“What do you want?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking. This was the closest he’d ever come to danger like this. Never had he had a gun pointed at his face, but he knew he was going to have to use his brain if he wanted to get out of this. Carlos was still in the car, maybe he’d realize something was wrong and come help him.
“Money, obviously.” Breckidge said. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Those idiots,” he jerked his head in the direction of the Honda. “Weren’t supposed to make a move on the car so soon. They were supposed to let us get back to the house first.”
“What good would that have done? My entire security detail is at the house.”
“Yeah, but how many of them do you think you can trust?” Breckidge asked, showing teeth. “And anyway, I had it all planned out. I was gonna take charge of your ‘safety’ and then smuggle you out to the car so the rest of them could take you.”
Anger welled hot and thick in Dorian’s throat. It was a good plan, he had to admit. No one would have thought twice about Breckidge taking him somewhere for his safety. Even he wouldn’t have been able to argue about that. Bless the rest of them for being idiots, then.
Anger was good, though. Anger was more productive than fear. It cleared his head of the thoughts of how much he didn’t want to die and how worried he was, and let him think. All he had to do was hold onto that feeling and he could get through this without going to pieces. That was what they wanted, after all. They wanted him scared and vulnerable, and he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction, no matter how true it was of his current emotional state.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said, pitching his voice loud enough that Carlos would probably hear it. “If you want my money, you’ll need me alive.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Breckidge said. “I know that. I’m coming up with a new plan.”
“Do try not to hurt yourself with over thinking,” Dorian remarked, making his voice sound bored and disdainful. He needed to hide his fear. The police were on the way. If he could just keep things going until someone intervened then he would be fine. In theory. There was only one Breckidge, after all.
Now the guard looked angry, and he took a step closer to Dorian, gun still raised. “You think you’re so clever. Always thinking you’re better than the rest of us. You just wait. As soon as we have the money, I’m gonna put a bullet between your eyes, Kingston. Right in that brain of yours. Just wait.”
“Mm, well, you’ll excuse me if I’m not very afraid of empty threats.”
“You—!”
But whatever he had been about to say was cut off by the single ringing shot of a gun and the bullet that slammed into his side. He was down in seconds, bleeding out on the pavement, and Dorian had to fight the urge to collapse himself.
He looked up and saw Carlos standing there with a mild expression on his face, gun held in his hand.
“Apologies for the wait, sir,” Carlos said.
“No need to apologize. I’m just glad you came.”
“I realized rather quickly that no real bodyguard would have you out in the open that long. Plus I could hear snatches of the conversation.”
“Well, thank goodness for that,” Dorian murmured. All he wanted was to go home and sleep for a week, but the wailing of sirens in the distance was a pretty good indicator that the police had arrived, and Dorian had been through the aftermath of this enough times to know that it was going to be a good long while before he got to relax.
He sighed and leaned back against the SUV, pushing fingers into his hair.
“Sir… Dorian,” Carlos began, and Dorian held up a hand.
“I know. I remember how this goes.”
“Very good. I’ll call ahead and make sure that Anita has something ready for you to eat when we get back home.”
“Thanks, Carlos,” Dorian said with a sigh. “And thanks for…” he motioned to Breckidge’s body. He didn’t know if the man was dead or alive, and at this point, he didn’t much care either way.
“Of course, sir. I may only be your driver, but I am tasked with keeping you safe the same as anyone else in your employ is, and beyond that, losing you would be more than a professional loss.”
It was as much of an affectionate statement as Dorian was likely to get out of the stoic man, but Dorian knew what he meant. He offered him a small smile as the flashing lights of the police cars and the shrill whine of sirens cut into the peaceful moment and heralded the end of Dorian’s reprieve.
Now it was time to straighten up and pull his wits about him so he could recount what had happened over and over again. There were bodies everywhere, which looked bad, especially since Carlos had shot one of them, but Dorian already knew that the local police were familiar with his story and his family.
There wouldn’t be any legal trouble, just headache after headache. And when he got home, there would be the tedious task of firing his entire security team.
He wasn’t going to be able to leave the manor for a good long time, at this rate.
***
Chapter 2: Breaking Point
“If you don’t like it, you can get outta my house!”
The shout was so loud that it shook the trinkets on the shelves and rattled the windows of the small house. In the middle of the living room, Andrea Samuel stood, hands clenched into fists at her side, face red with anger. Her teeth were gritted together so tightly that she could hear the groan of her jaw, but she knew that if she opened her mouth, she was going to say something she’d regret.
Instead she let out a slow breath and sidestepped the broken bottle in the middle of the floor. Apparently, trying to get her mother to stop drinking vodka from the bottle in the middle of the day was acceptable grounds for her mother to throw the bottle at her.
Luckily Andrea’s reflexes were sharp, and she’d managed to jump back before the bottle could hit her, instead watching as it shattered on the floor, the remnants of the liquor splashing on her bare feet.
Her mother stood near the couch, breathing like a winded animal. Her nostrils were flared, and there was a wildness to her eyes, that Andrea didn’t like.
