I licked my lips more to collect the want pooling there as I stared unabashedly at her chest.
“Fuck you.” She dropped back into her chair and covered herself up.
“Here’s hoping.”
I looked to my father still wearing the satisfied smirk from winning my exchange with Filly. He was waiting to meet my gaze. I met it only to feel the full weight of something wicked fall on me.
“What?” I asked, feeling defensiveness flare in my chest.
“You knew this and you didn’t tell me?” If his voice before had been cold, it was frozen now.
“I didn’t know who she was.” I uncrossed my legs and leaned forward to challenge him.
“She’s been hanging in the basement for two days!” he shouted and banged his fists as an exclamation mark. His chair fell backward as he shot up.
I cringed back and Filly’s hands flew to cover up her face.
“Do you think that I’m someone to be trifled with? Do you think this is a game?”
I shook my head, feeling my heartbeat pick up pace. “Never.”
“Do you think I am someone to take lightly?” He banged his hands on the table again. Filly shied away completely, but I stood, doing what I could to match his size, his fury.
“Have I ever taken you lightly?”
All too swiftly he pulled a gun from his chest holder and pointed it straight at Filly. My mouth went bone dry immediately and it was my turn to try and dig my fingers into the table.
“Tell me where they are.” He didn’t yell this time, instead he enunciated each word, his tone as if he was bored.
Blood red on pure white. I could see it again as I felt her life slipping through my fingers. My mind raced for anything that would please him. Anything that would move that fucking gun. I played back every word she’d said to me. This was the first time that I wasn’t trying to capture that feeling between us, trying to hear her voice. I was searching…
“Mexico,” I spat out.
She’d been on a road trip. I’d ordered that damn Charger dumped into the lake the first night that she’d been locked up. She couldn’t have come from France.
“Where in Mexico?” He swung the gun at me.
“I don’t know.” I swallowed as I recounted the two times he’d shot me before. The feel of the bullet tearing into me and the searing pain that came with.
“Where in Mexico.” He asked Filly this time making sure she was watching before he switched hands and cocked the pistol still pointed at my chest.
He wouldn’t, would he?
As if in answer he pulled the trigger. I closed my eyes and thought of Filly, of that kiss rather than everything that followed, and waited for the boom and then the pain. Or death. For even a blip I wondered if it would hurt. And if Filly would find me when she came.
The groan behind me interrupted my thoughts. I opened my eyes and turned. One of his mid-level enforcers slid down the wall behind me leaving blood streaking in its place.
“In case you weren’t aware of the severity of your situation.” He walked over to Filly and sat on the edge of the table next to her. With nothing more than a jerk of his chin, the two other men in the room slid from their silent posts to drag the body from the room. “Your parents did this,” he said softly. “They killed without mercy.” He stroked the gun down her breastbone then along the underside of her breast. “They fucked anything. Anytime. Including each other. You father has been inside your uncle, over and over and over.”
“You’re a liar,” Filly spat as she reached up and pushed her tears aside.
“No, baby monster.” He sighed. “I think it’s time for a story.”
Oh God. Oh, holy mother of God. What have I gotten into? What will it cost me?
The screaming wouldn’t cease in my head. Brye had come for me and my heart had soared only for it crash dive into the floor.
Murder. I’d watched someone die. And it wasn’t even that monumental. One minute he was alive, the next he just wasn’t. He wasn’t anything. He didn’t even exist, save the deep red that streaked the wall behind Brye. It was a gr
otesque painting across opulent wallpaper and it made me feel as if I both knew more and so much less about life.
I had no shield against those wicked things. No family. No history. Not if what he said was true. I didn’t even have the luxury of a t-shirt. I almost surrendered to the hurt. My hearing went fuzzy and my heart slowed. Maybe I’d just stop existing. But then the whomp whomp of Connor’s voice entered my fading periphery. Whatever he said made Brye lift his chin as he shrugged out of his suit jacket.
“You lied to me.” Connor’s voice became a little sharper.
“I did no such thing,” he countered as he started unbuttoning the small abalone buttons of his crisp dress shirt.
