by B. B. Reid
Downstairs, I went straight to the kitchen. Whenever the hand on the clock was at seven, I knew it was time for dinner just like my Daddy taught me. I got closer and didn’t smell the yummy smells when my mommy cooked, or hear her humming a happy tune. I peeked inside the empty kitchen. The living room was empty too when I checked.
“Mommy?”
She didn’t answer.
She always answered.
Upstairs, I called her name again and again until I heard a sound. I listened real hard, and the sound came again. It sounded like Mommy was crying. I was scared to know why, but since my daddy was gone, it was up to me to rescue her. I rushed to the door when I heard her cry again, but stopped when another sound, this time, harder and louder, drowned out her cries.
My eyes grew wide when I realized someone was in there hurting her. The door creaked when I opened it, and before I could peek inside, I remembered Daddy’s instructions to call him if someone was ever trying to hurt us.
I knew he would make the bad person go away, so I rushed for the stairs. I heard the door open before I could make it to the stairs. I kept running so they didn’t get me, but my mother’s voice calling my name stopped me. I turned around and found her rushing to tie her favorite blue robe. Her hands moved too fast so it took her three tries.
She looked so scared, but I didn’t see cuts or scrapes or blood like I got when I fell down and hurt. “Mommy! Are you hurt?”
Her bedroom door creaked again, and a tall man stepped out behind her. His jeans were unfastened, and he didn’t wear a shirt. When I finally looked at his face, I gasped and stepped back.
It was Uncle Art. I didn’t understand what was happening. Why would he hurt her? He was daddy’s best friend, and he always brought me toys.
“Sweetheart… honey… look at me,” my mother pleaded. I slowly did as she asked and found my mother’s eyes watering. “Have you called your father?”
I shook my head.
“Good. I know this looks bad, and I’m so sorry you had to see this.”
Should I tell her I didn’t see anything? She seemed so upset. Had I done something wrong by wanting to rescue her? “He was hurting you,” I blurted. I didn’t want to, but my gaze slid back up to Uncle Art. He stood behind my mother watching me silently. His gaze wasn’t cruel or scared, though. He just looked worried.
“No, baby. He wasn’t. He would never do that, do you understand?”
“But I heard you crying.” She flinched, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Uncle Art stiffen and then run his fingers through his hair.
“Listen to me, sweetie. I just need you to not say a word to your father about this. It would hurt him, and we don’t want that, do we?”
I shook my head so hard my pigtails hit my cheek and stung.
“Good, baby. Now Mommy just needs for you to forget. Can you do that?” I nodded, even though I wasn’t really sure I could.
Mommy sent me to my room. Tears spilled onto my pillow, and my chest hurt as I listened to them arguing downstairs. She was pleading with him that nothing had changed. The last thing I had heard before the door slammed was Uncle Art telling Mommy it was over. He never came back to visit.
Not even for Daddy.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
One cannot steal what’s already stolen.
ANGEL
Present
I sent Mian and Caylen home with Lucas and Z while I met with family lawyers to settle the estate.
Home.
It was easy to think Mian’s home was with me and hard to remember it wasn’t.
“Per the will, you are the sole heir of the Knight estate…” I tuned the lawyers out as they droned on with their legal garble. I would inherit a whole bunch of money, a big house, produce an heir, and not fuck it up. Yada yada…
My mind was stuck on my stepfather. Victor couldn’t keep his eyes off of Mian during the funeral and reception. I wanted to confront him, but there were too many eyes and ears around. I was confident the confrontation would have led to death. Instead, I hid Mian before Victor could get to her and decided against telling her anything to keep her from freaking out. It didn’t help that my mom had chosen that moment to discover Mian’s attendance. Luckily, Lucas had intercepted before I could.
Time dragged. but when the jargon finally stopped, I signed some papers, and they promised to be in touch. I didn’t waste time leaving the offices. My struggle to not put a bullet in Victor didn’t keep from me sensing Mian’s uneasiness when I sent her home. During the meeting, I had to force myself to ignore the demand in the pit of my stomach to go to her. As I jogged down the steps, I replayed what had happened between us upstairs. Nothing we said could have completely drained the color from her face. Something was up.
I got a phone call from Z the moment my feet touched the pavement. “Where are you?” he questioned as soon as I picked up. The urgency in his tone made me tense.
“Leaving the lawyers. What’s up?”
“Dude,” Z blew out. “It’s way more fucked than we thought.”
I stopped dead on the sidewalk and forced the people walking by to move around me. “Tell me.”
“I know who disabled the system and took the book.”
“Well, don’t keep me in unnecessary suspense. Fucking tell me.”
* * *
I forced myself not to go to Mian when I walked through my father’s door and up his stairs. Lucas and Z were in his office bent over Z’s laptop with expressions to kill.
