doyenne.

by Anne Malcom

  I met his eyes, willing myself not to blink. “I’m not scared. I don’t get scared.”

  “I am,” he said. “Freely admit you fuckin’ terrify me, more than any war in a desert has or ever would. Because you can destroy me so much more than they ever could.” He paused while my heart was in my throat. “Wanna make it, at least with us, that you don’t need it. To hesitate. Want you to have something in your life that just...because, without blinking, Boots.”

  I choked on his words. On the fact he watched me that close to pick up a motion that was as natural as breathing and connecting it to reality. He was watching me. Every inch of me. I knew that. It’s what I’d hired him for. But I didn’t think he actually saw me.

  15

  I didn’t know how he got past the doorman.

  I’d fired the original one who had let my would-be murderer in. Not that it had technically been his fault, the killer was a professional who excelled at getting his targets, the doorman wasn’t exactly trained for such things. But it didn’t matter about fault. It mattered that it happened. And though we had somehow been able to keep both incidents from the public, it wasn’t something Charlotte Crofton did, let people get away with such things. So I fired him. Not before arranging another job for him with the same salary at a different building.

  The new doorman had been vetted and was supposed to be among the best of the best.

  Yet the man still got past him.

  I wondered how.

  A distraction.

  A disguise.

  Or maybe he’d killed him.

  It didn’t really matter.

  Since he was here, in my apartment.

  I had been cooking.

  Off guard when the elevator dinged.

  I’d assumed it was Molly, here for an impromptu visit now she was finally back from India, or more likely an interrogation about Jacob. Or Vaughn, feigning something about work but likely for the same reason.

  It wouldn’t be the man himself.

  He never said when he was coming, just disappeared and appeared. I was not in control of when I saw him, or what things were like when we were together. But he’d spent every night so far in my apartment. We’d structure our days the same as before, run at five, then shower—together—and to the office. He’d leave before me so he was at the curb when Ralph pulled up.

  He knew my schedule. Which meant he knew that this was a rare night I didn’t have a meeting, on the books or otherwise. He and Ralph were the only ones who knew about the business meetings I took to acquire various companies and influence Kershaw’s shareholders. Talk to lawyers. Not that I was technically staying within the law. But trying to kill me to put a business deal through wasn’t within the law either. We were above the clouds in our offices, and above the law in our lives.

  Jacob knew everything, he even helped with suggestions late at night, after my body was bruised, scratched, sated, and ruined. His voice was tighter than normal, huskier, because he knew about Ethan Kershaw. But he wasn’t so dense as to try and stop me from taking care of it myself. He was not that kind of man, and I was not that kind of woman.

  Nor was I the kind of woman to be drinking wine, cooking dinner and trying to pretend I wasn’t expecting Jacob to walk through the elevator doors.

  But I was doing all of that.

  Which was why my guard was down, my half empty bottle of pink wine being replaced into the fridge when I heard the elevator.

  Chicken was sizzling on the stove.

  I wasn’t hungry.

  But it was time for food—dinnertime—and I hadn’t consumed enough today. It would be foolish of me to neglect my health just because of him. He’d torn my emotional health to shreds, it only made sense to control what I could about my physical body until I gained enough strength to figure out the emotional part.

  Turned out the physical part was going to be ruined too.

  With just the ding of the elevator.

  The heavy footfalls were what put me on alert.

  Vaughn’s heels would’ve been thwacking on the marble, sharp and echoing. Molly’s chunky heels would’ve been slightly softer.

  These weren’t soft.

  This was a man.

  It wasn’t Jacob.

  Not his boots.

  It took longer than it should’ve for me to register all this, be it the wine or the mess my mind was. But I still snatched my phone, not hesitating to dial Jacob’s number. The ringing started the second the man rounded the corner.

  The second to enter my apartment to mean me harm.

  I scrambled for the knife I’d washed and put on my drying rack after I cut the chicken, the phone glued to my ear.

  The man was faster than I expected.

  Three things happened at once.

  My hand fastened around the handle of the knife.

  Jacob’s voice sounded in my ear. “Boots?” His voice was urgent, concerned.

  And the man crossed the distance between us, snatching my wrist holding the knife with such a brutal grip I cried out and dropped it.

  I wasn’t sure if the crack I heard was the metal against metal or my bone snapping in two under my attacker’s grip.

  “Boots!” I heard one last roar in my ear before my phone smashed to the ground and the beating began.

  Jacob

  He considered himself a man immune to most all human emotions. Made sense, since he didn’t rightly consider himself a human. Hadn’t for a long time.

  There were only so many times you could take life, draw blood, cause pain before you were no longer worthy of the basic label as human being.

  There was a certain number of graves you dug, then you became something else. Something a lot less. And a lot more.

  Because unburdened by human emotions, killing came much easier.

  Life came much harder.

  Which was why he’d killed. To make it easier.

  And then it led him to her.

  Who made everything so much harder.

  She who showed him he was not immune to human emotions, only immunized against everyone but her. She was a fucking plague to his soul.

  He loved her.

  With whatever ruined, rancid and rotten part of his organ he had left.

