by Trisha Wolfe
Like I said, I’m not built right. But I am built for one specific woman, and that’s Alexis. I won’t stop pursuing her until she understands that.
I went into this relationship with her like I would any other woman. As if she was just my object to possess. I took responsibility for her when I took ownership, only I didn’t take responsibility for myself. I demanded compliance and honesty from her, without giving her the same transparency.
I required her trust, but I didn’t trust her to make the right choices.
I’m close to ramming my head through a wall just to make these enlightening thoughts cease. I’m not about to become enlightened unless Alexis is around to witness it. I’m still a man, after all. I know that it doesn’t count unless the woman you love sees it for herself.
I hit Send.
Then I’m off my couch and heading to my bedroom. I won’t hover around my phone like some pussy-whipped teenager. I cling to what dignity I have left, however little.
It doesn’t work. The thought of her suffering steals my breath. What if her brother’s condition has worsened? What if I’m so ill-equipped at handling these emotions that I should’ve demanded to be with her through this?
These thoughts pummel my brain in the dark of my room, keeping me from sleep. I should be focused on the case, but all I can visualize is the pain on Alexis’s face after she got the call.
“Fuck.” I roll out of bed and pull on my jeans, then head toward my phone.
No reply.
I call Jefferson. “When did you take Alexis home?” I ask as way of greeting. There’s no sense in platitudes. I hired him because he knows this.
His groggy voice sounds over the line. “Sir, I didn’t. Not yet.”
My brow furrows. “Then she’s still at the hospital?”
“No, sir. She wanted to go to the office. Said she had—”
“Then you’re still there. With her.”
A beat. Then: “She’s going to call when she’s ready to leave.”
“You left her there alone?”
“I’m on my way back there now—”
“No,” I say, my voice a dark boom. “I’m going.”
I hang up and try her number. It rings for a while before going to voicemail. Dammit, Alexis. I try calling again, and again, her voicemail picks up.
I type out a quick text: I’m on my way to you.
I don’t bother with a jacket and am already grabbing my keys when my phone rings. I dig it out of my pocket. Alexis’s beautiful face is on the screen.
“Are you all right?” There’s many different ways to answer this call…other things I wish to say…but this is my main concern. I need to know she’s all right. That she’s not sitting up in her office, hurt and alone.
The receiver picks up her shaky breaths. “I’m all right,” she says. “Chase, I don’t think this is going to work.”
I brace my hand on the door, holding my phone against my ear as I hang my head. “I don’t accept that, Alexis.”
She remains quiet, and I wait. Wait for her to realize what she’s saying is wrong. It doesn’t feel right because it’s not right.
“You tore up the agreement, Chase. There’s nothing between us anymore.”
My hand balls into a fist against the door. I grit my teeth to keep from rearing back and punching it. “I don’t need a fucking agreement to be with you.” I exhale, releasing the searing ache from my lungs. “I tore it up because I want more than something stated in callous legal jargon, Alexis. I want you. All of you—”
“Chase—”
“I’m coming to you. If you’re done with me, then tell me so. But do it to my face.”
“I’m already gone,” she says, essentially slicing my chest open.
“Where are you?” When she doesn’t answer, I practically growl into the phone, “Where the fuck are you?”
“Thank you for what you did for my brother,” she says, and it infuriates me more. This whole debacle is because she took issue with my interference into her life.
“Alexis, I demand to know—” I pound my fist against the door “—please, Alexis. Tell me where you are. We’ll figure this out, but—”
“Chase…I can’t. I know that Jake will be okay, and you’ll be okay.” The phone is muffled and I hear a sob break through the line. My gut clenches.
“Alexis?”
“I’m starting over, Chase. I have to get away from here and just start over.”
Three quick beeps end the call.
“Fuck!” My fist makes contact with the door, leaving a dent. I’m only rational enough to keep from smashing my phone.
I open the door and slam it behind me, clicking my key fob to unlock my car. Another man might accept this rejection. Might drink himself stupid and go find the quickest, easiest pussy to bury his dick in.
