Over meant over with my father. Literally, if you weren’t careful. “Can you tell me why I have to go away, at least?”
He exhaled deeply. “I didn’t want to bring up painful memories.”
My heart skipped a beat. I sat down on the bed, hands between my legs. I was almost afraid to ask. “You already did, on the phone. You opened that door.” I heard my voice falter.
“It’s about your mother’s killer.”
I inhaled sharply. My mother. He had already said it on the phone, but my heart still raced, having him bring it up here again. "What exactly is going on?"
"The man who killed her -"
"The one you said was dead," I interrupted, not caring whether he found it rude. “He’s not dead, then, is he?”
My father shook his head. "No."
"Did you know he was alive, all this time?" My voice sounded like it was coming from someplace else, somewhere outside of myself, this high-pitched, whiny voice that didn't sound like me. It didn’t sound like I was in control. "You said he was dead. You lied to me."
"I told you that to protect you."
"Protect me?" I couldn't seem to control the volume of my voice. I stood, wobbling, my thoughts racing so fast I couldn't make any sense of them. "Protect me from what? Protect me from the life you forced me into when I was a kid? Protect me from my mom being murdered? Tell me." I was screaming, filled with rage. "Tell me! What exactly have you protected me from?"
"You have no idea, Dani," he said. "You think you've been exposed to something, that the things you know are something? You've been exposed to nothing. You don't know what I know, what you could have seen."
"My mother's death- that was nothing, then?"
He shook his head, regret written all over his face, at least I thought it was regret. I never knew with my father. He was an emotional chameleon, changing at whim, and I could never be sure what was genuine. Or if anything was ever genuine. "You know that's not what I'm saying. Your mother's death was a tragedy. But her murderer was gone, and there was nothing you could do about it. You didn't need to worry about him coming after you. That's what I was protecting you from."
"So my mother's murderer has been running around for years wanting to kill me too, and you let me think I was perfectly safe? That's your idea of protection?"
"You've been protected the entire time. You've been safe."
"But suddenly I'm not."
"No. You're not."
"But you're not going to tell me why I'm not safe."
"No. I'm not."
"Why should I go to some safe house?"
"There’s no should. You will. This is the only time we'll have this conversation."
"Is that a threat?" I was pushing it, and I knew it. I was testing him. I watched the vein on his neck throb, the one that provided me with a barometer of how angry he was when I was a kid, how close he was to exploding. I watched him, wondering if he would explode now. He rarely did, but when he did it was nuclear.
When I was fourteen, my mother was murdered. I ran around after that, completely out of control, and my father was angry all the time. I didn’t know if he was angry at himself, at me, or at the world. But one day, I was sitting on my bed missing my mother, and I had an epiphany, as much as fourteen year old kids can have epiphanies. I’d always thought of my father as dangerous, but never to me. Toward other people, sure. But not to me, his daughter. But there was something about him after her murder, something dark- and I thought he might actually kill me. That was why I begged to go off to boarding school.
“It's not a threat," he said. "It's a statement. We will not have this conversation again. Pack your bags. You'll leave tomorrow."
After he left, I sat on my bed, feeling depleted. Part of me wanted to fight this, to get my shit, jump in the car, and drive away. I could start a new life somewhere under a new name. I would live in Thailand; serve cocktails on the beach; live cheaply. I could be someone else, anyone else, someone who was not my father's daughter. Another part of me was just resigned to it all, the same way I'd always been resigned to the fact that my father would control my whole life, no matter where he was. Everything he’d given me came at a price, and that was the cost. It was my deal with the devil.
I knew I didn't have the strength to fight him. I would shut my mouth; go to the safe house; read some novels; and sit on my ass until he did whatever he was going to do. I wouldn't ask too many questions, and I would live. My instinct for self-preservation would win out in the end. It inevitably did. That was the most important lesson I'd learned in life.
Always save yourself.
I steeled myself as I waited outside the heavy wooden door to my father's office. Bikers stood at the entrance to the house, lingering, joking around, playing grab ass with each other like a bunch of high school football players. Morons. These guys didn’t look familiar, a different club than he’d used when I was growing up. But they were all the same. My father, always in bed with bikers. Like father, like daughter, I thought.
Heat rose to my cheeks at the thought of what had happened with Blaze, his hands on my body, mouth on my lips, on my breasts. The image of him looking down at me, urging me to open my eyes and look at him while he came flashed through my head. I immediately felt arousal, like a reflex, in the pit of my stomach and radiating through my hips.
Stop, I thought. He's gone, and it was nothing. It was a one night stand with someone you don't even know. Get him out of your head. It didn't mean anything.
