Prisoned Series Box Set

by Marni Mann

  “I thought they found a needle in him?”

  “The needle was in his heart, Kyle. We both know that isn’t where an addict shoots up.”

  I’d seen Billy use plenty of needles in the past. I knew how he prepped; I knew where he injected. His heart definitely wasn’t one of those places.

  My stomach started to churn.

  “So, if Billy didn’t do it then…” I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that question. I may have been silent, but inside my head, I was screaming.

  “Billy was looking into Paulie’s death,” he said. “I think he found something out, and I think whoever killed Paulie killed Billy because of that.”

  Why would my brother do this? I wanted to ask Anthony, but I feared the truth.

  The truth would mean I would have to hold in another secret.

  I couldn’t take another.

  I couldn’t handle more guilt than I already carried.

  Anthony knew that. He knew I had barely kept it together at Paulie’s funeral, and Billy’s would have been even worse had I known he had killed again.

  “The bosses are looking into it,” Garin said. “They’ll find the murderer, whoever the fuck he is, and they’ll gut him for this.”

  The bosses would find Anthony. They would kill him. And then they would bury him, so he wouldn’t ever be found.

  He would finally get what he deserved.

  But what about me?

  It had only been a few seconds between admitting the truth to Breath and having that needle stuck in my neck, but during that short amount of time, the weight of my guilt had been gone, my conscience cleared.

  If I told Garin about Anthony, I would be in that position once more.

  I would be facing death, and Garin would more than likely be pulling the trigger.

  I sat up and tucked my knees into my chest, hiding my face between them. As I tried to find some air and calm the pounding in my heart, I rocked back and forth.

  “Kyle?”

  I didn’t answer him. I didn’t look up.

  “Kyle, tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I…” My voice sounded like a whisper. “I can’t…breathe.”

  His hand slipped inside the cave I had made, and it clasped around my chin, slowly lifting, as I made my way out of the darkness. “Did Billy trigger this?”

  When I opened my mouth, he pulled me on top of him. I was straddling his lap, his hands gripping high on my throat, but he wasn’t squeezing. He was just holding me there, so I couldn’t move. I felt his stare through my whole body.

  “Tell me.”

  “Nothing. I—”

  “Then, tell me what was on your mind that night in the bar before you disappeared into the restroom.”

  I tried to remember when we had been sitting at the table together. The details were cloudy, but they began to surface through the fog.

  “Even when I slept, I always wanted to be close to you. And then I left your apartment, and I just couldn’t stay anymore. It hurt too much. I struggled so much with it, and I was only…”

  I was only a witness, I had wanted to say. But I didn’t have the courage. And because he had wanted an answer and I couldn’t give him one, I had rushed off to the restroom.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I don’t believe you.” When I tried to look down, he stopped me. “There was something you wanted to tell me that night, and there’s something you want to say to me right now. Stop holding back.”

  “The only thing we have inside this cell is words, Kyle. Don’t hold them back from me.”

  My eyes scanned his. The air hadn’t returned, and I was starting to get light-headed. My limbs were all tingling. I didn’t know if I would have a voice, so I whispered, “I can’t.”

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  He wouldn’t hurt me…until he found out I had been lying to him, until he found out what I had been lying about. But how much longer could I let this eat at me?

  And how many more people would die because of Anthony?

  Thirty-Four

  Garin

  Twelve Days Ago

  I sucked Kyle’s lip into my mouth, so she would stop biting it. “I want to torture this fucking lip,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “And go where?”

  I kissed around her cheek. “To a place where I can give your body everything it needs.” I set her back on her feet, still keeping her against the wall in the hallway, and moved my hands to her throat. I squeezed just enough to show her how serious I was but not enough to scare her. I’d tried that earlier. For only a second, fear had passed through her eyes. Then, she had seemed to fucking love it, moaning even when I’d tightened my grip.

  She liked it rough.

  That was the way she was going to get it, too. Nice and fucking rough. After all those years of waiting, I was going to tear up her pussy when I finally got a piece of it. But I wouldn’t be tasting it tonight.

  Tonight, I had something else planned.

  She grabbed my hand and brought me outside, to where the car was parked. Fuck, she was making this so easy on me. She’d been in it earlier when I drove us to the bar. But, while we were inside, one of the bosses’ mechanics had stopped by. He made sure the car was ready for what was going to happen to it.

  “My feet hurt,” she whined as she got into the passenger seat.

  I started the car and shifted into reverse. “Take your shoes off.”

  She put her bare feet on the dash and turned up the radio, rubbing the back of my neck with her nails. She was dancing in her seat and singing, her hand going lower into the collar of my shirt.

  I wished I didn’t like the feel of her.

  I liked it too fucking much.

  I took her fingers off me and pointed at the seat belt. “Put it on.”

  She wouldn’t be wearing it for long. But, for now, it needed to keep her safe before it was ripped from her body.

  She laughed like I was messing with her and buckled it over her chest. “Where are you staying again? I can’t remember if you told me.”

