Hundreds (Dollar Book 3)

by Pepper Winters

  Elder’s voice turned inward. “When he introduced me to music and took me to my first cello lesson on my eighth birthday, it was as if the loudness in my brain quietened. While my mind had the notes and my fingers had the chords, I was empty inside…completely free.”

  My eyes drifted to his fingers where they twitched as if he played an invisible cello.

  He continued, “It quickly went from comfort to need. There was no other way for me. I had to play. It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t a need, or thrill, or any normal word to describe why a musician has to play his instrument. It was an all-driving curse.”

  He looked up, his eyes once again black with rageful passion. “I couldn’t stop. At home, away from my tutor’s cello, I’d slip into repetitive complications. I drove my mother mad rearranging the cutlery drawer, the pantry, the laundry. Nothing was safe, and everything had to be in threes. My brain latched onto whatever new flavour it wanted, and until it decided it had had enough, it was all I could talk and think about. We had no money to buy a cello, but my father saw how it helped me an hour a week at my lessons. How something like music could give me an outlet to master but be so complicated I could never be truly satisfied. The one thing that had unlimited potential to keep me within boundaries and stay healthy.”

  He shuddered as awful memories replaced the nice. “He went against my mother and borrowed money from people you should never borrow money from. He was so proud that night, giving me a beaten up second-hand cello. And I’d never loved him more or been so fucking grateful that he understood.”

  He chuckled under his breath. “Playing it made the neighbourhood cats squall until I learned how to tune it. I threw myself into everything there was to know about strings and bridges and bows. I devoured music books then songs on the radio, classics, melodies. I imprinted each tune to memory, and once I’d mastered everything a teacher had to teach, I created my own music. I blended. I evolved. I gave everything of myself to be the best.”

  He sat tall as if bracing himself for the bad. “Around the time when I’d mastered the cello enough to be noticed for my talent—to receive invitations to concerts, competitions, and awards—my mind once again turned for other tasks it could dominate. I didn’t play to be noticed. I played to be cured. And knowing people wanted to compete against me—to see if they could better me, beat me—took away the freedom I found.”

  He inhaled, his voice turning heavy. “My OCD isn’t a compulsion to do something repetitively. It’s a compulsion to do something until I conquer it. Not just conquer it but to be the best, the only, the mecca. I have to know it inside out. I have to absorb and control and own every minute.”

  He gave me a pointed look. “Are you getting it now, Pimlico?”

  Slowly, pieces fell into place. He’d told me before that my mind was his ultimate goal, not my body. That he wanted everything from me. My past, my thoughts, my secrets. He’d told me he needed to master me.

  I thought he’d been dramatizing his needs. That it was just a turn of phrase.

  I was so wrong.

  I shuddered to think of him playing me as aggressively as he did his cello. For him to know my every thought and tear every hidden fear from me. To know me better than I knew myself.

  How could one master another? How could I give him that sort of access to everything that fundamentally made me me? Was that even possible?

  Elder pushed ahead, forcing himself to reveal more, as if apologetic for the honesty he’d just let me glimpse. “I met someone when I was eleven. A guy I saw practicing martial arts on my block. Considering my heritage and the stories I’d grown up with, I immediately had a kindred connection. I asked him to teach me. He did.”

  He rubbed his face then squeezed the back of his nape. “My parents didn’t know who I fought with. They believed I went to the community gym, and I didn’t tell them otherwise. I went from a scrawny kid who never saw the sun with bleeding fingers from playing the cello to a muscly fighter who learned to master his own body. I didn’t look my young age. I shot up and piled on power. I knew every ligament and tendon. I studied textbook after textbook on the best way to strike, what a punch did to the human tissue, and how to kill with every part of me.

  “I became good. I became a master. I became noticed.” He scrubbed his forehead, shaking his head as awful memories turned sinister. “At twelve, I was recruited to be security for the same men my father had borrowed money from. Even so young, they said if I helped them out, they’d forget about the debt and excessive interest they charged him—even after three years, he was still paying them back. I agreed, willing to take the pressure off my family, knowing how complicated it was having a son like me.”

  He looked up, his face tight as if preparing himself for the worst. “I want to say I believed them when they said they were into import, export. I pretended not to notice when some containers held screaming people instead of crates of food. I lied to myself that they weren’t bad men even as I was used to teach lessons to those who defaulted on drug money or failed on a run. I was a stupid fucking kid who only wanted to focus on fighting, cello, and origami. I couldn’t afford to obsess over anything new.”

  I inched forward off the bed, dropping to my knees before him. I didn’t do it out of servitude but as an avid listener to his tale. Hesitantly, I placed my hand on his knee.

  He jolted as if watching me touch him didn’t prepare him for the physical heat of it.

  With his eyes locked on my hand, he said, “It started slowly. They told me they’d need my skills to protect a shipment, and I went. They said they’d arranged a fight to showcase my talent, so I fought. I didn’t care my opponents were all terrified or that they all lost. I became drunk on my own stupid power until one day, I became addicted to the look on their faces. I needed that fear in their eyes. I went searching for it.”

  He flinched. “One day, when I was thirteen, I picked a fight with my little brother just because I needed to see that fear.” He choked on a swallow. “I broke his arm.”

