by Shandi Boyes
Upon spotting the bob of my head, Maddox confesses, “He’s a federal agent.” When I stiffen, shocked I’ve caught the eye of a law enforcement officer, Maddox drags his teeth over the shell of my ear. “Keep moving. As far as he is concerned, we’re two friends from high school reminiscing about our teen years.”
When I follow his instructions to the wire, Maddox advises why I’ve gained the devotion of the dark-haired agent’s eyes. Even with his body plastered to mine, and his lips replicating a man hoping to devour me instead of shattering my very existence, it’s a terrifying few minutes, and the tragedy deepens when the reason for Maddox’s earlier quiet steamrolls into me.
“You believe him. You think I knowingly sent those men to their deaths?”
I shiver through the sting of Maddox’s teeth sinking into my shoulder, then I shake some more when he breathes out a husky, “No.”
He’s lying. I don’t know how I know. I just do.
“If you leave now, he’ll most likely arrest you,” Maddox pushes out in a hurry when I attempt to break away from him. “Is that what you want, Demi? Do you want to face prosecution?”
I whip around so fast my hair slaps the faces of several club goers surrounding us. I wore it down tonight. That’s a rarity for me. Usually, I have it up and out of the way, so it can’t be used against me as it was in my teens.
“Haven’t I already been prosecuted?” I fire back, too worked up to let it go. “You think I’m guilty. That’s all I need to be convicted, isn’t it? A jury of my peers to believe I’m a heartless bitch who sends men to slaughter with a smile on her face.” I thrust my hand at him, calling him out as my judge, jury, and executioner. “Stuff the truth. Don’t let that be shared because God forbid anyone in this town should be given a fair trial!”
I’m shouting at the wrong person, and I am lumping all my anger on the wrong person, but I can’t hold back. I thought Maddox’s sneaky glances the past three-plus years was because he found me attractive. I had no clue he was striving to unearth my hideous insides.
“I need to go.” I almost make a dash for it, but morals my father instilled in me before he died stop me. “I’m sorry for biting your hand, ruining your night out, and for anything else you seem to think I’ve done but most likely haven’t.” Okay, I’ll admit, the last part wasn’t needed, but I have a hard time being amicable when I’m unfairly judged. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”
Maddox doesn’t shout my name like he did earlier, but I know he’s shadowing my walk. Not only does his gasp hit my neck when an Audi A4 pulls up to the nightclub’s back exit doors within a second of me bursting through them, but his eyes also shoot to the agent he pointed out as fast as mine.
I don’t want to be witnessed sliding into my uncle’s car by a federal agent. I’m aware of the many reasons he’s being tailed by the FBI, but the silent opening of the back-passenger door doesn’t give me any other option. Col never sits in the front. He feels superior when he’s in the back. It’s where he wheels and deals, and more times than I care admit, where he punishes me for being disobedient.
Mercifully, only my ego has been walloped into submission since I reached womanhood.
Cheek slaps are reserved for special occasions.
“Demi…” Maddox whispers in warning when I step toward my uncle’s idling vehicle.
I keep my eyes forward, but I direct my voice in Maddox’s direction. “I’m fine,” I force out, issuing my go-to reply anytime I feel snowed under. “Innocent until proven guilty, right?”
The thud of my pulse in my ears could have me mistaken, but I swear Maddox gabbles out, “Not in his fucking realm,” a mere second before I slip into the back of my uncle’s car and am driven away for my second trial tonight.
9
Demi
“It went flat a little over an hour ago.”
Ignoring me, my uncle snatches my cell phone out of my hand before he plugs it into the charging cable dangling out of the door of his pricy vehicle. He may have stained our family name in dirt multiple times the past four decades, but that doesn’t mean he’s struggling to make ends meet. That hustle is left to the people below him—the shitkickers, as he likes to call them. The people like me who do everything he asks but get paid a pittance for it. I could earn more in hell than I ever will from him. It’s why I’m so generous with the tips I receive. Not one of the staff at Petretti’s is there because they want to be. They all owe my uncle in some way.
