by Jane Henry
“I don’t like the way he talks to you,” her father spat.
Alice controlled her urge to snort. Right, because no one could be high-handed with Alice except him.
“Excuse me for a minute,” she said. “I need to go and have a word with him.”
Her parents clearly weren’t pleased, but they said nothing as she left the room and walked to the front door.
Slay hadn’t shut the heavy wooden door tightly—it was still open a crack, allowing the chill from outside to blow through the screen door. She took a breath to steady herself, mentally preparing to discuss things calmly and rationally…
And then his voice came through the door.
“Yeah, Diego, that’s what I’m saying. Tony says she’s not at home, Cara isn’t open, it’s not a school day, I have no fucking clue where she is.”
Alice stood, arrested. Diego? Criminal Diego? And… were they talking about Nora?
“Fuck. No, everyone else was meeting up with you, per your request,” Slay said, his voice a harsh whisper. “I kept one guy, Bobby, on the scene to cover both Charlie and Nora. They weren’t supposed to split up. When Nora left, Bobby stayed with Charlie.”
A pause while Slay ran a hand back and forth over his head and Alice felt her stomach lurch uncomfortably, as though she’d entered another dimension—a dimension where Slay was apparently talking about plans and meetings with one of the bad guys.
“What the fuck do you think?” Slay demanded. “Of course I sent him to find her. Little idiot is going around with pictures of you and Chalo on her fucking phone, begging for trouble, as though falling on your radar wasn’t trouble enough.” A pause. “Well, now I have a fucking problem, hermano, because I’m supposed to be meeting up with you, and who’s gonna watch Alice?”
To watch her?
Her mind flew back to the night, which seemed forever and ever ago, when Slay had invited himself into her date with Gary. She’d asked him how he knew where she was, and he’d told her he had a “man” tailing her. She’d assumed he meant someone like him, someone who was a bouncer or an ex-soldier who could keep tabs on her. Now she realized with a sinking feeling that it went much, much deeper than that.
Slay started pacing up and down the front walk. “Who the hell is Victor? I don’t want some asshole I’ve never met over here watching my family,” he told Diego.
My family. Alice swallowed. So, not everything had been a lie. The way he felt about her, about Charlie, was real. But beyond that, who was this man she’d fallen for? She felt numb.
“No, I know she’s not in immediate danger, brother. Not the issue. Would you trust Victor to watch Nora?” he demanded. Then a second later, “Fine. Yeah, okay, I get it. Get Victor’s ass over here now. I’ll be there in thirty.”
He jabbed at the phone screen to disconnect the call, and Alice opened the screen door, pulling the front door shut behind her.
Slay stiffened, but didn’t turn around. “How much of that did you hear, Allie?”
“Enough,” she said, heartbreak in her voice. “Enough to know that you’ve been lying to me from the beginning.”
He spun around to face her, graceful and imposing. “I have never lied to you,” he corrected.
She shrugged. “Not telling me the truth is the same as lying, Slay. Who the hell are you, anyway? What are you involved in? How do you know Diego?”
Slay sucked in a sharp breath and cast his eyes from left to right, as though someone were hiding in the bushes watching them. She rolled her eyes.
“We’re not having this conversation right now,” he told her, and she huffed out a laugh that sounded like a sob.
“Did you ever plan for us to have this conversation at all?” she asked.
He nodded. “When the time was right, yes. Of course. But for now, you need to—”
“Oh, I swear to God, Alexander Slater,” she said, holding out one hand palm-up. “If you were about to say that I need to trust you, you need to back up the bus.”
Slay’s jaw set and his eyes got hot. In a flash, he was up the steps and in the house, marching her down the hallway to her room.
“What’s going on here?” her father demanded as they passed him.
“Allie and I are having a discussion, sir,” Slay said, not pausing or slowing down.
“Her name is Alice,” her father sputtered, but they had already reached her bedroom, and Slay slammed the door shut behind him.