  I hid my gasp, doing my best not to show any judgment. He threw me a quick glance then dropped his gaze as if he couldn’t stomach looking at me.

  “My father was the one who found us. Me in tears. Kade in tears. His arm hanging weirdly. We took him to the hospital. When we got home, Okaasan hit me, and I let her. She hit me until I bled, and then she disowned me. My father tried to defend me. My brother, too, even as he stood with his arm in a cast because of me. I was given one last chance. Cease to fight for the Chinmoku or leave.”

  Elder stood, shoving his hands into his hair as he paced. “I went that afternoon and handed in my resignation. I was a silly kid who thought it would be a simple goodbye.” He snorted. “Needless to say, they didn’t accept it. They came after me that night. Otōsan was the one who answered the door and told them I would no longer fight for them. He knew who they were. He understood the shit I’d landed our entire family in. He’d done the unthinkable and borrowed money from the Chinmoku, but I’d signed our death warrants by becoming one of them.”

  Elder’s voice turned tortured and thin. He cleared his throat twice before he continued, “The next night, I woke to a burning house with a message painted in blood on the living room wall. ‘Once a Chinmoku always a Chinmoku. You chose family. Now you have no one.”

  Those words hovered in the room long after Elder had spoken. He didn’t speak for an eternity until he finally murmured, “There was no way out. They’d drilled the windows closed and barricaded all the doors. I was the only one not locked in my room. It was as if they expected me to escape and return to their brotherhood rather than fight for my family.”

  He stopped pacing, swaying in place, ghosts of firelight dancing over his face. “I managed to break into the second-story window and pull my mother to safety. Otōsan went to get Kade when the gas cylinder in the kitchen blew up and sent the house into smithereens. I tried to go back in, but the fire crew arrived and stopped me. I can still hear my mother’s screams,
my curses, and the knowledge I’ll forever have their blood on my hands.”

  He looked up, his skin white and eyes far away. “After that, we had nowhere to go. No one would take us in because of my ties to the Chinmoku. With no home, my mother and I ended up on the streets. I traded my skill of playing sonnets for pillaging pockets. Until one day, she just vanished. I found out later her brother had offered her a place to live if she abandoned me—which she was only too happy to do.”

  I slapped a hand over my mouth in horror. “That’s awful.”

  He shrugged. “She blamed me—rightfully—for killing her husband and son. I didn’t blame her. I blamed myself.”

  He rolled his shoulders, the conclusion to his story coming out in a rush. “I knew where her brother lived and went to beg for her forgiveness. They all turned their backs on me and told me I was a ghost. I had died in that fire too, and that was all there was to it.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t pity me.” He held up his hand. “Never pity me. I take full responsibility, just like I take full responsibility for what I’ve done to you.” He threw me a broken smile. “That’s why I can’t let myself relax when I’m around you. Why when I say it’s not your body I’m after, I’m telling the goddamn truth. I need to master you, Pim. I need to study, control, and manipulate you until you give me every tiny scrap. And I refuse to fucking do that.”

  I held his stare. “That doesn’t explain why you won’t kiss me. Why you said you could only have me once.”

  “I can’t believe this.” He looked at the ceiling then back at me. “Are you asking why I won’t sleep with you? I thought you’d be glad about that after everything you’ve been through.”

  I broke eye contact. I couldn’t lie after he’d been so honest, but I couldn’t hide the truth either. “Part of me will be forever thankful that you don’t want me that way. That the other night was a slip and I’ll never have to have sex again.”

  He spoke with thick loathing. “And the other part?”

  “That part is curious. It wants to know how different it could be with someone I trust. I like when you kiss me. I like the way it makes me feel.”

  He pressed his lips together as if I’d shocked him silent.

  I breathed in, embarrassment pinking my cheeks. “I-I could’ve refrained from saying that, but after everything you just told me, I had to tell the truth. For you and for me.”

  He moved closer.

  I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. I’d dropped to my knees out of support, but now I hated the power exchange. I didn’t flinch as he stopped in front of me or pull back when he tilted my chin up with his finger.

  When our eyes met, he smiled sadly. “I won’t have sex with you again because I could lose myself in you. I would become utterly, terribly addicted. Once I’d had you—fully had you where you wanted me as much as I wanted you—I’d never be able to stop. I’d fuck you every hour of every day. I’d forget to eat, sleep, breathe. All I would need is you. All I would want is you. And that sort of obsession is not healthy—for either of us.”

  Letting me go, he strode to the deck where the doors remained open, letting the muggy night air mingle with the heavy confessions we’d bestowed. “That’s the main reason I want to set you free, Pim. Not for you but for me. I need you gone before I do something I can’t undo. Before I destroy both of us.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  ______________________________

  Elder

  “FUCKING HARDER. WHAT are you? Turning pussy on me?”

  Selix grunted as he swung the katakana swords directly at my head. “Giving you a break. Your mind isn’t fully in the game.”

  “It’s not a game.” I ducked and struck him in the back with the training nunchucks that didn’t break bones but definitely bruised.