“Are you fucking sure?” I demanded without preamble. Their surprise at my sudden presence was evident.
“I’m sure, man. The IP address belonging to the public library was just a mask. The real IP address was buried among over a million existing addresses. It’s a coded system I don’t recognize. It’s designed so if I figured out the first was a fluke, I’d have to weed through too many to find the real one in time.”
“How did you figure this out?”
“You.”
“Me,” I repeated.
“When Lucas asked why Mian needed a mask for the ball you said—”
“So no one can see what I’m hiding underneath,” I finished.
“When I realized our system had been hacked, I checked the IP address. Using a public computer made enough sense for me not to question it. The person who checked out the computer was a ten-year-old kid in a wheelchair. His parents are dead from the crash that crushed his legs and the grandmother that takes care of him can barely see ten feet in front of her.”
“There’s just one thing that doesn’t make sense. Why would my mom steal the book? She hates the life my father led and between her new husband and me, she's a well-kept woman.”
My phone rang. I was tempted not to answer it until I saw it was my mother calling.
“Son,” she breathed. “How did the meeting with the lawyers go?”
“I inherited everything, Mother.” I couldn’t keep the ice from my tone. “I’m a very rich man.”
“I’m happy to hear it. Shame you won’t be able to spend all that blood money,” a voice that didn’t belong to my mother’s said.
It was Victor’s daughter, Eliana. I knew immediately what this was.
“You made a big mistake taking her.”
“She’s not all I took,” she cackled. “Or don’t you know?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
There was shuffling and then I heard, “Angel?”
No.
There was no fucking way.
I stormed out of the office with Lucas and Z already on my heels. “Don’t bother looking,” Eliana boasted. “You heard for yourself.”
“The only thing I hear is the sound of you screaming while I kill you.”
“I want to make a trade,” she stated confidently. “You can have your mom and girlfriend back alive if you c
ome alone and die like all Knights should.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Three can keep a secret…
MIAN
My head continued to throb long after I came to. The last thing I remember before everything went black was the look in my mother’s eyes when she begged me to forget her affair with my father’s best friend.
But that was thirteen years ago.
I stared at the concrete beneath my bound feet and willed myself to remember the moments before I was knocked unconscious. Lucas and Z had disappeared upstairs, leaving me alone, after they claimed my pacing after we returned to Crecia were making them dizzy.
The here and now came back into focus, but then I figured I must have been hallucinating when I heard Bea’s voice. Her voice sounded addled as she asked about a meeting, and then the same feminine voice spoke that I had heard seconds before I was knocked unconscious and brought here. The conversation was one-sided, so I figured out she was on the phone just before said phone was shoved against my ear.
“What the hell are you talking about?” an enraged voice spoke, which I recognized.
“Angel?” The phone was gone before I could say more. Had he set this whole thing up? I tried to lift my head, but it felt too heavy. I was little more than a tomb—dead and hollow.
Had Angel changed his mind about keeping me alive? I needed to tell him what I remembered before it was too late. I knew in my gut my dad didn’t betray and kill Art for his legacy. He killed him for fucking his wife. Art had been the one to betray my dad. Angel would have to see that.
“I’m sorry the accommodations are grossly unpleasant,” she whispered in my ear. “I’m afraid this was your boyfriend’s doing.”
Fear allowed me to finally lift my head. I took in the concrete walls with small windows too high to do me any good. The space was large and mostly empty except the chains that hung from the ceiling. It creeped me out enough to send a chill down my spine.
“What is this place?”
“This, I’m told, is where he keeps people on ice until the client who pays for them comes to collect or where he makes them disappear altogether. These bleak walls closing in on them are the last thing his victims’ eyes see before he closes them forever.”
“Who told you this?”
“I did, dear girl.” A voice I didn’t recognize echoed around the room. I heard footsteps as a man who resembled Emiliano Diez, only shorter, approached. Bea, who I noticed was also tied, shrunk in her chair.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Victor Castro. Eliana’s father.”
I may not have recognized his face but his name instantly resonated. “You were my dad and Uncle Art’s friend and Bea’s husband after he died.”
“Yes, well, I had many titles. Too many in fact. I was first Art’s best friend, and then merely his bookkeeper when your father came along. You can understand why I felt the need to shed the dead weight.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Well, let me enlighten you. I was Art’s only friend for fifteen years. I did as he asked, when he asked, and never questioned him. Your father rescues him once, and the years I put in are simply forgotten. Loyalty means nothing to a man with so much power. He would never have given that power up without death.”
“And you made that happen.”
“It wasn’t hard. A man’s wife… and her pussy… is something to kill for.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that Art didn’t respect you because you were weak? He treated you like an errand boy because… well… if it quacks…”
“So you think your father was better than me?”
“No,” I answered confidently. “He was a criminal the same as you. He was just better and stronger at it.”
