by Marni Mann
But I had no choice.
In a matter of a week or so, my dresses would be too tight, and my stomach would start to show. Mina would know I was pregnant, and there was no way I could hide it. I was almost four months along, and the little peanut was already starting to pop out.
Once I’d signed with The Achurdy, I never thought I’d be a mother or that it would be the reason I had to kill myself. I had known things with Jae would have to end at some point, but I hadn’t planned for it to happen this way.
But it was the only way to be free of The Achurdy.
Jae was going to find me.
Gary would take my body away.
Mina and Wynter would be notified.
And it would all go down in the morning. Jae didn’t know it yet, but I was spending the night here. Then, once I woke up, I’d ask him to make me breakfast. Without any eggs in his fridge, he’d have to go to the store. I’d have the next twenty minutes to end my life.
Oh God, I wished it didn’t have to be this way.
I wished I’d made better decisions.
I wished I had met him before The Achurdy.
But he had come into my life when I needed him most, and we had made something beautiful together. A little Tyler or a little Jae. Whatever was in my belly was so real. Something made out of love. Something that would require so much care in order to survive.
I couldn’t give the baby that—at least, not this way.
It took everything I had not to start crying when he sat on the couch, put his arm around me, and pulled me against his chest.
The lump in my throat grew even bigger when I tilted my face toward him and said, “I miss this when I’m not here.”
It had been four weeks since I last saw him, and I’d missed him terribly during that time.
I’d miss him even more after tomorrow.
If that were possible. I didn’t know.
“I miss it, too.”
He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. His lips were so soft, despite how much scruff surrounded them. I’d have to remember that.
He reached for the remote, and I stopped him. “Can we just cuddle and watch the fire? It’s such a cool night, and it feels so good to sit here so close to you.”
He stared down at me for a minute and nodded. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “The quietness just lets me hear your heartbeat.”
“What’s it sound like?”
He was smiling, and I knew he was teasing me.
I took a deep breath. It made the tightness in my throat even worse. “It’s a sound I never want to forget,” I whispered.
His grip hardened, and he kissed the top of my head. He was so warm, his arms so heavy and muscular as they encircled me. His breathing was so deep, his air almost filled me.
I wanted to always remember his arms. His breathing. The way he felt against me.
His heartbeat.
When I closed my eyes tomorrow morning, Jae’s face would need to come through the darkness. He would need to get me past what I had to do. He would need to provide that comfort when I ran the knife across my wrist.
“I love you,” I told him. I heard him start to speak, and I cut him off. “Don’t say it. It’ll hurt too much. I know how you feel. That’s enough.”
And it was.
Beard
I shut the boat’s engine off when I reached the dock and tied the rope around the tallest post. Once I knew it was secure, I climbed out and walked toward the building. I didn’t bother going into the house. I had a feeling the guys weren’t in there. So, I went straight to the prison, using my codes to get through all the doors.
I heard the scream as soon as I stepped inside. It was a woman’s voice, but it was too distant for it to be coming from one of the cells. The muffled noise told me she was in an OR—Shank’s, I assumed, since he was the only one who touched the girl inmates. And it sounded like he was having a hell of a time with her.
But, when I got inside The Eyes, Shank was in there. So was Diego. Both guys faced me, as if they’d been waiting for me to come in. Even Demon was staring at me, his fucking teeth hanging over his bottom lip, making a sound that told me he was hungry.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
I hadn’t been given any more information on the flight. It had been just hours of silence from the guys. I hadn’t known what was going on at the prison, why they wanted me to come back, and why Bond had flown in. I’d thought Shank would have at least sent me something to satisfy my curiosity. But, no, I’d gotten nothing, and the wait had been brutal.
“And where’s Bond?” I added.
Shank dropped Demon in Diego’s lap and came over to me, putting his arm around my shoulders and leading me into the hallway. “He’s upstairs. He’ll be down in a little while.”
“Why’d you ask me to come back?”
He walked me past the cells and toward the ORs. “Some shit went down while you were gone.”
“What kind of shit?”
Shank was saying a whole lot of nothing. My best friend was usually straight to the point, and this felt like bullshit. I was the only guard who didn’t know what the hell was going on, and I couldn’t stand it.
He stopped outside my OR and turned me to face him. “Shit only you can handle.” He unlocked the latch and pushed the cement door, so it swung open.
As soon as I saw Layla, that fucking pain in my chest returned. But, this time, it was stronger than tugging. It felt as though my goddamn skin were being sliced open because Shank was cutting it with a chain saw.
“Beard!” she shouted. “Get me out of here.”
Tears ran down her face, her lips all wet with spit. She tried to lift her hands but couldn’t. She was strapped to my chair with shackles around her wrists and ankles. The burn marks on her neck told me, at some point, she’d been bound by rope. But the rope was gone, and there weren’t any bruises or cuts on her face. Whoever had handled her delivered her unharmed.
“What the hell is she doing here?” I barked at Shank.
