All of the truths.
I felt like I was floating away.
“I’m fine.” I tried to unwind from his arms. They tightened harder.
“Look at me.”
I couldn’t.
“Look me in the eye. I love your eyes. You know that. Look at me.”
I sagged in defeat. Turning my head, I met his eyes just enough to appease him. “I’m fine.”
“You have no more lies left.”
None.
I had no lies to give him.
That was the problem.
17.
We Can’t Break Anymore
Dash eyed me uncertainly.
That he was doing so at all made me laugh suddenly. But my laughs were tear soaked, and hardly humorous. I wiped my tears away and faced him. Bare. From now on I could only be bare in front of him.
I felt naked and exposed. Vulnerable. Breakable.
“Are you hungry? We should eat.” He moved around me and resumed what he’d been doing.
Broken.
I let out a relieved breath when he didn’t press me. Although he didn’t need to press me. He knew why I was breaking open. When you have nothing else to hide, your insides did the talking. Mine were screaming.
“Take these.” He held his hand out to me.
I eyed his closed fist suspiciously. “What are they?”
“Take these.” His tone hardened.
Sensing his anger, I gave him my palm. He dropped two pills—one large and orange, and one small and white—and then turned his back to me, pushing a mug of water close by. I peeked over his shoulder to find him dividing his and hers vitamins and supplements.
“We’re losing too much weight. These will help make up what we lose from fruits and vegetables. You have to start eating more. These should help us gain.” He produced two large protein bars wrapped in silver paper and red ink, and placed them both in my confused palm. “They require water. Eat them both, please.”
“Yes, master. Would you like me to eat them on my knees, or can I do so standing?”
“Coffee’s ready to go,” he continued, ignoring me. “Just hit the switch.” He ripped the plastic off of his own protein bar, and took a large bite, powering through it with his jaw. “I have something to take care of. Would you mind if I excused myself for a couple hours?” He grabbed a second bar and a carton of soymilk, meeting my gaze as he waited.
“What do you have to do?”
He looked away, and then back up. Not guilty, but reluctant. “I have affairs to take care of.”
“What kind of affairs?” I stared at him hard.
But he bent down and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “Your suspicions hurt me.” His eyes showed me how close he was to snapping.
I sighed, catching a glimpse of his soft swollen kissed lips. “Please answer me.”
He kissed me again, this time a second longer. “I left my VP in charge of my companies. I agreed to speak to him once a week for a couple hours to make sure things are running smoothly. I couldn’t just pull the plug on my work. Too many people rely on their employment. It would have also tipped my father off long before he knew I would break the bond. I’ll do it slowly, carefully.” He looked away this time, and a vein jumped in his throat. “Until we disappear.”
I was struck by the sadness in his voice, and I would bet, in his eyes as well. “I don’t want to disappear.”
“We have no other choice. The kingdom is yours. I’ll be out in a few.” He stepped around me and headed for his door.
“Can I come?” I blurted out, even if I knew it wasn’t a good idea to push him right now. I was learning that Dash wouldn’t physically hurt me, that it was safe to push, because he wasn’t going to punish me for it the way all the others had.
He paused outside his door. “If you’d like.” He didn’t sound like he liked it, but he’d allowed it, and that meant there was no reason I couldn’t come.
I caught up to him with my protein bars and soymilk in tow, expression innocent. He grunted, but ventured into his side of the kingdom. We bypassed his bedroom, and continued down the black hall. There was a clear room on my left encased in glass walls. A gym. There was a gym. I peeked around his shoulder to spot two doors. Regular doors. With thick bolts and locks. The one in front of us was even chained with a thick chain and an extra lock at the bottom. He glanced at me when I paused to look at it.
“What’s in there?”
“A backup plan. Let’s hope we don’t have to use it.” He opened the door on our right, and propped it with the collapsible kickstand on the bottom of the door. “Let’s go, Kinley.”
The exit. It was the exit.
