“You know, everyone fears Trace the most,” I said. “He’s so overtly vicious, very direct with his threats. And usually comes through on any intended mutilation.” I lifted my shoulders and spread my arms in a what can ya do? action. My heartbeat played on my eardrums like a one-man rock show. “But in focusing on Trace, you miss the quiet deception of Sax. He’s as brutal, if not more, because he treats his intended victims with slow-acting revenge. They suffer for a long time. Remain alive with torture. These brothers, they’re from the same family stock.” I cocked my head. “What makes you think Sax would kill you any less brutally than Trace?”
At last, a flicker of uncertainty crossed Bo’s face. “I’m not afraid of you, little girl.”
“You don’t have to be.”
Then came a sneer. “You’re so fucking rude. I despise cocky chicks. Especially when they know shit-all, like you right now. You can’t even begin to understand Gordo Saxon’s intentions when asking Sax to track down Trace. Nor can you figure out why Sax approached you in the first place. Sure, you’re a good player, but did he really need you to find his brother, who, as you said, likes to leave bloody footprints all over the place? Practically put a beacon on himself on where he was? Think about it, little girl, why are you here, all on your lonesome, with your lover boy once again sacrificing himself for you?”
My heels hit the floor as I backed up, his words like a scattering of glass shards raining down on my head.
“That’s right, Scarlet. You’re basically like that book—a big, fat red letter that Sax was better off avoiding.”
“Wow, look at you, you can read.”
His upper lip curled, strings of saliva spreading than detaching as he bubbled with rage. “Their father put a fucking hit on you, you dumb bitch. That’s why Sax had to find you, that’s why he kept you close, and that’s fucking why he followed Trace like a rescue pup when Trace said he had you.”
My lungs shifted, like my ribcage had become too tight and they were expanding for air. I parted my lips to say what? but my brain was working to fast, sifting too quickly, that my question was already made irrelevant.
Theo approached me on the yacht of an arm’s dealer, waiting in a quiet room for my arrival. I never thought too hard on his explanation as to why he came out of hiding and found me again. The idea that he wanted to contain his brother was enough of an excuse. Given Theo’s history with Trace, it was entirely viable that Theo would do anything to find Trace and prevent him from hurting anyone else. Look how he was with Drea, so tender and concerned. His roughened exterior immediately calming to a terrified girl who’d experienced the fists of his brother.
And that was where I’d failed. I’d forgotten to remember why Theo approached wounded females with such guided gentleness. How could I be so stupid? Theo’s history was laid out for me years ago, in glaring detail, yet it never occurred to me when he was kneeling in front of Drea that he remembered his high school girlfriend. That every time a woman was hurt at his family’s hands, he thought of her, and her continued torture.
Theo’s determination to protect was a well-known weakness exploited by his family, until he stopped loving. When he realized he couldn’t have anything of his own and made it so he never would again. Then, their manipulation stopped.
Until me.
Two years ago, I’d walked into his poker room, and he’d looked upon me with such instilled pain that I’d caught my breath just noticing it. We couldn’t have stopped our love if we’d tried. Not even a bullet could change it.
Fast-forward to the game with Neri and…
Neri showed deep interest in me during each hand, not to mention, Neri’s careful handling of getting me alone in the middle of an ocean. In my mind’s eye, I saw his neutral expression in a whole new light, especially when he said I wasn’t to be auctioned, nor was he going to use the one night he won for his own pleasure.
I was there to be killed.
Except, Theo was there—intervened?—and convinced Neri he didn’t need to go through with the hit, because Theo had money. He must have paid Neri more than the value of the price on my head to keep me alive.
Neri was going to have me killed, at the behest of Gordon Saxon. That was his intention from the very beginning, well before I set foot in a hotel ballroom.
Oh my God.
Neri and his bodyguard passing out from my drugs turned out to be crucial happenstance. No wonder Theo was so bowled over by it, and Kai even more so.
