by A. Zavarelli
“Sure, champ.”
Fucking asshole.
He walks away and disappears from the room and I’m trying to strategize when there’s another voice inside of my ear a moment later. A different voice. A husky voice.
“What’s the craic, sweetheart?” Rory asks. “You planning to fuck up that douchebag tonight or what?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I hiss.
He nods towards another guy across the bar. An unmistakably Russian guy who I’ve seen before.
Alexei.
He’s sitting with two other Russian guys and since when do the fucking Vory do business here?
My paranoia is ripe and I’m annoyed and nothing is going the way it should right now.
“You need to leave.” I tell Rory. “Now.”
Instead, he sits down beside me. In Royce’s seat. And Royce is a fed and Rory can’t be seen here with me right now and… fuck.
“Sweetheart?” he asks. “Are ye alright? You’ve gone pale as a sheet.”
“No, I’m not alright,” I bark at him. “You need to leave. Now. You’re fucking everything up.”
He grabs my stool and yanks it closer to him, pinning me between his legs.
“I don’t want ye doing this shite anymore,” he says.
His voice is low, the usual humor absent. It isn’t the first time he’s tried to get me to stop. But Rory doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know anything about me. And even if he is one of the few people I can actually deal with in small doses, right now he’s about to screw us both.
Alexander has always been the end goal. The culmination of my efforts and my revenge. I’ve waited for this opportunity. I’ve sacrificed and bled for this opportunity. And he’s about to destroy everything with five seconds of stupidity.
“If you aren’t going to leave.” I stand up. “Then I will.”
He grabs me by the arms and yanks me closer still, breathing me in. He gets high off me when he does that, and I’ll never understand it.
“Quit being such a bitch,” he whispers. “Ye know I like it.”
“No, you don’t.”
The vein in his neck is pulsing and his biceps are tense, and that’s how I know he’s lying. But when I reach down and grab his cock through his jeans, it reaches a boiling point.
“You fucking hate it,” I tell him. “You hate it so much that you’re sitting here with me pinned between your legs and your cock isn’t even hard. So, tell me again how much you like it.”
He grabs my wrist and pulls it away from him before releasing me. And just as I hoped, I’ve pissed him off to the point of no return.
“Go the fuck home, Scarlett,” he orders. “For once in your bloody life, think of someone other than yourself.”
His words cut me, but I don’t let him know it. And when he walks away, my panic leaves with him. It doesn’t last long though.
Because when I glance across the bar, Alexander still isn’t here.
And I can’t see him anywhere.
All because of fucking Rory and his misguided attempts to court me like an eighteenth-century romance novel.
Fuck him.
Fuck him all the way to hell.
I snatch up my purse and scrap anything to do with this bar or my revenge or anything else tonight. There is nobody else that will satisfy the demon inside of me now. Not after seeing Alexander and having him slip through my fingers.
I ride the elevator up to my floor and the room where I stashed my bag. I slip the key into the door and step inside, but then I stop.
Something doesn’t feel right.
The curtain is closed, the way that I left it, but the light isn’t on the way that I left it. My instincts are speaking to me again, and this time, I listen.
Or at least I try to.
I pivot on my heel and reach for my knife, but when I turn for the door, there’s a flash of movement beside me. Something reaches out and tangles in my hair and slams my head into the wall. Once is all it takes for me to drop the knife.
Twice, and I’m out cold.
When I wake up, I’m slumped in a chair. Legs dangling off the edge, heels haphazardly kicked off on the floor beneath me.
My head throbs, and there’s something dry and crusty on my skin. Blood, I imagine, but I’m alive so it can’t be too bad. Still, every part of me feels like I’ve been punched with a brick and I’m nauseous, but my clothes are intact.
When I slide a hand down my thigh, the knife that is always there isn’t this time.
“Sorry, babe.” Alexander draws out the word in the way that only a douchebag can. “Had to take your toy away from you. At least for a little while.”
His face explodes into my vision when he sits on the bed across from me. He’s too close and I can still smell him- that Armani cologne- and I really think I’m going to be sick.
My eyes bounce around the room and I try to find comfort in the familiar surroundings.
In this hotel room, I’ve always been in control.
I need that control. I crave it.
But right now, I don’t have it.
Alexander smiles at me and tips the tumbler of scotch in his hand as a toast to the reunion. It’s crystal, and it’s fucking ridiculous because I know that glass didn’t come with the room and I wonder what other props he brought with him tonight.
He always was a try-hard.
“Let me start by properly introducing myself,” he tells me. “I’m known by Royce now. Royce Carrington. And I’m an agent for the federal bureau of investigation.”
He flashes a badge at me, which doesn’t mean shit to my blurry eyes, and waits for me to say something. He wants me to be impressed. Nervous. Intimidated.
I am nothing because he hit my head so goddamned hard I can’t think straight. Spots fill my vision when I close my eyes and take a breath, and Royce sighs.
“Nothing to say, Scarlett? Really? After all this time?”
