by Sam Crescent
So he simply ignored the image staring right back at him. His father had set up deals that Draven had no choice but to see through. They’d been strong, but the men his father dealt with had been stronger.
It was one of the many reasons Draven finally killed him.
He walked into his office and went straight for the good whiskey. No glass needed as he drank straight from the bottle. The burn was a welcome relief from the pain.
He kept on drinking, wanting that blissful peace that would come over him. Staring across his office, he saw the picture of his father. He kept it hanging on the wall so he’d feel the rage the man never failed to inspire within him.
It’s what kept him going when deals went sour and he had no choice but to help. Tillie would become a problem. She owned clubs up and down the country. She was a wealthy mob man’s mistress, and he liked for her to put on a show. Since taking trafficked women, her clubs had become sought after. Men and women alike enjoyed having no rules, enjoyed inflicting pain.
The girls often didn’t survive. Most of the boys lasted longer.
It was a deal his father had struck.
The mob would tear through Stonewall and leave nothing standing. He still had the town to consider. It was what Alan had relished when he told him the deal that would take them to the next level.
It had been the final deal that had brought Alan down. Draven had taken over in the hope of ending it. He’d only become more embroiled within it.
Running his hand across his face, he went to his father’s image and set about destroying it, smashing the glass, not caring where the shards fell, and making sure there was nothing left.
With the image in pieces, he threw them onto the fire, and went back to his drink.
Blood coated his hands, and he wiped them down his shirt. The blood stained the pristine white fabric.
He kept on drinking until he started to feel numb, and after finishing one bottle, he moved onto the second.
Halfway down the second, he knew he needed to go and see Harper.
To tell her that he loved her.
He walked up to his bedroom, and when she wasn’t there, he went straight to her room. Not the one where he’d killed a man, but the one where he’d fucked her into oblivion.
Draven wasn’t quiet as he opened the door. It slammed against the wall, and Harper sat up. She had been lying down in sleep, and he saw her eyes were all puffy, even with his double vision.
“Hello, my queen,” he said.
“Draven, what do you want?” she asked.
“You’re right. I can’t look in the mirror. Not unless I’ve got you standing in front of me or your pussy is on display.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Maybe. I’m a little drunk, but I need to say this to you. It’s really, really important, so, shh.”
“Draven?”
“Shh.” He pressed a finger to his lips. “We don’t have time to talk. Not now. I don’t look in the mirror. I don’t like what I see. I’ve never liked what I see.” He touched his chest. “I’ve got a darkness inside, and it’s spreading. I can’t control it, and I want to. I want to make it stop, but I can’t. It’s always there. Always lurking and waiting to come out. I saw it in you, Harper. You feel pain just like me. When you left, I was torn apart. I didn’t want to feel anymore, so I did his bidding. I did whatever he asked for because it was easy. I didn’t have to think of all that I lost, and I lost you. I did everything to get you. Got Axel, Jett, and Buck on board. I knew that four of us against our fathers, we’d win. I didn’t win. I lost, big time.”
“What are you saying?”
“You can run. You can run a thousand miles, and even a hundred million miles, but I will find you.”
“You’re drunk, Draven.”
“I know I’m drunk, and I know that this is going to be the only time I say this. I can’t let you go. I don’t want to let you go. I know you hate me right now, and you’re justified in that. I love you. It’s why I can’t let you go. Even after everything I’ve done and we’ve been through together, I love you. I think you’re the best person in my fucking world, and I can’t let you go. It makes me selfish. I don’t want to lock you in my tower and throw away the key. I want to keep you protected. To love you. To make sure I never break your heart like your dad did to your mom. There’s a lot I want to do with you and for you. I can’t lose you, Harper. I can handle everything else but losing you.”
With that, he fell to the floor in sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Harper blew across her coffee to try and cool it down. She wanted to be out of the house before Draven finally woke up.
She tried to pull him onto the bed, but he was far too big and heavy. She ended up putting a pillow beneath his head, and some blankets over him.
He’d also snored.
In all the time they were together, she couldn’t remember him ever snoring, and the sound had kept her awake all night long.
She looked up as Ian entered the kitchen. It had been a few weeks since she last saw him. He smiled at her, and she simply watched him.
“Is Draven around?” he asked.
“Do you know everything that goes on in Draven’s life?”
“Harper?”
“You know all the business deals he’s part of. Do you know the complete truth about Hannah?” she asked.
“I know a great deal of it.”
She chuckled. “I knew that their parents were into it, but I figured Draven would move on from it.” She looked toward her father. “He’s not. He’s in it deeper than his father, and now he wants me to marry him.”
Harper hadn’t put on the ring. She’d seen it on the floor on her way downstairs, and had gone and put it in his office so he knew she didn’t steal it.
“I know it looks bad right now.”
“It doesn’t just look bad. It is bad. I can’t marry him. Not like this. Not knowing that … he’s this person. I don’t want to do this. There’s a lot I can take, but … people not being allowed to have a choice. I can’t. That’s too far.”
