by W Winters
“With what?” I ask him, feeling a chill in my blood.
“With the shit that’s going on. The war, not knowing who tried to take her or what they were planning.”
“She doesn’t need to know about a damn thing,” I say beneath my breath with every bit of humor long gone. “You shouldn’t have told her anything. We stay on lockdown. We wait for the Talverys and Romanos to trim their own numbers. If you have to tell her anything, that’s all she should know.”
Daniel’s head tilts back slightly and he runs a hand down his face, his body slumped in the chair. “She’s not allowed in the north wing and I don’t want her leaving without me or someone else with her… and I’m not supposed to tell her anything?” he questions me, letting his chin drop and daring to look me in the eyes.
“The women should stay out of this.” He fucking knows better.
“Says the man who started a war over a piece of ass.”
“Careful.” He cocks a brow at my response, but I stay firm.
Leaning forward, he puts both palms on the desk and asks quietly, like it’s a secret, “What’s going on with you?”
I steady my back against the leather chair, letting one hand fall to the armrest, my fingers tracing along the steel nail heads.
“I wish I knew,” I tell him in a breath. “We have to move forward with this and there are some things that will benefit us, but it’s a careful walk from here until the end.”
Daniel nods his head, his eyes never leaving mine. “And when are we getting revenge on Marcus? The man who tried to take what’s mine?”
“We don’t know that it was Marcus who tried to take her.”
“Who else would have done it?” Daniel asks but even as the last words slip out, his conviction wanes. Our enemies are surrounding us. The only saving grace is that they fear us, and they have other wars to fight.
“He has yet to answer any of our messages and no one’s confirmed he had anything to do with it.” Daniel’s nostrils flare as he slams himself back into his seat, making the front legs of the chair nearly come off the floor while he looks past me and out the window.
“So, I’m supposed to do nothing and keep Addison in the dark?” Daniel asks with contempt. “I need to do something. I can’t let him or whoever the fuck it was get away with it.” His frustration is getting the better of him. And I understand. I do. But we have to be smart and know how best to move forward before we act.
“We don’t know who did it. There will be nothing done until we do.” My answer is absolute, with no room for negotiation, and the air tenses as Daniel considers me. A moment passes, and I can’t breathe. My brothers are everything to me. All I have. And they’ve never questioned me. Not until this past week.
I’m losing my grip; I can feel it. And that’s never a good thing.
Finally, he nods once and relaxes his posture, moving one ankle to rest on his knee.
“Can I ask you something else?” he asks, and I rest my elbow on the desk and then my chin in my hand, nodding as I do. He’s going to ask me regardless.
“What are you doing with her?”
“It’s personal.” That short answer already reveals more than I’ve told anyone else, but Daniel shakes his head, a look of disappointment clearly written on his face.
“You aren’t the brother I remember.” He’ll never know the pain that comment causes me.
“Tell me what you remember, Daniel? You never saw anything past Addison.” I practically hiss her name.
“What the fuck does that mean?” His anger is evident, and his jaw tightens.
“You had her and I had no one.” My voice cracks at the revelation. Time marches on as we stare at each other. He has no idea how she saved him. Having someone to love, even if it is from a distance can give you hope. And hope is everything.
“We had each other,” he finally tells me. I know he’s thinking about the same shit I am. All the shit we went through. There were five of us, five brothers, but Daniel and I were the oldest and the two our father paid more attention to. If you can call what he did attention.
I let the anger and every other emotion fade, opening up the laptop to cue that this meeting is over. The truth slips by me unintentionally as I point out, “It’s not the same.”
“I just want to know you’re not hurting her.” He won’t let it go. My grip tightens on the laptop as I try to remain calm.
“You have to trust me. Everything is about to change and if that girl had stayed where she was, she would have died.” He waits for more. Proof, maybe. I don’t know what he wants, but the less he knows, the better. “There’s so much you don’t know.”
“You could tell me.” There’s a hint of sadness in his voice, or maybe I imagined it.
“Soon,” I promise him. “Soon.”
He doesn’t say goodbye as he walks away. But as he makes it to the door, gripping the handle and swinging it open, I remember what he said about Addison. “Daniel. Give her this,” I call out to him as I open the drawer. I have a few vials of S2L inside the small safe and toss one to him. He nods once and says something about Jase, but I don’t hear, and he’s already gone before I can question him.
Staring at the closed door, I think about how my brothers are the only constant I’ve had. Only them and no one else.
But admitting the truth out loud… I can’t trust myself to do it.
The last time I admitted something of this weight, my world changed. I sparked the depraved monster inside of me to life and it changed everything.
The day Talvery left me to rot where he found me. I’ll never forget the feeling as I heard my father’s truck come to a stop. The old thing sputtered, and the sound was so comforting until his door shut and the anger in his voice was clear.
“What the fuck are you doing out in the open? Do you want someone to call the cops?” he yelled at me and when he tugged on my arm, the burns and cuts shot a horrible pain through my arm that made me scream in the dark alley. Bloodied and bruised, my father still tossed me around like I was nothing.