“And where are two of Chicago’s strongest criminals now?”
“One is rotting in a grave and the other behind bars,” I answered, feigning indifference. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that I put them there.”
“What makes you think you put my father behind bars?” My heart beat faster when I witnessed the pride in his eyes.
“Who do you think told him about Art and Ceci’s illicit affair?”
It was impossible to keep a hold on my composure. Bea wept next to me, but the sound of her cries were muffled by her gag.
“Why?”
“Art was planning to announce his retirement the night of Angel’s birthday party. But that’s not all that was planned.”
“What else was there?”
His smile was cruel. “Your betrothal to his son.”
I repeated his words in my head, but they refused to make sense. I was never engaged to Angel. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Art convinced your father to save you for his son with the promise of you always having the protection of the Knight name and fortune. This was his way of ensuring Angel produced a suitable heir. Art was growing concerned over Angel’s insistence to stick his cock in every girl in Chicago. They signed a contract that only death could break. On your eighteenth birthday, you both would have married, and Angel would have assumed the throne.”
Suddenly, I was replaying Angel’s phone call on his birthday and his invitation to be by his side. It wasn’t because he wanted me. It had been a front for something he wanted more.
I was his ticket to power.
“Why would that make you betray them?”
“Because I was the one who put the idea of an arranged marriage in his head when he complained to me about his son’s whoring.”
My gaze was drawn to Eliana standing beside her father appearing just as enraged, and suddenly, it all pieced together.
“You expected him to marry your daughter. Not me.”
“My Eliana is closer in age and far more beautiful, yet he completely overlooked her.”
“How did you convince my father my mother cheated on him?”
“Seeing is believing.” Suddenly, my head was grabbed from behind to keep me still. I hadn’t realized there was anyone else in the room. I should have known. Eliana’s voice may have been what I heard before I was knocked over the head, but she looked like she hadn’t lifted more than a hair brush in her entire life. She approached with her phone and thrust the screen in my face.
The video played clear footage of a naked couple going at it on a red cushioned settee I didn’t recognize. The woman was mostly hidden by the strong body of the man. His back faced the camera, and I could see the muscles in his ass bunch as he thrust deep. Her legs were wrapped around him, and the only thing she wore were her heels. Their clothes were scattered on the floor around the chair they were fucking on. It was clear they didn’t know they were being recorded. It was impossible to see faces, but I closed my eyes anyway knowing who it was.
“Now open your eyes, dear. This part is important.”
I was repeatedly slapped until I complied, and when my eyes flew open, my heart cracked, letting every horrible feeling imaginable inside.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“You need to know what a whore your mother was.”
I wanted to burst his bubble and confess that I’d known about the affair for years, but at my mother’s pleading, I had filed it away and forgotten. Bea giving me the doll I broke the day I found out triggered the memory and everything after poured out. Art never visited my mother again, and my mother became distant. I told myself it was because she was sick, but I now knew it was because she blamed me for taking away what she truly wanted.
Art.
Not Daddy.
And not me.
I chose not to give Victor the satisfaction and kept silent.
“I think that’s enough story time. Don’t you?”
“What are you going to do with us?”
“I’m going to kill both of yo
u. Bea’s death will make me a very rich man and yours will just give me the satisfaction.”
“Why haven’t you already killed us then?”
“Oh, but temptation does pour from your sweet lips, doesn’t it? Alas, I have to wait until the guest of honor arrives. He dies last.”
“Do you really believe you can kill him?” Victor may have been capable of murder and manipulation, but Angel made the devil want to step his game up.
“Certainly, dear. I have you to convince him. He’ll die because of a woman, the same as his father. It’s oddly poetic.”
“He’s here, Father.” I snorted. Her formality would have made her a good wife for Angel. He wouldn’t have felt the need to compete with her father like he did with mine. I loved my dad, and I wasn’t willing to give him up for Angel. Just then, the doors opened, sunlight poured in, and Angel casually walked through them promising death with every step.
Chapter Sixty
…if two of them are dead. – Benjamin Franklin
ANGEL
I took one look at my gagged and bound mother and wanted to cut down everyone involved. “That’s far enough, and you can drop your gun.”
I stopped walking but didn’t lower my gun. “Not a chance.”
“Then I’ll shoot her now, and your mother can join her in hell.” He aimed his gun at Mian’s head. The true test of control was ignoring my rage. Reacting in anger would be stupid and fatal. I needed him to think I was calm inside and out. It meant control.
“If you shoot her, what will stop me from killing you?” I rationalized.
The fucker pursed his lips as if he hadn’t thought about it. I almost snorted. He thought he could actually kill me. “It seems we are at an impasse.”
“What do you want, Castro?” There was only irritation in my tone, but the truth was, I was scared as fuck. This was the first time I was the one with something to lose besides my life.