But I’m too stubborn for that. If Alexis is this distraught over her brother, this lost over us…then she needs me. She’s strong—stronger than she even realizes—but it’s usually the strong who break the hardest. She’s breaking.
There’s a sick twisting in my stomach that grips me whole, my instincts shouting to go to her. I’ll be damned if I lose her tonight. I’ll be damned if I don’t do everything within my power to stop that from happening.
I pull up the GPS on her phone. Another thing she might despise me for…but she can scold me all she wants later. I’ll gladly take the beating as soon as I have her in my arms.
21
Beast of Burden
Alexis
“That was pathetic.” Mason grips my chin, forcefully raising my gaze to his face. “You were supposed to make him believe, Alexis. To save his life.” He tsks. “You barely made me believe you want him to live, and I don’t want to have to end him. I rather like Chase. He’s a damn fine lawyer who I consider a friend.”
I suck in an unsteady breath and jerk free of his hold. “He’ll believe it when…” I trail off, unable to voice what’s to happen next, even if I’ve accepted my fate. “When I disappear,” I grit out between clenched teeth.
Mason drops my phone and stomps it. The crack echoes around the office, severing my link to Chase. “A precaution,” he says.
My wrists burn from the leather belt, my failed attempts to twist free having torn my flesh. My bare skin is blanketed in sheets of ice-cold sweat. My bra and underwear a flimsy barrier to the chilly air. Yet still I maintain my fight.
Mason tucks the gun into his waistband behind his back, his eyes narrowed on me. Then, his hand lands another slap to my face. My vision explodes in white. The blinding pain dulls into a throb as I choke back a cry.
“Chase is smarter than you,” I say, willing my voice steady. I look up, blinking my vision clear. “Malcolm goes to jail, then what? You’ll have to find another scapegoat. Because you’re sick. You can’t stop. You’ve already made one mistake by leaving your DNA behind. You’ll make another. Chase won’t need me to put it together, then.”
He raises his fist and I recoil, bracing for the impact.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, he yanks the skylark necklace from my neck and pockets it. My skin burns, the lingering sting of the chain still there. He grabs the knotted belt behind my back. “Get up,” he orders.
I struggle to my feet as he hauls me off the floor. “Where are you taking me?”
“To my scapegoat, baby,” he says, yanking me forward, and I cringe at the word. I loathe it. More than I loathe Mason’s attempts to defile me. The memories it evokes. “You’re just too damn smart a cunt, but at least I don’t have to bother with any pretenses.”
I lift my chin despite my fear. I fought Mason off once, I’ll continue to fight. He can kill me…but I won’t let him violate me. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to make it end quickly before he gets the chance.
He shoves me against the wall. I lean there, watching him tidy my office, making me disappear. “You can’t keep using your clients as patsies—”
“Pawns,” he
says, tossing my torn clothing into my purse.
“What?”
His eyes meet mine. “They’re pawns. See, Larkin and Gannet believe they’re grandmasters of this domain.” He spreads his arms wide. “But it’s been my board they’ve been playing on all along.”
I shake my head, moving farther down the wall. “You’re demented.”
He cocks his head in a clipped shrug. “All great men are. It’s the price one pays for genius.” He stalks toward me then, bracing his arms on either side of my head and locking me in place. “I think you’ll realize that once you acknowledge you’re just a pawn, too.”
I swallow hard, calming my breathing. His smile is too revealing, he wants me to ask. So I don’t.
“Lee Brooks,” he says, eyeing me closely. “Oh, wait. That’s right. What did Chase tell Sol? That you only knew him as John. A man that somehow charmed his way into your panties at your parents’ funeral.” Mason grins. “What a whore you are, Alexis.”
For the first time, my defense drops. Fear pervades my senses, ripping through me with a fury that decimates my nerves. Mason holds me upright as my legs give out. “How do you—? He raped me. He raped me…” The words tumble out, a painful release that I despise Mason for witnessing.
