Shadow Bound (Unbound)

by Rachel Vincent

  My jaw clenched, and I fought to unlock it. “I’m more use to you here. On the outside.”

  Julia huffed and leaned forward, gripping the edge of the credenza on either side of her knees. “That remains to be seen.”

  “Well, it’s not like I can compete with all that useful sitting around you do,” I snapped, relishing the glower she aimed my way.

  “I was well compensated for the loss of Mr. Caballero,” Jake said, as if neither of us had spoken. “But please understand that no one will pay for you like Cavazos paid for him. Your Skill is common, your strength and range mediocre. You are worth more to me for your influence over your sister than as a Traveler, and you’ve never been worth less to me as a bodyguard.” He leaned forward, eyeing me closely. “And to elaborate on the recent decline of your value, reports from the guards who protect your sister tell me she’s had frequent company recently—a certain pretty former prostitute who seems quite taken with Kenley. You know what that means, don’t you, Korinne?”

  Yeah. I knew.

  “That means that you’re about to become obsolete,” Julia supplied, and Jake nodded.

  “So if you have any worth to claim, I suggest you start demonstrating it now. What happened with Caballero and Olivia Warren at the park?”

  I sighed and swallowed the rest of the sarcasm burning in my throat. “They pulled guns on us, so Ian called up darkness, and I stepped us through it and into the wine cellar. We picked up a bottle of Cabernet for you, but I seem to have forgotten it in my rush to be threatened and insulted here today.”

  Okay, I swallowed most of the sarcasm. But neither Tower sibling seemed to notice.

  “He made it dark in the middle of the day? Outside?” Julia said, and for once there was nothing in her voice but genuine surprise.

  “Well, in the shade from some oak trees, but yeah.”

  “Amazing.” Jake nodded, pleased. “Tell me about his fighting. He’s good?”

  “Yeah. He’s fast, and strong, and accurate with a gun.” I didn’t want to increase Ian’s value, but I wouldn’t get away with lying. “We actually make a good team—he creates darkness and I use it. We could do good work for you.” I flinched as soon as I heard the words falling from my own tongue. They reeked of desperation. But it’s not like I was giving away my hand; we all knew what I stood to lose.

  Jake leaned back in his chair, eyeing me in ruthless interest now. “Did you fuck him yet?”

  I stared at the floor, silently refusing to answer. Hating how dirty the question made me feel. “He’s going to sign. That’s what you really want to know.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want to know. This assignment is equal parts recruitment of Holt and punishment for you—an extension of your sentence in the basement.”

  I bristled, my temper flaring like heartburn. “I thought this was a chance for me to prove myself.” To save my life and secure Kenley’s future.

  “It’s all of that at once. Efficient, isn’t it?” Jake smiled, and I wanted to break every tooth in his mouth. “Now, did you fuck him?”

  I’d never hated Jake more.

  “Yes,” I said, fists clenched at my sides. I despised him for asking, and Julia for listening, and myself for answering. “But it wasn’t like that.”

  “What was it like? Were there roses, and chocolates, and soft music?” Julia said, her words oozing saccharine venom. “Was it beautiful, Kori?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Julia laughed. “You know, it’s those clever, articulate retorts that tell me you’re exactly where you belong in this organization, Korinne. On the bottom.”

  Jake rounded the corner of his desk to sit on the edge, less than a foot away from me now. So close he could kick me, if he wanted. Or I could kick him, if I went batshit insane in the next few minutes. “I don’t give a damn what it was like, so long as it made him happy. Did you make him happy?”

  “Yes.” My stomach lurched over the truth of it. I had made him happy, and he’d made me happy, and Jake was soiling that. Defiling the memory. He was leaving his mark on a moment he’d had no part in, just by making me discuss it.

  “Good. You may yet prove useful.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” I spat, rage bubbling inside me, threatening to boil over. “I did it in spite of you.”

  He laughed out loud, not just a chuckle, but a great, full-bodied laugh. “Everything you do is for me. You’re not privileged anymore, Kori, and those in the general population do what I tell them to do. And you’ll fuck Holt again if I tell you to. Or never again, if I tell you not to.”

  “Oh, now, Jake, that would make the poor girl miserable!” Julia said, her voice dripping with fake sympathy. “She was telling the truth. I think she really likes him.”

  Jake’s left brow rose. “Is that true? Do you like him?” When I didn’t answer, he nudged my thigh with his foot. “Speak, Kori.”

  “Yes. I like him,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Julia closed her eyes and inhaled, like she was scenting the air. What she was really scenting was the truth of my statement. “It’s more than that,” she announced, glee dancing in every syllable. She loved seeing me suffer.