Couldn’t he see what they’d done to me? I could hardly open my eyes.
“We’ll get whoever did this, but come the fuck on before someone sees,” he hissed between his teeth.
“They wanted to know who I worked for,” I barely spoke as I hobbled to the car. Every bit of me hurt just to breathe. I slumped into the seat as he rounded the truck. And I know they saw. They had to have been watching me. Waiting to see who would come.
Country music played out as my father shut his door and took off down the street toward the dirt roads. I wanted to roll down my window so badly. I remember thinking I was dying, so I wanted to feel the wind on my face one last time. I’d coughed up so much blood, there was no way I’d be okay. My father ignored me as I asked him to do it, and instead, he turned down the music so only the sounds of the rumbling truck and his questions could be heard.
“Who’s ‘they?’” my father asked as he raced over a speed bump and my body jolted forward. I cried out like a bitch and he screamed the question again at me. It was fear in his voice though, not anger.
I know it now. Fear is what dictated his actions. Not strength like the man who’d done this to me.
“Talvery,” I answered in a single painful breath. As I said his name, I remembered the look of Nicholas Talvery’s freshly cleaned face only an inch from mine. I would never forget the way he looked at me like I was nothing and how much joy it brought him to know he could do whatever he wanted with me.
“What did you tell him?” he asked, and I looked at my father. I made sure to really look at him as I told him he was safe.
“I said I was just selling my dead mother’s cancer meds. I said I was no one. And they believed me.”
My heart has never hurt as much as it did at that moment when my father nodded his head and seemed to calm down. He was good at taking care of himself. He was good at living in fear.
That was the last day he looked at me as if I was
a pawn in his game. My wounds were still fresh when I started hitting him back. And I never stopped. I wouldn’t do the stupid shit he wanted me to. I would make money, a fuckton of it. But I never set foot on Talvery’s turf again. I wasn’t a dumb fuck like my father. And the next time he pushed me into the truck and screamed in my face so loud it shook my veins and the spittle hit my skin, I let my anger come forward, slamming my fist into his jaw.
I let the fear rule me in that moment. But it’s the fear I saw in my father’s eyes that defined the change between us.
Each time I went out, leading a life I didn’t choose, I thought it would be my last. I wanted to die, and it wasn’t the first time in my life that I wished for sweet death to end it all.
But without fear of death, I learned what power really was.
And none of my brothers understand that.
Not a single fucking one of them.
Chapter 10
Aria
His eyes won’t leave mine.
He won’t leave the room.
He won’t give me any space.
I don’t know how many days I’ve been here, but I do know that today is different by the look in Cross’s eyes.
It’s hard to count the days. My eyes flicker to the carving of stripes on the wall just beyond Carter Cross’s never-changing stern expression. Sitting on the metal chair a few feet from me puts him at the perfect height to block the etched stripes. One for each of the days I’ve been here. But I stopped a while ago.
My sleep is fucked and there aren’t any windows in the room. I’ve noticed that when I lie down and curl up to sleep, the lights go off. Which means two things, as far as I can tell.
He wants me to sleep. And he doesn’t want me to know how much time has passed. It could be midnight a week from when I was taken. Or it could be noon with even more days between now and my last day of freedom.
There are four stripes on the wall. One scrawled after each time I slept. But on the fifth day, I slept on and off with terrors of my childhood that woke me up constantly.
The first two days I got three meals, always delivered the same way. A small slot in the door opened, the food was shoved inside on a small foam tray and then the slot quickly shut with a deafening slam. I waited for hours by it on the third day, praying I could catch it, snatch the hand… I don’t know what. All I knew was that on the other side was freedom. But I quickly found that the slot only opened when I was in the corner of the room farthest from the door. Otherwise, no food would come.
I can barely eat as it is, but hunger won a few times. And instantly, I slept afterward. I don’t know if he drugged me or not, but the fear of sleeping is at war with the need to eat.
Either way, the food I’m given doesn’t aid me in knowing what time of day it is. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason as to what’s on the tray.
There haven’t been any breakfast foods at all. The last thing I ate was a biscuit and a chunk of ham. It was glazed with honey and my stomach was grateful. I devoured every scrap and then immediately regretted not eating whatever it was he’d given me before. If I don’t eat what’s given, he simply takes it away when I sleep. And somehow, he knows when I’m faking sleep. I tried that, too. I don’t know how many times I laid in the darkness waiting for him to open the door, only to fool myself into sleeping and waking to the tray being gone.
So much wasted time.
Maybe losing the time is the first sign of victory for him.
But I want it back.
“What day is it?” I ask him and it’s the first thing I’ve said in the time he’s been in here.
He comes in every so often, merely watching me. Scooting his chair closer and waiting for something. I don’t know what.
“It’s Sunday.”
Sunday… It was Thursday when I left to go to the bar. I know it was Thursday. “So, that means it’s only been three days?” I ask him although inwardly my gut churns. It’s not possible.
A devilish smile plays across his face.
“You slept a lot, songbird. It’s been ten days.”
