Give in to Me

by K. M. Scott

  We hurried back down the stairs and out the museum doors. Tristan didn’t say anything, but I knew he was far more worried than he wanted me to believe. We walked along the Grand Canal for as long as we could with him looking behind us every few feet. Finally, I realized that we weren’t going back to the hotel.

  “Where are we going? The hotel is back there.”

  “Just keep walking,” Tristan said, his tone serious.

  “What’s going on?”

  He pulled me into a dark corner and shook his head. “I thought they had him. I thought we’d be safe. Nina, no matter what happens, I won’t let anything hurt you. Trust me.”

  His words were meant to calm me, but I saw fear in his eyes. “You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

  The sound of footsteps on the stone walkway told me someone was coming. Tristan’s hand tensed on my arm as they came closer, and he pushed me behind him. A large man came around the corner and for a moment I held my breath until I heard a familiar voice.

  I peeked around Tristan and saw Varo standing there. “I’ve been looking for you. You lost me at the museum. We need to get you out of here. The plane’s ready to go.”

  Tristan held my hand tightly. “What’s happened?”

  “Daryl called me. He’s worried about Karl. He’s been released.”

  “Released?” I asked as I moved to Tristan’s side. “Is he here?”

  Varo looked around and shook his head. “I don’t know. We need to leave here.”

  Tristan didn’t question my bodyguard’s order, which told me he believed we were in danger. If I had any doubt, the gun in Varo’s hand put any uncertainty to rest. As Tristan asked him if he remembered something or another, I began to get scared.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tristan

  Varo followed us as I led Nina and him along the streets of the city looking for a water taxi to take us to Marco Polo. As long as we got to the airport, we’d be safe, at least until we got back to the States. There I knew I could protect Nina much better than in Venice.

  As we walked quickly back toward the Grand Canal, we ran into crowds of people flocking out into the night, making it harder to look out for Karl and whoever he had with him. I hadn’t seen his face yet, but I knew he was there. I’d taken everything that mattered to him, and now he planned to do the same to me.

  My heart raced as we weaved through tourists and Venetians, all out to enjoy a beautiful night. They had no idea that among them was a man who wouldn’t think twice about killing two people just like them.

  Nina held my hand like she was afraid I would let go, squeezing it harder when she heard a loud noise or when someone pushed against her as they passed by. My eyes scanned the crowds as we wound through them, every person appearing guilty as the minutes ticked by.

  “We should try to find a water taxi,” Varo said behind us. “The sooner we get to the plane, the better.”

  I saw a taxi coming in our direction, but it was on the other side of the canal. To catch it, we’d have to cross one of the bridges. Pointing toward the nearest one, I tried to make Nina believe everything was going to be okay. “What’s the name of this bridge? You know all about Venice.”

  Her eyes grew wide, and I knew she wasn’t buying my act. “It’s the Accademia Bridge, not that it matters. Why are you acting like everything’s okay?”

  “Because it’s going to be. Now tell me all about this bridge so we can at least pretend our tour of Venice was successful.”

  As Nina gave me chapter and verse about the history of the Accademia Bridge, we began crossing over to the other side of the canal and I saw my first glimpse of Karl. We were too late.

  Before she could realize what was happening, I stopped and turned toward Varo, who had seen him too. “I need you to do what you said you would.”

  Varo simply nodded, and I turned to face Nina. “I need you to go with Varo now. He’ll get you to the plane and keep you safe. I’ll be there in a little while.”

  Her eyes flashed panic, and she looked around to see what was making me send her away. When she settled back on me, I saw tears in her eyes. “No, don’t do this! Don’t send me away. You promised no more running. Don’t do this, Tristan!”

  I cradled her face in my hands as the tears rolled down onto my skin. “Baby, I won’t let them hurt you because of me. Go with Varo so at least I can know you’re safe.”

  “No! He’s going to hurt you or worse, and then I’ll never see you again. Please don’t send me away.”

