Beast: A Hate Story, The Beginning

by Mary Catherine Gebhard

  I would go back and do it again, and again, and again.

  I was a community college dropout going nowhere with my life. I lived under a staircase. I’d never had any boyfriends or any real friends. All I’d ever been in life was sick.

  At least now I could say I’d done something with my life.

  I saved Papa.

  “He is twice the man you will ever be,” I said, voice getting louder.

  “Oh really?” The Beast continued his meal, chewing with simultaneous poise and ferocity.

  “He is good and kind!” I yelled, filled with drunken courage.

  He laughed but said nothing.

  I went cold. “I don’t know why I bother. You can dress up as fancy as you like and do up all these nice trimmings,” I gestured to the lights and table, “but you’ll still be a beast. You’ll never understand what it means to be a good man.”

  His eyes flashed. “Does a good man send their child to slaughter?”

  “What did you say?” I stammered. Beast went silent. “What do you mean?” I asked. I stood up from the chair, knocking mine over, emboldened with a fiery curiosity. “What? What do you know?”

  He said nothing and I gulped, feeling as if I was drowning in the air around us. “What?” I asked. Lifting his napkin from his lap, he lightly set it on the table then looked at me. Though his countenance appeared calm, I knew better. His stare was ferocious, filled with wildfire.

  “I gave your father the choice to take you back and he chose to leave you.” As if deciding what he said wasn’t hurtful enough, Beast added for emphasis, “With me.”

  I gasped, stumbling back, tripping over the chair I’d knocked over. “Liar.”

  Beast laughed harshly. “I have no need to lie about such things.”

  “My papa wouldn’t leave me with you,” I seethed.

  Beast shrugged. “He did.” I spun around, looking for anything that might give meaning to the words he was saying. Papa had left me? Beast had given him the opportunity to take me back? When had this happened? I could have been free? None of this needed to happen? Questions tumbled through my mind, too fast for me to even comprehend them. It felt like the uncertainty and betrayal swarmed me, wrapping around my legs until I couldn’t stand.

  Stumbling back, I fell, ass hitting the cold, wet ground.

  The ground was too cold. My head was spinning, the liquor working its way through my blood and making my world hazy. I knew I shouldn’t have been having this conversation right then. I was too impaired, but at the same time, the liquor was making me bold. It was making me dangerous. I felt I needed to confront him.

  I didn’t believe it—believe him.

  I couldn’t believe that my own papa had thrown me to the wolves.

  “Maybe he didn’t believe you,” I whispered. “Maybe if you give me back, he’ll see you’re serious.”

  “Frankie…” The Beast’s face contorted into what I believed was pity, or at least his version of it. He stood up out of his chair and came over, reaching a hand out to me. I attempted to smack it away, but the buzz made my attempt poor and uncoordinated.

  “What?” I asked. “Just take me to him.” If I could just see Papa, I knew he would take me. He couldn’t have just left me. I mean, Papa wasn’t the best—he often forgot to get dinner and pay the bills, so by the time I could read, I’d taken on those responsibilities—but I was fine with that. Papa was Papa; he loved me in other ways. When I was younger, he would hold me and we would listen to old music. There was that one time that he got too angry and slipped and hit me, but that wasn’t his fault—he’d been drinking for days.

  He was Papa.

  He had his issues, but he loved me.

  “It’s not that simple,” Beast replied.

  “Why won’t you just let me leave then?” I snapped. “If you were going to give me back to Papa, why can’t I just go?”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “Yes!” The moment the words left my lips, I knew I wasn’t so sure. I’d been staying because I thought I had to, for Papa. Now he was saying that Papa didn’t want me, that Papa had fucking abandoned me. If for a second I entertained the idea that Beast was telling the truth, that Papa had actually left me here…

  No.

  I shook my head.

  That wasn’t true.

  Beast was just playing mind games.

  He got to his knees and reached a hand out, fingers clasping my chin. “Who’s lying now?” There was no malice in his question, and I found myself leaning into his grasp. His gaze was heady and insistent.

