King’s Captive

by Amber Bardan

  Colors swirl—the snake—the rose—the dove.

  All the patterns hiding scars.

  Hiding them because of what’s happened to us...

  I blink and find myself leaning against the wall. It’s like I’m sitting in front of a puzzle, and I have all the pieces—pieces I’ve been staring at for years, but I just can’t work out how they slot together.

  “It sure as fuck wasn’t about greed.”

  I straighten, and look at the bedroom door, then stalk to the door and make my way outside and down the path to the back of the island. I’m done making assumptions. I’m done trying to figure everything out on my own. I’m done with him fighting me for every sliver of knowledge. One way or another he is going to answer for everything today.

  The doors to the largest shed are open, and I don’t ask permission before storming inside. Nothing here is off-limits to me. That’s what makes this so freaking hard to understand. They don’t hide their criminal activities from me, they don’t care what I see and I’m usually there for most of their business. So why hide so much else?

  Julius, Dan, Leo and Pa stand in a circle in the center of the shed. Sand squelches between the concrete floor and my shoes. Julius looks up, and everyone takes a step back.

  He hands Dan a tablet computer. “Give us a minute.”

  The other men all walk past me out of the shed. Pa passes me, his gaze only brushing me before he shuffles away. I glance over my shoulder and wait until the men are all out of sight.

  “I’m glad you’re here. I was about to call for you.”

  I turn my head to Julius. “You were?”

  “Yes, I wanted to show you something.” He wipes the top of his hand under his now-clean-shaved chin.

  I scan him involuntarily. He’s back to looking gorgeous. He’s back to looking like the Julius I’ve always known—an animal in human finery. He’s not wearing a jacket but his pants are gray, his shirt white, and his belt buckle shiny.

  “I’d rather you tell me something actually.” I fold my arms close against the bottom row of my ribs. “Did my father have something to do with our accident?”

  Lines form between his brows and fan his eyes, his nostrils twitch.

  We might need more than a minute...

  “Indirectly, he had something to do with it.” His hand drops to his side and he rubs his fingers against his thumb. “But your father isn’t the one who ran us off the road.”

  With those words, there’s a flicker in front of my eyes, of the world spinning out of control. A distant scream I remember being my own. The sting of shattering glass raining over skin. I swallow and the lump in my neck gets just a bit less knotted. Because of course Dad wouldn’t have done that to me. “But my family had something to do with it?”

  His tongue flicks over his lips. “Baby—”

  “Has this been about getting back at my family?” I step closer to him. “Did you want to get your hands on Mercedes Shipping?”

  His chin dips, his shoulders rise and fall and the hurt pouring off him is so acutely visible I almost feel guilty for asking.

  Almost.

  “See, now, that’s the difference between them and me.” His head pops up, and I can’t help noticing the tiny little red veins piercing the whites of his eyeballs. “I don’t use the people I love to hurt the ones I don’t.”

  My heart throbs in the raw way a wound does. “Then what are we really doing on this island?”

  He shakes his head. He’s shutting down.

  I won’t let him.

  I step closer, and then closer again. “Why did you have to bring me here?”

  “There’s a reason you assumed I wanted to marry you that day.” He grabs me by the top of my arms. “You had to know something about your father’s business was worth killing for.”

  My heart pounds, the sound throbs in my temples. “Why risk taking me at all?” The answers are coming, and the light they shed might be worse than the dark.

  His fingers brand my triceps. “You were right. There is a reason, and if it wasn’t me coming for you that day, it would have been others, and nothing would have saved you then.”

  He releases me and paces backward, but he doesn’t seem to know where to walk, he’s just stepping. My fierce Julius, his torn edges keep on fraying. I’ve seen this side of him before. The one that can’t control his reactions. The side of him that made me think he was a little crazy. Now I’m not so sure it’s crazy. He’s more like broken.

  “What others? Who’s coming, Julius?”

  He lifts a finger in my direction. “Hate me if you will, but the only way you got to keep on breathing, the only way Thomas had to survive, was with me.”

  My throbbing pulse threatens to split open my head, but I walk until his index finger bumps my collarbone. “Dad wouldn’t have left things to me if it wasn’t safe. My family would’ve protected me.” I shake my head. But Uncle Pietro was arrested. On that same day...

  “You have no idea what your father did.” He leans down. “Your family would’ve been the first to come for you. But only the first.”

  His words fill my ears, and I picture just that.

  “Why would my family hurt us?”‘

  My stomach aches as though something has been ripped out.

  His jaw squeezes, but he lowers the finger against my collarbone and it slides down my body, across my belly, then he holds on to my waist on one side.

  He’s so strong.

  I always thought strong meant being fearless. It doesn’t. He hurts. He suffers. Julius is strong but there’re things he’s afraid of. Things like people coming for me and Thomas—bad people.

  People like the Connellys...

  My gaze hooks on his tattoo, so bold and obvious. He always had such a hard time saying my name. Except now, I see my name, our old life, made playing his part so much harder. In all this time I’ve been with Julius there’s a chance I’m the one who’s never called him by his name...

