by Pavan Kaur
“Don’t make anything, Hope. Jackson picked up a few things from the bakery on the way here.”
I stop in my tracks, placing my hands on the counter. I’m not sure what to do now that I’m not needed to make food.
Leo slides the box toward me and gets off the stool. “But you can warm these up and bring some coffee to the table, please.”
“Can I get some coffee too, please?” Jackson asks as they walk over to the table. I know what Leo is doing; he knows I have a routine that I follow and he’s going to try and break me from that. He’s going to try and get me to live a life where I can be myself.
Opening the box, I look at the different pastries. I’ve never had food from a bakery or a restaurant before. I’ve always had to make my own food, but these look really good and smell incredible.
I hear them talking about something but Jackson seems angry with Leo. All I can hear is that Leo should have told him.
After putting everything in the oven to heat, I get some coffee ready. Whatever’s happening between them Jackson isn’t happy about it. Leo seems to be his normal self, doesn’t seem to show much emotion but what can I say? What emotion do I show him?
I walk over to the table to put the coffee down, and Leo takes my hand and starts stroking my skin which is peeling. "Your skin doesn't look like it's improving, how about the pain?" He leans forward, so he can see my face, my eyes move away to the side where Jackson is sitting, then back to the table.
"It's fine," I tell him but it's not okay. My bones hurt a lot, but I thought I would give the medication some more time before I say anything.
I go back into the kitchen to get the food and get myself some water before joining them back at the table.
“The buyer has to have a shit ton of money if the price is that high just to enter the site!” Jackson shouts.
What are they looking for?
“Well, the dick didn’t know the name. All he said was you needed money to get in.”
Leo puts a pastry on my plate, then one on his. Staring at the pastry, I listen to them both talking about some website. Whatever they’re looking for they need that website.
“Hope,” Leo shouts my name a little louder to pull me away from my thoughts. “You’ve not even taken a bite.” He slides the plate closer to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
"Hope, you know you can talk in front of Jackson, right? He comes over all the time. I mean the fucker hasn't eaten at his own place since he bought it." I hear Leo laughing, and I try to record the sound in my mind as it's so beautiful.
"Now Hope is here, and she makes amazing food. Why would I eat at home?" Jackson says. I can hear the humor in his tone.
Leo grabs another pastry. “Get a cook.”
"Now that I've tasted the amazing cheesecake, I'm hoping to get some more of that, but before I get some more of the cheesecake, I'd like something else first."
"Yeah, what's that?" Leo asks, and I'm thinking the same thing. I mean I haven't said two words to him.
"To see those beautiful blue eyes that Leo keeps telling me about." Jackson leans closer to the table, and I feel his eyes on me. He doesn't say anything to him, and neither do I.
I feel Leo moving and I look up through my eyelashes as his hand reaches mine. "Hope, Jackson is like my brother, he would never hurt you." He places his hand on mine. I like his touch; it has a warmth to it.
Jackson throws his pen on the table. “So, this site, if we don’t know what it’s called, how are we meant to find it?”
Leaning forward, I pick the pen up, and Leo slides a piece of paper over to me. I write a word on the paper and slide it back to him.
“Underpleasure,” Leo reads it aloud and Jackson types. “Hope, you really need to start telling me something.” He reaches to touch my hand again, but I move it away from him.
“What are you going to do?” I ask. I get a feeling I know what he’s going to do and a part of me wants him to do it, but a part of me doesn’t all at the same time.
"I'm on the hunt for a man. For five years I've been hunting him. And when I do find him, I'll kill him." There's so much anger in the answer, so much rage. "After I kill him, I'm going to kill the man who had you. Jackson is working on finding your uncle—"
"No!" I interrupt him pushing my chair away from the table. He can't find him. Not even Leo can help me with him. He sold me, but he still came to the house to make sure I was behaving, and if I didn't it was bad, really really bad for me. He always told me he would find me if I tried to run. I know one day he will.
I'm panicking. I can feel my lungs getting smaller. The air around me is thicker now. I can feel the sweat building, and I rub my forehead as I try to inhale, but it's not working.
Leo kneels in front of me. “Look at me, Hope… Hope, listen to my voice, look at me.” His thumb moves along my cheek and wipes the tears away. “No one will ever touch you again. No one will ever come near you.” He brings his face closer to mine. “I promise.”
I shake my head. They don’t know him. He has people that work for him. He can and will find me.
“I know that a lot more happened and I want to know what that was, but you’ve got to trust me.” Leo puts his head down slightly to look at me, but I close my eyes.
"I can't go back there," I say quietly to myself. It took me years to find a way to escape, and I know that if they find me again, it will be the last thing I will ever do.
“You’re safe…”
I pull away from him. I can’t listen to promises that I know he can’t keep. I move back to the table. I just want the subject to change. I feel them both watching me and I quickly take a sip of my water.
"What did you find on the site?" Leo asks. His tone has changed a little, but I don't think it's because of me. I think it's more because he doesn't know what hold my past has on me.
“Nothing. It’s a porn site, asking me to log in.” Jackson takes another pastry off the plate. He can sure eat a lot; I think he’s had about four of them now.
