Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2)

by Angel Payne

  “Yeah,” he finally grates. “I had a lot of shit going on. Anger I didn’t know what to do with. Mom did her best, but she was a single parent without a lot of time on her hands to deal with me being pissed at a father who left when I was eleven, and a mother who let him—at least in my eyes.” He sits in the chair opposite me but stays perched on the edge, still a vigilant lion, swinging occasional, watchful glances over his shoulders. “But in truth, Dad was gone long before that. I just didn’t know the difference.”

  “And your mother was the most convenient person to blame it on.” Empathy, coming to me like second instinct, leads me to the statement—and I instantly, deeply hate myself for it. Damon’s stare of celadon gratitude only makes it worse. We owe nothing to each other, you and I. Just spit out your story and get the hell out of here, Damon Court.

  “I feel like shit for how I treated her—and Damon too.”

  Turn the empathy off. Do not hear the croak in his voice, or look at the sheen behind his eyes, or notice how pulses tick in place of his dimples when his heart is washed in agony…

  “But you did treat them like shit.” My spine pulls up. Better. The accusation may be as rough as the gravel under our feet, but is as firm as the concrete slab beneath that. Perhaps I can be a messenger of the true heartache his deception has inflicted on Cassian and Mallory. “The worst kind of it. You lied to them…in the most devastating way poss—”

  “I was at rock fucking bottom!”

  The explosion of his body is obliterated by the blast of his emotions—a collision like hydrogen and uranium, wasting my senses with the searing force. I glare up at him from where I have been blown back, gripping the curves of the chair’s arms, lungs detonated by fury and fear.

  “Do you think, for a second, that I haven’t spent every day since then regretting the choice I made?” His lips shake. His stare burns. “Goddammit. The choice they made for me…”

  His face contorts harder, turning him into a creature of self-loathing and hate—something I no longer can liken to Cassian, which does not bring the relief I expected. Instead, I am…sad. An unfair word for a big, awful emotion…

  “Then why…did you make it?” I finally manage to whisper.

  “Because I was sixteen, Mishella.” He stumbles away, steps heavy and clumsy, as if the words have been his daily mantra for fourteen years and he is weary from the weight of them. “I was sixteen, dammit, and I didn’t know any better—only that what was supposed to be a ‘one-time thing’ to get away from my pain had turned into a drug dealer’s wet dream. I needed meth or coke every morning just to get up and get through school, and sleep was only possible with a shit-ton of booze or, better yet, sedatives—reds, yellows; fuck, I’d lick the goddamn rainbow if it helped me pass out—to the point that I was skipping class to run shipments for my dealers, in order to pay for my next high.” He lowers back into the chair, skittering gravel with the violence of his movements. Harsh exhalation. Labored inhalation. “Well, one day, one of those runs went sideways.”

  Dammit. Empathy crushes me again. Even with the physical similarities diminished, he is so much like Cassian. His powerful, plunging movements. His restless energy. The way I am pulled toward understanding him…needing him to know he is not alone. “Your buyers were actually…CIA?”

  He braces elbows on his knees and steeples his fingers—again so much like Cassian—and turns his face up with what I expect to be an implied yes. And yes, his gaze conveys conviction—but not that one. A story about to take a different twist…

  A darker truth.

  “They were CIA…but they weren’t.”

  “Huh?”

  A vacillation across his face, reminding me of those scenes from Cassian’s superhero movies in which the hero debates revealing his truth or not. As soon as he does, the poor soul to whom he has entrusted his secret inevitably has a cinematic target on their back—to ensure what Cassian calls the “ker-ching factor” for the sequel, of course.

  But this is no movie.

  It is confirmed by the watchful solemnity of the man in front of me. It adds a new layer to my sadness. It makes me…restless. In a heartbeat, I understand why. I have never known strange silence like this with Cassian—because his soul is always open to me, speaking on its electric arc with mine. I do not know anything more about Damon than what he chooses to show. At this moment, that window is cracked only by inches.

