SEALed With a Twist

by Kiersten Hallie Krum

  “Hang tight, brother,” he gritted out to his friend. “We’re on our way.”

  Skye woke, disoriented and in pain. “Ow,” she moaned, hand going straight to her head where the ache was most acute.

  “Good, you’re awake. Now we can get started.”

  Everything in her locked tight at the sound of that voice. “Brandon?” Slowly, she opened her eyes. Please let me be wrong.

  Brandon stood in front of her, his handsome face in stark, contradictory lines of frustration and satisfaction. Skye almost closed her eyes again to escape it.

  She really wanted to be wrong.

  “What did you do to me?”

  “Drugged you.” He held up a hypodermic needle that looked filled with a fresh dose. “You were getting…difficult and I didn’t have time to fight with you.”

  It came back to her then. How she’d walked out of the bathroom to find him in her apartment with a gun. How he’d made her change in front of him, claiming he’d seen it all already. She’d been mortified and scared out of her ever-lovin’ mind. But that gun hadn’t wavered and she’d seen in his eyes that he was more than prepared to use it.

  She’d managed to convince Brandon that Grant would go crazy looking for her unless she left him some kind of message. Brandon reluctantly allowed her to text Quinn. Skye tried to think of some kind of clever code to put in the text, but in the end, could only hope maybe Quinn would realize the whole thing was out-of-character and alert Grant that something was wrong.

  But as Skye gathered her wits and met Brandon’s furious gaze, she realized she couldn’t wait on maybe.

  This was one fix she was going to have to get out of herself.

  “Have you lost your mind?!” she asked almost politely because really, what else was there to do in the face of pure insanity but remain calm?

  “No, but I’m about to lose the deal of my career because of your stupid, meddling grandmother.”

  Skye let the insult pass as she glanced around. She was in a well-appointed office. The chair she sat in was set before a heavy, wooden partners’ desk. A credenza graced the far wall, topped with a carafe and a set of expensive glasses. The view out the window told her they were several stories up, so somewhere downtown.

  She tried to get to her feet, only to be stopped short by the ties at her wrist that bound her to the chair. Perfect. “Where are we?” she asked. “And why have you tied me up and are acting like a bad Bond villain?”

  “One of my subsidiaries’ offices in Naples. It’s Sunday, so nobody will interrupt us.” His phone beeped with a message. “Ah, there’s the judge.”

  And there went her calm. “A JUDGE?”

  “Yes. He’s going to marry us.”

  Skye blinked at him. “You really have lost your mind. Even if I would, for a second, entertain the notion of marrying you after you kidnapped me at gunpoint, you are already married to my sister.”

  “Not anymore.” He jerked his head toward a folder on the desk. “I had it annulled last week. Melissa didn’t have a miscarriage; she was never pregnant. It was a trick to get me to marry her. She faked the pregnancy and rushed the wedding before anyone could tell she wasn’t getting any bigger. She finally had to confess it all to me when she didn’t manage to get pregnant after the wedding. Can’t get pregnant when you don’t have sex and no way was I fucking her again when she’d nearly screwed everything up. Melissa figured I’d stay married to her to keep the merger alive even when I found out she lied. She figured wrong.

  “Then your fucking grandmother died and left me another mess to clean up with that goddamn codicil to the will. I don’t know what that old woman was thinking, though you’ve always been her favorite. And now she’d made it so you had to be present before my deal could move forward.” He thumped his chest with the hand holding the gun, and for a wild moment, Skye was afraid it’d go off in her face.

  “This time I’m taking no chances. I annulled the marriage to your sister on the basis of false representation and no issue, and I’ve got a judge in my pocket who’s only too willing to officiate my marriage to you in exchange for some compromising photos of him with a rent boy. No matter what’s in that will, you’ll be mine, so it will be mine.”

  “You are certifiably insane. This isn’t the 1950s, Brandon. You can’t force me to marry you! No way is this legal. It’ll never hold up in court and believe me, Brandon, I will spend whatever inheritance I may have suing to get you out of my life for good.”

