by M. Never
“Let’s go. Quietly,” he threatens.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Silas,” I hiss. “I’ll die before I go back to him.”
“Trust me. Once you’re back home, you’re going to wish for death.”
I tremble in his grasp as horrid images of the past flood my memories.
I scan the room frantically looking for Jett or Kayne. Neither are anywhere to be found. My heart beats harder, and my fear balloons as I’m faced with being forced to return to the place I fled from. Escaped from. My eyes land on Alistair—who’s watching Silas and me closely. I want to scream for help, but I know that could lead to a fatal outcome. I can feel the gun holstered in his pants digging into my back.
“Don’t make a scene, London.” My name on Silas’s lips burns like battery acid, searing every old wound.
I can’t go back. I won’t go back.
My fight or flight instincts instantly kick in, and without even thinking, I stab my high heel into Silas’s foot. He barks in pain and momentarily loosens his grip. That’s when I bolt, purposely knocking into a waiter, sending his stacked tray of champagne flutes crashing to the floor. Hopefully, that will cause enough of a distraction for me to flee. I kick off my shoes and run. Past the other girls, Alistair, a host of Mansion’s clients, and Kayne and Jett who are just making their way into the room.
“HE KIDNAPPED HER!” JUICE CHEWS me out over the earpiece. “Are the two of you smoking crack?”
“She was in danger. He made an executive decision.” I attempt to defend Kayne as I blast a bad guy. Sometimes I wish it was this easy to eradicate the enemy. Just pick up an M16 and blow the motherfuckers away.
“An executive decision? She’s a liability now. Jett, you know that!” Juice clearly doesn’t share our view on Ellie’s predicament.
“She’s an innocent. And it’s our job to protect her.”
“You could have sent her to a safe house. We could have protected her without jeopardizing the whole mission!”
“Kayne says that would have looked too suspicious. He wanted to keep her close.”
Juice sighs, crazed. “Well you better hope he keeps her in his goddamn pocket. When the police come sniffing around, what’s going to happen then? Kayne was the last person she was seen with.”
“That’s what we have you for. Make it go away.”
“What am I, a fucking magician now? Alakazam,” he snaps, perturbed.
“I believe we know people in high places. Make a call. Keep the cops away. We’ll handle the rest.”
“You better do fucking more than handle it. You better run shit, Jett. This operation can’t go south.”
“It won’t. Do your job, and I’ll do mine. And everything will be fine.” I hope. Pray.
“No more bullshit, understand? I don’t want to clean up anymore messes until I absolutely have to.”
Translation: Don’t bother me until you have El Rey in your grasp.
“Roger that.”
No more messes. Got it.
Good little boys and girls from now on. Scouts honor.
“Over and out.” Juice signs off.
I toss the controller and rock restlessly in the gaming chair up to my eyeballs in stress. No more messes.
I glance at my watch, realizing I’ve been gone way longer than I intended.
Time to get back to business.
I WON’T STOP.
Not even when Jett calls after me. I’ll never stop until I’m gone. Until I disappear.
I fly toward the back of the house, into the service kitchen. I almost make it out the hidden doorway before Jett snags my arm.
“What the hell just happened? Where are you going?” His questions hit me like bullets. I have no answers, only painful regret and overwhelming fear. I tug on my arm, desperate to break free.
“Jett, I’m sorry,” I apologize frantically.
“For what?”
“This.” I knee him square in the balls, and he drops to the floor.
“Sonofabitch!”
Wracked with guilt, I disappear through the doorway that spits me out on a long narrow path leading to the backyard. I’ve explored this house enough to know where all the secret passages and alternate exits are.
Once I finally reach the edge of the house’s vast lawn, I head for the trees on the perimeter of the property. It’s dark but warm, and the full moon provides just enough silvery light to allow me to see.
Run, just run. Never stop running.
Panicky tears stream down my face, my leg muscles scream, and my lungs burn from the physical exertion, but I can’t stop. The extensive lawn seems to go on forever, the thick grass cold and wet under my bare feet.
I suddenly hear heavy breathing and weighted steps behind me. Terrified, I push my legs to move faster and my lungs to pump harder.
Run, just run. Never stop running.
“London!” My name echoes through the darkness, but I refuse to slow down. I won’t go back. I’ll never go back.
I barely reach the edge of the woods before I’m tackled to the ground.
“NO!” I screech, punching and kicking, unleashing my strongest fight.
“London, London, LONDON!” I’m finally overpowered and pinned down.
“No! No! No!” I continue to thrash in an insane fit. “I can’t go back! I can never go back!”
“Hey! London, look at me!” Jett’s voice penetrates the madness in my head. “London, look at me!” He grabs my face and shakes my head.
The panic-stricken tears start to pour.
“Jett, let me go! Let me run!” I push on his shoulders and ramble like a madwoman. “I have to run!”
“You’re not going anywhere until you calm down. You’re hysterical!”
“Jett, please!” I scream. “Before he finds me!”
“Who? Before who finds you?” He keeps an impenetrable hold on my face as he tries to understand. “What happened inside?”