  I leaned in and kissed her as Varo moved around me to take hold of her arm. “I’ll see you soon. Don’t worry.”

  She fought him off, but it was no use. He knew what he had to do. I’d made him promise that if she was ever in danger and I couldn’t protect her that he would. I needed to believe he’d live up to that pledge now.

  Nina’s eyes pled with me not to send her away, nearly breaking my heart, but I had no choice. For one of the first times in my life, I was doing the right thing, no matter how much it was killing me to watch her as Varo took her away.

  Karl stood on the other side waiting for me. Dozens of people separated us, each in danger if I didn’t find some way to get off that bridge. I took off in the direction Varo and Nina had gone, hoping to at least reach the walkway, but one of Karl’s henchmen was waiting. Terrified they’d already gotten Nina, I frantically searched for any sight of her, finally seeing Varo leading her into a building and hopefully to safety.

  From behind me, I heard a familiar voice. “Son, I told you not to fuck with me. Like father, like son.” I turned and saw Karl’s face twisted into an angry smug expression as a man grabbed me from behind to hold me. “Take him to the room.”

  “Planning to kill me in one of these hotels? Is that supposed to be ironic, Karl?” I asked, hoping to gain some time for Varo to get Nina out of Venice.

  “I’m going to do even better, Tristan. I’m going to kill you in one of your hotels. Or maybe I could do it on your plane. I like the symbolism of that too.”

  “Way to keep it classy, Karl. You always were new money. Never did understand your level, did you?” His answer to my question was a hard right to my face. After a few moments, I could see straight again, if not a little blurry. I knew I had to keep him there as long as possible. A couple more insults might give Varo the time he needed to get Nina to the plane. “No wonder my father only gave you a nothing company. He knew your true worth, didn’t he?”

  But Karl didn’t take the bait. “Always the clever one, Tristan. Take him to the room, and West, find your buddy and that girl now!”

  I turned to see West standing behind me. How long had he been working for Karl and living just yards away from Nina? I watched him take off to hunt down Varo and Nina and prayed to God I’d given them enough time to find their way out of the city. I heard two men start to say where to search for them and then all I felt was pain in the back of my head before everything went black.

  “Wakey, wakey. Time to rise and shine.”

  I opened my eyes and saw the familiar gold and burgundy décor of a Richmont Venice room. Karl sat in front of me with a cigar between his teeth, like some kind of evil villain character from an old cartoon. My hands were tied behind me, so I had to blink the sleep from my eyes. “Tie any women to train tracks recently?”

  “Still clever, even just minutes before I finally get rid of you once and for all. I have to say, Tristan, you are one tough foe to eliminate.”

  Shaking my head, I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this be my last conversation of my life, but he left me with little choice. The guy was a homicidal madman but even more, a colossal asshole. “It didn’t have to be like this, Karl. You were my father’s friend.”

  He blew cigar smoke in my direction and let out a deep laugh. “Friend? You don’t know much at all, son. I would have figured that by now you would have found out I was never your father’s friend.”

  “Then you were my mother’s lover. One would think th
at would count for something. I can’t imagine she’d want her son killed by the man she loved.”

  The smug expression slid from his face, replaced by a hint of sadness for only a moment. But then the nasty fuck was back again. “Oh, so you know about that?”

  “I know she loved you and you seemed to love her.”

  “I adored her. I may not have had the money your father had, but I could have made her happy.”

  “It would have been nice if someone did,” I said quietly, unsure how I felt about agreeing with the man about to kill me.

  “But she left me. For him! I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t,” he said with venom in his voice.

  “She had no choice. Once Taylor and I came along, she had to stay. She’s been dead for five years. Maybe it’s time to forgive.”

  Karl stood from his seat and walked over to the bar to pour himself a drink. When he turned around with the glass in his hand, I was struck at how much he reminded me of my father. The few times I’d watched Victor Stone conduct business, he’d had a glass of scotch in his hand each time. That’s what this was to Karl now. Business. But it had a lot of the personal involved too.