“I know it’s hard.”
She burst out laughing. “Hard. You think this is just hard? It’s fucking painful.” Tears sprang to her eyes as she looked at him. “I do love him, and it kills me. I can’t do this. I won’t.”
“I thought this when I first joined the team.”
“I really don’t want this talk.”
“I had your mother and you to take care of. Bills mounting up, and this job. I was in heaven, but I knew it was a bad choice, and still, I took it. I learned to look the other way.”
“You ended up divorcing Mom and being with a woman half your age.”
“You know I didn’t want to fall for Hannah. She wasn’t your mother.”
“You’re right, she wasn’t,” Harper said.
“But Hannah didn’t judge me when I came here. She didn’t point a finger and tell me I was a bad man or that I’d sold myself. She didn’t constantly remind me that I fucked up.”
“So she became the better option. No offense, you sound pathetic.” Harper stood up and dumped her coffee out.
“I know this is hard.”
“You don’t have a fucking clue how hard this is. I’m such an idiot. You think this is easy for me? I love Draven. Love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone else in my life, and yet, here I am, considering leaving. I’ve got to go. I can’t stay here knowing when he goes and does his deals, someone will die.”
“It gets easier,” Ian said.
“For you, for others. Not for me. Not with this.” In her mind, she thought about one of the girls, wanting a better life. Harper had convinced her to follow her, that an entire world was waiting for her and she just needed to have faith, to grasp it. Alan wouldn’t let a single girl slip through his fingers. Whenever he called, there was always someone he wanted.
Harper needed some fresh air, and she left through the kitchen door, finding little peace in the fresh air as it brush
ed across her face.
Guards were out in force, and she walked right on past them, going to the cells.
She didn’t go inside, not today. Harper paused and said a little prayer for all the women who’d come before her and had died here.
She moved on through the gardens, trying to find some peace, anything that would help her deal with the pain exploding inside her chest.
“I thought I’d find you out here.”
She turned to see Axel walking toward her. The first thing she noticed was the bruise on one part of his face.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Draven likes to make sure I know who is boss.”
“He did this.”
“I didn’t exactly defend myself, and I probably deserved it.”
“You didn’t deserve this.”
“You’re sweet, you know that, right?”
“I’m not sweet.” She reached out about to touch his face, but he caught her wrist, holding it tightly.
“He had a right to hurt me. I told you where to find them, and I set this chain of events off. I’m willing to pay the price.”
“According to you and Draven, I did.”
Axel waved his hand through the air. “Come on, there’s something I want to show you.”
He held her hand and started to lead her down one set of gardens she hadn’t explored.
“Where are we going? You know I can get shot from leaving the grounds.”
“You’ll be safe with me, I promise.”
He kept on walking, and they had to have crossed some kind of border.
“Talk to me, Axel. You’re scaring me.”
“Well, in my search for everything to do with Alan, I went through many of his well-known hiding places. You see, as kids, we had a tendency to spy. When we were about five, we all wanted to become spies. We thought we were so clever. We’d sneak into areas of the house where private conversations were happening.”
“I bet you guys saw and heard a lot of stuff you wished you hadn’t.”
“Bingo. That we did. Anyway, we’d been seeing a lot of shit for a lot of years, and so one day, imagine my surprise when I found that Alan liked to hide certain things. Be it murder weapons, or blackmail tapes.”
“He actually had blackmail tapes on everyone?”
“You don’t get high in this world without a bit of blackmail. You ever wonder why Draven, me, Buck, and Jett could get away with so much crap?”
“I didn’t really think about it.”
He shrugged. “It’s not a lot to think about. Our fathers had dirt on all the town’s people. The politicians, the cops, and they used it to keep them in check and all of us in line.”
“I still don’t understand why you’re telling me this.”
“Well, I had forgotten about Alan’s hiding place because many years ago, I believed it was haunted.”
“This is getting weird now, Axel.”
“Oh, I know, believe me, I know. Anyway, just at the peak of the cliff, there’s a path that leads into a cave. Do you know any of the town history?”
“No.”
“Oh, good, I can tell you a story then as we walk.”
“This is crazy,” she said.
“Not completely crazy as an old man filming everything in his office and hiding it, but Alan was never normal. So, story time about our town. Many, many years ago, Stonewall was nothing more than a little, quaint town. They didn’t have supermarkets and banks and stuff. They had fields upon fields of cattle and food. Farming. It’s how they as a town survived. So, anyway, one year the town suffered a huge famine. Most of the cattle died, and the crops, they didn’t grow. Back then, they didn’t think it was down to the fact it was too hot or too dry. Anyway, the elders in the town knew they had in some way upset the weather gods, I’m going to call it.”
“Is this actually true?”
“I have no idea if it’s true. I wasn’t born back then. This is the story I was told.”
“By who?”
“My dad. Let me finish.”
“Fine. Fine.”
They kept on walking. Axel didn’t let go of her hand.