“And yet you are accepting punishment without contest.”
I blew out a deep breath I hadn’t known I was holding when Connor tucked his gun away. Brye simply nodded as he pulled the tales of his shirt from his waistband.
“What if I do care for her?” Brye asked and despite everything, there were butterflies in my stomach. Connor growled in response. “What if I want to keep her as bait?” he countered. Both questions sounded the same, no waver or falter or change in his voice. They were equal on his moral teeter-totter.
“She’s going to learn what she is either way.” Connor moved to the mahogany china cabinet in the far corner and pulled it open.
I only caught a small glimpse, but there were guns, knives, and hooks hanging from the top. Long-handled metal rods lined one wall and the rest was hidden from view. He grabbed something from that side and slid it onto the table.
“Wha…what is that?” I barely got the words out when Brye drew my attention. Bile rose in my throat when he twisted, shrugged out of his shirt and revealed his stunning but broken back to me.
His thick and muscled back was ripped and full scars. Angry hash marks crisscrossed over dips and valleys of serious strength. Small, welted knots were peppered in between. At some point, he had been shredded. It was ugly. The definition of art. Of truth. But what really took my breath away was the massive tattoo that started at his spine between his shoulder blades and arced all the way down into the chaos of his low back. The most amazing, intricate wings cover his upper back then unfurled with grace and divinity until the scars met the feathers, giving them the appearance of being tattered and torn. They were wings that wouldn’t be able to fly despite once being glorious. They made him all the more beautiful.
“You’ll take it? No matter what I give?” Connor asked.
He only answered with a curt nod before bending over the dining room table.
Brye’s actions made goosebumps spread across my flesh, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what he was taking and I was pretty sure he deserved it. I mean, he had… well, the list was too long to compile. But then again, to me he was… He’d tried to… God, I couldn’t make myself finish those thoughts. Not when my insides were all mussed up. Not when the mere sight of that back, of those wings, threatened to make me want to comfort him.
Connor made sure my questions evaporated when he fisted into my hair. I screamed as he drug me, legs wheeling around the table to where Brye was. He dropped me to my knees, and the bang against the hardwood floor jarred my bones. A moment later, a leather-wrapped stick landed in my lap, the many long tails of leather wrapping down around my bare knees with a soft kiss. I reached for it and the world fell away.
It was a whip, mean in every way an inanimate object could be. The weight was heavier than I anticipated but my small hand wrapped fully around the handle. It melded to my hand. The tails themselves were over a foot long with small knots tied in intervals down each line.
“What the fuck?”
“Stand up,” Connor commanded. “Bring it with you.”
“No.”
Connor gripped my hair much the same as he had before and used his power over me to yank me to standing.
“I won’t.” I wouldn’t ruin my heart the way they had—the way they all had apparently.
“It’s okay, Filly,” Brye said softly as he unbuckled his belt and slid it out of his belt loops.
I tried to keep my eyes in my head as he shuffled his trousers down a hair, exposing the upper curve of his ass, framed by delicious dimples. He leaned over the table, seemingly so casual, so at ease. My fingers were drawn to him the same way they usually were to marble work, desperate to know the contours, to feel the softness of the stone. He was artwork, tragic and brilliant and beautiful.
He jumped when my skin skated across his. Then he sagged into his shoulders, drawing his wings together and shivering beneath my touch.
“I wanted to know what that would feel like from the first moment that I met you,” he whispered and it was my turn to shudder.
“So touching,” Connor mocked us both as he shoved the whip back in my hand.
He walked away from me and reached for Brye’s belt. As he circled the table, he pulled a little bit of the belt back through the buckle, making a loop. Brye stretched out automatically and his father looped the leather around his hands and pulled. His skin puckered above and below as Connor pulled. Brye dropped suddenly, flattening to the table as Connor crouched to tie him to a leg.
The realization of what was happening backhanded me. That it was not the first or even second time swung back and threatened to level me.
“You did this to him?” I shrieked. “You’re a monster.”
