doyenne.

by Anne Malcom

  I nodded once, opening the door and closing it purposefully. I didn’t glance at the men, not when they whistled and shouted. I strode to the building purposefully like I had every right to be there. People tended not to target those who radiated confidence, ownership of the situation—because cowards only tended to attack those whose grip on themselves seemed tenuous. My grip on myself was tenuous, but I was an expert at making it seem otherwise.

  The building was meant to have a security door that only opened when residents buzzed up visitors. But at some point, this had been broken. A landlord hadn’t come to fix it, since I walked right in without a problem.

  The foyer stank like stale Chinese food and a baby screamed from the depths of the building.

  There was an elevator to the left, but I chose to take the stairs.

  I passed no one in the stairwell. Different smells lingered together. Old takeout, human sweat, general misery. It was a building for the damned and the hopeless. People who had no other choice than to live in the concrete, cold, cramped and old apartment block that was designed to hold hundreds of people’s sadness within its walls.

  I didn’t feel anything about this in general. People made their own decisions, and life was hard. It was a fact. But the thought of Jacob being in here, breathing in this smell every day, letting this hopelessness sink into him...it unnerved me.

  I was uncomfortable with this feeling. You couldn’t survive at the top in this world if the suffering of others affected you.

  My hand was steady as I knocked on the door to 25C.

  There was no going back now.

  There hadn’t been any going back since that night in the alley.

  The door opened and a shirtless man with a spoon in his mouth and a jar of peanut butter in his hand answered.

  One that was most definitely not Jacob.

  He was young. Attractive. Had a pleasing body, covered in various scars that weren’t as extensive as Jacob’s, but still a lot more than a regular human should’ve collected. His hair was growing out from an Army issue buzz cut. His eyes were too light for what the rest of him communicated.

  His gaze traveled up and down my body.

  The spoon left his mouth and he grinned in a way that likely made women forget a lot of things, their inhibitions especially.

  “I would ask you if you’re lost, but you strike me as someone who is exactly where they intend to be at all times,” he said by greeting.

  His tone was flirty, sexy, playful even, which didn’t connect with the scars and the shadows hidden behind his eyes.

  “Depending on whether this is the residence of Jacob Lucas, I’ll be able to tell you whether I’m exactly where I need to be,” I replied, keeping eye contact with him, my voice flat and purposefully unaffected by the teasing in his tone.

  Where I needed to be was in my office, researching different companies with data banks we needed, making offers and figuring out how to consolidate each company, figure out how to come out on top. That’s where the Charlotte Crofton I’d constructed should’ve been.

  Not here, in front of a shirtless man with playful eyes eating peanut butter out of the jar, with scars that were familiar and a happiness that was alien.

  The playfulness in his eyes disappeared and his form stiffened.

  “I don’t know anyone by that name,” he lied.

  I quirked my brow. “You’re a good liar. But I’m better. I’m his employer. I’m not here for trouble.”

  His eyes went up and down me pointedly. “Yeah, you are. Just not the kind Jacob’s used to,” he muttered.

  Something in the words jerked me. There was a familiarity with Jacob in his tone. It was strange. I didn’t think of Jacob having people who knew him well enough to make such statements. I didn’t think of Jacob having anyone. It made me jealous in a way that I couldn’t explain. Shouldn’t I be happy that there was a man with smiling eyes that knew Jacob? But I wanted him to myself, I didn’t want smiles or happiness for Jacob, I wanted something more than that. I wanted him to myself. My greed knew no bounds.

  “Are you going to make me make this difficult?” I asked, taking half a second to recover.

  His eyebrow went up, as if he could calculate what that small pause meant. “As much as I would love to see you make it difficult, I feel like Jacob might kill me,” he replied playfully. “Though he’s likely gonna kill me for giving out his location. It’s just a matter of how violently I’d like to die.”

  He made me want to smile, this man. He was easy. Despite the scars on his body telling me that life had been hard to him.

  He reminded me of Molly.

  He was the kind of man I’d like for Molly to have. Someone who made her laugh but had the hardness of the world inside him so he could protect her from it. Granted, I wanted him not to live in squalor eating peanut butter out of the jar shirtless in the middle of a workday, all things that Molly would likely love about the man.

  I waited as he pretended to think on his statement. It was rather amusing, and the view wasn’t exactly bad, despite the surroundings. I was not a person accustomed to waiting. I knew there was something about me that made people not want to make me wait. They wanted to get me out of their presence as quickly as possible.

  Not this man.

  “You gonna put in a good word for me when you see him?” he asked. “Plead the case about how it’d be such a hassle to dispose of my body?”

  The corner of my mouth twitched. “I’m known to be convincing, so I’ll make sure you don’t end up in the Hudson.”

  He regarded me, sharp and soft at the same time. “I think you’ll make sure he doesn’t either.”

  His words struck me again, but then he was rattling off an address and I stopped my thoughts in their tracks. I didn’t know the area well, but I knew that it wasn’t likely to have many residential buildings.

  “You gonna write it down?”

