by Anya Palvin
"So who's this?" Tom asks Ciara as she checks on JT for the 30th time today. He's pretending to be asleep, and a tiny smile plays on his lips when Ciara speaks.
"This is Taylor. I don’t have the freedom to inform you his full name so you’ll have to be contented with that. And no, he’s not a gay and if you ask me that or say he's hot I'm calling Danny." she tries to intimidate Tom and they both titter. Keys watched from the window, and listened to their conversation. "Ok ok, no flirting...got it." He promises and she shakes her head. "Speaking of Danny, I'm gonna go call him and congratulate him on his first day in court, before he starts sending me angry text messages." he leaves the room and Keys looks away, hiding his face from Tom's view, and as soon as the floor is clear, he walks into JT's room and closed the door behind him.
Ciara looks up at cold brown eyes, and she flinched when he reached over and turns the lock on the door.
Her mind told her to be professional and smile but her instinctssaying her something is terribly not right!
5.
Ciara slowly turns to face an angry Keys. She holds her stethoscope firmly in her hand, as frightful thoughts starts to roam through her mind.
Taylor's lying on a hospital bed with 6 gunshot wounds and 2 bullets still inside, he had to get them from somewhere. All of a sudden this fierceman shows up and all she can think of is dialing 911 if he comes any closer to her or Taylor.
"Doctor Carlyle, right?" He asks stepping forward. She stays quiet, and he eyes her up and down. It's a cold stare as cold as the North pole though she hasn’t been there to make such comparison but that’s the only thing she could think of to describe the kind of look he’s giving to her right now and there's an extreme coldness in his voice when he speaks. "Visiting hours is now over" she says softly, trying not to break down. He laughs to himself and roam his glance once again on her. "Says who?" He sounds conceited and arrogant with just two words. "I'm sorry but I need to ask you to leave? My patient suffered severe trauma, there's still no telling what could happen and I can't afford to allow him be under any stress or..." She tries to leave but he thrust her hard with both hands and she falls hardly to the floor, hitting the cold concrete. She gathers the courage to look up at him after he revealed what may be his intention. He obviously didn't shove her to the floor to be kind.
Keys walks further into the room, stepping over her legs and sits quietly and calmly in the sofa chair. "Your patient is my friend and colleague. I have no intention of hurting him. His full recovery is very high on my list, doctor so by all means don't be concernedabout JT’s welfare. You should be more worried about yourself." He says gingerly, crossing his leg and knotting his fingers. He leans back in the dark, and watched as she silently panicked. "What do you know about that incident in Italy? If you lie, I'll kill you slowly. If you tell the truth, I'll make it quick. The choice is yours." He gives her somewhat of a decision to make and her heart crumbles into a hundred bits and pieces.
No matter what she says it won't change his mind about who she is and what she could be capable of. Somebody this paranoid can't be reasoned with.
She quietly sat in the same spot that she fell, counting the seconds in her mind as she holds to what's left of her life.
"There are so many things I could've done that I didn't do. I wanted to fall in love and get married. Have a son with my father's eyes and my mother's smile. I wanted to change the world and be remembered as ahero. I wanted to leave a legacy and name behind. When our bones turn to dust and our time here is no more, our names and the memories we created will remain. If I die now, what would be my legacy? What would be my best memory?" She storms through the rubble in her mind, trying to figure a way out of this mess.
Surely someone will come looking for her, and her shift is almost over. He can't possibly keep her locked in here all night.
"In your case, silence can mean different things, Miss Carlyle, it could mean you stupidly get yourself involved into something you have no knowledge about, or it can also mean you know something and you intentionally choose to put my patience into test. If JT was awake he could tell you that I'm the last person you wanted as an opponent and I don't accept allies. So you're pretty much fucked up here, unless you do exactly as I say." He continues his ice-cold rant, and she tries with everything she has to stay quiet and not show she’s actually trembling in fear.