  “They started out the bust the typical way.” His explanation begins slowly, his eyes going hazy as distant memories are accessed. “Well, I guess it was typical…badges were flashed and infractions were cited, including references to other deals I’d helped on for a few months. It was very clear, very fast, that they’d been watching me for a while, and waiting for the right time to pick me up.” Contemplative shrug. “Now that’s not uncommon, especially if a task force wants to make something stick—but why all that trouble for stick factor on a sixteen-year-old bit player in the game?”

  I lean forward. “You must have been confused.” I add, however reluctantly, “And frightened.”

  He lets me off easier for the compassion this time, chuffing wryly. “Tried to tell myself the same thing, especially when they didn’t formally charge me. I was never cuffed or read my rights, and they didn’t call my mom. When I asked if I could do it, and if they could tell me what police precinct they’d be taking me to, they blinked like I’d just asked the damn question in Klingon.”

  “I know the feeling.” All too well. Again, more common ground I did not ask for.

  The tips of his fingers turn white as he pushes them harder together. “Even as an underage punk blazed on a cocktail of who-the-fuck-knows and who-the-fuck-cares, I started putting together the pieces. Those bastards were throwing their own damn party, and local law didn’t know a thing about it.”

  I do not understand all the complexities of the statement, but glean enough to respond, “So they sought you out specifically…recruited you because you were so young, and would not register on anyone’s radar?”

  One end of his mouth kicks up again. “Feisty and smart. The boy wonder did grow up to pick them well.”

  I narrow a glare. “Save it, bonsun. Charm earns nobody extra points except Cassian.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “So what happened then?” My mind fills in the answer with a hundred possibilities, all inspired by the only exposure I have had so far to CIA agents: their portrayals in movies. The truth is likely painted with much different brushes, though… “You said…you were given no choice…”

  “Should’ve phrased that better.” The grin disappears. As in, vanishes completely—beneath a glower worthy of a Batman reel. “Depends on what you call a choice.”

  I relent, giving him a moment of silence to assemble his composure. Finally prod, “Well, what did they call it?”

  I am not surprised when he chooses to gain his feet again—nor by the fact that it is a careful, resigned flow instead of a defensive explosion. “Well…They definitely had the royal flush over my pair of eights,” he mutters. “That means their mountain of evidence was huge enough to keep me in a juvenile facility until I was eighteen, with a transfer to ‘grown-up prison’ for at least ten to fifteen after that.”

  “By the powers.” I gasp it on Mallory’s behalf. While making her accept his “death” was the ultimate crime, the situation had clearly not gotten that extreme yet. And he was just a kid, with a brain scrambled on drugs… “But they needed your pair of eights too?”

  “Even the royals need their essential numbers sometimes, yes?”

  His knowing glance betrays he knows more about me than just my name—another non-surprise, though certainly not a comfort. “And you were that…to them?” I counter with open skepticism. “An ‘essential number?’”

  “Turns out…I kind of was.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Neither did I…at first.” He stops, making a couple of butterflies skitter from the nearby rosemary, t
ugging a hand at his nape. The half-smile tugs at his mouth again, though snark does not define the look now. He gazes at me in what looks like…bewilderment. “You…ever had a single minute that changed your whole life?”

  “Yes.” Rarely have I felt as confident about a comeback, or the proud stance I take for it. I gain my feet once more too, lifting my gaze to meet his with all the pride and love that has spurred me. “The moment in which I met your brother.”

  And instantly beheld worlds of loss in his eyes—that you had helped cause.

  He blinks and backs up, the conviction clearly getting to him—as I hoped it would. But he recovers instantly, as I knew he would. Clearly, façades have become a life specialty for Damon Court.

  Still, as he speaks again, I sense his effort to strip back even that suave pretense, coming as clean as possible. “The two men who busted me that afternoon were the game changers for me,” he states. “Their names were Chris Maxmillan and Pete Shotwell—though I tried getting away with the typical sixteen-year-old bullshit like Lucy and Ricky, Mulder and Scully, Ketchum and Pikachu…”

  “Gezundheit,” I murmur. His forehead, more prominent than Cassian’s due to his tighter haircut, furrows until I prod, “So when exactly did the ‘life changing’ part occur?”

