Irresistible Attraction (Merciless World Book 2)

by W Winters

  “I am.” His hard jaw seems sharper in the faint light with the shadows from the moon. There’s an intensity that swirls in his eyes, but it seems different now. Not so much riddled with fear as it is with loss and regret.

  Or maybe it’s a reflection of myself, maybe it’s just what I want to see. He may be certain, but I’m not so sure of anything anymore.

  I can only nod, and lie back down. Back to his bed although I’m on my side and I intend to sleep all night with my back to him. I’ll do it every night until the hurt goes away. That deep pain that’s settled into my chest like fucking cancer.

  “Is there anything else I can…” Jase pauses and I hear him readjust as the bed jostles.

  “Anything else you can say or do?” I finish the question for him, my eyes open and staring straight ahead at nothing in particular.

  “Is there?” he asks when I don’t answer the question I raised.

  “We just move on, don’t we?” I tell him, feeling that pain spread like a web, tiny and sticking to everything inside of me as it spins. “That’s what happens.”

  “Why do you sound so defeated?”

  “Because it hurts, it all hurts and I don’t know how to fix it other than to believe you. Even that hurts right now.”

  The mattress groans as he leans forward, rubbing my back as I lie there, refusing to give in to anger. “What matters is that Jenny’s alive.” My bottom lip trembles and my throat goes tight as I ask, “You’re going to save her, right? You’re going to bring her home?”

  “I’m doing everything I can,” Jase whispers as he lies down next to me although he’s not under the covers. He pulls me in closer to him and as much as I’d love to shove him away for everything he’s done, I need to be held by this man for the very same reasons.

  “When we were little, she was my hero,” I admit to Jase, still staring ahead at the blank wall that’s been a photo album to me all night, flicking through memory after memory. “I was thinking about the time when I’d just reached high school and how she helped me with my English homework. She loved poetry. She was so good at it.”

  It sounds like Jase is going to say something, but instead he stays quiet. He kisses me on my shoulder though, through the sleepshirt and then on my jaw by my ear. The kind of kiss where I’m forced to close my eyes. When he lays my arm in the dip at my side and then rests his forearm in front of me, I twine my fingers with his.

  His touch means more to me right now than I think he’ll ever know.

  The second I part my lips to thank him, he speaks first. “Tell me more about her.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. She was my big sister, the one who looked out for me, helping me with everything… until it all went wrong.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Our mom did. That’s when everything changed.” The hollowness in my chest seems to grow thinking about it all, so I stay quiet. The silence doesn’t stretch for long.

  “Do you still hate me?”

  For lying about my sister while I was mourning her?

  For lying about scaring me into staying with you?

  For lying about the debt and taking advantage of me?

  The questions line themselves up in my head, but stay unspoken.

  “No,” I answer him. “I hate what you did, but I don’t hate you.”

  “Why do I feel like things aren’t okay?” he questions and that gets a reaction from me. Fighting the covers with my legs, I turn around to face him, propping myself up with my elbow and feeling the comforter fall down my shoulder.

  “Because I’m still upset,” I say and frustration comes out in my tone. “What would you have me do, Jase?” The exasperated question escapes easily from my lips. “I don’t know if you’ve lied about something else… or if you will.”

  “There are no other lies.” Anger colors his statement and reflects in his gaze.

  “I don’t believe you.” There’s no emotion in my words, only facts. “There are only so many times you can lie to a person. Only so many. But what am I really going to do? That’s why I’m hurt. I don’t want to leave you.” Fuck, saying the words makes me feel weak, down to my core. I don’t want to leave him. Not just for my sister’s sake, either. “I feel pathetic.” I practically spit the word out.

  “Do you forgive me?”

  “You said you were sorry.” That’s all I can say.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him.

  “It does.”

  “I forgave you without you even apologizing. It’s about trusting you and trusting myself after falling for you. The trust isn’t there anymore,” I admit.

  “I can give you reasons to trust me--”

  “Time will,” I cut him off. “Even when I hate you, you’re still what I need. You don’t understand how much I feel that I need you.”

  “I do. I know what that’s like,” he confides in me and I feel like it’s the truth. Why else would he want me here? Why else would a man like him deal with me, in this state, right now?

  When I don’t respond, he asks me, “How can I make it right?”

  “You can start with finding Jenny and bringing her home.”

  “I can’t guarantee--” he starts to say, but I don’t want to hear it.

  “I finally let go… I let go and she was still out there.” My voice cracks. If I had kept looking, if I’d kept asking around and demanding answers… Maybe she would be home now.

  “I can’t make that promise to you, Bethany.”

  Letting go of the regret, I focus on what we can do now when I tell him, “I know you can’t promise, but I wish you could.”

  Instead of lying down like I think he’s going to do, he sits up and walks his way around the bed to stand in front of me. “I have to go,” he tells me and I nod into the pillow, keeping my hands down on the bed, although I question if I should reach up and wrap them around his neck to pull him down for a kiss. Is it so bad that I want to be kissed when I’m hurting? Even if it’s by the one who caused the pain?