“It’s not what you think. You open that door and the floor falls away. You’ll fall one-hundred floors. In here, please.” He disappeared into the room.
I stared at the door as my stomach and heart fell. Romeo and Juliet’s poison. That’s what that door was. And that it existed rocked me to my core. It was all real suddenly. The MK Gang. The end of our lives. The running. The threat. That door was a way to win as we lost. I suddenly didn’t want to be alone. I hurried to the door to find an office fit with computers, monitors, and a sleek black desk. It looked like something that existed in the White House. A security room and office. There was one monitor in particular that showed my side of the kingdom.
I glared at them when I figured out why the view was so low. The sensors. The sensors were cameras.
He continued on, taking a seat at his desk and monitoring one screen in particular, fastidiously pretending I wasn’t burning him with my eyes. It was aimed at his father’s office. He pulled a keyboard over, and began tapping away, rewinding the tape for the past few days.
As he did so, the monitor on his right began to chime. He sighed, and reached over, tapping the touchscreen. The image changed from black to a man. He was probably as old as Dash, perhaps a few years older. His hair was black like oil, and his jaw was shadowed with a layer of stubble. He was handsome and harsh. I knew it without a word. The look in his eyes made me swallow hard and move closer to Dash.
When I did, his eyes focused on me. Recognition filled his gaze, and … shame? Was that shame in his eyes? I hadn’t ever met this man before.
“What?” Dash barked, eyes frighteningly darkened.
“You accessed the feed. I’ve been calling for days.” His eyes flashed to me again, but his expression was impassive now.
“What?” Dash repeated.
The man looked pointedly at me. “This situation warrants a better response than your attitude.”
Dash leaned forward and seethed. “You tied her to the fucking bed, Brogan. She thinks I’m some fucking creep because you and Fillan were raised by wolves.”
Brogan. I didn’t know who to glare at. Dash for being human, or Brogan for being an animal. I picked Brogan, who ran a hand through his black hair and appeared contrite.
“I don’t apologize,” he made sure I knew. “Ever. But you appear to mean more to Dash than his life, so I suppose I owe you one. Forgive me, Miss Hashawaye, for tying you to the bed.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, while inside, my heart pounded. Dash really hadn’t done it. “And if I don’t?”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “That’s your choice.” He dismissed me and returned to Dash. “I flagged a few things over the past couple days. Most of them I could identify, but a couple of them didn’t ring a bell, and if I access the database it will only raise flags. Lan thinks it’s nothing, but we both know he tends to overestimate his intelligence.”
The monitor on his father’s building fast forwarded on its own, and I assumed Brogan was controlling it from his end. The footage stopped, and suddenly, a car pulled up. A man got out of the back, and a doorman ran over to help him out. He was wearing a dark brown wool coat, and a black fedora. I frowned, staring at that hat. It looked strangely familiar. When the man turned around to thank the doorman, I realized why.
“I don’t know who he is,
” Dash said, staring intently at the man.
“He goes into the side door.”
Dash swallowed deeply, eyes on the man as he himself looked around to make sure the coast was clear. Then he bypassed the front door and made a quick walk to the back. The camera zoomed in on him as he made his way past the alley and to a nondescript black door. He knocked twice, and then kicked the bottom of the door with his foot, stepping back and looking around once more. The door opened and someone ushered him inside.
“Why forgo the lobby?” Brogan asked.
I stepped away as the bottom fell out of me.
“Raynard didn’t want anyone to know they were meeting.”
“Anyone, or just us?” Brogan’s tone lowered with his suspicions. “I told you there was no way anyone in the family would assume we’d just leave. Everyone who goes into that side door looked over their shoulder. Every one of them.”
There were no chairs in this room other than the one Dash sat in. Dash hadn’t anticipated I’d be in here. Every other space had room for me. I stared at the protein bars and milk in my hands, feeling overwhelmed. Why damn it? Why him?
