On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1)

by Rucker, Shay

  “She could have searched for you.”

  “I know she didn’t find me.”

  “Doesn’t mean she didn’t try. How old was she when she had you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Shit, she was a child. Likely with very few options. She could have been pressured by her family. She could have been… We don’t know what she went through, but I imagine, as a young girl, she believed she had little choice about what happened to you, or hell, what happened to herself. She gave you this and left you with people she thought were bound by God to watch over you and care for you.

  “It’s painful to be left behind, to be abandoned. Trust me; my mother did it often enough when she was using, but she came back. And sometimes I believed I hated her when she did. When she was gone forever, I knew I’d never hated her; I was just angry. I was just a child, and despite everything she put us through, I loved her. She was my mom, and she was an addict. Don’t think because your mother made the choice she made, that she didn’t love you. This ring tells me she loved you without question. That she wanted you to carry a piece of her with you.”

  She plucked him on the forehead. “Despite the pain your big head may have caused during birth.”

  There had to be something wrong with him. He’d always believed that. His mother was French and Algerian, his father was Greek but unnamed on the birth certificate. Was it because he was a mutt? Was it something in his blood, something in his eyes, some deficiency, some evil in him that made her walk away? Maybe it had been what the nuns and priests called his “unholy taint.” He’d always equated her abandonment with an act of hate, never an act of love, not until Sabrina’s words hinted at the possibility.

  He squeezed her hips. “I’m not using condoms. If it’s meant for you to give birth to Godzuki, you’ll give birth and thank me for him after.”

  “I never thought about bringing kids into this world.”

  “Don’t think about it,” he said as he stroked her ass.

  “Zeus?”

  “Sabrina.”

  “When all this is done, can we go on a search for her?” she asked, gripping the pendant around her neck that she never took off. “We have to hold our family close to us. Because when they’re gone, we lose a part of who we are forever.”

  “Anything you want.”

  “Anything?” she said, tilting her hips, slowly sinking on top of him.

  “Shit, woman, anything.”

  “Bad negotiating practice, big man.”

  “Whatever,” he growled, pushing into her as the world literally exploded around them.

  SABRINA SCREAMED WHEN the motel door imploded, sending shards of wood, glass, and Sheetrock into the already shabby room.

  In one fluid motion Zeus spun around her and grabbed his blades, advancing on the men spilling through the gaping hole. Before she could grab her blade, Zeus had fatally stabbed three men, and left one screaming and clutching an eye streaming blood. Sabrina sliced at the first hand that grabbed her arm and kicked the balls of one man so hard she cringed and rejoiced at his anguished cries. She fought her way toward Zeus when a shot rang out. She saw Zeus jerk back and fall to his knee, where he sliced open the thighs of two intruders before cutting their throats once they had fallen to the floor.

  Another shot and Zeus tumbled to the floor face-first. Sabrina heard herself scream. She fought to reach him as more men came through the door and advanced, guns aimed at the back of his skull. Every fiber of her soul screamed she would protect him, protect Zeus. She fought hard, some part of her aware these men didn’t seem to want to hurt her like the ones before them.

  She would kill them. Resurrect Zeus in a river of their blood.

  Save him, her heart cried, and she fought. She fought as if the spirits that possessed his blades possessed her body. She fought like a woman possessed by the power of a love she didn’t believe existed. She fought with desperation bred from an unwillingness to lose another person she loved.

  Reaching Zeus, she knelt over his exposed back and pressed her lips to his ear. “Don’t leave me, crazy man. I need you. I need you to live…”

  Something cold and metallic slammed against her temple. Her ears rang, a high-pitched tone that made her momentarily deaf. She slumped onto Zeus’s back, her vision engulfed in blinding white light that ebbed into the unending black of unconsciousness.

  Sabrina struggled to rise up through an eternity of nothingness. Her eyes were gritty, and her throat was dry and raw. Moaning from the pain lancing through her skull and the nausea in her stomach, she sat up and inhaled deeply.