I looked up at Martin, one of my father’s bodyguards, standing with his back against the door. Unwavering, expressionless Martin. He was like a guard at the Tower of London or something. I wondered if he ever laughed.
"Do you ever smile, Martin?"
"Ma'am?" he asked, looking down at me.
"I mean, does my father pay you specifically not to smile?"
"I don't know what you mean, ma'am." The door opened, and Martin took my elbow, guiding me inside. "Ma'am." No change in expression. The door shut behind him, and I stood there, gathering all the strength I had left for one final protest. I didn’t expect it to matter, but it felt stupid to simply acquiesce without letting my father know I was still pissed off about this whole thing.
"Daddy, I told you I'm not going anywhere. I'm not a fucking prisoner -"
My father cut me off. "Dani," he said. "This is the gentleman who will be accompanying you to the safe house."
I spun around to see an older biker with leathery skin and a face like a horse, standing at my father's desk. This was the guy I was going with? No fucking way. Behind him, there was movement, and the other guy stood.
"Dani," he said. I would have recognized the voice anywhere.
I stared at him, suddenly mute, my heart threatening to leap out of my throat. It was him. Blaze. He was wearing his jeans and leather cut, looking at me like he had at the hotel. It was like I'd never left him. I felt the same heat in my body, the same desire to fling myself at him, to let him rip off my clothes. It was like every cell in my body was screaming for him to throw me over his shoulder and carry me out of here. I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry like the Sahara. Blaze was involved with my father.
No, no, no. It's not possible.
It felt like some kind of betrayal, but I didn’t know Blaze, so it couldn't be considered a betrayal, not really. There was no betraying someone you didn't know, someone who didn't know you.
My father spoke. "I apologize for my daughter's rudeness. As I said, she's not entirely happy with this arrangement."
The older biker nodded. “Understood. Blaze will provide protection, keep you at the safe house until everything’s clear.”
"Dani," Blaze said.
Dani, Dani.
I heard him saying my name, his mouth close to my ear, still felt him inside me.
Look at me, Dani.
I opened my mouth to speak, to say anything, but I felt paralyzed. Say something. You look like an idiot, standing here saying nothing.
Blaze. Why was he involved with my father? I stared at him, my blood pumping in my ears. It was all I could do not to scream.
"I'm Dani," I said. I was inexplicably angry with him. Did he not know who my father was, what my father did? I had this strange impulse to protect Blaze. Everything my father touched was dirty. Blaze would be contaminated by him, just like everyone else. Or destroyed, like my mother. He just didn’t know it yet.
"Nope, that's not going to work." Blaze pointed at my bags on the ground in the driveway.
"What do you mean, it's not going to work?" I asked.
"It’s too much stuff. You’re going to have to pare down."
Now I was pissed. "What do you mean, pare down? I don't know how long I'm going to be gone. No one is telling me anything. I need some fucking clothes."
Blaze sighed. "Your sh -" He started to say "shit," then stopped, looking up at the bodyguard watching us. "Your stuff has to fit on the bike. That's too much stuff."
"If we're going somewhere to stay for a while, why don’t we just take a car? That way we can take everything," I said, arms folded over my chest.
"No cars." Blaze shook his head.
I sighed. I knew I sounded like a petulant child, but I just didn't care. Besides, I was allowed to be a little petulant, given the circumstances, right? I couldn't really be faulted for that. "Whatever. How much can I take?"
"Here." He tossed me a backpack.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously." He said it, his tone all business. "Plus whatever can fit in the saddlebags."
"Fine." I was exasperated. I opened my suitcase in the middle of the driveway, digging through my carefully packed bag, pulling out panties and bras, stuffing them in the backpack. I was aware of Blaze's eyes on me, and I looked up at him. "What? Are you going to just stand there and stare at me? You want to see what kind of underwear I'm bringing?" I didn't give a shit if we’d had sex. He was the one conspiring with my father, and now he was getting on my nerves.
Blaze raised his eyebrows. "Nope." He walked off, standing by his bike, looking out onto the front lawn.
Screw him. And screw my father.
I pulled out what I needed, and tossed the backpack at him when I was done. As I stuffed my shoes in one of the saddlebags, I looked at him. "Where are you taking me?"
"You’ll see when we get there." His voice was cold. “It’s not like you’re going to be wearing a blindfold or anything.”
"How do I know you're not going to chain me to the radiator in some shithole somewhere?”
The corners of his mouth turned up, and he leaned in close to me, breath hot on my ear. "You should be so lucky."
"Fuck you," I said. Blaze was treating this like a joke, and it wasn't funny. He didn't have the capacity to understand the stupid shit he had gotten into here by aligning with my father. I'd pegged him as smarter than that.
He drew back sharply, his face stony. "Go tell your father goodbye,” he said.