I blink at him and squint as my eyes narrow in on his face. He looks more like him now. In this room and in this moment. That boy that I once knew, so desperate for approval from those around him.
He can flash his badge around and proclaim himself a different man with a different name, but he’s still that freshman boy. He’s still Alexander Carrington.
It was set in stone before I ever had a chance to know him. Our parents decided our fates long before we could, shoving us together. My mother told me were destined to marry. And I was fourteen, and I didn’t know what my favorite kind of ice cream was, let alone what I wanted in a future husband.
I wasn’t on board with it and I told her I’d never be on board with it.
But like all things concerning my mother, I came around, eventually. Alexander put in the work. He did everything right. He escorted me at cotillion. He carried my books and said everything that I wanted to hear. He spoon-fed me bullshit, and I ate it up like the stupid girl I was.
Until that night. Until the night it all went horribly awry.
“I see the questions in your eyes,” he says. “I’ll save you the trouble, Ten. It’s me. Your eyes are not deceiving you. However, I have to tell you, I thought mine definitely were the first time I saw a photo of you. I couldn’t believe it. Not until I saw you in the flesh. But it really is you. You’re really alive.”
The smile on his face is not full of fond memories. It’s twisted and dark and a carbon copy of the same smile he wore that night. When he and four of his society brothers altered my life irrevocably. I wanted to believe it was the drugs. Or the alcohol.
Or anything other than the truth.
He hates me. Has always hated me. But he hid it well. The only thing I could never understand is why.
My voice is scratchy, my head still fuzzy, but I’m not that girl anymore, and he needs to know that.
“I’m surprised the FBI let you in,” I tell him. “Given your father’s giant clusterfuck of a Ponzi scheme. I suppose that’s the reason for the shiny new name, huh? I can only im
agine how well that went over back home.”
His lips pucker and I’ve left a bad taste in his mouth, and it feels good. So, I go on. Because I never could fall in line.
“I bet you haven’t been able to show your face on the Upper East Side again. Tragic, really. That you’ve had to resort to a blue-collar job. I know it was always your dream to take over your father’s legacy. But I guess prison isn’t quite as glamorous as fortune 500.”
His vicious reaction shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, but some things never change. He backhands me twice and then seizes me by the throat, choking the air from me as he leans down into my face.
“You were the one who couldn’t show your face again,” he snarls. “My perfect little whore girlfriend. The cum dumpster for Marquardt Prep’s finest. Did you like having those cocks inside of you, princess? Because I’m sure it’d be no trouble to get the gang together again. For old times’ sake.”
I claw at his fingers until he shoves me away in disgust.
He knocks back the rest of his scotch while I catch my breath and imagine plunging my knife between his eyes. There’s no question in my mind now.
I was right all along.
He isn’t sorry. None of them are sorry and they are all assholes and they all need to die.
“I’ve been watching you for a while now, Ten,” he tells me once he’s calmed down. “Watching the way you operate.”
I don’t want to believe him. Because that would mean that I’ve been remiss in my number one priority. Looking out for predators.
And this man is the worst kind of predator.
The same boy who led me to my doom that night. I was the fool who walked hand in hand with him.
The years haven’t changed him. He’s not playing by bureau rules, FBI agent or not. And I don’t have to be a psychic to know this is bad. Really bad.
He retrieves a file from the table and yanks out a photo, dangling it between his fingers. It’s me. Last week. Following Storm and my target into the hotel room where she tortured and tattooed him.
I swallow, but the lump in my throat doesn’t budge.
“I don’t suppose I need to tell you how many felonies you committed that night,” he says. “Do I?”
There is no negotiating with terrorists. But he leaves me little choice at this point.
“What do you want?”
“That man was the son of a senator,” he answers. “Did you know that?”
I didn’t know that.
Fucking hell.
“You’re an intelligent girl, Ten. Or do you really prefer Scarlett now? It suits you. It suits the street whore you’ve become.”
He pauses, and smirks, and waits for a reaction. But fuck him and his dirty file and I need to get the hell out of this room. He grabs another piece of paper from the file and scans it with his eyes, reading off the information as he goes.
“The media would have a field day with this one. Given your family’s name, your affluent background and social status. The best prep school that mommy and daddy could buy. The girl on the fast track to Harvard, by all accounts. An unblemished academic record- until your disappearance. Your extracurricular activities make Mother Teresa look like a slacker. So, you can just imagine how many circulars would love to splash that headline across their front pages. Missing Deb turning tricks in Boston’s seedy underground. They’d probably call you an addict, for dramatic effect. Speculate on your family and your childhood and tear your world apart.”
He smiles, and his teeth are so white it’s creepy. Probably at least twenty grand in that mouth alone.
“What do you want?” I repeat.
He sighs and discards the paper beside him, leaning back to examine me.
“I’ll tell you what I don’t want, Ten. I really don’t want to tell Senator Winslowe that you’re the girl he has numerous PI’s sniffing around for right now. Because we both know what would happen then. Between him and the Praetorians … I’m honestly not sure which is worse.”
