by K. V. Rose
Because if he had, I’d have never met his dad. Rolland Virani would have never been able to touch me. To coerce me. Rolland would have never made me his target. But I met Jack, and I fell for him, and when his control felt like love, I stayed.
I never realized his father was the exact same way. Just more vile. Never realized it until it was too fucking late.
I stop, inside the foyer with the marble floors and the chandelier and the gilded mirrors and Matthew, the butler with white gloves. I fling my hand out, palm flat against the wall, catching my breath, because the room is spinning when I think of Jack and Caden and that night. My chest squeezes and tightens.
I can’t breathe.
And then someone grabs me from behind, strong hands on my shoulders. They spin me around, pushing my back against the wall, gripping my shirt in their fist.
“You don’t get to do this,” Caden growls, his face inches from mine, his breath hot against my cheek. “You don’t get to mourn him. You don’t get to come into this house and act like your life has changed.” His hand goes to my throat and his eyes darken and I think, really, I deserve whatever is about to come next but then he lets me go, as if I’ve burned him. He backs away, shaking his head, his blue eyes full of some torment I can probably never understand.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he spits at me, “and never come back here. Ever.”
Three
May, 3 Years Ago
Jack opens the door and pulls me inside, slamming the door closed behind me.
“Where the fuck were you?” he asks, angry, his arms crossed over his chest. His brown eyes narrow on mine. His arms are slick with sweat and he’s still wearing his basketball jersey, silver and teal.
“Did you win?” I ask with a small smile, slipping off my boots. One has a hole in the toe, but it’s warming up outside, so I won’t need to replace them. An expense I can deal with next year, when Mom and I have more money. If I get a scholarship like Jack has already gotten, maybe I won’t even have to be with Mom anymore. Maybe I’ll be able to actually save money.
Jack scoffs and throws up his hands. “Seriously, Riley? Answer the question.” He runs a hand through his curly brown hair, and his brows are narrowed in anger.
I feel my cheeks burn as I straighten, after placing my boots neatly on the shoe rack for that purpose in the Virani’s foyer. The fact that rich people have racks for shoes blows my mind.
“Look Jack, I’m sorry I missed the game, but I don’t really want to talk about it—”
He grabs my arm, pulling me toward him, his lip curling. “This is the second game you’ve missed. That’s embarrassing, Riley. Fucking embarrassing. I don’t want to ask you again. What. Happened.”
I yank my arm from his grip. “Mom almost burned the whole fucking house down again, that’s what happened.” I clench my fists, anger making my eyes blur. “She fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand. I had to…had to put out the fire.” I don’t want Jack picturing me looking like a dumbass with the fire extinguisher, which is exactly what happened. Too late for that now.
Jack’s eyes soften, but only for a second. Then he turns on his heel and stalks down the hallway toward the kitchen. “There’s leftovers in here, since you missed dinner, too.”
I take a breath, my shoulders sagging. I didn’t want to come here. I shouldn’t have come here. But Jack was blowing up my phone, and I knew if I didn’t come, he’d come to me. The last thing I wanted him to see was the burn in the living room chair, smell the smoke in the house. See my mom, still passed out in the living room, as if I didn’t save her ass, once again.
In the year Jack and I have been together, he’s become accustomed to my mother’s bullshit. But lately, his patience for it has been growing thinner and thinner. I can’t really blame him. He’s dealt with her for one year. I’ve lived with her for eighteen. I know she’s a pain in the ass. Especially compared to Jack’s own family, living in this fucking mansion with luxury cars and a goddamn butler. Husband and wife, two kids, white picket fence with an in-ground pool in the backyard. Their house is worth more money than most people make in a lifetime.
Not for the first time, I wonder what he sees in me.
But not for the first time, I remind myself that I can’t do better than this.
I make to follow him down the hall, but I hear a click behind me. I turn, frozen, as the door opens.
As Caden Virani walks in, I’m holding my breath. At home, someone walking through the apartment door could mean the difference between a decent night and a hellish night. As Caden’s glacier eyes meet mine, I realize it’s the same thing here.
Especially as a tall, skinny blonde comes tumbling in through the door after him, clutching his arm and giggling. She’s wearing a tight, white dress, and he’s in a white crisp shirt and blazer; what he usually wears when he comes home from law school. Considering it’s a fifteen-minute drive from his parents’ house, that’s often.
Too often.
The girl straightens, fling off her heels, missing the shoe rack completely. She bats her lashes my way. “Oh,” she squeals, “you must be Riley.”
I feel my face grow hot. How the hell does she know that? I’ve seen Caden with many women. Never the same one twice. And I’ve definitely never seen this woman.
Caden rolls his eyes and shuts the door behind him. “Go on, Zoe,” he says, nodding toward the stairs. “I’ll meet you on the bed.”
She giggles and winks at me, then starts up the stairs, pulling herself along by the railing. Clearly, she’s very drunk. “Be naked when I get up there,” Caden calls after her. But his eyes are still on mine as he says the words.
Caden pockets his keys; keys to his black Infiniti parked in the driveway now. I turn around without saying a word to him, to find Jack. Right on time, I hear Jack bellow from the kitchen, “What the fuck are you doing now?”