“Was that before or after I called?” my uncle asks, shifting his focus back to me.
I smile at him like a brainless idiot. Unlike the Walsh brothers, my uncle prefers docile, submissive women. “Was what before or after you called—”
He steals my words with a vicious backhanded slap. It reddens my cheek in an instant and has my molars crunching together, but since it was an open-hand hit, I act as if not even the faintest sting is creeping across my face.
“It was in my purse, so I’m unsure. P-perhaps it was after.”
The quick balling of his hands warns me he’s bordering on retaliating with more than a slap. I’d be worried if all my concentration wasn’t focused on the frustrating stutter of my words. Furthermore, I deserve to be punished. Maddox said half the men I’ve recruited into my uncle’s fighting syndicate were murdered within weeks of them signing the dotted line. Half.
I deserve so much more than an open-hand slap.
I should be hung.
When my uncle growls at me in warning, my lips get flapping. “I attended the gyms you requested yesterday morning. I signed another three recruits. I did as you asked.”
“But you haven’t secured the man I want!” he interrupts, yelling. “You had orders to bring me the best. You’re not bringing me the best!”
With two fights already under my belt this weekend, I pray like hell the third time really is the charm. “Because he doesn’t want to fight for you. That isn’t my fault—”
I should have paid more attention to his balled fists. They hurt more than any slap ever could. The hit he splits my cheek with juts my head back so far, the back of my skull comes close to shattering the glass next to my head. I feel instantly woozy, and the tangy taste of blood has me forgetting the amount of garlic my dinner was laced in.
I want to say I’m surprised he hit me, but in all honesty, I’m not. He’s wanted Maddox fighting under him for even longer than Maddox has been contending in the underground circuit at his university. It’s why I bolted when Maddox caught my relieved sigh from Saint kissing Sloane, and it’s why I acted like I had no interest in him even with my crush being borderline psychotic.
While rubbing away a smear of blood from his hand like it isn’t from his niece, my uncle sinks into his seat. “If he isn’t interested in fighting for me, what was tonight’s date about?”
“It wasn’t a date.” The brutal shudder of my lips chops up my words. “He… umm…” I’m usually more on the ball with thinking on the spot, but since my brain was just rattled against my skull, I’m a little slow off the mark. “He needed help with a paper.”
He tsks me as if I’m a child. “You didn’t go to college, so how could you possibly help him?”
I didn’t go to college because I didn’t want to owe you anything, is what I want to reply, but since I can’t, I continue with my ploy to pull the wool over his eyes. “His paper was based on an experiment we did at Seacoast Private. I supplied him the evidence, so he supplied me a free meal.”
I thought he’d appreciate my wheeling and dealing—he’d sell my lung on the black market for a free meal—so you can picture my shock when disdain hardens his features instead of anger. “A man doesn’t buy a woman steak unless he wants to fuck her.” My skin crawls when he unlatches his seat belt so he can scoot to my side of the cabin. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you, sweet innocent Demi?” I can’t see my face, but when he drags the back of his index finger down my cheek, I know the exact area that’s starting to welt. It whitens along
with the rest of my skin when the reasoning behind his gentleness comes to light. “You have so many of your father’s features, I often forget you’re as pretty as your mother.”
I want to scream at him that I’m his niece when his finger drops to my collarbone before it moves to the neckline of my dress, but no matter how loud the words are shouted in my head, I can’t force them out of my mouth.
Denying him only ends one way.
Death.
While he traces the outline of my strapless bra through the thin material of my dress, he mutters, “I was disappointed when you failed to answer my calls tonight. When word got out you were seen dining with Ravenshoe royalty yesterday…” he spits out Ravenshoe like it scorched his throat, “… I thought you had finally done as asked.” He tsks me again. “Should have known better. You’re just like your father. Stupid and incapable. You’d be more useful to me dead. Alas…” he sighs like he’s doing me a favor, “… I promised your mother I’d take care of you.” I’ve seen men almost beaten to death, yet it has nothing on the smirk my uncle releases while saying, “She paid very well to ensure your safety. Perhaps I should make you do the same?”