"We're not speaking."
"Go tell him goodbye. He's standing right there."
I looked at Blaze, my eyes burning with hatred. How dare he tell me what to do? He was exactly like my father. I don't know what I saw in him back at the diner, or at the hotel. But whatever it was, it was gone now. The person who stood in front of me now, the one who was complicit with my father, was not the same one who had held me in the hotel bathtub the other night.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I said. But I did it anyway, stomping back over to my father.
"It won't be for long," my father said.
"When I get back, I'm not staying here anymore." It was my last act of defiance before I left.
My father nodded. "You can go somewhere else."
"Good." I turned, walking back to Blaze. I hadn't expected my father to roll over like that when I said I wasn't coming back to him. I'd expected more of a reaction from him. It was the truth, though. After this, I was done with him and done with his lifestyle. It had caused me nothing but heartache. I would rather drop out of school and become a bartender than keep getting involved in this crap.
Blaze handed me a helmet. "Put it on." Then the backpack.
I rode, hands wrapped around him. My heart skipped as I held him tightly, my body molded to his. Just like before.
No. Not just like before.
What wasn't like before was that I was being kidnapped by this man who was in collusion with my father. So, no it wasn’t the same. Last time, I had chosen to go with him. That was not true this time.
I recognized less and less of the scenery as we wound through back roads out of Los Angeles. I watched exits, tried to memorize the path we took. Then I gave up, realizing he was taking me on some circuitous path out of the city, either to keep me from memorizing the route or to throw off a tail. I suspected it was the latter. I had driven enough with my father to recognize evasive maneuvers. Even so, it made me worried. I didn’t really know anything about this man. Sure, it was supposed to be protection, but it felt a hell of a lot more like a kidnapping. Did I really know what he was capable of? He was one of my father’s henchmen, so it couldn’t be anything good.
We pulled over at a tiny gas station to pee, not the same kind of place where we had eaten in the diner. This building looked like part of a ghost town, the shell of a place left from its heyday in the fifties.
“Is this even open?” I asked. “It looks abandoned.”
“It’s just old.” Blaze stood outside the restroom while I used the ancient facilities, waiting for me, silent. Guarding me, or holding me prisoner. Two sides of the same coin.
"So are you going to tell me where we’re going now?" I asked, wiping my hands on my jeans as we walked back to the bike.
"I told you. We’re going to a safe house. You can read the road signs. I’m not keeping the location from you or anything."
"Whose safe house?"
Blaze sighed. "Let's just go."
The safe house was up near Big Bear, tucked away from all the little camps and nice vacation homes, down a long undeveloped road. I hadn't seen another house, or a store, in at least twenty minutes. My heart sank. When they said safe house, I thought they meant some nondescript place in the suburbs, somewhere not connected to my father. Somewhere connected to civilization at least. Not this. This was in the middle of nowhere. It didn't matter whether I knew where we were or what towns we passed through on the way. There was nothing out here.
I was completely cut off from everything. There would be no cell reception, and it wasn't like I could jump on his bike and ride away. I'd been a passenger on motorcycles, but never driven them myself. I wondered whether Blaze knew that, if that was the reason for no car. Shit. Blaze was less and less my hero, the biker who was kind and gentle with me in the hotel. No, he was becoming more and more like one of my father's hired thugs. Just another asshole.
I watched her standing in front of the house, taking it all in, and I searched her expression for any sign of disdain. I was just waiting for a condescending remark, something she would do or say that would make me hate her. Right now, I wanted to pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and take her to the bedroom. Christ, on the bike when we were riding over here, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and her hands wrapped around me. When we pulled over at the gas station, it was all I could do to stand with my feet planted in the ground outside the door and just wait, to keep myself from going in there and having my way with her. That would have been really classy, Blaze, taking her in a dirty gas station bathroom. That would have been a great way to show her you’re not just some thug.
I could not stop thinking about Dani, not since that night. I had never before been so distracted by a girl. And when she walked in the door of Guillermo’s house, the only thing I could think about that I was going to see her again. But in this scenario? No matter how much I wanted to throw her on the bed, put my mouth on her pussy, I couldn’t. Not with Guillermo Arias’
daughter. He would kill me, and maybe even her.
If I was reluctant to get involved with Guillermo before, strictly from a business perspective, that feeling was a million times stronger now. He was not some mid-level criminal. It was hard to get good intel on the guy because he laid low, but what I’d gotten said he was running one of the biggest smuggling operations in the country, if not the continent. Rumor had it he trafficked in a lot of things, and I suspected that included women and kids. I just couldn’t get anyone to confirm anything, only that he was ruthless when it came to his enemies. And I had no interest in
Taming Blaze Page 7