“That’s not me. And this can go wherever you want it to go. Your marks won’t always stand between us.” I let her think that was because I’d soon have a mark of my own, but I’d never been more determined to find a way to rid her of hers, and her next words only underlined that fact.
“No matter what happens, Jake will be in the way,” she said. “That’s how he likes it—his hand in every pie, so that even couples who’ve been together for years know that’s only because he lets them stay together.”
Chills were building at the base of my spine, spreading icy fingers out from there. “How the hell does he justify dictating the terms of his employees’ private lives?”
Kori shrugged. “Why would he bother justifying it?” she said, and my chills became a river of ice flowing up my back and down my legs. “If a match doesn’t benefit him in some way, he’ll dissolve it.”
“If you want to be with me—even on a trial basis—I’m not going to let Jake Tower stand in the way of that.” Since I was painting fantasies with a palette of lies, I might as well paint something nice for her. For us. “That’ll be the first contractual demand I make—Tower and his people have to keep their fingers out of my personal life.”
Kori met my gaze, her eyes swimming in guilt. “I never wanted this assignment. Not even for a single second. But I’ve never wanted it less than I do right now. I don’t want to be the thing that ties you to Jake. I don’t want to be the reason you sign away your free will. And I really don’t want to be the person who makes you look like the sun just set and it’ll never rise again.”
My chest ached. “This isn’t your fault, Kori.” But I couldn’t truly absolve her of her guilt without admitting my own, and I couldn’t do that while she was still bound to Tower. “Besides, the dark is my natural habitat, remember? Who cares if the sun never rises again? We’ll thrive in the dark together.”
“No one thrives in the syndicate. No one worth knowing, anyway.” Her eyes flashed with anger, and my pulse raced in response. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to kiss her again, and find out if anger made her as passionate as fear did. I wanted to snatch her away from the world and keep her for myself, so no one could ever put out the fire she breathed with every thought that sparked in her brain and every word that left her mouth. “He’ll change you. He’ll make you do things. Hurt people.”
And finally I understood. “You’re not responsible for what Tower makes you do. He is.”
“You don’t know—”
“Yes, I do,” I insisted softly, wishing the coffee table wasn’t between us. “I know he’s used you as a weapon, but even when you’re the gun, he’s still the one pulling the trigger. The blood is on his hands.”
“I’ve done horrible things, Ian. You may have heard, but you don’t really know. You can’t really understand. And I can’t forget.” Her voice cracked, but no tears came, and again I was floored by how incredibly strong she was. How determined to hold everything together, when her world was clearly falling apart beneath her feet.
I loved that she was so strong. But I hated that she had to be.
“What if we left?” I said. “What if we just go get Kenley and you take us as far as you can go? And farther still, from there? We could do it.” I’d lived off the grid for the past seven years. “I could keep us safe.”
She shook her head slowly, and that blaze of anger in her eyes evened into wistful frustration. “Even if defaulting on our contracts wouldn’t kill me and Kenley—and it would—he’d find us. He knows our real names. Part of them, anyway. And if he couldn’t find us, he’d go after my brother. My grandmother. Kenley’s girlfriend.”
My brow rose a little at that unexpected bit of information, but she was still talking, constructing verbal obstacles to every exit strategy I could possibly have come up with.
“Whoever you have, Jake’ll find them, too. And they don’t have to be bound to him to suffer at his hands. Or his surrogate hands.”
I thought about Steven, and Meghan, and Aaron. I thought about everyone I wouldn’t want to see hurt, any more than they already had been. But above all of them—above everyone I’d ever shared a cup of coffee or a kind word with—it all came down to one thing.
“You,” I whispered, staring down at her. I hadn’t realized how empty my life was, so far from everyone I’d ever loved—until I met her. “I care about you, Kori.”
She blinked up at me, her eyes sad, and more scared than I’d ever seen them. “Then that’s how he’ll get you.”
Twenty-One
Kori
Ian was up to something. I could tell from the way he kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye as he stacked dirty plates beneath a silver room service tray cover.
“Don’t tell me,” I said from the couch. I was trying desperately to hang on to the rare, vague sense of contentment I got from watching him clean up, like we were some normal couple staying in a hotel on vacation. Like our lives weren’t both at serious risk. But that look in his eyes was making me nervous.
“Don’t tell you what?”
“Whatever you’re planning. If you tell me, I’ll have to tell Jake. So don’t tell me. And stop plotting.”
