The men approached slowly and her understanding of their interest was instantly shaken. Even their walk exuded sexuality. From the corner of her eye, she saw the group watching the three of them with unconcealed curiosity.
The cousins stopped close enough for her to catch a delicate hint of cologne that went straight to her head. In her heels, they were almost the same height, putting them both around five-ten. There was a capability about them that told her what they lacked in height, they made up for in ferocity.
They wore slacks and dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up. She imagined suit jackets and ties had been discarded upon entering Trois. They didn’t strike her as the type to go without them.
Low enough that only she could hear, Nuri told her, “You are lovely.”
“Perhaps one day, we will discuss business with you, Miss Canfield but that is not tonight. At this moment, we wish to learn more about the woman we have admired for many years.”
“My father took my education and training seriously,” she replied automatically.
Fahad’s eyes met hers. “Our condolences on his death. He was a good man.”
“Thank you. I miss him.” She instantly blamed the alcohol for a statement that was unusually personal. It was rare that she mentioned anything about her feelings to people she didn’t know well. Even with closer acquaintances, she was intensely private.
They didn’t touch her but their fixed gazes gave her a similar sensation. No one had ever looked at her in such a way.
“Does our attention make you uncomfortable, Miss Canfield?” Fahad asked gently.
“Attention?”
“Attraction is a better word,” Nuri clarified.
Naturally cautious about how she presented herself to others, especially men, Marcy paused to consider her answer. “I’m unaccustomed but not uncomfortable.”
There was a long silence. “You are not accustomed to the attraction of men?”
“I am accustomed to being an acquisition. I am accustomed to being a means to an end. I am not accustomed to the attention or attraction of men whose wealth surpasses my own. No.”
A slow smile spread over Nuri’s face. “It is a feat that must be hellishly difficult to accomplish.”
Before she could temper the reaction, she laughed. Truly laughed. “To be blunt, this is the first time it’s been accomplished at all in my personal experience.”
Fahad inclined his head. “Shall we sit?”
As the words left his mouth, they stepped to her sides and gently took her elbows. They led her past the table she’d suggested to a more private seating area where a couch and two chairs were arranged.
Marcy assumed they’d take the chairs and schooled her features when they settled on either side of her on the couch. They sat closer to the edge, angled in her direction. They released her when they sat, careful not to touch her, and it was unusual to have her personal space so well respected by members of the opposite sex.
“Tell us what you believe our type to be, Miss Canfield.”
“I don’t want to . . . ”
“You will not offend us. Please.” Fahad’s voice was gentle and Nuri simply watched her.
Clearing her throat, she sat back and crossed her legs. After the confrontation with Victoria, she’d dressed in her customary business suit and gone to the office. It was a green so dark that it was almost black, tailored to her exact proportions, and made her feel confident.
The alcohol she’d consumed didn’t hurt.
Honesty was second nature to her. She’d been born with an almost pathological need to tell the truth at all times. “In my life, I’ve met two distinct types of men. Those who wish to gain their own wealth through the use of mine or those that see me as a chess piece to be positioned for greatest effect toward the growth of their existing wealth. That is not to say that you are either, it’s just the frame of reference that I know.”
Nuri nodded. “Continue.”
“The first sort is easy to pinpoint. They bore quickly with the long game and I don’t suffer fools easily. Unlike men in the same position, I refuse to shower them with gifts, take them on expensive vacations, or give them an unlimited line of credit.” She quirked her brow. “Most days, that type is lucky if I answer a call.”
Fahad’s eyes sparkled. “They would seem to be a waste of valuable time.”
“Have you had many such men attempt to win you?”
“Through high school and college, it was ridiculous.” She smiled. “Once I assumed my first position with the company, most realized their attempts would be futile.”
“The second sort of man common to your life?”
“Those who have wealth of their own tend to see me as a smart business decision. They don’t see me as a person and their focus on me is practical. Typically, when I reject them, they go on to acquire the trophy wife they really wanted and probably needed. A woman bent solely to their care and comfort, satisfied to exist in a specific capacity and live as the extension of a powerful man.”
“A tool to be used for parties, heirs, and smoothing ruffled feathers.”
“Yes. Precisely.”
“I imagine that sort of existence would strangle you slowly,” Fahad said.
Her surprise slipped before she was able to cover the reaction. “Yes.”
Their black eyes were heavily lashed and intense. She’d never held eye contact for so long with men outside of a business meeting but it was almost impossible to look away.
“You enjoy your work. It will always compete heavily with relationships in your personal life.” She nodded, speechless. “A stance accepted for men but frowned upon in a woman.” Nuri paused. “We find it thrilling to see a woman with the drive and sense of purpose that we possess.”
Fahad stated, “The world that the three of us exist within is small.”
“Sometimes painfully so,” she whispered. At her confession, the silence drew out.
“You traveled to Dubai with your father when you were a teenager.” The change of topic caused her to stiffen and both of them noticed. Fahad brushed the back of his hand across hers. “You spent your time in our country exploring with a massive security team.”
