by I. T. Lucas
The ruddy color leaving his cheeks, Shawn’s chest inflated with self-importance as he pointed a finger at her. “I’m only going because you want to. There is nothing these people can show me that I haven’t seen already. But you’d better not forget who you’re with and who you belong to.”
Callie stifled the urge to roll her eyes. For a guy who believed he was the big bad wolf, Shawn was ridiculously predictable and easy to manipulate.
Flattery worked on him like a charm.
“Never.” She shook her head dramatically. “How could I?” He was so full of himself that there was no chance he’d detect her mocking tone. “You’re the best.”
Out of necessity, Callie had gotten very good at acting over the past year.
Shawn was a big guy, and with his volatile mood swings and aggression, he could turn really scary really quick. Defusing and deflecting his rage was an exercise in survival.
So far, she’d been lucky.
During his temper tantrums, Shawn had taken out his rage on the walls, the furniture, the appliances, the dishes, and other inanimate objects, but not on her.
Not yet.
It hadn’t taken her long to realize that her husband was a bully who thrived on belittling her, manipulating her into bending to his will, and generally pushing her around. The funny thing was that he didn’t see it that way. Shawn was convinced that he was a great husband and that she should be grateful for him.
It was easier to just let him believe that.
Instead of fighting an outward war which she was sure to lose, Callie learned to roll with the punches and get what she wanted in a roundabout way.
Shawn believed he had a subdued, agreeable wife, when in fact she was only letting him win the small things while going after what was really important to her.
When he’d said she couldn’t go to college because she needed to help pay the mortgage, she’d taken a waitressing job at the Aussie Steak House where Dawn’s sister was a manager, and the tips were more than generous. Working only four evenings a week, including weekends, she made decent money, and could still take college classes with enough free time left over for homework and housework. As a car salesman, Shawn also worked evenings and weekends. As long as she brought the money home and deposited everything into their joint account, he had no problem with her schedule. As with everything else, he wanted complete control over their finances.
Whatever. It wasn’t all that important.
She made their marriage work, but the effort that went into it was becoming more and more exhausting.
Were all marriages like that?
One big compromise?
Other than books and movies, which romanticized the reality of everyday life, Callie had nothing to compare her marriage to. Growing up in a single-parent household, she could only imagine what a loving partnership was like.
Perhaps what she and Shawn had was as good as it got?
Still, she couldn’t help thinking that it shouldn’t be so difficult, and that power games, lies, and manipulations shouldn’t be part of a good marriage.
Then again, it was possible that in her youth and naïveté she was imagining an ideal that was unattainable, and she should be thankful for what she had.
Shawn wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Instead of watching perverts in a kink club, we should go home and work on putting another baby in here.” He rubbed a hand over her flat belly.
As devastating as losing the baby had been, Callie was grateful for her apparent difficulty in conceiving. Given that they weren’t using contraceptives, though, it was only a matter of time. Ever since her miscarriage, Shawn had been obsessed with getting her pregnant again.
She rested her head on his chest. “There is no reason to rush, Shawn. It will happen when it happens.”
He tightened his hold. “God willing.”
She hated when he talked like that. Shawn wasn’t a religious man, and those kinds of sayings just rolled off his tongue without any real meaning behind them. Growing up in a devout home, he hated anything and everything to do with religion.
He wasn’t a believer, and neither was Callie.
When he’d knocked her up, she’d refused to consider abortion, not because of the dictums of some scriptures—she’d followed what was in her heart. Even though she was now smarter and somewhat disillusioned, if faced with the same decision today, she wouldn’t have acted differently.
At the time, she’d believed that if they nurtured their attraction and infatuation with each other, they would grow and mature into love. A year later, she was less hopeful but not ready to give up yet.
Not everything was lost.
In his own convoluted way, Shawn loved her. She didn’t love him back, but she didn’t hate him either. Their marriage was salvageable. In Callie’s opinion, people were giving up on their marriages too easily and for the most trivial of reasons.
Besides, giving up was not an option.
The truth was that Shawn would never let her go voluntarily. Aside from his temper, which was worrisome enough on its own, she could sense that something was off with him. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was a darkness lurking inside him—just waiting for the right catalyst to manifest.
Leaving him would unleash it with a vengeance.
She would have to run—flee to either South Carolina, where her father had been transferred, or Massachusetts, where Dawn was still attending MIT.
The situation with Shawn was far from desperate enough to make her do either.
She would make it work.
Somehow.
The problem was that she had no clue how to tame Shawn. Instead of getting better, he was getting worse. His newest control freak-out was demanding to know where she was and what she was doing every minute of the day. He didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was tracking her by her phone’s GPS.
Whatever. The tracking had at least ended the baseless accusations.
Before that ingenious solution, he used to put her through a merciless interrogation every time she’d left the house, and then not believe anything she’d said.
Some battles were just not worth fighting.