He presses against me, and my stomach roils at the feel of his erection digging into my belly. “I know, baby. He sure did, and he’s about to again.”
I shake my head, attempting to get as far away from him as possible, but his body seals against mine.
“Chase used company resources to dig into your past,” he whispers in my ear. “Seems that Lee was a client of ours once. In fact, Chase defended him, how do you like that? And I thought to myself, how ironic.”
Ironic. That Chase once defended my rapist, that he knew who he was—no, that’s not ironic. That’s just another cruelty linking us together in this fucked up world. I’ve been afraid to face the man who raped me, to face my past—but I’m not angry with Chase for any of it. “I don’t care,” I say. “You’re trying to hurt me, but you can’t. Stop your lame monologue and get this over with. I’m sick of looking at you.” I spit in his face.
I’m provoking him. It’s what I have to do. My only assurance that I’m protecting Chase—that we’ll be gone by the time he comes looking for me.
Mason only smiles, then licks a trail across my lips. I sputter back my revulsion. He pushes his erection harder against me, and I wish I could tear it from his body.
“You want to know the real irony that’s about to take place?” he asks. “Chase learns that by sicking an investigator on Lee, he revealed your whereabouts to him. As paranoid as Lee is, he had no choice but to take out the woman threatening to put him away.”
My eyes widen.
“Now you’re seeing the whole picture. Of course Chase wants to punish the man who hurt you. The man who comes back to hurt you all over again. And he will. He’s just going to punish the wrong man this time.” As he pulls back, his gray eyes assessing my reaction, he says, “Checkmate.”
I’m thrust through the office door on wobbly legs. Mason walks behind me, directing me down the hallway. My whole body feels ready to shut down. The adrenaline that kept me sharp, primed to fight, has depleted my muscles, leaving me drained and hollow.
There’s a calming relief washing over me, though—as twisted as it is. It won’t be the truth, but if Chase believes Mason’s lie, if he accepts a man from my past has done this to me, then he’ll know I didn’t willingly leave him.
Only Mason hasn’t thought this all the way through. He hasn’t been methodical. He didn’t have time to plot this out, think around all the angles and evidence. He stumbled upon a jagged piece from my past, one he thinks he can forcefully wedge into his warped puzzle.
But it’s half-hatched and sloppy. Leaving behind a trail that Chase will follow.
“Framing Lee is going to be more difficult than you think,” I say, nearly buckling from the throb in my shoulder as he jerks the belt to halt me at the elevator.
“When you know the law, you know how to get around it,” he says simply. He turns me around and drives my back against the wall, knocking the breath from my lungs.
He smiles at my pain as he closes in. “I’m not a bad man,” he says, drawing the gun from behind his back. “I just have particular tastes and needs.” He runs the barrel between my thighs, the cold metal biting into my skin. “I’m going to do things to you Chase only fantasizes about. Things you never knew you craved.”
I’m shaking. I can’t help it. But I don’t lower my gaze. I hold steady, looking right into his eyes. “Even if I never figured out the truth, you were always going to do this. You want what belongs to Chase.”
The backs of his fingers graze my cheek. “I can’t help myself – you’re forbidden fruit.” The gun makes contact with me through my underwear, and my breath is lost. His smile stretches. “Taking Chase’s plaything for myself is just too irresistible.”
I close my eyes as he reaches around me…and then the ding of the elevator doors opening sets my breath free.
“Let’s go.”
Inside the elevator, Mason keeps me in front of him, the gun seated at my lower back. I can’t help but think that at one time, when Chase first approached me, I was just a game to him. A piece to be moved around. A possession to be owned. His property.
Mason said it himself: I’m a pawn. Pawns are meant to be sacrificed. I want to believe that’s changed—that somehow, we’ve become real—that Chase no longer sees me as a pawn. I have to trust in that—in us—or else my sacrifice is empty.
