Into the Shadows

by Carolyn Crane

  The plan was to use that leverage to infiltrate Hangman—Dax believed that would be the best way in for him. Once inside Hangman, Thorne was to do what it took to grab the reins of Hangman and learn who was protecting the gangs at the federal level. And then he’d get to kill Jerrod.

  The day he heard that conversation he carried out a hit—one of the Slater brothers. It was part of the maneuvering he and Dax had devised. Thorne usually hated doing hits, and he hated the zone of deadness he would go into afterward. But that night, he did the hit and he welcomed the deadness. It dulled the sharpness of her betrayal.

  Do him for me.

  He was back in the mansion at dinnertime, eating with Victor’s other soldiers. The soldiers ate first; the guards ate last. Victor treated his guards as the lowest of servants—one of the many reasons the man would be easy for somebody to kill.

  The clock chimed six, but Thorne stayed at the dinner table instead of going to her.

  He and Nadia always came together fast and furiously, and as the minutes wore on, he could imagine where they’d be. At ten after, he’d have her clothes off. Maybe his, too, though sometimes she liked him to fuck her with his clothes on. At a quarter after he was painfully aware that he’d be inside her.

  He does as well as anyone.

  He remembered eating cake that tasted like sandpaper, wishing he’d never heard the recording, that he could’ve lived in ignorance of how she saw him. Wishing that he’d never felt the warmth of her sunshine.

  At twenty after, she came down and addressed everyone at the table. “How’s dessert tonight?”

  The men answered and joked; some liked the cake, some didn’t.

  She cast a questioning look at Thorne. Why didn’t you show up? I’m waiting.

  He stirred his coffee, face blank. She’d always hated the blank face because it shut her out. So he kept it up, wanting to sting her.

  She put her hands on her hips. “Any takers on the last piece? Last chance.” Again she addressed the group, but again, it was mostly him.

  There’s nothing to him. I just don’t like a closed door.

  He sat perfectly still as his insides went raw with jagged emotions. He hated her for being beautiful and funny and warm and everything he wanted. He hated her for letting him into her magical life and for making him happy when it was all just a lie. And God, he hated her for acting like she’d seen something special and lovable inside him when she hadn’t seen any such thing.

  And he hated himself for still wanting to go to her and worship every inch of her and fuck her, even knowing his hand could be any man’s hand; his cock could be any man’s cock. He hated that he still craved her affection even though it was mostly fake.

  God help him, he’d take the fake stuff.

  “Okay then.” She left through the kitchen door, throwing one last glance at him over her shoulder. Come on! Her steps faded up the stairs.

  He hated himself because he still loved her.

  Heart pounding, he forced himself to wander into the annex den where the guys played video games, as if he still had free will.

  He stayed as long as he could, and then he went, up the back steps that were reserved for the help, out onto the porch, and up on the roof to her window.

  And so, the season of love turned into the season of lovehate.

  Nadia came to the window wearing complicated red lingerie that looked like half a bathing suit; it involved a garter belt and no panties. She enjoyed the dress-up stuff. “What the F?” she said as he climbed over the sill, shaking.

  She meant to pass him to her bitch of a sister like he was pair of socks?

  He went to her without a word, watched himself press her against the bedpost and kiss her, tender and hard, because it was like glass cutting him inside, the way he lovehated her.

  She seemed to like this wild new energy. She pulled away, sparkling. “You make me wait like that? Why should I fuck a lowlife brute like you?”

  It had been a slap in the face the first time she called him that when he discovered her up on the roof—the kind of slap that energized you and got you hot. After a life of everybody being falsely nice to him, there she was on the roof, weeping. Fuck off, you lowlife, she’d said.

  It had cut through to the center of him. And, as if possessed by something, he’d kissed her.

  And she’d kissed him back.

  There on the roof it had felt like a miracle, her simultaneously calling him that and wanting his mouth and hands on her. Both at the exact same time. An intoxicating combination.

  It was if she’d wanted him because of what he was. As if he was somebody good.

  He’d grown to love when she called him lowlife loser brute or whatever colorful alternative she’d come up with. The names she’d call him were like twisted affirmations. They made him feel happy, like things between them were honest. Special. And so fucking hot.

  But now he knew better. She’d spelled it out for Kara; he was just an interchangeable source of semi-rough sex. Nothing special.

  He pushed her onto the bed and stood over her. She lay there, gazing up at him, smiling. “You think you can be an asshole and I’ll still let you ravish me?”

  He wanted to push her, but he wouldn’t push her like she wanted. He stormed across her room, grabbed a terrycloth dress off the floor, and threw it at her. “Put it on.”

  “Exsqueeze me?”

  “You’re getting me into the workout room.”

  “You don’t get to go into the workout room. That’s not a privilege that you have.”

  “I need you to get me in.”

  “Seriously, Thorne. You need to go in the workout room? For real?”

  “You have the key.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  He climbed over her, but he wouldn’t touch her.

  “Losers and thugs need not apply,” she said, smiling, starting up their game. She lifted a foot to his crotch, but he pushed it away before she could feel his raging hard-on.

  She really did disdain him. Why should he be surprised?