“Even if I’m plotting to whisk you away to some isolated homestead in the middle of the Australian outback, where we can forever live in peace and privacy, far from the meddling hands of both egomaniacal mob bosses and the IRS?”
He said it like it might actually be possible.
“Especially if that’s the plan.”
Ian rounded the couch toward me. I should have backed away, but I couldn’t do it. I let him sit and wrap his arms around me and I cursed myself silently when my hands slid over his stomach and around his back, feeling hard planes and solid ridges. I couldn’t help that, either. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to be touched by him.
And that thought terrified me.
He kissed me, and I kissed him back, and for that minute, with his arms around me, the taste of him on my lips, I forgot all the reasons this was a very bad idea.
I forgot that I was dooming him to serve a human monster. I forgot that my life and my sister’s well-being depended on his compliance. I forgot about everything except how good he felt, and how much I liked the version of myself I saw reflected in his eyes.
Then he pulled away with a satisfied moan, his eyes still closed, and reality came crashing down around me again, the pain sharper, the aching hopelessness deeper than ever after the brief distraction.
“You know we can’t do this,” I whispered, clutching his shirt in both fists, my forehead resting on his collarbone. I wanted to hold him, but I needed to push him away, because the longer this went on, the harder it would be for both of us, when Jake ripped him from my grasp.
Jake might actually agree not to mess with Ian’s personal life, but he could still do whatever he wanted with me. How would Ian react if Jake sent me to recruit someone else, under the same circumstances? Jake would do that—and worse—just to prove he could. To punish me. And maybe to punish Ian for trying to protect me.
“We can’t do what?” Ian’s hands slid up my back, touch demanding nothing. Offering everything. I’d never met anyone like him. I could step back, and he would give me space, but he’d still be there, ready to accept more whenever I was ready to give it.
“This. We can’t do this. It won’t last. It can’t.”
“I don’t like how easily you toss that word around.” He frowned, his green-eyed gaze narrowed on me. “Why is everything ‘can’t’ with you?”
“I speak from experience.”
“Not this time, you don’t. If this had ever happened before, it couldn’t be happening now. That’s what they mean by ‘once in a lifetime.’”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But that was only half-true. I might not have followed whatever convoluted logic his words mapped out, but I knew what he meant. I could feel it, too.
“I’m talking about you. Us. You can’t possib
ly know how this is going to end, because this doesn’t fit into the boxes you shove all your other issues into. This is bigger than that. This is bigger than you, and bigger than me, and it’s sure as hell bigger than Jake Tower.” He ducked, drawing my gaze back up with his, and the look in his eyes was so intense my pulse started whooshing in my ears almost loud enough to drown out his words. “Kori, I—”
“Don’t.” I stood and backed across the room in mounting panic, trying to hold myself together by pushing everything else out. “Don’t tell me how you feel, and whatever you do, don’t tell Jake. But don’t lie about it, either, because he has Readers, and he’ll know the moment you tell an outright lie. And he’ll know you’re hiding something even if you only think about lying. It’s a trap. The whole thing is one great big trap and we’re flies flapping our wings, trying to pull free from the sticky paper. But the harder we flap, the tighter we’re caught.”
Ian frowned and came closer, but I backed away again. “You’re starting to sound paranoid, Kori.”
“I am paranoid.” The bitter laughter that bubbled up my throat actually burned. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t out to get me.”
“Okay, calm down.”
I shook my head and backed around the glass coffee table, but he followed me slowly. Persistently. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what happened. I can’t come back from what I did, and even if I could, I don’t think I want to.”
“I know what happened.” Ian reached for me, but I backed away again. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to let him hold me, and that’s how I knew I should keep distance between us instead.
Wanting things is dangerous—it gives people power over you.
Wanting things you can’t have is even worse.
But giving in to desire just because you want something is weakness. Inexcusable weakness of character and will. I didn’t get many opportunities to exercise my own will, and I wasn’t going to let any of it slip between my fingers just because his arms felt strong. Just because it felt good to let someone else stand guard for once. I wasn’t that weak.
I couldn’t be.
“How do you know?” I didn’t want to believe him. If he knew what I’d done, he might also know how I’d paid for my crimes. And I desperately didn’t want him to know that.
“People talk and I listen even when they’re not talking to me.”
That was the truth, and part of me was glad he respected me enough to give it to me without the sugarcoating. But the rest of me… The rest of me was…
I don’t know what I was.
