by JA Huss
I let off a little laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Sasha asks, trying to see herself in the dim reflection of the dark windows lit up by the moon outside.
I can’t answer that without offending her. So I just shrug. “The way things change so fast, ya know?”
“You mean us.” She drags her eyes away from the window.
“Is there gonna be an us?”
She gives me a shrug back. “Who knows? I’m not exactly in a good place right now. My whole life seems to be up in the air.”
“That’s not always a bad thing.”
“Pfft. Speak for yourself. I’m OCD about this kind of stuff. I like planning things. I hate being spontaneous. I like clear goals with measurable metrics. And a few hours ago I had to clean out my office, and you know what?” Her eyes are fixed on me now.
“What?”
“The only personal thing I had in that office was a dinosaur Chia Pet.”
“Sorry I broke it.”
“No,” she says, swiping a stray strand of hair from her face. “That’s not what I mean. I didn’t care about it. Not really. After two years of practically living at that school, my office should be like a bedroom. Filled with crap, trash, remnants of life. But my office was spotless.”
“So your OCD carries over into your professional life.”
“Why didn’t I notice that I was so uninvested?”
“Does it matter who notices first? You or your mentor?”
“Yeah, because I’m super-competitive. And I found out I lost a prized internship and got kicked out all in the same hour. I mean, that’s one hundred percent total failure.”
“Or,” I counter, “it’s a chance to take a second look at what you’re doing and why.” I’m about to say more, to ease her mind about what happened today. It has to feel like failure and I don’t want to end this conversation like that. But the car comes to a stop and she looks at me with pure panic in her eyes.
“You’re fine,” I say, squeezing her hand.
“What if they are panic attacks?”
“What if they’re not?”
The front door slams as the driver gets out, and then he’s pulling open Sasha’s door and offering her his hand.
She looks up at him, takes his offering, and steps out of the car like a professional.
I get out on my side and offer her my arm as the driver hands her off. She accepts it and we walk forward, her head tipped up to take in the entire four-story estate.
“Holy shit,” she says. “It really is like a hotel.”
“You don’t get out much, do you?”
“What makes you think that?” She laughs.
“You’re a billionaire’s daughter. You have a ton of money stashed all over the world, I’m sure. And yet this country estate in north central Nebraska impresses you.”
“I’ve been lots of places…” She trails off as we walk up the front steps. They are massive, like the manor, and built of stone, also like the manor. In fact, it looks like something from the French countryside. You can’t see it well at night, but the bricks are light-colored sandstone, there are wings on either side of the main house that seem to go on forever, and there are turrets to give it character. It looks a little like a castle to the kids who come through here. “But I’m a simple girl, Jax. My childhood home was an RV. And Ford’s house isn’t big. Not like this. I even shared a room with my sister Kate while we remodeled the main floor one year.”
The door swings open before I can remark on that insight into her childhood, and then the doorman is there, bowing and extending his hand in a wave that signals we are to come inside.
Sasha tightens her grip on my arm and I give her a reassuring pat on the hand.
“Your coat, ma’am?”
It’s a simple question, but Sasha just stands there with her mouth open.
“Here,” I say, slipping her coat down her arms. “I’ll help you with that.” She nods at me, but I can see the panic in her eyes. Has she been like this all fall? I don’t recall seeing her so disoriented. Of course, she’s practically been a recluse. Staying home most nights, unless she was working. “Are you OK?”
She looks around to see if anyone is watching, and then gives me such a small shake of her head, I almost miss it. “No. Let’s go, please.”
“Shhh,” I say, taking her hand. “You’re fine, I promise.”
Chapter Nineteen - Sasha
But I’m not fine. Everything about this feels wrong. The house is pretentious. The doorman is subservient. The entrance is massive, and all the doors I can see from here are closed.
“I want to go home,” I whisper.
“Ten minutes, Sasha. Just ten minutes. Meet her, we’ll go to our rooms—”
“I don’t want to sleep alone, Jax.”
He sighs down at me. It’s an opening to some joke about being more than willing to let me sleep with him. But he knows I’m serious right now. He reads me well, and I’m not kidding. This place is creeping me the fuck out. “Sasha,” he says in a discreet tone, “nothing is going to happen to you. Your aunt is responsible for—”
“Saving more than twenty-five Company kids from their pre-determined fate,” a woman’s voice says from behind me.
My heart, holy fuck, my heart. It’s beating so fast I want to pass out. I take a few deep breaths and force myself not to place a hand over it and let everyone in on my panic.
“Sasha Cherlin, meet Madeline Haas. Your aunt.”
“Call me Auntie,” Madeline says. “Everyone does.”
“Jax didn’t,” I quip. “So I’ll just call you… Ms? Haas? Since I know that’s my mother’s maiden name, that would make you an unmarried spinster or a divorcee with pent-up hate.”
Oh my God, what the fuck did I just say?
“Sasha,” Jax whispers.
“Sorry.” I seriously don’t know what just came over me.
“I see the reports are true,” Madeline says.
“What reports?” I snap.
“Your reputation precedes you, niece.”
