Beating Ruby

by Camilla Monk

There was no need to insist. His hand left Alex’s throat immediately after the warning had been issued, and on Alex’s neck reddish marks had appeared, mirroring the ones around my wrist.

  I knew what March was capable of—I had seen him kill people in ways I didn’t even know existed—but there was something disturbing about this burst of pure aggression. This wasn’t him. Even when he had maimed Creepy-hat because I had been hurt, or when he had engaged in a bare-handed fight with Dries, he had retained a thin thread of control; those had been decisions. I had read enough novels about biker alpha males who pissed around the heroine to mark their territory—sometimes literally so, if we’re talking about dog shifters—to know that this was a reaction.

  I stepped closer to Alex. I didn’t dare touch his neck for fear I’d make it worse; I merely allowed my hand to graze his arm in an awkward gesture of comfort, something halfway between a hesitant pat and a platonic caress. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, don’t worry.”

  I cast March a disapproving look. “That was unnecessary.”

  To be fair, I think he knew that already and felt perhaps a little embarrassed about his primitive display. He readjusted his cuffs with a cool glare in Alex’s direction. “I’m certain it won’t need to happen again. Now, please get in the car, Island.”

  Behind me, Alex was already reaching out for my arm again, this time more carefully. I moved to stop him, placing my hands on his shoulders. “I know this is complicated, but I swear it’ll be okay. March won’t hurt me; he just wants to talk.”

  He seemed conflicted. “Island, you can’t ask me that. I’m not supposed to let you go with him—and I don’t want to.”

  “You want me to trust you. I need the same from you. You have to trust me on this,” I insisted.

  The corners of his lips quirked up, but his eyes told a different story. “I get it. You want space. I’ll give you space. But sooner or later we’re gonna have to talk about this.”

  It was no threat, just a fact. I nodded. “I know.”

  I stepped away from Alex. March took it as a cue that he had won this round, and flashed his adversary a contemptuous smirk. “Feel free to report this to your superiors as a bona fide kidnapping, Mr. Morgan. I’ll see you at Mesa in thirty minutes. Do not be late.”

  All traces of sadness and betrayal vanished from Alex’s features, and he responded with a smile of his own that was definitively Agent Morgan’s. “Drive safely, South African—that’s my girl in the front seat.”

  A blush spread to my cheeks, and I didn’t miss the way March’s right fist clenched at this explicit reminder. He kept his cool this time, however, choosing to pull out his car key and press it to unlock the Mercedes doors instead. For all my determination, I couldn’t look at Alex as I got into the car. I needed that time away from him, just as I needed to talk to March, but I couldn’t shake the sense of guilt seeping under my skin.

  The atmosphere in March’s Mercedes as we drove toward Central Park South was tense, to say the least. There was a lot of traffic, and at some point we got completely stuck, so I leaned my forehead against the window to stare at the carriages lined up along the street, their horses waiting patiently for tourists to climb in.

  It felt weird to realize that after six months of thinking of him, March was right next to me, that I could feel his presence, smell the mints, and I had no idea where to start. I shifted to look at him—the familiar chiseled features and aquiline nose, those faint crow’s-feet . . . His hair had grown a little. It was still pretty short, but tiny waves were starting to emerge along his hairline.

  “Why?” I asked.

  His fingers drummed on the wheel as we waited at a red light. “Why what?”

  “All this!” I sighed in frustration. “I thought I’d never see you again, but you were here all along, in New York. You’ve been to my place, right?”

  “Only once,” he mumbled.

  “March, you can’t do this! You can’t . . . hover above my life. You have to let me move on!”

  “With Mr. Morgan?”

  His tone had noticeably cooled down as the car started moving again. I had hoped this conversation would take us in another direction. “How long have you known? I’m pretty sure I saw your car on Greenwich Street last night.”

  “I checked on you a few weeks ago. I merely wanted to know how you were doing. I discovered you had met someone. I was happy for you.” The way his hands tightened around the wheel as he said this belied his words.

  “So happy that you ran a background check on Alex?”

  “It was in your best interest. He hid a lot of things from you, Island.”