Before he could speak, Alice whirled to face him. “The phone calls, the text messages, the times you couldn’t tell me what you were doing… The pictures on Nora’s phone. Tell me what’s going on, Slay,” she pleaded. She gripped his forearm with both of her hands and outright begged in one last-ditch effort, “Please, Daddy, tell me.”
He pressed his lips together. “I do security work, you know this,” he said.
She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “You work security at The Club and you helped Blake design the security system. You used to do the same work at Club Black Box. You knew some guys who helped find Nora. None of that, none, has anything to do with this,” she said, throwing a hand out in exasperation.
“It does and it doesn’t,” he said, completely unhelpfully. “I do security work for other clients. And I can’t say more, Allie. Remember, not won’t, but can’t.”
She shook her head wildly. “My parents took one look at you and decided you were a criminal, and I was in there defending you,” she said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “And meanwhile, you’re outside having a chat with Diego, a guy who was involved in Nora’s kidnapping, discussing some plan where you’re going to work together on something. Explain to me how you have Chalo Salazar’s henchman on speed dial!”
His head went back at this. “You think I work for Chalo?” he whispered.
“No!” she denied immediately, instinctively. “No.” Whatever she thought, however angry and wronged she felt, she knew he wouldn’t do that. “But I don’t understand what’s happening, either,” she admitted.
He remained silent, watching her, and she threw her hands up in frustration.
“You can’t keep doing this, Slay! Yes, I’m your babygirl, and yes, I love it. But I’m not a child. I don’t need you to protect me from the truth. You’re asking me to take a huge leap of faith and trust you, but you’re not trusting me.” Her voice broke at the end.
Slay shook his head. “Allie,” he began.
A knock on the door made Alice jump.
“Alice! Alice, what is going on in there?” her father demanded.
“Not now, Dad!” she yelled back.
Slay shook his head again. “Baby, this is not the time,” he told her, his voice low. “Your parents are here, Charlie is here.”
Alice folded her arms across her chest. “Charlie’s watching cartoons. And I don’t care what my parents think. I submit to you, and I don’t need to justify anything to anyone, remember?” she hissed.
His eyes flared. “Oh, I remember, little girl. And I’m glad you do, too,” he said, a warning note in his voice now. “Not that you haven’t earned yourself one hell of a reminder later, anyway. But people are waiting on me, Alice, and I have to go.”
“People more important than I am,” she said flatly, refusing to be cowed. Let him spank her. Let him do anything he wanted to her, besides walk out the door with things unresolved between them.
“Hear me, Alice,” he said, stepping forward until they were toe to toe, making her look up to keep sight of his eyes as they burned into hers. “There is nothing and no one more important to me than you.”
Alice swallowed. She wanted to believe that. Lord, did she want to believe that she was as important to him as he was to her, but evidence suggested that wasn’t the case.
“I will explain everything, I swear, Allie. But right now, I have to go. And when I go, I need to know that you are going to be safe. Someone will be here any minute to keep an eye out, but he can’t do that if you’re going to be out with your paren
ts or shopping. You need to stay here, with Charlie, to stay safe. Can you do that for me?”
She regarded him silently for a moment, then two. What would happen if she said no? Would he stay? Would he choose to stay with her, keep her safe, rather than going out and doing whateverthefuck he was going to do?
But then… did she want to be that girl? The kind of submissive who played the brat to get attention? The type of person who whined and manipulated? No. That had never been her style.
“Yes,” she said. “Fine, I’ll stay.” But she couldn’t help but add in a whisper, “But I’m begging you, Slay, not to go like this. If you don’t trust me now, I don’t know if we can come back from this.”
“We can,” he said confidently, his hands reaching out to grab her upper arms and squeeze her to him. “We will. Once I explain everything, once I have time to do that, you’ll understand that this was the only way I could play it.”
She nodded sullenly, and he leaned his forehead down to touch hers.
