by Kate Stewart
He’d left me to the care and mercy of two people who hated me. Most of all, he’d lied to me. Somehow, I’d figure out how to visit him soon. I needed to hear the truth of his betrayal from him. I spent too many years enabling him and telling myself grief was the reason why he couldn’t love me after mom had died.
So who do I blame for my spiral downward? Angel? My father? Myself?
“You are a beautiful one.”
The familiar voice sent my heart plummeting into my stomach. Fear rooted me to the spot. I was afraid to turn around and see the monster attached to the voice. The air didn’t seem so fresh anymore. It was too thick to breathe in and was pungent with the stench of evil. I looked around for the best escape route and realized I was now in an unfamiliar part of the grounds. I hadn’t realized how far I’d wandered off. I could no longer see Z or the tree he stood under.
“My son isn’t always intelligent,” the voice continued, “but he has good taste.” I felt a crawling sensation on the bare skin of my arm and realized it wasn’t phantom. He was actually touching me. I spun around then, but the sickening feeling piercing my skin didn’t dissipate when his hand fell. I opened and closed my mouth several times but words—all words—escaped me. “What am I doing here?” the senator offered.
I could only nod.
“I’m here to see Angel.”
“You’re out of your mind.” I was startled by the threat in my own voice.
“You mistake my intentions, Ms. Ross. I simply want to call a truce. Angel is more valuable to me alive than dead.”
“You mean because he’s still alive, he’s more valuable to you as an ally than an enemy. You’re afraid of him.”
Angel was undoubtedly someone to be feared, but it still amazed me that he could hold someone as powerful as a senator under his thumb. And then came the reminder that I’d tried and failed to kill him. What would he do to me once he’d gained his strength back? My death could reinforce their allegiance if Angel took his revenge.
“Don’t be so smug, Ms. Ross. I’m not the only one vulnerable.”
“But you’re the only one afraid. Fear makes people desperate. It breaks them.”
“And what does fear do to you, Ms. Ross?” His voice had lowered, and though no one paid us any attention, he stepped forward to ensure I would be the only one to hear his next words. “When someone threatens your life or the life of your child, will you break?”
His challenge hit its mark and the need to vomit built. He’s never going to leave us alone.
“Mian!” The senator’s deceiving smile dropped as he looked over my shoulder. I knew that voice, and I knew Z was closing in. I could hear his footsteps pounding on the pavement. The senator, unfortunately, still had me under his spell.
Suddenly, I was being shoved behind a wall cloaked in a black hoodie I recognized. “You want to die, senator?” I could hear the leashed rage straining in Z’s voice.
“Dear boy, it is not as if you are going to murder me in broad daylight. There are witnesses mere feet away.” His gaze returned to me, his smile indulgent, and I knew it was the only reason I was still alive.
“Then you underestimate my ability to not give a fuck, Staten. What are you doing here?”
“Paying my respects.”
“Angel isn’t dead.” He snarled. “You’re going to have to pay your respects another time… if we don’t kill you first.”
“It is well within my power to have you arrested for threatening death to a senator.” Staten coolly dangled Z’s freedom in front of him like a leash.
“Then do it.” Z took a step closer to the senator, and my heart stopped when I saw Staten’s two-man guard reaching for their guns.
“Z, take me inside.” There was no way I could risk seeing Z gunned down. I’ve had enough death for a lifetime. When my plea failed, I grabbed his hand to get his attention and dug my fingers into the warm skin of his palm. He trained his frown on me, but there was no longer murder in his eyes as he stared back. “I want to go inside,” I repeated. “Now.”
His hand tightened around mine, and after one last warning glance at the senator, he led me back inside with his body shielding me the entire way.
WE DIDN’T RETURN to the estate. Arturo’s home was much further from the hospital, but maybe that was why he chose this place for us to retreat.
“I can’t believe anyone voted for that ass!” Anna paced the room that had once been my prison with a deep scowl twisting her soft features. This was becoming a too often occurrence—bad things happening to me and me bringing them to Anna’s doorstep. For Christ’s sake, she’s just a kid. This shouldn’t be her world. “What are you going to do?”
I purged my answer quickly so I wouldn’t back out. “I’m going to run.” After Z had recounted my run-in with the senator to Lucas, Caylen and I were driven to Crecia under guard. Running had been all I could think about since. It was scary and reckless, but it was also my salvation.
I once read in Homer’s Iliad that it was better to flee from death than feel its grip.
“Run?” Anna squeaked.
“I can’t fight, and I can’t hide here. They’ll find me.” If I ran, it wouldn’t just be the senator looking for me… Angel would also stop at nothing. The truth burned in my gut.
“But you can’t run with a baby. Jesus, Mian! We can try going to the police.” I studied Anna’s bright blue eyes, her golden locks, and her red puffy cheeks stained with tears. She was biting her lips, the only sign she was keeping the fiercest of her emotions reigned in.
“And tell them what? That my son’s father, the son of a senator, wants to kill me and my baby, and that another man wants revenge he doesn’t deserve?” In a way, I envied Anna’s naiveté. That level of innocence was something I would never possess again.
