by K. V. Rose
I see from the door that leads out to the pool that the sun isn’t up yet, the world still bathed in darkness.
But there’s a light on in the kitchen, and Mamie is pulling something that looks like muffins out of the oven.
My stomach growls.
I fist my hands in my T-shirt, trying to resist the urge to shove Mamie out of the way and pluck a muffin from the pan.
I don’t remember the last time I ate.
She closes the oven door with her hip, sets down the pan then slides off the black mitt, lying it on the counter.
Finally, she turns to me, crossing her arms as she leans against the counter. She looks tired, lines under her blue eyes, her hair pulled up into a messy bun. Her black shift dress is rumpled, and she’s got white fuzzy slippers on her feet.
I wring my hands, torn between darting around her and grabbing a muffin, and asking about Max. A doctor came over, dressed in a white coat, a hospital badge clipped onto his breast pocket. He didn’t look twice at the wreckage in the foyer, the dead bodies and blood, all the shattered glass and dropped guns.
He simply stepped over it all and took over where Mamie left off.
She led me to my room. The doctor saw me afterward, cleaned the wounds on my throat, applied ice to my face.
When he left, I asked after Max, but Mamie promised he would be okay.
We both know he won’t after next week.
He won’t be okay, and he’ll have people after him. People that want me badly, far more than my father does, for reasons I don’t understand. They might finish what Colton started last night.
But that’s not my problem.
That’s not my problem.
I’m glad I’ll be free of him.
No matter what he did last night, he didn’t do it to free me. He hasn’t done anything good for me. It’s all been to protect his merchandise. To ensure he gets paid back from whatever my father fucked up.
The only thing Max cares about is money, because he thinks it protects him for whatever he endured to get to where he is now.
And to him, I’m a hell of a lot of money.
So, I shouldn’t feel guilty about what I’m going to do, but even so…I do.
“He’s okay,” Mamie finally says, breaking the silence. She watches me carefully as I rock back and forth on my bare feet, feeling exposed even though I’m in sweats and a t-shirt. “But are you?”
I feel my face warm with her words, but I don’t answer her.
“I saw what happened to you,” she continues. “It’s okay to not be okay, Addison.”
I straighten my spine, lift my chin as I meet her gaze. “I’ve never been okay, Mamie.”
She smiles, her eyes softening. “I didn’t think so,” she agrees, and I feel a spark of surprise at those words. “It’s why you and Max get along so well.”
At her comment, my mouth drops open, eyes wide. “What?” I ask her, my hunger momentarily forgotten. I shake my head. “We don’t…we do not get along well. He kidnapped me, and I—”
“And yet he pulled you into his arms last night, and you held his face between your hands.”
“He was on the verge of passing out—”
“And before that, he slept outside of your door, he forbade me to clean your room—”
“No,” I insist, shaking my head. “No, he said you couldn’t use pine—”
She laughs. “No.” Her tone is gentle, but not meek. “Aside from cleaning up the mirror you destroyed,” she cocks a brow and I rock back and forth, twisting my hands in my shirt, “he forbade any of us from going into your room to clean.”
I frown, my mind spinning. “But it was always clean and—”
“You can thank him for that.”
I grind my teeth together, glaring at her, dropping my hands into fists by my sides. “He’s going to sell me like I’m a—”
She glares right back. “He won’t be able to, because your brother loves you very much and I cannot, in good faith, let you become a slave.”
I feel some of the anger leave me as she stares at me. Despite who she works for, she’s helping me. She’s risking her very life—if Dante is any indication of how Max treats betrayal—by helping me escape.
“I don’t think Max Bennett is a saint,” she continues. “He’s the furthest thing from it, but you are the first woman in this house, aside from me, that he’s shown any ounce of affection toward without fucking their brains out.”
I bite my tongue, thinking of what we’ve done in the night. Still, I don’t argue.
There’s no point.
She’s going to help me. That’s all that matters. Not her fucked up ideas of Max having something like a fucking heart.
“What happened to his face?” I ask her, my voice hushed as I glance over my shoulder, ensuring we’re still alone. “The stitches above his eye?”
She frowns, her brow furrowed. “The same men who want you, the same ones that will come for him when you’re safe…they did that.”
I try to ignore the way my stomach flips, thinking of what it would take to hurt Max like that. I push away any feelings of guilt over what’s going to happen to him, knowing what he’ll do to me if I don’t escape.
And before I can think too much about it, Mamie pushes away from the counter, comes to stand in front of me, bending down so her mouth is over my ear. “But those men last night were sent from his friend, Luca.” She speaks quickly, so quiet that I can barely hear her even though she couldn’t get any closer to me. The scent of the muffins calms my nerves as she talks about things that could get us both killed, and I focus on that instead of what we’re going to do. “Max is going to be more volatile than usual”—I almost laugh out loud at that—“and he’s going to be pissed off. He’s not going to want you out of his sight. You’re to eat here, under my guidance, and then I’m going to escort you to his bedroom.”
His bedroom.
I realize with a sense of foreboding that I’ve never been in his bedroom. I hate that the idea is as exciting as it is terrifying.
