Hard Truths (Kiss Her Goodbye Book 1)

by Rebecca Royce

  We walked together down a long staircase, and I tried to do a better job of taking in my surroundings. Like the room I’d woken up in, the house was a mixture of decorations, which gave the impression of being modern with a classic touch. Had one of these men decorated it?

  At the bottom of the staircase, T pointed left, and I walked in front of him, making fast note of the front door. As soon I could, I was making a run for it. I’d go out screaming. Surely some neighbor somewhere would hear me and call the cops. K had grabbed me and hauled me to the bathroom, but other than that it wasn’t like I was being dragged around in chains. I’d wait for my chance, and then I’d go out the front door.

  Determination made my fear disappear. I was getting out of whatever this mess was any minute, and the police could sort out what had happened here.

  Some of my newfound energy fled when I found three more men in the room where they brought me. All of them tall and strong. Why couldn’t there be one wimp in the whole bunch? I was a tall, fit woman. I could probably take out a not fit guy who was shorter than me. Use him as leverage. And why hadn’t I actually taken those Krav Maga classes when I’d had the chance?

  The room was large, several couches, and a large television caught my attention quickly, but it was the men themselves who held it.

  K pointed at the tallest of the three. He spoke slowly, like he either thought I was hard of hearing, stupid, or needed time to digest what he said. I didn’t guess it was the last one. Internally, I rolled my eyes at the asshole. Outside, I kept my face passive. The front door beckoned me. I would get out there.

  “This is W.”

  Oh God. We had another letter. I’d hated algebra. It was hard enough to solve for X. Now I had these fucking letters. Okay. I quickly ran through it again. If they were going to use letters as names I had to remember them. K—my dark haired bully captor. T—the man in black. And now W—with the glaring eyes.

  He was interesting looking—in the way that I would never forget his face—but not necessarily handsome. Like I wasn’t traditionally pretty, he was too severe to be called good looking. His face was oval, and he kept a trimmed beard and mustache. He was dark haired and olive skinned. With thick eyebrows and huge brown eyes, it was his prominent nose that defined his face. This was a hard man. Facial features could be misleading but his gaze was not. He would not be an easy man to speak to. He nodded at me and then looked away as though I were nothing more than a fly in the air he breathed. He wore a light brown suit with an auburn colored shirt he’d slightly unbuttoned. His watch was expensive, but I didn’t immediately know the names of his clothing. I’d picked out my father’s clothing for years. I knew designer brands for men.

  I had a second to try to memorize who he was. It was the glaring eyes I’d remember.

  With that done, K pointed to the man who sat on the couch farthest away from me. His legs were stretched out in front of him as though he had not a care in the world. He was the youngest of them so far. Or maybe he just had a baby face. The man had light brown hair and green eyes. He was so good looking he would probably be called pretty. His hair was styled back with gel. He wore a gray long sleeved t-shirt and jeans. He didn’t have shoes on, just gray socks. Unlike W, he didn’t even nod.

  “That’s J.”

  J—who seemed to be right at home here. Casual J.

  And finally K—how was I already getting used to this initial thing?—turned to the last man. He stood by the window, watching me with hooded eyes. Usually I found men who had man buns to not be my type but this man would be everyone’s. Probably even people who didn’t like men sexually. He had blond hair, long enough that it was in the already noticed man bun. His eyes were blue. Like everyone except J, he had facial hair. Had they all just gotten back from a camping trip where they couldn’t shave or had I missed the trend where rude kidnappers had to have facial hair? Like the rest of them, he was muscular and good looking.

  “D.” K finally provided. “Now you’ve met everyone.”

  D—the blond dude with the man bun.

  I quickly ran through them in my head. I was getting out of there as fast as was humanly possible but I had to be able to tell the police. K—the bully who made me go brush my teeth. T—who wore all black. W—glaring eyes. J—the casual one in his socks. D—man bun.

