A Beautiful Nightmare: A Novel

by Shana Vanterpool

  I looked at him as he worked, my pulse pounding in my ear.

  There was a way out, and I’d bet anything it was on his side. He’d mentioned that there were two controls to turn them on. One on the ground floor, and a control on this one. I may be able to turn it on from his side. I needed to find it on mine.

  I couldn’t stay here, falling for his touch, letting my heart believe it could breathe. We would hold our breaths, because the air in here wasn’t safe. I had to get free, leave his insanity behind so mine would leave as well.

  Offices didn’t have laundry rooms.

  I pushed to my feet and left the room, the sound of the blow dryer to my back as I took in my room. If I were at the top of a skyscraper, I’d put the exit in front of me at all times. So that no matter where I faced, the exit was within my line of sight. But there was his side of the kingdom. He spent more time out here. And I was free to roam. And there were cameras on the first floor, as if there was a chance someone would know exactly where to look. I covered my face with my hands, feeling a headache grow behind my eyes.

  “You’re so worried about the exit, you haven’t even considered its true purpose.”

  I knew its purpose.

  I knew why I was here.

  Feeling sick suddenly, I stumbled to my bed, and curled up under my covers and blankets, wanting to block out the entirety of everything. Dash did this to me.

  “Not this again,” his deep voice said somewhere behind me.

  I couldn’t breathe. And yet, I burrowed deeper. Wanting to crawl through my mattress, the floorboards, and slip through the cracks. And for some strange reason, Dash let me. My headache grew, and my suspicions and theories did as well, until I forgot whether I was trapped, or protected. I’d done this, hadn’t I? I cheated, and this was my punishment. I lost the man who grounded me, and the one I loved had thrown away the key.

  Right?

  Hadn’t that been the way it was?

  Unable to breathe, I tossed my covers aside and ran from the room, finding Dash in the middle of cleaning up our breakfast dishes.

  “You’re not ready to fight with me,” he said, his dark tone leaking everything he hadn’t said.

  “What would we be fighting against?”

  He met my eyes from across the room. In them was a truth far more frightening than him. It turned his irises amber, as if the light in his eyes had bled with his pupil.

  They only got that way when he talked about one person.

  “My father.”

  14.

  You Wanted Me To Be The Monster

  I stared at him from across the room, letting the implications of his answer sink in.

  But they wouldn’t.

  He was looking at me like everything I needed to know was in that answer.

  But it wasn’t.

  “Your father …?”

  “Truth?”

  I backed away immediately, in no mood to be distracted by sex. “No. What does your father have to do with this?” I waved a hand around the kingdom, me, the two of us in our tower.

  “We are safe here.” He dried his wet hands off on his pants, and stepped around the counter.

  “From your father?” My eyebrows turned down further.

  In all of my imaginings, Raynard McKing hadn’t been in them. But I hadn’t thought of anything other than why I was here and how to get out. I hadn’t known there was anything past that. As far as I was concerned there was nothing else. But I should have known. Sometimes when we lie to ourselves, it’s easier for everyone else around us to tell the truth. I’d sifted through Dash with a fine toothed comb, but Dash hadn’t lied once. I had.

  “Truth,” he repeated darkly.

  I took another step back, my breaths too few. If he kept going, I had a feeling everything would change. The ground beneath me would shift, and this time, both of us might fall through. “You’re not ready to fight with me.” He’d said it twice. He’d warned me … and maybe all this time, he’d been protecting me too?

  Rage and fear collided inside of me to create tears and fire. “Why didn’t you just let me go?” My wail said everything I was feeling.

  He came closer, eyes glimmering amber. Dash may not have secrets, but he had truths, and they terrified me more than any lie. “I didn’t want to let you go. I could never do that.” Pain twisted his face, as if he’d considered it many times, and fought himself.

  Where had the unsympathetic man gone? Confusion blurred my vision.

  “Kinley,” he begged, his anguish bleeding from his eyes. “An entire lifetime without you? A moment? A second? I could never live that long without you.”

  I stepped back once more, only for him to follow with the same step. It reminded me of magnets feeding off the pull, existing within the fight between lust and lies.

  “I could never hurt you.” He sucked back a sob, and fell to his knees, looking up at me the way one seeks light in darkness. The same way I ran for the field before his goons took me.

  Images of him unhinged when I first awoke in this nightmare floated through my mind, repeating those same words over and over again, pleading with me even then to believe him. “I know,” I whispered, trying to fight the pull. But my feet and brain took control, guiding me to him. I held his handsome face between my hands. My tears blocked my eyes, and I blinked them away, ignoring how my fingers trembled around his jaw. “What’s wrong?”

  He reached up and held my hands in place. Though it should’ve comforted me, it only made my anxiety worse. You can’t force someone to hold on, even if there was a time when that was all I wanted. I had an overwhelming desire to go back in time. Not before we made love—I regretted lying far more than letting him have my body—but afterwards. If I had given him what he wanted—what I wanted—we’d be somewhere else right now. Instead of on our knees in the clouds begging the other for something that had already passed.

