by Fawn Bailey
"What is it?" I asked, busying myself with some papers.
"It's Kain," my right-hand man, Salomon, said down the line. "We just got word that his hideout has been found."
"So?" I asked rigidly. "We already knew that. I was there only a few weeks ago."
"Not by you," Salomon said, his voice tense. "But... your father found him."
I stood up right away, feeling my pressure rising as I tried to keep my voice down. The last thing I needed was Ophelia finding out about this and causing a panic when there was no reason to worry.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"Michael seems to have him," Salomon admitted. "When we got there the place was ransacked with nobody left. Bunch of dead bodies, no Kain though."
Fuck. So maybe panic was in order.
"Keep everybody calm," I instructed Salomon. "Make sure the word doesn't get out. And, Salomon?"
"Yeah, boss?" he asked, his voice nervous.
"Fucking find him."
I cut the call and put my phone down. Fuck. Ophelia couldn't find out about this, and neither could Ginger. I had a feeling both of them would cause a panic.
But wasn't that the right thing to do?
I was fairly certain whatever my father's reasoning had been behind kidnapping Kain, it wasn't going to be pretty. He'd already proved that he didn't give a shit about blood.
I ran my fingers through my hair and massaged my temples. It was fucking hard not to think about my brother. He was always in the back of my mind, always whispering, telling me things I was doing my best to ignore. But despite everything Max had gone through, he was the voice of reason inside my head. Maybe I should've listened to him more often.
The day passed uneventfully, with all of our efforts to find Kain and my father coming up empty. Finally, I got busted on a phone call with Salomon by Ginger herself, and I only noticed it when I turned around after ending the call. She was standing in the doorway, wearing one of her signature floral dresses and a frown. She looked good enough to lick. I shook my head to get the thought out.
"What are you doing here?" I asked her roughly. "Get back to Ophelia."
"Don't you think there's more important stuff to worry about?" she asked me with raised eyebrows.
"Like what?" I asked icily.
"Like the phone call you just had. Like Kain." She walked into the room, her hand trembling as she placed it on the chair in front of my desk. "That's what the call was about, right? He's in trouble?"
I could have lied to her, but for some reason, I didn't want to. I just gave her a long look and she breathed out slowly. I could tell she was panicking.
"We'll make sure he's okay," I said, trying to calm her down. "I'll find him."
"You don't know where he is?" she asked, biting her bottom lip nervously. "But something could have happened to him. And Ophelia would never get over it."
"No?" I asked her coldly. "As if you know what happened between them, tesoro. You don't know shit."
"Don't call me that," she hissed, and I raised my eyebrows at her as she blushed. "Just don't."
"Someone's sensitive as fuck," I muttered under my breath. "Fine, baby, I won't say a word. But you can't tell Ophelia, either."
"Why not?" she asked, immediately gearing up for an argument just like I knew she would.
"Because I'm going to," I replied simply, then strode past her out of the room and down the hallway.
She followed behind me as I walked into Ophelia's room, my heart pounding harder than I would've cared to admit. I knew it had to be done, however. Despite Ophelia's current feelings about Kain, she had a right to know what was going on with him. A sick part of me even hoped she would be glad to see him gone, but I managed to shut that side of me up pretty fast.
"Ophelia?" I called out, opening the door.
And there she was, my slut turned snow queen, sitting at the foot of the bed and slowly combing her hair. There was no vanity in her new room, but it didn't seem to matter. She was so lost in her own mind I wondered whether she'd even noticed there wasn't a mirror before her. At least we'd gotten her out of the habit of being naked - she now wore a red linen dress. But her eyes were as lost as ever, and I was convinced she never would have put that dress on had Ginger not forced her.
"Ophelia," I said again, coming to stand next to her. "Can you put the brush down for a second?"
She ignored me, repeating the same motion over and over again.
Finally, I knelt next to her and gently pried the brush from her fingers. A dark red blush crept all over her décolletage and cheeks as if she knew something bad was coming. She wouldn't look at me.
"Ophelia," I practically begged. "Look, there's no easy way to say this."
Her eyes found mine, dark irises accusing me of things I hadn't done. And whenever she looked at me like that, something inside me awoke, begging me to let the old feelings come out and play.
It was true - I'd been in love with the girl since I was eleven years old. But she'd never been meant for me, always for my brother. She wasn't mine to take, wasn't mine to have. Except now that Max was gone and Kain was - in his mind, temporarily - out of the picture, I finally had a chance to make Ophelia fall for me again. Yet I wasn't sure if that was what I wanted to do. There was a certain little blonde who seemed to have taken permanent residence in my mind, and I wasn't sure whether I could even focus on Ophelia when Ginger was around.
"Kain is in trouble," I said simply, and her pupils dilated even more, making her eyes look nearly black. "It looks like my fath-Michael found him. And we don't know where he has taken him."
She kept staring, not saying a word, still stuck in her broken mind but struggling to make sense of the words coming out of my mouth.
"I'm going to do my best to find and help him," I said rigidly. "We're allies here. I don't want to help my father. I never did. You know that, don't you?"