Compromise was the name of the game.
Chapter 3: Brundar
One year ago.
“Boss, can you come up front? I have a situation.” The receptionist sounded annoyed and just a little scared.
“On my way,” Brundar spoke into the microphone attached to his T-shirt.
One of the biggest hassles of being a part owner of a nightclub was throwing out undesirables. After the last idiot who’d harassed the girl, Brundar had bought a taser gun and instructed her and her weekend counterpart on how to use it in case he and Franco were both occupied elsewhere.
Buying half of Franco’s club hadn’t been a financial or business decision. Brundar had done it to help the guy out of a tight spot in exchange for a share of the profits—if there were any—and had had no intentions of getting involved in the day to day management of the place. His Guardian job wasn’t the kind that allowed time for a side business.
As the saying went, no good deed went unpunished. Whether he liked it or not, time and again Brundar found himself stepping in.
The financial rescue hadn’t been a favor to a friend. Brundar didn’t have any. He liked Franco, but the guy was little more than an acquaintance.
Brundar’s reasons had been entirely selfish. Finally finding a place where he was comfortable, he refused to let it go bust. When Franco needed an infusion of cash to keep it running, Brundar came up with the dough in exchange for fifty percent ownership just so he wouldn’t have to search for a new club.
What made the place different than others was Franco himself. He started it as a regular nightclub, adding the private basement level much later to provide a safe space for himself and a group of like-minded friends to socialize and play. Over time, his friends brought along other friends and membership had expanded, but Franco still treated it
as his private playground and was very picky about who he allowed in there.
The upstairs clubgoers didn’t even know about the lower level.
Making most of his money from charging entry to the nightclub, selling drinks, and renting the place out for private parties, Franco kept the membership fees to a bare minimum. The guy was more concerned with the quality of his clientele than with their ability to pay.
The upstairs club subsidized the maintenance of the lower level.
Unfortunately, Franco’s business acumen left a lot to be desired, and Brundar was slowly getting sucked into getting more and more involved, implementing changes that would make the member portion of the club if not profitable, then at least self-sustainable.
Most of the time Brundar didn’t mind helping, but occasionally he had to get involved in inconsequential crap. Drunks and the like were handled by a bouncer, but sober paying customers were usually not turned away unless a private party was going on. He wondered what it could possibly be that required his intervention.
Hopefully, it wasn’t another nosy journalist like the one he’d kicked out a week before.
As he neared the anteroom, the waves of aggression wafting from the receptionist station had Brundar’s fangs throbbing and lengthening even before he pushed the door open. “What seems to be the problem, Belinda?” he asked in his usual icy tone.
The troublemaker turned around, his face red with anger. “This bitch you have sitting here refuses my wife entrance,” he spat.
That was unusual. Women were never turned away from the nightclub. On the contrary, twice a week they got in free. There were always more guys than girls.
The lady in question was hiding behind her husband’s broad shoulders, but Brundar could smell her embarrassment. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent like the stink coming from the husband, in fact it was quite alluring despite her discomfort. A mix of soft femininity and strength of character. The last was not a scent most immortals could detect, but it was one Brundar was especially attuned to.
“I tried to explain that no one under twenty-one is allowed in the nightclub or in Franco’s basement,” Belinda said. “And that it doesn’t matter that they have a member’s recommendation.”
Sidestepping the angry jerk, he peeked at the slender woman standing behind him.
To call her a woman was an exaggeration, and yet she took his breath away—a beautiful, delicate flower that had no business in the club above let alone the one below.
She was still a child. No wonder Belinda refused her entry. The girl looked eighteen at the most.
Why the hell was she married at such a young age and to that asshole?
“This is ridiculous. She is a married woman, for fuck’s sake,” the jerk fumed.
Yeah, and you should get flogged for robbing her of her childhood. The thing was, Brundar had the sense that the girl wasn’t scared of the big bully, only embarrassed by his behavior.
“That’s okay, Shawn, let’s go.” She tried to thread her arm through his.
He shook her arm off. “Stay out of it, Callie.” He turned to Brundar. “So what is it going to be? Huh? If you don’t let us in, I’m going to trash your club on every review site and every newspaper I can get to.” The guy inflated his chest, thinking to intimidate Brundar.
So that was why Belinda had asked him to intervene. The jerk had probably threatened her with the same crap. Bad reviews were bad for business, and one jerk with a vendetta could do a lot of damage.
Behind the desk, Belinda groaned in frustration.
Brundar affected a tight-lipped smile. “I don’t think that will be necessary. We can resolve this misunderstanding in a mutually beneficial way.” He imbued his tone with influence.
Trying to resist the command, the guy pinched his forehead between his thumb and forefinger. A few seconds later, he faltered. “Yes, that would be better.” His chest deflated.
“Come. I’ll escort you to your car.” Brundar opened the front door.