“And once you understand, you will know just how badly you have earned the punishment you’ll be receiving,” he promised, his voice low and harsh.
Her heart skipped a beat, and a pulse of excitement flared in her belly before she ruthlessly quashed it.
He pressed a quick, bruising kiss to her lips before darting out her bedroom door, calling a distracted goodbye to Charlie and her parents as he passed, and leaving her confused, wanting, and majorly pissed off.
“Momma, are you paying attention?” Charlie demanded, glancing up from the movie on his iPad to find her watching her phone, which was still disturbingly free of any communication from Slay, even though he’d left her ten long hours ago.
“Yeah, honey, I’m paying attention,” she assured him, running a hand over his silky curls.
Fortunately, she’d seen How the Grinch Stole Christmas often enough that Charlie wouldn’t catch her in her lie, because she had absolutely not been paying close attention. Approximately half of her consciousness was focused on the phone in her hand, willing it to ring, and the other half was thinking up things she needed to say to Slay when he came back.
The list had grown fairly extensive
“But the movie ended, Momma,” he told her.
Alice squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then opened them and smiled ruefully at Charlie. “Okay, honey, maybe I was a little bit distracted there at the end,” she admitted.
“Is it because Slay isn’t here?” Charlie asked.
Ugh. She thought she’d been doing a pretty good job of keeping things from him, but clearly not. Smart kid.
“A little bit, honey. I’m waiting for him to get back,” she admitted. So I can finally understand what the fuck is happening, she didn’t add.
She’d tried, over the course of the long morning and afternoon, to see his side of things. Once her parents had left, disappointed and annoyed that she hadn’t provided any explanation for ruining their plans, she had worked to find her submissive place in all this. But she simply couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been honest with her from the beginning.
Which meant that likely he didn’t have a side. He was just plain wrong.
And this was no oversight on his part, either. This wasn’t him forgetting to tell her about some trivial thing, or not realizing that his actions would have consequences. He did this on purpose.
She thought back to their frenzied lovemaking the night before, remembered the way he’d halted in the middle of the action, made her wait, reminded her that things between them might not always happen when and how she wanted them to, but that she should wait for him to take care of her. He knew that he was withholding information, and he wanted her to wait for him to reveal it.
But at a certain point, willfully choosing to withhold information, information that in some nebulous way involved her safety and the safety of her boy, was dangerous. There was more at stake here than her trust.
She sighed. Dwelling on this stuff would not solve anything.
“Why don’t you take the iPad to my room?” she told Charlie. “I’ll make some hot cocoa, and you and I can cuddle up under the covers and watch X-men. Whichever episode you want. And I’ll even leave my phone on the dresser,” she told him, handing him her phone and drawing a cross over her heart with her finger.
He giggled. “Good deal,” he agreed. He bounced off the sofa and down the hall to the bedroom, and Alice headed toward the kitchen.
Until she heard a knock on her front door a minute later.
Slay!
No matter how mad she was, she couldn’t contain the joyful leap of her heart, and she couldn’t help that the first thought that registered in her mind was not of righteous anger but Thank God he’s home. She opened the heavy front door, eager for a sight of him…
But it wasn’t Slay standing there. It was Douchebag Gary Levitz.
He was smiling warmly at her through the storm door, as though the last time they spoke, he hadn’t been marching out of a restaurant while Slay glowered. As though she’d actually returned any of his dozens of calls and texts. She nearly rolled her eyes.
And then he pulled a bouquet of flowers from behind his back. Oh, Lord.
“Hi, Alice,” he said. “Your mom said you’d be home today. Can I come in?”
Alice’s first instinct was to say no… but then she sighed. He was a jerk, yeah. And no matter how much her parents liked him, she’d learned in her brief time with Slay that she could never, ever be with a guy like Gary. Still, Gary deserved, at the very least, to hear all of that from her, so that he could stop calling her and move on.