Caden laughs under his breath. I want to glare at him, but I don’t trust myself to turn around. Every time I’m near him, I feel dizzy. Faint. It’s not just his eyes, or his thick blonde hair or those lean muscles that are visible beneath the white shirts and blazers he always wears. It’s something else, too. Maybe that he’s older, unattainable, off limits. Maybe it’s that I’ve heard him listening to death metal in the room his parents keep for him here, when all Jack wants to listen to is hip-hop.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. Caden isn’t for me. Caden would never be interested in someone like me.
“Do you always jump when he calls for you?” he asks quietly behind me. “Like a dog?” His voice is smooth and low. Where Jack is loud and obnoxious, boisterous and boyish, Caden is quiet. It makes him seem all the more intimidating, for some reason.
“Do you always bring the trash to your parents’ house?” I counter, turning now, ignoring the way my stomach flips as I lock eyes with him.
His expression is unreadable as he slips off his shoes. Shoes that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
Then his lips curl into a smile. “No,” he answers me. “Sometimes I take them to my penthouse.” And then he goes up the stairs without a glance back.
Four
Present
I touched her.
I can still feel her throat under my hand, even though she’s long gone. With any luck, she’ll be on a plane back to the States. Maybe already there by now, because it’s nearly midnight. The bass downstairs from Dad’s annual summer party is pumping, and people are drunk as hell, acting sloppy. I’m in my old bedroom, and I know Mom is in hers, too.
I don’t know why Dad throws this party.
Actually, I do know. It comes with owning half of the real estate market in Toronto and wanting to show off what that means. I’ll be leaving in the morning, of course. I only came for Mom. I don’t give a fuck about Dad, just as he never gave a fuck about Jack. That motherfucker didn’t even cry when he died.
Riley thinks I don’t know.
She thinks I don’t know the scheme she cooked up wi
th my dad. She thinks I don’t know he’s pulling her strings. Maybe I don’t know everything, but she’s obviously fucking him. That much was made clear tonight. What I don’t understand is what he gave her as an incentive. She loathed Jack, in the end. I can’t really blame her; he was controlling. Obsessive. She couldn’t go anywhere by staying with him. But even still, what she did to him…I don’t see how she could hate him this much. To keep fucking him over even in death, by fucking with my father.
My throat feels tight.
I shake out my hands, trying to get the feel of her off of my skin. It sickens me that when my hand was on her throat, when that fear slid into her eyes, I felt good. Not just because her life was, quite literally, in my hands, but because…
I shake my head and lay back in bed, tapping my fist to my mouth and closing my eyes. I can’t think about her. In the three years since Jack died, I’ve tried so hard not to think about her. When I do, it eats me alive. Knowing that, even though I blame her, and even though, eventually, I’m going to hurt her as bad as she’s hurt me, it was my fault too.
I fell for her.
She was only eighteen. I was twenty-four. I was in law school, and I was having the time of my life. I saw her at my parents’ house when I would stop by, which was often, and I saw the way she looked at me. Wide eyed and terrified. But there was something else in her eyes, too. The way they lingered a little too long on mine. The way I wanted them to. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, of course. Jack was crazy about her, but he was no saint himself. Maybe he drove her to want the escape. To want something she couldn’t have.
Fuck this, I think, and grab my phone, sitting up in bed. Dad won’t be going to sleep anytime soon, and he probably won’t be going to bed alone. He’ll take the guest room, and it’s across the house from me, but I still don’t want to risk catching a glimpse of whomever he pulls into bed with him. I hate him enough as it is. I don’t need to see the pussy he takes in the same house as my mom to make me hate him more.
Luckily, Benji’s texted me.
Come to the club.
I know where he means. I know, because it’s where we always go when I’m in the city. He owns the place. I live less than an hour away, but I try not to come here much. When I do, we go out. There. I shake my head, trying to clear any thoughts of her, and I dress quickly, a white shirt, black blazer. And then I get in the Infiniti, and I leave without telling anyone goodbye.
Five
May, 3 years ago
Shade is packed. Schools are out for the summer, it’s Friday night, graduation for seniors is next month, and it seems like everyone eighteen and older is in this club. I had walked past the long line of people waiting to get in, didn’t bother to flash my ID to the guards. Benji is waiting for me at our table in the back of the red and black main room, vibrating strobe lights beyond our reach, thank God.
I hate that shit.
Benji has a vodka soda brought over with a snap of his fingers, and he leans back in the booth, eyes on me.
“So?” he prods me. “Sure you don’t want in on this?” He gestures vaguely to the throng of people grinding against one another in the middle of the expansive dance floor, black marble floors, glittering red ceiling.
I shake my head. “I graduate in July. When I do, I’m taking SVE off the ground.”
Benji scoffs as a waitress wearing a skimpy white dress sets down my drink, flashing me a smile. I nod in her direction, then turn away from her, picking up my drink.
“I think SVE is already more than off the ground,” Benji says, rolling his eyes. He’s got his arms hooked around the black leather booth. He’s wearing a dark blue suit, surveying the money maker that is Shade. Benji didn’t go to grad school. He barely graduated university. He hates everything about what he calls ‘institutionalized education systems’. I don’t blame him; law school has been a time suck. But this is not really my scene.