I cry inconsolably, my body succumbing to the fear, sinking into the cold, wet grass while trapped beneath Jett.
“London, please,” he begs earnestly in a soft, soothing voice. “Tell me all your secrets so they can become mine, too.”
“No,” I sob. “The only person who deserves to share my secrets is the devil.”
“There is nothing you can’t tell me. There isn’t anything I won’t understand.” He sounds so sincere, so worried. It makes the pain of the past harder to bear.
“Jett, please. Just let me go,” I stress in a strained whisper. “Forget you ever knew me and just let me disappear,” I implore.
The moon’s glow highlights all his worried features and the shocked and confused look on his beautiful face.
“You know I could never forget about you. What you’re asking is impossible.” He uses his thumbs to wipe away the wetness descending down my cheeks.
“Then just kill me.” I move his hands down to my throat. “Just do it right now and put us both out of our misery.”
Anger flashes in Jett’s acute eyes. “London, you are talking fucking nonsense!” He snatches my wrists and pulls me up.
“No, I’m not. I’m dead fucking serious. I’d rather die than go back!”
“Back where? You have to tell me so I can understand.” His grip gets tighter, more urgent. “Trust me. If there’s only one person you’re ever going to trust in your life, let it be me.”
The tears rain out of my eyes as I crumble under his stare. Simply verbalizing the memoires is emotionally excruciating.
“I was sixteen.” I finally crack wide fucking open. I’ve never shared this part of my life with anyone, and I don’t know if I’ll survive if I do.
“What happened when you were sixteen?”
“I was taken,” I explain through the tears. “Given to a man who did unspeakable, vile things to me for years. I was a slave. I lived in a cage. I was his pet.” My voice disappears.
Jett’s expression drops. He understands.
“Who gave you
to him?”
I look dead in his eyes. “My father.”
“What?” he gasps, appalled.
“I thought I had been kidnapped. Turns out I was sent to be trained. To be broken.” My lip quivers as the memories surge in like an angry sea. “He wanted a submissive, a slave, and he got one. For a long time. I did everything I was ordered to, no matter how disgusting. I was his signing bonus, his blackmail, his entertainment. Whatever he needed me to be. I had no voice. No face. No soul. I was a beautiful building with nothing inside. And he took full advantage.”
“And what happened?”
“I escaped. I’d had enough. I was dying. That night was the last straw.”
“What night?” Jett hangs on my every single syllable.
“The night he tied me to a bed and left me there. The night I was used over and over and over again by countless men. Even when I pleaded, even when I cried. Even when the pain engulfed my entire body and I couldn’t take another second, it continued.” I completely break down. “It continued for so long. I was helpless, and he knew. He loved it. They all loved to hear me suffer. It was part of the thrill.”
“Jesus Christ.” Jett pulls me into his arms and lets me sob out the agony all over his silk shirt. He rocks me consolingly, humming a soothing rhythm in my ear.
“How did you finally get away?” he asks delicately.
“When it was finally over, when I was finally released,” I weep. “I was bloodied and bruised and completely destroyed. I didn’t care whether I lived or died. All I cared about was it ending.” I become lost in the memory. “My father’s right-hand man, Silas, always kept a gun tucked away in the waistband of his pants, and I knew it. I knew I could get close to it. He had his time with me, too. Whenever he wanted. Which was often. I knew the two of them so well. Knew their routines, and their habits, and their timetables. I knew them better than anyone.
“I planned to just grab the gun and shoot myself, but it didn’t happen that way. Silas was too quick and deflected the shot. The bullet ricocheted and ended up hitting my father. We were all in shock, and Silas had to make a split-second choice to either help my father or catch me. He chose my father. I escaped down the service elevator and didn’t look back.”
“Where did you go?” Jett’s investment is ironclad.
“I hid in the streets. Cold, hungry, and alone was better than the hell I was living in. I ate out of garbage cans and bathed in public restrooms. I barely survived, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t a slave anymore.”
“Where was your mother during all this?”
“I have no idea,” I sniffle. “I never met her. And the few times I did ask about her, my questions were brushed under the rug. The last time I ever tried to find out anything my father threatened that if I didn’t stop pestering him, I’d end up just like her. I was nine, and his outburst scared me to death. Sometimes I wonder,” I whimper. “I wonder if he subjected her to the same hell as me . . .”
“And she wasn’t lucky enough to escape?” Jett finishes my thought.
I merely nod. It’s the only response I’m capable of. I’ve often wondered if I was a product of her hell. The thought sickens me, as I mourn a mother I never knew. What’s worse, the idea allows me a look into the window of her life, and what do I see through the glass? My own sad, abhorrent reflection.
“So how did you end up with Sasha?” Jett urges me to go on.
“I barely remember, to be honest. One minute, I was huddled in an alleyway, trying to stay out of the rain, and the next, I was getting into a warm car with a strange woman who had kind eyes. She took me in, cleaned me up, helped me start to heal, and when I was ready, she put me to work. She never asked for anything more than what I was ready to give.”
“That definitely sounds like Sasha.” He smiles wistfully.