Shank shook his head. “That’s for you to figure out.”
I knew she could hear every word if she only quieted her crying, so I stepped further into the hallway and kept my voice down. “We’ve been hired to kill her?” I shoved my hands in my pockets to stop them from shaking.
Inmates didn’t start in the OR. They went into a cell to simmer for a while, so when we brought them in here, they’d talk. Straight into an OR meant instant death.
What had she done to deserve this kind of torture?
“Yeah,” he answered, “something like that.”
“It was our guys who went in and cleaned out her place, wasn’t it? But she didn’t get off the plane when I was at the airport, so when the hell did she arrive?”
“She came in with my dad.”
It felt like Shank had punched me in the face. My neck moved back like I was trying to avoid a second blow.
“Your dad?”
Bond had come in after I left, which meant he’d taken a plane that wasn’t ours. That wasn’t usual. Bond always took ours when he flew here. I’d never known him to take a different aircraft.
None of this was making any sense.
“Shank, I’m so fucking confused.”
His hand went to my shoulder. All it did was make me angrier.
I knew my best friend had all the answers, and he was keeping them from me. And, somehow, he was a part of this, and that pissed me off even more.
When the hell had he found out about Layla and the stripper? And why had he let me go all the way to Miami to look for them when she had been on her way here?
“Go talk to her, and figure this out,” he said. Then, he walked away, leaving me standing outside my OR.
“Shank!” I yelled when he was halfway down the hallway. “Where’s the other one?”
“She’s dead!” he shouted back.
“Nooo!” Layla screamed from her chair. “Beard, nooo. How could y
ou do this? How could you let this happen?”
I closed my eyes for just a brief second and took a breath. “Did it happen here, or…”
Shank nodded. “Her limbs are in The Pit. The rest of her is with the babies. You know how they like the taste of women so much better than men, so I tossed her in their room and let them snack on her for a while. It’s been a couple of hours. I’m sure they’ve gotten her pretty well gnawed up by now.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
My stomach was making a sound I didn’t recognize, flipping and churning like actual feelings were inside there. That was something new. Because, in this prison, I hadn’t felt a fucking thing anytime I ever took a life. But, now, someone was sitting in my gyno chair, someone whose mouth had sucked me off, whose cunt and ass I had come in. And the limbs that had been thrown in The Pit had touched my cock; the body that was being eaten by rats had been lying on me just a week ago.
When I went in the OR, I kept the door open. With all the cameras and microphones in here, we didn’t have privacy, and I was sure the guys were listening in anyway. I walked in and stood right in front of her. Her chin was pointed down, and she glared up at me through her long lashes.
“Layla, you’d better start talking.”
“She’s de-dead?” she sobbed. Makeup dripped down her cheeks, the black landing on her lips where it seemed to soak into her skin. “My beautiful gi-girlfriend is de-dead?”
“Yes, and you’re going to be killed, too, unless you tell me what you’ve done.”
That was a lie. I couldn’t save her, not in this prison. It didn’t work that way. But I could make sure she didn’t suffer too much. I just needed to hear her confession first. Then, I’d send Shank in and tell him to run a blade across her throat. I’d have him use one of the sharp ones, like the butcher’s knife, so it would happen fast, and she’d bleed out quickly.
“I don’t know anything,” she cried. “I haven’t done a thing wrong. Please, Beard, you have to believe me.”
I moved around the chair, checking out each side of her. I didn’t see any blood, no additional marks that I had missed earlier. She was wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants, the typical clothing we dressed the inmates in when they were transferred to the prison.
“I went to Miami,” I hissed in her face, mine only inches from hers. I knew she was hiding something from me, and I was on the verge of exploding. “I went to your condo, and the whole place was cleaned out. I went to your office, and it was empty, too.” I grabbed her cheeks, squeezing them. “We’re hired for a reason, Layla. All the people who come into this prison are guilty of something. What is your crime? Who the fuck did you piss off?”
My eyes dropped to Layla’s hand, and that was when I saw it. The tattoo. The same one I’d stared at for so many years. Layla had always worn a ring on that finger to cover it, but all her jewelry had been removed.
“What the fuck?” I shouted. “How…” But then I stopped when I heard movement behind me. Feet on the concrete, the swish of clothes as they entered my OR. I turned around to see whom it was.
The scream I heard was my own. A sound I’d never made—at least, not in the last few years. But I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t soften it. I couldn’t even pause. Not with those eyes looking back at me, those lips, that beautiful face.
My thoughts were halted the second she said, “I’m the one she’s pissed off.”
Bond
Two Weeks Ago
“Hey, Bond,” Eddy said as he opened my office door and stuck his head inside. “Someone’s here to see you.”
I didn’t even bother to look up from my computer. Instead, I pecked at the keyboard, finishing the email I had started a few minutes ago. “I’m not interested.”
“It’s a woman.”
“So?”
“I keep trying to send her away, but she insists on seeing you. She says she knows you’re here, and she won’t leave until she speaks to you.”