  “Where are you going?” I ask him, not hiding the surprise or the slight worry in my cadence as I glance at the clock. “It’s late.” I say the excuse as I sit up and wrap my arms around myself.

  I expect him to hesitate, to lie or to give some vague response. “I’m going to kill the man who murdered my brother,” he answers and my heart lurches inside of me. All the pain I’ve been going through and turmoil, he may have had a hand in it, but I forgot he suffers through it too.

  “Jase, are you okay?” I don’t think I’ve ever pushed myself up quicker in bed as I get onto my knees and move toward him.

  “I’m fine, anxious though,” he answers me as I sit in front of him, neither of us touching each other in the dark night. It’s all shadows and cool gusts of air between us and I wish it would go away; I wish I could change everything.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and do exactly what I wanted to do a moment ago for myself, but right now it’s for him. Sitting up taller, I press my lips to his for a tender kiss, my fingers brushing against his stubble and then laying across the back of his neck. Jase tilts his head down and cupping the back of my head, keeps me there for a second longer. Just one more beat.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I ask him in a whisper, my lips close to his, not wanting to let go.

  “I’ll be fine,” he answers me and I don’t think he’s lying. I think that he thinks he really will be fine, in a situation where nothing at all is fine.

  “Do you care that I’m going to kill him?” He doesn’t let me go as he asks the question.

  “Only in the sense that I care about what it does to you.” The answer is immediate and true to the core. Maybe it’s wrong, but there’s so much that’s not right that I simply don’t care about being wrong anymore.

  “I want you with me. You can know, or you can guess, you can ignore it all. I don’t care so long as you’re with me.”

&nbs
p; “I want to know,” I tell him even though a tremor of fear runs through me.

  “All I care about is you being here when I get back. Tell me you’ll be here.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  I wish I’d told him I loved him, but he kisses me and then leaves me breathless on the bed. I can feel it in his kiss and when he leaves, when the door is closed and he’s long gone, I ask as though he’s still here with me, why won’t you tell me you love me?

  I refuse to believe it’s not love. It’s fucked up a million ways and then some, but this is love.

  Jase

  “In some cultures, people bury the men they murder face down so they can’t come back to haunt them.”

  Four stories up in the vacant and grand estate, the large windows are open and the rooms are all bare. The empty old office is bigger than the entire house I grew up in. The ceilings are tall; the light wood floors shine with polish. When Romano left his place weeks ago, he took off and got rid of everything. One day he was here, the next he was gone. The worst decision he made was coming back.

  “Face down? Like in their grave?” Seth asks from across the large room. There aren’t any lights in the room; the full moon and the streetlights give us everything we need. He’s still dressed in jeans and a shirt, both black. His men are downstairs sweeping the place and preparing for what’s to come, while we’re up here with our guest of honor.

  I nod, listening to the muffled noises that come from behind the balled-up rag in Romano’s mouth. Hysteria is setting in for the old man as his face turns red and Carter, Declan and Daniel join us. He’s never looked so old to me. So close to a fucking heart attack and then death. Wouldn’t that be ironic? If the fucker had a heart attack while tied down in that desk chair and we didn’t even get a chance to kill him.

  “They thought if they buried the men they killed face down, when their spirits woke up, they’d be disoriented,” I explain to Seth and to whoever else is listening.

  Seth lets out a rough chuckle, playing with a knife as he sits in a wingback chair in the corner. The leather is old and cracked. I guess that’s why Romano left it behind. Everything left in the room was meant to be thrown away. Now Romano’s been added to that category.

  “I’ve heard of feeding the dead to pigs. They’ll eat anything,” Seth answers.

  “Can’t bury a man if he dies with dynamite in his lap, can you? Or feed what’s left of him to the pigs?” Carter questions and then pats my shoulder as he enters the room. He only glances at Romano, not paying him much mind as he walks around the room. This estate has to be a hundred years old. It was a family legacy. One that’s ending tonight.

  Although the conversation borders on lighthearted in tone, tension is thick in the room.

  “This used to be your office?” Carter asks Romano as he leans forward, placing a hand on the soon-to-be dead man’s shoulder. From behind the rag comes nothing but rage and the muted sounds of what I assume are curse words.

  I wonder what it’s like to be him right now. I’d rather have a heart attack than to be him right now.

  Carter only smirks at him, standing up and pushing off of his shoulder, sending Romano rolling away in the wheeled desk chair. Gagged and tied down, this is how he’ll die. In the room where he made all of his decisions. Decisions to murder and decisions that require consequences.

  “Any situations tonight?” Carter asks Seth who shakes his head. “In and out, he was sleeping so the chloroform was easy. Overall it was,” he says as he looks Carter in the eyes, “uneventful.”

  “And the detail in the next room? Did they try to interfere?”

  Seth answers, “Didn’t see them, didn’t hear them. It was all over in under ten minutes. Even if it was filmed, we were masked and didn’t talk. There’s no way to ID us.”

  “Good work,” I chime in and my brother agrees.

  “Explosives are planted everywhere but the main room where we hid the cash in the safe. It’ll look like he came back to hide evidence, but mistakenly set it off too soon,” Carter explains.