Kai? Did he know? Was that why he’d participated in Theo’s plans to shepherd me out of the United States?
“How…” My throat crunched against the words, but attempted bravado was my only available weapon. “How much am I worth?”
“You’re not the end game,” Bo said, laughing. “But you’re definitely at the end of the line.”
I became aware of my slip of a dress, my bare feet, my tousled, useless long hair. Bo was leaning forward like he was about to pounce.
Bo ran his tongue across his top teeth. “And guess what? I want that money.”
He leaped.
I was quick. And much lighter than his heavy, muscle-laden frame. I dodged his grab, sprinting to the far corner, bouncing against the wall, then tearing down the hallway. He caught me by the end of my skirt. My chin cracked against the floor and I rolled over, arms up in defense. Bo crawled on top of me, his meaty hands climbing over my thighs, latching onto my breasts, then heading to my neck.
Screaming, I clawed at the skin on his forearms and kicked at his weight, but any footprints I left on him were pain-free, because he kept coming, his fingers reaching until they landed around my throat and squeezed.
Stars came immediately. My vision wavered, my tongue bulged, and my face felt like it was about to crack into a thousand pieces that would never fit together the same way again.
Fumbling, desperate for time, my dress was hiked past my thighs, naked legs exposed. My fingers hit cool metal and slipped, then grappled for it again. I pulled it out of my garter—my other hand still digging into his wrist, arm, fingers, peeling back his nail beds, begging for life—I flipped the safety, pointed at his temple, and pulled the trigger.
His lids peeled back from his eyeballs, a garish picture forever imprinted on my mind, before the image exploded with blood.
Bo flopped on top of me, the full weight of him a crushing reminder that what was once a lively individual hellbent to kill me was now a dead person. I suddenly wanted him off me—off, off—the sounds echoing throughout the hallway sounding inhuman, animalistic, and containing the most basic language of survival. Eventually, I discovered those sounds were my own.
Trembling, I pushed out from under, his body making a flopping sound reserved only for the lifeless before rigor mortis set in. My shoulders were wet with warm, thick, syrupy blood, my feet slipping on the same, but I managed a stand, then a topple into the wall, before sliding into the bathroom and turning on the shower. I peeled out of the gown, my cheeks suspiciously dry throughout the process of washing somebody else’s blood off my limbs. When I clambered out, soaking wet, I traveled from the bathroom to what was Drea’s temporary quarters on the other side of the apartment. Bo didn’t move as I stumbled by, and was in the exact same, face-down position I’d left him in.
I searched through drawers, finding a basic sweatshirt and leggings, and slipped them on. There were also a pair of worn-white sneakers that were a half-size too big, but I put them on, too. Still, no tears. But I dropped the clothing a few times due to my jerkier-than-normal movements, the trembles in my fingers that were refusing to ebb. Forget tying the laces.
Bo’s body remained immobile when I went back to retrieve the small, pearl-handled gun I’d filched from Rada’s closet and stuffed into my waistband. Despite my body’s seizures, I remembered to turn the safety back on before doing so.
My gown, I shoved into a plastic bag. A jug of bleach was discovered under the kitchen sink, and I dumped it down the shower’s drain. I wiped down
anything I touched. Then, I exited the apartment.
Forty-five minutes.
That was how long it took to clean the parts of me that I could and remove any incriminating evidence from the crime scene.
I hadn’t said a word.
22 Upperclass to Underground
Twenty Hours Later
Kai met me at the gate.
I deplaned from the public aircraft, having been curled up in a middle seat in economy class for the better part of seven and a half hours. My joints were stiff, my scar tissue even more so, and I winced at every step forward. I still wore the sweats I stole while Bo was lying dead on the hallway floor. The thought of him prone, the all-black of his outfit hiding the blood that had to be seeping underneath his body…
I swallowed.
“Hey,” Kai said. He lifted my duffel from my shoulder and threw it on his, put his arm around my shoulders, and kissed my temple as we walked. “You look like shit.”