“I’m a monster?” Connor asked, accusation in his voice. “I’m a monster? Let me tell you about the monster that made me.”
I backed away, but Connor rounded the table, grasped my shoulders and shoved me back toward Brye. I stood behind his wide back that tapered into toned hips and Connor lifted up the whip and let it land softly on Brye’s skin. Brye flinched then settled again, his head falling to the wood beneath him.
“Your turn, Ms. Ryan.”
“I won’t do it.” I pulled the leather from Brye’s tanned flesh.
“He lied to me, Ms. Ryan,” Connor’s voice ticked up.
He’d kept my secrets. He said he’d tried.
“He didn’t,” I offered weakly.
“Yes, he did. He kept things from me!” Connor screamed so close to me, my ear began to ring but then he softened immediately. “You should feel my pain. You should understand. You know who lied to you? Your whore mother that had all of Chicago up in arms.”
“My mother is not a whore,” I growled and Connor answered by sliding his hand down the plane of my stomach down to my… I shot back only to run into the hard of his body.
“Perhaps your fucked up satanic father who killed for sport?” He kept one hand resting between my thighs while he reached for his gun with the other. Cold steel pressed against my temple. I choked on my protest.
“Or maybe his longtime lover, Horse?” A smile filtered into his voice as he nudged his erection against my ass. “If you didn’t have your father’s raging eyes, I’d wonder who your father even was.”
“How dare you!” My temper welled up and bubbled over, my voice pinging off the crystal chandelier above us, my fingers dug into the leather of the whip as I wiggled against his depraved grip.
“There’s that signature Ryan savagery,” he said softly as he nuzzled against my ear.
“My parents, my uncle… They’re none of those things.” The tears were coming back, punctuating to my sentences.
“Whip Brye and I’ll tell you everything.” He pressed a kiss to the curve of my jaw.
“No. I…” My insides were breaking. Everything I’d known was crumbling. Because even if my heart raged against it, maybe my head had always known there was more to their story…
“I’ll tell you all the ways they lied to you. I’ll tell you who they really are.”
My heart resisted him fervently. Perhaps I came from monsters, because the fury inside me was monstrous and hellfire bubbled in my veins. That he would goad me into abusing his son made me unforgiving.
“You want to know why they lied, don’t you?” he purred
against my skin. “They could have saved you from this, from me, if only they’d told you who they really were.”
He crooked his finger inside me and that awful touch made me break.
I brought the whip down on Brye’s back and he grunted. Angry red rose up amongst scars that had already been there.
“Oh my God.” I dropped the whip onto his battered skin. “Brye, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t, Filly…” His muffled voice trailed off.
“Pick that up.” Connor kicked the whip. “Listen to the truths of your family. Learn the consequences of defying me.”
“No.” Tears, hot and wild stung my cheeks.
“Do it, Filly,” Brye said softly from between his outstretched arms. “Do it, or it’ll get worse.”
“Smart boy. Should have used that brain beforehand. Perhaps then I’d be whipping her.”
“Do it, Filly,” Brye repeated and the way he adjusted himself, I realized he was steeling himself.
My whole body quivered as I reached out to pick up the whip. Once I held it, it hung at my side, shaking just the same as I did.
“Once upon a time,” Connor started, “Cole Ryan was the right-hand enforcer of Mickey Maloney, a demonic brute of a man that thrived on drugs and sex and slavery.”
He lifted his eyebrows waiting for me to lay leather to flesh as I thought about my daddy. The man who joined my garden tea parties and taught me about fairies. The man who described how the stars sparkled as he watched them not in the heavens, but in my eyes. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hear Connor’s words—I was morbidly curious about it—I just didn’t want it to be true. At all. It wasn’t that I hated each word. It was that they existed in the first place. That it was my truth made my skin crawl.
“Filly…” My name was a warning on Brye’s lips.
“I don’t want to,” I whimpered.
“But you’re going to.” Connor cocked the gun against my head and I knew the sound from all those nights shooting at cans and cactuses in the desert with my dad and Horse. It had seemed so innocent but now…