His Cinderella: A Possessive Dark Romance (Mayhem Ever After Book 3)

by Vivi Paige

  I remained frozen in place for what seemed an eternity after Ella fled from my declaration of love. But I was utterly discombobulated by her reaction.

  It hadn’t been planned. Not in the least. I just looked into her eyes, so beautiful in the moonlight, and those fateful words came burbling up to the surface, issuing from my mouth like a geyser. Had I scalded Ella with my font of passion? Why would she break into tears? Did she not love me back?

  I decided that had to be the cause of her crying, but I didn’t want her to flee into the woods and be injured. I’ll give chase, I thought. I would chase her down and keep her safe and tell her it was okay if she didn’t love me back.

  I ran to the edge of the roof, hoping to catch a glimpse of where she might have gone, and got far more than I had bargained for or even imagined. A pair of robust, shaven-headed men wearing ill-fitting tuxes manhandled a limp and lifeless Ella into the back of a nondescript, gray, four-wheel-drive extended cab pickup.

  I screamed her name and rushed for the steps. Even as I turned the first bend, I knew I would be too late. It was bad manners for the host of a soiree like the one I held that night to go about armed. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do when I reached the ground if they happened to have guns, which they likely did.

  As I turned on the second landing, one of the men rolled down the window and sneered right at my face. He held something out, small and shimmering in the moonlight.

  A glass slipper. My gut bottomed out, a feeling of palpable dread darkening my thoughts. They knew about her new tattoo and perhaps much more. This was not a random act, I realized.

  He tossed the slipper onto the steps leading up to the manor. It shattered into a hundred pieces, each one catching and refracting the slivery moonlight. They crunched under my foot as I dashed into the lane after the truck as it roared away. Where in the hell were the guards?

  I chased the truck until I could no longer see the tail lights, screaming at them to come back, to give her back because she was mine. I stumbled over a clump of grass neglected by the groundskeepers and sprawled onto my belly in the gravel lane. I slammed my fists into the ground in a fit like an angry toddler. Continuing to spew threats and invectives, I dug my fingernails through the gravel, disregarding any pain and clawing at the earth itself as it I would make it pay for their sins.

  “Deryk, hey, Deryk.” Peter jogged up next to me. “Get up. Come on, man. Don’t let anybody see you losing your shit like this. You’re a Mayne.”

  “She’s gone,” I said in a guttural voice. My throat felt thickened with rage, so much that I could barely speak. “She’s gone.”

  “We’ll get her back,” Peter assured me. “Come on. Get up. Get up.”

  He helped me to my feet just as Will joined us. Will may have been the biggest and strongest, but he was also the slowest—though not in the head.

  “Is he hurt?” Will asked Peter, apparently believing I was too hysterical to reason with. Perhaps I was.

  “I don’t think so,” Peter turned to me. “Are you hurt, Deryk?”

  “I’m fine,” I told them both, having recovered some of my composure. My initial terror and panic had turned to cold anger. I would find the men who dared steal the love of my life and punish them—and not in a good way, like in the playroom. I would punish them as Lucifer punished sinners in hell. I would get Ella back and they would all be dead. “We have to go after them.”

  “Where in the fuck are the guys watching the gate?” Peter looked about.

  Will shook his head, lips a thin, tight line. “Beyond caring how pissed off you are,” Will said flatly. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a crumpled paper. “Found this in one of their mouths.”

  I snatched it out of his hand. Standard ransom note bullshit. Thirty million dollars by midnight tomorrow or she dies. Instructions to follow. Not one iota of evidence to tie it to any single person or organization.

  “Do you think it’s the Olafs?” Peter asked.

  “No,” Will said. “The Crocodile wouldn’t risk doing something this overt because he knows it would start a war.”

  “Then who?” I asked, my gut now a hollow pit of despair.

  “Someone either too stupid or too angry to know or care that they just signed their own death warrant,” Will murmured. “I say we call Lucy. He’ll figure out who’s behind this.”

  “Lucian is kind of pissed at me right now.” Peter scratched the back of his head. “I’d rather not be around when you talk to him.”