  He hadn’t admitted it to her. Not with words. He knew she knew, on some level. Because she was her. She cataloged everything around her like a fucking black ops agent. She read people in a second. Could destroy them in just a few more.

  She’d done both to him.

  Eventually, he’d have to make the hardest kill he’d ever made. Whatever it was between them.

  Eventually.

  When the threat was eliminated.

  The thought of someone actually succeeding in hurting her filled his thoughts with acid. But on some other level, he wanted that constant threat, if only so he could continue marring her life with his presence—which was why he hadn’t done away with the farce and killed Kershaw. That and he knew if he did so, she’d know, and that protection would be betrayal in her eyes. The killing wouldn’t bother her, but the open statement that he didn’t believe she could solve her own problems, control her empire, that would. So he didn’t kill Kershaw, even though his bones cried out for him to do so.

  Because she got him, unlike his own fucking blood did. Because she was wrong too. The world had scraped away all the purity in her, scooped and hollowed her out. But she wasn’t empty. Just full of something different. Ugly. Beautiful.

  He’d leave her eventually.

  For her own good, maybe. But for selfish reasons too. So he didn’t have to fucking feel all the time.

  Then he got the call.

  And all those emotions he thought had been killing him, all of them that he thought were his demise, they weren’t shit compared to that phone call.

  The unmistakable thudding of fist against flesh tore at his fucking vision. Literally split it down the middle.

  Fear ripped across his skin, scoring it, tearing at it as he ran thr
ough the city, as he ran to her, fucking terrified that he wouldn’t get there in time.

  But he was already too late.

  He had been since he first heard the sound of someone’s fist pounding at her skin. Skin that he was only allowed to bruise. Ruin.

  And she’d be ruined in a different way when he got there.

  Charlotte

  I was on my kitchen floor.

  My eyes were intent on the blood smeared on my white marble floors. I imagined having to explain that to my housekeeper.

  No, I wouldn’t explain anything.

  I never explained myself.

  I would clean it.

  As soon as I found the strength to peel myself off the floor.

  It wasn’t the pain stopping me from getting up. Though that was bad. Worse than bad. Perhaps some of the worst physical pain I’d ever experienced. My attacker was nothing but efficient. And brutal. My ears were still ringing with the fleshy sound of his fist impacting my body.

  My employees would’ve been heartened to know that I was not made of marble, and his blows hit my fragile skin, impacted my bones, maybe even broke them, I wasn’t able to pinpoint sources of pain to be sure.

  But that wasn’t why I was still on the floor, even though it’d been exactly twelve minutes and eighteen seconds since he left me in a crumpled and bleeding heap.

  It was shame. Shame that yet again, I’d been unable to handle myself in a situation controlled by a man, orchestrated by a man who couldn’t get what he wanted from me using contemporary standards, so he reverted to barbaric ones instead. Using the muscled giant who I was no match for to teach me a lesson.

  Make me feel weak.

  And I did. Not even from the beating. From the entirety of what had happened these past months. A rogue and uncontrollable tear trailed down my cheek. I was no longer even able to control my emotions.

  “Boots,” a broken voice cut through the fog in my mind.

  Two boots rushed toward me.

  The man whose eyes I was so used to seeing as placid and unfeeling met mine. They were chaos. Not with the animal inside. But with the man. With fear. Terror.

  With a gentleness I didn’t even know he was capable of, he brought me into his arms. Eyes surveying my body, my likely obvious wounds with an expert eye. His body shook as he sat, his back resting against the kitchen island, cradling me in his arms.

  I expected him to rattle off questions. Ask me if I was okay. Ask me what happened. Who did this.

  Though I guessed the answer to all of those questions were rather obvious. Jacob was a smart man. He didn’t ask stupid questions.

  He just sat there, holding me, kissing my head, breathing heavily.

  My mind was cloudy with pain and I supposed shock, but I was certain for however long we sat there for, it was because Jacob physically couldn’t move. He was paralyzed. I didn’t know if it was from seeing me, I couldn’t imagine it was a pretty sight, but then again, I doubted it was anywhere near the worst he’d seen. Which was why the second option was a lot more plausible. He didn’t move because he didn’t trust himself. He’d come here ready to kill, he’d come here without a hold on the man he pretended to be. And he was scared to move just in case the monster came apart.

  He put me in the shower. He didn’t take off my clothes. Probably because looking at me, he reasoned I didn’t have the strength to lift my hands above my head or stand on my own.

  He would’ve reasoned right.

  The water was scalding.

  I wanted it to be hotter, so it burned my skin from the bone.

  He stepped into the shower with me, fully clothed. Boots and all.

  I let out a hysterical giggle at that.

  It was the first time I got that expression.

  If Jacob thought there was anything strange about me erupting into giggles—the first he’d ever heard of me laughing—while he was washing my own blood from my skin, he didn’t say anything. He just kept his jaw marble, his eyes running over every inch of my no doubt ruined skin, running his hands feather light over my body.

  My giggling stopped as the water pouring over his boots turned crimson.