  “On our wedding day.” I stare him in the face. “What name did I take?”

  His eyes blaze. He doesn’t answer but doesn’t stop me. There’s hope and fear in this gaze. I see him in those eyes, the way he’d been in the photo from our wedding day. The Julius I have now so different from before—unrecognizable.

  “You have no idea the price I’ve had to pay or what I’ve done for you.”

  I do know. Maybe if I’d been able to handle it three years ago, he’d have been able to tell me. To trust me with the truth that would kill us all.

  “No one ever knew I was your wife—they all thought I was your hostage.” I reach for his neck, run my hand down his throat until the exact place the texture change brushes my fingers. “Until Neil figured it out.”

  I close my eyes and while I’m still connected to him, still attached by the beat of his pulse, I’m swept up in another day.

  “John Fury.” Dad pants.

  “My father told me something just before he died,” I whisper, eyes still squeezed tight. I make myself take in the air required for speaking, but my lips are numb. “He said that Fury would come for me, that he’d save me from you.”

  The flutter against my fingers turns thumping.

  “You’re confused, aren’t you?” I open my eyes, and look into his. “Because that’s not even a possibility.”

  Julius just watches me, but his eyes get brighter, and brighter.

  “What my father said and what I interpreted while I was scared, and angry, and desperate, wasn’t what he was trying to tell me at all.”

  I stroke the first little scars flicking around his neck. They’re so much finer up here than they are on his chest.

  “It’s shocking how easily the mind will bend to tell us what we want to hear.”

  Julius’s t
eeth flash between his lips, but he doesn’t speak and he doesn’t attempt to talk me out of this. He swore he’d always tell me the truth.

  I draw him closer by his collar, then press my hands to his cheeks. “He wasn’t telling me someone was coming to rescue me, he was telling me who you are.”

  My vision becomes a wash of blood and gore.

  I’ll never escape that day, but I see it better than I ever have. I fought for my life. Mistakes were made. I did the wrong things. Made the worst possible choice I could, defending myself and my family.

  The haze clears and I see Julius again.

  His breath washes against my lips, and the taste of it makes me want to suck on his mouth. I want to cry, and I want to kiss him.

  Tears drip down my face. “You’re John Fury.”

  His forehead clunks against mine. “You shouldn’t say those kinds of things.”

  I hold on to his cheeks and cry. He’d tried to tell me in the beginning. I fought him from the start. I betrayed him at every turn.

  All this time. All these years. How I’ve judged him while he fought to protect me.

  “It’s okay, baby.” He slides his face against mine. “It’s almost over.”

  My tears slam to a halt. There’s a point to all of this that has almost nothing to do with me.

  “The Connellys...” I stumble back. “It’s about them. After they lost the last shipment, you said they all had to be on this one.”

  The last shipment stolen by Fury—he pirated his own weapons.

  “They’re the ones that tried to kill us, now you’re going to kill them all.” My heels hit an empty pallet on the ground.

  Julius comes after me and grabs my hands. “If all I wanted was to slaughter them, I’ve had a dozen chances.”

  “Then what are we doing?” I try to tug my hands from his grip, but he holds me tight.

  “Are you ready?” He hauls me against him. “Are you finally ready to know it all?”

  Saliva fills my mouth but it’s hard to swallow when I’m breathing so fast. “Yes, I am.”

  That’s true. I’m afraid, but I’m not lost. The broken pieces might not be mended, but they’re slotting together—they’re staying together.

  “Then I’ll show you.”

  He lets me go and walks to the back of the shed. I stare after him. Is this the same thing he wanted to show me when I first arrived? I follow him. Julius shoves aside another empty pallet. Chill air rushes up a large steel grate.

  He kneels and lifts the grate with both hands and exposes the gaping hole in the ground. “I don’t think you’ve seen everything this island has to offer.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Julius descends into the hole. The air rising out of it dries my lips saltier than sea air. He holds on to a metal rung and looks up at me before disappearing completely. I peer down after him. Julius lets go of the ladder and his feet thud to the floor underneath. I wipe my hands on my dress, then go after him. The crude metal bars screwed into rock wall burn my palms as I squeeze them all the way down.

  Hands close around my waist on the final step. My knuckles push white around a rung, but I let go. Julius lowers me against him. My dress bunches around my hips, and every inch of me from the back of my knees to my head slides against his solid heat. His buttons and belt catch on my clothes.

  My feet meet the floor but I still lean on him. His hands leave my waist and travel to my belly under my bunched dress. He pulls me deeper against him. I’m enveloped in his arms and in his strength. There’s not a moment, no matter how volatile, that my body doesn’t crave this touch from him. He inhales deeply against my hair like he’s drawing in my essence, then releases me. I adjust my dress around my thighs and look around. We’re in a rock tunnel. The walls sweep in natural curves, lined and bumped with hundreds of thousands of years of wear.