“I feel…”
“I know, honey.” He pulled me tighter into his side. “Once we get in the car, tell me everything.”
“Is Chenko…?”
“No,” he said. Too abruptly.
“Does he know I’m back?”
“Not yet.”
“I couldn’t press the button on the necklace.”
“I know.”
“I had both brothers, and I couldn’t do it.”
“Don’t fret about that right now. Be glad the new ID worked, got you back here.”
“Thank you.” A lot of breath encased my words, but it was billowed with relief. I wasn’t sure if I’d make it out of London, if as soon as I flashed my passport, Chenko’s agents would be waiting, shiny metal handcuffs dangling.
When I called Kai, it was with nervous desperation. There wasn’t much I could say over the pay phone without further incriminating myself, other than, “I need your help to get out of here. I’m in big trouble.”
Any other time, I would have been over the moon to step into a traditional English phone booth, bright red and quaint as hell. If Verily would have been with me, we would’ve taken selfies in front of it, laughing as we tripped over each other’s feet in order to both get in the shot. At least—the Scarlet in my memories was like that.
Kai used his connections, built through his time as an undercover agent for the Saxon mafia, to have a fake passport made. He directed me to a storefront advertising delicious Indian food, and when I gave my name with a voice seeming more autotuned than real, I was led to the back, behind the kitchen, where a nondescript tripod and an elderly lady with long, almost knee-length grey hair and a bright orange kurti took my picture.
Ten hours later, the passport was ready. I’d fallen asleep in the corner, adrenaline crashing like a kitten who’d gluttoned on too much milk, and was shaken awake by the same young man who’d met me at the host’s table however many hours previously. He had a dish of succulent foot in his hand, tipping his head in the direction of the old woman as explanation.
After I finished eating and promptly paid from my pilfer of Henry the Duke’s son’s lockbox, the passport was shoved in my hands and I was ushered out the back door. When the blustery outdoor weather hit the bags under my eyes, I was reminded to check the booklet. The small square of my face looked back at me, and a few slow blinks later, I categorized it as me and not a war-torn, pale version of Cassie, brown hair askew, lower lip drooping in a tired, traumatized way. Samantha Davis, likely one of the most American names I’d ever seen.
I curled the booklet against my stomach and hailed the next taxi that crossed my path.
What could Theo be doing during the hours of my wait to get out of the UK, the time I spent in the air, the minutes I now spent with Kai? Almost a day separated us now, the last I saw of him in the interior of his car, the dark tint of him blinding in my memory.
Would he get another scar as punishment? How much mutilation could one son endure?
I’ll find you, I thought. I have to. You won’t suffer alone.
Kai fished into his pocket then sent out a beep-beep as he pressed the keyless fob to his car in the covered parking lot adjacent to the arrivals section of JFK. Somehow, we’d made it outside and across an airport road without me cataloguing it.
“In you go,” he said, opening the passenger door. I slipped in without a peep, my exposed legs suddenly cold. I wished Kai had a blanket in here. I hoped I wasn’t getting sick.
He got in on the other side and started the engine.
“Okay,” he said once he backed out. “You’re safe. Now talk.”
I did. I told him everything. Out of everyone left in my life, Kai was the best trusted, the most understanding, the one who could help me figure out what to do to get Theo back.
“Are you fucking out of your goddamned moronic stupid mind?” Kai yelled once I was finished.
“Not the reception I was hoping for,” I mumbled.
My voice sounded dry. I fumbled around for a bottle of water, which I knew Kai often had on hand due to his many stakeouts—some mandatory, most being annoying—and found an unopened bottle that had rolled under my seat.
“What were you expecting? A high-five? You left a dead body in a mafia safe house.”
“Which they’ll assume was a mafia hit. I cleaned up, don’t worry.”
