The Token 6 (New Adult Dark Romance)

by Eros, Marata

  I react without thinking. My foot strikes the hand that carries the knife and it clatters away, spinning and striking the kitchen island with a twang that sounds like a discordant note.

  Then my bad hand gives out.

  Fuck.

  Jay, who isn't Jay, moves in. The fading twilight strikes his hazel eyes and they appear to catch fire.

  He looks like a demon.

  My elbow collapses without the support necessary from my hand. It cracks on the wood, and I yelp, scrambling as Jay lands on me.

  His erection settles into the crack of my ass and my scream sounds like a howl.

  Kiki's round eyes meet mine, a gag stuffed in her mouth.

  She shakes her head and I fight instant tears. Instead of giving in to defeat, I dip my head forward then slam it backwards, my neck shrieking from the angle.

  Jay bellows and rolls off me.

  I stand, then trip and fall on my ass. The blood's so thick I can't get a foothold.

  Kiki's eyes slide to a point behind my left shoulder. I duck.

  The breeze of a hand moves over my head, and I run.

  I sprint to my bedroom and slam the door, flipping the lock.

  He hits the door.

  It shudders.

  My eyes charge around the room and light on the glass towel bar in the bathroom. It takes seconds for me to see it's all I have.

  I run in there as the door cracks behind me.

  I take a marble vase and toss the flowers out on the floor. They scatter like a rain of petals. I bash the vase into the towel bar holder embedded in the wall tile.

  The glass bar slides out of the broken holder, the end sheared off into a jagged point.

  I drop the vase, and it shatters the tile floor, fissures running from the center in a haphazard web.

  I grab the rod before it hits the floor, but Jay is there, scooping me up from behind.

  Peanut!

  The maternal protection instinct crushes me. It sets my teeth and leaks out in a growl so primal Jay pauses in his assault.

  I can hardly breathe for it.

  I don't need to. I wrap my hands against the opposite end of the towel bar and stab backward.

  He screams and staggers away.

  I glance behind me and see I've nailed him in the groin.

  Our eyes meet.

  I see the end of me in his.

  I tear out of there, and he rushes after me.

  I move by Kiki. Tears are streaming out of her eyes as I leap over Butch's body. Jay’s maybe twenty feet behind me and bleeding like a stuck pig.

  Stuck dick, I think with a hysterical bark of laughter.

  I'm on the edge of losing it. I smack both buttons on the elevators. One leads to the penthouse, the other to the lobby.

  The elevator doors open and I jump inside.

  Thomas's dead eyes look up at me. His skin is already turning gray.

  Adrenaline surges to my extremities.

  I look up. Jay's ten feet away, and he looks as though he's peed his pants.

  In blood.

  I hit the button with my bad hand. The doors whisk shut. The elevator travels up to Mick's unfinished Penthouse. No escape.

  I back into the corner, pressing my face against the cold walls.

  The mirror reflects Thomas on the ground at my feet.

  Oh God, help me.

  Kiki's down there.

  I cover my mouth, choking back a sob.

  Survive.

  The chime pings, and I rush through the opaque tarp hanging in the entrance of our soon-to-be penthouse. The carpenters have done more work in the kitchen. A granite top graces the island, and carved corbels adorn the underside, making it appearing to hold up the surface.

  A nail gun sits hooked to a compressor. It has a fully loaded clip of finish nails. My eyes skip to the compressor. They haven't left it on but it holds air. I can hear it leaking out in a faint hiss.

  It's all I have.

  Why didn't I use the lobby elevator?

  What if Jay has the knife again?

  I hear the flap of the plastic at the entrance, stealthy, like unopened candy as Jay pushes through.

  ***

  “Do you believe in bad seeds, Faren?” Jay's voice touches the emptiness of the space and bounces back to me.

  I can't help cringing. My left hand flops like a fish out of water. I grab it with my right, clenching my eyes.

  I don't respond. He'll know where I am.

  I let go of my hand and grip the cabinet door for the kitchen island, moving inside it. I listen to him walk around the mess of the construction.