  He hit her. He actually struck her, right across the face, so fast, it took Skye a few seconds to feel the pain. It exploded through her cheek, white-hot and shocking for being so foreign.

  She’d never been hit by anyone in her life.

  Suddenly, Brandon was in her face, so close that, even though she reared back in the chair, the spit of his words hit her cheek. He pulled her head back by her hair, and it was nothing like when Grant had done the same.

  “You’ll do exactly as I say. Your family is done fucking up my life. You’re going to marry me, then we’ll go back to Miami and get that goddamn will read. You’ll sign your Power of Attorney to me and then will retire to our family home to have and raise our children. You won’t see anyone I don’t allow. You won’t talk to anyone I don’t allow.” He held up the loaded needle right in front of her eyes. “And if I have to drug the crass, common slut you’ve become 24/7 to get your obedience, I will not hesitate.”

  She believed him.

  It was there in his face. Not crazy. Crazy, she could deal with. It was utter ruthlessness. She’d known he had that in him, would do anything to get what he wanted, but she’d made the mistake of thinking Brandon was human. Turned out he was an amoral monster with no limitations.

  And now she would pay for it.

  Hurry up, Grant.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grant was losing his goddamn mind.

  He had only the flimsiest evidence, but he knew, in his gut, in his balls, he knew his woman was in trouble.

  “What d’ya got?” he asked Rossi. The man was hunched over McBain’s system, clicking through messages that were coming in pretty quick from the man’s tech guru.

  “A smart-assed sister who’s gleefully racking up IOUs,” Rossi muttered into the screen he peered at with singular focus.

  “Calm down, Twist,” Jasper urged. Grant shot him a narrow look.

  “I’ll remind you how calm you were last year when Quinn got snatched from right under our noses.”

  “That was the Russian mob. I doubt a Fortune 500 asshole rates the same level concern.”

  “How do you think he became a Fortune 500 asshole?”

  “Leave him alone, Jasp,” Quinn quietly interjected.

  “Got ‘em!” Rossi shouted. “Office building downtown Naples. Fucker owns the parent corporation that owns the group that owns the company that owns the building. Fucking corporate layers. Import/export called Ostrich Corp.”

  “Christ, that was fast,” Jasper noted.

  “Chessie’s the best,” Rossi proudly boasted. “Building’s closed on Sunday, but Chessie got a street camera feed that showed a woman being carried in there about an hour ago.” The computer blipped another incoming message. “Update: someone else showed up. She’s running facial rec.”

  “Text me when you get an ID,” Grant said, already halfway out the door. He heard Jasper kiss Quinn and then felt his friend at this back as Grant broke into a swift jog to his car. “Sorry for fucking up your honeymoon,” he offered as they peeled out of the lot. He heard the familiar sound of a mag being shot home in a pistol.

  “Got one for you too,” Jasper said to Grant’s look. “Picked ‘em out of McBain’s armory while you were wearing a tread in his floor.”

  “At this rate, guy’s gonna start charging us.”

  “Takes it out in trade.” He shrugged when Grant shot him a frown. “We’ve had a few beers. Sometimes, I’ll help him out with information. Never know when you’ll need a man like that.” />
  Grant sped them through downtown Mimosa Key, past the convenience store and onto the bridge that’d take them to the mainland.

  “Thanks man,” he said quietly halfway across the bridge.

  Jasper nodded. “Anytime, Twist.”

  “I’m very sorry about this,” Judge Williams whispered to Skye.

  “You’re sorry?”

  “I had no idea this was Brandon’s intention,” the man replied, voice shaking. “I thought he’d simply have me break the terms of your grandmother’s will.” He mopped sweat from his receding hairline. “I’m afraid I have no choice though but to do what he says.”

  “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you paid to have sex with young men,” Skye snapped, surprised at her own venom. But really, who did he think he was?

  She’d recognized Judge Williams when he entered the room. A crony of her grandmother’s, the judge had more than once visited her grandmother when Skye was at her house. In his early seventies, he hadn’t succumbed the soft living of the bench, but had maintained a lean, healthy form that made him appear ten years younger. Now she realized he probably kept in shape for his lovers. Which really grossed her out.