Kai dared an exasperated glance up at the car’s roof. “He’s American, Scar. This is going to come back—”
“To the Saxons. It’s their problem, now. Add it to their list of transgressions.”
“This is bad. Like, really. We have to loop Chenko in and I’m not sure if you can get out of this without charges…”
“He tried to kill me, Kai.”
“I know. Jesus Christ, I know.” He squeezed the wheel, so hard I saw the bones of his knuckles. “When you boarded that plane with Sax, we had a clear plan in mind. Get the two of them in the same room together. Press the necklace’s button. Send in the troops. That was it.”
“We left out an important problem,” I said.
“Yeah?” he responded, somewhat angrily. “And what’s that?”
“Humanity.”
Tendons in Kai’s cheek stood out.
“What went on in London … it was unpredictable. We didn’t consider other people. Rada, Drea, this duke’s son, Bo … Trace. I kept in front of it as much as I could, but their actions preceded mine. I’m convinced Trace knew, the entire time, where Theo and I were. And he had the plan to get his brother all along.”
“But why?”
“That’s where I hit a roadblock. I don’t know. And considering there’s a hit on me, why didn’t Trace take it? He had all the chance in the world to take me out, and instead, he played cat-and-mouse with us. It’s almost like their father had one agreement with Theo, and another with Trace. Like Gordon Saxon was playing them against each other for pure entertainment in order to see who would end up on top.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Not to mention, why did the king Saxon put a price on my head? What was I doing that angered him so much he wanted me dead?”
“Uh, let’s see. You broke a major drug trafficking scheme spearheaded by his favorite son, Trace Saxon.”
“That was a couple of years ago. He’s holding that much of a grudge?”
“And instead of dying then like you should have—in his mind—you went on to become a major player in underground poker.”
“Never in his houses. I made sure of that.”
“Fine. Next transgression—you scattered both his sons to the wind. Heirs he’d been grooming since they had diapers strapped over their dicks. When grown, both were damaged by his unfatherly ways, yet carefully honed into taking over an illegal empire. And when you made them fugitives, all Papa Saxon was left with was … who? The youngest brother? What’s his name? I’m always forgetting.”
“Ward. Are you saying he’s blaming me for the break-up of his heirs? He’s the asshole pitting them against each other!”
/> “You think he sees it that way?”
“How’s my death going to benefit him? I’m a little piece of nothing, swimming around in his ocean like an … empty plastic bottle.”
“That will never disintegrate.”
“God.” I covered my face with my hands. “You’d think I’d’ve learned to stay away from the Saxons by now.”
“I dunno. You talk about assassins coming after you like it’s a day at a beach when the sun’s too hot.”
“I have to,” I said, looking out my window. “If I allow it to compute, I’m a goner. All I wanted to do was find something I was good at, and that turned out to be poker. And in finding the game, I found Theo. I can’t escape him.” I paused.
“Are we talking about the Sax of two years ago, or now?” Kai asked as he made a right turn.
“I…”
“Fuck.”
I glanced at him. “What?”
“Well,” he said on a sigh, “You’re talking about humanity putting a wrench in our plans, but I don’t think you’ve considered your own.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re back in love with Sax, Scarlet.” Kai braked at a stoplight and turned to me with the flattest expression I’d ever seen on his usually vivacious face. “If you ever fell out of it. And you’ve just made this a hell of a lot more complicated.”
23 G.S
Kai took me back to his place.
For a man who had taken a sick day to aid and abet a fugitive, he was doing rather well, but I guessed being an undercover agent for the purposes of a highly dangerous mafia sting would do that to a guy.
I also understood that my time as a free woman was severely limited. Kai had kept Chenko and his agents at bay for as long as he could, but now that I was back in the US (and with no Theo or Trace to show for it), if Chenko got wind of my presence, there would be no questions asked. I’d be immediately taken into an interrogation room, squeezed for information, booked, then put in a holding cell.
And I would be no good to Theo in jail.
WIN THE GAME Page 18