"Username is password, and the password is username07," I tell them. I turn my head towards Leo but don't look at him. "I used to hear men talking about the website, so they gave them a username so that people could have a peak," I tell him. I heard so many different voices talking about the site; I could easily pick the voices out in a crowd.
“Leo, you might want to look at this,” I hear Jackson as he pushes the laptop over to him.
"Welcome to Underpleasure. You know why you're here. To enter the room, you need to pay $50,000—"
“Fifty thousand dollars just to enter the fucking site!” Jackson shouts.
I start scratching my hands like crazy. Leo's about to learn something about me, and I'm scared of what he's going to do.
"You can see our items which have been sold, click the link." He takes a sip of his coffee, and I watch with dread as his finger moves, and I hear the click. "We have everything you need from young to old, white or black. This is your answer to a sweet shop for adults," Leo stops talking, and I look to the side to see what he's doing.
Nothing. He’s facing me.
“Sweet shop for adults, is this how sick these fuckers are?” Jackson pulls the laptop over to him. “Have you seen the time? I’m sure we both have work to do.” He closes the laptop. “I’ll see if someone can help me find an IP address or something. I don’t really know how to do this side of things,” Jackson says.
I have to tell Leo before he goes to work. If he finds out while he's out, or if Jackson finds out and tells him, then he might lose it with me, and I don't want that. Leo is trying, and I'm trying too.
“Before... erm… there’s…” I start tapping my fingers on the table. “I...need—”
“Hope, talk to me.” Leo puts his hand on mine to stop the tapping.
I point to the laptop. “There...is something...you need to know,” I whisper. I hear Jackson sitting back down and opening the laptop and sliding it over to Leo.
; “Okay, what are we looking for?” Leo asks.
I take in a deep breath. "Look under…" I swallow the large lump in my throat, "limited edition, there is only one person on there," I tell him, and I look over as his fingers move around.
"We can provide one of a kind treats. If you want something, let us know, and we can find it. This little beauty was sugar coated by her uncle and was our most popular find. Her bidding broke all the records, lasted for months until one man made the biggest bid in history. Eight million dollars." There is silence in the room; even Jackson isn't saying anything, not one sound.
Leo pushes the laptop hard over to Jackson, I know there is a picture on there of a ten-year-old me.
Leo stands up and walks away from the table, Jackson stays where he is, and I wipe the tears from my cheeks.
Jackson clears his throat, and I swear I can see the emotion in his eyes. "Hope, I'm sorry this happened to you. Leo means it when he says nothing will happen to you again. Leo is a… hard man. Women are the last thing on his mind, and I mean last. So trust me when I say, he won’t let them get you,” he tells me and walks over to the kitchen where Leo is.
So, now Leo knows that I was sold and now he's going to make it his mission to find out who bought me, and he's going to make them pay—only this time not with cash.
Chapter 16
Leo
“I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” I sit next to Jackson and pull him closer to me. One of Jack’s men beat him today because he said no. I tried to help him, but I got grabbed by two other men.
“Leo, I don’t think—”
"Hey, listen to me, as long as I'm alive, I'll fight for you, and I'll take any beating that I can," I tell him as I can't bear to hear him crying. I've let him down a few times when I just couldn't help him. The other day after Jack was finished with me, I was so weak and tired that when they came for Jackson, I couldn't even stand up.
We both sit up as the door opens. “You’re with me.” He points to Jackson.
I stand up and push Jackson behind me. “Leave him alone. Take me,” I tell them.
“Well, the boss wants him.”
"He's not getting him." He goes to grab Jackson, but I kick him. "He gets me, or nothing. I won't let you take Jackson."
“Take him.” I hear Jack behind the man.
The man's hand wraps around my neck, and he pulls me closer to him. "Jack's had a bad weekend, so get ready to have some fun."
He pulls me out of the room, and my body begins to shake as I know that it's going to be darkness and hell this weekend.
“Her past makes ours look like a fucking playground,” Jackson says as he stands next to me.
“I know, I thought it couldn’t get more fucked up than mine. I did my best to keep you safe—”
He places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. "Don't Leo. You protected me. You took it all so that I didn't have to. Yeah, some shit happened to me, but if it wasn't for you a lot more would have happened."
I still remember the one day I couldn’t save him; he was locked away for three days before he was allowed out again.
"What are you going to do about the site?" I ask him. Now, this is not what we do, this is a lot bigger than we thought it would be. I wanted to kill one man, and maybe that man is on this site, maybe he's not. But one thing's for sure, this is something that neither one of us can do.
“I have no fucking idea. I suggest the best thing to do would be to go to the police. I don’t know.”
Blowing out the smoke, I shake my head. “If we go to the police, we might lose our only link in finding him and—”
"You want to find the man who spent eight million on Hope don't you?" Jackson stands in front of me. "Some people owe me a favor. Let me talk to them to see if we can find anything on the buyer." He glances over at Hope breaking off pieces of her breakfast. "She's starting to open up to you, but before you make promises, I think you need to make sure you can keep them." Tapping my shoulder, he leaves.