  Then what he’d said finally registered. “You know the terms of my grandmother’s will?”

  He had the faint grace to look abashed, but that didn’t stop him from telling her. “I was with Margaret when she dictated the changes to her lawyer. She felt badly about what had been asked of you. Learning Melissa had lied and it’d all been so unnecessary, Margaret decided to make it up to you. In short, she put her controlling interest in the company exclusively in your hands. You needn’t worry any of your family will suffer or are likely to contest the terms, not when there are many other companies to divest. You won’t even feel the hit from the death taxes.”

  “I’m not really worried about my inheritance right now, Judge Williams,” she hissed.

  Taxes?! Was he for real?

  She tried to stand up, was yanked back into the chair by the ties on her wrists. She jerked, jerked again, jerked a third time, uselessly, totally done, and yelled, “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

  “Skylar!” the judge objected. “There’s no cause for that language.” He looked at her wrists and actually clucked his tongue. “I don’t know why he restrained you like that. You’ve always been a good girl. Margaret saw to that once that floozy of a mother of yours was gone.” She blanched at this characterization of her mother, but the judge didn’t seem to notice. The judge reached past her shoulders for the scissors on the desk behind her. “You’ve always done what’s expected of you, Skylar,” he said as he snipped the ties from her wrists. “Margaret could always rely on you for that. I know the circumstances aren’t ideal, but you’ll do the right thing now too.”

  Skye wasn’t sure who to feel the most disgust for, the judge or herself. Because the judge was right; she always did what was asked of her. What was expected.

  Always afraid someone else would leave her if she didn’t.

  Look where that got her.

  She wondered if her head would actually spin around with rage. “Perhaps you failed to notice, Judge Williams,” she gritted through her teeth as the judge leaned far too close to her chest to get to her wrists. “I’m about to be forced into marriage, with your help, and then sequestered in some house for the rest of my life, raped by the man who proposes to be my husband until I’m pregnant, a prisoner to his will, all because my grandmother decided at the last minute to change my life without bothering to even wonder what I wanted—AGAIN.

  “Well, THAT’S IT!” She said the last as her wrists snapped free, swinging them up to push the man back a step, far enough she could reach out and grab the needle Brandon had stupidly, arrogantly, left lying out on the desk while he went into the hall to take a call. Without pausing to think about what she was doing, Skye jabbed the needle into the judge’s neck.

  “You try having your autonomy taken away from you and tell me how you like it.”

  Ladies don’t yell, dear.

  Bite me, grandmother.

  The judge’s eyes bulged wide almost comically. His hand grabbed for the needle, but Skye shoved the plunger down before he could yank it out. She didn’t know what Brandon had loaded into the thing, but it had an instant effect on the judge. His eyes rolled back in his head as he flopped back onto the floor, legs at an unnatural angle beneath him.

  “What the hell did you do?” Brandon shouted from the door.

  Quick as a snake, Skye snatched up the gun he’d left next to the needle.

  Brandon didn’t look at all alarmed by this change in their circumstances, which gave Skye pause.

  “What did you have in that needle?”

  “Morphine. Prescription strength. My mother has a standard monthly refill.”

  “Did I kill him?” she asked, scared of the answer.

  “Unlikely, but he’s out for a while, which will delay the wedding.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the judge, or what she’d done to him, not until Brandon moved, and then Skye swung her attention and the gun back on him. It was heavy and took both hands to hold it upright, plus she felt woozy from the dose of morphine he’d shot her up with. Brandon kept sliding in and out of focus and, now that she’d gotten her rant out, Skye felt a weight of apathy and weariness bearing down.

  “Oh, come on, Skylar,” he chided, leaning casually against the doorjamb. “Do you really think I’d leave a loaded gun where you could get to it? How stupid do you think I am?”

  The gun exploded in her hand, the force of it so unexpected, it threw Skye back against the desk. She screamed at the same time Brandon yelled in pain. She shook her vision clear and focused on him where he was bent over in the doorway, clutching his side where a red bloom spread across this shirt.