Unsure about the direction of the conversation, her answer was wary. “I was embarrassed that it was necessary. All I did was shop.”
Nuri told her, “You diminish the shopping that you did.”
“You requested to be taken to the poorest regions of the city,” his cousin added.
Flustered, she shrugged. “They had the prettiest goods.”
Both of them laughed and the sound was strangely beautiful. Fahad shook his head. “An American teenager walking the streets of Dubai with a bag of currency, buying entire shops of goods and having them shipped to shelters in the United States, is not done because the items are pretty.”
“It accomplished what I needed. The people were kind.”
“I thought our grandfather would have a heart attack from stress. He sent his own team to watch over you. He was determined that nothing would happen to the daughter of one of his oldest friends.”
She blinked and the alcohol haze cleared from her system with a snap. Sitting up straight, she tilted her head. “Your grandfather is Salid bin Qasim?”
“He is.”
“He was kind to me when . . . he was kind to me.” Marcy didn’t want to relive one of the most horrifying hours of her life with these men. She hadn’t spoken a word to Victoria for months after their return to the States. Truthfully, she hadn’t spoken to anyone.
It was clear that they already knew about that day from the looks on their faces. She whispered, “I don’t wish to speak of it.”
“Understood.”
“You’re both . . . familiar to me.”
One side of Nuri’s mouth lifted and this time, she noticed a dimple in his cheek. “We were part of the team assigned to you.”
Absently, she said, “How dull that assignment must have been. We are . . . close in ag
e.”
“Excitement is found where you search for it, Miss Canfield. I am three years older,” Fahad said before nodding to his cousin. “Nuri is two.”
She rubbed her temple and flipped through her memories of the long-ago trip. They’d been locked up for so long that they weren’t easily accessible. Her family had been in Dubai for two weeks when a horrific series of events overshadowed the joy she’d found half a world away.
The friends she’d made there.
Glancing back and forth between them, she was stunned at how much she’d forgotten. In a whisper, she told them, “You’re Near and Far.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“You remain the only person in our lifetime to give us nicknames,” Fahad replied softly.
Fifteen years before, Marcy had been taller than both of them. They were young men struggling with puberty who were underweight, prone to acne, and had voices that consistently cracked.
“You look so different. You . . . grew up.”
At the same time, they replied, “So did you, Marcy.”
She had forgotten so much that suddenly rushed back.
Reaching out, Marcy moved the collar of Nuri’s shirt and stared at the scar that slashed across his collarbone. Taking Fahad’s hand, she turned it over and traced her finger over the raised flesh dissecting his inner forearm.
It was physical evidence of the severe injuries they’d taken for her the day before the Canfields boarded their plane and returned to New York.
She had never returned to the Middle East. She’d never even asked if they’d survived. One afternoon, she left her bed and pretended it never happened.
“You could have died and I put all of it out of my mind like a selfish child.”
“You were in shock.”
“We understood, Marcy.”
There was a clench in her chest. “I didn’t understand.”
Inhaling carefully, she closed her eyes and forced her mind back to the day when her exploration of beautiful Dubai had gone horribly wrong.
***
The young men had been kind to her from the moment she arrived and the three of them were introduced. The girls her age were so ladylike and subdued that she’d felt awkward in their presence.
Instead, she’d found kindred spirits in the cousins. Close in age and naturally charming, they’d appointed themselves as liaisons within the high walls of their grandfather’s castle.
They asked her about books and movies, peppered her with questions about her days in the United States, and made her laugh when they told her what they imagined life was like in America.
Being around them made her happy, made her heart race, and she recognized that she felt differently about them than other boys she knew. Raised in wealth, she recognized the vast difference between her existence and the majority of the world population.
Near and Far understood how she lived but the violence that had surrounded them from birth was a different aspect. Some of the experiences they shared with her provided much needed perspective. It gave her a new appreciation of wealth, freedom, and what good she could accomplish with both.
During her time in their country, the pair entered her thoughts unexpectedly. She’d been thinking about them, a small smile on her face, as she exited a store that sold blankets.
It was the last truly innocent moment of her life.
A tall man with bright red hair stepped up on the sidewalk and shot the security men on either side of her in the head. He grabbed for her but she dodged his hand and ran hard.
Staying on the main road, she tapped into years of self-defense training. She didn’t look back, she didn’t scream, she simply ran. A van squealed to a stop as she approached an intersection and two different men jumped out.
Darting into the street, she changed direction and kept running. She knew she couldn’t enter a shop or stop a passing car. Anyone who tried to help would be in mortal danger. She was valuable. Innocent bystanders would be nothing more than witnesses to dispose of and no match for the kind of men in pursuit.
A mile, two miles, and Marcy began to hope for escape. Suddenly, a woman stepped from between two buildings and punched her in the face. She hit the concrete hard.