  “I do. I very much believe,” he says.

  What is he talking about? My eyes move to the nail gun. Almost within reach. A balanced lean out of the cabinet, and it's mine.

  “You might not be aware of our connection, but I continue our father's work.”

  What?

  “I was there on that special night.”

  I should be thinking about escape, but his voice holds me. I'm hooked. Afraid. Riveted.

  “There is more than one Bunce. I was only a mistake. One of dear old Dad's many prostitute dalliances. But then I found purpose. I almost had this entire thing wrapped up. Then Father died by your hand.”

  My breathing stopped. My mind sifted through memories like sand through an hourglass.

  I touch on one that tumbles into place like a puzzle piece.

  A boy with dark hair. Looking at me curiously as he rides away with Ronnie. I was five.

  He would have been around thirteen.

  I remember how pretty his eyes were. They glittered through the back window of the car like the sun.

  Or the devil on fire.

  His face leans down into the hole of the cabinet. I'm a rabbit caught in a snare.

  “Or your foot,” he says, referencing how I finished Ronnie.

  He jerks me out of the cabinet.

  My arm flails behind me. I scoop up the nail gun. It's heavier than it looks. My left hand sings with displeasure and the klutziness that all non-dominant hands possess.

  My prayer to a God I don't believe in takes half a second.

  I stab the tip of the nail gun into the back of his foot as I spin behind him. It bites deeply against his Achilles tendon.

  I depress the trigger, and nothing happens.

  Then a symphony of jagged beats pop like a shuddering strike of firecrackers.

  Jay drops me, jumping up and down as he yells, grabbing at his ankle.

  Ignoring the pain he turns, dumping to a straddle on top of me. I throw my hands in front of my face as his fist smashes into me.

  “You fucking bitch!” he howls, his hands wrapping my throat.

  “You don't deserve anything,” he grits through his teeth.

  He slams my head against the wood floor. Stars burst in front of me and I choke, gasping for air.

  My hands try to find his eyeballs but I'm too far away.

  “He fucking took me instead of you. He pimped me out to men instead of you! You were his fucking princess and I was his prince whore.”

  Whack!

  My vision begins to dim.

  “He said someone had to be sacrificed.”

  His voice lowers as his thumbs dig a pathway into my neck. “Rose McKenna was the first whore I got rid of.”

  My eyes fly open and he smiles, his teeth like a wolf's.

  “That's right.” His fingers press down.

  I grab the hose of the nail gun and jerk it toward me.

  He's so intent on killing me he doesn't notice.

  “This entire time, I've been taking as many flesh whores as I could. Daddy's favorites.”

  He grins as he presses. My fingers loosen on the hose.

  “Imagine my surprise when the flesh tycoon fell for the biggest whore of all.”

  The metal heats underneath my hands.

  The hissing of the compressor threads through me.

  “Two birds with one stone.”

&nbs
p; He leans forward, and stale breath and day-old sweat tickles what's left of my breathing.

  “I'll make it slow for Miss King. And the knife is an abortion tool of sorts. You don't get to have anything. That baby's coming out.”

  Adrenaline surges. My fingers wrap around the handle of the nail gun, and I drive the tip into his knee.

  His eyes widen for a moment of frozen time.

  There's a click as the gun does one more hiccuping fire, driving a slim two-and-a-half-inch finish nail into his kneecap.

  Jay falls over in a shrieking pile. His fingers are gone and my lungs fill with air powdered with sawdust and drywall flakes.

  It's the best air I've ever breathed.

  A face appears above me. As Tagger fills my sight, I try to swim away on my elbows. My bad hand is spasmodic and unusable.

  My killer screams so loud, he drowns out all other noise, even Tagger’s shouting. Cops fill the room with the black barrels of their weapons clearing holsters.

  Mick is there, his hands hovering over my body as his eyes move to my neck.

  His lips form words. I strain to hear him over all the people and noise.

  I open my mouth to tell him to get the imposter.

  Then my lips close, and sleep rolls over me in a dark wave of nothingness.