His words steal the bit of courage from me and I turn to face the door rather than him, pulling my legs into my chest and sucking in a deep, calming breath. Ten days of screaming and crying in this room. Of not knowing when help is coming, or if it ever will. Of barely eating and only bathing from a bucket of water while hiding under my dirty clothes.
“If you would only kneel for me when I come in, I would give you so much more than this.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” My question is a whispered breath. No tears come from my dry eyes and the pain in my chest is dull. There’s only so much a person can take before they break. I don’t need sleep or food even. I need answers.
“You ask that often,” is his only response, as he straightens himself in the chair. Squaring his shoulders toward me and making the pressed dress shirt stretch tight across his shoulders.
His handsome features look like nothing but sin as he stares at me. I have to rip my eyes away from him. I can’t look at him. He’s a monster and that’s the only thing I need to know about Carter Cross. A beautiful monster who enjoys depriving me and watching me fade into nothing.
“How about we play a game?” he asks me, and a chaotic laugh erupts from my lips.
“Come now, I promise you’ll enjoy it,” he says, and his voice is a promising caress.
“And what’s the game, Cross?” I say his name out loud, staring defiantly into his eyes. I imagined his aggravation, maybe even anger at my response, but instead, he only grins at me. A crooked grin on a charming face. I wish I could smack it off.
“An answer for an answer,” he says and that’s when it hits me.
“You think I know a thing about my father’s business? You’re wasting your time,” I say but my voice betrays me as I speak. It cracks on my last words.
So, this is his plan? Steal me, lock me in a room with nothing for days until I’m desperate for change so he can get information from me? I know it’s merely because I’m a woman. That’s why they haven’t tortured me. But it will come eventually, and I have nothing to give them.
My eyes burn with the need to cry, but I don’t let it happen. “I swear to you,” I barely get out and then stare into Cross’s dark eyes, willing him to believe me, “I don’t know anything.”
“I know you don’t.” It takes a moment for me to register what he’s said.
“Is this a trick?” I ask him, feeling as if I must be going crazy. The hope in my chest is fluttering so strongly. “I don’t want to die,” I whisper the confession.
“I’m not going to kill you.” He answers simply, devoid of emotion, giving me nothing to hold on to other than the matter-of-fact words. “The Romanos would have killed you. You would have died or been captured and given a much crueler fate if I hadn’t taken you first.” I’m silent as I listen to him talk about me as if I’m merely a pawn to sacrifice. “Your best chance at surviving what’s to come is with me.”
Tears threaten to leak down my cheeks at the thought of men infiltrating my father’s estate. At Nikolai being shot as he sits at the kitchen table where he always sits on the early weekend mornings. At my father being killed in the same room where my mother’s life ended.
“Do you want to play the game?”
“I’ve never done well with games,” I answer breathily, watching every inch of his expression for a hint at what’s to come.
“The blanket is yours for playing,” he says and nods toward a pile of fabric he’d tossed at my feet when he came in. And inwardly, I’m grateful. “Why don’t you eat?” he asks me, and I know the game has started. An answer for an answer and he holds the first question.
Staring down at myself, I answer him with half honesty. “I’m not hungry.” Ten days… I try to remember how many times I’ve eaten. Maybe six meals. At the realization, my stomach roils.
A moment passes before he shifts in the chair, leaning back but keeping his hands on
his thighs. “If you lie, then I can lie,” he says and the way he says the word “lie” forces me to stare into his eyes. It’s like the devil himself discussing deceit. “That’s the way this game works.”
“I don’t trust that you aren’t going to drug me or poison me. Or something.” The truth so easily pours from my lips.
My eyes drop to the ground at the reminder of all the horrific ideas that have flitted through my head since I’ve been here.
“It’s only food and you need to eat.” Again, there’s no emotion, only a statement of fact. I watch him intently as he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands in front of him. “Your turn.”
“What are you going to do with me?” I ask him without thinking twice.
“Feed you and keep you in here with nothing but what you have until you submit to me.” He readjusts in the chair and adds, “You’re a social creature and lonely. I can see how lonely you are.” As he speaks to me, my gaze wanders and the hollow ache in my chest rises.
“I’m used to being lonely.”
“I hear your prayers in the dark, songbird. I hear your wishes for someone to save you. Your father. Nikolai… Who is Nikolai?”
“A friend,” I answer him, feeling the pain and agony sweep over my body. And feeling like a liar. The word friend sounds false even to my own ears, but it’s been so long since Nikolai was anything else. And a friend is what he needed to be. Nothing more. Or else my father would have found out.
“Wrong answer. He is no one anymore. They’re all gone, and no one is coming to save you.”
“Gone?” The word comes out like a question, but the monster in front of me doesn’t answer. My eyes close as I inhale deeply, thinking he’s lying. They’re coming. They’ll come for me.
“You’re bored, alone, and starving yourself into nothing. You will submit to me, or you will stay like this forever.”
My lips kick up into a small smile I can’t contain, and I don’t know why. I must be going crazy.
“You think that’s funny?” A hint of anger greets his words and it only makes my smile grow, but it’s accompanied with tears leaking from the corner of my eyes. And I don’t even know when I started crying.