I smoke the rest of my cigarette and gaze over at Hope thinking about what to do next. She starts peeling the skin off her hands, but I move my focus to her face. My attention moves to her lips. I remember her kissing me last night. She let me kiss her, she let me in. She must trust me enough to do that.
Pushing myself off the counter, I make my way over to her. I turn her chair around to face me, as I sit in front of her. "Jackson's not here, you can look at me now." She lifts her face a little, and I feel a spark of joy inside. She doesn't try to hide her eyes away from me, for the first time she is looking at me and not behind me.
“How about we start walking with our head held high? You have nothing to hide from—”
“I’m hiding from him.” Her voice is broken, scared.
I swallow hard and think about Jackson’s words about promising her things. "In the house, you don't have to hide from anyone. The only people that come here are my parents and Jackson. They won't hurt you. I'm going to find who did this and I'm going to make them pay, but I don't want you to hide from my family."
“I’ve lived with rules for—”
“There are no rules in this house. Everything they said to you, everything they made you do, none of it lives in this house. This house...is yours.”
Her hand moves to mine where it’s resting on her leg. “I’m trying. I am...but then I remember something and the rules come back to haunt me.”
"Hope, do you trust me?" Until she trusts me, no matter what I say to her, she's not going to believe me, and there's nothing I can do to make her feel safe.
“I want to. I want to believe that you won’t hurt me once you get my trust, but they did it. Someone always got me to trust them then they broke it.” Pulling the sleeve of her sweater, she uses it to wipe the tears and her nose. “Someone always broke me,” she whispers the last part, as she drops her head.
"I won't break you. I'm going to make you whole again." Placing my finger under her chin, I slowly lift her face to look at me again. "Now, if it's okay with you before I go to work I was hoping that I could give you another kiss." My gaze moves to her lips then back to her eyes. "I might have enjoyed you kissing me last night." I give her a wink.
Her eyes search mine and her fingers move to the scar just above my right eye. "You can kiss me," she whispers, and I can't help but smile. Her cheeks flush with pink, but I'm not going to say anything about that to her.
Leaning in closer, I move my hand to her cheek and then slowly to the back of her neck. I move my lips against hers. I just want so much more from her. I've become lost in her kiss; all our defenses are being pushed to the side. I know that there's so much hunger inside me for her. Just the feel of her soft lips touching mine is all I want every day. She pulls away from me, but I don't want her to. My hand is still on the back of her neck and my forehead leaning on hers.
Then I hear it, my phone’s ringing. She pulled away from me not because she didn’t want it but because someone is calling me.
“Hello?” I answer the phone.
"Mr. Masters, you haven't come into work, and you have a meeting this morning. Would you like me to cancel it?" my assistant asks, and I look at my watch. I'm so late.
“No, I’ll be there.” I end the call and put the phone in my pocket. Hope is watching me.
“Have a nice day at work.” She goes to stand up, but I pull her back down.
"And what do you have planned while I go out?" I ask her. She doesn't do anything fun, but I don't think she knows what fun is, I don't either. My life is work and home, and I like it like that.
“I was going to wash the bedsheets and clean the bathrooms and then make some dinner.” She starts gathering the plates together that are on the table.
“How about pizza tonight?” Her hands freeze as she grabs a plate. “Or you could make the pizza?” I need her to step away from her routine. I can’t push her out of it. I’m starting to learn that I need her to break the chains that are pulling her back; I can onl
y help her find the strength to break them.
"For two or three?" she asks, and I start laughing out loud. She knows Jackson so well.
"What do you think?" I ask her as I stand up. I walk over to the door and glance over at Hope cleaning the table. "Hey," I call her, and she turns to face me, "Tonight, you can look up, he won't bite." I give her a wink, and I leave.
I don’t want her to keep hiding from Jackson. He’s over all the time and I want Hope to feel comfortable here, but I can’t make my best friend stop coming over.
***
This man in front of me has been talking about some hot dog van he wants to open. Yes, that’s what New York needs, another hot dog van. “Stop talking, were you born in New York?”
“No, no sir.” He looks at his presentation then back at me.
"I wasn't born here either, but as a businessman, I know that New York already has hundreds of hot dog stands, so how about you leave and think of something that no one else has done." This is the fifth person to walk into here that I've kicked out before they have had the chance to finish their presentation.
“If I—”
“Not interested, you can leave now,” I tell him, turning away from him to look out the window. There are over eight million people in New York. You’d think one of them would have something that I would be a little interested in.
“Mr. Masters, your next applicant is here,” I hear Katie say behind me.
Giving her a nod, I look at the rest of the board staff that is here. Most of the time, I have no idea why they come. They never talk or ask questions. I know why that is; they piss me off, they might lose their job. The business lawyer is always here, just in case I overstep and say something that I shouldn't, but that still doesn't stop me.
Turning around, I look at the group of four setting up. They look at each other and whisper something then turn to face me.
“You four, family, friends?” I ask them. There seems to be a vibe that’s off about them. It’s like they work well together, but there’s also something wrong between them at the same time.