Flawed

by Francette Phal

  “Yes,” I say, with a one shoulder shrug, “with school and all…” It’s the only thing I can come up with.

  I look up in time to see May take a sip of the red wine in her glass before setting it back down at her side and giving me a smile. “It’s a good thing you have Thanksgiving coming up, the four day break will give you time to rest. Will you and your family be having Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “Mom,” Tyler intercedes, maybe seeing the slight flinch I give at the mention of Thanksgiving break and family. Yeah, we at the Barnes residence weren’t too keen on holidays. Shit, and now with my Mom missing—yeah, that’s not something I’m really looking forward to. “Ease off with the third degree, not everyone celebrates the way you think they do.”

  May looks dismayed, “I know that, I was simply trying…”

  “Don’t,” he says, with a finality that brings crickets.

  “Tyler, you will not speak to your mother that way.”

  Before the awkwardness can reach dangerous levels, I open my mouth, “Yes, my family and I will be having Thanksgiving dinner. My mom isn’t much of a cook so I always end up making most of the meal.” I give a smile that probably borders on the edge of psychotic before I take on my plate of mashed potatoes and grilled chicken with gusto. Tyler knows I’m full of shit, but his parents don’t, and that’s all that counts.

  Let’s just say awkward doesn’t even come close to describing the rest of the dinner. Luckily, it comes to end a few minutes later and I can’t get up faster if I tried. But I have manners. Not much, mind you, but I do the polite thing by offering to help May clear the table and do dishes to which she mercifully declines. Fucking dodged a bullet on that. We’re in Tyler’s room now. It’s three times the size of mine with an en suite bathroom that he shares with absolutely no one. We’re working on homework—well, I’m working on homework, he’s splayed on his four-poster bed, propped up by a bevy of pillows, and on his phone texting God knows who.

  “Your dad’s right, you shouldn’t talk to your mom like that,” I say, from where I’m sitting on the chair at his desk. It’s completely out of the blue, but it’s been gnawing at me. I shift my eyes away from the Word document of my nearly finished nine page essay to look at him.

  “She was trying to dig for information so she could shrink you,” he replies, but fails to return my gaze, his fingers moving rapidly over the rotated screen of his phone. “I can’t fucking stand when she does that shit.” There’s an edge of animosity that he hides pretty well but not well enough that I can’t pick up on it. Or maybe, it’s that I know him too well.

  It’s a long shot, but I ask anyway. “Wanna talk about it?”

  “Fuck no,” he’s quick to say, but it manages to bring his gaze up to me. “How about you tell me why you threatened to sell me out last week?”

  Damn. I forgot he was just as good at deflecting as I was. “I wasn’t going to really do it.” And that was the truth. I would never sell him out.

  “So why threaten to?”

  I shrug, the words on the screen suddenly more fascinating. “I was desperate. I needed money quick.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. I was doing well for a little bit there. I hadn’t even thought about Knox for a good two hours now. But this conversation is shoving everything to the forefront of my mind. The incident in the hotel room, the weird, crazy, vivid dreams that I can’t seem to forget, and then that ominous feeling that I’m being followed. I’m itching all over, my heart pounding in an erratic beat, and I start to sweat because I’m suddenly anxious to run to Tyler’s curtained window, the one in the far left corner of the room that faces the street, just to see if I can find the shadow. Find Knox in the dark. My own ridiculous version of ‘Where’s Waldo.’ When I raise my hand to grab my phone instead, I notice the tremors.

  “What did you need the money for?”

  He doesn’t like his mother giving me the third degree but suddenly it’s okay for him to do it? Hypocritical much? “My brother got himself into some shit. Nothing I couldn’t handle.” But I can’t say I’m not partially grateful, the barrage of questions works in getting me out of my head.

  “Why couldn’t he handle it himself?” He sounds a little angry, fuck if I know why.