When the woman bent to seize her, she mule-kicked her in the sternum and watched her hit the side of a building, her head bouncing off the stone.
Struggling to stand despite the pain bouncing through her body, she ran again. The van stopped alongside and the three men rushed from the open doors.
Reaching into her bag, she took out a can of mace and a small knife. She would never be able to outrun them. They would take her but she planned to hurt them as much as possible to buy time and weaken their advantage. They surrounded her and she found herself backed into a narrow alley.
The cuts she delivered weren’t fatal but they would always carry the evidence that their target fought back. The man with red hair tried to grab her and she sprayed mace in his eyes. Her victory was short-lived as the remaining attackers wrestled her into the van. Thrown on the floor, her arms and legs were bound with tape and another piece was pressed over her mouth.
The woman she’d kicked jumped inside and punched her in the face repeatedly, despite the screaming from her male partners in the front. She listened to the various accents through the ringing of her ears and memorized their faces through the eye that wasn’t swollen shut.
They were driving for several minutes when the redhead could see again. The man who’d killed her bodyguards straddled her torso. The skin of his face was enflamed and his blue eyes watered.
“Bitch! Did you think you were going to get away? I always get what I want.” He ran his hands over her breasts and when she tried to get out from under him, he punched her in the temple. “I can’t kill you but I can make this bad for you. Lie still. Let me see what’s so special about the little heiress.”
It was the sort of attack she’d never expected and wasn’t prepared to deal with. At fourteen, she’d never so much as kissed a boy. No one had ever touched her intimately. She started screaming behind the tape and everyone started talking at once.
The man in the passenger seat brought his gun around. “You’re damaging merchandise worth billions, you fucking amateur!” His accent was thick but the message was clear.
Suddenly, there was a crash and the van stopped moving. The redhead was thrown free of her as the back door was pulled wide and several men in black tactical gear stood on the street. Gunshots from the side windows killed the two kidnappers in front. The woman and the redhead launched themselves from the van, shooting and slashing Marcy’s would-be rescuers.
Disoriented and nauseous, she rolled herself against the wall and worked at the bindings on her wrist. When the tape ripped free, she pulled it off her ankles and mouth.
Crawling to the open doors, she saw that the redhead’s back was to her. He held a hostage, an older woman likely passing on the street who was grabbed when violence broke out.
His female accomplice was on the ground, shot in the center of her forehead, a long knife in her hand. Her dead body lay between Marcy and the man who had thought nothing of the men he’d killed, the way he’d touched her in the van, or the trauma he would cause the innocent victim he held to protect his own worthless hide.
He thought himself safe because the van blocked his back.
Quietly climbing from the cargo hold, Marcy bent and picked up the wicked blade. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she gripped it firmly and moved up behind him without a sound.
The men in combat gear yelled at her in Arabic but she ignored them. They kept their eyes on the man holding the hostage to keep him from turning and seeing her.
“I don’t understand you fucking animals! Speak English!” The murderer pushed the gun harder into the temple of the woman. She was crying. “I’m walking away from this shit! I’m walking away or I’ll kill this cunt!”
Marcy was inches from his back when she simultaneously hooked one arm around his elbow, pu
lling the gun away from the hostage’s head, and used her other hand to slash her kidnapper across the back of his thigh with the knife.
The blade went through his pants easily and she felt when it hit bone. The effect was immediate. His screams as the woman broke from his grasp were nothing to her.
Twisting the gun out of his hand as he dropped to the ground, Marcy watched him thrash as he bled profusely onto the cobblestone street. Checking the ammunition in the magazine, she shoved it back in place and stared into his eyes.
“Who sent you?”
He started to laugh. “You stupid little bitch. You’ll never be safe.”
Glancing down his body, she extended her arm and put a bullet in his knee. “Who hired you?”
His fresh screams were accompanied by her being surrounded, guarded by a full dozen men standing shoulder to shoulder. Half of them faced out to watch the street. Those facing toward her had their guns pointed at the kidnapper’s head and she knew they’d shoot if they believed her to be in danger.
Past them, she noted emergency personnel arriving to contain the scene. Medics worked on the injured a dozen feet away. Among them were Near and Far. They were covered in blood, their wounds likely delivered from the same knife she held in her hand.
Straddling the redhead’s torso, trapping his shoulders with her knees, she slid the gun away and switched the knife to her other hand. “I may never be safe but I will always be safe from you. You have one more chance to tell me who hired you.”
“Fuck you, rich girl.”
In her life, she’d had no real friends other than the staff who took care of her. To know that this man had hurt people she cared about and could have killed her first friends for money made her mind cloud with rage.
Looking down at a man who was delirious with pain but still able to spit hatred at her, she said clearly, “No. Fuck you.”
Then she sank the blade into his chest with both hands. She watched as he gurgled his last breath and then the world rushed back, like an explosion in her brain, and she lost consciousness.
Angels & Sinners: The Motor City Edition Page 29