I sigh heavily. Annoyingly, in fact. “Well, it was great to meet you, but Jax and I were in the middle of having fun before we pulled up here. So”—I turn and look up at a stunned Jax—”can we go now?”
“I’d like to have a few words, Sasha. Explain what it is we do here. What my plans are—”
But I stop listening at plans and just start shaking my head. “Nope. No way. I’m not part of your plans. I have no plans with you at all, in fact. I’m ready to hit the road.” I turn around, searching for a coat closet.
“Can you give us a minute, Madeline? We’ll meet you in the greeting room.”
I glance over my shoulder, since the doorman is blocking the coat closet with his large, very large—like bodyguard large—body. My aunt is scowling at me, like she had some vision of what kind of person I was and that’s just been shattered.
“Fine,” she says through gritted teeth. “I’ll have the servants bring drinks while I wait.”
The stress on the word wait seals the deal and as soon as she’s out of earshot, I lean up to Jax’s ear on my tiptoes. “She’s a bitch.”
“What the hell is going on with you?” Jax asks. “It’s like you just flipped into Bizarro Sasha before my eyes.”
“I didn’t flip into Bizarro Sasha, Jax. I went from Sasha Aston to Sasha Cherlin in two seconds flat. I. Don’t. Like. Her. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Just stop, OK? She’s not what you think.”
“What is she? Some do-gooder saving kids from the Company? I don’t see it.”
“Well, she has. She still does, Sasha. She’s known me most of my life. I know her.”
“I hate her. It’s not even dislike, it’s hate.”
“That’s not even rational.”
“I do not care.” I even cross my arms for good measure.
“Sasha,” Jax says in that FBI voice of his. “Consider the possibility that you’re angry at her for not bein
g in your life. That you were left homeless and orphaned after your father and grandparents were killed. That is rational. But blind hate is not.”
“Blind hate seems pretty rational to me. I’ve felt it before. I had an uncle from this side of` the family as well. He was a total dick. I never liked him. And that was a good call. He tried to kill Harper once.”
“Just give her ten minutes. OK? Ten minutes. That’s probably all the time she scheduled for this meeting anyway, she’s incredibly busy.”
“Yeah, busy running this… this… what the hell kind of place is this?”
“She’s gonna tell you. If you let her.”
“I don’t like this, Jax. I’m telling you, the inner assassin in me is screaming, Get out. I want to leave.”
He sighs. “OK, fine. I told you it was your call, and it is. So just wait here. I’ll go tell her we’re leaving.”
The relief floods through my body. “Thank you.” I grab his arm before he walks off. “And I’m sorry, OK? I am. But I just can’t be here.”
He nods at me, feigning understanding. But I know he thinks I’m irrational. Regardless, I got my way. He walks off down a long hallway in the same direction as Madeline—which was not the way she approached—and I watch him until he disappears around a corner.
I hug myself, chilled to the bone. Something is wrong here. I can feel it. I’m not sure what it is about this place that has me on edge, but—
“Giving up already?” I whirl around to find a man about the same age as me, standing under an archway with open double doors. “I figured you’d bail. Auntie had higher hopes, but I know your kind.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
He’s wearing a black suit. Like, all black. Shirt and everything. “Just another broken promise.”
“Excuse me?” Heart rate, Sasha, I have to tell myself. Control your heart rate. Because it’s beating so fast, my chest might explode.
“Tell me, Sasha Cherlin,” he says, walking towards me slow and deliberate. “What would you do if I attacked you right now?” He nods to the hallway Jax disappeared down. “He’s out of range, believe me. Madeline took him outside.”
“Why in the world would you attack me? I thought she was all benevolent and she just wanted to talk.”
“She does. But I have other plans for you.”
“Is that so?” Cocky motherfucker.
He lunges, striking me in the face with the back of his hand.
I react, diving for his legs and sending him to the floor. He puts a leg up and kicks me in the chest, sending me reeling backwards on the shiny floor.
I taste blood in my mouth from his hard slap and then jump up to my feet. He’s on his as well, circling me like a predator.
“Come on, asshole,” I seethe through my teeth. “I’m ready.”
“You sure about that?”
I attack this time. I take two steps forward, duck to the left a little too slow, allowing his fist to connect with my cheek, and then grab his throat and his arm and swing myself up into a flying armbar. The momentum slaps him down on the hard travertine-tiled floor, and I sit on his back for a few seconds of rest before he bucks me off, sending me flat on my ass, my dress hiked all the way up my legs.
He stands over me laughing. “Next time you pick a fight, trying wearing panties.”
The next thing I know, he’s face first on the floor and Jax is standing in the spot where the new guy just was. Blood is spilling onto the expensive polished floor and my attacker lets out a groan.
“You OK?” Jax asks, breathing heavy and extending his hand to help me up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know he’d be here, or I wouldn’t have left you alone.”
“Damn right,” new guy says. “You know I’ve a score to settle with her.”
“That’s enough, Julian.” Jax says it with authority and Julian bites his tongue. “Get the fuck out of here or I will handcuff your ass right now and take you in.”