  “What a tragedy.” Daniel’s comment drips with sarcasm. Out of all of us he’s been the most quiet, the most still. Leaning against the back wall and staring at Romano all night.

  Romano says something. It could be his last words for all I care, they won’t be heard.

  Declan adds, “It keeps the feds off our back, they go away. I want them the fuck out of here. And we take over the upper east side.”

  “All our problems solved.” Triumph comes darkly from Carter’s voice.

  Almost all. Marcus and Walsh are becoming more difficult problems by the day, but I keep that opinion to myself.

  “I wish they all knew,” Daniel speaks up. As he kicks off the wall and walks closer to the far edge of the room to look down at the tied-up man, the light sends shadows over the harsh expression on his face. “It’s too quick and not public enough for what you deserve,” he tells Romano. His voice is hoarse, and anger and mourning both linger there.

  The memory of Tyler dead in the street plays tricks on my mind as I look out the large window feeling the cool breeze against my face. The cast iron fence separates the estate from the road and it’s just beneath us. The road ahead is a backroad; many don’t travel on it and it’s not the road Tyler where died, but any black road slick with rain will carry that memory forever.

  “Justice is a funny thing, isn’t it?” I murmur as I tap my blunt nails along the windowsill, opening the window even more, as much as I can to feel the cold air blow in. “It never feels like enough.”

  “What?” Daniel asks from behind me, so I turn around to face him.

  “It’s never going to feel like enough… because it’s never going to be all right.” With the singular truth exposed, a raw pain grows from my empty lungs and radiates upward.

  “I’m grateful he didn’t get away and the feds didn’t fuck this up for us. We’ll spread it around, that we didn’t like him talking to the cops,” Carter says and looks pointedly at Seth, who nods. Rumors travel fast in this town and everyone needs to know it was us. Romano fucked with us. Now he’s dead. That’ll make a lot of other pricks question whether or not they’re willing to do the same.

  “What about Tyler?” Daniel asks. His forehead creases as he continues, “They should know Romano killed him and that’s what gave him a death sentence.”

  “We’d be admitting we didn’t know the truth until recently,” Carter speaks up, shaking his head. “It’s easier to keep it a secret.”

  A lie, hisses in my ear, and I have to turn away from my brothers, once again looking out into the empty street only to see the ghost of memories there.

  “I don’t like it.” Daniel disagrees with Carter. Seth and Declan are quiet, simply observing the two of them.

  “Tyler deserves justice,” I speak up before being conscious of it. “It shouldn’t be kept a secret.”

  “Romano dies tonight.” Carter’s harsh words whip through the air. “What more do you want?”

  I’m surprised by Daniel’s words as he says, “Humiliation, pain… I want it to be a spectacle.” He’s still filled with hate over Tyler’s death. He’s still angry. He’s still grieving. I’m convinced the five stages of grieving aren’t like steps where you take one after the other. I think they’re waves that constantly crash onto the shore and you never know which one will hit you.

  “That’s not going to help our FBI situation,” Declan answers, peeking up from the corner of the room where he’s standing behind Seth. I can feel all their eyes on me, but I don’t look back yet. All I can look at are the spikes that line the top of his iron fence. All I can think about is how awful it would be to die like that, to fall onto the spiked fence beneath us and be impaled next to an asphalt road. It’d be the last thing he ever looked at.

  “We decided this was how it would be… now you want to wait?” Carter questions, his voice tight with incredulity.

  “No, we don’t have to wait.” I turn to finis
h my thought, looking at Daniel as I suggest, “We can throw him out this window. That would be a spectacle, as you called it.”

  Daniel smirks while Declan lets out a chuckle and then asks, “Wait, are you serious?”

  “He can die committing suicide by jumping onto a spiked fence,” Daniel says and smiles over Romano’s muffled pleas. The man’s fighting in his chair now, causing it to roll slightly across the floor. I kick the back of it gently, just to push him away from me and torture him some more.

  “Who would kill themselves that way?” Declan asks. “Who commits suicide by spearing himself onto a fence?”

  “No one,” I answer him and Daniel adds, “That’s the point.”

  “That would send a message,” Seth comments although it’s not meant to agree or disagree. He stays neutral in all of this.

  Carter’s voice is low as he says, “It would send a message to the feds too. That we don’t care they’re here and that we’re still running this town. Is that the message you want to send?”

  “That’s the message we need to send,” Daniel presses. “What are they going to do? We don’t leave evidence. They’ll know, but they can’t do anything about it.”

  “Just like they can’t do anything about Tyler,” I say and my statement is the nail in the coffin for me. Romano murdered our brother and left him on the street to die. “This is justice.”

  He’ll do the same.

  “No one knew about Tyler; how could they have done anything?” That’s the problem, isn’t it? With so many lies and secrets, no one could do anything for Tyler. It was just a tragedy.

  Just like Jenny. I think about how many times Bethany went to the cops and filed a missing persons report for her sister. How they told her they were sorry, and they didn’t know what happened when the trunk was found.

  “We need to do this, Carter,” I say and look him dead in the eyes, feeling a numbing prick flow over my skin. “No accident, no dynamite. We give him the death he earned.”