  “What the fuck did you do now?” Will sighed, rolling his eyes.

  “I gave the Jolly Roger back to Belle.”

  “You fucking idiot.”

  “Look who’s talking. At least I didn’t take on thirty Russians with a popgun.”

  “It was only a dozen, and it was a nine mil. More than enough in my hands.”

  “Hey,” I interrupted the brothers’ bickering. “Quit comparing dicks. My girl’s gone. She’s gone, guys.”

  My voice quivered, bordering on hysterics again, and Peter put his arm around my shoulder. “Hold it together, Deryk,” he said. “Let’s go back to the house. You call the old man. Will and I’ll disperse the party guests. They’ll understand.”

  “Don’t let Joe leave,” I said suddenly, anxious for the Native American’s brand of justice.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. He wouldn’t leave if I told him to, anyway. Only Lucian could keep him from indulging his sadistic thirst for violence and mayhem.”

  “Will, do you want in on this?” I asked my cousin.

  Will shook his head. “Sorry, Deryk. But they might be targeting all the Mayne women. I want to stay with Scarlett.”

  “How about this,” Peter said. “Me and Belle will take her to the New Jersey safehouse, hit the mattresses.”

  “Just one gun?” Will said.

  “Belle’s a hell of a shot, man, every bit as capable in a fight as me,” Peter said. “And we’ll take Jimmy the Bull along, too. Does that put your mind at ease?”

  “I guess so,” Will said. “All right, Deryk. I’m your man. Go make the call while I head back to my place and pick up the tools of the trade. You been keeping up your target practice?”

  “Not so much,” I said ashamedly.

  “No big deal. Lucian always said you inherited the Eye.”

  “The Eye is a bunch of bullshit,” Peter countered.

  “Don’t talk shit about the Eye, Pete,” Will warned. “You’ve got it too. If you start acting flip, it can be taken away in a heartbeat.”

  I left them in the dust as I jogged back to the manor. I didn’t care about who was more of a shooting prodigy than whom. All I wanted was Ella back in my arms. I feared for her greatly. Kidnapping victims had a fifty-fifty shot at getting out alive, even when the ransom was paid. I knew this because we ran more than a few such operations ourselves. Shit, that’s how Will met his lady Scarlett, and if that didn’t fuck with your head, what would?

  I headed up the front steps to the roof and then down to the third floor so as to avoid having to talk to anyone. I dialed Lucian’s number, rather than texting first, which is the protocol. It’s our way of alerting to an emergency without also alerting the FBI agents or rivals or whoever who could be listening in.

  Someone had to be watching in order to send that chilling message with the glass slipper. I ran my mind over our enemies list but couldn’t think of any of them who would use kidnapping as their modus operandi, especially not against a woman who wasn’t even officially part of the Mayne firm, yet.

  Lucian picked up on the fourth ring. “What is it, Deryk?” he said, a lilt in his voice belying the somberness of the situation. “You do know it’s well after midnight. Yes?”

  “Ella was kidnapped, Dad.” I didn’t beat around the bush.

  Silence. I heard the squeak of his bedsprings. He really had been asleep. Drawers banged open in the background as he spoke again. “I’ll look into it. I’ll call you back soon. Be strong, Deryk. They wa
nt you flustered so you’ll make a mistake.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I sputtered.

  “Be strong. You’re a Mayne. And more importantly, you’re my son.”

  He ended the call, and I sank to the bed and held my head in my hands. The sheets still smelled like Ella. What if in the morning this smell was all I had to remember her by? How could the universe be so cruel, so diabolically sadistic, as to reunite us after so long only to have it end in tragedy?

  I was alternately seized by despondent depression and manic, violent vigor. I paced back and forth, punching at phantoms in the air and foaming at the mouth as I sputtered threats and epithets at those who dared take my love away.

  Then crashing to the floor in a sobbing fit, crying for my lost love.

  When my phone rang, I panicked because in my raging depressive fit, I had lost track of it. I found it far under the bed, scraping my back on the bedrail in a mad scramble to reach it.

  “Hello,” I said with a trembling voice.