Finally, I understand the dynamics of this firm, only too late. This is all a power struggle for the partners. Each one taking turns trying to conquer the other. Chase’s warning, his promise to protect me…did he know Mason was capable of this? Does he realize how malicious one of his partners is?
No. He can’t. Chase plays the game, too, but he’s not capable of the vileness Mason harbors. Mason isn’t playing on the same level—he’s deranged.
I love Chase. I believe he loves me. That’s all I need to trust in. I’ve never belonged to anyone the way I belong to him. I’m known by Chase in a way I’ve never felt before. He has protected me. Had I never given myself to him, I wouldn’t have discovered just what I’m capable of.
In the seconds it takes the elevator doors to open, the brief moment where time suspends, where my eyes connect with Chase’s and Mason extends the gun, fate no longer controls my life. I control fate.
I’m only granted a second, but time—for once—obeys me, and I lunge to the right.
My eardrums explode. The blast ricochets around the small enclosure of the elevator, a dizzying effect that rocks my equilibrium. All noise fades away, just the thud of my heartbeat filling my ears.
My name breaks through the muted current of sounds before the floor hits me.
When the world rights itself, my sight scrambles to latch on to an object—any object—and my gaze catches Chase. He’s a blur of movements at first, then he comes into focus along with a pitch of sound that brings everything around me racing back as time speeds up.
Chase has Mason’s arm pinned against the wall of the elevator, the gun held within Mason’s grip. With his free hand, Chase is pummeling Mason’s face. Red mists the air as Chase connects his fist with Mason’s face over and over.
As I try to sit forward, a sharp pain sears my shoulder. I cry out, struggling against the restraint of the belt. “Chase!”
His attention is momentarily directed toward me, his clenched hand held aloft mid-swing.
“Don’t kill him,” I manage to get out. “Don’t—”
Chase bangs Mason’s arm against the wall, loosening Mason’s grip on the gun and it falls to the floor. Then Chase has Mason by the collar and slams him into the metal wall. “I should kill you,” he grates through clenched teeth. “But you’re already a dead man.”
He delivers a final blow to Mason’s face before he leans over
to pick up the gun. Then he’s kneeling beside me and unbinding the belt. “Don’t move,” he says, the tremble in his voice evident.
“I’m not hurt,” I say, the pain in my shoulder going numb. “I need to get up.”
“Alexis—” his solemn gaze finds mine “—you’re shot. Stay still. I got you.” He digs out his phone with one last glance toward a bloody Mason, then brings his phone to his ear. “Wexler, listen, there’s a situation at the firm—” A beat. “No, the law firm. Lark and Gannet. I need officers here to arrest one of my partners, Caleb Mason. And I need an ambulance.”
He doesn’t stay on the line; he ends the call and is cradling me in his arms, careful of my shoulder. “I should’ve killed him,” he says. “Why did you do that?”
My eyes flick up to his face. “Because I could.”
Despite the seriousness of our situation, he eases a tight smile out. “You’re beautiful when you’re defiant.” He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. Then as he glances around, he curses. “We’re not waiting. I’m taking you to the hospital myself.”
“No—wait.” I grasp his arm, pulling myself up against his chest. “We can’t leave him here—”
The doors of the lobby open, and then heavy footsteps fill the ground floor as three men dressed in black approach the scene.
“Mister Larkin,” one of them says with a curt nod. “Our employer wishes to thank you for alerting them of the situation first.” He eyes Mason, then returns his sharp gaze to Chase. “It will be taken care of.”
“Who are you?” Chase demands.
The man—nearly as tall as Chase, broad shoulders squared, with no hint of fear in his dark eyes—smiles. “It will be taken care of, sir.”
Chase’s arms wrap around me, securing me to his chest as the man takes a close look at my shoulder. “It’s a flesh wound, but you’ll want to get it treated.”
Chase exhales the tension from his chest. Evidently, as relieved as I am. A flesh wound—I’ll live. I look up at Chase. “I’m fine. I don’t need—”