  I didn’t say anything. They had done this, they could explain to me why. Or not. I could run for the door. They hadn’t blocked it. Had none of them considered that I might make a break for it?

  J shook his head. “You didn’t show her the house.”

  He spoke with a lazy casualness. He really seemed… calm.

  “I’m not the tour guide. I went to get her and had more than enough hassle for my trouble. You want to show her around, have at it.” He crossed the room to the bar in corner and poured himself a whiskey. I could go for one of those, just as soon as I got out of here. I’d drink the bottle. Forget my two drink rule.

  J rose slowly. “She’s thinking of running. That tells me you haven’t shown her the house. I think before we go any further, before we explain to her what has happened to her life, she should see the house. Then she’ll understand. It will make things simpler if she understands.”

  “I don’t care what she understands. This is happening.” T shrugged crossing to where K had poured the drink, presumably to pour himself one.

  W sighed. “It’s a good idea.” He snapped his fingers and it took me a second to realize he’d done so to get my attention. His eyes continued to glare. Was he fucking serious with the snapping? “Go upstairs. All the way to the top. That’ll be two sets of staircases. All of those rooms are empty right now. Go in. Out on the balcony. Then you’ll see. Come on down after that. You can go wander around outside if you want to. When you’ve worn yourself out from the futility of planning escape, we’ll tell you what we expect from you and why you’re here. But not a minute before. There’s no point in speaking to someone who is plotting a ridiculous escape attempt. I don’t want to waste the breath.”

  D strode forward, his man bun catching my attention again. “You could jump from the balcony if you want to. It’ll kill you. Even should you manage to survive a fall from that level, there are rocks everywhere. Hitting the ground would kill you. That’s always an option. Jump, if you want to.”

  “Fuck.” K shook his head, a laugh in his voice. “Did you seriously just say that?”

  These assholes could all choke on their own stomach bile for all I cared. I turned like I was going to do as I was told. No one blinked at that, which told me they were used to being obeyed. That was fine by me. I wasn’t taking a tour of the house. I ran to the front door and out, slamming it behind me.

  It was sunset, and I’d lose the light soon but that was okay. I didn’t intend to be out very long. I was barefoot, but I ran like I had on my running shoes. At that moment, I couldn’t have cared less about stubbed toes or torn up skin.

  Cold air stuck me, and I shivered as I looked left and right. In the back of my mind that struck me as odd. It wasn’t cold in Louisiana in March. Were we having a cold spell I didn’t realize? I ran hard out the front door and abruptly stopped. I had nowhere to go if I continued forward, not unless I wanted to run straight into the water.

  The house was flat against a rocky beach. My heart beat faster. Where the hell was I? I didn’t wait to consider that but ran on. There had to be a road somewhere. It must be on the other side of the house. I darted left and ran hard, following the line of the house to the other side. No, there was no road. On this side there were trees. Lots of them. None of this made sense. How could there be no way to get to this house?

  They must traipse through the woods whenever they came and went. It seemed like a huge effort for them to make each time they departed or arrived. I didn’t care about the logistics.

  I ran.

  Until I had to stop because I had run almost the entire length of the island. I didn’t have my phone or my watch on me to calculate exact dista
nce, but I was a runner, and it felt like about three miles. I was on an island, containing just the big house. As far as I could tell, there was nothing else.

  It had fallen fully dark. I could swim, but I didn’t know where the closest land was or if that was even safe to do. I put my hands on my knees and tried to breathe. It wasn’t exertion making me out of breath but sheer panic.

  Thunder boomed in the sky a second before rain pelted down on my head. It was cold rain, and I shivered. I had to face facts. I was in this strange place, wherever it was, with five guys who went by initials. I had no memory of getting here. The weather was drastically different than it had been at school.

  I was royally screwed.

  Okay. I stood up straight. I couldn’t stay out here and freeze to death. The temperature had dropped degrees just since I’d been outside running. If I hadn’t been moving, I’d probably have frozen by now.

