by Kelly Favor
“The thing is,” Raven began, wanting to tell Scott about Skylar and why she couldn’t afford to burn bridges with Jake.
“I don’t really care what the thing is,” Scott interrupted. He smiled again, but it wasn’t real. “You see, I run a multi-billion dollar business, Miss Hartley. Club Alpha is bigger than you can imagine, and we have clients wealthier and far more powerful than Jake Novak. We have people we answer to, and they don’t ever want to hear our company mentioned in the national media. Not ever.”
“I’ve never spoken about you to anyone,” she said.
“But they’ll find out if you keep giving them reasons,” Scott told her, sitting down and daintily sipping his water again. “The media is stupid, but they have this amazing ability to sniff out the truth. They’ll eventually realize how you met Jake, no matter how hard you try and cover it up. Already they know your name, and they’re digging and digging. Soon they’ll find out all about your little mess you got into back in high school.”
Raven’s blood ran cold. Her entire body went numb. “Little mess?”
“Yeah, the one that led you to that nasty hospital stay for six months. The little mess that made you run away from home, never to turn back. You think you can spin what happened to you into some fairytale that makes Jake look like a hero?” He barked a scoffing laugh at her. “The reporters and bloggers and bloodhounds will see it for exactly what it was. They’ll tar and feather you and Jake Novak will get hit right along with you. It will end his career.”
She couldn’t believe that Club Alpha knew about her past. It had been buried, all of it, scrubbed from the internet, and her hospital records were confidential. But then again, none of that would stop a powerful company like Club Alpha. They could buy and sell her and she knew it.
“I was a victim,” Raven said, finally, trying to gather her composure. “Everything they said about me was lies. I was bullied. That’s the point.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Scott replied.
“How am I wrong? I lived it.”
“What you lived doesn’t matter,” he said. “You must be a bigger fool than I took you for.”
“I’m not a fool,” she said, standing up. “And I’m leaving.”
“Sit down before I put your head through that window behind you.” His voice was like ice, and she knew he meant it. She sat down immediately.
“So you’re going to beat up a woman?” she asked him, meeting his gaze. “How courageous of you.”
He stood up and peered down at her, unbutton his vest. “My job isn’t to be courageous. My job is to keep my clients and investors happy and make us all a lot of money. And I’m not going to let one naïve, silly little girl ruin an empire. Just so we understand each other,” he said.
“Understood,” she replied, her breath whistling in her chest.
“You’re to leave this office and outside a car will be waiting to take you back to Boston,” he told her. “Everything’s been arranged. All you have to do is get inside and leave.”
“What about the fact that I have nowhere to live, no money, no job?” she said. “That’s because of you. I have nothing to go home to.”
“Don’t you worry,” he said. “We’ll get you your little job back, find you an apartment, give you a couple dollars to tide you over. We’ll make sure you don’t starve. And all you have to do is stop speaking to Jake Novak, forget you ever heard his name. No interviews, no telling anyone—I mean anyone—about what happened between you and him. Forget you ever heard of Club Alpha and we’ll try our best to undo the damage you’ve done to us.”
“The damage I’ve done to you? You’ve threatened me, had me fired—“
“Shut up,” he told her. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “One more word and so help me, I’ll show you what real damage is.”
“You’re going to hit me?”
“Only if you give me a good reason,” he grinned. “Please, doll, give me a reason.”
Raven felt faint, and she saw spots for a moment, but then she blinked them away. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go. Just don’t hurt me.”
“Gladly,” Scott said. “It’s so good we had this little chat, darling. Really good to meet you. I mean, Max has told me so much about you, but meeting you first hand is precious. Just precious.”
“Great,” she replied, simply trying to end all of this. It was a nightmare and she only wanted to wake up now.
“I’ll go and tell Max you’ve been a sport and agreed,” Scott told her. He started to walk out, but he turned around at the last moment. “One last thing, Miss Hartley.”
Raven forced herself to look at him, even though doing so made her sick to her stomach. “Yes?”
“If I find out you’ve talked to Jake—even a Tweet, just a friendly hello—I don’t care what. If I find out you so much as breathe in Jake’s direction, I will send a couple of goons to pick you up. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it won’t matter. My guys will find you and within twenty-four hours you’ll be halfway across the world, in some slum in Africa or Asia where nobody can find you. And you don’t want to hear the rest,” he told her, as calmly as if he was offering her another glass of water.
“I’m sure I don’t,” she replied, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of showing him how terrified she really was.
“Good, we understand each other, then,” he said, and opened the big wooden doors, leaving as calmly as he’d entered.
Raven was still sitting and waiting. She was scared, really scared, in a way that she hadn’t been in a very long time.
Maybe she hadn’t ever been this afraid.
Max Mendez came into the room moments later, and he was visibly tense. “Come on,” he said, “we need to get you outside to the car. It’s waiting to take you.”
“Back to Boston?” she asked him.