  “My beauty awakes.” A voice reached out, anchoring her. She knew that voice. She opened her eyes and saw she was lying on a large bed too fine for the seedy little motel room she’d been in.

  Kragen sat at the foot of the bed, watching her with a love and pride that were eerily disconcerting considering he was a complete stranger.

  “Where’s Zeus?”

  Kragen waved a dismissive hand. “The bodyguard is no longer of importance to you.”

  “Is he alive?”

  Impatience marred his blissful countenance. “For the moment.”

  “What do I have to do to make sure he stays that way?”

  “Your behavior, his life—the two will never again be connected. Zeus will die, and you will live.” He stood and walked over to the side of the bed where she lay. “You must live for me as I will live only for you, Sabrina.”

  “I want to see Zeus.”

  “You really don’t. Your golden boy isn’t nearly as attractive as you remember him being.”

  Sabrina’s heart stuttered. Zeus probably had less than minutes. She’d seen what Kragen did to the women he deluded himself into believing he loved. It probably wasn’t until the women failed to fulfill whatever fantasy he’d created that they died. Which meant that until Kragen played out his delusion to its conclusion, she had time. It could be days, weeks, months even. But Zeus…

  Sabrina looked around the room. “Where am I? I don’t remember this room,” she said, playing the role of his long-lost love.

  Kragen smiled. He looked so normal, so boyishly handsome. “I bought this place after I learned you were on the West Coast. I remembered you’d dreamed of what it would be like. Remember how we had fantasized about seeing the ocean together?”

  He held his hand out toward her. “Come. Let me show you around your new home.”

  She shifted off the bed, feeling unsteady from the earlier blow to her head. On one side of the bed, she noticed the manacles bolted into the wall. She gripped her stomach as a wave of nausea threatened.

  “You brought other women here,” she accused, ignoring his outstretched hand and assessing her surroundings. There was a metal night lamp on an end table that could cave in half of Kragen’s head if she swung it with enough force.

  The room itself was sparse, but it didn’t stop her from cataloging each object she could use to attack. The biggest problem was the manacles. Not only were they bolted to the wall, but there was a place on the bed’s headboard that he could secure a pair of shackles to as well. If she was bound, she wouldn’t be able to help herself or Zeus.

  Kragen’s face was flushed when she gazed back at him.

  “As you know, I am a man with needs, Sabrina. For years I couldn’t look at another woman because she wasn’t you. After a period of searching and coming up with nothing, I succumbed to those needs. I never gave up hope of finding you, but I had to go on with my life with as much normalcy as I could. They were temporary. They simply filled a passing urge.”

  She wondered what was inside the ornate, dark wood armoire against the wall. A body? Bodies? Or a wardrobe of designer outfits, like the slate-gray one he wore?

  “How many women have you had since we were together, Kragen?”

  “Max. Please. You were the only one who ever cared enough to give me a nickname.”

  “How many women, Max?” she asked, strolling closer to him although instinct wa
rned she keep as much distance between them as possible. “One? Five? Fifty?” She needed to know how many potential victims were out there. How many women he’d sacrificed to his madness.

  He wouldn’t look at her.

  “How many, Max?”

  “They meant nothing…”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No, of course not. I…”

  “Eight, a hundred?”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. So, he didn’t like being questioned. Did he feel ashamed? Surely not because he was forced to admit his infidelities to the woman he claimed to want more than any other in the world.

  Sabrina wandered closer to the armoire and reached for the metal handle. Kragen’s hand fisted around her wrist, easing it away.

  “Not yet,” he mumbled, stroking the inside of her wrist with his thumb. “Not until everything has been worked out between us.”

  She swallowed back another wave of bile at the feel of his clammy hand wrapped around hers. “I don’t see how anything could be worked out between us. You had me beaten and kidnapped. Twice.”

  “It wasn’t my intention.”

  “You’ve slept with hundreds of other women—”

  He smiled. “Hardly hundreds. No more than twenty-five in all the time since our separation.”

