doyenne.

by Anne Malcom

  Now I’d never escape Jacob’s eyes, they’d be mounted on the wall in my bedroom, where Molly insisted I hang it.

  And despite the damage it would do, I let her because I never said no to Molly.

  She had given me one last hug before leaving to go to the airport. “You know I can handle the darker parts of your life, right?”

  I schooled my expression, the knowledge of her harboring the truth about our parents in her beautiful brain for over a decade. “I know. I just don’t want you to.”

  She frowned. “But I want to. You’re not alone, Charlotte. You’re not in this ivory tower, cold and without feeling, whatever everyone else says, whatever you tell yourself. There are actually quite a few people around you that love you. That adore you. And not just because they share chromosomes with you.”

  I stilled.

  Her meaning was clear.

  I ached to spill everything about Jacob. All of the ugliness, all of my torment, everything that was haunting me.

  “You’re going to miss your flight,” I said instead.

  My sister already had enough ghosts haunting her, whether she made it seem like it or not.

  She shook her head, smiling. “I’m not going to miss my flight, since even though I’ve got a commercial itinerary, I’m going to get to the airport and escorted to the private hanger because you know I’d never agree to such a waste of fuel until it was too late.”

  The corner of my mouth twitched. “Don’t tell me you’re going to refuse to go now?”

  She smiled. “Not this time. But I’ll be making a hefty donation to clean air organizations on your behalf.”

  “I’ll call my business manager and get it arranged.” Though it was already arranged since I knew Molly would have some kind of stipulation before she got on my jet.

  She rolled her eyes and then her expression sobered. “I know something is going on, beyond you and Jacob. And I know that’s dangerous, despite what you say. I know there’s some kind of real danger. I can...” she trailed off. “I can feel something. So just be careful, okay?” Something dark and unnerving flickering through her light eyes.

  I clenched my teeth. “Of course. Only if you promise the same.”

  She grinned again. “Of course I won’t promise to be careful.”

  She winked and left in pursuit of peace while I resigned myself to stave off chaos.

  “Are you afraid of flying?”

  I jerked up from my laptop.

  It was the first words he’d spoken to me since we’d gotten on the jet.

  No, it was the first words he’d spoken at all, apart from some clipped responses to Vaughn’s questions.

  Though Vaughn knew him well enough by now to understand he wasn’t going to get anything but the bare minimum of words from Jacob, it seemed to be his hobby to try and get more.

  I wondered if he and Molly were in a competition.

  Jacob’s eyes were on me from his spot across the cabin. I should’ve gotten used to that near constant gaze, he’d been my security for over a month now. But it was something I’d never get used to. No one should ever get used to a stare like that.

  Silence stretched on after his question, one of the first he’d ever asked me.

  I dissected what that meant to the power dynamic.

  “What makes you think that?” I asked instead of answering with a lie like I would’ve with anyone else.

  Vaughn included.

  Vaughn had his headphones on and was typing on his laptop, in a world that was nowhere near this conversation. He was extremely engaged in dissecting the dynamics between Jacob and me, but he was also extremely diligent with his job, and when he focused on something, it was with his full attention. To an almost unhealthy extent, which was why he was my second.

  Jacob didn’t reply to my question, just tilted his head ever so slightly and gave me a look communicating that I should know that his entire job was noticing things about me, learning things about people, picking out their weaknesses.

  “I wouldn’t say afraid,” I said after a long pause. “It just makes me uncomfortable that—”

  “You’re not in control?” he finished for me.

  I pursed my lips, hating that he was right and it made me sound like a total control freak. Which I was. I knew this about myself. But hearing it out loud...

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, but yes I suppose that’s the crux of it,” I replied. “I’m not afraid of crashing. That’s ridiculous. I’m well aware of the statistics of people dying in plane crashes, even smaller jets such as this one. I’m more likely to die in a traffic accident, or in my apartment, it seems that assassins are what I have to worry about, not fiery deaths.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” he clipped, voice cold.

  I stared at him, tried to stare into him. “I know.”

  He didn’t make an effort to further the conversation.

  He didn’t stop staring either.

  I could go back to work, pretend I didn’t know he was watching, pretend it didn’t do anything to me. I’d been doing that for over a month. But I didn’t.

  “Are you afraid of anything?” I asked, surprising myself with the question.

  I didn’t expect him to answer. He didn’t volunteer personal information. Nor did I, but I wanted to give him all of it, everything personal and ugly about me. I had to actively stop myself from cutting open my emotional flesh and letting it all pour at his feet.

  “I used to be,” he said, his low rasp taking up all the air in the cabin. “But everything I used to be afraid of died with the person I used to be.”

  I blinked, glanced to Vaughn, to make sure he was still focusing on his laptop, headphones still blaring. To me, that admission was loud enough to cut through whatever terrible music Vaughn was listening to.

  Jacob’s ice gaze tugged me back. “Didn’t think I’d be afraid of anything again. Gotta have somethin’ to lose in order to fear anything.”

  My heart beat in my throat.

  I opened my mouth to say something. Anything.

