My shoes clicked on hardwood for a few feet more before they met the edge of an oriental rug in browns, reds, and golds, gaudy to my eyes, likely just expensive to his.
Money over actual discerning taste, that was how this man operated.
He wanted people to know how successful he was. Which was important for me to know.
"Christopher, this is Charlie Mallick. Charlie, Christopher Eames," Michael introduced us as my gaze finally went to the man behind the desk as he moved to stand, buttoning his jacket with one hand while extending the other toward me.
"Charlie, I've heard good things."
"Mr. Eames, thank you for seeing me."
"I always have the time for capable men. Do you like coffee?" he asked, waving a hand outward, making me half-turn toward the doorway where a woman was coming through with a tray in her hands.
And the fucking world stopped.
I wasn't a romantic.
I didn't buy into shit like butterflies and soulmates and all that cheesy crap.
Women were a pastime, casual and temporary.
But this woman made the hands on the clock stop ticking just by entering the room.
It was easy to say she was gorgeous, so easy that the words suddenly lost their meaning, not nearly strong enough a way to describe her.
Around my age, if maybe slightly younger, she was tall and fit, five-nine if she was an inch, bare-footed, her toes painted a light pink color that I found myself too fixated on, forcing my eyes up her long, shapely legs clad in simple jeans that neither clung nor hung, but grazed her curves perfectly. A plain white tee skirted the waistband, worn tight enough that I could see the outline of her bra through the material, the way the cups hugged her breasts, the straps climbing over her shoulders to disappear down her back.
Her black hair was long, silkily hanging over her shoulders and arms, catching what little light there was in the room, framing her face.
And that face.
Fuck.
That face.
A gently pointed chin and a sharp, but delicate jaw leading up to high cheekbones that framed an understated nose that tipped up ever-so-slightly at the tip.
And those eyes?
Yeah, those eyes could do a man in.
Almond-shaped and thickly lashed.
And a light, striking shade of hazel.
Her gaze didn't so much as drift my way as she moved in. And never before had I wanted to catch a woman's attention as I did right that moment.
But she refused it as she moved to the desk, placing the tray down on it just a foot to my side.
I smelled strawberries as her head jerked, swishing her hair over her shoulder as she stood straight.
It was then I saw them.
Up close, where the lack of light didn't place shadows there.
Her neck.
She had bruises on her neck.
Across her neck.
In bands of blue that tapered off on the ends in round spots.
Fingers.
Those were bruises from strangulation.
I would know.
I'd left them on a few men over the years.
Someone had taken their hands, put them around her small throat, and squeezed.
See, I did a lot of shitty things. Things I should have gone to jail for, might go to hell for.
But I had lines, and I didn't cross them.
Didn't fucking matter what the paycheck was.
No children.
And no fucking women.
Case closed.
In my mind, there was wrong, and there was fucked up.
Putting your hands on a woman, that was fucked up. There was no way around that. No excuse you could come up with that was good enough.
Maybe I was going to hell.
But I prayed that there was a special place for assholes who victimized women. Preferably a place where I could partake in their never-ending torture.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Christopher's gaze move to her neck.
And, I shit you not, this woman noticed, and simply raised her chin higher.
I saw something odd as I looked at her, uncovered a memory fuzzy with time.
When I was a kid, maybe seven or eight, we lived in this shit area where the houses were matchboxes and the yards butted right up against one another.
The neighbor to the left had a dog, a big old Rottweiler named Misty that he had kept chained to a tree her whole life, never taking her in in the winter, the sweating heat, or during storms. He kicked her when she barked, left for days on end on a bender, leaving her to starve until my Pops would toss scraps of meat over the fence for her.
This woman in the office had the look that Misty did the day her owner came back from three days away. Right before she lunged at him and ripped out his throat.
I'd been on our back porch because my father was stripping the paint off the kitchen cabinets, telling me they had lead in them - whatever that meant - and it wasn't safe for me to be around while he dealt with it.
"Fucking crime," he had said as we watched animal control take Misty away.
"Where are they taking her?" I'd asked, watching as she yanked against the handler.
My father wasn't a soft man, didn't know what that meant, didn't understand the concept of sugar-coating facts.
"To the pound to put her down," he'd told me. "Cut off her head and ship it to the state for a rabies test. Don't have rabies, just got sick of being treated like shit. And now she'll have to pay the ultimate price for standing up for herself."
This woman looked just like Misty had.
Like she was sick and fucking tired of putting up with someone treating her like shit.
And was just waiting for the chance to rip out someone's throat.
I didn't know the woman, but there was some primal, indescribable urge within me to make sure her fate wasn't the same as Misty's, that she would not pay the ultimate price for her fight for freedom.
Christopher's gaze moved away from her neck, unaffected, but curious.