  “You’re going to take me down there, and I’m going to have myself a look around,” he said. “And if I feel like it, I’m going to put you on a machine.”

  “You’re not supposed to be in there.”

  He got up off the bed and leaned against the wall. He’d been in the workout room dozens of times and he had bugs in there, too. He just wanted to push her. “I need to see what I can see from there.”

  “Is this for your beef with the New Tong?”

  She’d had the idea he was enemies with the New Tong guys. She hadn’t known then that they were all like dangerous vultures, waiting for her father to fall.

  He let his voice flatten out. “I need to get in.” She liked that asshole voice; it was part of their game, though he’d never made such an extreme demand.

  He was surprised when she actually brought him down there—it was ballsy and brave, but then, she was Victor’s girl. He remembered having the thought that if she’d been a guy, Victor would’ve groomed her for the life. Victor was stupid not to have used her. She could’ve saved him.

  Down in the weights room, he strode openly around, so that anybody coming down to this part of the basement could see them together where they shouldn’t be, wanting just to push, push, push. He was like a wounded animal, and he wished so badly that he didn’t love her.

  “Satisfied?” she said.

  “No.” He went to the door and locked it.

  He was crossing a line. Her eyes shone. “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think? This loser wants to fuck your brains out now. I’ll never be good enough for you, and I shouldn’t even want to fuck you, but I do.”

  The truth. He wasn’t good enough for her. The lowlife game—it was really what she thought.

  She smiled as the knife of his words twisted inside his heart.

  “Get your clothes off. Make yourself ready for me,” he said.

  “What if somebody
comes in?”

  “I’ll fucking take them apart.” He pointed to the deltoids machine. It was placed away from the door and it had a configuration that he liked.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nobody’s coming in here.” He went to her, picked her up and she laughed. He could remember how happy he felt to hear it. He wanted not to care that she was having fun, but he did. “Lowlifes notice things that Party Princesses don’t see,” he said, setting her down. “Like who goes where when, so you’ll just have to trust me.” He pushed up her dress, baring her complex lingerie, crazy with lovehate. Then he pulled the dress over her head.

  “Jesus, this is risky,” she said as he lowered his lips to her silk-covered breast, as he closed his mouth hot over the outline of her nipple.“Bite it,” she breathed.

  He blew on it instead. “Lowlifes don’t take direction, baby.”

  He slid his chin up and down the bulge at the side of her bra cup, wishing she didn’t feel so damn good. He pressed his fingers into her hips, feeling the intensity spiraling. “God, Nadia.”

  “Do me, loser.”

  “No. Make yourself ready for me,” he grated. He’d always wanted to watch her masturbate, and she’d been shy to do it, so he’d never pushed her. Now he would. It was the only way he could think of lashing back. He stood back and unbuttoned his cuffs. “Do it.”

  “Come on,” she protested. “I’m ready.”

  He waited. Once she was turned on, she would do almost anything to get him to fuck her. Fine. He’d be the jerk she wanted now.

  She hesitated, not believing him, maybe. Finally, she slid her hand between her legs, touching herself, embarrassed, but heading forward, just like she always did. She’d get these little indents in her cheeks when she felt tense, and it was happening now. He couldn’t believe how beautiful she was.

  He watched how she moved, noting a certain rhythm he would use later. He didn’t know who he was being harder on—her, making her do that, or himself, making himself watch her from afar, removed and apart. The boy who got thrown out into the desert, left to die alone with the scorpions.

  “You’re a brute who doesn’t know how to act right,” she said.

  “I know,” he whispered.

  It was a strange miracle, this new directness. Like one of those buildings where you could see the pipes and joinery without all the nice finishes.

  “You ready?” he grated.

  She flicked a dark gaze up to him.

  “Are you?” he repeated, trying to keep his breath under control. She didn’t know to watch people’s breath like he did, and therefore wouldn’t notice the jerkiness of it, the harshness. The desolation in his heart.

  She held up a finger, glistening wet.

  “Are you?” he asked, control fraying.

  She got up and came to him in her scraps of red silk. He panted as she pressed flush to him. He’d meant to make her say something—he couldn’t remember what the fuck it was, all he could think about was that finger with its sparkly black nail polish on one side and her arousal glistening on the other. He grabbed it with his bad hand, wrapping her in scarred flesh, and then he closed his mouth over her fingertip, drawing hard.

  She pushed her other hand down into his pants and grabbed his cock, holding him firm around the root like he’d shown her.

  “I’m ready,” she whispered, shaking, trembling.

  With his free arm, he caught her around her waist, pulling her up to him as she stroked. He let go of her hand and grabbed her bare ass, cupping her buttocks, lifting her to him.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He pushed her back against an upright pad, aware now that his desperation was feeling like domination to her. Which she liked. He was fucking her like she liked, but inside his head, everything was rearranged.

  “You think I’m going to let you fuck me?” she asked.

  “Yeah, Party Princess,” he said, getting rid of his pants and rolling on a condom he’d brought. He pulled up her leg and pressed a hand to her wet crotch. “I was raised by scorpions and I don’t know how to act right, and I’m going to fuck you anyway.”