  “Jeez, Tyler, I don’t fucking know! I’m his family, that’s why. That’s what family does for each other. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  I watch him set the phone down and come off the bed in one fluid motion. I’m not blind. I know how attractive Tyler is, but I just don’t see him that way. He’s got that whole skater, grunge thing going for him. Boys with tattoos. He fits into that category perfectly. He’s got a pretty good build on him, too, tall with lean muscles that speak of his athleticism. And he’s wearing a white T-shirt with loose fitting jeans and bare feet. “Nothing is ever a big deal with you, Lace.” He comes to stand right in front of me and I have no choice but to crane my head back to look at him. His eyes are really blue, really beautiful, but nothing at all like Knox’s exhilaratingly frightening gaze.

  What? Where the hell did that come from? And why the hell am I even comparing how their eyes look?

  “You could’ve asked me for the money, Lace,” he’s frowning at me, “I don’t get why you won’t let me help you.”

  I manage a smile, not Joker scary, but something a little more genuine. “It’s not your job to take care of me.” It was nice that he always wanted to though. “You give me enough by just being my friend.”

  “Friend,” he scoffs, but I can’t be too sure. I watch him rake a hand through his overgrown fringe before he reaches down with the same hand to cradle my cheek. I’m seeing emotions playing across his face that make me a little uneasy. I can’t even handle my own emotions, let alone someone else’s. I don’t know what to do with the friendly hand on my cheek so I remain still. He’s looking at me and I’m looking at him. I wait for him to speak. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I am,” he says, a moment later, the words steeped with resentment.

  I know where he’s going with this. I know what isn’t being said. The unspoken words that reverberate between us like a struck bell demand that I acknowledge but refuse. There can’t be anything else but friendship between Tyler and me. He deserves someone who’s better. Someone that could actually love him. There’s too much going on in my life to take on the added baggage of having a boyfriend. And I didn’t love him…not like that anyway. I don’t do relationships. I do johns. I do sex for money. Money that I’m going to use to help me get out of this fucking cesspool that is my life. I can’t lose sight of that. It’s the only thing I have. I need to break free. Get the hell out of here and never look back.

  “There can’t be anything else.” I wouldn’t even know what to do with a boyfriend and all complications the relationship would inevitably bring.

  He leans down and utters, “I like you, Lace.” The moment is saturated with tenderness but the impact of his quiet words induce a small earthquake of pain in my chest that makes it hard for me to appreciate it. When he brings his face closer to mine, the earthquake builds itself into a panic so suppressive I want to shove at his chest to get him away from me. But he doesn’t kiss me on the lips like I thought he was going to. Still, the brush of his warm, soft lips against my temple seems far more intimate than if he’d pressed his mouth to mine. “I get you. I get it. And I’d rather be just your friend than nothing at all to you, so I’m not going to push.” Relief, sweet, merciful relief is filling my lungs with air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding until he finished that last sentence.

  It’s nearing midnight and I’m in the guest room downstairs now. Donald came to check on us a bit ago, wanted us to give it a rest for the night, but what he really meant was that he didn’t want to go to bed with me still in his son’s bedroom this late at night. So I said good night to Tyler before following the Hayes’ patriarch downstairs. “I hope you didn’t take offense to Mrs. Hayes’ inquiry at dinner, Lacey,” he
said unexpectedly, stopping just before the guest room door and facing me. He is putting me completely on the spot. “No, of course not,” I answered in a chipper voice. This fake, happy person wasn’t me at all. Nevertheless, the cheerful tone came out when I was talking to fully functioning adults. I learn something new about myself every fucking day. “It was really nice of her to ask,” I added, and smiled. The smile put him at ease.

  “Have a good night,” he says, with a small smile of his own.

  I’m in a bed that is nothing like the saggy, squeaky, spring-less mattress in my room and it feels amazing against my back. I check the messages on my phone and make an appointment with Greg for this Saturday. I don’t want to go to sleep because sleeping meant dreaming and lately every dream was of Knox and all the wicked things he did to me. As much as I try, I can’t ward off sleep for too long. And as I fall into the darkness, I am appalled to realize just how badly I want those things done to me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Knox

  I follow her.

  I watch her.

  I study her.

