His Tinkerbelle: A Possessive Dark Romance (Mayhem Ever After Book 2)

by Vivi Paige

  My hand tightened round my phone so hard the case creaked in protest. “No, you fucking idiot, we’re going to take the family hydrofoil and save Belle from that dickbag Hook. Bring guns. Lots of guns.”

  I hung up on his stupid ass, grumbling to myself. Why was everyone telling me to get over Belle? Probably because they had never experienced that kind of deep, passionate love before.

  Will had. That was why he let me go instead of beating my ass. He knew what Belle meant to me because he’d been through a similar wringer with his lady, Scarlett.

  I couldn’t believe a famous party boy like me was about to defy his powerful family and risk his life for something as effusive and intangible as true love. But you know what? The longer you live on this crazy mudball planet, the more you begin to realize the things you can’t see or buy or sell are the most important.

  Belle was the most important thing to me in the whole world. I literally would trade my life if it meant she would be safe. This was a major revelation to me, and I felt as if I’d aged a decade in the last week.

  I leapt into my Jag and sped down to the docks. The cops in Jersey knew better than to pull over a Mayne, so I flew right along at nearly a hundred miles an hour most of the way.

  The Boyz? Not so much. I waited impatiently in front of our sleek, small but elegant hydrofoil yacht. The bullet holes had been patched up—again—and I was afraid that before the sun set on another day there would be more to fix.

  When they finally arrived, we loaded about six duffel bags onto the yacht and dumped them in the lounge area. Each one weighed over a hundred pounds, and inside were enough guns to equip an army.

  “Jeez, Nibs, you went nuts.” I lifted an AR-15 and slapped a magazine into place with a metallic snick.

  “Sorry, Pete, you know I tend to overdo things.” Nibs shrugged.

  “It wasn’t a complaint.” I stood and brandished my rifle, a grin stretching my face. “Overkill is underrated. Let’s go get my girl back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I won the stupid contest.” The cold barrel of Hook’s gun pressing into my forehead caused my voice to tremble with fear. “It’s over.”

  “My honor is satisfied, Comrade Hook,” Crocodile announced. “As far as I am concerned, our affairs are at an end and she is free to leave.”

  Hook’s thin lips twitched into a smile, though his eyes never stopped boring into me. “Your honor may be satisfied, but with all due respect, mine is not.” He shoved the gun a little harder into my skin, to the point of pain, but I refused to flinch. “You are my creature, Belle, my instrument. If a tool does not do the work it was designed for, it is to be discarded.”

  “So, discard me. Fire me. I’ll find a different job, won’t even apply for unemployment,” I joked.

  Crocodile laughed, and Hook seemed to remember we were not alone. He glanced at all the auction patrons and took a step back, still pointing his pistol at me.

  “Let’s continue this discussion in private,” he waved me toward the steps leading to the upper decks with his gun. Two of his private security goons moved in on either side of me to reinforce the order.

  “Fine.” I turned to Crocodile and bowed my head respectfully. “Mr. Ivanovich. I’d say it’s been a pleasure, but I respect you too much to lie.”

  He guffawed, showing off those sinister sharpened teeth. “I respect you as well, my little babooshka,” he rumbled. “I do hope we may meet again somewhere down the road.”

  “I wouldn’t bet the family farm on that,” Hook snapped. “Let’s go.” I walked up the steps to the upper decks, but Hook changed his mind. “No, let’s go to the lowest weather deck,” he ordered, a sinister edge to his voice. He turned to one of his goons. “Tell the musicians to play something loud and jaunty. I don’t want Belle’s screams to disturb the auction patrons.”

  “Just shoot me already,” I snapped. “For God’s sake, Hook, all the years I’ve spent working for you, covering for you, breaking the law for you, and you don’t even have the decency to kill me clean?”

  “You’re right, Belle.” He grinned. “I don’t have any decency. You see, I found out a long time ago that such concepts, such social mores, were not ever intended to govern elites such as me. We make the rules and are above such base notions as ‘decency.’”

  “You’re above such notions? Well, nothing is below you.”