The girl named Callie cast him a perplexed glance. To resist the influence, her brain must’ve been stronger than her husband’s.
What was a smart girl like her doing with a moron like that?
“Sometimes a calm tone is all that’s needed,” Brundar whispered in her ear.
Staring at him, she shook her head, once, and then again. Perhaps she was wondering about her husband’s uncharacteristic response, or still feeling the influence and fighting it.
As they reached the couple’s Honda Civic, the husband unlocked the doors with the remote and got behind the wheel, leaving his young wife standing on the sidewalk.
Brundar walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for her. “My lady.” Without thinking, he offered Callie his hand, a rare gesture for him. He hardly ever shook hands with a woman and never with a man.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her eyes trained on his face, his offered hand outside her peripheral vision. “Can I have your name, sir?”
“Brad.” He gave her the name he was known by in the club. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Callie.”
She smiled shyly. “It’s Calypso, but I go by Callie.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I never use my real name.” Pink flooding her cheeks, she looked down.
Unable to resist, he hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her head. “Calypso. It suits you better. A unique name for a unique girl. One of a kind and beautiful.”
She chuckled, blushing again. “Funny that you would say that about me. Talk about unique.” She waved a hand at him. For a moment, it seemed like she wanted to say more, but then she decided against it.
“Look at me, Calypso,” Brundar commanded softly.
She did, her green eyes losing focus as he delved into her mind. “You’re beautiful, and I’m just a guy who is way too old for you. Forget about me.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m twenty,” she protested.
A little older than he’d thought, but still a child. One with a strong mind, though.
Curious, Brundar delved a little deeper.
He didn’t like what that little glimpse he’d allowed himself revealed. The girl wasn’t safe with the man she called her husband. Brundar knew the type well. For now, Shawn was just a controlling bastard and a verbally abusive jerk, but his behavior was going to escalate. It always did with bullies.
“Get in the car, Calypso.” He waited for her to buckle up before closing her door and going around to the driver’s side.
The guy was still in a trance-like compliance.
Weak mind.
“Look at me, Shawn,” Brundar commanded.
The guy raised a pair of unfocused eyes.
“You’re going to pay attention to the road and drive home safely. You’re going to take care of Callie and treat her well. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Brundar closed the door, then waited for Shawn to turn on the engine, put the transmission in drive, and ease out of the parking lot.
As he watched the car disappear from view, he committed the license plate number to memory. The thrall he’d put on Shawn was going to hold for a while, but not indefinitely.
Once it wore off, Calypso would be in danger.
Chapter 4: Losham
The present.
Losham poured himself a shot of whiskey and walked out the French doors to the presidential suite’s balcony. Nothing but the best for him and Rami. The twelve men Navuh had grudgingly allotted for his use were comfortable enough in a nearby extended-stay hotel.
Leaning over the railing, he took a sip and held it in his mouth to savor the flavor. It wasn’t the best there was, just the best the hotel had. Decent, but not what he was used to drinking at home. And to think the place promoted itself as the fanciest in town.
Rami followed him outside. “What are we going to do with the new men?”
Losham knew what he meant. Navuh had authorized less than one fifth of the personnel L
osham had asked for. “That’s not nearly enough for all the clubs, but it is for one. I’m going to keep them here. We know that at least part of the clan is residing somewhere in this area. It makes sense for them to hide in a big city. San Francisco with its tech hub is also a good bet. But I have a hunch their leadership’s base is in Los Angeles. If it were me, I’d have chosen the larger city as my command center too.”
“As always, you are right, sir.” Rami glanced at his watch. “We should head out. The men are waiting.”
“Yes.” Losham finished his drink and handed Rami the empty glass. “Call the valet and have the car ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
After much deliberation, Losham had decided that the best place for holding meetings with his men was in a rented warehouse in an nondescript industrial park, one of the hundreds scattered throughout the large city. Keeping his operation low key was prudent on top of saving him money.
The place was the size of a classroom, with a kickboxing class as a neighbor on one side, and a spinning class on the other, where sweaty humans exerted themselves on stationary bikes to the screeching sounds of loud music.
Perfect for his needs.
With various fitness trainers renting spaces in the park, there were plenty of people coming and going. His men wouldn’t stand out.
Rami parked next to the two minivans he’d rented for the men. Through the windows, Losham could see them sitting inside.
“Rami, transparency doesn’t lend itself to covert activities.”
His assistant followed his gaze. “The rented vans are a temporary solution. I’ll make sure that the cars they get have tinted windows.”
“Indeed.”
As Rami unlocked the door, Losham motioned for them to come out of the vehicles. “Welcome,” he greeted each one, offering a handshake.
Following instructions, the men didn’t salute.
When everyone was inside, Rami locked the door behind them and lowered the shades, then walked over to the stack of folding chairs leaning against the wall. “Make yourselves comfortable,” he said, pointing for the men to make use of them.