  “Char? We’ve got Korea on the phone, they want to talk about rolling out our whole brand range in fifty new stores and I need to consult with you on—”

  Vaughn’s voice cut off abruptly as he noted the air in the cabin after tearing off his headphones.

  I tore my gaze from Jacob to my assistant, proverbial life raft.

  “It can wait,” he said quickly, corner of his mouth turning up.

  I tapped on my laptop, calling up the agreement. “Of course it can’t,” I said, voice ice. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for and I need to go over every inch of the contract before I have a call with them. Organize a conference call after we land and finish the meeting.”

  “Already done,” Vaughn said.

  “Good.”

  I focused all of my attention on the screen in front of me.

  Or I pretended to.

  I was drunk.

  The bottles littered around my suite were evidence of that.

  And the fact I was passing those bottles, barefoot, wearing cashmere sweats, no bra and heading to the door.

  My face was free of makeup, I’d let my hair air dry after my shower, therefore it was slightly damp and had an unruly wave to it that the best hair stylists in New York usually blew out twice a week.

  I was without any of the armor I suited myself with to enter the world. Anything outside of a hotel room or my penthouse required the armor. I couldn’t trust New York, all the people in it to walk around with my guard down. Even before the attacks.

  It was a testament to how drunk I was that I didn’t even hesitate to open the door, close it behind me and walk steadily to another door at the end of the hall.

  There were only three rooms on this floor. All suites. Each of which housed the two men who had flown to San Francisco with me. I had put Vaughn in the middle as a buffer, but I knew he would not be inside his room nearing midnight on a Friday. In San Francisco, of
all cities. His phone would be on, and he’d be there in an instant for anything work-related, but we were strictly off the clock. Hence me having imbibed so much alcohol after pouring over my laptop for ways I could acquire Kershaw’s company.

  My gait was steady. I hadn’t been drunk often in my life, but whenever I was, the average outsider wasn’t likely to notice, since I never outwardly looked anything but maybe a little flushed.

  My hand was shaking as I knocked on the third door. It had nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with the man that opened that door moments later.

  He had a gun in his left hand.

  The safety was off, even though my vision was slightly blurred, it didn’t stop me from noting the subtleties of a deadly weapon.

  Which was why I noted something not so subtle about the man who served to be deadlier than a gun.

  He was shirtless.

  I pretended that I didn’t think about what he looked like without his tight tees and leather jackets. I thought I’d called up somewhat of a pleasing and tempting image in my mind.

  It was nothing on reality.

  He had the same sculpted muscles I knew he would have, abs that bordered on an eight pack, every muscle that could be carved in a person’s body stark and beautiful.

  But it was marred by ugly.

  By puckered scars covering almost his entire torso, spaced unevenly, textures varying.

  Burns. Gunshot wounds. Some kind of tearing of the skin, that didn’t look to be from a knife or a bullet.

  I cataloged them with absent sterility that was only possible from a drunken mind. The same drunken mind that let my hand lift, move forward and attempt to touch the ruined skin.

  Jacob let out a sound that wasn’t quite a hiss or quite a growl.

  My hand froze, the warning was clear.

  I let it dangle there, suspended in the air for a moment. I toyed with the idea of pushing past the pure danger in the noise that he just made, touching him despite every single one of my survival instincts that were roaring at me to retreat. Run.

  I never retreated. Or ran.

  I did lower my arm.

  “Why won’t you let me touch you?” my words were soft, the only inkling of my inebriation—lack of flatness to my tone.

  Though my inebriation was quickly disappearing, as if spotting the predator that Jacob was was more sobering than coffee, a cold shower or a long sleep.

  A hangover was hitting me quick and fast, my head pounding, stomach lurching.

  Or maybe it was the reality that I was standing here, unprotected, in bare feet, bare face, bare soul in front of the man without a shirt but still layers of steel protecting him.

  He stared at me with the eyes that were wild and caged at the same time. The emptiness unsettling because it was anything but.

  Empty, that was.

  A chilling thought echoed through my spine. Those eyes would be wild until the grave took him. Haunted forever.

  I didn’t think he’d answer, just stare at me with those wolf eyes. I was seconds away from backing down, flickering my gaze away and retreating. Me.

  The woman who had won stare downs with men who owned weapons companies that could have a hit out on me in the blink of an eye.

  Me.

  Who had met and fended off numerous Senators and one Prime Minister from sexually assaulting me because they’d thought it their right.

  And here was one man without the billions, the titles, and the expensive suits that had me surrendering. Because none of that meant anything. None of that was real power.

  “Because I don’t have control,” he growled, the air thickening with the murmur of his voice.

  I blinked, long and slow. His voice was death but it was also sex. “Over what?”

  He glanced down at his hands, large, calloused, attached to veiny, sculpted and scarred arms. “Over these,” he muttered. Then he glanced back up to me. “I won’t touch you with the hands that have ended lives, destroyed them,” he spat his words at me, as if he could use them as a physical force to rid him of my presence. To scare me away.

  That, coupled with the fresh memories of blood and death and the power humming in the air very nearly did. Scare me away, that was.

  But the wolf eyes, the ones that I presumed were also trying to banish me were what chained me to the spot. Tightened me to him in a grip that I was afraid was too tight. That I might never get free of.