  What if he was telling the truth?

  The hurt branded my soul, hot and searing and scarring. The worst part, though, was that the Beast had called my bluff. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave. I’d been using Papa as a cushion, a reason not to address what had been happening between us. No matter what happened between Beast and me, no matter what became of me, it had always been for the greater good. Now what?

  What did that make me?

  “I don’t believe you,” I whispered against his fingers.

  “Yes you do,” he said, voice low, “but you don’t want to acknowledge it yet.” He probed me with his eyes, demanding I get lost in them.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I ripped my gaze away and snapped my chin from his grasp. I attempted to get up, but stumbled, so I placed my hand on the heat lamp to steady myself. My ass was wet, my hands red and frozen from pressing into the snowy ground. I focused on the individual bricks in the ground to stop the world from swirling. For a moment I’d forgotten I was drunk, I’d been so focused on him.

  “Then why are you here?” he asked to my back.

  Was he serious? I snapped my head up. “Because I have no choice.”

  “You’d still risk your life for a father who abandoned you?”

  “You’ll still kill him if I leave?” I countered.

  “You have a choice, Frankie…” He came to me, closing the distance between us in two slow and deliberate steps. “I won’t come after you if you leave.” His index finger gently trailed across my cheek, pulling my gaze back to his. “But if you stay, you’re mine. I own you, every inch of you.” The finger that had been so lightly caressing my cheek came down to my neck and he opened his palm. I sucked in a breath as his fingers wrapped around my neck. It wasn’t harsh, just enough to pull me to him.

  I came, leaning so close I could smell the taste of him on his lips. Just when I was sure he was going to kiss me, he let me go.

  “But if I go you’ll kill my father,” I whispered my fear.

  “Yes.”

  I broke away, stumbling across the roof. I had to put distance between us. “That’s not much of a choice,” I said, over my shoulder. “I’m in exactly the same position.” Oh God, it felt like each minute I was getting drunker and drunker. Everything was getting blurry and I was having a hard time standing.

  This would be a good time to admit I’d never really had anything to drink.

  Ever.

  “If that’s how you feel.” His voice was suddenly right next to me, but all around me at once. I waved a hand out to grasp at it, and I met something solid. At first I thought it was Beast, but then I saw my hand slip on the table and knock over the pitcher of hot chocolate. It melted pretty brown rivers into the snow.

  “Are you drunk?” I had half a split second to register his voice sounding angry before he gripped my wrist and threw me to the table. The food crashed to the ground. The vase shattered, and I shuddered as he threw my dress up. Beast’s fingers curled around my neck, keeping my body in place. This is it, I thought, he’s going to do it again. The small reprieve I’d had since the first night was over. He’s going to enter me again. It’s going to happen. It’s going to be just as dirty and dark and violent as the first time.

  The worst part was that earlier I’d been asking him about it. I’d been wondering where he’d gone.

  “Are you asking me why I don’t fuck you Fra
nkie?”

  “As long as you’re here, I own you Frankie,” he growled. “You keep forgetting that. I owe you no answers. I owe you no bargains. And you are to obey me.” His fingers curled around my thighs, skin digging into skin. “I don’t know where the fuck you got alcohol but I’m going to find out.”

  A sob caught in my throat. “I should just go then.”

  He leaned down, his whispered words like razors against my ear. “You should.”

  “You would kill him though,” I spat. “You fucking murderer, you leave me no choice. It would be like I’d put the knife in his belly myself.” With a violent shove, he pushed me away. The small table shuddered with the movement. I heard his footfalls soften, the elevator ding, and then I assumed I was alone. Afraid to move, I stayed where I was. Exposed. Open. The frigid air licking at my skin.

  My head pounded rough and brutal. I felt awful. It was like my emotions were coopting my drunken state and twisting it for their use.

  “So stay.” When he spoke, I jumped. I’d thought he’d gone back down with the elevator. “And put the knife in your own belly instead.” I heard the elevator close and this time I was certain he was gone.