  “Deryk, I’ve discovered who took Ella.” I wanted to feel relief at the knowledge, but the note of icy dread in Lucian’s tone kept me in suspense.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “A black ops mercenary unit who call themselves the Coachmen.”

  “The Coachmen? Wait a minute, weren’t they subject to a congressional investigation at one point?”

  “At several points. Their involvement in the Gulf was highly controversial, if I recall. I’ve used their services only twice, and on both occasions their lack of professionalism and needless bloodshed disappointed me greatly. Their leader still holds a grudge against us, I fear, for cutting them out of the business.”

  “If you know these guys so well, surely you know where they can be found,” I pointed out.

  “Well, they have a public headquarters and training center, several in fact, around the globe, but she wouldn’t be at any of those. She’d be in an off-the-books safehouse. Probably somewhere close.”

  I stood up suddenly, my voice tight when I spoke. “You know where they have her,” I breathed. “Tell me. Tell me now.”

  “I’m sorry, Deryk,” Lucian said. “But I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Tell. Me. Now.” I bellowed, spattering the phone with my spittle.

  “Deryk, if I tell you, you’re going to go off after them and get yourself killed. Damn it, son, I love you, but you’re not Will. You’re not a soldier.”

  “No, but I’ve got the Eye, right?” I countered. “I’ve hardly ever missed, even as a kid.”

  “The Eye is an urban legend, a story people in our line of work tell each other to alleviate boredom, nothing more. Deryk, you’re going to run the firm someday. You’re too important to risk.”

  “What do you want me to do? Just sit around while she’s in danger? I can’t do that, Dad.”

  “You’re going to have to learn to think like a leader, son. The president doesn’t pull the trigger. He makes a phone call and someone else launches the drone. You feel me?”

  “I have to find her, Dad,” I told him. “I have to. If these guys are mad at us, like you said, then paying the ransom will be like a death sentence to Ella.”

  Lucian sighed. “If I tell you, you have to promise not to go alone.”

  “I promise. I swear!”

  “Take Will for real. Is Joe there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perfect. With that Native American killing machine backing you up, I’m starting to feel a lot better. The Coachmen use an abandoned logging mill about six miles from the family cottage.”

  “Son of a bitch. I know where it is.” I was already moving for the hallway. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Don’t get yourself killed, Deryk. I hope she’s worth all this.”

  “She’s worth it, Dad. Believe me. She’s worth it.”

  I ended the call and ran downstairs, hollering for Navajo Joe. Will had better hurry back with the weapons.

  Tonight’s lover’s moon had just become a hunter’s moon. And this hunter would destroy his prey.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  My eyes snapped open, focusing on a black-carapaced knobby cricket inches from my face. Instead of being startled, relief flooded through me. Where I was, it was safe enough that the little insect felt confident being out in the open.

  “Hey, little guy,” I said in a thick, groggy voice. “Where are we?”

  “Wouldn’t it be a trip if he answered back?”

  I started and turned about to face a red-haired man with a handlebar mustache seated in a rustic wooden chair. The chair lacked a back, so he leaned against the edge of a splintered gray table. The man smiled, and despite my circumstances I relaxed a bit. It wasn’t the smile of a psychopath, but one seemed designed to put me at ease.

  “You know,” he said in a slight Southern accent, “all Jiminy Cricket-like?”

  When I didn’t respond, he frowned. I took a moment to take in the rest of my surroundings. I lay on a simple but clean-smelling gym mat, a man’s denim jacket laid over my body. Besides the red-haired man and the cricket, it seemed deserted. High vaulted ceilings and the preeminent smell of sawdust convinced me I was in an old mill, even before I saw the big ten-foot circular saw designed for splitting trees in half.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I reckon you’re probably pretty durn groggy right now. It’s the chloroform. It’s not the pleasant ride they make it seem in the movies.”

  He reached up to the table, took down a bottle of water and rolled it across the ten feet of floor separating us. I caught it, shooting him a look of gratitude. After unscrewing the stubborn cap, I gulped down halt the tepid contents in one go.

