Captured: Claimed Book 3

by M James

  “Dena will be staying with us for a while,” Vincent announces, smiling. “That was the rest of the surprise, Poppy. She’s going to be working at one of my new clubs here, and until she finds a place, I know you’d be happy to have her with us.”

  It might have, once upon a time. But I know now that every gift comes with strings. And Dena is barely even a friend any longer.

  A friend would have been horrified at what I told her earlier. Her response wasn’t one of a good friend. It was the response of someone who needs this to work with Vincent for her benefit.

  “Surprise, Bestie,” she says with a million-dollar smile.

  “I would have said something, but Vincent wanted to be the one to surprise you.” She says with a girlish giggle. Vincent’s smile is wide and satisfied.

  I watch them both, dumbfounded. Erin is staring too, and Zach looks confused. Sonya is still smirking as if she’s enjoying watching this all play out.

  Dena, on the other hand, is positively glowing.“I know it’s going to be amazing being here with Rain and working at your club..” She smiles flirtatiously at him. “I’m so grateful for the opportunity.”

  “You're more than welcome. It’s not a party every night. It will be hard work,” Vincent warns her. “But I think you have exactly what the position needs.” He’s smiling that charming smile that I know so well, and his gaze slides over her, up and down lasciviously, as if no one else is watching. I’m horrified because it’s so obvious to anyone looking that my fiancé is openly ogling another woman, and one who is supposed to be my friend. But no one seems to care. Sonya sure as hell doesn’t, and Erin and Zach are both staying carefully neutral.

  I won’t let Vincent see a single flicker of emotion.

  “I know it’s your first night in, but if it wouldn’t be too much, it’d be great if you could start tonight —there were two girls who were supposed to be new hires, but they weren’t, well…they weren’t appropriate..”

  “Of course it wouldn’t be!” she answers quickly. “I appreciate everything so much, whatever you need!” She glances over at me as if just now remembering that I’m there. “Thank you, Rain!”

  As if I had anything to do with it. “That’s so exciting,” I stumble, trying to look happy for her. But in reality, I’m stunned. She will be staying for an indeterminate amount of time—basically living with us and working for Vincent. That makes me think she’ll be around for a long, long time, and I feel suspicious. Not jealous, exactly—I don’t have the right feelings for Vincent anymore for jealousy. It’s something else, a feeling in the pit of my stomach that this is part of some elaborate trap. Some game that he’s playing with me. He wants access to Dena for some reason—here at the house, at one of his clubs, and I don’t think it’s just to fuck her. He can do that with anyone. He chose her for a reason, brought her here for a reason.

  Nothing he does for me is really for me anymore. If it ever was. He’s taken away my only friend; I can’t trust her now. If I ever could.

  “April,” Vincent says smoothly, “I’ll need you to take Dena to the club. I’d like some time alone with my lovely Poppy while you get Dena squared away.”

  It’s meant to sound sweet, but the way he says it sends shivers down my spine. It makes me wish that the lunch could last forever, as awkward as it is, but of course, it can’t. We eat our way through the grilled shrimp and rice and vegetables that Andrea had the cook prepare. Afterward, Zach and Sonya quickly make their excuses, and Erin scampers back up to her room.

  When April and Dena are gone, Vincent turns to face me, a self-satisfied smile on his face. “Well, Poppy, aren’t you pleased? Your friend has a better job now, thanks to me. And a better place to live, in New York, here with us. Isn’t that good?”

  I force a smile onto my face and slide a hand up his arm, looking at him with all the sweetness I can muster. “Of course, baby.” The words stick in my throat; I want to choke on them. “That was a really sweet thing for you to do. I’m sure Dena will be so much happier here. I know she’ll do a good job.”

  “Of course she will. She is appreciative.” Vincent laughs, and there’s an edge to it that I don’t like. “I’m hoping some of her will rub off on you.”

  I take a deep breath as I slide my chair a little closer to him. I’m desperate to see my family, desperate to remember why I’m doing this—and even more than that, desperate to get Erin home and out of this awful house before something worse can happen to her.