He averted his eyes, glancing away. “Yeah, yeah. Boston. Come on, we need to hustle.” He clapped his hands like an instructor.
Raven got up and walked out, following behind him, as he made his way back to the elevators.
Inside the elevators together, there was a long and uncomfortable silence between them. Max stood with his hands clasped and just stared straight ahead, still not looking at her, as the floors dinged during their descent.
This time they didn’t stop at the lobby, and Raven realized he’d pressed the button for the basement.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her heart hammering inside her chest.
She had a feeling of claustrophobia, as if the elevator was closing in on her.
“Just out the back way,” he said, smiling. “The car’s parked out there.”
“Oh.” She swallowed drily. Her bladder was throbbing and she wanted a bathroom more than anything now.
When the doors opened. They were in a dark and dingy narrow hallway, and it was the polar opposite of the beauty and richness of the rest of the building. Max led her down the hallway, which was littered with boxes and barrels and smelled of rot and mildew.
At the end, he opened a small steel door and Raven was grateful to see an alleyway back there, with a black sedan parked close by. Near to it was a dumpster, and a small gap between buildings to which she could even glimpse Central Park West, as if it was a door to a beautiful fantasy world.
Through the narrow gap between buildings, she could see joggers passing by, and rich people walking a tiny dog, and then a family strolling by, dressed like something from a catalog.
“There it is,” Max said, pointing at the black sedan, which was somehow menacing in its quiet stillness. “Go ahead, now. Back you go.”
She started out of the basement and into the alleyway, walking slowly, her heartbeat getting faster and faster.
She turned back to look at Max. “This car?” she said, suddenly more scared than she’d ever been. “Are—are you sure?”
Max smiled, a little too friendly now. “Yeah, of course I’m sure. Go ahead. Get inside.” He was standing in t
he doorway from the basement, watching her intently.
She was at the car now, and she reached out to open the door. As it swung open, a smell came pouring out, a smell like…she didn’t know for sure. Later, she would tell herself it was just her imagination. But she could’ve sworn it smelled like a hospital, and she instantly pictured herself getting in and being unable to get out again, the doors locking on her.
The driver was a hulking shape in the front seat, and she imagined him coming back at her with a big cloth in his hand, pushing the chloroform to her nose and mouth, holding her until she passed out.
And then Scott’s voice echoed in her mind, over and over as if on a loop.
…Within twenty-four hours you’ll be halfway across the world, in some slum in Africa or Asia where nobody can find you…
She stood there as if for an eternity.
Distantly, she heard Max telling her to get into the car, but then everything inside told her to run.
Run where?
Back to Jake.
The only place that was even remotely safe for her anymore.
And so she did it. She turned and bolted for the gap between the buildings.
“Where are you going, you crazy bitch?” Max Mendez yelled, and she could’ve sworn he was coming after her, but as big as he was, he wasn’t that fast.
And she was literally running for her life, practically falling in her heels, but still able to scoot through the gap and then out onto the crowded street where there were far too many people for anyone to just come and grab her.
Raven walked as fast as she could, blending in with the crowd, not looking back. At first, she found a small group of Asian men and women who were excitedly talking to one another. They might have been business colleagues, she had no idea. They didn’t seem to notice her walking in the middle of them, and so she stayed with them for a couple of blocks and then she saw a cab sitting on the corner and ran to it, jumping in and shutting the door.
“Take me to…the hotel,” she gasped.
“Which one?” the driver asked her, his eyebrows raised as she slumped lower in her seat.
“Hurry, drive! Drive!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Shit, relax,” he said, but drove anyway.
This time, she wasn’t as lucky with the media. As she exited the cab in front of the hotel, the paparazzi overwhelmed her, and she had no security team to back them off. They were in her face, snapping pictures and screaming questions. The questions were ridiculous, absurd, insulting, and she tried her best to just ignore them all.
She put her head down and tried her best to cover up, at least hide her face a little as she walked inside.
Once inside the lobby, the random strangers were all staring at her like she was an alien.
She felt like one, too.
Tears were very near the surface, and Raven was starting to feel like she might simply break down. How much more could she take?
The elevator ride was quiet, with an older couple who spoke French to one another and laughed softly, holding hands.
Raven got to her floor and walked slowly to her room. Funnily enough, she no longer had to go to the bathroom—it must have been nerves before. She was still feeling scared, but not quite as scared as she had felt back at the Club Alpha building.
She was also quite certain that she’d done the right thing in not getting inside that black sedan when Max had tried to convince her to. There had been something very wrong with that whole scenario, and she still had the feeling she’d only just escaped in the nick of time.
If they were really willing to kidnap her and whisk her away to some foreign country, that meant that Club Alpha was capable of just about anything. Now that she’d openly defied them, what would they do to her next?
She didn’t know. Raven unlocked her hotel room door, and as it swung open she was shocked to see Jake sitting on one of the chairs, drinking a bottle of beer.
She walked inside and the closed the door behind her.