  She smothered a wave of sorrow. Twenty-five. That was so much more than the few the Brood knew about. “That many?” she said in a broken voice that was only half feigned. “I can’t be with you. You say you’ve changed, but how can I believe you, Max? You’ve hurt me. You’ve had countless other women. I don’t see how that makes you a better, more trustworthy man than the one I ran away from.”

  She had to get the hell out of this house. Away from the man who surpassed every level of insanity she’d ever experienced.

  She needed Zeus. She needed to make sure he was alive. To make sure he was safe. She wanted his heat, his piercing gray eyes, his deadpan expressions that made her want to strangle him.

  Because she didn’t have him, she turned back to Max, allowing him to witness the tears gathering in her eyes. “How can I be with a man who only cares for his needs and callously disregards what I created for myself? That sounds like selfishness, Max, not love.”

  His hand shot out and gripped her around the throat, his face contorting in rage. Miscalculation, she thought as she tried to break his choke hold. She’d only intended for him to feel ashamed, but her words had obviously triggered the demon that drove him to do the sick things he did to women.

  Suppressing the impulse to fight, she stopped struggling and stared him down as sparks of light burst around her, likely due to the lack of oxygen. “This is not love,” she managed to get out.

  Kragen blinked several times, released her, and turned away. “I’m sorry.”

  “How many times have you said those words to me, Max?” she said, trying to steady her breathing.

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Too many. But I can’t give you up again. You’re the only one who’s ever loved me. I’ll make you love me again.” He walked to the bedroom door. “I’m sorry for hurting you. It was never my intention.”

  “Max,” she called as he opened the door. She moved toward him, still needing to help Zeus. “I’m willing to start over. I’m willing to give us a try, but it can’t be with the blood of the man who protected me on your hands.”

  Kragen turned to face her, his expression unreadable.

  “You may not like that he hurt you or he killed your men, but he did it to protect me.”

  “And touching you, sleeping with you, was that a part of his job?”

  “No. That was him being a man and me being a woman. However, if you can forgive me one discretion, I will forgive you your many others. Let him go so we can enter this union better than who we were, Max. That’s all I’m asking of you, all I will ever ask on behalf of another man.”

  He stared at her intently, silently. She wondered if she’d made another miscalculation; then he nodded.

  “There’s no guarantee he’ll live if I let him go.”

  “There’s no guarantee any of us will survive from one moment to the next, but for our sake, I want to see you set him free. Whatever happens after that… Well, at least I’ll know you loved me enough to give me this gift. To give us this chance.”

  It felt like an eternity, but eventually he held out his hand and led her down a wide hallway that, though short, reminded her of the one she’d seen in The Shining. After only a few steps, Kragen stopped her in front of another door on the opposite side of the hallway. He knocked twice, and the door swung open.

  The iron-heavy smell of blood was the first scent to escape through the doorway. The scents of musk and sweat were soon to follow. Sabrina fought back tears, knowing Zeus had been in this room suffering, and those smells, ripe and nauseating, told her she didn’t want to imagine what he had gone through while she lay unconscious on a mattress soft enough for fallen angels while he endured hell.

  “Sir?”

  The thickly built, brown-skinned man she had seen trailing her and Zeus at the electronic store filled the doorway, his chest bare, and his pants unbuttoned and only halfway zipped. He appeared to be sweating rivulets of blood

  “Eddie, we’re going to let Mr. Zeus fly free. Sabrina has requested it, and I’ve decided to grant her this request.”

  She saw Eddie look behind him uncertainly. “He’s not really in the shape to crawl, let alone fly, sir.”

  “I want to see him,” Sabrina said calmly, though everything inside of her felt desperate and terrified. The truth was she needed to see him. Needed to prove he was alive and able to get away from this place.

  Eddie looked to Kragen for permission, and he nodded. Sabrina stood on her toes and kissed Kragen’s cheek, hoping the action would give her more leverage in the future. She rushed into the room and came to a dead stop, her mind refusing to accept what her eyes were seeing.