  I stared at the shattered glass shards on the ground, made blurry by the snow.

  Or maybe those were the tears in my eyes.

  Fourteen

  Anteros woke with a start, bright light streaming through the windows. He must have fallen asleep on the desk. The last thing he remembered doing after dinner with Frankie was going to the office. He stayed up but he didn’t work at all. He stared out the windows at the glimmering, devil-eyed city trying to work out a different problem.

  Frankie.

  He’d taken Frankie to the roof, had a dinner prepared. She’d been drunk. Anteros hated those who couldn’t handle their liquor, but that wasn’t what drove him to madness with her. It wasn’t that she’d somehow circumvented his rules and found alcohol, it was that her drunken state was another reminder of what he already knew: he was losing it.

  With her, he was out of control.

  The morning after the funeral when he’d awoken and seen Frankie in his bed, he’d realized just how close to the sun he was flying. He knew he should have sold her that morning, gotten rid of her somehow, but instead he’d prepared a date for her. He was addicted to the heat on his wings.

  She constantly drove him to do things he would never do, to say things he had no intention of saying. He hadn’t planned to tell her about her father, had every intention of locating the idiot and continuing their arrangement, but the words had fallen like a loose tooth from his mouth. Even still, she drove more from him. Anteros was a collected and calm man. In interrogations, he never spilled, and the scars on his body were testament to that.

  With Frankie, he spilled like a tipped over oil can.

  He knew what was happening, too, but still it didn’t help. For some reason, Anteros couldn’t lie to her. He could keep secrets from anyone else, but if Frankie asked him point blank, he was compelled to tell her. Where he once had been so calculated he was almost robotic, now he was becoming…sloppy, emotional even.

  Anteros stared at the door, wondering. He’d basically opened the door for her and said, Go. He hadn’t seen her since leaving her at the table and driving the point home. She was so blind to what she was doing by staying with him. There was no honor in staying, and for another fucking reason he couldn’t figure out, he’d had to show her that. He half expected to walk out and find her gone.

  He exhaled through his nostrils. No, she wouldn’t go.

  She was too attached to her fuckhead of a father.

  Did she not realize what a complete craven she sacrificed herself for? Why did she keep risking everything for such a complete piece of human garbage? Still, when he gave her the opportunity to run far away, to never see him again, she kept risking herself. Loyalty was something to be admired, but not when it was at the expense of the person giving it. She was just so fucking maddening.

  She should take his bargain and run far, far away from him. It would kill many birds. If she left, he wouldn’t have to worry about the Wolves, about fucking up his life. She would be gone, out of his hair. He could go back to his normal self.

  He stared at the grains in the door, wondering if she had gone. Anteros had turned off the video monitors the night before, not wanting to watch her, trying to get her out of his system like a junkie during a detox. He had no idea if she’d gone to bed or if she’d slipped out the front door.

  Maybe she was out in New York.

  Or maybe she’d gone back to Jersey, to the empty home where her father had abandoned her. He put his hands together on his desk and leaned forward, staring at the door, fighting the urge to stand and check. The clock ticked one…two…three seconds, and Anteros folded his hands together, so tight the nails dug into the skin. Another few seconds passed, his eyes boring into the wood. If she left, it would fix so many of his problems.

  “This is fucking stupid,” Anteros said to himself. He stood just as the door opened. With his hands pressed flat on the desk, he paused, waiting to see who would come through the door. He knew who it was—it was the person who always came at this hour—yet for some reason he thought it might be someone else.

  Someone with long, curling brown hair.

  Nikolai appeared in the doorway. “To the docks, Boss?”

  Anteros arrived at the docks at the same time as Rhys and Emilio.

  “Senator Hatch is, of course, upset,” Rhys said. As Anteros opened the door and took a seat behind his desk, Rhys walked to the middle of the room and Emilio slouched onto the couch. Unlike his Wolves, Rhys never took a seat. He never was entirely comfortable in the office. Anteros leaned back while Rhys continued. “He was under the impression we were going to allow him to simply step down.”