“Raynard knows we are brothers.” Dash paused to take a deep breath. “He would have killed you both to remind me who was in charge.”
“I don’t regret the leave,” Brogan assured him, clearing the emotion from his throat. “Lan either. You know where we stand.”
I stared at the wooden floor as my mind turned over on itself.
“What should we do about the UFO?”
“I’ll work on it,” Dash said, rewinding the tape to watch him again. “How is the hawks?”
“Rainy,” Brogan answered emptily. “So kind of like the sox.”
I frowned at their terminology, but the man on the screen faced the camera again, and I was back to staring at the floor.
Dash smirked. “Good coffee.”
“Birds are fly.”
As they went back and forth with their strange conversation, a commotion behind Brogan caught my attention. A woman traipsed by the camera naked and bleary-eyed. Brogan stopped talking to shoot her an evil look.
“Your money’s on the table. Take it and get out,” he snapped.
“But—”
“Excuse me,” Brogan growled, jumping to his feet. He shoved the woman out of frame.
I looked at Dash, who was looking at me. I hadn’t been asked to leave the room. But he had bought me. Still, I felt a spark of gratitude that he hadn’t made me regret going to bed with him. “What’s the hawks?”
He motioned for me to come close. When I gave him my ear, he kissed my temple and whispered, “they’re in Seattle.”
I put two-and-two together. “And sox is in reference to Chicago.” Sports. Denny loved them. Denny wanted me gone.
“Yes. I’m impressed.” His lips caressed my cheek, and I realized I was still bending over with my ear to his mouth. “Would you like to sit?” He patted his lap.
“Get out!” Brogan’s shout came from far away.
I flinched and quickly turned around to sit on Dash’s thighs. “Thank you.”
“Eat your bars.”
I wasn’t hungry. But if I didn’t keep my mouth busy, I would tell him who that man was. He’d realize that Denny hadn’t screwed only me over. I tore the packaging off my bar and shoved it into my mouth just as Brogan returned, expression empty.
“You shouldn’t be bringing anyone around,” Dash admonished.
“Like you having bought your own bird.” Brogan raised his eyebrow in challenge.
The woman on the screen. The birds are fly. Women. Dash paid women for sex? I craned my neck to meet his eyes, my own accusatory.
He gave Brogan a dark glare, choosing to overlook my stare. “No more birds. Anything else you have to add?”
“One more thing.” Brogan looked right at me. “Ask your girl why she looks green.” The screen went black.
Dash didn’t say anything as he reached around my body for the mouse to his keyboard. He replayed the clip two more times before he paused it on the man’s face. Then he wrapped his arms around me and held me to his chest.
“Who is he?”
I sighed at the screen. “I think this goes deeper than you thought.”
“Why?”
“You’ve hired … prostitutes?”
“Yes. Who is he?”
“Why?”
“Because what’s the point to date women, when I cannot be myself around them? I pay them for sex. They give it to me. Then they leave.”
I thought about that. Faceless women and meaningless sex. It sounded lonely. And slightly infuriating. Picturing him with them the way he had been with me, bodies twisted as he took them as high as he had taken me. “What did they look like?”
“What does it matter?”
I shrugged, settling down in his lap. “Did you know I’m a jealous woman?”
He groaned into my ear. “This is ridiculous.”
“Did they ... give you what you wanted?”
Realizing what I meant, he sighed. “They don’t even come close, my queen.”
I tried to deny the relief that brought me, but my body breathed the truth into her lungs. “I don’t want to tell you who he is.”
“I assure you I can handle it.”
“Think about it, Dash. I knew who he was. I knew.”
He took a second, probably doing in his head what I had done so often in mine. He ran the people I knew through the people he knew. There was only one. And since the man on the screen wasn’t Denny. Then that only meant—
“The bastard’s father.”