  My body claims me into the unconsciousness of traumatic injury. Protecting me from more.

  ~ 10 ~

  I don't wake up and see the face I want to.

  Lance Tagger stands over my bed, and I push myself deeper into the pillow.

  Pillow?

  I look around, dismissing Tagger for a moment, and see that I'm in a hospital.

  I sit straight up.

  “Where's Kiki?” I croak. My fingers move to my tender throat.

  Tagger leans forward and I shy away.

  Thorn and Mick move into my line of sight.

  Now I'm ultra-confused.

  Mick kisses my forehead, and a breath I didn't realize I was holding slides out of me.

  “She's fine,” he answers.

  My hands move around his waist, and he grabs my elbows, holding me tightly against him.

  I swallow hard. “Butch?” He's an oaf, but my body tingles with the thought that the blood I tripped on was his life slipping away. Nobody deserves that end.

  Thorn dips his head around Mick’s body, putting a large hand on the back of his neck.

  “He's going to be okay. Lots of blood transfusions.” Thorn and I look at each other around Mick's body.

  I shake my head. “No. You're on… investigative leave.”

  Why he's in the same room as me, Thorn, and Mick?

  Tagger gives me a lopsided smile.

  “Tagger's been holding out on us,” Thorn says.

  “This was much bigger than just you, Faren,” Tagger says.

  I slip out of Mick's embrace and fold my arms. “I've obviously got time.”

  Tagger drags a metal chair over as Mick gives me some water. He strokes the back of my head, and I grab his hand.

  Like Jay's voice in the emptiness of that unfinished space, Tagger’s words are a freight train of information, lies, and years of police work. I wait for the train wreck I know is coming.

  Finally, I respond. “So Jay Hightower had an assistant...”

  “Dmitri Bunce.”

  “His natural son?” Ronnie had a kid. A biological one.

  Tagger nods. “He ingratiated himself to Hightower, became indispensable.”

  “He was intimately aware of Hightower's business dealings,” Mick adds.

  That's how he knew about the Black Rose expansion.

  “Then after years of systematic childhood sexual enslavement...” Tagger trails off.

  Oh god. I cover my face with my hands, thinking about the innocent boy in that car almost twenty years ago.

  He blames me. He holds me accountable for the deeds of his father. Little did Dmitri know the tyrant that Ronnie was to me and mom.

  “Powerless to stop being pimped out by his own father, he became fixated on punishing those he saw as being in a better position. The strippers his father paid, the prostitutes he pimped to high-paying clients… They were first on his list.” Tagger’s eyes flick to Mick. I feel his body tense underneath my fingertips.

  “Mr. McKenna's sister was the first of many.”

  Tagger tosses a photo on my bed.

  A glossy pink scar bisects the left side of the torso, directly underneath the ribs.

  The skin does not have the blush of life, but is gray like molding parchment paper. I remember Thomas the doorman.

  “Dmitri?” I ask and look at Thorn.

  He nods. “Finito.” He makes a swipe with a finger across his throat. A breath slides out of me.

  Bright spots of color appear on Tagger's face. “We know now that Mr. Simpson was never guilty. At the time, we didn't have our current technology, and he was at the scene, holding a knife—a dead assailant at his feet.”

  “All that time, it was Ronnie Bunce's screwed-up prodigy,” I say.

  Tagger sighs. “We've matched Dmitri’s DNA to the scene. The wound he had is exactly where Mr. Simpson claimed it would be.”

  “But why?” I look at Tagger. “Why were you after Mick and me? Why did you treat Thorn like he was guilty?”

  Mick and Thorn look at each other.

  “Go ahead,” Tagger says.

  Thorn smiles. “I've been dying to say this.”

  Tagger rolls his eyes.

  “I'm the fuzz, baby,” Thorn says.

  What he just told me doesn't compute. “What? You're—you're Mick's manager at the Black Rose.”

  Thorn shakes his head. “I'm deep undercover. But not no more.” He winks at his butchered English.