  “Sorry it’s not cold. We can’t run the mini fridge because it keeps shorting out the generator.”

  “Thank you. You’re very accommodating for a kidnapper.”

  He shrugged. “Everyone on our team has their unique skillset. Mine happens to be conversation. And explosives. Well, demo disposal mostly. I used to set bombs for Uncle Sam, but now I don’t do it for anyone anymore. Boss Wade knows that.”

  “Boss Wade?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” His face scrunched up. “Not the nicest fella, but he pays me well and doesn’t try to make me blow stuff up. I usually get saddled with babysitting duty, and I’d much rather be congenial and polite than tie you down and try to terrify you. Know what I mean? This whole experience is bad enough as it is. Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “But honestly, you’re making it easier. My name’s Ella. I don’t suppose you can tell me yours?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Call me Heath. It’s not my real name, of course, but it’s what the other fellas call me on account I look like the Joker guy. The, uh, Joker guy who wasn’t all weird and strung out dancing on the stairs.”

  “I get you.” I laughed despite my anxiety. “Thanks for your kindness. You know that as soon as you go out to pee I’m going to try to escape. Right?”

  “Well,” he said, half-laughing but eyeing me warily. “Thanks for your honesty.”

  “It didn’t feel right to lie.” I shrugged. “So this boss of yours, Wade, do you think he’ll let me go once the ransom is paid? I mean, that is what this is about. Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that and… well, Boss Wade’s got a major grudge against the Mayne family. Feels like they cut us out of a lot of potential work by blackballing us. Maybe he’s right, but quite frankly I don’t much approve of mixing vengeance with business.”

  “You don’t sound happy at all about this.”

  “That’s because I’m not,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I got outvoted, you know? These guys are my brothers. I don’t want to just… walk away.”

  “It sounds like maybe you need a change of leadership.”

  “Hey,” Heath jabbed a finger at me, “you don’t understand. Boss Wade saved my ass, saved all our asses more times than I can count. He’s Rambo mixed with the Terminator, okay? He’s almost fifty but he moves like a ga
zelle and hits like a bucking bronco. And he makes you think you can do shit you’d never be able to otherwise. He’s a man’s man. But his temper…” He hung his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose and sighing. I decided then and there this wasn’t a bad man, just a man in a bad situation.

  Just like me.

  “Heath,” I said, “we don’t have to get into this if it bothers you. Tell me, how did you end up in this line of work?”

  He brightened up a bit. “Well, I reckon I got into it because I figured I got a girl pregnant. Enlisted when I was seventeen, lied about being eighteen. Didn’t have many other prospects.”

  I arched an eyebrow and pulled up my knees. A rat came out and ate the cricket, but I didn’t even flinch. I guess I was a bit over being startled at that point.

  “Figured?” I questioned. “You figured you got a girl pregnant? How does that work out? I wasn’t aware pregnancy was a hypothetical condition.”

  Heath chuckled, apparently not noticing the rat as it sort of meandered behind me without a trace of fear. I remember my neighbor had a pet rat she trained to do tricks. It was cute. This one was big and gray and had the most innocent black eyes as it devoured the remains of the cricket, leaving behind only a pile of legs.

  “Turns out she was preggers all right, just wasn’t mine.”

  “Ouch,” I winced.

  “Yeah. But it was too late. Then I sort of… I was never a kid who did well sitting in a classroom. You feel me? But out in the open, getting plenty of sun and fresh air, I don’t know. I liked soldiering, at least up until the point I had to kill people. Not like I had the money for college.”

  “Your parents weren’t able to help?” I asked, a leading question to open him up. I felt bad because while I did want to like Heath, my main objective was to get his sympathy enough so he would let me go.

  “Nah, my mom was dead before I was out of junior high. I was in and out of foster homes after that.” He shrugged. “Lots of folks had it worse. There are a lot of shit foster families. I wound up with a good one. I was damn lucky.” He glanced over at me and frowned. “Look, no offense, but I’ve read your dossier, and you got a damn raw deal in life.” His voice broke, and he wiped at his eyes. “Damn raw deal.”