  His goons actually chuckled until Hook shot them a withering glance. “Enough. Get moving.”

  I walked down the well-maintained steps onto the bow weather deck. It wasn’t very large, measuring only about ten feet across. Hook turned to one of his men and whispered something into his ear. The man quickly ran off, presumably on some errand, leaving me with just Hook and his other goon.

  I was feeling froggy after my victory in the swimming pool, but even so I didn’t dare make a try for Hook’s gun. Even if I managed to keep him from firing, his thug was armed and would not hesitate to put a bullet in my head. I knew they were planning to murder me, yet my fear kept me rooted in place.

  “I don’t like the look in your eyes, Belle.” Hook’s gaze narrowed. He glanced around until his eyes fell upon a coil of rope wound around a spool. “Bind her, and don’t worry about making the knots too tight. She won’t be alive long enough to worry about petty things like losing circulation.”

  My heart pounded as the goon took a length of rope and severed it from the spool with his knife. They were going to take away my ability to resist, as much as that really mattered. I guess Hook had decided I was a bigger threat than he’d wanted to admit.

  I grimaced as the goon yanked my hands behind my back, crossed my wrists, and knotted them together with the roughly textured naval twine. Just as Hook had told him, the goon made the ropes extra tight. My fingers already tingled with numbness before he finished tying off the last knot.

  “Her feet too,” Hook said. “Unlike that fool Crocodile, I will provide her with no avenues of escape from her fate. It is why he is ultimately used by men such as me—a lack of vision.”

  “God, do you ever shut up?” I snapped. The goon shoved my legs together and wound cord around them from the ankles to just above the knee. “You sure like to hear yourself talk.”

  “An affection.” He shrugged. His hand moved up to loosen and remove his tie. “But while I may, perhaps, be fond of hearing my own voice, I’ve had quite enough of yours.”

  I spat in Hook’s face as he approached me with the necktie in his hands. He froze, his face contorting into an angry grimace. I winced when he pulled his hand back to slap me, but all he did was pat me gently on the cheek.

  “A final act of defiance. How fitting.” With that he shoved the necktie between my teeth and tied it around my head. He made the silk incredibly tight, so much so that it cut into the corners of my mouth. Just attempting to speak triggered my gag reflex. I glared at him in impotent fury, hands clenching into fists behind my back.

  The goon Hook had sent away returned, bearing a plank of wood roughly my height and about a third as wide. He set it down on the edge of the weather deck and then shoved it out until half dangled over the dark, gentle waters of the Atlantic.

  “Everyone mocks me for my privateer predilections,” Hook said. “I therefore see it to be quite fitting that I use a time-honored execution technique. Walking the plank.”

  He looked at my bound feet and chuckled.

  “Well, I suppose you won’t be walking anywhere. Will you, my dear?” Hook gestured toward one of his goons. “Put her into position, if you please.”

  I groaned in alarm when the goon wrapped his massive arms around my waist and carried me onto the rickety plank. It bent scarily under our joint weight, a fact not lost on my captor. He carefully set me down and inched his way back, the board springing back a bit as he retreated.

  I had been more angry than afraid until that moment. My bound feet struggled to find purchase on the slickly painted plank, damp with sea spray. Every breath I took seemed
to send me tottering precariously closer to the edge. The only thing keeping me from plummeting into the dark waters below was the weight of the goon still standing on the other end of the wood.

  “Does the accused have any last words?” Hook asked mockingly.

  I tried to mouth the words, “Yeah, fuck you,” around his necktie gag, but all I succeeded in doing was choking myself and sending a line of drool running down my chin.

  “Very well then…”

  Hook raised his hand in the air as if it were a saber. I knew when it came down, I would be sent to my death. I stared into his dark eyes, filled with sadistic glee…

  But then they widened, the glee replaced with panic and fear.

  “No,” he said, backing away. “It’s not possible.”

  I looked in the same direction he did, and my eyes widened in surprise. A boat was cutting through the water like a blade, sending spray up into twenty-foot gouts in its wake. On the bow perched Peter, his legs entangled in the safety railing and a huge rifle in his arms. As the boat slowed, it settled into the water on its hydrofoils.

