“And me?”
Her smile grew smaller, tighter. “For you, the irresistible force. Korinne, our own shattered doll, pretty, yet fierce. Delicate, yet dangerous. The damaged woman who cannot be fixed—Kryptonite to any man with a hero complex.”
“He played us.” The truth of it echoed inside me, ringing over and over, resonating in every bone in my body.
She nodded again. “He did. And he watched you both struggle and flail for two days, butting heads and bruising egos for his entertainment, knowing that in the end, you would sign with him for the same reason you came out of hiding—to protect those you care about. My brother is cruel and smart, and he is without mercy. Which is why I can tell you without a doubt in my mind that if you don’t sign whatever contract he offers you, he will cut poor Vanessa in places that should never feel pain. And if that fails to motivate you, he will move on to your brother, and your brother’s fiancée, and—”
Before she could finish threatening everyone I’d ever met, Julia’s phone started ringing and she frowned, then reached into a slim purse and pulled out her cell. Her frown deepened when she glanced at the display, then she pressed a button and held the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
She listened in silence for several seconds while a voice I didn’t recognize said words I couldn’t understand. Then Julia’s brows rose in sudden interest. “Yes, I’ll show him. We’re on the way.”
She ended the call, then started pressing more buttons on her phone. “You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Holt. As it turns out, Jake won’t have to target what remains of your family after all,” she said, and a cold ball of dread formed in my stomach, growing with every second of silence from Julia Tower. But I wasn’t going to beg for information.
Finally she looked up and her usual smug smile was absent. She looked almost somber. Instead of offering me an explanation, Julia simply handed me her phone.
I took it, dread churning in my stomach. But when I glanced at the screen, my rage swallowed all other emotions like the ocean swallows a single raindrop. Kori stared out at me from the display on Julia Tower’s phone. She was shouting, but I couldn’t hear her, because there was no sound. But I could see her gesturing in fury, her mouth open wide with each enraged shout. Behind her were a toilet, a curtainless shower stall, and a rollout mattress on a raised concrete block.
“That’s a live feed. From Jake’s basement,” Julia said. And as badly as I wanted to believe this was old footage, even on the tiny black-and-white screen I could see that Kori was wearing what she’d put on that morning, including the double holster, though the guns—and no doubt the knives—were gone.
“Let her out.” I could hear the rage roiling in my voice.
“That’s beyond my authority. The only way for you to help Kori is to sign the contract.”
I pulled the phone out of reach when she tried to take it. “Can you honestly tell me that if I sign, he’ll let Kori out?”
Julia watched me closely for a second, like she was sizing me up. Trying to decide whether or not to gift me with the truth. Or maybe to curse me with it. “No,” she said at last. “We both know Korinne will never set foot outside that cell again. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“Get her out, or I won’t sign.”
“Sign, or she’ll suffer before she dies,” Julia countered. “And if you do it quickly, I might be able to arrange a visit with her.”
“That’s not good enough.” I dropped the phone on the leather between us and grabbed her by the throat, pinning her to the opposite door, letting my fury echo in my growl. “Get. Her. Out.”
Something hard pressed into my stomach and I looked down to find her holding a gun, the barrel digging into my navel.
“You’re not going to shoot me. Your brother needs me.”
“And you’re not going kill me, because you need me,” she insisted hoarsely, using the fingers of her empty hand to pry at mine, trying to free her neck.
“You just said there’s nothing you can do for Kori.”
“There isn’t—as long as Jake’s in charge.”
I blinked in surprise. Then I frowned. Then I frowned harder and loosened my grip on her neck. It almost sounded like… “Are you asking me to kill your brother?”
“I’m not asking anything of the sort.” Because she couldn’t. She was no doubt contractually prohibited, just like the rest of Jake’s employees.
“But you can speak in hypotheticals, right?”
“As can you,” she said, and I let her go.
“If Jake were out of power, you could help Kori?”
“I could.” She rubbed her neck with her free hand, but her gun remained pointed at me.
“Why should I believe you care one way or another about what happens to her?”
“I don’t.” Julia shrugged, like that should have been obvious. “I care about what happens to me.” Her brows rose in question, silently asking if I was understanding the things she wasn’t allowed to say.
“You’re not happy under your brother’s reign?”
“You mean under his thumb? I’m chained to him just like Korinne is, only I’ve been serving since I was sixteen. Since before service came with a time limit.” She lifted her left sleeve to show me her binding marks, which seemed to ring her entire arm. “As long as these marks are live, I’ll never have a family or a home of my own. I can’t leave the city without authorization, which never comes. I can’t even leave the room without permission. All because of one stupid oath I took as a kid, in exchange for my older brother’s protection.”