I like parties, and women, and drinking. I just like smaller settings.
“You’ve got how many millions from investors?” He arches a dark brow, his hazel eyes glittering in the candlelight suspended from the ceiling overhead. I told him that was a safety hazard. He told me to fuck off.
I finish my drink, slam it down on the table with a celebratory thud. “One hundred, but that’s not really the point. The point is, I don’t want to be in the club scene.” I lock eyes with him, so he knows I’m serious. I wouldn’t mind going into business with Benji. We’ve known each since grade school, been best friends basically since we met. But I won’t go into business on this. Eventually, I won’t want this, and I know that.
Benji might always want it.
His eyes slide past me, and a dark smile curls up on his face. “You might want to rethink that.”
I turn to see what he’s looking at and watch as a leggy brunette in a red skirt and crop top, tits nearly bursting from it, comes stalking my way. I recognize her as a girl from one of my mock trial courses.
She comes to stand at the edge of our booth, dark eyes on me. “Wanna dance?” she asks coyly, fluttering long, fake lashes.
My eyes trail down over her tan chest, her tight stomach, ample hips. My fingers are curled around the edges of my empty glass, and I tap them a few times against it, making her wait. Her bravado starts to a falter, her shoulders drooping.
Benji chuckles under his breath. He knows my games.
When I see a faint blush on her smooth skin, I finally nod. “I’m warning you,” I whisper as I slide out of the booth, looking down at her red lips. “I bite.”
She giggles, like she thinks I’m joking. Then she pulls my hand and threads me through the mass of people on the dance floor. Immediately, she turns around, pushing her ass into my cock. I trail my hands down her neck, over her shoulders, then down to her bare stomach, my fingers digging in.
My cock swells as she grinds harder into me, and I hope to God Benji can’t see me because he won’t let this Shade ownership thing go if he does.
But it’s Friday night. I deserve some fun, too.
“What’s your name?” I ask the girl in her ear. I never spoke to her before. If I did, I don’t remember it.
She spins around to face me, wrapping her arms around my neck. She frowns, and I think we must have spoken before. Oh well. “Savannah,” she says finally, forcing her frown into a tight smile.
Someone bumps into me from behind, and I brush it off. It’s nearly impossible not to on this dance floor. Shade is expansive, but it probably should be remodeled for less booths and more dance space. I make a mental note to tell Benji that, even as Savannah is sliding her hands down my shoulders, all the way to my cock.
She palms me, looking up at me through her long lashes.
But then I still as someone bumps me again and I get jostled over, changing my view behind Savannah’s head from the DJ’s booth to the tables by the entrance of the club.
My brother.
He’s got his hands up, and I can tell, even from this distance, that he’s yelling. He’s standing at the edge of a crowded table with kids I don’t recognize, but the person he’s yelling at, I recognize her.
Riley.
“What’s wrong, baby? See an ex?” Savannah asks me in a husky voice, moving her hand up and down my cock, through my pants. “Wanna make her jealous?”
Jack slams his fist on the table, and Riley jerks back, as if she’s nervous. Scared.
I push Savannah off of me, and without a word, fight my way through the crowd, headed straight for my brother.
My shoulder knocks into a kid with a drink in his hand, and both the kid and the drink go flying. He yells something after me, but I don’t look back. At 6’3”, I’ve never really had to deal too much with people picking fights they’d never be able to win. Even in wrestling back in high school, I had more people take a forfeit than risk it.
As I get closer to the long, black tables, I can hear Jack going off. And now that I’m closer, I see the guys at his table are hi
s teammates, and their girlfriends. They’re all looking down at their food, trying not to get involved.
Fucking cowards.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Jack is asking, his hands now curled around the edge of the table. I see a vein throbbing in his neck. He’s wearing his fucking basketball jersey, like all of his fuckhead friends are, because they think it means something cool.
It doesn’t.
“Did you fuck him?” I hear him yell, and at this, one of his friends looks up from his French fries, but he still doesn’t say anything. I’m only a few feet away now. And then I see him take Riley’s shirt in his hands, twist it in his fist. “Did. You. Fuck. Him?” he growls again, in her face, pulling her off her feet.
I almost want to see Riley backhand him, because she will. But I don’t wait.
I slam the dude in front of me out of my way and get to my brother before either he or Riley can say anything else. My hand goes to Jack’s throat, and he lets go of Riley, more out of shock than fear. His hands go to mine, but I lift him off of his feet and slam him against the wall beside the tables.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I ask him, my voice low against his ear.
He realizes it’s me, and the fury in his eyes only deepens. “She took a ride home from some prick—”
I let him slide to the ground, my hand still on his throat. “Stop talking,” I command. “You don’t get to monitor her every movements, you understand that?”
Someone is pulling on my free arm, but not very hard. I glance over my shoulder and see Riley. She’s wearing a black t-shirt of some obscure band that probably only a dozen people in the world have ever heard of, and her usually olive complexion is pale, even in the dim lights of the club.