  He walked back and took a seat in front of me again, the ice cubes in the amber liquid clanking against the side of the glass. “Sometimes there can be no forgiveness, son. Sometimes all you’re left with is hatred as pure as the blood that courses through your veins.”

  “So you won’t forgive my father or mother and decided to kill me instead? Seems pretty fucked up. You have nothing left, Karl. Can you possibly hate me so much that you have to kill me? Does the fact that you loved my mother mean nothing now?”

  He drank a gulp of scotch and took a deep breath before he exhaled slowly, as if some weight had been removed from him. “If only she’d met me first. You know, I used to wish that you and your brother were my sons. Twins ran in her family, so maybe we could have had twins. I never liked your brother, Tristan. Presumptuous fuck that he was, he thought he was too important to deal with the likes of me, even as a teenager. You were different, though. More like me. He was all books and studying, but not you. I could have liked you. I did like you. You’re a lot like her. I see her in your eyes, even now.”

  “You mean the one that’s nearly swollen shut or the other one your men haven’t started on yet?”

  “Your one flaw—do you know what that is?”

  He took another drink of scotch while I shook my head, not interested in helping him in whatever the fuck this was. “Boyish charm?”

  “Smart ass. Your one flaw is that you get attached to things, people. The drugs when you were younger. This girl now. She’s the reason I have to do all this.”

  I chafed at his mention of Nina, tugging at the ropes that held my wrists behind me. “Don’t blame Nina for your being crazy, Karl. At least be truthful with yourself. You’re killing me because I found out about Cordovex and how Rider’s drugs were killing people. Nina had nothing to do with that.”

  “But that’s not true, Tristan. If only you’d left things well enough alone. You couldn’t, though. That’s your mother in you. You found out about Joseph Edwards and then you saw his daughter. That getting attached thing, remember? Your weakness. All you had to do was throw some money at her. It wouldn’t have taken much. A middle class girl probably would have been happy if you paid off her fucking student loans. But no, you had to ride in on the white horse and save her. You did this.”

  “My father had Joseph Edwards killed. Once I was CEO of Stone Worldwide, it was the least I could do to try to make up for that.” Why I felt the need to explain my actions to this psychotic madman was beyond me, but I did.

  A laugh exploded from Karl’s face, startling me. “Your father never had a damn soul killed. He couldn’t be bothered. You think he was some kind of shark, but the truth was he was just a workaholic. Nothing more. Well, work and those goddamned secretaries he liked to sleep with. It was the work he loved more than the people around him, though. Hell, he loved work more than he loved Tressa. He made it easy for me to get to her.”

  “The least you can do now is tell the truth, Karl. I know my father ordered Nina’s father to be killed. He’d gotten too close to exposing the story of Judge Cashen and his daughter’s deaths and Taylor’s part in that. I know all about the sexual harassment case and the Judge’s part in that.”

  Slowly, Karl shook his head. “Right puzzle, wrong pieces, son. It’s true that Taylor got that girl pregnant. That smarmy fuck thought he could do a teenage girl, but he wasn’t smart enough to wear a fucking condom. That he didn’t want her was no surprise. She was a fucking child. A throwaway lay. But your father had nothing to do with her father’s death. That was me. I ordered his death and Edwards’.”

  The realization that my family hadn’t directly ruined Nina’s family stunned me for a moment. All this time the guilt I’d shouldered had been wrong. My father hadn’t been a saint, but at least he hadn’t killed Nina’s father. “Why? Was it because Edwards was getting to close to the dirty laundry my father wanted hidden? Did he tell you to get rid of Cashen and Nina’s father?”

  Chuckling, Karl lifted his glass and swallowed the last gulp of alcohol. “You have a misguided view of who Victor Stone was. A semi-talented businessman, his real skill was as a worker. He knew more about business than most men because he spent hours learning about it, but he would never have a threat eliminated. He preferred to fight it out. The competition is what he liked.”