“Like dirty old men do, they decided the only way to appease their weather god was a virgin sacrifice. You know, the good old reliable woman’s blood. I still don’t get it, but I digress. The elders convinced the town that the gods would pick a willing sacrifice. The sun beamed down and ta-da, that woman was their virgin sacrifice. Now, any good town story has to have a lot of dirt, so they brought the woman up to this cave. She walked willingly as well, thinking she was doing this for her town’s people. So very noble and fucking shit if you ask me. They laid her on the platform within this cave, and according to the rules, they sacrificed her. However, the story I was told, the men couldn’t resist her virgin flesh and took her for themselves, each raping her. The six elders took their turn, spilling her virgin blood before slicing open her wrists and draining her. Of course, her neck got sliced in the end.”
Harper didn’t like this story one bit.
“The next year, a wonderful harvest. Well done, old chaps. You did it. So Stonewall had a couple of really good seasons until, like the weather predicts, it didn’t. Another sacrifice. Then they decided to guarantee a good harvest every year, they had to pick a girl every single year. They’d take her up to the cave, rape her, kill her, drain her, burn her, and move on to the next girl. Until, the girls started to realize what was happening. Personally, I think the elders got a little cocky and talked openly about it, and one of the girls told the others. There were no virgins in the village.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I’m not. It is kind of cool. They spited the village, and the women banded together to kill the elders, on the exact table they had slaughtered so many innocent girls. So that is the end of my tale. Only, the reason I never came here and Draven, Buck, and Jett never did, we were told it was haunted by the ghosts of those dead girls, and if you had hurt a woman or female in any way, they would know. Not only would they know, you’d be dead. Needless to say, to a couple of young boys, we didn’t exactly want to plunge to our deaths.”
“You never went to the cave.”
“Exactly. As kids, we didn’t go because we were fucking scared. By the time we were teenagers, I was told the cave had collapsed, and was fucking dangerous. I wasn’t going to go and risk my life like that. Then, three days ago, I figured why the fuck not. I’d tried everywhere else. And I discovered the cave hadn’t fallen in on itself in any way.” They paused outside of the cave, and Harper didn’t even want to look over the ledge. Axel pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shined it into the room. “This was the only place I didn’t look. The last place I even thought about.”
With the flashlight shining into the cave, Harper didn’t like being here. However, right at the end of the cave, she saw the files.
“You’re really serious right now, Alan hid his files here?”
“This cave is reached from my house. No one can have access to it unless they enter my land. I mean, Draven’s land. You get the gist of it. My dad was many things in life, but he trusted Alan. They were a team, and they hid a great deal of stuff here, together. I doubt my father even realized Alan wanted it all to himself. His … complacency killed him. So, I started looking. The tapes are labeled by date, and seeing as I remember the day you left so clearly, I was able to locate it.” He went to a box, opened it up, and pulled out a tape. “Here you go,” he said.
“Have you watched it?”
“No. I’ve not watched anything,” he said. “I figured we’ll take it home and have a little movie show with Draven. Unless you want me to do the deal today.” Axel held a gun up. “What’s it going to be?”
“I want to go and watch the tape.” She didn’t even hesitate, holding her salvation in her hands.
“Come on, let’s go.”
Harper followed Axel out of the cave with one glance back. She didn’t know if the story was t
rue, but her heart went out to the girls if it was.
Axel didn’t speak as they made their way back to the house.
Once inside, Harper went to Draven’s office to the wall where she’d seen the old- fashioned VCR. Axel had offered to go and get Draven, to fill him in on the details.
Just as she was about to put the tape in, they entered the office. Draven looked a mess. His hair was all over the place, and he looked a little green from last night’s drinking.
She turned back to the television, grabbed the remote, and moved toward them.
“So, when we’re ready, I think Harper you should get on your knees and face the television,” Axel said, holding out his gun again.
“You’re not going to kill her,” Draven said.
“A deal’s a deal. For Buck and for Jett.”
“No.”
Harper sank to her knees. “I’ve got nothing to hide.” She clasped her hands in front of her and waited.
Draven took the remote from her hand, and she watched as the screen came to life.
She stared at the screen. Alan sat at his desk. The date was in the corner. He was on the phone or on the computer.
Finally, when it was time, Harper closed her eyes. She didn’t need to see this to remember.
The volume was turned up loud, so they could all hear it.
“Hear me properly, I can kill you. I can make the next few years of your life unbearable, but I have a feeling I’ve got a way of getting what I want, by removing you from the picture and you keeping your life.”
“What?” This was her scream as he let go of her throat. She touched her neck, recalling how easily he could have killed her.
“I want you gone.”
“Not going to happen.”
His smile. Always that same wicked smile that played inside her nightmares every single night. “I want you gone. Your bags packed, no trace of you ever. As far as my son and his boys are concerned you skipped town because you couldn’t handle being known as his whore.”
“He’ll know differently,” She’d been such a fool.
“You’ve run away. Gone. You’ve run at the first opportunity.”