  It was all working just the way I wanted it to.

  “You’ll remember the place when you see it.”

  But she’d never see it.

  “Do we have to wait until we get there?” She leaned across the seat and kissed the side of my face, her mouth dropping to my neck and back to the corner of my mouth.

  I smelled the sweet scent of the alcohol, but underneath it was the scent I really remembered. How could a single smell bring back so many goddamn memories?

  Fuck, Kyle…

  I wanted to pull over, lift her out of the car, slam her on the pavement, and ask her why the hell she had done this. I wanted to tell her how serious this was and to really put the fear in her.

  But it was too late for that.

  “You want my cock right now?” I moved away from her mouth, so I could see her face.

  “Yes,” she moaned. “Right now.”

  Her eyelids told me she was almost where I wanted her.

  She rested her head on my chest and rubbed her hand over my abs. “God, Garin, you’re so much bigger now. So hard and muscular.” The slurring was getting old, but it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t in control anymore. “I’m so sleepy.”

  She was asleep a few seconds later.

  As I reached the red light, I pushed her back into her own seat. She slumped against the window, her head leaning into the glass. She clung to the door like it was a fucking pillow.

  I took out my phone and hit the number that had been texted to me.

  “You good?” a guy said after the first ring.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “I’m good.”

  “How long?”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Get the car ready.”

  Before I shoved the phone back in my pocket, I pulled up Azzo’s text. He had sent a picture about an hour ago that showed the inside of the safe that he’d found in Kyle’s closet. He’d t
old me about it when we talked earlier, but now, I was able to get a look at the masterpiece Anthony had built. The safe was the entire height of the wall and at least five feet wide. It was custom-made and foolproof unless Azzo was the one trying to unlock it. The entire thing was filled with cash. Azzo estimated there was over a million in there.

  Under the picture, he typed that he’d left things just the way he found them. He shut the safe, wiped down Kyle’s house, and turned her alarm back on.

  I was the one who’d given him the code.

  The girl may have left The Heart, but there were things about her that hadn’t changed at all.

  I put my phone away and glanced at her again. She looked so fucking beautiful when she slept. Shit, had things not ended the way they did, had I not been tipped off, she could have been my wife.

  But things hadn’t gone that way.

  And, now, as I looked back at the road, I saw the headlights up ahead. Three quick flashes, telling me it was him.

  I ground my fingers over the cheap leather of the steering wheel and leaned over the seat, pressing my lips to Kyle’s ear.

  “Take a deep breath, baby. This is your last smell of freedom.”

  Thirty-Five

  Kyle

  “I won’t hurt you,” Garin repeated, as though I hadn’t heard him the first time.

  I was straddling his lap, his breath hitting my lips, his stare trying to pull the truth out of me. It was impossible not to hear him. I just didn’t believe what he’d said. And I knew that, once he found out the truth, he was most definitely going to hurt me.

  But I couldn’t let my fear keep me from doing what was right.

  Not anymore.

  Billy was the second person Anthony had murdered. I was the only one who knew it was him. I had to put a stop to it.

  I climbed off Garin’s lap and let my feet drop to the floor. The moonlight showed his eyes, his lips. I reached the sliding door that led out to the balcony, leaning my shoulder into the glass. This spot had the best view of the water, and if it was going to be my last time seeing it, I wanted to be as close as possible.

  There was no breath to be found. No air.

  Just words.

  And those words needed to describe when Anthony had put up the first bar of my prison.

  “I saw Paulie when I walked out of your apartment that night…”

  I was suddenly no longer in my room. I was in The Heart. It was night; there was total blackness, and I saw Paulie from the glow of his cell phone. He went to his car, and I heard his footsteps…his breathing.

  Every detail was coming back to me.

  I just let them pour out.

  When I reached the part where Anthony demanded I get in his car, I wrapped my arms around my stomach and slid to the floor. I was in the corner between the mattress and the windows, and Garin was looking down at me from the bed, just like I had sat and waited in his room all those years ago. But as I looked up, it was Anthony peering out from the car, and I was clinging to the side of the tire. My eyes were shifting between Paulie’s blood and Anthony’s blacked-out window.

  But there was no blood and no window. It was just Garin, the moonlight, and the intensity of his eyes. He didn’t make a sound.

  I hadn’t said Anthony’s name. I’d referred to him as he.

  “I want to rewind my life, Garin.” I tucked myself into a small ball. “I want to go back to that moment and not get in his car. I want to run to your apartment and take whatever those consequences were—whether he tried to shoot me or run after me. I just want to do it all over and not hide anything from you this time. And I want to tell you all of it.” I tried to take a breath even though I couldn’t, even though it felt like the room was closing in on me and I wouldn’t be able to push my way out.

  “I want to tell my younger self that twelve years’ worth of guilt wasn’t worth it because I was protecting a person who didn’t deserve to be protected.” I wrapped my arms tighter around my legs, and I rocked, my nails pressing so hard into my elbows that I could feel them piercing my skin. “It was Anthony. He killed Paulie, and I’m positive he killed Billy, too.”