Her eyes filled with more tears. “It’s better than never seeing you again.” I forced my gaze away because I couldn’t bring myself to offer promises I couldn’t keep. “What if I came with you?” she offered.
“You’re seventeen and still in school. Taking you with me would be stupid and selfish.”
“But leaving me behind will hurt.” Her voice cracked, and her body threatened to collapse. I jumped from my seat at the foot of the bed and pulled her into my arms. “It will hurt so much, Mian.”
“It doesn’t have to be forever,” I caved. Angel lived a life that would eventually claim him, and maybe just maybe if I disappeared the senator would eventually wash his hands off me.
“Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”
“I mean it. Whatever the chances, I’ll come back for you.”
She lifted her head from my shoulder. “Where will you go?”
“I don’t know, but anywhere has to be safer than Chicago.” I hesitated to deliver a blow that would hurt me as much as it would her. “I won’t truly feel safe unless I leave Illinois.”
“But that’s too far!” More of her tears fell, and I rushed to erase them.
“I have to be sure, Anna.”
“You won’t get far without money,” she tried to reason.
“I have money,” I answered. “I just have to get to it.”
“What are you talking about? What money?”
“Angel gave me the money the senator paid him to kill me—”
“Oh, God,” she groaned and turned so I could only see her back. I waited until her sniffling died before continuing.
“It’s locked in a safe that only I know the combination to. I can get to it, but I need your help.”
“I don’t understand, Mian.” She turned, her mouth agape and her tears dried. “What safe?”
Chapter 4
MIAN
Two Weeks Ago
I WOKE UP disoriented and sore in places I’ve never been sore before. One glance through the parted curtains and moonlit
windowpanes told me it was still night. My body and weary mind begged me to drift back to sleep, but then Aaron, the senator, the money, and the touching�
�� it all came rushing back vividly. I wasn’t sure if it was the threat of death or the memory of what Angel did to me afterward that caused my heart to race.
Batting away the cobwebs of sleep, I moved to get out of a bed I should have never been in. I had one foot on the carpet when fingers grabbed my hair, and I was pulled back across the mattress until I collided with a hot wall of muscle.
Gasping from surprise, I felt his heat blanketing me. “Where are you going?” His voice sounded like he’d been eating gravel.
“I need to check on Caylen.”
“He’s fine.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not for you to decide.” I tried to leave his bed, but he simply locked his arm around my waist. I could feel his dick pushing against my spine and every other hard part of him molding against my own body.
“I checked on him an hour ago and brought back his baby monitor. He’s fine,” he insisted a little more forcefully.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“A few hours,” he grumbled before having the audacity to snuggle into me. I wanted to kick my own ass for almost leaning back into his chest. It would be exactly what he wanted—me, dependent and helpless against him. “How were you planning to get to him, anyway?”
Because Angel still kept him behind a locked door.
I didn’t hesitate to answer truthfully. “Whatever it took.”
He grunted his agreement because we both knew it wasn’t an empty threat.
Sleeping was no longer an option, so I did a slow sweep of his room. The space took me back in time to when life honestly wasn’t much simpler than it was now. I didn’t find peace or a weapon I could use to knock him out. The lamp on the nightstand would do the trick, but I knew I wouldn’t get to it in time. The monster would probably break my fingers before I could even wrap them around the black base with a silver skull painted on it. My gaze fell to the baby monitor lying next to the lamp. I could hear the faint sound of my baby’s breaths as he slept and felt myself relax.
“If this is going to work, you’re going to have to trust me.” Angel’s sleepy voice drowned the only sound I cared to hear.
“Well, maybe I don’t want this to work.” I sounded like a brat to my own ears. I had to make this work. For Caylen’s sake.
“Then you’ll both end up dead. Is that what you want?” It wasn’t a threat.
“Of course not,” I whispered defeated. He didn’t respond as his arm released my body, and I listened as he heaved his powerful body from the bed. It was hard not to stare at the muscles in his ass bunch and release as he stepped into his pants. When he turned and held out his hand, it was all I could do not to retreat.
“Come with me.”
I didn’t move. “Why?”
“The window on my mercy is closing,” he warned. I didn’t know what his idea of mercy was, but I knew I would be sorry if I didn’t accept it. His hand quickly closed over mine when I placed my palm in his as if he were afraid I’d change my mind and bolt. It was frightening sometimes how well he could read me.
It made it impossible to hide from him.
We started for the door when he suddenly stopped and bent to pick up his discarded shirt. “Put this on.” It was then I remembered my nakedness.
I took the shirt with hesitant fingers and slipped my arms through the dark gray sleeves. He barely gave me time to button more than two buttons before he took my hand again and pulled me into the dimly lit hallway. I wanted to ask again where he was taking me, but the stiff set of his shoulders told me he wasn’t in the mood to indulge me.
My heart rate picked up as we ventured through the west wing. He was locking me back up. I tugged against his fingers and berated myself for trusting him for even a moment. He didn’t break his pace or acknowledge my resistance other than a hard squeeze of my fingers. When he stopped in front of the doors to his father’s office, confusion replaced anger. My feet were like lead, so he all but dragged me inside and closed the door before letting me go and making his way across the room. His long strides ended in front of the painting of him.