I ground my teeth and finally glanced up at him.
People didn’t often come to the mills to meet with me. When they did, they’d show up at the original location we had opened, assuming it was where I kept an office. Little did they know, I had chosen the shop that was the quietest, the area of town where a Mercedes parked out back wouldn’t stand out or where it wouldn’t automatically be assumed it was driven by a drug dealer.
I opened my desk drawer and removed my 9 mm handgun. Checking to make sure the safety was on, I tucked it under my thigh. “Send her in.”
“You want me to stick around, maybe hang in the corner while she’s in here?”
“Please.” He started to close the door, and I said, “Eddy”—I waited for him to look at me again—“don’t be afraid to shoot.”
He nodded and closed the door.
I returned to my monitor and clicked on the window that brought up the security feed. It showed Eddy walking down the hallway to the front of the store, stopping by the entrance to speak to a woman, and then she followed directly behind him. The live video wasn’t the clearest. The cameras were in the corners of the ceiling, so the angles made everyone look small, including Eddy who had been hired because of his size. But this girl couldn’t have been much over five feet, and she looked extremely lean. If she acted up, I was sure Eddy would have her on the ground in seconds.
The feed showed Eddy outside the door, and I heard the knock before he came in.
Unlike him, I wouldn’t have described her as a woman. This was a young girl, who couldn’t be a day older than twenty-five. She didn’t wear much makeup and dressed in clothes that were extremely nondescript. Yet she was attractive in a way where she didn’t have to try. I imagined, after a few hours in Neiman Marcus, the girl would be gorgeous.
“How can I help you?” I said.
She walked in and stood by the chairs in front of my desk. Eddy stayed close, just to the side of me, his hand clenched around the butt of his gun. It appeared that the girl noticed but didn’t seem at all affected by it. Admittedly, that surprised me. So did her disposition. She was calm, collected. I would even describe her as confident.
And she wasn’t a junkie. I could tell that immediately. She lacked the dark circles under her eyes and the acne. She wasn’t scratching her arms or acting fidgety.
If this wasn’t about drugs, I couldn’t imagine what she needed to discuss with me.
“I’m here to talk about one of your clients,” she said.
Perfect. I could get rid of her as fast as she’d come in.
Keeping my hand on the gun, I crossed my legs underneath my desk. “I don’t discuss my clients with anyone. I’m a doctor, and I maintain a strict confidentiality policy. Besides, it’s against HIPAA—”
“The Achurdy.”
I froze in my chair, my foot no longer tapping the ground, and I squeezed the gun a little tighter.
No one had ever said those words to me, except for Arman—an ornery old bastard, who’d been my contact at that organization. I’d met him over twenty years ago while vacationing in Belize, and we’d been doing business together ever since.
“Why don’t you take a seat, Miss…” She didn’t respond to the inquiry of her name. “And then you can tell me why you’re here.”
She pointed at Eddy. “He needs to get out.”
I shifted my eyes over to Eddy. “It’s okay,” I told him. “You can leave us alone.”
He waited a second before he left my office.
Once I heard the click of the door shutting, I said, “He’s gone. Start talking.”
With anyone I spoke to, I always tried to absorb a few of their details, never knowing when they would come in handy. So, when this young girl sat down and rested her hands on the edge of the desk, I noticed her short, clean nails. She didn’t wear any jewelry. Her outfit didn’t exactly call for accessories. But what I couldn’t stop staring at was the tattoo on her finger. I’d seen plenty of body art over the years. Christ, my son had some, and so did his friends. This pie
ce wasn’t what I would have expected on her. It was on her left hand, starting at her knuckle and extending all the way to the top of her ring finger. I couldn’t tell what kind of animal it was, but it was a skull of some kind with horns on each side.
“I know you supply The Achurdy with drugs,” she said. “I want you to stop.”
I was so caught off guard by her accusation, I laughed.
Here was this tiny, young female, only filling half of the chair she sat in, and she thought she could come into my office and give me orders. I could end her life the second I lifted my hand and pointed my gun at her chest. But I couldn’t deny that I was curious to hear what she had against this business and why she wanted to hit them where it would hurt.
“I’m not admitting that I have any type of relationship with this so-called company you speak of, but if I did, explain to me why I should cut all ties. Businesses usually spend thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, with their vendors. Who would compensate me for that kind of loss?”
“I’m going to tell you a story, and when I’m done, I’m going to tell you how it affects you.”
I laughed again, unable to get over the sheer courage and determination this young girl had. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in females her age, and I saw lots of women on our video feeds at this mill and the others I had around the state.
“You have about ten seconds before I raise the gun from under my leg, aim it at your chest, and pull the trigger.”
“You can kill me,” she said, still so calm. “But, if anything happens to me, one of my friends has pictures that show proof of the illegal operation you’re running here and at all your other pill mills. If he doesn’t hear from me in the next thirty minutes, all of that information will be forwarded to the police.”