  “That motherfucker.”

  That told me everything I needed to know.

  Garin was murderous.

  But I wasn’t done. He needed to know the rest.

  I picked up the story from the moment I got into Anthony’s car and took Garin through the entire ride until Anthony dropped me off much later that night. I told him about the threats. The rules. The orders. I told him about our trip to Florida later that week when I had gotten into college and when Anthony had bought his first house.

  “He wanted me out of Atlantic City,” I said. “I was his only witness, so he dumped me in a place where I knew no one and where no one knew us. If he could have gotten me to drop out of high school, he would have. But graduating was my only stipulation. Everything else he wanted from me, I would do.”

  I ended by telling Garin about the financials and how I cleaned Anthony’s money and all the assets he had paid for over the years, including my business, both houses, and the cars. And about the safe that was in my closet, only a few feet from us.

  “I don’t know how much is in there,” I said, grinding my toes into the carpet. “I don’t have the code, and I’ve never seen inside. He doesn’t allow me to, and honestly, I don’t want to.”

  He hadn’t said a word since I’d mentioned Anthony’s name. He hadn’t moved. The silence should have worried me, and it did, but there was so much relief, too. The anxiety and dread and guilt I had been holding in for twelve years had spilled out of me. Garin now knew it all—the reason I had treated him so badly in that alley, why things had ended between us before they ever really began, why I had left Atlantic City.

  “I’m not trying to justify any of this,” I added, squeezing my knees into my chest, tucking my chin between them. “I should have told you; there’s no excuse for that. All I can say is, he’s my brother. I’ll never be able to fully explain the kind of loyalty I felt to him. You know I wasn’t close to my mom, and he was the only other family I had, despite how he treated me. All the threats and the intimidation.”

  Still, he said nothing.

  “I know what happened to Billy was because of me. My silence is the reason he’s dead. That’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life—however short my life is going to be now. But there are no more secrets. I’ve told you everything.”

  Several seconds passed before he said, “You didn’t kill Paulie; Anthony did. And he killed Billy, too.” His tone was deep, but he didn’t snap at me. If anything, he sounded sympathetic.

  “But, Garin—”

  “Don’t put that on yourself.”

  He stood from the bed and walked over to the corner. My eyes followed him the entire way. They didn’t warn me; they didn’t make me fear the closeness between us. When he reached me, he put his hand out for me to grab.

  “Come here,” he said.

  I clasped my fingers around his and followed him to the bed where I sat next to him. My mind quickly brought me back to that night in his room when he had done almost the same thing. But, here, Garin didn’t say another word.

  The desire to touch him was unbearable, so I placed my fingers on his shoulder, and I waited for him to push them off. When he didn’t, I slowly moved up to his face and ran my fingers over his cheek. If this was going to be the last time, I wanted to memorize the feel of his skin—the soft areas and the ones that were rough.

  “Garin,” I whispered, my palms now cupping his cheeks, “I’ve loved you my entire life. Leaving you was torture. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to give myself to you. I wanted to move to Vegas with you and never let you go. Getting in Anthony’s car to drive to Florida…”

  I remembered the tears I had cried the whole way. I remembered the verbal abuse and the threats Anthony had spewed at me.

  “It was just awful.” The pain was coming through in my voice. “I never s
topped thinking about you. I looked you up on social media. I followed your life as much as I could from a distance. And then seeing you again at Billy’s funeral, those feelings resurfaced. They never went away. Never. But there was so much guilt. I knew when we were kissing at the bar that I could never be what you wanted while I held in this secret and lied to you. I didn’t deserve you. But that didn’t stop me from wanting more from you.”

  I suddenly felt how clammy my hands were. “I know there are consequences to what I did. I’ve known that all along. If I worked for the bosses, they would kill me for lying to them. So, I have a good idea what you’re going to do to me.”

  My heartbeat sped up as I waited for him to respond. The sweat on my hands turned to ice. The tightening in my chest made it even harder to breathe.

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  The vibration of his words passed through me, but it didn’t bring any relief. There were other consequences besides death…things that would hurt just as much because I’d be alive to feel them.

  “But?”

  “I fucking hate that you didn’t tell me.”

  His hands went to my waist, and he held me tighter than he ever had. His touch would leave a bruise. I didn’t care.

  “I hate that you lied and kept it a secret. I don’t ever give second chances, Kyle.”

  My body began to shake as I prepared myself for how this was going to end.

  “But I understand why you did it. I can’t agree with it, but I get it. And, now, I’d be the liar if I said I didn’t feel something for you.”

  “You…do?”

  More coldness passed through his eyes. More anger. But then something changed. Something that caught me off guard.

  “I do,” he said.

  I never expected this. I never expected him to understand any of it. I certainly never expected for him to have feelings for me after I came clean.

  “Garin, I don’t even know what to say—”