Something crawled beneath my skin, fighting to get out, and I wanted to scratch, but that would bring no relief. My throat ached from holding back words I couldn’t say. My eyes burned from holding back tears I couldn’t let fall. And in my head, one word played over and over, and I couldn’t make it stop.
Nonononono…
“Kori…”
“No! Stay there.” I backed toward the short hall, instinctively pulled toward the dark bedroom. Toward escape.
“Okay. I’ll stay here.” Ian stopped in the middle of the living room, reaching for me with his palms out. Unarmed. Unsure. “But you stay, too. Don’t go, Kori. Please.”
“I got him shot.” The room blurred beneath my tears. “I was supposed to protect him with my own life, and I let Jake get shot instead. His kids could have been killed. He hates me now, and even though I’m out of the basement, I’m still being punished, and that’s never going to stop. I’m poison, Ian.” I looked right into his eyes, trying to make him understand how serious my predicament really was, because the words alone weren’t enough. I wasn’t overreacting. I wasn’t unreasonably paranoid. My fear was justified, for us both. “I’m the most dangerous thing that could ever have happened to you.”
“No. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I shook my head, and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t make my hands stop shaking, and my breaths were coming too fast again. “If you try to stay with me after you sign, you’ll piss him off, and you’ll go down with me.”
“You’re not going down, and neither am I. No one can hold a grudge forever, and you were one of his favorites, right?” Ian asked, and I nodded, trying to see whatever possibility he was seeing for my future. I needed that light at the end of the tunnel. “When you bring me into the fold, all will be forgiven, and you’ll get your place back. You’ll get your job back. It’ll be just like it was before.”
I couldn’t tell whether he meant that or was just trying to calm me down. I could feel panic building beneath me, a spiral of dread and alarm waiting for me to take that final step over the edge. And once I lost control, I wasn’t sure I could ever regain it.
But that didn’t really matter. None of it mattered anymore, because of the truth I hadn’t been able to voice before. The truth I shouldn’t have voiced, even then.
“I don’t want it back, Ian. I hate him, and I’m scared that if he gives me my job back, the next time I have a chance to protect him, I just…won’t. I’ll just let the bullet fly right past me, or I’ll pull him through the shadows a second too slow.”
Pain exploded in my head, in reaction to thoughts I had no contractual right to speak, but I kept going because the pain in my head could never hurt worse than my memories. Than the gnawing deep in my gut as the nightmares and flashbacks ate at me slowly, devouring the me I’d been to make way for this new me—a whimpering coward I didn’t want to face in the mirror.
“It’ll hurt, but it’s a terminal breach, so if I can ride out the initial pain, I’ll survive, and that’s too much temptation for me to resist. I want to kill him, but I can’t. Letting him die is the best I can do.”
“So let him die.” Ian reached for me again, and again I backed away, and the walls of the narrow hallway closed in on me.
“I can’t.” I shook my head, trying to clear it. Trying to slow my breaths like Kenley had shown me. “I mean I can, but if Jake dies, everything’ll be worse. So much worse. There are clauses in place. If he dies, every contract and piece of property not already in his wife’s name automatically transfers to his heir, and we’ll be so much worse off then.”
“Who’s the heir?” Ian asked, and I almost missed the note of quiet danger his voice held. He’d stopped advancing, so I’d stopped retreating, but I couldn’t let him come any closer. This wasn’t the kind of problem a little cuddling and some vodka could fix. “Do you know who it is?”
“I know, but I can’t tell you. No one can. We’re all sworn to silence.”
“So, killing Jake Tower wouldn’t free you?”
I shook my head slowly, watching him through narrowed eyes. I could see what he was thinking. Hell, he’d practically said it. “That wouldn’t free me or anyone else. You can’t kill Jake. And I can’t let him die. And we can never, ever have this conversation again.”
Ian
Kori sat in the hallway for almost an hour, one bare foot stretched into the unlit bedroom, like just the touch of darkness soothed her.
I wanted to touch her—to hold her—so badly my arms ached from emptiness. But I was afraid to get any closer for fear that she’d bolt into the bedroom and out of the shadows before I could even call her name.
I didn’t know how to fix what was wrong with her, and it killed me to see her sitting in the corner—both literally and figuratively—when an hour before, she’d been ready to spit nails at anyone who crossed her path. I didn’t know what had triggered this meltdown, and at first I thought it was me. I thought kissing her—or maybe touching her—had triggered some memory she couldn’t conquer. And maybe that was part of it.
Shadow Bound (Unbound) Page 28