  “We recruited Ty when we realized the mistake that had been made and let Mr. McKenna take the credit for exonerating him.”

  My mouth drops open and I turn to Mick. “You knew.”

  “Yes.” His eyes are steady on mine, his hand gripping me.

  “He couldn't tell anyone,” Tagger says. “There's never been two men who were so much of the same mind. McKenna and Simpson wanted Rose McKenna's killer.”

  My head is reeling until I think of something. “Dmitri kept killing?”

  Tagger nods. “It's a horrible fortune that a human being's compulsion to murder is what ultimately gets him caught.”

  “There were so many related murders of known prostitutes and strippers with the same modus operandi,” Thorn spreads his arms wide.

  “We needed someone with Ty's street knowledge. The killer would never look at him. We know now, his eye was on fooling Hightower, infiltration of the revolving lap clubs and in the end—you. In the beginning, all we understood was the perp was after pole dancers.”

  I roll my lip inside my mouth. Ronnie is dead, but his legacy lived on regardless.

  The sins of the father.

  Thorn nods. “We thought we had him at the raid.”

  “You thought it was Ronnie,” I guess.

  “We did.”

  Mick's hand clips Thorn in the arm. “I'm still pissed you let Faren do laps in that shady fucking mess.”

  Thorn rubs his arm. “We didn't know Faren was related to Bunce. I've explained that, bro.”

  Mick and Thorn exchange a stare full of heated reprisal.

  “The tangled web we weave,” Tagger says.

  Thorn shoots him a look.

  “Shud-up, Tag.”

  It's so strange to see their interaction.

  I shake myself. “So that college degree you have?” I ask Thorn.

  “Criminal justice.”

  “Huh.”

  “Of course, we didn't know Bunce was wanted for the attempted murder of your mother. Once we discovered that... we had to watch him. He had about a hundred different aliases. We wanted to catch him in the act.”

  So they had been drawing him out while my mom languished in a coma.

  I open my mouth.

&nb
sp; Tagger holds up a palm. “We had you under surveillance.”

  “Butch?” I ask.

  Tagger smiles. “One of ours.”

  Mick's forehead rests on the top of my head. “I wanted to tell you a million times. The sting had me in knots.”

  “Ronnie almost killed me.”

  I remember Mick and Thorn showing up at just the right time.

  The cops breaking up that horrible lap dance.

  Mick showing up just as the fake Jay, who was really Dmitri, came all over me.

  I narrow my eyes. “What about that time you showed up and kicked Dmitri's ass?”

  Mick looks sheepish.

  “That's all me. I couldn't stand that you were an unwitting part of the operation.”

  “We didn't know Dmitri was the perp,” Thorn admits.

  “Then…”

  “Yeah?”

  “How... how did you find me?” I ask.

  “Butch. He discovered the condo wasn't secure.”

  Before Dmitri went medieval on him with a knife. I remember the bloodbath I tripped over with a shiver.

  “How'd Dmitri know you were on to him?”

  Tagger shakes his head. “He didn't. He was making his move.”

  I think about all the texts where I blew him off. Not caving to his demands.

  Kiki pepper sprayed his ass.

  He was a killer.

  My eyes touch on Tagger. “Is he… dead?”

  Thorn nods. “He rushed the guys with a weapon.”

  Tagger shrugs. “Suicide-by-cop, Faren.”

  But Thorn’s gaze glitters with malice. That stare tells me Dmitri would have been dead regardless.

  My mind whirls with the revelations. No one is who they seem.

  Even me.

  ~ 11 ~

  I'm okay.

  Peanut is too.

  Thorn is way more than a manager of expensive flesh. Our initial encounter is seared into my brain. If he was deep undercover, would that explain the private lap dance he insisted on? Maybe Thorn played the role a little too well.

  That Thorn had to go to prison at the tender age of eighteen doesn't seem justifiable. That his freedom became the sacrifice.

  At the end of the day, both Bunces are dead—that's what matters.

  I almost died as well. No one knew Dmitri Bunce's obsession for payback until it was almost too late.

  *