Once again, there was no reply.
I sighed and started to get up when she reached out to me, her little fingers wrapping around my wrist and tugging hard. I looked down into her eyes and saw the terror and fear filling them. It made me wonder just how broken she really was. After everything she'd gone through, all the people she lost, she had no choice but to retreat to the quiet of her mind. Anyone would have done the same faced with the terrors she'd gone through.
"Please."
The word was a broken plea coming from her lips, and I widened my eyes when I heard her speak for the first time in weeks.
I knelt back down next to her and watched a single tear slide down her porcelain cheek.
"I'll find him," I said. "I promise. You just need to stay calm and stay here with Ginger. It's safe here."
She shook her head violently and I gave her a long questioning look.
"What do you want then?" I asked, getting aggravated. "You want me out on the streets fucking looking for him, don't you?"
She looked away guiltily and I growled out loud, pacing the room as I spoke to her in angry, upset tones.
"He's the man who killed your father," I told her. "He's the one who took everything away from you, Ophelia. You're really ready to be his again, after everything he did to you? After he broke you the last time?"
I felt her staring at me, but I didn't turn around to face her. I wasn't done just yet.
"You can't expect me to..." I started, but when I took another look at her, my words stopped coming.
She was looking at her hands clasped on her lap, and there were tears streaming down her pretty face. Now I felt like a real jerk, and awkward as fuck because I had no idea what to do in the situation. I couldn't comfort her the way I wanted - I didn't know how to help her, either. My father was a hard man to trace down, and I knew that whatever his intentions were with Kain, he wasn't going to let him live.
"Ophelia," I breathed out, approaching her one last time and getting on the floor before her. "I want to help. I do. You know how much you mean to me. You always have."
She gave a sm
all nod and I marveled at the sudden change in her. It was the closest thing to a reaction I'd gotten out of her, and I wondered whether she was slowly, slowly, piecing herself back together.
"Do you want to help me find him?" I asked her gently, and she raised her eager eyes to mine. "Okay, we can find him together. And once we track them down, I'll make sure he's okay."
She grabbed my hand, squeezing hard.
"You will help," I tried to reassure her. "You'll be right there beside me making sure everything goes according to plan, okay?"
This seemed to satisfy her, and she got off the bed and walked past me right out of the room in her light, airy white dress. I walked out after her and bumped into Ginger in the hallway.
I tried to move past her but once I raised my eyes to hers I saw the problem right away.
She'd been crying, her eyes red-rimmed and her pouty bottom lip trembling.
"Baby," I said gently, but when I reached for her, she ripped herself out of my embrace.
"Don't baby me," she hissed at me like a wildcat. "I'm nothing to you, am I, Ryker?"
"What?" I raised my eyebrows at her, feeling genuinely confused. "The fuck is this about now?"
"You and her," she said bitterly, motioning down the hallway where Ophelia had disappeared. "You two... there's something between you, isn't there?"
What the hell was I supposed to tell her? The story was too complicated for a quick sentence or two dismissing all my feelings I'd ever had for Ophelia. And despite the little blonde vixen, it was true - I still felt an attraction to Ophelia that felt almost impossible to resist. I wanted her to be mine, partly because I'd loved her as a kid, and partly because she'd be the ultimate prize.
But then there was Ginger, a sweet little kid with a tight little pussy and a giggle that stole my heart.
I was fucking lost in my thoughts, and she could tell, hitting my shoulder with her small fists.
"I hate you," she said pointedly. "I want to get away from here."
"Be my guest," I told her easily. "Door's that way."
I could almost feel the anger coming off her in waves, and I hated myself a little for what I'd said to her. But I couldn't let her win. The sick, deeply masculine part of me demanded submission from her even in a situation like this, where I rationally knew I wasn't doing the right thing. But I couldn't fucking fight it.
She stormed away from me, leaving me alone in the hallway with my hands shaking and my head swimming with thoughts.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kain
I felt my personality slowly draining out of my pores as I transformed from Kain into a killing machine.
All that mattered was bringing the enemy down, and in my eyes, the enemy was Jasper who was poised to attack me at any second.
We must have been a sorry sight, both of us covered in blood, bruises and hurt beyond belief as our bodies crashed together midair.
I started pummeling him with my fists, hurting, punching, doing anything I possibly could to win. I wasn't Kain anymore. There was no trace of the boy who watched his parents die, no memory of the heavy grapefruit scent hanging in the air. There were no thoughts of Ophelia, the beautiful, raven-haired Russian beauty who had saved me. There was nothing left, fucking nothing. All that mattered was the metallic scent of blood in the air, the pounding of my fists against flesh until I hit bone.
I slammed Jasper in the ground, but soon figured out Michael must have injected him with even more of the drug than he'd done to me. Despite Jasper being more fucked up, he seemed even stronger, even fucking angrier. The spark I'd come to know in his eyes was erased, replaced with unbelievable anger threatening to destroy us both.
Every once in a while, I felt my own personality returning, and I clung to the remnants of the old me desperately, never knowing how long the shreds of normalcy would last.