  As he stood to refill his glass, I asked, “Then why were they killed if my father wasn’t worried about losing the case or what Nina’s father had?”

  With his back to me, he answered. “Rider Pharmaceutical.”

  “What?”

  He turned around and smiled, repeating his answer. “Rider Pharmaceutical. The success of Cordovex wasn’t going to be ruined by some nosy journalist or your father’s inability to keep his dick in his pants. So they had to go.

  “All of this over Rider and Cordovex?”

  “That competitive streak in your father extended to your mother too. When he found out, he gave me that tiny, pissant company named for her maiden name. I knew what that meant. That was his way of saying I couldn’t have the woman I loved but I could have some useless company to remind me every day that he’d won. Over the years, I’d been able to make it into something and then Cordovex came. We got it through the FDA with an acceptable level of problems, but no amount of hope changed the fact that it wasn’t what we wished it would be. Your father found out and fired me. He was nice enough to give me some time to come up with a way to save face when I left Stone. That’s where his mistake was.”

  I wracked my brain to remember any evidence of Karl ever being fired, but if there had been any proof, I’d never seen or heard about it. Whatever he was going on about was fiction to feed his demented ego. “My father never fired you. This is all just to make you feel like you weren’t some low level operative in a company run by a bigger man.”

  “So I found a way to make sure I didn’t have to leave. I couldn’t be forced out if the man doing it wasn’t around anymore.”

  Karl’s words slowly sunk into my brain and I suddenly realized I wasn’t breathing. It couldn’t be true. He must have been lying.

  “I see by the look on your face you don’t believe what I said. Believe it. I needed to find a way to get rid of your father and Taylor, since he’d take over the minute your father was gone. That your mother would have to suffer for staying with him was poetic justice, but I knew I’d have to find some way to get rid of you too. I figured I could deal with that later. Tressa had secretly told me that Victor planned to fire me over the Cordovex thing your girlfriend’s father had found out about and thought convincing him to take a few days off would give me the chance to leave the company quietly. She told me you didn’t want to go. Something about some party you didn’t want to miss.”

  As he spoke, I remembered that time like it was yesterday. I’d told my mother I had
no interest in going away with them but at the last minute, I’d given in to her constant asking me to change my mind, thinking a few days in the islands would at least offer a chance to party there with much better drugs. My mother had been so happy when I finally relented.

  Rage coursed through my veins as the truth became clear. Karl had killed my family over his petty ambitions and now planned to kill me and Nina because he was a megalomaniacal fuck. “You bastard! You killed them over a fucking job?”

  “I deserved that job! I made Rider Pharmaceutical a company worthy of respect and he wanted to shut me out of everything! I deserved everything he was taking away.”

  “You killed my entire family over some bullshit company the Feds would have ruined anyway. Cordovex would have been the end of Rider,” I said quietly, still unable to process the actions of the monster in front of me.

  “Not true. Rider only had to pull the drug voluntarily. The FDA is nice like that. Then it was just a matter of playing the waiting game for a few years and reintroducing it onto the market. I just had to make sure that reporter was handled. But then you didn’t die in the crash.”

  A look of disappointment crossed his face and he shrugged nonchalantly. My living through the plane crash had put a damper on his big plans. At least I could know that even though I didn’t know about it at the time, I’d been a thorn in this fucker’s side.

  “But then you disappeared a few months ago and all my plans could be set in motion once again. It was like God was smiling down on me from Heaven. So Cardiell was born, and I had it all, but once again, one of you fucking Stones ruined it.”

  Karl’s face turned bright red, and he jumped up from his chair to begin pacing as he rambled on about how he’d been treated unfairly, first by my father and then by me. With every word, he sounded more and more like a madman out of his mind.

  It didn’t matter, though. None of his men had returned to report their success in finding Nina and Varo, which meant they’d found a way to escape. As long as she was safe, I could handle anything Karl did.