When he reaches for his belt, I sneak a hand around my back to secure a firm grip on the door handle. Rolling onto asphalt at seventy miles an hour will hurt, but I doubt it’ll be as painful as discovering there was a reason for the horrified gleam in my cousin’s eyes anytime she begged to have a sleepover. Ophelia only ever pleaded to stay the night when her father returned from ‘business’ trips. It was rare for her request to be granted since my uncle refused to let her go on the basis he had barely seen her the months prior.
After wetting his lips, my uncle whispers, “Do you want to play a game, Andi?” He only ever calls me Andi when he’s up to no good. My father was so desperate to please him, he christened me with the female version of his beloved son’s name. He can’t use that when he wants to forget we’re related by blood.
When he glares at me, demanding an answer, I tug on the door latch. No matter how I answer him, my response will produce the same result. I’ll either die from colliding with the pavement, too ashamed to remain living, or be strangled by the belt now hanging loosely down his splayed thighs when I tell him no.
My grip on the door handle loosens when my uncle’s temper gets the better of him. He lunges for me, his grip on my hair enough to spring tears to my eyes. “I asked you a question!”
The hand he raises to strike me across my cheek suspends midair when the revs of a motorbike sound over the roar of his words.
When my uncle jackknifes to investigate where the disturbance is coming from, he rips a chunk of hair out of my head. This is the exact reason I usually wear it up.
“What did I tell you, Andi? He wants to fuck you. Enough to risk his life for the chance? I’m not sure.” After returning his eyes from Maddox tailing us on his motorbike to me, he sneers a snarling grin. “But I’m always willing to push the boundaries.” He sleazily winks, so I can’t miss the double meaning of his comment.
I breathe for the first time in what feels like minutes when he signals to his driver to pull over. Once he has his belt looped back around his waist and his zipper sitting in its original spot, he dismisses me with a wave of his hand through the air.
I have my seat belt off and my door flung open in under a second, but I’m far from free of additional controversy.
“Are you forgetting something, Andi?” my uncle asks, his tone laced with an equal amount of humor and superiority. When I crank my neck to face him, he taps his cheek like I’m unaware of what he’s asking. “Did your father not teach you any manners?” The gleam his eyes held when he undid his belt returns full force when he mutters, “Perhaps I should spend the weekend teaching you? Sometimes the only way a child can learn respect is by having theirs stripped.”
“You can’t,” I stammer out, too frightened to care he’s using my ultimate fear against me. I’ve done everything he’s asked of me because I don’t want to end up like my mother. I gave him my soul, yet it still isn’t enough. I have to give him the one thing I’ve wanted for over half my life. I have to throw Maddox into the fire with me. “I have a fighter to sign.”
My reply pleases my uncle more than my fear of his threat. “That you do.”
When he taps his cheek for the second time, I tilt across to his side of the cabin. Kissing his cheek already makes me want to vomit, and doing it under Maddox’s watch is even worse, but it has nothing on the disgust that rains down on me when my uncle twists his head a mere nanosecond before my lips land on his cheek, forcing them onto his open mouth.
The growl that rumbles up his chest is horrific, much less what he says next, “Almost as sweet as your mother’s cunt.”
10
Maddox
I’ve seen some sick-fucking-shit in my life. Men fighting after they’ve had digits removed by their ‘owners’ for disobedience, my sister half-naked in the hot tub with a townie, one of my brothers balls-deep in his college professor, but the gleam in Col’s eyes when he forces his niece’s lips to land on his mouth cuts the fucking cake.
Ophelia was more friendly with the seniors at our high school than her female counterparts, but since it was brushed off as her wanting to gain their approval than her being too sexually advanced for her age, I didn’t think much of it.