  I’m thorough in my notes. Every single detail of her life, everything essential to my research, I scrawl inside a small, black notebook. I treat her like my next victim. Sometimes I’d go undetected. But other times, times when I want her to know I’m there, when I want my presence to feel like a cold breath on her nape, I make myself visible, I let her see me. My presence isn’t subtle and she’s smart enough to look for me, to sense me, to feel me around her like the muscles wrapped around her delicate bone structure. She’s not a target, not a job, but I treat her like one because that’s the way my mind works. I haven’t figured out how to place her actions. She’s extremely smart. I know this because I’ve hacked into her school’s computer mainframe to get her transcript. But being book smart as she’s proven over and over again, doesn’t necessarily translate to having much common sense. I don’t know how she’s survived this long doing what she does with nothing to protect her but that poor excuse of a knife. Luck. It had to be sheer, dumb luck.

  And that luck has fatefully put her in my path. Extorting money wasn’t my expertise. That part of the Khitrova business luckily had nothing to do with me, and yet, I found myself shaking down her brother that day because I’d been doing a favor. Katia had been like a yapping dog in her persistence that I go and retrieve the money loaned to this man, and reluctantly agreeing to go was the only way to shut her up. I hadn’t expected her to send Vigo to help oversee the situation. The entire ordeal had been an inconvenience until I saw her. Eighteen years old. Prostitute. Lacey Barnes.

  I now know a lot about her. But it’s the things I don’t know about her that intrigue me the most. My interest is rarely ever this piqued by anything other than body disposal. It’s the paradox of her that settles beneath my skin like a shot of lidocaine. Twice now I’ve interfered on her behalf and I’m very curious to know why. What is it about her that moves me to act when I’ve typically never involved myself in people’s lives?

  Lacey. Her name makes me hard. Beneath the scorching jets of the shower, I brace a hand against the tiled wall in front of me and with the other I wrap my rough fingers around my cock. Photographic memory places gamine features, wide, green eyes, button nose, and full, coral lips. I recall the dress she’d worn in the hotel room and how it molded to her sylphlike frame like a second skin. Eyes clenched shut, water pelting down on my bowed head, I breathe in through the rivulets running down my face. I breathe in deep like she’s here. Like I have my nose pressed to the slick V of her pussy, her scent, that tangy, salty musk of her wet flesh open to me.

  My hand jerks up and down in a languid progression, stroking the full length of my hard dick as I picture her bound, intricately trussed with fine bamboo rope that will frame her breasts, her ass, and the pulsating lips of her cunt. I would have her hanging from the chains of my vault, weak, powerless, and completely at my mercy. I’d torment her, carve into her flawless, gold skin until she bled for me, screamed for me. I cup a hand around my tight balls, squeezing them tight as my other hand continues to jerk my cock in long, firm strokes. I imagine the sounds of her screams in my head. I see tears streaming down her cheeks, and it’s the pain I picture in her eyes, the agony that I placed in those beautiful light greens that shoves me over the edge. I come with a groan, the pleasure pulled from the place inside me that has never been right.

  It doesn’t take me long to finish my shower after that. I’m not exactly satisfied but the tension of earlier is gone. A kill would’ve been far more revitalizing, but I’ve been…preoccupied.

  I dry off and dress quickly in a pair of black cotton pants and a black, long-sleeved sweater before exiting my bedroom. I walk down the iron staircase to the first floor of my industrial loft. I’ve lived her for exactly thirteen years. The building had once been a lumber warehouse. It’s taken me approximately three years to convert it into its current habitable condition. The warehouse had been my gift from Yuri for successfully ridding him of the second cousin who’d had the tendency of running his mouth to the press. That second cousin had once owned this particular building. I’m now its sole occupant. Moving to the red, brick wall by the front entrance, I stand in front of the dark red freight elevator and insert a key that only I carry before stepping inside. It takes me to the basement floor of the warehouse.

  It is a long, dimly-lit, cemented corridor that’s a direct path to my vault. There is no visible light here. Everything is illuminated solely by freakishly ominous ultraviolet lights. The black bulbs housed in half-domed casings are on track wires along the vaulted ceiling. I continue to walk until I reach my vault. It is a room with sound dampening walls. Alternating black and white, patterned foam cover each wall from concrete floor to vaulted ceiling. Its pyramid shaped design was a ploy to throw off the mind. An illusion meant to disarm those who were led within. It’s my brain, my mind, where I descend with the willing and allow my imagination to run free. There is nothing intimate about this space. It is cold and forbidding but its beauty fits around me like a warm glove. It’s exactly how I like it.