  “You’re going to need new boots,” I said, my voice strange and far away.

  He froze. “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “We’ll go shopping,” I decided. I hadn’t left the house with Jacob being anything other than my bodyguard. It would be nice to do something normal.

  But then again, Jacob had never been my bodyguard. And we’d never be able to do anything normal. I still clung to the idea of it nonetheless. In the midst of horror, the false belief that some kind of normalcy may return was the only thing that made it possible to make it through.

  Jacob kept me in the shower until the water was no longer crimson.

  Then he stepped us both out, his clothes clinging to his body. I was wrapped in one of my Egyptian cotton towels, the soft fabric like razorblades on my skin.

  Jacob lifted me into his arms, pressing me into his wet body and quickly walked us to my bed, placing me on there with the same gentleness that had been present since he walked in on the violence.

  He stood, eyes on me as he kicked off all of his wet clothes. I held his gaze for no other reason than I didn’t know where else to look. Nothing quite made sense.

  “Getting your first aid kit,” he said when his clothes were a soppy pile at his bare feet. “You gonna be okay here?”

  No.

  “Yes,” I replied, voice croaky.

  He gauged the single word, gritted his teeth and took a visible inhale and exhale.

  Then he left.

  My fingers clutched the towel at the same time my mind clutched to my trademark calm. Strength didn’t mean anything if I didn’t exert it in my weakest moments.

  Jacob took a few seconds to get the first aid kit I’d never told him the location of. But he was Jacob, he would probably know the location of everything in my house, down to the emergency box of tampons underneath my sink.

  It was extensive, top of the line, not because I’d expected I’d need it, but because it was a sensible thing to have in your apartment and you lived alone. And when you would have to be bleeding from a mortal wound in order to do something like take yourself to the hospital—which was me.

  Jacob knew this, because he was Jacob. Therefore there had been no mention of doctors or hospitals, which would’ve been the first two words out of anyone else’s mouth when they took stock of my no doubt substantial injuries.

  They were painful, ugly, brutal.

  They wouldn’t kill me, though.

  Jacob knew better than anyone what would kill someone and what they could survive.

  Methodically, he opened the kit and began tending to the wounds that could be tended to. It hurt. A lot. I didn’t wince, cry out or even exhale roughly. Pain was only a state of mind, after all. And the damage was already done.

  It was more agonizing to have Jacob try to treat my wounds than it was to sustain them in the first place.

  The snapping shut of the lid of the kit told me he was done.

  His hands circled my neck, his thumb brushing over my jaw, where I guessed a bruise was already forming.

  “Boots,” he murmured, the word yanked from somewhere visceral, painful.

  He didn’t say anything else.

  He stood after a while when I began to shiver under my towel.

  “Clothes,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He disappeared into the closet. Again, I clutched at the edges of the towel and held myself together in his absence. I stared at the blood-stained cotton swabs he’d used on my face.

  They were obscured from view when Jacob came back, dressed in sweats and a tee he’d left in my closet. It was only yesterday I’d strode in my walk in, organized with suits, couture, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of material possessions. And the thing that was of most value, was the small corner where Jacob’s things were. He dropped a folded pile on the bed beside me, ex
tracted the towel from my hands, letting it splay on to the bed.

  My wet hair dripped onto my bare shoulder.

  He lifted me to my feet, keeping one of his hands steady on my hip, as if he knew I couldn’t support my own weight.

  I should’ve wanted to. I should’ve pushed his support away, dressed myself, taken care of my own wounds.

  I didn’t.

  I let him dress me.

  When he was finished, he rested both of his hands on my hips, taking on all of my weight. I leaned against him.

  He didn’t speak.

  I wondered how long we might’ve stayed like that had the elevator not dinged and had he not yanked a gun from the back of his sweats that I hadn’t even known was there.

  “Charlotte!” my sister’s voice screamed from the foyer.

  Jacob put his gun back and my entire body stiffened.

  Molly couldn’t see me like this.

  It’d break her.

  My delicate and beautiful sister did not need to see the pain of reality.

  Jacob seemed to sense my panic, since he wordlessly placed me sitting on the edge of my bed and strode from the room.

  I watched him leave until I couldn’t watch him anymore.

  Then I focused on the canvas in front of me, the wolf eyes.

  The low rumble of his voice carried through the apartment. I couldn’t distinguish his words.

  I could distinguish Molly’s.

  “I don’t give a fuck,” she yelled. “You may be strong, scary and probably armed, but you’re not gonna keep me from my sister. Unless you want to shoot me?”

  I smiled at the ensuing pause.

  Jacob could protect me from anyone else that might’ve walked out of that elevator, but not from my sister.

  There was another low rumble, and then the sound of heels clicking on my floor.

  I held my breath.

  Tried not to vomit from the fear.

  It was more intense than what I’d felt when this had been happening. Because it was only happening to me. I could handle that. I couldn’t handle it happening to Molly. Though something told me it had already happened to Molly. It was the reason she was here in the first place, it was the reason for the naked panic in her voice when she’d screamed my name upon entering the apartment, without even seeing the bloodstained kitchen.