  He grunted as I parried backward, sweat rivering down my naked torso and soaking into my sweatpants. “It’s a fight, Selix, so be a fucking man and fight.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He roundhoused me, taking me by surprise, using his foot as his weapon and not the swords in his hands. “Fine, I’ll fight.”

  I grunted as my lungs forgot how to work. “That’s how you want to play, huh? Cheap shots?” Tossing the nunchucks to the side, I attacked him with my fists. “You got it.”

  Thanks to my obsession with all things fighting, I knew how to kill with a single strike, how to protect my knuckles, and how my cartilage and joints reacted to a sucker-punch versus an upper cut. I also knew how it would feel to the other person. I’d studied sketches and medical journals that showed which muscles contracted to absorb the blow, how blood gushed to an injury, how the nervous system highlighted pain.

  I knew all that. I thought about all that. Even as my mind locked onto the only thing I could.

  Fight.

  Fight.

  Fight.

  Parry, swing, punch, duck.

  Selix wasn’t like me. He didn’t need to know every minute detail about something to be good at it. He was a street survivor. He’d been the victor and victim.

  We fought each other, delivering punishment while taking others. The cushioned mat in the bottom level of the yacht became slick with sweat as we painted each other in bruises.

  I’d woken him up at daybreak and ordered him to join me in the gym. After talking to Pim, I couldn’t sleep. I’d stepped onto the deck and hadn’t returned to my quarters in case she was still there, asleep on my bed, innocent and open. I didn’t go back because I wouldn’t forgive myself if I took her up on the offer in her gaze and fucked her.

  I wouldn’t fuck her.

  Not when she offered it up as a gift—a painkiller to every screwed up thing I’d told her.

  What was I thinking telling her that shit?

  Christ, I couldn’t get rid of the shame.

  So I took it out on Selix. Attacking him with more power, rage, and coldbloodedness than before.

  I hadn’t been this close to slipping in years. Normally, my cello, fighting, and business kept my compulsive tendencies at bay.

  That was before Pim.

  Before she ruined me with her hopeless suicide eyes at Alrik’s.

  The buzzer sounded, telling us as we circled and kicked that we’d been fighting for over two hours. We were both exhausted, both bleeding from cut lips and swollen noses, both weary with wounds.

  Selix charged forward, landing a solid strike to my chest with his shoulder.

  In repayment, I gave him three quick jabs to his ribcage. We separated and held up our hands, assessing the other and if it was time to quit or if we would fight until we couldn’t stand.

  It was my decision. Selix wouldn’t back down.

  I had to get a grip and accept that this was enough. That the obsession didn’t control me. I controlled the obsession.

  Stepping backward, I bowed with deep respect. Honouring the discipline and honourable rules such fighting expected. “Thank you.”

  Selix sighed, matching my bow with cupped fists. “Welcome.”

  Touching knuckles, we rolled our shoulders, smirking in pain. “Well, I feel better.”

  Selix chuckled. “You feel beaten up you mean.”

  I laughed. “I think it was you who was beaten.”

  “You think wrong.” Grabbing a towel from the rack in the corner, the mirrored walls showed him wiping his face and scrubbing his arms before tossing it into the hamper by the water cooler. Weight machines and treadmills glittered in the bright lights, coaxing unwilling bodies to do cardio.

  Grabbing a drink, he muttered, “You gonna be okay today?”

  Selix had his own attributes. One of which he could guess another’s agendas and flaws accurately. He’d never fully asked what I suffered from or why I’d sometimes play the cello for days or punish myself with sword wielding until I passed out from exhaustion. He knew enough to understand Pim’s introduction to my structured existence wasn’t easy.

  “I’ll be fine.” Snatching a towel, I wrapped it around my n
eck and rubbed it through my hair, capturing the droplets of exertion. “I need to go back to the warehouse. Have a few things to run through with Charlton.”

  “I’ll get ready and meet you in an hour. That work?” Selix moved toward the exit.

  I nodded. “Fine.”

  He left with a salute while I headed to the elevator and pressed the top floor. I’d shower and eat and then find Pim and hope to God my mind was in a safer place now the sun had risen, and I’d broken a few blood vessels.

  Last night had been a mistake. I had no idea what possessed me to do such a thing, but it would never happen again. I wouldn’t let her get under my skin any more than she already had.

  Striding into my suite, my heart clenched to find it empty. I didn’t want to acknowledge why disappointment climbed through my veins rather than relief.

  Pim wasn’t in my room, but something foreign rested upon my bed: a large red parcel from one of the most expensive stores in Monte Carlo.

  I’d ordered Jolfer to send one of his female staff to buy Pim more clothes. She needed a wardrobe that fit her better. She deserved dresses that clung to her and showed off how stunning she was rather than swamp her delicate frame.

  She also needed other things. Things that I didn’t want to see because I didn’t need such images fogging up my mind.

  I should send the box straight to Pim, but I couldn’t help myself. Cracking the lid, I fingered an item that made my cock rock fucking hard before I slammed it closed again.

  Goddammit, I shouldn’t have ordered that.

  It would only make my life that much more tricky.

  But Pim was worth it.

  She was worth every penny.

  Even if she cost me everything.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ______________________________