Taylor fights to stay awake and listen in on their conversation but as the painkillers get stronger, he gets weaker. He tries to speak but words inexplicably fail him. The next half hour seems more like a misty dream to him, or faintly remembering the details of a horror film.
*Two weeks later*
Choker organized a party in Venice to celebrate JT’s successful recovery, with the aid of his mom. And, he also manages to stay away from New York this entire time.
There's no cheerful decoration or balloons hanging around his private ballroom, but it's an elegant royal ambiance. Gold chandeliers hanging from the ceiling with diamond tentacles distributed a few inches from each one. The high ceilings have historic paintings of ancient times, markings and traditions. The floors are gold marble, and the back walls have ancient paintings as well. On the far end of the enormous room there are huge French windows and doors and a balcony on the other side of it. There's a DJ booth with very small speakers but they make violently loud noise.
The other side of the room has ancient statues that reveal doors and pathways to other rooms in the house if touched the right way.
There are professional men in suits drinking hard liquor and elegant women dressed in gowns drinking champagne.
Choker's security detail is on standby surrounding the whole building. This place is pooling with billionaires and hot women.
If this isn't awonderful way to come home from the hospital, I don't know what is.
JT walks in wearing a killer all-black suit accessorized with a $200,000 Rolex, and a sexy blonde on his arm. "Choke, this is awesome." They shake hands and hug. "I'm glad you're alright. Now I can fire those morons that have been screwing up your job for the past 2 weeks." He grunts and gulps down his brandy. "It's that bad huh?" JT chuckles and a waitress hands him a glass of whiskey. He clinks glasses with Choker, and they take a gulp of the strong liquid simultaneously.
All of a sudden both the music and movement around the room were seems to put in a sudden stop. And Keys enters intogether with Ciara. Her sexy red gown steals the hearts of every man in the room.
Her hair has soft beautiful curls, her makeup is absolutely flawless. She walks in with so much elegance and grace that the room remains frozen for at least 10 minutes. Keys keeps his hand possessively wrapped around her waist, and Choker's heart drops hard and fast into his stomach. She makes eye contact with Choker and the spark that was there when they spoke two weeks ago is completely intensified now. His throat goes dry, his stomach pounds, his eyes water and his hands sweats at the sight of her.
The closer they get the more anger, jealousy, regret, desperation and lust builds within him.
Keys smiled and waves at everyone as they get closer to Choker and JT.
JT looks over and sees the dead look on Choker's face, and he adds up the last two weeks in his mind. "Yea, I have something I have to tell you." JT whispers and Choker turns to face him, and sees the seriousness in his eyes.
They walk off to another room to talk in private
6.
Choker angrily scrapes everything off the desk in his office, and they all helplessly fall to the floor.
"He came back to the ICU after you left and he threatened the lives of her family and friends. I drifted off before I could get more details of their arrangement, but she hasn't been back to the hospital after that night. He doesn't trust her and he thinks she's a threat to us so I don't see why he would bring her here. What kind of game is he playing?" JT asks concerned for the sanity of his boss.
Clearly, Keys doesn't know that Choker has a thing for Ciara or he wouldn't be here with her right no
w...would he?
They walk back to the party, drinks in hand.
There's a squabble going on between two men on the lowest part of the industry scale. There's yelling, shoving and the exchange of foul language.
The Florescent lights glimmers, and several shots are fired. The screams of every woman in the room is almost deafening. Choker panics, his eyes search the room for Ciara. As soon as he sees and knows she's ok, he looks around the room again and sees his mom safe and sound as well and relief is visible in his eyes, but there's also anger. His mother is a veteran in this business, she knows to expect the unexpected and be prepared for anything and everything. All those ages she’d been married to Choker's dad taught her how to take care of herself in situations like these. She has a tiny handgun in her purse to protect herself in unexpected situations. As a matter of fact, all the guns came out as soon as the fight started, there's a chorus of clicking sounds all over the ballroom.