  Jake frowned. “Is there more? Do you love him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I swallowed the rest of what I’d almost said—the rest of how I felt—because it couldn’t be captured in mere words. But that one word was enough for Jake.

  “And he’s going to sign?”

  “Yes.” That word, I wanted to take back. I wanted to chew it up and swallow it just so he couldn’t have it. I didn’t want Ian bound into the same hell I’d served in for the past six years.

  Jake nodded, pleased. “Once he signs, you are done with him. You’ll never touch him again, and you won’t let him touch you. Understood?”

  Tears formed in my eyes and rage burned in my chest. “Why?” I demanded, whispering to keep from shouting. “Just to make me miserable? To make him miserable? You’re getting what you want. He’s going to sign. What we do after that is none of your business.”

  Julia leaned forward in anticipation, and I could feel her watching me. Watching her brother. Waiting for him to snap. But that wasn’t Jake’s style.

  “You’re an investment, Kori. If you love him, you’ll put him ahead of me in your heart, and that would be bad for business. So once he signs, you will stay away from him, and he from you. I’ll send someone else to him. Someone prettier. Someone nicer. Someone better in bed. He’ll be with her and he’ll forget about you, because none of this was ever real anyway. I created this little love connection, and I can take it apart just as easily.”

  “But you didn’t,” I said, when understanding surfaced with sudden brilliant clarity. “Ian and I clicked in spite of your involvement, not because of it, and you hate that. You’re threatened by it, and that’s why you’re trying to tear us apart.”

  Jake stood and pulled me up by one arm, then leaned in to growl directly into my ear, and if I hadn’t known he wasn’t allowed to touch me, I might have missed the flare of pain behind his eyes. “If you don’t watch your mouth, you might find yourself in another bed, performing a similar function for someone else who needs to be reminded that nothing and no one comes before the syndicate.”

  “Do it,” Julia said, and the eager cruelty in her voice made me flinch. “Give her to someone else. She needs to be reminded who’s the boss around here.”

  I held my breath, waiting for his decision, fighting the need to punch something.

  Someone.

  Julia.

  Jake let me go and turned to her with a scowl, and I’d never seen him so close to losing his temper. “That was her reminder,” he snapped. “She knows who the boss is, and she knows that’s not you.”

  Julia flushed, but kept her mouth shut. A lesson I probably should have noted.

  “Bring him in,” Jake said. “I have a statement of intent already drafted and I want Holt here within the hour.”

  �
��An hour?” My heart thudded in my ears, racing in panic. “I can’t. I don’t even know if he’s out of bed yet. I need more time.”

  “Lies…” Julia hissed.

  Jake glanced at me in surprise, and I cursed silently. Nothing in my contract actually forbade me from lying to him, but with Julia there, I wouldn’t get away with it. I’d known better, but panic made me foolish and rash. I’d never been more afraid of anything than of signing Ian and losing him. Of seeing him every day, but not being allowed to touch him.

  In that moment, facing monumental loss, I realized that I could love him. I might already. Either way I could no more lose him than I could lose Kenley.

  I couldn’t let this happen.

  “One hour,” Jake repeated, angry now. “He will sign, then you’re done with him.”

  “You can throw women at him, but he won’t touch them and he won’t forget about me,” I said, rage burning deep inside me, fueled by my terror at the thought of losing Ian. “And you can send me to whoever you want, but I won’t fucking do it. I won’t bring Ian in, either. If he wants to sign on his own, fine, but I won’t be the one who hands him the damn pen. I want no part of it. I’ll kill myself first.”

  Everyone had a limit, and Jake had just found mine.

  “She means it,” Julia said, her eyes flashing in anticipation.

  “Well, she’s wrong.” Jake slid off his desk and onto his feet again, and he stepped so close I could smell the coffee on his breath. But I held my ground. “You won’t kill yourself and you will bring Ian Holt in for the same reason you do everything else I tell you to. To keep your sister safe.”

  I glared back at him, my fists clenching and unclenching at my sides. Viewed through the red-tinted lenses of my own rage, everything suddenly seemed so clear. So simple.

  “That threat won’t work anymore. You already said I’m expendable.” Kenley would be fine without me. Jake still needed her.

  “You aren’t afraid to die?” His gaze searched mine from a couple of inches away, and I stared back, letting him see the truth.

  “There are days I fucking wish for death, Jake. Whether it comes from your hand or mine matters less every second, and your threat to kill me is starting to sound more like a promise.”