“I’ll only stay a minute,” he promised.
Alice gave him a small smile and relented.
Still, her hand hesitated on the door latch. Slay had specifically told her…
That’s only because Slay has some weird jealous fixation. Maybe it would be good for Slay to know that she wouldn’t blindly follow his orders, and that trust was a two-way street.
She opened the door and stepped back, allowing Gary to walk inside, then shut the door behind him to block out the chill.
“Gary,” she began immediately, “I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls or texts, but I need to tell you… I’m involved with someone else.”
Gary turned to face her, and his friendly smile morphed right before her eyes into something sinister.
“Oh, yes, I know. You’ve been fucking Alexander Slater.” He tsked and shook his head sadly. “And thanks to your fuck buddy, my life has gone to hell in the last couple of weeks.”
Alice felt her eyes widen and her jaw go slack. What was happening?
“You are such a disappointment to me, Alice,” Gary sighed. “Some people just can’t seem to make decent life choices. I had thought I could help you with that.”
Was the man insane? Oh, God, what had she done?
She reached blindly in her pocket for her phone to call for help, but then remembered she’d given it to Charlie. Charlie! Oh, God, she prayed he stayed back in her bedroom. Her eyes cut to the front door, and her hand reached for the knob. Did she have time to scream? Would the neighbors hear?
Gary guessed her thoughts immediately and his smile became broader.
“Oh, you don’t want to do that, Alice. You really, really don’t.” He still held the bouquet of flowers in one hand, the cheerful yellow daisies now comically out of place. But now he threw the daisies to the floor, sending petals and greenery scattering. From the pocket of his jacket, he extracted a small silver gun and pointed it directly at her.
She gulped, and moved her hand from the knob.
He smiled his friendly smile again, though now she could see that his eyes were… absolutely insane. “See? Aren’t you glad I’m here? You’re learning to make better choices already.”
Then he reached out, grabbed a handful of her hair, and yanked, pushing Alice back against the cold stone of the fireplace.
Pain exploded across her scalp from the way he held her
, but she managed to stay silent.
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, don’t come out here! She pleaded with her mind.
“Gary, please,” she begged. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I wanted to fuck you,” he said bluntly. “That’s all a bitch like you is good for, you know? But then Alexander Slater started investigating me. Sent my information to the authorities, ruined my fucking reputation, ruined my life.”
Alice’s heart froze at his words. I wanted to fuck you. Oh, God, no.
“Please, don’t, Gary, please don’t,” she whimpered.
He laughed, an ugly sound. “Don’t what? Fuck you? Take Slater’s sloppy seconds? Hell, no. Now I’m just going to fuck you up.” He paused, as if considering the idea. “Although now that you mention it…”
He pulled her hair even harder, and she bit her lip. His eyes, as they stared down at her, glittered with madness and anger.
“Maybe we’ll save that part for when Slater gets here.” Then with a smile, he delivered a vicious backhand to her cheek, and Alice cried out.
Chapter 10
Slay pulled onto the intersection of Hawthorne and Main as his phone buzzed. He glanced at the time on the dash and cursed angrily. Thanks to Victor's fucking timing, he was running late for the most important phase of the operation to bring down Chalo Salazar, the operation they'd been working on for months. Slay should've been there by now, should have already met up with Diego and the others and gotten into position. But he didn't like leaving Alice and Charlie without a man watching out for them, so he'd stayed longer than he should have, waiting.
Once he had it on good authority Victor was on his way, would be there any minute, he’d forced himself to leave, and tried to focus on the operation despite the niggle of doubt in his mind. Everything was going to be just fine.
Slay picked up his phone and jabbed at the answer button.
“Yeah,” he growled, waiting to hear the update from Diego and give his ETA. But instead of Diego's deep voice he heard a softer, higher pitched voice that sounded like a child. It was hard to hear, as the voice was barely speaking above a whisper.