Making me all-too-aware that the bruises weren't from his hands.
If not his... I didn't even need to finish the thought.
Michael's.
Even as my eyes went there, I saw the smug smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, making me have to ball up my fists to keep one from landing there, knocking the look off his face.
I realized then, as I took the three of them in, that this woman wasn't just some servant being treated badly.
No.
There was no mistaking it.
The dark hair. The jaws. The long and lean builds.
This was a family.
Father.
Son.
Daughter.
And this fuck that I was trying to work for was letting his own goddamn flesh and blood get abused under his own roof.
If that wasn't some fucked up shit, I didn't know what was.
"How do you take your coffee? Helen can make it up for you before she goes," Christopher offered.
Helen.
She had a name.
An apt one too.
I wondered if her mother somehow knew when she'd named her how beautiful she would someday be.
The most beautiful woman in the world.
Just like her namesake.
Helen of Troy.
The face that launched a thousand ships.
"I take it black," I said, turning my attention to Helen who reached for a simple white mug, handing it to me. She was so careful to avoid our fingers so much as brushing that it made me wonder if she had reason to fear the touch of her father's men, an idea that made my saliva turn bitter. "Thank you," I said, trying to catch her gaze, but she was avoiding me as she poured cream into two other cups, then turned to rush back out of the room as silently as she had entered.
"Sorry about her. She has the manners of a feral cat," Michael said, as soon as she was out of earshot.
"Anyway, back to business," Christopher
said a bit pointedly, like a reprimand, like a warning about bringing outsiders into family business.
So then we got back to business.
I felt torn, even after hearing the salary that put all my other jobs to shame - after a trial period, of course.
I was a bastard.
I did things people, good people, didn't do.
But that didn't mean I didn't have a moral compass.
Working for shitheads like the Eames family rubbed me the wrong way.
It also meant I would get to be around the house more, get to see Helen more.
It was a stupid thing to base a job decision on - the desire for a woman who wouldn't even look in your direction.
I couldn't explain it, didn't even try to analyze it because I knew there would be no logical answers.
But I accepted the job.
For better or worse, I aligned myself with some of the lowest scum I had ever met just on the off chance I'd see Helen again, maybe get her to talk to me, to agree to see me.
And then I dragged my ass back to the shithole I was temporarily staying in, dropping down on the edge of the bed, listening to the click of the ceiling fan that no one had likely needed to listen to long enough to complain about, reaching for the bottle of whiskey, unscrewing the cap, and drinking right from the bottle.
There was no shaking the feeling that I had royally fucked up.
I wasn't an overly superstitious man, but I had always trusted my gut. The gut that was currently telling me that something bad was going to result from all of this.
No.
Not just bad.
Life altering.
But what was done was done.
You didn't take back your word.
Not with men like these.
I knew the drill.
As far back as the deal with the Russians, I knew how this worked.
I was in until death.
Theirs.
Mine.
Or until the organization crumbled.
Those were the only ways out.
It was a terrible idea to drink a fifth the night before I was supposed to prove myself to my new boss.
But it was the only thing I could do to numb the gut-churning sensation of regret, silence the swirling thoughts in my head.
One thing it didn't manage to do, though, was make me forget her.
If anything, it amplified the color of her eyes, the shape of her body, the defiance that vibrated off of her, the smell of strawberries that clung to her hair.
As I drifted off to sleep, I couldn't stop thinking about her name.
I couldn't help but wonder if mythology could somehow come true, if she was a real-life version of the most beautiful woman in the world.
If she was the face that would start a war, end an empire.
If anyone would be left standing in the aftermath.
But, really, I mostly wondered if I could get her to look my way, give me a smile, tell me her story.
And that was about as fucking sappy as a man could get.
What the fuck was going on with me?
THREE
Helen
I wasn't supposed to notice them.
My father's men.
Even years after Helga first gave me the warning, I still bided by it.
I kept my eyes downcast around them. I skirted the corners. I made sure we never accidentally touched.
Though, as I did when I was not even ripe enough for the picking, if they deliberately touched me, I handled it.
My father never spoke of it to me, though I still found him watching me sometimes after an incident like he was weighing and measuring me.
I never could figure out if he found me lacking or not, why he didn't scold me, demand I treat his colleagues with respect.
Or, well, maybe that was what it boiled down to.
Respect.
He might not have had any for me - or womenkind in general - but this was his home, I was his daughter, and he did demand respect within the walls. Even toward me.
That was almost a comfort of sorts.
Of sorts.
Because there was precious little comfort to find in my life, in these walls where my own brother could attempt to strangle me in the kitchen and get away with it.
So I made it my business to mind my own business, to never notice my father's men.
But I had noticed him.
I don't know what it had been about him that made me look.