  “It was our only option. My only option. I’d never hurt you, and I wanted you.” He paused to kissed my palm, eyes sliding closed. “I wanted you. You wouldn’t come to me. Denny wanted payment. And—” He stopped, opening his pain covered eyes.

  The look in them chilled me. And suddenly, I knew. I was caught up in something far bigger than Dash and his wants. I knew why those men had taken me. Why they’d been rough, why they hadn’t known to treat me kindly. Why the moment I stepped into that street, something felt off. And suddenly, I despised Denny from the bottom of my soul. Every ounce of guilt in me for what I did left me the way it did when my parents abandoned me. When my mother left me at school for so long it was dark before the cops were called. How when they brought me home, the trailer was empty, left in shambles, the only room not gutted being my own. The look in my father’s eyes when I showed up on his doorstep. And then the look in mine when he sent me on my way at fourteen. My heart had chilled that day. I had never felt more astray or unwanted.

  Until now.

  Dash was suddenly just a very sick man on his knees pleading for me to see things the way he did. He let me think badly of him, let me blame him, because he knew what would happen once I understood the purpose of these walls and the true repercussions for falling in love with him.

  “I won’t be the bad guy anymore. You want me to be the bad guy.”

  He’d known what I was doing all along. He knew me so well that he’d been able to anticipate exactly how I’d react.

  I stepped away from him completely. “And what?”

  His head bowed. “You wouldn’t listen to me. You wanted me to be the monster. The crazy unstable guy you once had sex with. But I did the only thing I could do.”

  “And what?” I screamed.

  He looked up at me, eyes red and defeated. “And my father wanted your blood.”

  I knew there was so much more there. The bleakness in his eyes told me there were parts missing. But my own thoughts were churning around the ache. Denny wanted me gone. Denny wanted me gone … but how did he know Dash was the son of the MK Gang kingpin?
I racked my brain, until I realized that he’d watched our every session. He went back to a year ago, and listened to Dash spill his guts about his childhood, about his father. He could have followed Dash, learned where to find Raynard, and then saved his ass by giving him mine. He wanted me gone, and I’d bet anything he hadn’t gone to Dash first. But Dash’s ass had to be on the line as well …

  I stared into his eyes, feeling my heart break all over again. He would never hurt me. That’s what his father had wanted him to do.

  I wasn’t locked in this tower because Dash wanted to keep me. That was simply a perk. He could have kept me anywhere.

  I was locked in this tower to protect me.

  Because Dash was supposed to kill me.

  15.

  Maybe It Was A Sign

  In my heart, a crumpling began.

  It’s happened before.

  From my parents and their neglect.

  The men that came into my life who made it known I would never matter. To the women my father married, who made it known I was his last choice.

  To the men I’ve dated, who dismantled me before I could do the same to them. The hidden black eyes and baggy clothes.

  Denny. The four years of lies I forged through to keep my feet on the ground.

  And now … Dash.

  His betrayal felt worse than all the others combined. It’s then when I understood the depth of my feelings for him. How much my heart wanted this man made sense the second I realized he was the one who broke it. It felt like parts of me were breaking off for good. This pain in my chest flared, and the fire that raced over my flesh left me blistered and full of ash. Pieces of my heart flaked away, floating and dissipating, never mattering again.

  I would never matter again.

  And maybe deep down—in a place that only knew the truth and despised it—that was all I wanted. A simple desire to be desired, not because I existed, but because my existence had only ever mattered to me. I taught my patients to be enough for their selves. Dash was right. I was a shitty therapist. I was worse than my worst patient. I was adrift in this world, because there was a time when I thought, even for a pathetic second, that I might have mattered to Dash.

  “You killed me.” The air in my lungs felt like sharp shards stabbing me with each breath.

  “Obviously not. You’re still here.” He remained on his knees. Defeat was written all over his face. Now I knew.

  “But your father thinks I am.” The glazed faraway look in his eyes undoubtedly mirrored my own. “What about you, Dash? What does he think you are?”

  “At this point, I imagine he knows which side I chose the moment Brogan and Fillan didn’t return.” A small spark reentered his eyes. “Every time, it’s you.”

  “You mean instead of not actually killing me, you just pretended to kill me and lock me in a tower? I’m sorry if I don’t look more understanding. I’m sorry, if I’m not thankful!” I screeched, despising this man for ever making me feel differently. My spinning thoughts were trying to settle on one, but like it’s been since I woke up here, I couldn’t latch on to anything other than what put me here. I couldn’t stand how deeply my name was interwoven in this prison.

  “You should be thankful.” Darkness and fear collided in his amber eyes. “The men who took you during your run were hit soldiers. They have a list. They cross names off as soon as they’re done, and forget all about the blood on their hands. That’s all they do.”

  I wanted to demand he stop lying. But Dash hadn’t lied to me. Not once. He may’ve sat on the truth, but that’s only because I was asking the wrong questions. I rubbed my temples, and tried to think of what Dash would want me to ask. “What name was after mine?”