  “You know I’d have worn pants if I knew we’d be exploring caves.” I glance at him.

  His cheek twitches and I get a little flash of dimple. “Don’t worry, baby, it gets more civilized.”

  It does?

  He takes my hand and guides me down the tunnel that, while not pitch-black, is pretty damn dark and creepy. The roof gets lower and we have to bend. The dark grows to a kind of orange, then there’s light.

  The tunnel opens to an enormous cavernous space.

  “Holy fuck.” I walk into the cave and my eyes don’t know where to look first. Stalactites hang from the roof like icicles, and the central dome is filled with...just a bunch of stuff. Shipping crates, boxes and more than I can take in at once.

  It’s all surreal and out-of-body. There’s a chance I could be sleeping.

  There’re telltale signs of caves on the island. On the cliff face below the main house, there are a couple of gaping holes but they all seem so useless and inaccessible.

  The small child inside me gets very fucking excited. Because it seems Julius really is a pirate and I’m actually staring at his goddamn treasure cave.

  I go to one of the smaller crates and push back the lid. My excitement dwindles a little at the contents. It’s full of handguns and ammunition. “I was hoping for rubies.”

  Julius slides his hands into his pockets.

  “Did you steal all of this?”

  “I prefer to say we confiscated them.” He places the lid back on the crate.

  “How the hell did you get it all in here?”

  He gestures to the far side of the cave. “There’s another way in.”

  I shake my head. I’ve been living here for three years and I never even contemplated something like this, and I sure as fuck have never seen a big-ass shipping-crate-sized entrance. “But... I’ve never even seen a ship come here regularly. How has this happened?”

  “We don’t have a ship, we borrow a different vessel every time.” He exaggerates the word borrowed, the way he did confiscated. I almost have to pinch myself that he’s really telling me all of this. “The thing with weapons smugglers is, they tend to speed up and get defensive when they recognize a pirate approaching.”

  I turn around full circle, then wander through the piles of things. Jesus, what is he planning to do with all of this weaponry? I stop at a huge long box with a military stamp on the outside.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a missile.”

  I stare at him.

  A missile?

  He can say that without breaking a sweat?

  “Does it work?”

  “Apparently, but that’s not what I brought you here to see.”

  “Is it worse than a missile?”

  “It depends what you consider worse.” He holds out his hand, I stare at his long capable fingers before reaching for them. My hand is swallowed by his and certainty settles over me. Whatever is going on here, it’s all going to be okay.

  He leads me to the wall of the cave, where there’s an actual door. A heavy metal door with a keypad beside it.

  “Is this a safe?”

  “Technically, it’s a panic room, but I use it mostly as storage.” He punches in the code while standing in front of the pad. The door clicks and he swings it open and walks inside.

  I follow after him, and it should be bizarre to be standing in a panic room in an underground cave, but hey, I just found out I’m married to a notorious pirate, so what could be stranger than that?

  There’s a table and a chair pushed into a corner and a cabinet against a wall but what really fascinates me is the map on the wall.

  “You’ve been working in here?”

  “Sometimes,” he says behind me.

  No wonder he never had a problem with me being in his bedroom. Everything important was in his secret Batcave.

  I approach the map. There are pins stuck in various places
, all connected with strings to other pins, and some to photographs. All my attention locks on to one. Dad. My dad’s photograph is on the wall with a red pin and attached to a red string. I follow the trail of the string and not surprising at all is the way it leads to Sicily, and to a photograph of Uncle Pietro—another red pin stuck squarely in his forehead. A green string leads from my uncle to a green pin fixed in Dublin.

  The city my mother was born in.

  “What are you going to do?” I touch the green pin with my index finger. “What happened, Julius?”

  He steps up next to me and collects red string from a box on the table. “For two centuries Fury Shipping imported and exported goods from Ireland, but the thing they excelled at, the thing they did better than anyone else—” he tugs the green string from Uncle Pietro’s pin “—was moving things that people like the Connellys paid a great deal of money not to have found.”

  I press my hand against the cool wall, my pulse playing a high-tempo background score to his words.

  Julius loops a thread of red to the pin in Sicily, and drags it toward Ireland. “Except one day in a bar, Fury met a half-Sicilian girl.” He tugs out the green pin with his free hand and pushes in a red one. “What were the chances of that?”

  What?

  My mouth droops. What is he trying to say?

  “But by the time he found out who she was, it was too late.” He turns to me, and there’s a lifetime of pain and history in his eyes. “It didn’t matter who she was or why she’d come. He loved her too much to ever let her go.”

  My hand clutches my throat. “Did Dad... Did Dad send me to you?”

  My dad? My father who lost his shit when someone tried to kiss me? I just didn’t see that happening in any lifetime.

  He stares at me for a long time. “I never believed that, not even when your father’s price for leaving us be was me working for him.” He turns fast, and loops the red string around the new pin, and ties it in a knot. “But the Irish weren’t pleased with the conflict of interest.” His fist closes around the bobbin and he snaps the thread with his free hand.