  “I know we just got back,” I begin slowly, thinking about my words before I say them. “But I was wondering—is there any chance that I might be able to make plans to go and visit my family soon? My dad just went through another round of treatment, and he’s doing really well, but I know my mom is stressed, and I could take Erin home, then she wouldn’t be a bother to you anymore. She really doesn’t need to be here, especially now that I have Dena, and I know she’s upset you…” I trail off, seeing the expression on his face, and my heart sinks. I already know what the answer is before he speaks, from the minute he starts patting the hand that’s resting on his arm.

  “Poppy, I know you’re eager to see your family,” he says gently, almost patronizingly, as if I’m a small child. “But don’t you remember the conversation we had before we went to Italy? You need to focus on yourself right now, especially after last night. You’ve been a terrible fiance, and I know you were sorry, but I need to see that you’re not drinking. I need to see real improvements in how you look now that you’re on a better diet and have your trainer. And you can’t be gone next week, the club opening is next Saturday night. I want you to look your best on my arm. I need to impress my investors.” His mouth hardens into a firm line as he looks down on me. “You start classes with your finishing tutor soon, too. I expect you to work every bit as hard on that as you would have at that silly writing degree you had your heart set on; after all, this matters, for my future and yours.”

  He takes a deep breath. “As far as Erin, I already said that she needs to be here, where I can keep an eye on her. Who knows if someone is after her now, too, after that little stunt she pulled? Maybe Matteo told her something. Maybe he has plans to follow her and take her away. I’m protecting your sister, Poppy, and I’ll keep protecting her, no matter how ungrateful you are or how much you keep testing my patience.” The warning in his tone is clear now. “Erin is not going anywhere, and neither are you. You’re both going to be good girls and appreciate all that I’m doing to keep you safe and comfortable.”

  I know better than to cry. Vincent hates my tears, almost as much as he hates being told no. I keep them from falling, but I can feel them glimmering in my eyes, and Vincent sees them, too. I sniff, and he looks down at me disapprovingly and sighs.

  “Fucking hell, Poppy.” He runs a hand through his hair. “You’re so goddamn focused on your family when you should be focused on your life here, with me, and the family that we will have. Remember what I said in Italy? After the wedding, no more birth control. I want an heir, and I want you to learn your place. You will obey me, and you will have my children, and you will stop fighting me on every…fucking…thing.” His teeth are clenched now. “And as long as you do that, your family and your friends will be safe. If you put as much fucking energy into worrying about me and your lessons and your fitness, you’ll be a perfect, fit, intelligent wife in no time.”

  He stands up then, walking across the room to get a glass of scotch from the bar on the other side. There’s a bar in every goddamn room in this house, it seems like. “When you can prove that you’re being a good fiance, we’ll talk again.”

  I can feel the nausea rising up in my stomach as I watch him. It’s useless, all of it, and I don’t know why I keep trying. All I can do is watch my life play out now, like a movie that’s out of my control. It used to be fun to be Vincent’s doll, to let him dress me and take me out, but now I’m literally nothing but. Just something for him to pose and teach phrases to and give orders, not even a dol
l, but a pet to have sit and stay and do tricks for the important people who work with him. Then he can bundle me back into my cage.

  He’s taken every defense I have, given me every reason to have to stay. He holds everything over me now—my family’s future, everything I owe him. I’m in a prison, partially of my own making, and I want to vomit when I remember how I once thought I was special, that I thought I was different.

  I thought I had captured the heart of the most powerful man in Chicago, that I had made him into a different man, someone soft and capable of loving. That I knew him better than anyone else.

  But he captured me instead, and now there’s nowhere for me to go. No one left to help me.

  So I stay seated until he tells me I can go up to my room.

  Like a good pet.