“My father had this painting made weeks before Theo killed him,” he said with his back facing me. “I didn’t care much for the tradition, but he told me duty is something we rarely understand or agree with but something we must do all the same.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I wasn’t exactly in the mood for a family history lesson.
“Because the first duty he ever gave me was to protect you,” he answered. “I never stopped.”
“If I hadn’t broken in here to rob a dead man, you and I would still be pretending we don’t exist. I haven’t been yours to protect for a long time, Angel.”
He turned around then. His eyes were a storm, but his voice was composed as he said, “Do you think your life would have been any better if I hadn’t stayed away? I claimed you when you were sixteen fucking years old. Your father would be in a grave instead of chains if he had tried to say otherwise.” He took slow, careful steps toward me, but I refused to back down. “My ring would be on your finger, you’d be in my bed, and Caylen would be mine.” There was a deep ache low in my belly that I shouldn’t feel. I couldn’t deny his words because I knew those words were true. He would have claimed me, and for a while, I would have believed it was what I wanted. “You wouldn’t have wanted for anything except me. You would have been miserable. Stuck in a big castle in a faraway land with only your dreams to keep you company.”
“Because that’s what your father did to your mother?”
His eyes narrowed. “You know the tale.”
“Maybe it’s just the ending I don’t quite get.”
“As it turned out, it wasn’t a fairy tale after all. Happily ever after isn’t real.” He turned and stalked back to the painting. This time, he lifted it from the wall with little effort and set it aside, revealing the safe that started this war when I broke into it. He keyed in the combination before pressing a few more buttons.
“Come here,” he ordered with his back still turned. I approached with wary steps as I considered what he intended to show me.
What if it was the book? The perfect twist to a bad dream?
I closed my eyes and pinched myself.
When I opened them again, Angel was still there brimming with deadliness, and I was still his captive. He stepped around me, placing me between him and the safe.
In the safe wasn’t a leather bound book inscribed with two-hundred years of deadly secrets. Inside were piles of neatly arranged stacks of money.
This definitely wasn’t a dream.
The book was gone, the senator wanted me dead, and my son and I would never be safe.
“What is this?”
“It’s the money the senator paid me to kill you. All accounted for and yours. All it needs is a code to protect it.”
I turned away from the money to look into Angel’s eyes. There was no deception in the mahogany depths, but still, I wavered. “What do you want?”
“Trust.”
Instead of feeling free, I felt the walls closing in and my shackles tightening. To bestow trust is welcome deception. What if Angel’s offer of control was nothing more than an illusion to gain my trust? He was willing to risk losing so I wouldn’t fight him.
What would he be willing to risk so I wouldn’t win?
I turned away so he couldn’t see my doubt. I closed the safe door and keyed in a new code that only my eyes could see.
Angel wasn’t the only one who could create illusions.
Chapter 5
MIAN
Present
MY ARMS STRAINED as I lifted the painting of Angel. Deja vu slammed into me when I almost toppled over under the weight. I managed to hold my footing and blinked away at the sting of sweat pouring into my eyes. I didn’t have much time to get into the safe and out of the house with Caylen. Anna was currently keeping Z and two of Angel’s guards distracted, but it wouldn’t be long before Z would get suspicious. Lucas had fortunate
ly stayed behind at the hospital with most of Angel’s guard.
My fingers trembled as I keyed in the combination I set the night Angel took me to his bed for the first time. It took me three tries to calm my nerves enough to key in ten-thirty-one—his birthday, and the night my world crumbled around me.
I unhitched one of Angel’s old backpacks from my shoulder and quickly filled it with money.
My money.
Caylen’s money.
The money Senator Staten paid to have us killed rather than use to help feed his grandchild. The reality that my son shared blood with someone so evil made me sick to my stomach.
Once the safe was empty, I zipped up his ratty backpack and quietly stepped down from the chair. I didn’t have time to right everything, so I didn’t bother. Angel would know I’d been here anyway. It was the very risk he took when he bargained for my trust, and I would never in a million years feel bad that he lost.
As I slipped through the office doors and made my way back to the guest room, I listened to the sound of Anna’s giggles and the chatter as it drifted up the stairs. Every now and then, Z’s amused voice would respond to something she said.
Caylen was sound asleep as I grabbed as many diapers, bottles, and formula as could I fit in the limited space of the backpack before carefully wrapping him in a blanket. I said a prayer he wouldn’t wake before slipping out of the nursery. I strained to hear their voices, but in the matter of minutes it took for me to gather the supplies, the house had fallen deathly quiet. Part of the plan was for Anna to ask for a ride back home with the excuse that I had gone to bed early with a migraine, so I wasn’t alarmed by the silence. Z wouldn’t bother me until morning and Anna would be safely home. Before we put our plan into motion, she’d called Joey, who had agreed to pick me with the promise that he’d get a second date with Anna. It was even more difficult this time to convince her even though she’d swear it wasn’t because of a certain brooding criminal with silver eyes and a killer smile.