“In other words, you’ll hurt me a little bit?” I sighed, fluttering the curly stray hairs around my face. “For some reason, you’re starting to sell me on the idea of taking the job.”
He looked down at his big-faced watch. A smidgen of a smile contorted his cheeks.
I opened my mouth to say more.
“Don’t speak,” he warned, shuffling me down the hall.
He picked a room a few doors down from his previous suite and pulled a funny looking card from his wallet; a wallet-sized motherboard.
He slid it through the door, allowing us inside. He immediately picked up his phone and walked to the window. Holding up his hand, he directed me to stay put. He had a hushed conversation with someone on the other line for too many agonizing minutes.
Long after he finished the phone call, he remained by the door, looking for something or someone.
“If you had that hacking device this whole time, you could’ve pushed me into the room instead of kissing me.”
A brow contracted, revealing more of his blue eyes, tinged in warmth. “This room was unoccupied; the room we were standing in front of wasn’t. I wanted to kiss you, and I didn’t need an excuse.”
“Oh,” I said as though he deflated my balloon. The man was full of surprises. His answer confounded me.
Twenty minutes of pacing the space in front of the door later, a soft knock on the door startled me out of my skin.
“It’s the concierge service, sir.”
Catch approached my position and moved me to the side. He opened the door a crack. Hushed words were exchanged with a woman. He released the door, allowing it to close and returned with a leather duffel bag.
Shoving the duffel bag toward my chest, he forced me to take a hold of it. Unzipping it, he rifled through the contents, withdrawing a few things.
He held up a plastic bag, unfurling it and a plastic packet the size of an envelope. “Take off your clothes.”
“Right here?” I looked around the room skeptically and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Now?”
He shook his head in a lazy way. “You were naked in front of me last night. Why is it a problem?”
“It’s…different. I’m not modest. I…”
“Don’t give it away for free?”
Dick. Snarling at him, I set the gun down on the floor, between my feet. I snatched off my clothes and threw them into the empty plastic bag he opened in front of me.
Placing my hands on my hips, I waited for a reaction. He might as well have been a smut peddler who witnessed the most beautiful naked women day in and day out. Or maybe I wasn’t his type. My body did nothing for him and made me question why he would want to kiss me in the first place.
He extended the white package. “Wipe your hands and feet.”
I snatched them from his grip and began to do what he said. The strong chemical smell made me retch and burned my skin.
“Thoroughly,” he barked at me.
Muttering, I did it again.
He opened the bag in front of me, nonverbally directing me to throw them in. He stepped toward the bathroom door and opened it for me. I picked up the gun from the ground and sidled inside the bathroom.
He took the gun from me, with his hands covered in a portion of the plastic bag. “Take a shower. There are clothes for you inside the bag.”
I locked the door behind his exit on the tails of a man—introducing himself as a police officer—banging on the door.
In the mirror, I examined myself, looking for any new cuts or bruises. Besides the bump on the back of my head, nothing new alarmed me.
The unanswered questions were the only things keeping my mind busy.
The clothing in the duffel bag fit a woman who took her fashion and tailoring seriously. The quality and fit of the simple white T-shirt and a pair of skinny jeans with nude heels placed it far from the ordinary. In the bottom of the bag, my fingers grazed a small, soft box. Pulling out the blue box, I pushed my thumb at the seam to open it.
Inside was a diamond ring with a blinding amount of carats in a platinum or white gold setting. I fingered it, recalling it had been a long time since I’d touched something so beautiful.
After showering, I put myself together as best as I could. I placed my curly hair up in a twisted bun with the hair supplies provided. I followed what my gut told me to do and slid the diamond ring on my fourth finger, left hand.
The authoritative voice and the footsteps of a cop echoed on the other side of the bathroom door. Giving myself one more glance over and straightening my clothes, I waltzed out of the bathroom, cutting through the bedroom to meet Catch and the police officer in the sitting room.
“I’m so sorry, miss,” apologized the uniformed cop. He shielded his eyes when he caught me shoving the length of the T-shirt down to settle naturally at my hips. “We received phone calls about an incident on this floor, and as I was telling your fiancé, we are questioning everyone to determine if guests of the hotel had heard or seen anything.”
I sauntered over to Catch, keeping my posture pageant-straight, and hooked my arm around his waist. “We were so loud last night, I think the entire floor heard us.”
“You were the one screaming at the top of your lungs, sweetheart,” Catch played along and draped an arm over my shoulders bringing me closer.
“Oh, come on, baby.” I rested my hand on his chest. His pecs tensed under my grip. The expression on his face held mischief. “You know how loud you are at times. You tend to lose your senses when you’re fucking me.” A broad grin spread across my lips. I patted his chest with my left hand harder than necessary for two reasons: to hurt Catch and to show off the ring to the officer.
“Ma’am.” The look on the cop's face when his eyes settled onto my busted lip, on the tail end of healing, said it all. I didn’t envy the look he cast at Catch. “Can we speak privately for a moment?”