  12

  Zach

  I’m sitting by the pool when Rain walks out. Sonya is with Vincent, going over some business bullshit, and as much as I wish I could be a fly on that wall, I know I’m not welcome in that room just yet. I also know that April would want me to use the time away from Sonya to figure out how to get back into Rain’s good graces. So here I am, waiting to see if I can casually run into her and trying to think about how to make it seem as if I’m going along with April’s plans while not actually making things worse for myself and for Rain.

  It’s all I can do to not do a double-take when she walks out. She looks fucking stunning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a bikini before. I’ve seen her naked, obviously, but that was years ago. She’s filled out, and the red bathing suit she’s wearing doesn’t leave a whole hell of a lot to the imagination. It lets me see exactly where she has curves now, the hourglass shape of her waist and the slope of her hips, her firm thighs, and the swell of her breasts that would fill my hands perfectly now. Just seeing her walking through those French doors gives me a hard-on that makes certain I can’t get up. She’s still thin, but there are curves where years ago there were only straight lines.

  “Hey,” she says, clearly startled by my presence. “I’m sorry, I can go back inside—”

  “No,” I say quickly. “It’s your house. If you want privacy, I’ll go in.”

  “It’s Vincent’s house,” she says with a small laugh. “Not mine.”

  “When you’re married, it’ll be yours.” I shrug, hating those words in my mouth. “Half, at least.”

  “If you say so.” She keeps walking towards the pool, and I’m treated to the glorious view of her ass in the small red bikini bottoms, walking away from me. My dick gets that much harder.

  Fuck. It’s going to be harder than I thought to keep myself in check. I have literal orders to seduce this girl, and I’m trying to fight them with everything in me. The last thing I need is more complications—handling my own feelings, breaking Rain’s heart, trying to keep Vincent from knowing that I’m moving in on his girl, trying to keep Sonya from realizing that I’m moving in on Vincent’s girl. It’s a hell of a tangle and a lot of drama, and I’m not about it. I’m pissed as hell at the FBI all over again for doing this to me, for giving me these stupid orders. I wanted to work a case, not a soap opera. But clearly, I wasn’t given a fucking choice.

  “Not planning on swimming?” Rain walks down into the pool, and I catch a glimpse of the water wavering around her waist. Her skin is glistening under the sun, and as a breeze wafts across the backyard, I catch a whiff of sunscreen, the scent of fake bananas filling my nostrils. There’s no nostalgia to it for me. We never went on vacations to any body of water as a kid. We never went on vacations at all. I didn’t go over to friends’ houses and see their sisters tanning out on the lawn. Rain for sure never did. But it smells good, and I have a sudden vision of myself in the water, leaning down to run my tongue in the valley between her breasts, breathing in the scent of her warm, sweaty skin and the sunscreen coating it.

  If I don’t stop, I’m never going to be able to stand up again.

  “I hadn’t planned on it.” I lean back in the deck chair, trying to shift so that my throbbing erection won’t be noticeable. “I can’t remember the last time I was in a pool.”

  “Well, there’s no one stopping you.” Her voice is cool, and I can’t quite read her. I can’t tell if she wants me to get in or not.

  I just know that I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be that close to her, looking at her wet hair and gleaming skin and that bikini clinging to every curve. God knows Vincent has security cameras out here. I’ll fuck everything up. I can’t possibly trust myself in this situation.

  “I’m fine. Just getting some sun while the adults do their business talk.”

  Rain shrugs. “Your loss.”

  She dives under the water then, a blur of pale skin and red bikini, and I have to look away for a moment.

  She looks like something from a fairytale, a mermaid, sleek and shimmering beneath the water. I swallow hard as I look back in her direction and see her come up from the water on the other side, her hair darker and plastered against her head now. She smiles, just a little, as she sees me looking in her direction. For a moment, I’m transported all the way back to Indiana, and I’m seventeen, and Rain is fifteen, and she’s sitting on her front porch, and she smiles at me just like that.