  A guttural sigh escaped his lips. “Denny’s.”

  I looked sideways at him, unable to breathe again. “Is he …?”

  “He’s spending his money I gave him. Unaware. Thinking he got rid of you, me, and out-smarted the MK’s.”

  I shook my head in wonder, and … appreciation. Dash had unknowingly been checking on Denny, maybe to check our own asses, or maybe to make sure he could tell me the man who betrayed me was still alive. A gift after breaking. It was strangely selfless on his part. Or maybe I was asking the wrong questions again.

  I looked down. “Thank you.”

  He pushed to his feet, and we stood facing each other. There was a shift in our roles. He was no longer my abductor. I was no longer his prisoner. We were both prisoners to so many things, I truly didn’t know who our greatest foe was.

  “We can’t leave. If we step foot outside this building, we are marked. We’re already marked here, but there are no eyes in the sky but ours. May I show you something?” He held his hand out.

  I stared at it and then up at him long and hard before placing my hand in his. His fingers enveloped mine strongly. He pulled me after him over to the long line of windows. Below us the city of Chicago sprawled. Skyscrapers, but not as high as ours, reflected the sun. Cars rushed by on the street. People walked on the sidewalk.

  He pointed at the world below. “I have no doubts that you’ve asked yourself why I chose this building.”

  I said nothing. Dash was in my brain in a way I hadn’t even known.

  “It’s the tallest building in Chicago. At least it was supposed to be. A Chinese tech company built it years ago, but there was a mistake during its construction, and the costs to correct it was more of a loss than the ultimate gain. They sold it for a smaller loss. I bought it.” He talked to the glass, his eyes trained on a spot below us. “I had a dream about skydiving from the top. Or a nightmare, I guess. My parachute didn’t open. The ground opened up and swallowed me. Instead of splattering, I woke up back at the top. And I jumped, Kinley, over and over again, until my parachute opened. I bought this building the next day. Maybe it was a sign.” He pointed down at a building with a different look than the others. It was sharp angles and height, with dark metal and glass. “The FBI has been searching for the MK leader’s den for decades. They’re looking for it in the wrong places. My father’s nine-to-five job is a ruse, of course, but it’s the best of them all. It explains away his bank accounts, his hours on the job, his clients, and it puts him in the middle of his men and the cops. They have no idea the boss of the MK Gang is on the busiest street in Chicago working as a high profile lawyer.”

  I watched myself swallow hard in the reflection of the glass. “You can watch him from up here.”

  Now I knew why he’d picked this building. What predator looks for his prey right under his nose?

  Lions stalk. They wait, they watch. They don’t look up or down. Their confidence was a problem when their opponent was their son, and he knew their ins and outs.

  “I monitor their building. If they find us, we’ll have a sixteen-minute head start.”

  The hairs on my body stood on end. I felt exposed, more like the prey than a prisoner. This had been the shift. The truth had waltzed in and took over. But I was still trying to decipher the lies.

  I cleared my throat. “How would they find us?”

  He took a long moment to answer. “The bars are lain slightly to the right instead of in the middle. From their position we are unidentifiable if they looked up. My Wi-Fi has been constructed with minimal range and its own firewall and password. Even someone on the second floor of this building wouldn’t pick it up. It was a risk setting it up, but it’s a necessity I required. Brogan and Fillan are the only two people who know we’re here. And they’re marked now as well.”

  I took a deep breath, and forced myself to go along with this. He seemed to think this was our problem now, and as much as I wanted to brush it off, we weren’t talking about school bullies. We were talking about the MK’s, a gang who made soulless men rethink their choices. “Who are Brogan and Fillan?”

  “We met when I was in high school. The street soldiers are all young punks looking to make their way up the rank.” He sighed, eyes focused below us. “They scared me. Every one of my fa
ther’s men scares me. Their loyalty is only there to save their own ass. Their disloyalty as well. You know how I feel about the MK’s. But Brogan and Fillan were different. They weren’t stupid angry vicious men. They were smart, hungry, and honest. At least with me. We were our own gang within a much larger one. They made it easier on me.” He cleared his throat and looked away from his father’s building, moving away from me. “They saved you from the hit soldiers who drugged you.”

  I shuddered, swallowing the bitter taste in my mouth down. “I can still taste the chloroform from the cloth they put over my mouth.”

  He settled on the sofa, and gave me a small smile. “This isn’t a movie, Kinley. I’m sure that cloth was to muffle your screams. They stuck you with a syringe in your hip. It’s why you went out so quickly, and stayed out long enough for Brogan and Fillan to intercept them, get rid of them, and bring you back here.”

  I glossed over certain parts and focused only on one. “They stuck me with what?”

  “An opioid. Think elephant tranquilizer.”

  I pulled down my sleeping shorts on my left, but my hip was bare of any pin pricks. I searched on my right side, and sure enough there was a tiny, almost unidentifiable bruise the size of a pen dot over my right ass cheek.

  “They knock you out and kill you somewhere else.”

  “Hit soldiers, right?” I shrugged uneasily, panicked despite my sarcastic front.