“Oh, you want to talk about this?” I gestured toward my lip. “My soon-to-be-husband had a wife. She didn’t take the news too well that there was going to be a new Mrs…” I racked my brain for a name to throw out “…Kelly.”
“I hope he’s worth it,” the cop muttered.
“She only got to hit me once. She lost the fight, and I won the man. I’ll find out soon if he’s worth every bit of the punch I took for him. Anyway, officer, as I’m sure my fiancé told you, we didn’t hear anything last night. Can you say anything about what happened?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t, ma’am.” With a nod, he headed toward the door. He left a card on the table on his way out. “In case you think of anything else, or…” He looked at Catch, studying his hands. Finding no evidence on Catch’s knuckles to prove he abused me, the cop relaxed, and headed out of the door.
“Catch Kelly?” His forehead lifted in amusement.
“I had to think on the spot. I knew you’d never tell him your real last name, since you won’t tell me the first name on your birth certificate.” I slipped away from him and carried my body to the bed. “Catch, what happens when they go through the records and find out we were in that room, or see us on the cameras?”
A slow-forming grin should’ve brought me comfort, it was full of enough devilry to steal it immediately away from me. “The only thing they will find is that we checked into this room last night and checked out this morning.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I have friends in low places.” He stepped toward me, and with the softest touch, lifted my chin to scan my busted lip. Grabbing the hem of my shirt, he moved it up my torso to examine the bruise Temple left on my stomach. If I hadn’t studied him as hard as he studied me, I would’ve missed the tinge of anger flickering in his eyes and the slight shake of his head.
“Why did you do that to them?” I kept my voice low.
He leaned forward, his face a hairsbreadth from mine with his fists balled, denting the bed on either side of my legs. “I would have to be something close to a superhero to murder all those
people.”
“Or a super assassin,” I mumbled. “Why can’t you ever give me a simple answer? Are you trying to fuck my head?”
A darkness clouded his eyes. “If I was, you wouldn’t need to question it. You’ll feel every inch of me when I fully penetrate your mind.”
I crossed and uncrossed my legs. My mind and body fell out of sync and stood on two separate sides.
“Is there a valid excuse for why you didn’t listen to me and made more work for my associates?”
I jolted to my feet, bumping into him as I did. “You didn’t exactly give me directions on what to do other than to wait for you.”
“I never thought there was a need to explain.” He crossed one arm over his brawny chest and thumbed his chin.
I wagged my finger at him. “You can stop dancing in my head now. You were my superhero. You saved me…again. Go ahead and claim your cape.”
“I’m not much of a showboater.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his denims.
“Really, Catch?” I arched a brow, my lips tensing into a mocking grin.
“Let me rephrase; I’m not comfortable with dramatic arrogance.” He leaned into me, the back of his hand stroked my palm, evoking the odd sensation I couldn’t name again. “You’ve been given another chance to think about my offer.”
“Fate is a fickle bitch. Fuck fate. She screws me without the lube often and at the wrong times. This is a situation with two choices; worse and worser.”
“We all have choices. It’s whether or not we want to face the consequences of our choices.” His eyes flickered as they darted around the carpet. “I’m not your hero. I’ll never be one for you.”
I shook my head as if trying to shake myself free of his umpteenth attempt to muddle my mind. “If…I go with you, are you going to protect me?”
Without blinking. Without a single solitary doubt draping his face, he said, “Whatever needs to be done to protect you, it will be done. That’s a promise, and I never make empty promises. I take very particular care of the things that belong to me as long as they treat me with respect.”
The discontent swirled inside my stomach and threatened to make me fold. “Taking care of me and protecting me would make you my hero.” The sullenness in my words was unexpected and uncontrolled. I gave him hints to the nature of my life without intending to.
“A hero does things for selfless reasons.” He picked up my hand and gave it a soft kiss.
I cursed the man for being incredibly skilled at the way he moved me.
“Nothing concerning the things I do to and for you will ever be altruistic.”
I appreciated his honesty, and took it on faith that because he admitted to the bad, he wasn’t the worst option I had. Unfortunately, when the weekend was over, my time in an alternate world, while dressing in the personality of an alternate woman, would come to a cutting end.
I slid my hand from his grip and sidestepped his emotionally suffocating presence.
Without looking back at him, I headed into the bathroom. “I’m going to take another shower.”
With my hand on the door to the bathroom as I stared at the emergency exit map on the suite door, I planned my escape.
“Take your time.” He disappeared around the bend.
The moment Catch’s movements were no longer seen or heard, I slipped out of the door.
-6-
A RIGGED GAME
The clock inside the cab driver’s car blared 6 a.m. in glowing red print. It was Monday, and I was just in time to return to the house, shower, and get ready to start the day.
This weekend would definitely go down as the most eventful. I thought the reason I began fighting was due to an obligation—the reason I remained was for the thrill and the freedom. Meeting Catch made me question everything.
The cab driver pulled up to my house in Bel Air Ridge. Sam wasn’t standing watch as he always did at the front pathway lined by square trimmed bushes.