“He’s okay. The bullet has been removed and his personal doctor patched him up. But when you go up there, you’re not going to talk about your brother, your father, anyone. You’re going to survive until it’s time for you to go.”
She takes a breath, and I hold mine, wondering why the prospect of escaping with Danik doesn’t make me feel as happy as it should. Why these whispered plans between us should fill me with relief and instead, I’ve only got dread twisting up my core.
“Get a muffin, eat it, and please, Addison, no matter what you think of him…try to remember that he really, truly is still in there.”
Without another word, she straightens, walks past me, and stands at the sliding glass door that leads out to the pool.
I turn to stare at her, so many questions on the tip of my tongue, but I voice none of them.
Instead, I do as I’m told, and stuff a blueberry muffin down my throat, preparing to spend a week with a pissed off, vengeful Max Bennett.
“He’s still in there.”
I try not to choke on my muffin.
“Two are coming in tonight, three more in the morning, sir,” Silvestre’s voice is clear and confident through the phone.
I nod absentmindedly, flipping through the television channels, my phone on speaker as my eyes glaze over, not taking anything in.
The exhaustion is almost insurmountable, but I refuse to sleep. Not until she’s in here, and not until the two guards Silvestre is relocating from my warehouse in Tijuana arrive on my doorstep in Athena.
They’ve been working for me for ten years, and I’ve met them personally dozens of times.
They’re not Dante, but they’ll do.
I flip through another dozen channels while Silvestre waits silently on the other end of the line.
I think TV is a waste of time, and it wasn’t until this morning that I had one put in my room, thanks to my dayshift doorman who is one of the only guards of mine ali
ve from Luca’s carnage last night.
Luca will still be healing from those wounds in his thigh if he didn’t bleed out, but his body might as well quit while it’s ahead.
He’s going to die soon anyway.
Nearly two decades I’ve known him, and he betrayed me without thought.
I wonder what Jameson has to offer the cartel, to have them threaten people like Luca. Briefly, I think of Danik, the rumor he’s working with the DEA. I push the thought aside. Speculation will give me nothing.
A grainy video of what looks like a misshapen plane against a night sky has me pause my search through the channels. Rolling my eyes, I listen as the narrator gives the time and date of the footage of a supposed UFO, shot somewhere over the Appalachian Mountains.
“They’re to call me when their plane lands,” I tell Silvestre.
“Yes, boss.”
I end the call without another word, mute the TV and toss the remote control on my nightstand, trying not to wince from the pain in my shoulder. The bullet might not have done any real damage, but it fucking hurts. Every scar I get, I think the next one won’t be so bad, but apparently, pain doesn’t really work that way.
My phone rings where it rests on my thigh. I glance down at the string of numbers and grit my teeth, then answer the call, holding the phone to my ear.
“Soon, I’ll be where you are. I’ll have a separate plane take you to St. Petersburg too, as part of our…understanding.”
Soon. I should ask when “soon” is, but part of me doesn’t really want to know.
“Why did you involve Luca?” I ask instead, through gritted teeth.
There’s silence on the other end of the line as I see the bullshit I’m watching cut from the supposed UFO footage to Obama being interviewed in the White House, a smile on his face, hand under his chin as someone presumably asks him about aliens and he laughs.
His laughter is mirrored by Jameson’s through the phone. “It was worth a shot. Just like with Zeke. I don’t particularly trust you, Max Bennett—”
“You have my goddamn brother.” I can’t stop the rage bleeding into my words, and I know it gives away my weakness, but I don’t care. “You own my fucking brother—”
“And you have something that belongs to me.”
My blood runs cold with those words. The way he said them. There’s something sinister in his tone. Something…possessive. “How did you know?” I ask him carefully. “How did you know who I was? Who Oliver is, to me?” Questions I had from the beginning but never bothered to ask, because there’re no lengths I won’t go to in order to get Ollie back.
In the silence, I watch the alien documentary shift to a guy in a plaid shirt and untrimmed beard, beer in hand, gesturing wildly as he discusses his alien experience, a caption at the bottom of the screen reading, “Curtis, Abductee.”
“With every product,” Jameson says quietly, emphasizing the word, “there’s a photo of the seller.”
My fucking photo. What he’s saying is bullshit, but somehow, he found out enough about me to get my image. I think again about the DEA rumors. How Jameson, a white fucking redneck, is able to worm his way into a Mexican cartel.
“Your brother—my pet—saw your picture.”
My fist clenches as I grip the remote in my hand tighter.
“You know he still doesn’t speak, as all good pets shouldn’t.”
I can hear my pulse pounding in my fucking ears.
“But he’s learned a few signs. He was clapping his hands, making those goddamn chirping noises that I can’t fucking stand, and just when I was about to beat them out of him, he made the sign for ‘brother’.”
I feel like I can’t breathe, my chest heavy with every word this motherfucker speaks.
“I wasn’t his original owner, Max. He’s been passed down a few times, used up quite a bit. But,” he sighs, “he’s been with me a while. He’s seen the worst of me.” He laughs, and my skin crawls as I force myself to keep staring at the TV. “I was hesitant to give him up, but you’ve got something I want. And I knew, when your baby brother made that sign before I kicked him in the ribs to shut him up, that we had ourselves a nice trade.”