  “Pretty stupid, I’d guess,” she said in a bit of a daze. In truth, she’d been aiming somewhere in between the two Brandons her wonky vision had conjured up.

  “Fucking bitch,” he snarled.

  Get out! Getoutgetoutgetout!

  Heeding that inner voice, Skye stumbled to the door, swerving out of the way of Brandon’s reach, feeling his fingers brush her side as she dodged his swipe before he doubled over again in pain.

  Gait unsteady, Skye ran. She banged into walls, crashed into partitions that separated cubicles, but she ran. Surely, she could find the lobby and elevators or even emergency exit stairs. She wasn’t certain what floor she was on, but with a man unconscious and the other bleeding, that felt like good odds in her favor, right?

  She shrieked again when the speaker above her head suddenly crackled to life.

  “You can’t get away, Skylar. You’ll never get away.”

  The disembodied voice hissed through the office paging system, sending her racing down the next hallway. The place was a maze of makeshift corridors and offices, the scarlet trimmed, warm gold walls and darkened windows the only witnesses to Brandon’s crazy scheme playing out within its walls.

  Thornquists never rush.

  Skye supposed she’d always hear her grandmother’s voice in her ear. How fitting that, out of all the times she’d been admonished by the woman, one would come to her while Skye ran for her life.

  “Skylar,” Brandon sing-songed through the speakers, a mockery of the song that was her namesake. Skye thought of the beauty Grant had given her when they’d danced to her song last night. She wanted more of that. More dances, more laughter, more sex. No matter what guise he wore—joker, warrior, lover—Skye wanted all that and more with him and for far longer than one night.

  For that alone, she could not let Brandon win.

  She clutched the gun close, careful this time to keep her finger off the sensitive trigger. A rattle behind her made her jump out of her skin. Her arm jerked around to point the gun back the way she just came as Skye skirted around another rabbit warren of cubicles.

  She tried to get her bearings and realized she’d blocked herself into
a corner of cubicles only a few feet shy of the main conference room.

  “Gonna get you, Skylar.”

  Brandon’s voice came from the speakerphone right next to her. Obviously, the phones worked with the internal PA system.

  He sounded weaker, like he was a failing more each second.

  The phone!

  She yanked up the receiver. Nuts, she didn’t know Grant’s number and hadn’t memorized Quinn’s. 911 then. But when she put the receiver to her ear, there was no dial tone.

  “Don’t bother calling for help,” Brandon called from close by. “You need a code to dial out.”

  Super.

  Skye slowly backed further into the cubicle, praying her dark suit would blend in with the shadows. Have to stay quiet. Maybe he’d go right by her. She held her breath and strained to hear…anything.

  She cautiously glanced over the tops of the cubicles—and saw an exit sign hanging from the ceiling. Maybe. Her eyes were a bit cloudy yet from the drug. Skye gave her head a shake and looked again.

  Yes, that was an exit sign for sure right above a set of double doors. Probably led to the emergency stairs. Should she risk it? If Brandon was close, he’d be on her as soon as she moved. But if he was losing blood, she might get past him, even if she was off-kilter from the morphine.

  Wait. Did the exit doors just…open? Dammit. Brandon beat her to the stairs.

  Okayokayokay. She’d seen the glass lobby doors on the left; the elevator bank had to be in that direction too. If Brandon was in the stairwell, she might have a few seconds clear to risk a dash to the lobby.

  She braced to go.

  Put her weight on her back foot.

  Brandon shuffled right past the cubicle where Skye hid.

  Skye froze, immobile, holding her breath, rigid with fear, wobbling ever so slightly on her back foot.

  Brandon kept moving on down the hallway.

  Skye risked a shaky breath.

  Holy cats, that’d been close.

  Drops of blood marked his passage. Skye looked hard at the gun clutched in her hand. She waited until he was two more cubes away from her. Slowly, she crept up behind him, gun raised in trembling arms, and pointed it at his back.