I am now, though, and the thoughts are as ugly as I’m about to make Col Petretti’s face.
He wants to see me fight. Who am I to deny his every wish?
I’ll give him a front-row seat to the festivities, bloody nose and all.
At the same time I throw my leg over the leather seat of my motorbike, Demi stumbles out of the back of her uncle’s Audi. Her lips are cracked and dry, her eyes are brimming with tears, and blood is dribbling from both her nose and a cut in her cheek, yet her attention is far from herself. It isn’t even on her uncle. It’s solely devoted to me.
“Turn around, Maddox. This isn’t your fight.”
“Like fucking hell it isn’t.” My words sound as if they were delivered straight from the fiery underground I referenced, fueled by the annoyance Col is even more of a coward than predicted.
He’s such a weak prick when I climb into his car to drag him out by the lapels of his fancy suit, he doesn’t draw his gun on his niece. He orders one of his goons in the front seat to jab it under her ribs instead.
“One more crinkle to my suit will see you spending the weekend scraping her body parts off the asphalt so you’ll have something to bury.”
The brutal heave of my lungs is heard in my reply when I yell in his face, “She’s your fucking blood, you sick prick.”
His laugh is as evil as his soul. Unfortunately, it isn’t loud enough to drain out the sob that escapes from Demi’s mouth when she’s brutally clutched by Col’s head goon. Since I didn’t immediately jump to Col’s demand, Demi is being forced to endure the punishment of my disobedience. That’s almost as bad as me believing a single thing Agent Moses said about her. Deep down, I knew she wouldn’t have done the things he said, I was just worried my years’ long obsession had me refusing to absorb the truth.
That’s done with now.
After fixing Col’s crumpled suit in a manner that reveals I look forward to fucking it over more ways than Sunday once his niece is far from his reach, I climb out of the cabin of his car, then sling my narrowed eyes to the man fisting Demi’s hair so firmly, she has to balance on her tippy toes to save her glossy locks from being ripped from her scalp. “Let her go.”
The dumb fuck acts as if I didn’t speak. He maintains his arrogant stance, his grip on Demi’s hair only weakening when Col signals for him to stand down.
After watching me pull Demi behind me in a protective manner, Col clicks his fingers at the man seated behind the steering wheel. Two clicks and a business card is thrust over the privacy petition separating him from the two men in the front seat.
“Meet me at this address tomorrow night
at nine o’clock sharp.”
Col jots down an address on the back of his business card before he passes it to a shuddering Demi peering at him over my shoulder. He’s smart. Even though the card is for me, he hands it to Demi because he knows not even the threat of being shot will stop me from getting in a punch when he’s within striking distance. That’s how much I despise this prick. I’ve never wanted to kill a man until now, and a quick, painless death isn’t at the top of my wish list.
I want to torture this fucker and smile while doing it.
After drinking in the pure rage reddening my face, Col says, “Wear white. The more blood, the more money you’ll pocket—”
“I’m not fighting for you,” I interrupt, my voice almost a growl. “I’d rather starve.”
“Okay.” I stare at him, stunned as fuck he gave in so quickly. He’s a coward, but he is usually more on the ball when it comes to threats. “If he doesn’t show up, I’ll finish what I started before I decide where we go next.” He isn’t looking at me. His eyes are locked with Demi’s. “Do you understand, Andi?”
The quiver wreaking havoc with Demi’s tiny body exposes why she reacted so fiercely when I shortened her middle name yesterday. I did it in jest because her christened name is so similar to her male cousin, it felt odd expressing it while having improper thoughts about how sugary her mouth most likely tastes. I had no clue it had been used against her before, and Col’s seedy delivery guarantees I’ll never use it again.
When Demi nods, albeit sheepishly, Col grins a victorious smirk. “Good.” He shifts his eyes to the dark pair watching him in the rearview mirror. “We’re good to go.” As the driver seeks an opening in traffic, Col issues one final warning. “Tomorrow, Andi. Don’t let me down.”