  My feet tingled, my digits letting me know what my brain had finally realized, this wasn’t working.

  I limped back to the house, trying the door handle. Fortunately, it was open. All hope wasn’t lost. I was a: not dead. If they wanted to kill me they could have done so by now. As long as I wasn’t dead there was hope. And b: they had to get supplies sometimes. They had to get on and off the island. I would figure out how to make that work for me. I wasn’t a wilting flower. I would get away from wherever here was.

  “She’s back.” T called out, coming out of a room I hadn’t been in yet. The smell of food wafted toward me, and my stomach growled. Between the vomiting and the running, I was starved.

  He looked me up and down. “You’re drenched.”

  “It’s raining.” That seemed an obvious answer.

  He sighed before he stormed in front of me and opened a closet. “There are clothes in here. Not yours but you may use them for the moment. Change in the bathroom, there. Then come in here and join us for dinner. We weren’t going to hold it much longer. None of us settle for cold or burned food. If you caused either of those things to happen, you’d just have to starve for the night.”

  I’d never gone without food, and I wasn’t a fool, that didn’t sound very fun. I needed answers, too, so I hustled, doing exactly what he told me to do. I arrived in what proved to be the dining room to find all five of them sitting around a round table.

  It was a funny look for a dining room and not one I’d ever seen before. Dining room tables were long, at least where I came from, and had two heads of the table. There was an empty seat next to D, Mr. Kill-Yourself-If-You-Want-To, and I sat down next to him.

  A woman came in, wearing a maid’s uniform and holding a tray of food. Behind her, an older man followed, holding a second one. I nearly gasped. There were servants here. I made a quick note; maybe they’d help me. Maybe I could make something happen.

  The two served bowls of soup before exiting without a word of acknowledgment from any of the men.

  Surprisingly, considering his dismissive gaze earlier, it was W who spoke to me. “Did you wear yourself out? Have a good look? See any of the local wildlife?”

  “Wildlife?” My voice cracked, my throat feeling a little bit like sandpaper. I hoped I wasn’t getting sick.

  He drummed his fingers on the table while everyone else started eating their soup. I took a page from the rest of them. It was delicious, creamy. I thought I tasted squash and apples.

  “I’m going to level with you,” W spoke, and I set down my spoon, waiting. “You are here, Everly, because we need your father to do something for us. As soon as he does it, you can leave.”

  My mind buzzed. My father? I hardly saw the man. He had done his best to raise me, but as a single parent who owned his own accounting firm, he’d been busy a lot of the year. I stared at W for a long moment. “I’m sorry. You want my father to do something for you so you’re holding me prisoner? What is this, the Bronze Age in France? You can’t just take a person prisoner to compel their parent to perform some kind of task. And what could you want from him? He’s a small town accountant in Louisiana specializing in basically widowers and divorcees.”

  K shook his head. “I’m afraid not. But we aren’t surprised you don’t know about what your father actually does. If you knew, it wouldn’t be secret.”

  Seeing as I was in this house, in the middle of somewhere I didn’t know, with five men who had kidnapped me, I was willing to suspend my disbelief on this subject. “Is my father in the CIA?”

  “The CIA is nothing.” D threw his head back.

  “Less than nothing.” K groaned, taking a spoonful of soup into his mouth. “The CIA is ants marching. The NSA, the FBI. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. People have no idea who’s in charge.”

  My body had gone cold. Conspiracies had never been my thing. Illuminati was not confirmed, they didn’t have aliens in Area 51, Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK, The Moon Landing wasn’t faked, and there was no Reptilian Elite.

  I shivered. Maybe my shoeless run had been ill thought out. I really didn’t want to get sick right now. “Who’s in charge? Little green men?”

  W smirked. “We are. Or more specifically, a group called The Alliance. Your father is a member of The Alliance.”

  Now that was too far. “Is it possible you have the wrong person?” A girl could only hope. “My father is a small town accountant. He isn’t running the country.”