  Her man, Zeus, was naked and slumped against the wall, unconscious. There was a bullet hole in his upper chest and one in his right thigh, both still sluggishly leaking blood. She wondered if each wound was Kragen’s version of an eye for an eye, because the wounds were similar in location to the wounds Zeus had inflicted on him.

  Almost the entire length of Zeus’s pale bronze abdomen was an assortment of black, blue, red, and yellow bruises. She knew his ribs had to be bruised, if not fractured, if not broken. There was a contusion at his temple, and the left side of his face was swollen.

  Zeus.

  Tears welled and fell from her eyes. She couldn’t control the sob that rose in her throat, but she didn’t let it spiral into a despair-filled wail. She swallowed several times. Zeus didn’t need her tears. He needed her to help him get the hell out of here so he could come back and dismember each of these sadistic bastards.

  The man wearing Zeus’s blood walked across the room and stood beside him as if anticipating the next course of violence. Though most women might initially find the man’s muscular good looks attractive, all Sabrina could discern was the stench of revolting brutality and an unnatural need to please his employer. A minion, she acknowledged. Years with Ernesto had taught her well how to recognize minions. Eddie was an empty man salivating at the feet of his powerful employer just so he could prove to himself and the world that he had worth and value. Both he and Kragen were so twisted they thought behavior like this was something to be proud of.

  Zeus could have turned into a man like these two, but even with his killing ways, Zeus was not evil. He did what he did, and she wouldn’t pretend otherwise. He was rude, antisocial, and deadly. Maybe the spirits in his blades really had saved him. Even if they hadn’t given him much of a conscience, they allowed him to hunt down evil instead of perpetuating it.

  Sabrina faced Kragen and wiped her tears away. He smiled as if in approval of her efforts at composure. Forcing herself to walk slowly, she knelt down next to Zeus. She didn’t want to cause him more pain,
but she had to touch his chest, make sure his heart still beat. She bent closer to him so his nose nearly touched her cheek. She felt a few coils of her hair tumble forward, as if reaching out to him.

  One wrist was shackled to the wall, and though the thick chain was slack, she knew if he stood, it would be too taut for him to stand upright and defend himself effectively.

  “Zeus,” she whispered softly. The increase in his heart rate and the pace of his exhalations let her know on some level he knew she was there. Sabrina stood. “He’s alive. I swear, I would never have survived the guilt if he’d died here. He protected me and deserves better.”

  “He touched what belongs to me and injured me with the intention of continuing to have what was mine. There had to be consequences for his behavior,” Kragen said.

  “Well, you’ve clearly had your revenge. He’s taken his punishment, so let me clean him up and get him on his way…as best as he can.”

  Kragen smiled magnanimously and shrugged. “Sounds reasonable.”

  The idea of him being reasonable was absurd.

  “Eddie, bring the first-aid kit. Tend to him as best you can within ten minutes, Sabrina, then I set him free to live or die as God sees fit.”

  Eddie walked out of the room and Kragen followed, pausing by the door. “I’ll give you a moment to say your good-byes.” Before closing it, he said, “Ten minutes, Sabrina, and after, you will give me your heart and soul.”

  Zeus grunted.

  “For as long as you’ll have me, I’m yours,” Sabrina said.

  He smiled. “Just as it once was.”

  “It’s unfortunate I don’t have any memory of our time.”

  “We will create much more pleasurable ones.”

  “I look forward to it,” she said, imagining him dead at her feet.

  “As you should,” he replied, his gaze promising things she didn’t have the time or the stomach to contemplate.

  KRAGEN SECURED THE door, closing Sabrina inside with the soon-to-be dead man. He walked upstairs and saw Reed sitting at the table inputting information into his computer.

  “What has our man in OPD reported?”

  Reed looked up. “It’s been all silent since the tag on your woman’s hotel transaction.”