  “Well,” Anteros said, leaning forward and bringing his fingers together in a point. “He was a fool.”

  “I am still concerned about damage control…” Rhys continued, but Anteros found his focus waning, thoughts drifting to the night before. Frankie had looked radiant, her gold dress catching the lights above them like dragon scales. Anteros still wasn’t sure where she’d gotten the alcohol, but if he had learned anything about Frankie these short weeks, it was that she had hidden depths of intelligence and she was full of surprises. Finding alcohol was probably the least she could do.

  “And,” Rhys continued, “I have sources that say he’s not going to let this go—” The door burst open, cutting Rhys’s words off at the quick. His wolves, minus Crazy A, came barreling through.

  “Have you heard of knocking?” Rhys asked, irritation lacing his tongue. “We were in the middle of something.”

  “What’s that?” Big O asked, taking a seat on the couch.

  “Knocking?” Pretty Boy put a hand to his chin, sliding into his seat. “Is that a British thing?”

  “The bald bastard and the De Luca bastard have more manners than us,” Little O commented, taking a seat. “They weren’t raised by wolves.” He grinned, baring teeth.

  Rhys’s eyes clouded under a furrowed brow. “Always good to see you, Nico, Orlando, Ottavio.” Rhys nodded to them, tone clipped. He adjusted his coat, making a motion to leave. Turning to Anteros, he said, “I will fill you in later, Mr. Drago.” He headed toward the door and Emilio trailed after like a puppy.

  When they were gone, Anteros turned to his Wolves. “Has Crazy A spoken with you all?” Anteros disguised the fact that he wasn’t sure. It was obvious that Crazy A wasn’t at the meeting, and that would have been a mortal insult had Anteros decided to address it. The other Wolves probably thought that Anteros was allowing it, and Anteros chose to let that implication lie.

  “I haven’t seen him since before the funeral,” Pretty Boy said. Little O and Big O nodded in agreement, and Anteros paused for a moment. If no one had seen Crazy A, then that meant they knew nothing about The Council’s involvement with the attack. Before Frankie, he’d never be
fore questioned whether to fill his Wolves in on anything, but he sat behind his desk, fingers thrumming on the wood, uncertain yet again.

  “Just means I get the chair.” Little O shrugged deeper into the seat in the corner.

  “What is it Boss?” Big O asked, noting the way Anteros thrummed his fingers. Anteros watched the pads of his fingers connect with the wood, slowly shifting his head back up to them.

  “It’s nothing,” Anteros replied after a few moments. At his words, he thought back to Crazy A. I’m questioning you now. He’d never lied to his Wolves before or kept anything from them, but here he was, keeping a secret.

  “I’ve been thinking about what Crazy A said down at the docks,” Pretty Boy said. “Ever since you bought the slave, things have been getting really fucked up. Just look at the funeral.”

  “That had nothing to do with Frankie,” Anteros replied, louder than he had intended.

  “Frankie?” Pretty Boy’s eyebrows shot up into his forehead.

  “The slave,” he amended. A few minutes passed in silence. Big O stood up off the couch and picked the plush basketball off the ground, unperturbed by the quiet. The low rumble of the heater sounded, vibrating through the walls. Kneading the ball between his fingers, Big O watched Anteros. They all did.

  “With all due respect…” Pretty Boy said with a cough, breaking the silence. “Nothing to do with the slave?”

  “You committed a fucking honor killing,” Little O pointed out.

  “Arlo’s dead because he tried to take something that didn’t belong to him,” Anteros said, fists curled. There was an edge to his voice that even he was surprised to hear. Little O’s eyes went wide and he quickly shut his mouth, sitting back in the seat. Someone, maybe Big O, sucked in a breath.

  As if trying to change the subject, Little O said, “So I’ve started beating up the homeless. We’ve never gone this long without a hit and I’m pent the fuck up.”

  “Where are you doing that?” Big O asked curiously. “I haven’t seen any homeless.”