The drinking was old news, as was the yelling, but the throwing things was new, and if her mother was going to add physical abuse to go with the verbal and emotional varieties she inflicted on her regularly, then she wasn’t going to stick around for it.
The house was in her mother’s name only, anyway. The bills and mortgage might have come to Leandra Samuel, but Andrea was the one who made sure they got paid. She was the one working two jobs just to make sure that they had enough money to cover everything each month, and to be quite honest, she was tired of it.
She forced herself not to flinch as she walked past her mother, heading down the dark hallway to her bedroom. As she moved around, shoving clothes and her laptop into a bag, she heard Leandra muttering to herself and heading into the kitchen.
To get another bottle, more than likely.
Yeah, she wasn’t sticking around for that.
Snatching her keys off her dresser, she left her room, using a tiny key on the key ring to lock her bedroom door. Her mother had gone in and rifled around looking for money before while Andrea was gone, and she’d installed a doorknob with a lock the very next day to prevent it from happening again.
“Yeah, you get on outta here,” Leandra slurred as Andrea walked past her in the kitchen. “Who needs you anyway?”
“Try not to cut yourself on the glass in the living room,” was all Andrea said as she opened the front door and then let it swing shut behind her. For a second she entertained the idea of going back in and cleaning up the glass herself, knowing Leandra wouldn’t do it, but she decided against it in the end.
Leandra was a grown woman, for all she acted like a child these days, and Andrea was tired. She’d been cleaning up her mother’s messes for years, and right now she wanted to be far away from them.
She sighed as she got into her car, leaning her head back ag
ainst the seat and letting out a low breath. Her own anger melted away as she sat there, and she was left feeling sad and worn down.
Before she could slip into that mood fully, she picked up her phone and texted her brother.
Benjamin Samuel had washed his hands of his mother’s foolishness years ago, but he understood Andrea’s need to care for the woman who’d raised them. To a certain extent, anyway.
He thought that it would be better for Andrea to leave their mother to her own devices, but he didn’t nag her about it, and he was always there when Andrea needed him. So when her phone vibrated and the text from Ben was urging her to come over, she smiled and put her car in gear.
Ben was the older of the two of them by five years. He lived in a small apartment not too far from the house they’d grown up in, and he worked in security. Whenever things got too bad with Leandra, Ben was always more than willing to let Andrea crash on his couch, and she appreciated it.
Even though there was a five year age gap between them, losing their father when they were very young and their mother’s subsequent descent into alcoholism had done a lot to bond them together, and even though they were both adults now, they were still very close.
She didn’t even have to explain anymore. All she had to do was text him an angry looking emoji, and he knew what she needed.
With so much of her life being based in chaos, it was nice that she had him to offer some stability.
She parked in front of his building and made her way up the stairs to his floor, bypassing the elevator, which had a tendency to get stuck when it felt like it. Spending a couple of hours trapped inside of it didn’t sound like a good way to make her afternoon any better.
Ben was waiting for her when she made it to his apartment, and he let her in, eyes taking in her expression with one once over.
“That bad, huh?” he asked.
Andrea sighed. “She threw something at me.”
“Something like one of her slippers or something like a weapon?”
“Something like the quarter full bottle of vodka she’d been nursing all morning,” Andrea replied bitterly. “It’s still in a broken heap in the living room.”
Ben’s eyebrows went up. “That’s crossing a serious line, Drea. You know that, right? It’s one thing for her to yell at you and call you names all the time, which I mean, isn’t good, but her throwing stuff is just moving towards hitting you.”
“I know, Ben,” Andrea sighed. She dropped onto his couch and put her head in her hands with a drawn out groan.
“Drea…”
“No.”
“But-”
"No, Ben," Andrea said firmly. "I already know what you're gonna say and the answer is no. It's been no since forever, and you know it."
They'd had this conversation before. Several times, actually. Their mother's descent into alcoholism had bothered both of them, and they'd banded together, trying to do something to make her feel better, to take care of her, to show her that she didn't need to drown herself in liquor because she had them.
Needless to say, that hadn't worked very well at all. Leandra had lashed out at both of her children, and when they were both old enough that they were living with their mother by choice instead of because they were too young to live anywhere else, Ben had left.
He'd clearly had enough of the way their mother talked to them and how she could turn anything into an argument and lash out at them for no good reason at all. It had been too much, and as soon as he'd had the money to move out of their little house, he had.
Andrea, on the other hand, had stayed.
Ben encouraged her to leave, too. To stop working long shifts to take care of Leandra because she didn't appreciate it.
He'd found her exhausted and stressed out, crying from tiredness and from things their mother had said, more times than either of them probably wanted to count, and yet Andrea couldn't bring herself to leave.
"She needs us, Ben," was what she always said, and then when Ben had left, it turned into "She needs me."
And that was even more true now than it had been before. Leandra was so deep in her bottles that it was hard to remember who she had been before. It was hard to remember that there had once been good times when they'd been a family. Aside from Ben, Andrea was worried she'd never know what it was like to have a family again.