At one point, I realized how horrendous the situation was. Realized that Jasper and I should be working together to beat the men who had put us in the horrific situation. I did my best to explain that to him.
"Jasper, please!" I growled as he grabbed me by the throat. "Please, I'm not your enemy! We need to fight together! We need to fight them!"
I motioned to the window where several men were watching with big, toothy grins.
Soon enough they disappeared as Jasper dragged me to the window, glaring at the men with his teeth bared.
"That's right," I said shakily. "We need to kill them together, Jasper. They're the ones who put us in here. We're friends. We've been friends for years!"
"NO!" he snarled, sending me sprawling across the room. "We're not friends! Nobody is my friend!"
He started slamming his fists on the window, and the men behind the glass retreated, some of them even wearing panicked expressions that told me they were about to shit their pants.
I grinned to myself just as the drug kicked back in, in full force this time around.
The anger descended like a red mist and demanded me to take out the first person I saw before me.
My eyes landed on Jasper and I dragged myself closer to the window, grabbing him by the back of his neck and smashing his face into the glass. He groaned, and I roared with anger, ready to hurt him even more.
My body and mind were working together with only one goal in mind - to kill everything that stood in our way. And the obvious target was Jasper.
He seemed to have forgotten all about the men behind the window, and so had I. Jasper turned his attention back to me, growling as he launched himself into attack.
We ended up on the floor, sprawling across the wet ground and doing our very best to kill one another. I was ready to destroy him, and Jasper was more enraged than I'd ever seen him. Those flashes of reality I'd felt before were long gone, replaced with nothing but anger rooted so deeply inside me there was no getting rid of it anymore.
We were intent on killing one another. There wasn't a moment where Jasper, my former best friend, wasn't fucking attacking me. And I responded, hitting him over and over until I heard the satisfying crunch of bones under my knuckles.
Another flash of reality came and went, this one so fast I barely registered it, but now there was the feeling of regret tinged with all the rage I felt. None of it mattered. I just had to kill.
Another flash. This time, it stayed longer.
I looked down at my hands, seeing them covered in blood. I looked at Jasper's heaving, barely moving figure on the floor, and fought the urge to scream.
I approached him slowly, carefully. I didn't want to hurt him anymore. I just wanted to convince him to stop doing this.
But once I reached him and he turned his eyes to mine, I noticed he was having one of the flashes too, and his body sagged on the ground, tears flowing freely from his swollen eyes.
"I don't want to hurt anymore," he told me, his large body shaking like I'd never seen it before.
"I know," I said desperately. "We just have to fight it together... This drug, this urge to fucking kill. Stay with me, Jasper... Just stay the fuck with me."
The older man sobbed as we stared at each other, trying to stay rooted in the world where we were best friends, not enemies.
I felt the effects of the drug lessening, the urge to kill fading into a dull ache at the back of my head.
Was it over?
Had we beaten Michael at his own game?
I turned my attention back to the window, where my father was furiously shouting instructions at his men. The brunt of it seemed to be going to a terrified looking guard, who was trying to resist whatever my father was telling him, shaking his head and telling him he wouldn't do it.
But my father wasn't having it.
He pointed a gun at the guy, a kid barely over twenty, before giving him an injection.
I knew what this meant.
My father was trying to send his guard inside to give us another dose of the drug.
I would have to do everything in my power so that needle didn't go inside Jasper's skin. H
e was too fucked up to defend himself anymore.
But I also knew why the guard was resisting - the moment he walked into the den of wolves, I'd fucking kill him.
I stared him down through the glass, and almost felt sorry for the boy who'd sworn allegiance to the wrong man.
I never treated my own employees like this - never forced them into situations where they were helpless. And I would spend the rest of my life regretting what had happened to Jasper.
The door of the room opened, and the boy stood in the doorframe, regarding me with his eyes wide open, one hand holding a gun and the other holding the needle.
"Get the fuck away from us," I snarled at him, a fair warning.
"I-I can't," he stuttered. "He told me he'd kill me if I do."
My blood ran cold as he drew nearer, and we circled one another like players in a ring.
"You know you'll die anyway," I told him coolly. "You inject either of us with that drug, you're not getting out alive. You want to die serving a shitty person like Marino?"
"I don't have a choice," he admitted bitterly. "If I don't he will kill my family."
I didn't want to tell him what kind of man my father was. That he would still do that if it benefitted him in any kind of way.
Michael Marino was a fucking monster.
And I was becoming more and more aware that the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
I launched myself at the boy, wrestling him to the ground.
The gun went off, and flew from his hand, hitting the floor a couple of feet away.
The boy was no fucking match for me. I was ready to kill, ready to hurt, despite his story playing on my black heartstrings.
"You die here and now," I told him solemnly. "I will tell your family you were a good man."
I would never forget the view of his dark eyes staring into the abyss of my soul as I reached for his neck.
I snapped it the same moment he plunged the syringe into mine.
I roared back to life, leaving the corpse on the floor and turning to face Jasper.
"Jasper," I managed to get out. "He did it, the drug is in... In me."