  Nibs came up behind Peter and held a megaphone to his lips. Hook and his goons seemed confused about what to do. Obviously they were outgunned, and outnumbered, as Toots and Curly appeared with their own weapons—

  And Gentleman Starkey, too. Behind him was another face I’d not expected to see again—Wendy. She shot me an apologetic gaze, her bottom lip trembling. Well, if you feel so damn guilty for it, why did you sell me out?

  “Hold it right there, Crenshaw Hook,” Peter spoke into the megaphone. “Step away from the girl and put your hands where I can see them.”

  Hook laughed and spread his arms wide. “A very poor choice of phrase, Peter Mayne. A poor choice indeed.”

  The goon stepped away from me—and off of the plank. I squealed behind the gag, dropping like a rock toward the ocean below.

  I hit hard, the impact causing tingles on the bottoms of my bare feet. Thrashing, writhing and twisting underwater, I fought the cruelly tight knots to no avail.

  It was so dark I didn’t even know the way to the surface. Muted bubbling sounds that may have been gunfire reached my ears, but it was all I could do not to give in to the burning desire in my lungs to suck in a big gulp of air.

  Air that was nowhere to be found beneath the sea.

  Something grabbed me, and I panicked, thinking it was a shark. But then I felt fingers grasping my limbs, following the contours of my arms until they reached my bound wrists. Something hard and metal pressed between my wrists, and in an instant they were free.

  My legs were still bound, making swimming difficult, but I put my arms around my savior’s neck, and he swam for the surface. As soon as my head burst above the waves, I looked up to see Peter’s concerned face.

  “Belle, are you all right?” he asked, fighting with the gag until it came loose at last. I mashed my mouth onto his, not caring that we were miles out to sea with danger all around.

  Then something flopped into the water right next to us, drawing our attention. It was a life preserver, white and blue and floating on the surface. Peter paddled over to it, and soon we were hauled up onboard the smaller hydrofoil yacht as it drifted closer to Hook’s.

  “The enemy vessel is secure, Captain,” Nibs saluted Peter with a grin. I glanced over to Hook’s ship and saw that the aged man was held at gunpoint by Starkey and Curly.

  “Thank God this is all over.” I shivered as Peter wrapped me in a towel.

  “Not quite.” Peter’s eyes narrowed as he gazed over at Hook. “I have some unfinished business with your boss.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Well, well, well.” I vaulted over the short span of water separating my yacht from Hook’s. “Hello, Mr. Fancy Pants. Having a ball, Hook? Or do you always dress like a Bond movie villain?”

  “Your ceaseless prattle lacks wit, whelp,” Hook sputtered. “You think assaulting me on my own boat is going to end well for you or your precious firm?”

  I sneered at him, putting my arms akimbo. “I’ve had enough of your threats. You’ve gone too far this time, Hook. You tried to murder a woman in cold blood.”

  “A private affair, which you had no business interfering with.”

  “Hey, asshole.” I gestured over to my boat. “You see that gorgeous lady there? She’s mine. I love her. And if you mess with her, you mess with the firm. You feel me?”

  “You posture with authority you do not possess, stripling.” Hook shook his head. “I wonder how Lucian is going to respond to all of this noise and bother.”

  “Okay, chump, two things.” I held up one finger and grinned. “Number one… seriously dude, no one says ‘stripling’ any more. This is not Middle Earth.” He sputtered, his wizened face turning dark red, and I laughed. “Two, you think Uncle Lucy gives two shits about you?” I threw my head back and laughed, eliciting a stream of curses from Hook’s mouth.

  “You insufferable cretin, you swine! You pestilent boil upon the face of humanity…”

  “Well, at least you’re not using the word ‘stripling’ anymore.” I laughed boldly in the face of his sputtering rage. “I know in your mind there’s this great big rivalry between your organization and the firm. Like we’re Coke, you’re Pepsi, right? Well, nothing could be further from the truth.”

  “I’ve had enough of your prattle, boy. If Lucian didn’t fear me, he would have attempted to end my life long ago.”