“Protection from what?”
Her lips pressed together for a second before she answered. “There’s a skeleton in every closet, Mr. Holt.”
“Fair enough. What about his heir? Do you honestly think it’ll be better with Jonah pulling your strings?”
Her brows rose again, and her smile was back, small and reticent this time, like she was about to tell me a secret. “I can handle Jonah, Mr. Holt. His bark and his bite are both fierce, but I know how to leash him.”
I thought about that for a moment, weighing my options and her sincerity. “If I were to give you that opportunity, you’d make sure Kori goes free? Immediately?”
“You have my word that if Jake is removed from power, Kori Daniels will go free immediately.” I wasn’t sure I believed her, but since I planned to kill both Jake and Jonah anyway, Kori would go free whether or not Julia kept her word. What I really needed to know was…
“Can you get me a second alone with Jake?”
She nodded without hesitation. “My contract predates time-in-service limits, but it also predates the stricter obedience clauses. I have more leeway than most employees. But I’m going to need some reassurance from you, Mr. Holt. A handshake won’t do.”
“What do you want?”
“Protection. When people find out that I helped rid the world of Jake Tower, those loyal to him—or to his wife—will be out for my head. I want your word—signed and sealed—that you’ll protect me until that threat is gone.”
“No bindings,” I insisted. Kori’s bindings had gotten her tortured. Kenley’s had gotten her caged. Steven’s had nearly gotten him killed.
“Then no deal,” Julia countered. “It’s a simple promise, Mr. Holt. Not a service agreement. Jake’s secondary Binder is bitter about being replaced by Kenley Daniels and he’s loyal to me.”
Secondary Binder? A glimmer of an idea surfaced on the horizon of this new complication. “Is his name Barker?”
Julia frowned. “Yes. And I assure you, he’s heavily guarded. Especially with Kenley currently on the run. Though that won’t last long.”
“I have no plans to harm your Binder.” Big lie—if Kori couldn’t take him out, I damn well would. “In fact, I’m looking forward to working with you both.” Smaller, obvious lie, to cover the larger fib.
Julia rolled her eyes, and I knew I had her. “I know you don’t want to be bound, Mr. Holt. But I assure you this is
the least painful solution for all involved. I’ve already drafted the binding, and we can strike through and initial minor points of compromise before we sign. Then when we get to Jake’s house, you will play your part. After that, you and Kori can walk off into the sunset, if that’s the kind of cheesy, happy ending you sentimental types like.”
“Just like that?” I studied her face, searching for the catch. “It sounds too good to be true.”
“I assure you it’s not. Jake knows how to defend himself, and even if you’re successful, you’ll have to fight your way out. I’ll do my best to rein Jonah in immediately, but in moments of passion and fury, men are often uncontrollable.”
A fact I was personally familiar with. But if Jonah was so uncontrollable, what made her think she could control him? Especially once he’d inherited her binding from Jake?
There was something she wasn’t saying, and I wouldn’t trust Julia Tower even if my own marks had been tattooed on her arm.
“This Binder? How far away is he?” I asked as that idea on the horizon came into even clearer focus.
“Less than a mile.” She pressed a button on the glass separating us from the driver, then gave him an address. “I’m pleased we could come to an agreement.”
* * *
Barker turned out to be a grizzly looking man in his mid-sixties who subsisted on nothing but pizza and beer, if the garbage covering his kitchen counters was any evidence.
I was sorely tempted to kill him where he stood, to free Kenley, which would cut Kori’s last tie to Tower. But if I killed Barker, Vanessa was as good as dead, and Kenley would never forgive me. Which meant Kori might never forgive me. So I watched in silence as the Binder read aloud from the document Julia had produced from a briefcase taken from the trunk of her car.
The document was short and to the point. It said that I would protect Julia Tower from any threat rising from the demise of her brother until such threat was over. I insisted that Barker add an expiration date—Julia wanted five years, but I whittled her down to two, max—as well as a statement that both Vanessa and Kori would be released from the basement the moment Jake Tower died.
I tried to end their terms of service, too, along with Kenley’s—why not shoot for the moon?—but Julia insisted she didn’t have the authority to do that. And we both knew she wouldn’t have freed them even if she could have.
The phrasing was all very careful, because Julia could not actually ask me to kill her brother or offer to reward me directly for that service.