  I straightened my spine. “I’ll remember.”

  He grinned. “Yeah.”

  He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. There was a knowing in that single word that made me uncomfortable.

  I nodded. “Well, thank you, Mr...?”

  “Everyone calls me Shooter,” he said.

  “What does the IRS call you?” I asked, my voice curt.

  He grinned, big and wild. “They don’t call me much, since I’m kind of not in contact with them anymore,” he said playfully. “Usually I have to kill the people I tell my first name, but I’ll make an exception for you. Donald.” He held out his hand.

  I raised my brow as I shook it. Donald was the least likely name for a man like this. It was comical enough for me to lose the control over my expression and my mouth moved less than an inch.

  Of course this man noted it. He only grinned wider. “See why everyone calls me Shooter?”

  I let go of his hand. “Thank you, Donald.”

  His laugh followed me down the stairs.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait?” the driver asked, peering into the seemingly abandoned warehouse with obvious unease. “Doesn’t sit right, leaving you here alone.”

  He had seemed to forget about the professional distance that was required of him for these situations. I wasn’t sure why. It’s not like I’d treated him warmly enough to warrant him caring about my wellbeing other than making sure he got the hefty tip that people like me were known for giving services such as this.

  Maybe it was the concern for his tip and not my wellbeing that had him acting out.

  “I’m not alone,” I said in response. “Thank you for your services and your discretion today,” I continued, reaching into my purse and handing him the envelope I’d had in there for this exact situation.

  He took it with wide eyes. “You walked into that apartment building with that in your purse?” he asked in disbelief. “I would’ve walked in with you if I’d known.”

  I almost smiled at the five foot nothing man who was barely over twenty wanting to pr
otect me. Or protect the tip that would likely pay his rent for the next two months.

  “Well, now I don’t have it and I assure you I’ll be okay.”

  I was out of the car before I could taste the uncertainty in my own voice. I was most certainly not going to be okay. Not if I went in there. The smart, Charlotte Crofton approved thing to do would’ve been to get back into the town car and right back up to my ivory tower where this place was nothing but a dark spot on the landscape. Where he was nothing but a searing hole in my memory.

  Some part of me knew if I did that, I’d never see Jacob again. That I might be less safe from assassination attempts, but my overall physical and mental security would be better off.

  I walked into the warehouse anyway.

  I strode around the yawning space before me, my heels echoing through the wrought iron walls, the sound catching on the wind breezing through the boarded-up windows. A bitter smell carried in the air, forgotten poverty, hidden demons. Forgotten sorrow, hidden pain.

  There wasn’t much in the space, an old weights bench that had rudimentary weights on it and little more. In the other corner, a single cot, made immaculately with military corners. A rusty mini fridge was humming beside it. Though this was little more than a ramshackle warehouse in the middle of the Manhattan that was forgotten by the glossy Matthattanites and inherited by those with no new hotspot to migrate to, it was clean. Bare. But clean.

  I focused on the ice blue eyes that had been watching me. He hadn’t acknowledged me when I entered the abandoned building, though he likely knew I was here the second I stepped my heeled foot onto the floor.

  No, he would’ve known I was here since the car pulled up at the curb. Maybe even before, if Donald had called to warn him.

  He didn’t speak, didn’t even look surprised to find me in his...whatever this was.

  Jacob would never live in actual squalor.

  He was just squatting in a building.

  Despite the fact he had an apartment, paid for and empty on Park Avenue. Despite the fact he was earning enough with me to rent his own property wherever he wished. But he was here.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Then again, Jacob didn’t make sense.

  He stood statuesque in the middle of the room. It was jarring, that image. Such a beautiful and broken damaged man in an ugly, broken and damaged space.

  He didn’t fit.

  There was nowhere that Jacob fit. Inside me, maybe. In situations where he took human life.

  “You live here,” I deduced.

  He nodded once, never breaking eye contact, not questioning why I was here.

  I stared back with effort. “Why?”

  He knew the depth of my question.

  He glanced up, breaking his eyes from mine. I should’ve felt relief, instead the loss of his attention was physical.

  I followed his gaze. Like any warehouse, the ceilings were high, towering above our heads with rusty and crumbling exposed beams. Old spider webs blanketed the ceiling.

  “The décor?” I guessed dryly.

  The silence yawned before he answered.

  I’d come to expect it. Get used to it, even if it was something that I never tolerated in whatever passed for my everyday life. I didn’t wait for people to answer, I demanded it. And most people were either scared of me, wanted something from me, or hated me enough to give me an immediate one.

  Not him.

  I found myself willing to wait until forever for one. I feared and hoped it would take forever to get them all.

  The answers.

  “Space,” he rasped. His eyes flickered around the empty expanse of the room. “You don’t get that anywhere here. Not without a few million and then some. Didn’t have that. Couldn’t live in the box my pension gave me. Even with supplementary income.” He paused. I knew the supplementary income he spoke of. Killing people. I didn’t imagine death came cheap, but then again, life was cheaper than a deposit on an apartment building in New York City.