  “Is that what you think?” I doubled over as Starkey and Curly kept a close watch on Hook’s goons. “Pathetic. The truth is, if you were a threat, Lucy would have deep sixed you right off the bat. You just weren’t worth the hassle of killing. There’s no rivalry. There’s no battle between our two families to control the future of the tri-state area. There’s just us, looking down on your little bitty ‘empire’ and laughing our asses off.”

  “Peter, let’s go,” Belle called from the other boat. “Don’t bother taunting him. It’s over.”

  “It’s not over.” Hook growled. “It will never be over so long as I draw breath.”

  “Well, that puts me in a bit of a pickle.” I stroked my chin thoughtfully. “I suppose I could just kill you, but unlike you, that’s not how I get my rocks off. Like I said, if you were troublesome enough to be dead, you’d already have reached that state by now.”

  “Enough.” Hook jabbed a finger at me. “You Maynes are all the same. You wield your power and influence like swords, stabbing into the flesh of those who oppose you. I had my club on that same street for decades before you decided to interfere. It was my street.”

  “Settle down, Hook,” I quipped. “You’re turning red as a beet. Has your doctor talked to you about hypertension, Crenshaw, baby? It’s not good for your health.”

  “You prattling fool. You disease upon my existence,” Hook sputtered. “You think I need the Olafs to take you down? I have my own power. I have my own allies, and some of them have seats in Congress. Do you really think your firm holds a candle to the original masters of deceitful business practice, the US government?”

  I paused, my smile draining from my face. Hook really could make our lives difficult. While I supposed I could have killed him, Hook had half a dozen offspring, all of whom would be just itching to make their reputations by taking out the guy who killed their daddy.

  “All right, Hook,” I cocked an eyebrow. “So, what would it take for all of us to just walk away from this and pretend it never happened?”

  “You—you seek to bribe me?” Hook snarled, lashing about the air with his limbs like a madman. “You think money will make this go away? After the way I’ve been treated, on my own boat? At my own auction?”

  “Well, it was worth a shot.” I shrugged. “Come on, Hook. This doesn’t have to end with one of us dead. There must be some way we can work this out.”

  Hook calmed all of a sudden, his eyes losing their glazed-over look of madness. Instead they lit up with craftiness. Instantly I was worried and ch
ecked his goons, but they were fully under our control.

  “I have a modest proposal,” Hook said in a low tone dripping with menace. “I understand you have some experience fencing?”

  “You could say that.” I shrugged, grinning ear to ear. “You could also say I was a champion. At nationals.”

  “Splendid.” Hook gestured to himself. “I’ve been known to lunge and thrust a bit myself.”

  “I didn’t need that image in my head,” Curly winced.

  “So, what, Hook? Are you proposing a duel?” I laughed. “A duel, in this century. Why in the world would I ever agree to such a thing? To satisfy your honor?” I gestured at Belle. “I’ve already won.”

  “The girl still belongs to me,” Hook snapped, his mustache flecked with spittle. “Me, you understand? I own her. All I have to do is make one phone call, and every below-board act she’s ever committed at my behest will result in her arrest. Needless to say, I’ve taken steps to protect myself.”

  I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. This wasn’t fun anymore. Hook was a rotten bastard, as low as a snake, and nothing short of putting an end to him seemed like a feasible solution.

  “I’m sure you would try to carry out that threat,” I said. “Fine. I’ll accept your duel, but I have my own conditions.”

  Hook rolled his eyes toward the sky. “This should be droll.”

  “First, when I win…”

  “If,” Hook corrected.

  “—you’ll swear off all retribution against Belle.”

  “Granted,” Hook said. “A moot point since you will not succeed.”

  “Quit your bragging. I’m not finished,” I snapped. “Second, you’ll turn over the deed, and all trademark and intellectual property rights to the Jolly Roger. Needless to say, I’ll do the same with Lost if I lose.”

  “Peter, no!” Belle shouted. “He’s tricking you! You’re falling right into his trap.”

  “I’m sorry, Belle,” I muttered. “I don’t have any other choice.”