My mouth is dry and my heart’s beating too fast, and I know now, the direction he is heading with all of this.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” he quotes Robert Frost, because he’s a fucking asshole and he knows I used to like that poem and he wants to ruin it for me like he ruined everything else.
“Which one will you take, Scarlett?”
“Tell me what my options are.”
There is victory in his eyes and his smile, but he hasn’t won yet.
“Ethan, Trip, Quinn, and Duke. You remember them, right?”
“How could I ever forget them?”
There is the tiniest of ticks in his jaw, and it’s not quite regret, but something else.
Jealousy?
“I’m sure they want the past to stay buried just as much as you do,” he tells me. “Now that they are well and truly successful members of society. So, here’s the deal. You walk out on me today, and each of them, along with Senator Winslowe gets your name and address hand delivered by the end of the day. Should you be lucky enough to survive the week, I take you in on the numerous felonies the DA will happily indict you with based on my investigation into your activities.”
There are no words left in my mouth or in my head. Only questions. A frantic search for answers. But there is no time for Q&A because he’s not done yet.
“Option two. I think you’re going to like option two better, Scarlett. See in this one… you get to live.”
“And let me guess what you get out of it,” I scoff.
Alexander’s jaw ticks again. His eyes are bottomless pits and he is vacant. There is nothing inside of him but darkness and I want to scream at him because he infected me with it too.
“You destroyed me,” he says. “You were mine, Scarlett. MINE.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” I ask. “Because you didn’t see it that way when you let all of your buddies have a go at me.”
He shrugs it off, and he’s back to casual again. Unruffled.
“Give me a fucking break,” he says. “You knew there were sacrifices to be made. I only did what needed to be done. And it worked. I got into the Praetorians and you got into Birds of a Feather. And had you stayed the fucking course like you were supposed to, you’d be a Harvard grad by now with a belly full of my first child. Instead, you’re nothing more than a common street whore.”
He gets up and paces as he rants, and he’s even more fucking deluded than I ever could have imagined.
“Surely you don’t think I’m still going to have a life with you.”
He pauses, a slick smile spreading across his lips.
“What I think,” he answers. “Is that you’re going to do whatever I tell you to. Because what other option do you have?”
There is no argument to be had. He’s a federal fucking agent. Which I don’t doubt for a second was not a strategic move on his part. He’s been planning this for years. A decade, even. And there is nothing I can do right now but get out of here and figure out my options.
“How did you know?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a moment, thoughtful. Unsure how much he wants to reveal. But I need to understand his motives before I can plan a counterattack.
“I went back,” he says. “A few days later. I couldn’t…”
His voice is softer now, and for a second he almost seems human again.
“I couldn’t think of you lying there like that. In that pile of leaves and dirt while the animals picked over you.”
“Then I guess you shouldn’t have left me there.”
The mask falls back over his face and his eyes are blank when they meet mine again. “The boys and I agreed, for our own protection, that you needed to be buried. But you weren’t there.”
I grind my toes into the carpet to calm my nerves. If they knew I was alive, then there’s a good chance they’ve been preparing for my return.
“I couldn’t tell them,” Alexander answers my unspoken thought. “I wanted to keep it to mysel
f. Just the idea that you were out there somewhere… I liked that. So, I told them that I buried you. And nobody would ever find you again.”
“Except for you,” I whisper.
“Except for me,” he agrees.
“Tell me what you want.”
“Despite what I said earlier, I do want you to come out of hiding. To reveal to the world that Tenly Albright is not dead, but alive and well. And you will do it on my arm. As my fiancé. We’ll hire a publicist to spin the story. We will make all of this go away.”
He makes a gesture with his arm as if to encompass the entire city of Boston. And it all makes sense now. His insane request. This pathetic attempt at a reunion. His stalking me and his blackmail and the dying ember of hope in his eyes.
He isn’t here to redeem himself.
He thinks I am his redemption.
“You want back in,” I murmur.
And then I laugh. I laugh too hard because it’s so fucking pathetic, and I can’t help myself and he’s angry and I really need to stop… but what the actual fuck?
“You think this will win them back over,” I say. “Because of what your father did. You are an outcast. You’ve been an outcast for all these years and you are still trying to worm your way back in?”
“Fuck you,” he spits. “You have no idea what happened because you couldn’t hack that world. You ran off and fucked me up in the head and abandoned everyone who ever cared about you.”
“And now you want to ride my coattails on the way back in. Using the Albright name and the publicity to polish your shiny new reputation.”
He lunges at me again, and it’s not pretty, his rage. He yanks my hair and shoves my head back and squeezes my face in his hand. And I can see it now. That he would crush me if he could. If he wasn’t planning to use my name as his way back in, he would do it right this time.
I would stay dead.
“I will tell you how it’s going to be, you little bitch. You’re going to earn this small mercy from me, and you’re going to do it on your hands and knees. You will be my wife, or you will die. Those are your only options.”
He waits for me to respond. Expecting me to argue, probably. When I don’t say anything, he shakes me.
“Do you fucking understand me?”