  This is dangerous. So fucking dangerous. I can feel all the years of putting Rain out of my head, of coming to terms with the fact that I’d lost her, that we were done, unraveling. I’d told myself that what I’d done was the best thing for her, that I’d made sure she wouldn’t get stuck in Indiana, in some shitty apartment, married to some guy that was either fresh out of jail for shooting his father or on the run or just a plain and simple fuck-up.

  Would I have done it differently if I’d known I was going to go into the FBI? Maybe. Maybe not. I want to think that I would have, that I’d have had Rain come to visit me at my aunt and uncles on the weekends I was free from the academy, that I’d have seen a future with a job that had a steady paycheck and good benefits as good enough for the girl that had always been my princess, the one I’d promised to save and protect no matter what.

  But looking at her, trying to be as honest-to-God real with myself as I can, before I fuck our lives up even more, I have to say I’m not sure. I think I might have made more excuses, told myself the job was too dangerous, that I might leave her a young widow, that it wasn’t fair to her to always have to worry about where I was and what was happening to me, if I’d come home or not at the end of the day.

  Because the hard truth is that it wasn’t my life that I thought wasn’t good enough for Rain. It was me.

  And I still don’t feel good enough for her. I’d told myself all these years that I left her so as not to drag her down with my shit, but look what happened. Now she’s trapped with a man that April thinks is abusing her, who, at the very least, I can see with my own two goddamn eyes doesn’t love her. I’m in the position of fucking his cousin to try and get information for the FBI while trying to bring him to justice—and Rain is caught up in all of it.

  It’s not my fault she wound up with Vincent, but it sure as hell feels like my fault that all the rest of this is happening now. If only I’d let them take me off of the case when my father died, then—

  Then what, Zach? Some other agent would be sitting in this chair right now, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be going back and forth about the best way to handle all this so that Rain doesn’t get hurt. He’d just be thrilled he gets to fuck not one beautiful woman but two. He’d be in that pool right now buttering her up and working her into bed so she’d flip on Vincent, and he could get this case wrapped up ASAP and collect his shiny new promotion.

  If I weren’t here, there wouldn’t be anyone to protect Rain. No one with her best interests in mind, just the best interest of the mission. I know that’s true.

  So what the fuck do I do?

  “Chase?” Rain is looking at me curiously from her end of the pool, probably wondering why I’m sitting there staring off like some kind of idiot.

 
; “Yeah.” I stand up then, grateful that all that thinking at least made my hard-on calm down for a second. “I’m just gonna go grab some trunks.”

  As I walk through the house, I can hear raised voices from Vincent’s study. I feel another momentary flare of resentment that my task is to try to work Rain over, to manipulate her or even seduce her, and not find a place in that room gathering actual intel. It feels cheap that my job is to flatter and fuck the women, not do real detective work.

  “Chase.” April’s voice floats towards me as I reach the bottom of the stairs, and I stop in my tracks. Well, it doesn’t so much float as smack me in the side of the face, even talking low enough not to be heard; April still sounds like a fucking drill sergeant.

  My “name” on her lips sure sounds a hell of a lot less attractive than when Rain says it.

  But the truth is, I don’t want to hear Rain say that stupid fucking name at all. I hated having to drill it into her that night at her party, act as if it were the most important thing in the world to me when in fact, I’d love nothing more than to hear my real name on Rain’s lips again, to hear her whisper it the way she did that last afternoon, breathless and aching and completely, utterly in love with me.

  “I’ve got another task for you,” April says, her voice flat. I can tell she doesn’t think much of the job I’m doing so far, but at the moment, I’m having a hard time caring. To be frank, I don’t think much of the job I’ve been given.

  “Let me guess, I’m supposed to seduce…Gianna? I’m afraid she’s a little old for my taste.”

  April’s expression isn’t amused in the slightest. “We don’t have time for the chip on your shoulder, Chase,” she says flatly.

  I hate how she always puts that emphasis on my name, like she’s reminding me of my purpose here. It feels kind of like she’s mocking me, even if she doesn’t mean to. I fucking hate feeling like I’m being used and manipulated, especially by the people who are supposed to have my back.