“I liked living with her.” I rest my head wearily against Jett’s chest.
“Well, I like you living here.” He hugs me tightly. Securely. Protectively.
“She said I would be a good fit,” I recall her words.
“You are a good fit. You’re my perfect fit.”
“None of it matters anymore. Silas had to have told my father where I am by now. He’ll come for me himself.” The thought is terrifying.
“He can try. Doesn’t mean it will happen.”
“Of course, it will. Easton Erickson always gets what he wants.”
“Did you just say Easton Erickson? The real estate mogul?”
I nod. Eyes screwed shut. “The one and only.”
“I didn’t realize he had a daughter.”
“No one knows. He kept me hidden most of my life. I was homeschooled in his penthouse and raised by butlers and nannies. He never took much notice of me until I could give him something he wanted.”
“Well, he can want you”—Jett tilts my face up—“but he sure as hell ain’t gonna get you.”
“You don’t know what he’s capable of.” I shake fearfully in his arms.
“You don’t know what I’m capable of.” He presses a firm, possessive kiss on my lips. “I told you, I can be ruthless if I need to be.”
I don’t want Jett to be ruthless. I don’t want to be exposed to any more violence. I want the storm to pass. I want calm waters and blue skies. I want peace.
All I want is peace.
“We’re going to end this, London.” He pinches my chin, securing my mouth an inch away from his. “Tonight.”
OF ALL THE NIGHTS FOR London’s demons to rear their ugly head.
As if I didn’t have enough on my plate with a sadistic drug runner staying under my roof, a captive girl stashed away in my dungeon, and a house full of unsuspecting clients, I now have to deal with Daddy Dearest.
London and I backtrack through the house with her shaking like a leaf the whole time.
I find a very agitated Kayne and a counseling Alistair tucked in a corner right outside the kitchen.
Before Kayne even has a chance to rip me a new one, I cut him off. “We have a situation.”
“No shit, Sherlock! Your little pet here just caused a scene, and now there are two very pissed-off men stashed in my office demanding to see her.”
“Two?” London nearly jumps out of her skin. I tug her close. “He’s here,” she whispers petrified.
I squeeze her hand.
First things first. “Where is Javier?”
“Occupied. Upstairs with Spice,” Alistair informs me. I suppress my wince. It was inevitable. But just the thought of him being with one of my girls ties my stomach in knots.
“Is the other situation still under control?” I ask Kayne cryptically.
He nods stoically.
“Good. Alistair, stay in the party room and keep up appearances. It’s just another typical night. Got it?”
“Of course.” My uncle always has my back.
“Kayne, come with me. I think I’m going to need some extra muscle.”
The four of us separate, each going our designated ways.
“Are you going to clue me in to what’s going on?” Kayne stalks beside me.
“Yes.” I stop in front a large antique vase displayed on a shelf in the hallway leading to Kayne’s office. I reach in and retrieve two sheathed hunting knives. One I hand to Kayne, the other I stash on London.
“You stay right behind me, understand?” I slip the blade into her leather corset, right between her breasts. Her eyes are as wide as satellites as she watches me.
“You keep weapons in your antiques?” she asks dryly.
“Yes.” I look directly at her face. There is so much she doesn’t know about me. About this house. One day I hope to tell her everything, but tonight my secrets will stay buried within these walls.
“I am going to try and bargain for you. A smart businessman never walks away from a lucrative deal. But if it doesn’t work, I’m willing to turn to violence.” I lean in so only she can hear. “For you, I will kill.”
London stands petrified before me. I
don’t know how that statement affected her, but I hope she understands its depths. I hope she understands how much I fucking care. About her. About us. About what we could potentially have. How I will do anything to keep her by my side. “If I go like this behind my back,” I curl my finger in a give me motion, “hand me the knife. Don’t hesitate. Understand?”
She nods vacantly.
“Say it. Say you understand.”
“I understand.” Her voice is hoarse.
“Good.” I glance at Kayne, and he thrusts his chin in agreement. In acceptance. As a brother in arms. Alistair may be related to me by blood, but Kayne is related by loyalty.
Behind Kayne’s massive mahogany office door are two men, both immaculately dressed, and both with cold, calculating eyes. I survey them one at a time, pegging London’s father immediately. He has her dark blue eyes and straight thin nose. He’s much smaller in person, though. Five-seven at best. I’ve seen images of him on TV, and his real life persona does not live up. His egotism must make up for all the things he’s lacking.
When Kayne strides by Easton, he makes him look like a dwarf, which I find highly satisfying.
The other man I assume is Silas. He’s older as well, with thin, oily hair, a crater face, and a wannabe gangster pinstripe suit.
The thought of him ever having his greasy hands on London disgusts me.
“I see you found my property.” Easton gets right down to it.
“Let’s get one thing straight. She’s no one’s property,” I correct him condescendingly.
“That’s where you’re wrong, son. I’ve owned her since the day she was born. And her little disappearing act cost me a shitload of money.” He stares London down.
“How much?” I question haughtily. “Let’s even it up right now. I’ll write you a check, and you can go on your merry way.”
Easton laughs obnoxiously.