  He takes a few steps deeper, beneath the arbor. Again, his pace seems to represent more deliberate thoughts, and I have trouble being patient about it. His five minutes are nearly up and I am ready to walk back inside, with or without an explanation.

  “They revealed…that they’d been scouting me.”

  “Scouting?” I echo it after a long, puzzled pause. The verb is not unfamiliar to me—though all the contexts to which it applies in American culture are far cries from the CIA. Baseball players, movie locations, fashion models, CIA superspies…circle the one that does not belong…

  “That’s how I reacted.” He shrugs with much less aplomb than he obviously would like. “Until Max and Shot fired up their laptop and showed me all the stats. My stats.” His head tick-tocks on a slow, dazed shake. “There were at least a hundred categories of criteria, from my talent at running track even after sucking down a reefer, to my curiosity about people and my ability to remember shit about them. Lots of shit.” The last is muttered nearly in a moan, as if he is a teenager once again and simply recalling hordes of homework. “Those criteria, paired with my age, made me a perfect candidate for an elite team they were putting together…”

  “A team? Of what?” It stammers out, a reaction to the conclusion he is clearly leading to. “Teenage super spies?”

  A loud laugh. The burst does not help my bewilderment, because it reflects the exact same sentiment. “I know how it sounds. Even fourteen years after the fact, I still keep waiting to wake up and learn it was all a damn dream, and I was just punked bad by one of those asshole dealers I used to run dust, rocks, and flakes for.” His mirth fades. Despite the sun dancing along the gold spikes of his hair, a new darkness drapes his whole demeanor. The Batman comparison does not seem like such a joke. “But suddenly, the good guys wanted my help in putting down the scum—the biggest ring of them in all of the tristate area, as a matter of fact—so huge, their ties had origins in international cartels who were rewarding dealers for trickling the drugs down to the elementary school level.”

  My stomach pitches. “They rewarded dealing to children?”

  Tight nod. “It was why the FBI gave the CIA leeway at all—but only nine months’ worth, meaning it’d be impossible to integrate regular operatives at the high schools. So, the CIA did what it needed to do.” He returns to the formidable stance, hands locked behind his back. “Bent a few rules.”

  It gives my belly no rest, and the reason is not difficult to discern. “By recruiting children for their mission.”

  “A mission that saved a lot of those children too.”

  Stomach, meet real pain.

  My glare whips up as everything beneath my navel is wrenched in. “What does that mean?”

  His stance broadens. I am not the only one in this confrontation with a truth to be obstinate about. “It means that I might have been coerced into that insanity, but that insanity also gave me purpose. That things were about more than my pain…that someone else’s pain might actually be worse.” His head dips. His body stills. He is like that for such a long pause, I have no choice about accepting his diligence as sincere. “In helping save those kids’ lives, my own was transformed.”

  With uncanny coincidence—or is it?—the two butterflies return to the bush behind him. They rest, silent but strong, amazing products of an extreme metamorphosis—just like his. But I can open up a science book and figure out the rest of their story. There is still a huge piece of his missing. An epic tale with blank pages of its most awful twist. When the bard of the story remains eerily silent, I grow angry again.

  “All right. Your life was ‘transformed.’” I step forward, unwavering in my own intent. “But why did that mean giving it up? Completely?”

  His stance stiffens but his face does not. Clearly, the query is not a slap from nowhere—though it is still the lash he has been avoiding.

  And continues to avoid.

  “Damon?” I finally prompt again.

  Finally, he grits out, “It was necessary, dammit.” He ducks his head, leading the way into a violent spin. “It was…necessary.”

  “Necessary.” If not for the anger practically sparking off of him, I would step over and jerk the stubborn lout back around. I battle to do it with my voice instead. “Why? How? Was that part of your buddies’ package deal too? ‘Here, kid. Purpose, direction, and getting to wear the white hat. Just ignore the fine print about having to die for us on the way to the good guys’ party.”