I wanted up suddenly. I tried to rise, but his arm wound around my waist and held me in place. Dash took me to have me. That’s the only thought my brain could comprehend. But Brogan had tied me up, and Dash had already refused to let me return to that fact. That Denny and his father had deeper ties to Raynard, meant this nightmare was barely starting. It meant that Dash had let me paint him as the monster to keep me from feeling like there were so many more of them out there.
“How would they know each other?” Dash demanded, and by the question in his voice he was asking me to take part in this for the first time.
I worked through my thoughts, running Trent McDonald through my head and crossing him with Raynard McKing. Only one thing connected, and I hadn’t known it until Dash pointed out the building below us. “They’re both lawyers.”
His breathing was suddenly louder. “What is his name?”
“Trent McDonald. Do you know him?” Please say no.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Brogan either, apparently. What was Denny’s father doing at my father’s office? Either they meet all the time, or they’re meeting because of us.”
“Or both.” I leaned back to catch his gaze, my own heavy with my confusion and fear. “How would they know each other?”
His eyes were no longer glassy. They were intent, trying to think around a fork in his road. He’d anticipated a lot of outcomes. The side door to nowhere said it all. Being above his father’s business. Letting me think he was the monster. He’d anticipated and dealt with the possibilities. But he didn’t have all the players in this game. There was one more, and if so, others.
He blinked at me. “Denny found me,” he said, his voice drifting the way one does when they’re about to realize this nightmare wasn’t simply mine anymore. “He sought me out before he went to my father.”
“Or he went to your father first.”
Because Denny’s father already knew Raynard. His familiar face morphed into a stranger’s on the screen. His once kind dark blue eyes became cold and icy. The once endearing wrinkles around his eyes, had become the wrinkles of the dark, not the aged.
“How did you meet Denny?”
His question made the shattered pieces of my heart tremble in fear. Not again, they begged. We can’t break anymore. “I met him at a coffee shop. I didn’t have enough money and he stepped in to pay the bill.” Despite t
he burn, I recalled that moment with fondness. I squeezed the food in my hand to keep my tears at bay.
“Do not cry over him.” His cold tone made it harder to keep it in. “You have me now.”
“He made me happy.” Even for a short time, Denny had made me happy. Then his second skin started to show, like the thread from a costume slowly unraveling. Soon, he stood before me in all of his glory. But so did I. I had fought him feeling for feeling, pain for pain. We’d competed, but I’d lost. I always lost. I didn’t think it was the game that beat me. Games changed just like the rules. I think I lost, because I lied the moment I started playing.
“What coffee shop?” His teeth ground together.
I shook my head, unable to recall. “It was near the apartment I lived in at the time. I don’t remember the name.”
“West Chicago?”
“Mhm,” I mumbled absentmindedly, recalling the day I met Denny McDonald.
I’d been renting a shitty room in a shitty apartment with a roommate. My credit cards were cancelled. I knew it when I went into the coffee shop, but I’d only wanted to smell it. To smell the rich comforting aroma. But my feet had moved toward the counter, and I’d ordered a large hot coffee with half-and-half and sugar. I watched the barista make the coffee, pour it into my cup, and top it with cream and sugar. I was starving and broke. I had enough money for my rent and gas. Anything extra was out the window. I snapped out of my haze when he said the price. So small to me now. I’d panicked, and fumbled with my purse, pulling out a credit card at random. It didn’t matter which. None of them had money on them. When he said my card was declined, I tried another, growing hot and panicky.
“I’ve got it,” someone said behind me, and then Denny McDonald stepped into my life like ray of sunshine. His gorgeous baby blue eyes and easy smile. And the slight hint of bad that always hovered on the edge of his eyes. I loved that bad. It looked just like mine.
“Didn’t you ever wonder what a trust fund baby was doing on the west side of Chicago?”
“I asked him about it. He told me he was lost. He came in to get a coffee and ask for directions.”
“But instead he found you.”
“He found me.”
A Beautiful Nightmare: A Novel Page 16