  I thought of the Caterpillar, of how he and Alex seemed to know everything about me, from my ties with March to my mother’s past, and even the fact that Dries was my father. One piece was still missing from the puzzle, but I was almost certain I knew what it was by now. “Alex’s boss, the guy who smokes cigars—his name is Erwin, right?”

  March averted his eyes from the road for a second. “I didn’t know Kalahari had told you that much, but yes, it is. I used to work for him, and I assume there’s no need to explain to you why allowing one of his agents to . . . court you under a false identity was absolutely unacceptable.”

  “Because it meant sticking his nose in your private life again?”

  “Something like that,” he said quietly.

  “What’s the DCB, by the way? Alex mentioned that, back in the garage.”

  “It’s a department Erwin relies on frequently. DCB stands for Dry Cleaning Boutique. Need I elaborate?”

  “No, I think I get the idea. And I suppose it’s no coincidence EMG hired you to help recover Ruby and their money?”

  “I did pull some strings,” he admitted. “Given the circumstances, it was the least a friend could do.”

  His words tore through me, sizzled across my skin, and in that moment, even if it was not the best time—would it ever be?—I decided that I needed it all off my chest.

  “You’re not my friend, March. You’ll never be.”

  A thick silence welcomed this statement. Outside the car, a light breeze had started to rise; I watched it stir Central Park’s elms from their slumber, their leaves like green shoals.

  When he finally answered me, his gaze was straight, and his voice sounded cold, remote, which I knew to be his way of expressing anger. “I understand. I apologize for this misunder—”

  “Stop that! You know exactly what I mean!” I had to catch my breath because I could feel my eyes watering already. “You’re not my friend because you broke my heart. I spent an entire week crying; I couldn’t focus on anything. You were in my mind, and you were in my fricking life all this time! I can never, ever think of you as a friend.”

  I looked at him as he drove, searched his features for any sign he had actually heard me. I found none, and this silence was even worse than the previous one. I feared I had gone too far this time, embarrassed myself by coming off as some enamored teen, and in the process broken March’s limited ability to cope with human emotions.

  Hope returned when I noticed his lips had moved in a visible effort to formulate a coherent sentence. His Adam’s apple twitched as he swallowed and gave it another try. “I’ve been . . . I just finished reading that book you told me about, Accidentally Married to the Billionaire Sheikh.”

  My mouth fell open in shock. “You have? So, um, did you like it?”

  “It’s a little predictable, and very explicit, in an oddly lyrical way. I can only imagine how disappointed female readers must be when facing the reality of—” He cleared his throat. “Well, in any case, I’m not certain Hedwardh is a good match for Swanella. I feel the author was forcing them together toward the end.”

  “Why? I think it’s made clear that they have this irresistible attraction and all,” I countered.

  “An unhealthy attraction.” He frowned. “Swanella is inexperienced, and she throws herself in the arms of an older man without ever consideri
ng the possibility that he might hurt her.”

  “But why would he hurt her? There’s a happy ending; she even gets pregnant!”

  “Because he pushes for them to have this child. Hedwardh is very controlling, and his love for Swanella borders on obsessive. I think that scene in the limousine clearly shows he cannot restrain himself once he’s given in to his . . . urges. And by the way, the refractory period doesn’t work like that,” March concluded with a snort.

  I shrugged. “I know, after thirty it’s like a day or even two.”

  He stopped at a red light and averted his eyes from the street to stare at me for several seconds. He wasn’t saying anything, but his nostrils flared, and he looked as if I had played with his radio or thrown a candy wrapper in his car: beyond outraged.

  “What?”

  He sighed as we exited Columbus Circle to stop in front of the Time Warner Center’s futuristic twin towers. “Nothing. But I rest my case: the relationship portrayed in this book is not healthy. Hedwardh knows he can’t make Swanella happy, and still he can’t stay away from her. That is his fundamental problem.”

  March drove toward the parking entrance, and I gazed at the shoppers hurrying into the place, fighting a smile. “Maybe. But when Sheikh Djahkobh holds her captive in his palace, Hedwardh comes to save her. I think that’s all that matters in the end.”