1
Choker walks over to the two guys that caused this embarrassing interruption to the party. His bodyguards interrupted and impounded their weapons immediately. They struggled to break free from the strong men, but it's no use. No one seems to be hurt by their incompetence, but by the look on Choker's face, it's clear that he's unhappy or the least bit impressed by their shooting skills. There's a time and a place for everything, and irrespective of whatever issues these men have, they should've known better not to bring their show to an event thrown by Javier Charles Prince aka Choker, especially not an event thrown at his home. What were these fool thinking?
Choker whispers something in one of the bodyguards ear and he hands Choker a pistol with a suppressor attached to the muzzle. "Gentlemen, where do you think you are?" Choker speaks, and in this moment, there's dead silence spread across the ballroom, everyone’s eager to witness Choker's anger first hand. "I'm gonna kill you, you little fucking piece of..." one of the guys yell to his opponent, completely ignoring Choker's presence. But before he could complete his sentence, a bullet went straight into his forehead. The men holding him drops him, and he's nothing more than a human carpet now. The other man trembles in fear as Choker looks down at the dead man. "Never cut me in mid-sentence when I speak, never raise your voice in my presence, and never ignore me when I ask a question." Choker calmly tells the deceased the ground rules. He now turns his attention to the other troublemaker, being held by a few of his bodyguards. "Make no mistake, this will also be your fate in a few minutes but first let me make an example of you in front of everyone here." He paused and hands the gun back to the bodyguard. "I consider myself to be a very fair and sensible man, but I don't tolerate the lack of courtesy in any way!" He raised his voice so everyone listening could hear. "There are women here, someone's mother, someone's girlfriend, someone's sister, fathers, brothers, and loyal friends. How on earth did you and this moron decide it was okay to put everyone in this room at risk for your foolish amusement?" He's still speaking loudly in thundering voice, it's almost traumatic listening to the horror his voice alone creates. "I do not care, nor do I wish to know the senseless reasons behind this insulting display. You are utterly irrelevant, less than nothing. But since I am a fair man I'll ask the person that means the most to me to determine your fate. Mother!" He calls out and Julia diligently makes her way over, wearing a gorgeous custom Royal purple and gold gown by Vera Wang. "Yes, darling" she says when she reaches his side. She kisses him on the cheek and he smiled. "As much as I would love to see your punishment, I must say this isn't the right time or place. My son has dramatic and theatrical tastes when it comes to retribution and execution, but I'm a bit more conventional. This is JT's party, he's the guest of honor, so he should be able to execute this perfectly." she decides and JT smiles a devilish grin. "With pleasure." he says softly and snaps the culprit's neck hard and fast. "Clean this up." Choker orders the bodyguards, and they pull roughly the two lifeless men off to the exit. "Ladies and gentlemen I apologize for the sudden turn of events, please accept my deepest apologies and accept a check for the charity of your choice before you leave." She smiles after speaking and steps over the pool of blood on the gold marble tile.1
For a moment, Choker's mind wanders off, and so did his eyes. He's captivated by Ciara, but if memory serves, she's not the biggest mob fan. He avoids making eye contact with her or Keys and makes his way to the balcony.
***
Ciara watched everything happen up close and she begs herself to be upset or afraid of the man that just shot a man down in cold blood, and allowed JT to kill another. She mentally hit herself several times, trying to be angry or force herself to run away screaming. But deep down, she's completely fascinated by him, she's been attracted to this man since she saw him harassing a homeless man on the streets of New York 2 weeks ago, and evidently, nothing has changed. The attraction should've faded after everything she's been through since then, it should've become different now when she witnessed him tonight, and she should be completely disgusted by the idea of him, but instead, her panties are soaked, her nipples hardened, and her breathing's intensified.2
"What kind of person could possibly be attracted to a murderer?" she argues with herself within the limits of her mind. "Maybe there's more to him than what meets the eye, those guys were pretty reckless earlier. I can't say if he overreacted. Ok, maybe a call to the police would've been enough, but calling the police is what got me here with Keys in the first place, and no matter what his threats are, or how terrible it feels to be on his arm tonight, watching Choker in action brings out the undomesticated side in me, and I've never felt safer." she comes to a conclusion in her mind, and Keys eyes her up and down passive aggressively.3
She watches as Choker angrily head off to the balcony, and before she could realize what was happening, she’s already following after him.