“What are you doing?” she asked him, realizing she was less surprised than she probably should have been at his invasion of her personal space.
“I should ask you the same thing,” he smiled, taking another swig from the beer bottle.
She wanted to tell him the truth, tell him what had happened with Club Alpha, but she was also afraid of his reaction. What if he didn’t care? What if he wouldn’t help her, wouldn’t stand up for her?
And what made her think that he might stand up for her for any reason?
Jake hadn’t defended her or shown any interest in helping her in the past.
“I’m not ready to talk about me yet,” she said slowly. “I’m having a pretty bad day.”
“Were you hanging with Skylar and her parents?”
“Ummm…yeah,” she said half-heartedly. The weird thing was, as much as she doubted him sometimes, she couldn’t deny the safety she felt being in the same room with him.
Jake made her feel like nobody could ever hurt her as long as he was nearby.
Even if it wasn’t true, it was how she felt. And that melted her, it made her want him to hold her tightly again, it made her want to be close with him like they’d been not so long ago.
Jake got off the chair and swigged from his beer. “What did you guys do?” he asked, wiping his lips with the back of his hand as he came towards her.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” he said, coming even closer. He was dressed in a casual gray sweater and black slacks that hugged his muscular legs. He smelled clean and fresh, and every hair on his head was perfect. But his brown eyes were locked on hers, and he wasn’t giving her any space.
“Jake, how did you get in my room?”
“Hey, I’m practically Houdini,” he said, throwing his arms wide. “There’s no safe I can’t crack, no lock I can’t pick,” he said, getting so close to her that she stepped back nervously.
“You should try and respect my privacy.”
“I can’t do that, Raven.”
“Why not?”
“You won’t let me. You keep lying to me,” he said. “And so I can’t trust you.” He put his beer bottle down on the coffee table nearby.
She bit her lip, her entire body trembling now. This day had been too much for her in so many ways. The last thing she could do was resist Jake Novak, especially when his comfort was her one possible salvation.
“I don’t want to lie,” she told him, meeting his brown eyes. The little scar above his eyebrow wasn’t just sexy—it also turned his boyish face into the face of a man who’d seen too much.
And he seemed to have seen through her. “If you don’t want to lie, then why did you text me you were with Skylar?” he asked. “I saw her and her parents in the hotel restaurant and she said she hadn’t seen you at all.”
Raven turned and walked away from him. “I can’t take this,” she said. “I can’t be grilled right now. Everything’s getting to be impossible.”
Suddenly, Jake’s hand was on her wrist. “Don’t walk away from me.”
She spun around. “Don’t touch me. Remember what we said?”
“What you said. I never agreed to stop touching you.” His brown eyes were burning as he looked at her. His hand was still gripping her wrist just tight enough as she tried to pull away from him.
At the same time, she wanted him to refuse to let her go. She wished that he would fight for her as much as he seemed willing to fight against her. If he would do that, she could tell him everything.
But right now, the risk of him turning her away, the thought that he would simply wash his hands of her rather than deal with the mess she was in—it hurt too much.
“Let go,” she said, not knowing what else she could say. It was a lie anyhow, since she didn’t want him to.
“No,” Jake said.
“I’ll scream.”
“I want you to scream,” he smiled. “Just like you did last nigh
t.”
Raven felt her entire body flush with heat. “It’s not right,” she said. “We’re not really together.”
“Aren’t we?” he smirked. “I think we’re together right now. We’re certainly not apart.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“Where were you, Raven?” he said, grabbing her other wrist and pulling her into his body, so that he pressed against her, his lips almost touching her lips, his forehead against hers now.
“I…I can’t talk about it,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because, I’m scared.”
“You’re scared of me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, finally. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly.
“That’s too bad, Raven,” he told her, letting her wrists go. “Because I really thought we had potential.” He sighed. “But you seem determined to ruin everything.”
“That’s not true,” she replied.
“I can’t do this,” he said, shaking his head and starting to the door. “Not when I can’t trust you.”
She laughed at him as he walked past her. “Why am I not surprised?”
He turned and looked at her. “Don’t even try and put this on me. You know you lied.”
“The second things get complicated, you run faster than a scared little rabbit,” she told him. “How could I risk telling you anything that matters to me?”
Jake came towards her again. “I’m not running anywhere,” he said. “You’re the one who’s made it impossible. You asked me to trust you, just like…” he seemed to catch himself, and his cheeks turned a deep shade of red.
“Just like what?” Raven demanded.
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “This is a waste of time.”
“You’re the most frustrating person I’ve ever met,” she replied. “You let me down every single time and somehow blame me for it.”
“I let you down?” he laughed. “How have I let you down?”
She wanted to scream, she was so frustrated. None of the ways he let her down could be spoken out loud. How could she tell him he’d let her down by not wanting to actually be her boyfriend, by refusing to ever kiss her, by not caring about standing up for her to Club Alpha when they’d gotten her fired?