  His brows rose in interest, and he glanced at Julia, who nodded to confirm the truth in my statements, and her cruel smile was reflected on her brother’s face. “Lia, go get Kenley Daniels and find a cell in the basement for her.”

  My pulse spiked painfully, but I refused to let my fear show. “That won’t work.” Why hadn’t I seen it before? “If you’re going to have her tortured anyway, what’s her motivation to keep sealing bindings for you? Resistance pain doesn’t seem so bad, when your whole world is pain.”

  Jake’s smile gave me chills. “I’m not going to have her tortured. I’m going to have you tortured, and she’s going to watch. How do you think your sweet little sister will react to seeing you beaten and humiliated, knowing there’s nothing she can do to stop it? Do you think she’ll still be psychologically stable after several days of hearing her only sister scream? Do you think she’ll ever forgive herself for not being able to protect you like you protected her?”

  I closed my eyes, horror rolling through me, deeper with every word he spoke. In six years, I’d never seen Jake Tower bluff. He would do it, just because I’d pissed him off. And he was right—even if I survived another stint in the basement, Kenley couldn’t, even if no one laid a hand on her.

  And he wouldn’t let me die. There would be no out for me, and there would be no recovery for her. There was only one way to stop Tower from signing Ian, caging Kenley, and putting me back where I’d sworn I’d never go again.

  We had to run. Even if we got caught. Even if we didn’t get very far in the first place. Even if we spent the rest of our lives traipsing from one shadow to the next in search of peace.

  “Stop,” I said, when Jake waved Julia toward the door, on her way to send for Kenley. “I’ll bring Ian in. Leave my sister out of this.”

  “She’s lying,” Julia warned, and Jake nodded perfunctorily, like that’s what he’d expected from me all along. “Which is why she won’t be going alone. Lia, ask Harris and Milligan to come in here please.”

  Julia stuck her head out of the office and gestured to someone I couldn’t see. A minute later, she held the office door open and Milligan—one of my basement jailers—and Harris stepped into the office. Both were members of Jake’s security team—men I’d worked with for years.

  “You will escort Kori to pick up Ian Holt, then bring them back here. If she so much as hiccups without permission, haul her straight back to the basement, then bring me Holt and Kenley Daniels. Understood?”

  Both men nodded. Neither looked at me.

  Jake stepped close to me again, and every hair on my body stood on end. It was his calm that scared me. I knew people who’d killed in self-defense and many more who’d killed out of rage. But Jake was the only person I’d ever met who could order someone brutally tortured or slowly, viciously murdered without blinking an eye. Even someone he’d known for years and shared meals, and drinks, and conversations with. The suffering of others truly didn’t touch him. That knowledge terrified me because it told me he wasn’t human. Not in any way that counted.

  And that meant there would be no mercy from him. No hope.

  “This is your very last chance, Korinne,” he said, so close to me his breath brushed my ear. “If you mess this up, I will bury you in the basement and forget I even have a key. Your binding will expire and your mark will die, but you’ll stay buried, alone in the dark with the voices in your head, and no one will ask about you, because they’ll all think you’re dead. I will keep you there forever, Kori. Alive in body, but dead in every other sense of the word. If you want anything at all from the rest of your life—anything other than pain and dead shadows—think very carefully before you try to screw me over. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” There was nothing more to say.

  Jake nodded and stepped back, dismissing me without a word as he rounded his desk and sank into his chair. When I left the room, escorts in tow, Jake was already speaking into the phone, demanding that an Intent to Sign document be sent over for Ian Holt.

  Milligan and Harris followed me silently across the foyer, up the stairs, and into the darkroom while I did my best to ignore the buzz of impatience and fury tingling beneath my skin. Jake meant what he said, but I’d meant what I said, too. I wasn’t taking them to Ian, and they would never get their hands on my sister, either.

  “Kori…?” Milligan said softly, as I pulled the door to the darkroom shut, closing us in with absolute darkness. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing—”

  “Shut the fuck up and give me your hand,” I snapped, and a hand found each of mine in the dark, one thick and rough, the other smooth and strong. “When I tug, take two steps forward, then stop.”

  Without waiting for their acknowledgment, I pulled them forward as hard as I could and they stumbled alongside me, out of the darkroom and into Ian’s bathroom, where I let them go and fumbled for the doorknob.

  “Where are we?” Milligan asked, as I shoved the door open and stepped into the bedroom without them. Light flooded the bathroom, illuminating marble countertops, a hot tub and a dual-head shower.

  “Holt’s suite. Stay here. I’ll go get him.”

  “Hell, no.” Harris grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the bathroom. “I know what a Traveler can do.”