7.
Loyalty is showing support, commitment, faithfulness, trustworthiness, dedication, dependability, and trueheartedness. These qualities are hard to find in family, and most difficult to spot in friends and colleagues. But if you're lucky enough, you might discover them in someone special, and in some very rare cases find them in a few people.
We all have our work cut out for us in this life. We have to determinewho among us really hadrespectable qualities and distinct itfrom the ones pretending to be otherwise but ultimately turned out to be a total disappointment in the end.
The party restarted again as if nothing really happened as soon as the last drop of blood is moped off from the gold marble tile.
The guests resumed their activities when the music starts; talking, laughing, drinking champagne, and dancing.
Keys turned his back to Ciara to say a few words to an investor from Australia, but when the conversation ends, she’s nowhere to be found.
Chokers strides at the corners of the balcony with an ambiguous thought, slumped shoulders and angry clenched up fists.
He's in full take down mode. Nobody has ever seen him this remorseless in a very long time. Yes, of course they know killing is apart of his nature, and sure, they are aware of his empire being one of the most dangerous and death-dealing companies in the entire world. But he's never made a scene like this in front of this quite a number of people before---people who are just investors and not actually part of the root ofhis organization. Choker could easily be worried about the backlash from the investors and the people they could inform about everything that happened here tonight, but he isn't. He's not worried about that at all. He could destroy everyone in this room's credibility in his sleep. But there's only thing bugging him right now, and it’s digging painfully under his skin like a sharp blade. What the hell was Keys thinking bringing her here? She could have been in real danger, and he didn't even see it coming.
"Hi" Ciara whispers as soon as she makes eye contact with him. A surge of wind obscured from the mountains brushed her shoulder. She shivers, holding her arm as if she's been hit. Like a super hero, he appeared at her side, wrapping his jacket around her pro
tectively, and she fell helplessly into his embrace. They stood there wrapped in each other's arms for a moment, and in that time, nothing else matters. It's almost as if their bodies and souls were combined as one, but nobody told their minds.
He pulled away first, and stepped back a few feet, almost touching the cold metal rail. "You should go back inside" he orders coldly, and she blinked a few times as if she’s trying to sort his words.
There are so many things he wanted to say to her but he didn't know how and where to start. All he could think about was the look on her lovely face when she witnessed him pull the trigger a few minutes ago. He didn't actually see the look on her face, but he could tell without doubt, and it wouldn't be good. She was utterly outraged by the murder of a stranger a few weeks ago, how on earth could she look at him now with anything other than so muchcontempt? He's never been scared of anything in his life, but he now afraid of disappointing her.
His heart starts throbs faster than the usual, and his throat goes dry. He loosened his bow tie and intended to go back inside, but he'd have to walk by her and he couldn't bare it if she looked up at him with those beautiful angelic eyes, he'd melt for sure. She's the most intimidating woman he's ever met and I wonder if she’s aware what she’s doing to him right now. Her lips twist wryly, and he braced himself for whatever it is she's about to say. "I never thought I'd see you again." she whispers, biting her lip. Of all the things he expected her to say in this moment, he’s surely not expecting that one? He opens his mouth to say something, but fails miserably. "Are you alright?" she asks, stepping closer to him, but he's frozen to the spot, and so are his words. That familiar pull of electricity explodes them both when she touches his face, and he grabs hold of her hand immediately. She gasped and their eyes remain locked on each other. After a few lingering stares he couldn't take it anymore, and neither could she.