  She was panting, gone.

  He touched her heat, got her right onto the edge—the topography of her cunt changed, blew up a little.

  “I can’t last—be inside me.”

  He stroked her like she liked, bringing her mercilessly closer. “This is what happens when you let a brutish lowlife have his way with you.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God, Thorne,” she breathed.

  “Not good enough for the Party Princess.” He was getting into it too much. He whispered one bit of truth to her after another. “But I don’t care. I’ll pull you and your perfect everything down into the dirt with me. I’ll dirty you up just by being near, like a pit bull, drooling over you.” The rawness was turning him on. He didn’t know if it was a game or not anymore. He felt her melting in his hands. They’d achieved some kind of evil liftoff.

  “You don’t want a brute, and I’m going to fuck you anyway,” he whispered.

  He defiled her with his hands and the truth of his doomed love for her bloomed dark in his heart.

  Something ripped open then, a kind of freedom.

  And though he’d never bitten her earlobe before, he was connected to her in a new way now, and he had to bite her like an animal. So he bit her. Hard. She broke apart above his hand, undulations pulsing against the pads of his slowing fingers. He kept on moving, forcing the sensation higher until she was weeping, and he was kissing off her tears. His lovehate for her raged.

  He pulled up her leg and she locked it around his waist as he slipped the head of his cock into her.

  “Yes, do it,” she said. “Please, Thorne.”

  He took her hands in his bad hand and pushed them above her head, pressing them to the cold metal and he drove into her—slowly—letting her envelop him, hot silk around lowly flesh. He didn’t know what anything was, he only knew that he wanted to fuck her forever.

  In the weeks and days after, he always made her call him a lowlife, so that they were clear on where they stood. And a little bit to punish her for disdaining him.

  And it still got him so hot, sometimes he couldn’t see straight.

  Voices. Soft footsteps.

  A group of Jerrod’s men passed beneath him.

  Cans clattered. They’d reached the kitchen; they’d be heading up to the bedroom level now; the other half would be searching the office wing.

  Divided in two groups. Perfect.

  He uncurled himself and walked his hands down so that he was hanging by the chandelier, then he dropped catlike to the floor. Like a shadow, he moved through one room and another and finally up to the second level. In and out of Victor’s room they went. In and out of Nadia’s, the baby’s. The guest rooms. With every clear they relaxed a little bit more, thinking, perhaps, that he’d escaped.

  Thorne started with the two hanging back in the hall; he smacked their heads together, an effective and quiet knockout strategy, and tied and gagged them in the safe room. He met a guy coming out of a guest room and quickly choked him out. Him, he carried to the master closet. He hadn’t planned on knocking them all out and hiding them, but the idea appealed to him on a psychological level. It took around six minutes to handle the six guys on the upper level; just as he was making his way back down the stairs, one of the phones he took from one of the guys buzzed.

  Thorne grabbed his reading glasses from his ankle holster and read the text.

  Report.

  He scrolled through the history. All queries had been answered with a word and a number. They were using a system, dammit. If he was one of the brainy Associates, he’d be able to figure it out, but he wasn’t a brainy Associate.

  Fuck it, he’d do something better.

  He searched for a skull and crossbones GIF, and simply sent that back, smiling as he continued through the shadows across the great room toward the study. They’d have gotten the text and woul
d be tense. The tenseness would make them easy to fight.

  The office area was a lot like a bedroom wing, except it was offices. And he had the remaining six cornered.

  He could take six in a confined area, easy.

  Too easy.

  On instinct, he reversed course, but not before he caught a whiff of something sickly sweet.

  Gas.

  He turned and ran, knees like jelly, stumbling when he hit the great room. Quickly he dragged himself into a dark corner.

  Figures in gas masks appeared, crossing the room in a tight, fearful formation. Summoning his waning strength, he leapt up, taking out two guys. He yanked off one of their masks, but he was losing the use of his fingers, his arms. The next thing he knew, he was staring at the ceiling through haze, four guns pointed down at him. The floor…he was on the floor.

  Somebody else appeared and pointed yet another gun at Thorne’s head. It was Jerrod—Thorne could tell by the brown rockabilly curls above the top of the mask. Jerrod was saying something about traitors, his voice a faraway trumpet, gun a close-up trumpet.

  He became vaguely aware of a song. No, a text tone. Then one of the masked men was reading something.

  How odd that looked, he thought, a masked creature checking his smartphone.

  Thorne had the thought that he would die now.

  Jerrod would kill him.

  Thorne wondered if it was dawn yet. He thought about Nadia as the darkness closed in.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Yana.” One of the women examined Nadia’s photo under the yellowy dome light. “Yana.”

  Nadia scrambled to her side, gripping the vinyl seat edge as they rattled down the road in the back of the van.

  “Yana?” Nadia asked. “Not Suzy? Yana?” Was that her mother’s name? “You know her?”

  The woman said something in Russian—all Nadia could get was the word one.

  The leader with the braids, Rita, translated: the woman had seen her mother one year ago.

  “Poke,” Rita said. “Another like that.” She pointed at the back of the van, indicating the co-op sweatshop they were speeding away from.