  “I was a POW,” he continued. “Seven months, three days, eight hours, three minutes and thirty-three seconds.” His tone was brisk. No nonsense. I recognized it.

  It was empty.

  Almost.

  Hiding the pain.

  It was the same one I used every day of my life.

  “They put me in a box just tall enough so I could stand, lie down if I curled into a ball. Next to my own filth. They wanted me like that. An animal.” His eyes glowed, the wolf alive, the monster in control.

  I got it now. The wolf wasn’t just alive, it was what was keeping him alive. You couldn’t go through that without finding a way to cope.

  I killed everything human in me to survive what I went through.

  He did the same but called up something less than human. Something more.

  “It’s what they got, an animal,” he continued. “I came back. Went home. But my family, friends, they were waiting for the man that left. He was gone. I had a wild animal in his place who didn’t know how to be free. Who suffocated in a town that knew, or thought they knew, it all.”

  I gaped at him, a lone tear rolling down my cheek. I was in too much shock to understand it was the first tear I’d shed since I was sixteen years old. “Why here?” I choked. “New York is one of the busiest and stifling cities on earth.”

  His gaze was hot and uncomfortable as the ice-cold tear trailed through my makeup. “Exactly. I could get lost in it. The horde. The concrete. It’s not the crowd that makes me feel stifled, Boots. It’s the space. It’s the wide-open spaces of my hometown.”

  “But you need space,” I said, glancing up at the roof yawning above us.

  He stepped forward, then caught himself before he could come too close, his jaw hardening and the fists at his sides clenched. “Yeah. When I’m alone, so I can sleep, I need it. As much as I can get. Because that box apartment was a fuckin’ joke. Couldn’t close my eyes in there for a second. Not when it took me back there.”

  I flinched at the roughness of his voice, the way the pain filtered through the air to fill this wide-open space. I thought about that building that was held together with questionable labor practices, sorrow and poverty. No way he could exist there. Survive. Whatever little of him that was left.

  I’d wished he’d talked more, throughout the time I’d known him and come to be obsessed with him. I’d craved him to speak more than clipped sentences and hoarse demands when I was at his mercy. No other time had I been more aware of the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for.’

  I wanted to go to him. Comfort him. Though I’d never been good at that, my hands itched to run through his hair, to give him whatever support I could. But the way he held himself warned me against that. He’d erected a barrier between us, one I didn’t have the skills or kind words to climb over.

  “Makes sense,” I said finally, the words lackluster and hollow. “I’m sorry,” I ended up on more than a whisper.

  His eyes glowed. “I used to be too. Not one to dwell on the past, or cry over shit. But I did curse those mother fuckers every time I tried to sleep in the ranch my grandfather built from the ground up. When my sister looked to me with real terror in her eyes. When I had to leave and never contact them for a year, because the alternative is too much. Being faced with my own weakness is not enough.” He searched my face. “I wish I could kill them thirty times over for that. It’s the soundtrack to my nightmares. Their screams. My lullaby. I hated it. Until now. I can’t bring myself to hate it that much. Or at all.” He stepped forward, not crossing the barrier between us, but bowling through it.

  He was in front of me, not touching me, with his hands at least. His next words wrapped around me so tightly I almost couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to. Didn’t need to.

  “Now, I’m thinkin’, Boots, that I don’t want to bring them back from the grave and kill them again like I have for four hundred and eighty-four days.” His hand clutched my jaw. “Wanna fuckin’ thank them. For that. For turning me in
to this. If I wasn’t this. Then I wouldn’t have been brought to you.” His entire frame stiffened. “That man in that alley might have been successful.” He shuddered. “And that in itself, you livin’ in your world. That’s worth seven months, three days, eight hours, three minutes and thirty-three seconds in a box. Easily. A trade I’d likely make again. Without blinkin’, baby.”

  I didn’t blink at his words.

  Didn’t breathe.

  Not without his command at least.

  Because this was the last point of battle.

  It was the point of surrender.

  And I did.

  13

  He was now in my offices for meetings with employees.

  Vaughn was told this was because the possibility of Kershaw having turned another one of my staff. Which wasn’t outside the realm of possibility since it seemed it had taken little effort with my uncle, who was family, not that that meant anything when it came to business. My staff didn’t share my blood and definitely didn’t share any warm thoughts toward me. But they were treated well, were paid a lot and had signed non-disclosure agreements that would ruin their lives if they thought about doing what my uncle had done, so it was a low risk, but a risk nonetheless.

  And that tiny risk was one of the reasons my acquisitions of Kershaw’s smaller companies under different shell corporations was kept completely separate from everyone. To cover for this, I made sure we had acquired smaller defense companies with much less impressive data banks than RuberCorp—they would serve our purposes but would not make us the most competitive outfit on the market. In my business history, I’d never settled for second.

  If Vaughn was surprised about my seeming lack of frustration about this, he wasn’t showing it. Then again, I never seemed frustrated. Even when I was in debt up to my neck, eating one meal a day and still paying fifteen people’s salaries. Calm was key in battle and in business.