  “World,” D corrected. He must have finished his soup and pushed it away.

  I put my head in my hands. I couldn’t hide it. “I am in the presence of crazy people. Crazy people have somehow kidnapped me. I… Are you all suffering from the same paranoid delusions? I have the deepest respect for people with mental illness but this is too much. Did you all escape from the same institution? Is there someone I can call to help you?”

  “Everly,” J said my name, and the room was silent until I looked at him. “You should never have known about this. We were raised in it, as your father was, and as any son he had would be. As it is, he only had you, so his family line will die with no son to carry on the line. Unless you have a son, in which case it’ll go to him. Your father seems like a small town accountant. He is not.”

  The two servants who’d come in before re-entered and cleared away the soup bowls. The men were evidently not concerned with speaking in front of them because they continued. This time it was K who spoke.

  “Think about it. If you were going to control the workings of the world, who was rich, who was in power, who lived and died, would you let your presence be known? Would you be obvious? Or would you hold non-descript upper middle class jobs that earned you enough to be comfortable, enough you could hide your riches from others.”

  I hated that what he said made sense. This was supposed to be ludicrous. It wasn’t supposed to inch into the back of my mind. No, I refused to go down this path. Conspiracies were insidious for a reason. They sucked people in, made them believe in nonsense.

  “And my father is one of those people? You five sitting here with me are the powerful Svengalis moving the workings of the world while you eat apple soup at a circular table?”

  T shook his head. “Did you taste the apple more than the acorn-squash?”

  I could have growled. “That’s not really important right now.”

  The next round of food was placed in front of me. It was a good thing I ate everything and didn’t have food allergies because no one had asked me ahead of time. The plate was filled with quinoa, green lentils, steamed kale, sweet potatoes, microgreens and a spicy peanut sauce. All of that was at the bottom of the plate while tender steak rested on top. It was delicious, but I almost choked on it thinking about the conundrum I found myself in.

  They really believed what they were saying. None of my friends would have put together a hoax like this. I didn’t think the best prank players in the world could have fathomed this.

  I chewed my steak slowly to give myself time to contemplate what they’d told me. Finally, I spoke. “So what world events have you personally controll
ed in The Alliance? I mean, things aren’t so great out there right now. Unemployment. Poverty. World hunger. People killing each other. Children being gunned down in school. Plague. Homelessness. It doesn’t seem like you’re doing such a good job.”

  J nodded. “You’re thinking altruistically. That’s a mistake. The Alliance is not designed to take care of the world. It is to keep and improve upon the status quo. All of those things you said are absolutely true and then some. If you have never been to a third world country then you likely don’t have a real sense of truly how bad off the world is. You’ve studied social work so perhaps you have more of a kind soul than most.” He waved his hand in the air. “Or maybe you just didn’t know what to major in. I don’t know, and I don’t care. There are lots of truths in the world, some you haven’t imagined.”

  He had my attention. “Like what?”

  K answered for him. “Like the rich keep getting richer. The economy crashed. It weeded out the pseudo-rich. The truly top percentages got even wealthier. People took power, positions they’d been promised. The herd was trimmed. Whatever it looks like, whatever beautiful Pollyanna ridiculousness the ant masses hold onto that things might get better are always bullshit. Because behind it all, behind every decision, every election, every dollar spent is The Alliance. Waiting. Watching. Moving things.”

  I wasn’t hungry anymore, and I’d only eaten a few bites of my food. “I can’t accept that. Not at all. If that was true, someone would know. Someone would have exposed this. People would know.”

  J smiled at me. “Would they? We took you from your apartment in the middle of the day. We took all of your things, transported you unconscious, and not a single person looked at us sideways. People see what they want to see, Everly.”

  “You shouldn’t even know about this.” D sighed. “Women aren’t included in The Alliance. This is a men’s club. Women’s lib isn’t real, not in the real world, not in the one where it matters. But you’re here and so you’ll know.”