Julia signed. I signed. Barker stamped the agreement with a bloody thumbprint, symbolizing his own will to seal the deal. And after several tense moments, we agreed to leave the document with him, because neither of us was willing to trust the other with it. Then we got back in the car and rolled steadily toward Jake Tower’s fortress of a home, while I tried to think about exactly how I wanted to end his life instead of how dirty I felt, like I’d just signed over a piece of my own soul.
Thirty-One
Kori
“Let me the hell out of here or I’m going to rip your head off and finger paint with your fucking gray matter!” I shouted, roughly the twentieth variation of the same threat. Plausibility and creativity had expired about six versions earlier.
“That’s gonna be kinda hard to pull off, with you in there and me out here,” Jonah called back over the intercom, and I pounded on the glass again.
“Then come face me like a man!” My demands were useless—the glass pounding even more so—but I was alive with rage that had no outlet. My fists itched for Jonah’s face. I was finally free to fight, but couldn’t reach the target.
“Honey, if I go in there, only one of us is coming back out,” Jonah said.
“That’s the general idea!”
Silence answered me, and my rage burned on, unspent. I whirled around and scanned the cell for something to throw. Something to break. But there was nothing. I couldn’t even tell if this was the same room I’d occupied before, or just a neighboring look-alike.
Either way, there was nothing that wasn’t bolted to the floor, except for the worthless two-inch-thick mattress and… My gaze hovered over the toilet, one of the few differences between Jake’s homemade prison and a real one. This toilet was commercial, not detentional. The tank had a lid. A heavy, porcelain lid.
Someone was going to get his ass reamed for overlooking that security risk.
I picked up the tank lid and hefted it, getting used to the weight. If it would kill a Hollywood zombie, it would kill an actual asshole.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” I demanded, stalking closer to the glass, my porcelain weapon hanging at my right side. “You’re scared to face me, now that I’m armed and free—” I bit off my own words in a sudden belated spasm of common sense. They didn’t know I was unbound, and telling Jonah would mean giving up my only advantage.
“Now that I’m free to fight back,” I finished instead. Because Jake hadn’t ordered me not to, this time. “Does your brother know what a sniveling coward you are?” I pounded the glass with one fist. “Is there anyone else out there? Can you guys actually see Jonah’s balls shrivel up and retreat indoors, or are they so small to begin with that you can’t tell any difference?”
“Keep talking, Kori,” Jonah said over the intercom, fury riding his voice like light rides a bolt of lightning. “Every word you say buys you a little more pain.” But beneath his worthless threats, I heard what I really wanted to hear. Laughter. He wasn’t alone, and the other men were laughing at him. Helping me taunt him into disobeying orders, at least long enough to open the door to my cell.
I glared at the one-way glass, pissed off that my reflection was all I could see. “A little pain, huh? If memory serves, a little’s about all you have to offer.”
I couldn’t hear the laughter that followed from the peanut gallery, but I could practically feel it.
“You know you’re in there because of your own stupidity, right?” Jonah said over the staticky intercom, obviously trying to claim the verbal upper hand. “You walked right into a trap.”
Unfortunately I couldn’t argue with that. But…
“It wasn’t your trap, though, was it? Leaving me in the dark last time wasn’t your idea, either, right? Was it Jake? No, it was Julia, wasn’t it? The ideas come from Julia. The orders come from Jake. But what good are you, Jonah? What do you contribute to the Tower team effort?” I paused to give him time to answer, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he didn’t.
“Nothing. That’s what you contribute,” I shouted. “They could give your job to a fucking monkey and the result would be the same. How does it feel to know you contribute nothing?”
The intercom buzzed with static for a moment before he spoke. “It’s not going to work. I’m not coming in there.”
“Because you’re a fucking coward!” My vision started to darken with fury and I swung the tank lid without thinking, smashing it against the glass. The glass cracked but held. The porcelain shattered into several large chunks and a zillion tiny slivers of white glass.
Shit! My fearsome bludgeoning weapon had been reduced to half a dozen mediocre stabbing weapons. Still, any one of them was sharp enough to open a vein if wielded with enough enthusiasm. But to even have a shot at Jonah, I’d have to get him in the room.
“Are you gonna cower and quake out there with your guns and knives because you’re scared of one unarmed woman? Did Jake actually say you couldn’t come in, or are you using your binding as an excuse to cower out there in the hall? We all know you bend the rules when you want to. You thread the loopholes like a seamstress threads a fucking needle. Don’t tell me you don’t!”
Shadow Bound (Unbound) Page 40