  He had been waiting for my retreat and since he didn’t get it, he stepped forward, his goal to intimidate me with his body, the charge letting off it. It did intimidate me. But it excited me. To my toes and then back up in between my legs where my panties were soaked.

  “I won’t touch you, Boots,” he murmured. “Not with hands that only offer death and pain. That only know death and pain. I don’t have control over what happens after I lay them on you. I have to have control. Even when I’m ending a man’s life, I have it.” He paused, the sliver of air separating us feeling like a hair and a chasm at the same time. “Hell, that’s when I have the most control. But with you? You offer chaos. And destruction. Yours or mine, I can’t figure out. The latter, I’d be happy with if I got to feel your skin. But the former? Not a risk I’ll take.” Wolf eyes turned from wild to resolute. “Not ever, Boots,” he promised. And then just as the chasm began to close, he stepped back and slammed his door.

  In my face.

  I stared at the door for longer than I would like to admit.

  It was only me and his words left in the empty hallway. I could barely breathe around them.

  But I did.

  Breathe, that was.

  I turned and returned to my hotel room.

  I opened another bottle of vodka and continued working on a way to bring Kershaw down. If only to distract myself from the fact the man two doors away had already brought me down.

  11

  The next morning I woke up with a headache.

  And a lot more than that.

  Memories fractured and out of sequence rushed into my brain as I forced myself up and into my running gear. My stomach lurched once, then settled. I waited for the regret, the shame to rush in with the knowledge of what I’d done last night, what I’d revealed to Jacob.

  But none came.

  Because I may have revealed a lot. Definitely too much. But he’d revealed a lot too. More of those shreds of himself I was determined to detach from him, collect and own.

  I laced my shoes and made my way down to the hotel gym. First, I had to make it through the hallway. The hallway that was drenched in the heaviness from the night before. Walking through it was like trying to wade through the muddy ocean floor.

  Especially when I passed his room.

  The door stared at me in accusation. Dared me to knock again, and not to pause when my survival instincts warned me not to touch him. It urged me to move past my human self-preservation and surrender to my obsession with my own destruction.

  I almost did it.

  Almost.

  But then I continued moving and took the elevator down to the hotel gym,

  I half expected him to be there. It was the usual time for our morning run, and since it was pouring with rain outside, he would deduce that I wasn’t hitting the San Francisco streets.

  I held my breath as I entered the empty room, five in the morning was too early for even the most exclusive of their business clientele.

  The room was empty.

  And so was I.

  A week went by with the elephant of that night between us. Though of course Jacob acted like it never happened, never mentioned a word, though sometimes I swore I saw him looking at me with something other than his intense but cold indifference.

  I could have been imagining it.

  I almost certainly was.

  The amount of work I’d been pushing myself to do was bordering on insane, even for me. I’d shaved hours off my already short sleeping schedule, falling asleep at my laptop most nights, plagued by broken and frighten
ing dreams.

  Not of the traumas I’d been through. Not of blood or of death.

  Just him.

  The him that was waiting outside my building every morning at five, who ran beside me without a word. Who sat across from me in the car for fifteen to seventeen minutes, depending on traffic. Who escorted me to functions, meetings and anything else that he deemed outside the safe area. His silence should’ve made him melt into the background, it did anything but.

  I became more hyper-aware of him with every passing day. To the point where my weekends, when he wasn’t around, I was sure I felt his eyes following me to the market, up and down the streets of the East Village where I wandered amongst the crowds.

  Worry was a constant pinch at the back of my spine. No, not worry. Bone deep terror, that it wasn’t Jacob that was unraveling me, nor the man who was trying to kill me, or my uncle’s betrayal. No, it was the villain lurking in my brain, in my genes, slowly but surely sinking its talons into the flesh of my psyche until I was its prisoner.

  More often than not, those thoughts became most unbearable at three in the morning, when I jerked awake.

  I thought of my mother in those lonely hours.

  Wondered about her sitting in some tastefully decorated mental institution with great amenities and top-notch staff. Her beautiful surroundings meaning nothing when her mind was rotting from the inside out.

  I knew this because that’s how I felt in that hour known as the witching hour. My memories a rotting corpse amidst the shiny and expensive things I’d surrounded myself within the ivory tower of mine.

  I held onto one thing when I became seriously concerned about my grip on sanity. Well, two things, the eyes staring at me from across the room. The wolf hung directly in front of my bed.

  Him.

  The reality of him drove me to the edge in the daylight, but the memory of him stopped me from toppling over in the darkness.

  Now, those itching feelings were creeping into my days, whether it be from lack of sleep or the start of the disease, I couldn’t be sure.

  I was on my fifth coffee for the day and it was barely eleven. I was looking at different companies I’d acquired in the past two weeks in order to give myself a chance at taking Kershaw down. No one knew I was doing this. Not even Vaughn. I’d outsourced all legal representation to handle the deals, and I was operating through a shell corporation. All very clandestine and paranoid, but my uncle’s actions sat in the forefront of my mind as to just how far people would go to grasp onto the kind of power I was toying with. I was holding onto.