I don’t speak. All I can think about is cutting this man’s head off, ear to fucking ear.
But I force my mind away from it all. Away from his taunts, away from his threats. Ollie is coming back, and I will never let anyone hurt him ever again.
Instead, I think of business. Logical. Facts.
Right now, my men probably have a plier clamped down around Luca’s incisor, extracting information before they extract all of his teeth.
I had my house searched for bugs, and none were found.
Which means that whatever Luca knows about Addison, he learned from someone in these walls.
Whoever it is better hope they’re already dead, or they’re going to wish they were.
But I can’t resist asking, just in case, “Who did Luca speak to, inside my own house?”
There’s a sigh on the other end of the line. I lean back against my pillows and close my eyes, grimacing as I move my shoulder just slightly.
“That’s your own personal matter to deal with, Max. I don’t know a thing about that.”
I grit my teeth, say nothing.
“Sorry you got roughed up down south, but Zeke was a good employee. Should’ve kept him alive, Max. But you should know, if I don’t get the girl, it’s not just your brother I’ll hurt. It’s you.”
I force that icy mask of calm over my mind, protecting me from thoughts of Oliver’s screams. “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” I say lazily.
Jameson barks out a laugh, then grows quiet for a moment before he says, “I heard you didn’t scream once, Max. I could change that, you know.”
“I’m truly terrified.”
There’s a pause on the line and I shift my hold on the phone, trying to get comfortable.
Then I hear it.
A string of sounds that I’d recognize anywhere, through a phone from hundreds of miles away or not.
Oliver.
I sit upright, ignoring the burning pain from the bullet wound. My hand is gripping the phone so tightly, my palm starts sweating. I stare at the thick, grey comforter on my bed, squeezing my eyes closed tight.
“If you don’t do as I ask, if you fuck this up, Max Bennett, I’ll kill him, and you’ll hear every painful second of his death.”
I mouth my brother’s name, but don’t dare speak it aloud. The soft sounds die off, and I can breathe again. But I can still hear it, in my head…his screams.
There’s a knock on the door, across the room from the bed. It’s locked, and no one in this house has a key.
I open my eyes, stare at the door, but I don’t move.
Jameson starts to speak again. “I’ll be sending you a message. A visual reminder of what happens to people who fuck with me.” He laughs softly. “Don’t fuck this up.” He ends the call before I can say a word.
There’s another knock on the door as I clench my phone in my fist, gritting my teeth.
“Max, it’s me.” Addison’s voice.
I push thoughts of Jameson aside, his cryptic warning. If he hurts Oliver, he knows the deal is off. Whatever he’s planning to “send” me, it won’t be that.
Don’t be that.
I compartmentalize it, focus on the immediate problem here.
Someone in this house told Luca about Addison. His men were waiting for him last night, and he shit his pants at the last minute, not quite brave enough to shoot me before I got to him. He distracted me with news on Danik, tried to get me to run, as if he didn’t know me at all.
But no matter Luca’s fuck up, someone else is lying to me, too.
I get off the bed, setting my phone down on the nightstand as I cross the room to get the door. My eyes land on the low, marbled table set against the wall of windows, my dark curtains pulled closed.
There’re two decanters of rum, clean glasses stacked b
eside them.
Addison calls my name again, apprehension threaded through her voice. I wonder if she thinks I’m dead. If she hopes I am.
Not yet, love.
I tear my eyes away from the alcohol and unlock and open the door.
Mamie is behind Addison, smoothing down her black dress. She meets my eye. “She ate breakfast.” Glancing at my shoulder, white gauze taped over it, she says, “Think you’ll live?”, a small smile playing on her lips.
Someone in this house spoke to Luca. I intend to find out who the fuck it was.
I keep my eyes on Mamie’s for a long moment, but she doesn’t falter. Doesn’t look away and doesn’t lower her arched brow as she waits for me to answer her.
“I always live.” I glance at Addison between us, wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and step back to let her in. Her green eyes meet mine for a second, then she walks into the room, smelling like goddamn cotton candy. I look to Mamie. “More guards will be here tonight. In the meantime, no one comes past the gate.”
She says nothing, only nodding in response, and I close and lock the door, turning around to watch Addison take in my bedroom.
It’s far bigger than hers, but with the same dark hardwoods throughout. The bed is a king, and at the foot of it I have a grey trunk full of knives, rope, and chains.
For a moment, I wonder how she’d look with a knife to her throat as I fucked her. Then I think about last night, Colton cutting her with the blade. The wounds were surface level, nothing that couldn’t be healed with a dab of alcohol. Still, the thought is enough to have my hands balling into fists.
If he had killed her, I’d have failed my brother again.
I cannot do that.
Addison glances at the bed, her hands tucked under her arms. Her golden hair is messy down her back, and I like it like that. It looks like she just got fucked. And the last person to fuck her was me.
She turns away from the bed, toward the leather couch across from the table with the decanters. Making up her mind, she crosses the room on bare feet and sits down on the couch, finally looking up at me.
Then her gaze shifts behind me, and for the first time since she’s been here, I see her face light up.