I had felt his gaze on me, but I often did when his men were around. But it hadn't felt prying, like he was picturing me naked, but penetrative in a different way. Like he wasn't trying to see under my clothes, but under my skin instead.
It was a new sensation for me, this girl who everyone wished was invisible, to find someone who wanted to actually see me.
Or, hell, maybe I was just imagining it all, was suffering from a debilitating case of wishful thinking.
Maybe if he was one of the usual men - old enough to be my father, lecherous, with receding hairlines and overflowing waistline, I could have overlooked the under-skin thing.
But he wasn't any of those things.
He was my age, or maybe just slightly older, tall, solidly built, with shoulders that reminded me of the linebackers in letterman jackets. His dark hair was in need of a trim, pieces falling into his eyes. Good God, those eyes. The piercing blue eyes framed with thick lashes in a face made of all hard angles.
His hands were scarred.
I'd noticed when he had reached for the coffee cup I'd handed to him.
All across his fingers and the backs of his hands were a map of old injuries, some white with age, others pink and red, just barely healed over.
I knew enough about the seedy underworld my father existed in to know who hands like that belonged to.
Enforcers.
He was an enforcer.
Which made him one of the lower men on the totem pole. But also one of the most trusted.
I'd seen him three times since he had that meeting that first time.
Once, I had been carrying a basket of laundry down the stairs as he walked in the front door. He seemed to sense me, his head moving up even as I froze on the stair, one foot hovering over the next one down but refusing to move.
His head ducked to the side, a ghost of a smile tugging at the sides of his lips.
"Helen, nice seeing you again," he said in that smooth voice of his - all molasses and whiskey. I swear it seemed to shiver over my skin.
"She bothering you?" Michael asked, coming up the hall, casting me a warning glance. A warning of what, I wasn't sure. But I knew Michael too well to doubt he would make good on it, whatever it was.
"Not at all. Just saw her coming down, decided to say hello," Charlie said, shrugging, falling into step with my brother. But he cast me a smile over his shoulder.
You know the type.
The ones that made you sure your panties were going to ignite.
The next time, I had been walking down the driveway toward my car to head to the beach to work the ice cream booth as he had been walking up.
"Heading to the beach?"
I should have just smiled and walked away, stuck to my rules.
But I couldn't seem to force myself to do it.
"Sort of."
"How are you sort of going to the beach?" he asked, rocking back on his heels, hands ducked into his slacks pockets.
"I work on the boardwalk," I informed him.
"Oh yeah? Doing what?"
"Serving up ice cream," I'd told him. "I'm, ah, running late," I added, shuffling past before I could do anything stupid. Like tell him that I had totally had a sex dream about him the night before, vivid enough to make me wake up in tangled sheets, sweaty, frustratingly unfulfilled.
The next time, he'd walked up behind me as I unloaded paper bags from the trunk of my car.
"Let me help," he demanded, reaching to pull a bag from my hands.
"No, really. That isn't nec
essary."
"Got two arms, Helen," he'd told me, reaching for two more bags, "I can lend them to you for a couple minutes," he added as I grabbed another bag.
I bit down on my tongue to keep from telling him that it was his hands, not his arms, that I was interested in.
"What are you doing?" I asked as we went in through the back entrance to the kitchen, and he started unloading the contents of the bags onto the counter.
"Helping you," he supplied.
"I'm sure my father is waiting," I said, making a shadow cross his eyes, making me immediately regret saying the words that made him stiffen, made the warm smile fall from his face, made his eyes darken.
My father had an uncanny ability to do that.
To steal someone's light.
To make them go dark.
I'd seen it a dozen times over the years. It never bothered me before.
And it shouldn't have bothered me then either.
But there was no denying it did as he turned from me and walked away.
I didn't see him again for weeks, thinking maybe he was avoiding me, even if that made me seem paranoid or self-centered.
Maybe my father or brother had warned him off, though that seemed unlikely. They'd have to give a shit about how I spent my time to do something like that. And since they clearly didn't care about how I spent my time - evidenced by how no one said boo about how I dressed in one equally ridiculous work outfit after another and went and earned my money while Michael had wads of cash tossed at him randomly.
I was surprised at times that it didn't rub my father the wrong way that I had such common jobs, thinking they would reflect poorly on him.
But nothing was ever said, so I just went to job after job, accepting my measly three-thirty-one per hour, socking as much of that away as possible in a false bottom to my bedroom nightstand I had made myself when I found out my father used them frequently.
Even if someone bothered to search my room, they'd never find anything.
I wouldn't put it past my brother to be that malicious, to steal every penny of my measly savings.
Even if he did, though, it wouldn't change a thing. As soon as Helga was ready, we were going, whether we had money to start over or not.
Mallicks: Back to the Beginning (Mallick Brothers Book 5) Page 3