  The car had stopped. March remained quiet for several seconds, his hands still on the wheel. “Biscuit . . .” His voice was low, laced with the tenderness I had missed so much. I held my breath. “Simply because Djahkobh is bad for Swanella doesn’t mean Hedwardh is a better choice.”

  There was this ache in my chest, as if it would collapse on itself. I sat up straighter and swallowed. “You know what? You’re right. Swanella deserves better than this,” I snapped, opening my door and stepping out of the Mercedes.

  I heard March’s door slam shut and his footsteps behind me as he followed me toward the exit without a word. I never looked back on our way to the elevators; I couldn’t face him yet. My heart was pounding, and I knew that if I turned to look at him, I’d say something stupid, something that would cause him to retreat even further back in his shell and hurt me. Again.

  I looked at the tip of my ballet flats on the garage’s dull gray paint. How could a man who had read Accidentally Married to the Billionaire Sheikh for my sake be so totally, infuriatingly, painfully blind?

  THIRTEEN

  The Kraken

  “Give Trenton a chance, Jess! For Christ’s sake, he’s bending over backward for you!”

  —Lane Tempest, Wrapped Around Me: The Octopus Shifters Series #6

  Given all the rumors about his icy and controlling character, I could see why a guy like Ellingham would enjoy the Time Warner Center. The whole thing felt austere and monumental, with its massive incurved atrium enclosed on one side by a glass curtain, smooth gray stone columns, and steel cables holding the structure together. A perfect showcase for the trendy shops lining the floors.

  We made our way across the lobby toward the elevators and stepped into one of the cars, along with a couple of Asian tourists carrying shopping bags. March pressed the fourth and last floor’s button, and soon we were rising toward the top of the huge hall, the elevator’s glass doors a window to this modern temple of self-importance. It was a nice view, though, and I’m sure March enjoyed it too, until a pair of brown boots appeared in our field of vision. Khakis. Rugged leather jacket. The rest of Alex’s body was progressively revealed as the car slowed down and stopped at Mesa’s floor.

  He stood in front of the doors with his arms crossed, one eyebrow cocked at us. “Did you enjoy your ride?”

  Next to me, I felt March shift. I took a step forward in case there might be more throttling coming. “Alex, let’s go.”

  The three of us made our way across a minimalist hall toward Mesa’s entrance, marked by a sober black noren curtain bearing two white kanji forming the restaurant’s logo.

  A long corridor with dark wood walls led to the dining room, where a young Asian woman stood near a waiter and a few burly-looking guys in dark suits. Alex and I probably didn’t fit the dress code in this den of super-elegant Zen; the hostess did. Her silky, straight black bob, high cheekbones, and impeccably cut short-sleeved red dress—designer stuff, no doubt—felt almost intimidating.

  “Miss Chaptal, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. November?” she asked with a suave voice. Dammit, that beige lipstick was so perfectly applied it looked tattooed on her lips.

  We all nodded, and I saw Alex cock an eyebrow at March upon hearing his “name.” Oh well, if we were going to work with March, Alex would get used to those aliases like I had, eventually. Since my first encounter with him in October, I had heard March introduce himself with half a dozen different months, and there was at least one thing I was almost certain of: I’d never hear his real name—if the man even had one.

  The young woman stepped aside to reveal a long sushi bar with a wooden counter. “Mr. Ellingham has been waiting for you.”

  Now, my dad was a banker, so he was pretty wealthy. After more than a decade spent killing people for two hundred grand a day, March was frankly rich (but I had been told he saved most of it and lived in a cubicle house). Finally, Dries, my biological dad, I filed in the category of the supervillain-rich, and he had no qualms about showing off a little. None of that was billionaire-rich, I realized upon scanning the barren dining room with beige walls and minimalist black furniture.

  No. Billionaire-rich is when you can privatize the most expensive restaurant in New York on a whim. The place was empty, and I assumed that those big guys with the crew cuts acted as bodyguards for the blond man in an anthracite suit sitting at the sushi bar. He seemed busy examining a bottle of sake celebrity chef Mesahiro Hikuyama was showing him—damn, that guy looked even balder than on Top Master Chef.