  It’s my special space, just like the abandoned cabin in the woods, but this one is designed for violence of another kind. It is sparsely furnished. What it contains, however, is meant for specific purposes. There is a solitary thick, black slab at the center of the room that constitutes as a table with four stainless steel legs to support it. Dangling from each side are double-linked chains and leather cuffs that hang to the floor. Off to the far left side of the room is a steel cage meant for a small dog. But canines are not the sort of animals I like to keep in there.

  I proceed further inside and head to the farthest wall of the room. I don’t need to count, it’s automatic as my fingers move to the seventh row down and the eighteenth black pyramid across. It brings me to the hidden button only I know is there. A compartment opens just to the right of where I stand. Inside, meticulously arranged is a sea of small, black leather notebooks. The A-Z of all my victims. Alphabetized by each’s surname. Sometimes there is nothing more than a few short sentences, random facts I’ve picked up about them before I kill them. Other times, I fill the entire notebook.

  Those instances are rare and far in between. Until now. Until Lacey Barnes, with her faux bravado and horrible decision making. My eyes find the tab with the letter B and my fingers skim over the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth notebook in that row. The first is filled with her medical information, from the minuscule to the substantial. Medical records I’ve tracked, her blood type, any diseases, STDs, infections, colds she may have had in the last ten years. The second is on her family, leeches, parasites who greedily suckle from the open vein of her generosity. The third is about her friend, the skater. The amateur drug dealer who clearly has a thing for her. The fourth details the deplorable way she makes money. I haven’t witnessed her turn a trick in the week that I’ve been following her. But I’ve tracked her virtual footprints to an escort service that is cleverly d
isguised as a dating site. A cesspit where the run of the mill sexual predators converged. But she is discriminative. Stays with clients she’s been with before. I’m unsure of whether this speaks of her intelligence or the boldness I’ve seen in her pale green eyes.

  She is young. Practically jailbait.

  But suddenly the thought of having her in this room, of testing her limits, experimenting with that grit, that beautiful tenacity, is something I want more than anything. The urge is strong, the pull is like the thrum, like the call of the lullaby, that incessant needling itch beneath my bones to do harm. To capture. To torture. To tear in to flesh with my instruments and feel life ending beneath my hands. It is that same dangerously pervasive urge that has me following this woman-child. She is nothing at all like the women I bring here. Older, well-compensated women seasoned enough to withstand the scope of my brutality.

  Would she be strong enough? I barely keep them alive. I would break her. The thought excites me. It is like the heat of lips wrapped around my cock. It makes me hard just thinking about it.

  It would be smart of me to leave her alone. Forget that I’ve funneled twenty-five thousand dollars of my own blood money back into the great beast that is the Khitrova group, absolving her brother’s debt like I said I would. Her brother will live to see another day. But her…

  I release a sharp breath and jam my fingers through my damp hair. And then I smirk. Her fate has been decided. She will not be so lucky. Not this time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Katia

  My father’s mansion is a fortress. It’s outfitted with a massive security force that covers nearly every square inch of the fifty-four square foot mansion. Most people are oblivious to the guards posted behind every wall, strategically hidden behind trees or even the ones lying low on the rooftops, but I know they’re there, armed and ready to take down any and all possible threat. I’m used to them so I barely bat an eyelash as I bypass security and walk into the warmth of my childhood home; however, there are no pleasant memories here. Dmitry had been a nightmare. My father was always absent. No mother to speak of. But that is not something I harbor a grudge against. I don’t miss sleep at night because I lacked proper nurturing. But Knox…Knox had made living here bearable. He was everything to me then and remains everything to me now. He’s more of a brother to me than my own flesh and blood. I love Knox in ways that I can’t even begin to describe. He’s been the best gift my father has ever given me.