“Do it,” Julian challenges. “See how far that gets you with Auntie.”
“I cannot believe you call that bitch Auntie.”
“Watch your mouth, Sasha,” a voice from behind me says.
I whirl around to see Madeline back in the entrance. “You people are crazy.”
“I asked for one conversation. Ten minutes of your time. And you treat us like we are unworthy of your company. What’s that say about you?”
“I was brought here against my will.”
“Then Jax misunderstood. He was asked to set up a meeting. If he went about it using less than honorable ways, that’s something you need to take up with him.”
I shoot Jax a look.
“It’s ten minutes, Sasha. Hear her out and we’ll leave right after.”
“He attacked me!” I say, sounding like a child as I point to Julian with one hand and touch my lip with the other. “I’m bleeding!”
“She’s rusty,” Julian says to Madeline. “She needs to be retrained all over again if I agree to take her on.”
“Take me on for what? Someone better start talking or I’m gonna lose my shit!”
“I practically begged you for a conversation, yet you—”
“Fine,” I yell at Madeline. “Five minutes. Start talking.”
“In private,” she demands. “And while you’re waiting,” she says to Jax, “maybe you can find her some undergarments.”
I glare at her. “If you think you can shame me, you’re wrong, lady. I’ll strip naked and kick your ass right now.”
Jax chuckles.
“And you,” I say, whirling around. “What the fuck? You bring me to these crazy people after I spent the last ten years squeezing the psycho out of me one drop at a time? Just what the actual fuck?”
Jax’s face gets serious. “Julian was not supposed to be here. He knew better than to approach you tonight.”
I open my mouth to ask what that means, but Madeline has my arm. It’s a gentle grasp, up near my elbow. Meant to guide, not threaten. But I shrug her off. “Fine, lead the way, Auntie,” I sneer the word. “But the next asshole who attacks me will not get back up when I’m done with them.”
“Duly noted,” she says with a swish of her long gown as she turns. “Please follow me to the library.”
I don’t look back at Jax as I make my way after her. But if my paranoia was piqued when I got in that black jet with him earlier, it’s off-the-charts manic at this point. I have to take deep, cleansing breaths in rhythm with my steps to calm myself down.
I made a huge mistake back in that car. I should not have had sex with him. But it’s easy to come to that conclusion after two orgasms. Not so much when you’ve been in a two-year dry spell.
I need to get my head on straight because he’s hiding something. All these people here tonight are hiding something.
And I have a feeling they’re about to tell me everything. But there’s only one thing worse than not knowing about secret shit, and that’s knowing more than you should.
Chapter Twenty - Sasha
We end up in a room I would assume is the library but for the fact that it’s lacking books. It’s more of a sitting room filled with butter-colored leather couches, overstuffed chairs, and a grand floor-to-ceiling window that must have some stunning views during the day to warrant such a prominent place in the room.
Madeline waits for me to enter first and then quietly closes the double doors behind us and walks over to a couch. “Please, sit. Make yourself comfortable.”
I walk to one of the chairs, still looking for the books in this library, and take a seat.
“It’s all digital these days, right?” Madeline says, waving a hand at the room in general. “Everyone reads books on a device. I resisted for years, but technology. The future cannot be denied, no matter how hard we try to rebel.”
I shrug.
“Besides, we move too often to have collections of anything.”
“Move what?”
“Places, Sasha. Residences. I don’t own any homes in my
own name. They are all purchased or leased under company names.”
I know what she means. I understand that the word company has a generally benign definition to most people. But we are not most people and my spine goes stiff at the mere mention of the word. “What is it you need to say?”
“You’re not the least bit interested in me?”
I have nothing for that. She’s serious. “Why would I be? You show up in my life after all these years and expect—what? I’ll run into your arms and give you a hug? I’m so over that.”
“Over what?” she asks, reaching for a tea set on the large oval coffee table. “Drink?” she offers.
I ignore her offer. “Over wishing my life was anything but what it is. You could’ve found me at any time after my birth and you didn’t. You left me to figure all this shit out for myself.”
“You did a remarkable job. You turned out much better than most.”
“I was lucky.”
“You were taught well.”
“And that has nothing to do with you.”
“True. But your hostility towards me is misplaced. I’m not part of the problem. I’m part of the solution.”
“I don’t need your solution. My problems were solved a long time ago.”
“Is that why Nick Tate is on the hunt?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t talked to him in years. But I’m sure if he wanted to find me, he’d find a way.”
“That’s his number one priority at this very moment, Sasha. He’s looking for you. And he’s broken away from his handler in Central America. Matias is just now figuring it out, but Nick Tate was never part of his gang. He was always one of us.”
“Define us.”
“Company.”
Once again the word shuts me down.
“I have a simple request, that’s all. And I’ll get right to the point since you are so eager to leave. You can think about it overnight, but I need an answer in the morning.”
“I’m not staying here, so I’ll just give you my answer now. No.”
“Not even if it means you can prevent dozens, if not hundreds of other girls from having to navigate the world like you? Hmmm? You’re so selfish that you’d turn your back on your Company sisters who need help?”