  At least it gets him to turn around. “It wasn’t Max or Shot’s fault,” he retorts. “It was mine. Nobody’s. But. Mine.”

  For one moment, I regret my sardonicism—but only for only one. While I believe his story, I am still not sympathetic to it. Inside the soul of the man I love, there will always be a boy on the cusp of manhood, mourning for the big brother he loved and worshipped…

  “We were running tight with the Noriega cartel,” he finally rasps. “I got sloppy one night…left my phone lying behind me, without the password lock on it. One of Noriega’s men found it—along with the string of texts from Max on it. My buddy, Louis, covered for the bungle, but the entire team was nearly made—and Noriega started suspecting hinky play.” The words might as well be vomit, and I have no doubt they taste the same to him. He might have been an addict as a kid, but has grown into a man who prioritizes his duty to others—along with the regrets of having compromised it too. “So I went to Max and Shot, and offered to do the right thing.”

  Suddenly, the acid burns up my throat. “Creator’s teeth.” Comprehension turns it into a croak. “The right thing, as in…”

  “Yeah. I was prepared to die. Had letters written to Mom and Cas, and even binged on every sixteen-year-old’s favorite last meal—triple cheeseburger, large chili fries, and six glazed donuts, washed down with an extra-thick chocolate frosty.”

  Groan. “And that did not slay you first?”

  He snorts. “As opposed to the typical daily junkie diet?”

  I concede the point with half a nod. “So why was it not your last meal, after all?”

  “Because of Pete Shotwell’s brilliance.” His features warm before he dips his head, all but bowing in honor to the reference of his mentor. “In addition to being a Krav Maga master and an awesome mechanic, the man was into all that weird apothecary crap. He borrowed a page right out of fucking Shakespeare…”

  “And made you drink something that made you appear dead…”

  “For twelve hours only.” His face hardens with a new chill. “Revivable only with an antidote.”

  My eyes cannot widen enough to fulfill my shock. “Long enough that everyone, including your family, would assume you were dead.”

  “Which was neces
sary, so the most important person thought I was dead.” His jaw jogs up as he supplies, firm and resolved, “Santiago Noriega.”

  A shiver courses through me despite the summer’s muggy blanket. Noriega. His name alone carries haunting meaning—as anyone on staff at the Palais Arcadia has learned over the last year. Our island’s re-entry into the modern world has exposed us to all of its modern wonders—and all of its leading monsters. Noriega, a despot who rules from his hole somewhere in a South American jungle, is a fitting pig for the second category.

  Still…pigs can be duped…

  “There was no way for you to get even a message to Cassian and your mother?” I persist. “Have your miracle-working friend arrange for a secret meeting, even years after?”

  The edges of Damon’s mouth twitch again—but his gaze remains ominous as a sky of green thunder. “The day I drank that nasty shit in Shot’s vial was the day I gave up being Damon Court. It had to remain that way, if I wanted to be sure Mom and Cas stayed alive.” The storm relents, but only for a second. “From then on, I could only participate in their lives from afar,” he grits. “I saw how they struggled, and what they went through…fuck. I couldn’t send them a damn dime, or even leave a bag of groceries on their front stoop. To this day, I have no fucking idea if Noriega hasn’t learned the truth, and isn’t watching every move I make.”

  The words, in any other circumstance, would sound like melodrama. Horrifically, I know they are not. Santiago Noriega and his organization tiptoe the line between organized crime and radical religious terrorism in the almighty church of wealth.

  But that means they lead to another glaring issue. “So why are you here now?” If Noriega could still be tracking his every step…

  Unbelievably, the air around Damon Court buzzes with more tension. His posture tautens with it; his face ages at least five years from it. “Because Cassian is in danger from a bigger monster than Noriega—and I’m going to stop him from that mistake.”

  “What?” The gravel flying from my stumbling feet feels more like ice chips. This bonsun has brought the filthy name of Santiago Noriega into Temptation with him, and now blithely drops the word danger into the same sentence as Cassian’s name? “Who?” I demand. “And why? And what the hell are you going to do about it?”