  I stole a glance at March and Alex. They looked cool as cucumbers, whereas my palms were getting clammy and my stomach was doing flips. When our host turned to acknowledge our presence and got down from his chair, I couldn’t help but stare, trying to file every detail of what might be my only close encounter ever with my big boss.

  In my mind, Hadrian Ellingham had always been more or less a stock photo: some aristocratic Ken doll, smoothed by makeup and studio lighting. I thought it made sense that he looked like a Nazi cyborg, since everybody said the guy had this terrifying aura about him—think Max Zorin minus the creepy mental illness. Even the Bad Sex Sloth meme hadn’t been able to help that part of his image, and that’s saying something.

  So, imagine my shock to discover a mere mortal in his late thirties, with dark circles under somewhat downturned blue eyes, and a few wrinkles in what was no doubt an Egyptian-cotton shirt. My gaze lingered on the faint oblique scar linking the underside of a straight nose to his upper lip. Prince had once told me that the guy smiled so rarely that it wasn’t his real mouth on those magazine covers: they always photoshopped some random model’s smile on the pic so Ellingham would look more human. Well, here’s a scoop: they didn’t photoshop his mouth just because he looked too stern. They did it because the guy was born with a cleft lip. I wondered if he had a problem with it and asked for that particular retouch himself.

  He extended his hand to March for a firm handshake. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr. November.”

  I thought his voice sounded a little deeper than on TV.

  “And you are Mr. Morgan, I presume,” he went on, greeting Alex in the same fashion.

  Then it was my turn. And apparently regular employees didn’t deserve a handshake. Had those blue eyes been that cold a second before? God, they were so pale they looked like ice. “Please sit down, Miss Chaptal. I’ve heard a lot about you in the past couple of days—perhaps more than I wished to.”

  I shuddered. Alex and March wouldn’t have told him things about me . . . right? “I . . . uh . . . It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” I mumbled as March took the chair next to Ellingham’s and
I sat between him and Alex, safely away from our host.

  As soon as we were seated, the young waiter in a black suit with a long white apron waltzed toward us, carrying four sake cups on a platter. Someone dimmed the lights in the restaurant, leaving only the large sushi bar under the spotlights, illuminated like a stage.

  Chef Mesa, who had been chatting with Ellingham before our arrival and had since retreated into the kitchen, came back from the shadows. I realized that low atmospheric music was now filling the room, mixing notes of dramatic Japanese flute with birdcalls and the sound of water running. I looked at March and Alex alternately, in case either of them might have an idea what was going on.

  “Making food.”

  I jumped at the ominous echo of Chef Mesa’s thick Japanese accent. He stood before us, head bowed, arms along the sides of his body, legs apart. He looked like Madonna before starting a show. His bald skull shone bright under the ceiling’s lights, his outfit and apron blinding white patches against the darkened background. Each crease and wrinkle on his solemn face was sculpted by the golden hue bathing him.

  “I seek the essence of food. The life within the ingredients. The shibui sensory experience. Tamashii. Umami!”

  I gawked as he struck a little ninja pose and grabbed a long kitchen knife with a beautiful Damascus steel blade. Behind us, I realized that the waiter and the young woman who had greeted us were applauding discreetly. Ellingham consented to a few lazy claps; March, Alex, and I took the hint and did the same too while Chef Mesa started slicing a horseradish in half, ignoring us to concentrate on his art.

  “Now, I understand you haven’t made any significant progress at all in your investigation?” The tone was cordial, the voice soulless, and Ellingham was looking at the three of us with a sort of rictus I think he had intended to be a smile.

  “Actually, we have made some progress. We’ve yet to understand who engineered the theft and where the money was wired, but we now have a clearer understanding of the chain of events that led to Ruby’s activation,” Alex ventured, at the same time that the chef raised his knife with a dramatic gesture and grabbed a couple of bananas. I stared in confusion at the strange recipe being prepared before our eyes.