Now Ben sighed, shaking his head at her. "She doesn't deserve you, Drea," he said. "Not even a little bit. You can't keep... Putting your life on hold because you're taking care of her. She needs help, but you're not in anyway obligated to be the one to help her."
"If I don't, who will?" Andrea asked, looking up at her brother. "She doesn't have anyone else."
"Because she chased everyone else away! She had family and friends, but she chose drinking over them." Ben ran fingers through his close cropped hair. "Andrea, you're my sister, and I love you. I want better things for you than playing babysitter to a woman who doesn't appreciate any of it. She threw something at you today. Do you think she cared whether it hit you or not?"
Andrea opened her mouth and then closed it again. Her instinct, even now, was to defend her mother, even though she knew that there wasn't a reason to. She already knew the answer to Ben's question, after all. "No."
"No. Exactly. She could have cracked your head open with that bottle and she would have just kept drinking. Aside from you deserving better than her, it's not safe for you there."
As much as she wanted to argue, it was hard to deny that he had a point.
"So what do you suggest, Ben? You want me to run out on her?"
He shook his head. "No, I don' t... I think. I think you need to give her an ultimatum. She's our mother, yeah, but without you she has nothing, like you said. You leave, and the bills don't get paid and no one goes grocery shopping, and she doesn't eat. You leave, and she'll have to come out of that stupor long enough to realize that she can't live on her own. It's a start."
It was a start, but it seemed cruel to her. They both knew that their mother couldn't stand on her own two feet. She didn't have anything left in her to do that, and with Andrea gone... She tried not to picture her mother starving or begging in the streets.
"What am I supposed to do, exactly?" she asked.
Ben shrugged. "Tell it to her straight. Tell her she's either got to get her act together, or you're gone. You can come stay with me until you find a place of your own, if you want. Show her you mean business." His brown eyes were kind, but firm as he looked at her. "I'm not going to let her hurt you, Drea."
Andrea nodded. It was going to take her some time to be okay with this, that she already knew, but at least she wasn't alone.
Her stomach growled loudly, breaking the tension and making them both laugh.
"Let me guess," Ben said, hand on his hip. "You haven't eaten today."
She shook her head sheepishly. "I'd like to see you manage to cook breakfast while trying to wheedle vodka from a grown woman."
"The difference is that I wouldn't have tried," he pointed out. "Pizza?"
"God, yes."
"Pineapple?"
"Do you even need to ask?"
"Nope, just making sure you were alright. The day you turn down a ham and pineapple pizza is the day I know something is actually wrong with you."
His words made her grin, and she found herself laughing for the first time that day. That was one really good thing about Ben. As firm as he was about things, he also knew how to make her feel better almost instantly. He knew her better than anyone else (and she never could decide if that was sad or not), and he genuinely cared about whether she was happy or not.
He'd been trying to get her to take his advice for years now, and maybe it was finally time she took it.
By the time the pizza had arrived, she'd made up her mind to do just that, no matter how much she would have to psych herself up to do it.
They ate together, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. With how much both of them worked, they didn’t a
lways have time to spend with each other, so it was nice to take it where they could, even if it was because Andrea was hiding out at Ben’s place.
Andrea was debating another slice of pizza when Ben’s phone rang. He groaned and fished it out of his pocket, covering his mouth to muffle a belch before he answered.
“Hello? Yes, this is he…”
He was silent for so long that Andrea was sure something had to be wrong. She sat up, wiping her fingers on the napkin in her lap, eyes intent on her brother. She knew that he had a dangerous job, guarding people’s safety and keeping them out of the line of fire or whatever else, and she worried about him constantly.
He’d been a police officer before he’d started his own security company, and she didn’t know why he was hell bent on doing things that could get him killed.
“Oh, wow. Yeah, I’d. I mean, yes, I’d love to come in for a meeting, absolutely. I can be there tomorrow if that’s not too soon. Excellent. Great. Yes, please just email me the address, and I’ll be there. Yes. Thank you so much. Have a good day.”
When he ended the call, he looked shell shocked, and Andrea tilted her head. “What is it?”
“That was Dorian Kingston. Well. His representative, anyway. Apparently something has made him be in the market for new security. A new head of security, to be exact.”
“Whoa,” Andrea said. “That’s a pretty big deal, right?”
Ben nodded. “Yeah. Especially since Dorian Kingston is arguably the richest person in the state right now.”
“Holy crap.”
“Right?” He got to his feet and started pacing the living room. “If I got it that would mean I’d have to give up my other clients, but I could refer them to other people. Or let some of my staff take them. I mean we still have to meet to make sure it’s a good fit, but god, a job like this would be amazing.”
“I’m happy for you,” Andrea said with a grin. “If he pays you an absurd amount of money, I expect to be spoiled appropriately.”
Dancing With Danger (BWWM 2015) (BWWM Billionaire Romance) Page 2