As my heels tapped against the freshly waxed, dark wood floors in the foyer leading to the major room, which opened to the grand stairs, an unknown force grabbed ahold of my heart and strangled the life from it. Breathing freely became a task. I had returned to my prison and all the feelings I tried to wash away during the weekend came flooding back to drown my identity and my autonomy.
I slipped off my heels and peered into the room with a piano, a couch, and nothing more. Every weeknight, I played the same song for an audience of one. It was one of the few times I felt unencumbered while standing inside a place that represented everything I hated.
I padded upstairs toward my bedroom. My hand touched the knob of my bedroom door. I relaxed my shoulders only to tense them again when I heard Sam call out to me from behind me.
I plastered a smile on my face to meet the man I had an arrangement with.
“Don’t flash your pretty smile at me and think we’re okay.” Sam shook a finger at me like a father who waited up past curfew to catch their child in the act.
I roamed around inside my room for an envelope, and found cash hidden in my drawer to place inside it. I would be short this week due to Temple’s antics.
I handed the envelope to Sam. “I couldn’t meet her this weekend. Some things came up. Can you do it? You know where to go, right?”
“I do.” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “You’ll never tell me what your connection to the little boy and the old woman is and why you give them everything you earn over the weekend, will you?”
“Nope,” I said with a smile. The little boy, Darren, was the son of the woman who was killed. I took up the baton and began fighting in her honor. Darren's grandmother took him in, and she didn’t have the means to provide for him. I made it my duty to give them everything I earned over the weekend. I hoped to someday make an account for Darren to access when he turned eighteen.
My inability to give Darren more while I lived in luxury irked me. The man responsible for my home would never give me money, only objects, and he tracked everything I purchased—even the money I earned from my nine to five.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Sam asked, folding the envelope and placing it in his back pocket. “You promised me you’d make it here by midnight on Sunday.”
He might not have let me continue the weekend excursions if I told him the truth. I had Deana to thank for the reason he looked the other way and allowed me to roam the streets. Deana was my half-sister, and she had a tangible pull with the men in the syndicate. She was born into it, I wasn’t. We had nothing in common other than our bloodline and lack of real friends outside of each other.
According to Deana, she had acquaintances, and a stalker she manipulated into doing whatever she wanted. While we shared everything once we had gotten to know one another, she never revealed the identity of the person who had been stalking her for over two years, nor would she tell me what she made the person do for her.
“Has Deana called me back yet?” I hadn’t spoken to her since last month, October, and I hadn’t seen her since the end of August. We were relegated to chatting on the phone thanks to Michael—the man she called her father. Our last conversation was strained; she accused me of being something I wasn’t. When I asked her if I had done something wrong, she quickly made up an excuse about being busy with her new job and hung up the phone.
No matter how many times I called, she never picked up. I missed her, palpably. Meeting her and being with her was the one thing that shimmered in my hopeless and dark present.
“No.” Sam shook his head at me. “She hasn’t called me in a few days. Look, I can’t turn a blind eye anymore. A couple of girls from the family went missing over the weekend. One turned up dead. This shit has been going on for over a year, and it needs to stop. All the women are on lockdown until we figure out who’s taking them—maybe killing them all.”
“Deana?” I stopped my frenzied need to grab things in preparation for my shower and spun toward him in a panic. “Is she okay?”
“I told
you. I haven’t heard from her. I know someone who is where she is, and they tell me she’s all right.” He nodded to my bedroom door. “You better make like you’re getting ready for work. I think Michael might show up this morning instead of tonight. He might lock you down more than he already does.” He turned on his heels and headed downstairs.
In the streets, I was an unknown girl—a fighter for cash. Here, in a very tight corner of the world, I was the good girl who graduated from college a year ago. It took five years to obtain my degree—I couldn’t decide on a major and not all of my credits transferred. I received a safe entry-level job, due to Michael’s connections, working as an administrative assistant for a bitch in expensive heels.
I was only allowed two places during the week: home and work. If I strayed during the week someone was hurt or killed. I was both grateful and resentful of Sam. He became my bodyguard two months ago, and it was only due to him that I was given any freedom at all. My ability to live any semblance of a life was stolen from me shortly after I turned sixteen.
Exhaling, I closed the door to my bedroom and rested my back against it. I held my hand up and stared at the ring I had forgotten to remove. I turned it around toward my palm and shuffled into the bathroom to take the hottest shower I could stand.
I rushed out of the bathroom in my dress slacks and button-up shirt several sizes too large. Michael controlled what was in my closet, and I was never allowed to wear anything that revealed my curves. Makeup was another cardinal sin according to him.
The last time I deigned to wear mascara and do something with my hair in his presence, he had his bodyguard hold me down and he cut my hair nearly bald. It took two years to get my hair to my shoulders when it was originally down my back.
There was only one way I could consistently rebel against Michael and avoid his wrath: silence. I had never spoken more than a few words to the man since he showed me his true nature. His resolution was the piano. He claimed music was the one way he could make me communicate with him.
Lies & Lullabies Page 6