Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4)

by Aubrey Parker

  There’s another shout from ahead. It’s female, but that’s all I can tell for sure. We quicken our pace. This time, the fight wasn’t nurtured. This time, whatever is happening has occurred on its own. Simple as chaos theory: The board thinks Halo can predict and we can control it all. But proof that this experiment has already failed is all around them, if they’d raise their heads enough to accept it.

  “Did she believe you?” Trevor asks, without bothering to explain what he means.

  I nod. “We made up.”

  There’s a moment where we exchange new awkward glances. I’m thinking how Trevor shouldn’t know I’m with Bridget because, on paper, she’s here for him. And Trevor, he’s probably thinking about how he should report me for breaking the rules … but everyone already knows.

  “How long did you stay outside the tent?” I ask.

  “Caspian closed it down almost as soon as you went inside.”

  “So he could watch the camera feed.”

  “There’s no camera feed. Not unless Caspian brought in something of his own and hid it well. You know how Halo is.”

  “If anyone can hack Halo, it’s Caspian White,” I say, knowing it’s bullshit. Everyone knows that Halo’s unhackable. Even the person who finally hacked it says so, and means it.

  “So … ?” I say — a question without a subject.

  “I have no idea.”

  “What about Kylie?”

  “What about her?”

  “Did he test her somewhere else?”

  “I don’t think he tested Kylie at all.”

  A strange emotion stirs. Caspian’s motivations are almost impossible to guess — not because he’s so wily but because he’s so unusual. You can’t apply normal logic because he does things for reasons that are alien to normal humans, and it’s one question inside another as to whether he proceeds that way because it suits him — or because he’s trying to fuck with anyone observing his actions.

  I guess it’s not surprising. All tests here are centered on one person, with the others involved only to act as controls. Sometimes, the outcome is expected, as with Ivy. Sometimes, it’s a surprise, like in Roxy’s test. But there’s always one key subject who matters most, and with Caspian as guest judge, that subject was me.

  Maybe because I’m curating the experiment and he wanted to test my mettle.

  Or maybe because sex is behind most human behavior in one way or another, and how I responded to Bridget told him things about how I’m conducting this all in the first place.

  Or, most troubling, maybe he knows who I really am. Maybe he knows what I truly want out of this.

  It’s bad news for Bridget. All along, the idea was to throw Kylie into the mouth of this test, stuffing her with a secret and offering her to Caspian like a sacrifice. Whether there were four contestants and Kylie’s departure made three, or whether the move was from three to two, Kylie was always meant to go next. She was custom-made to fall before Caspian’s judgment, given what Kat knew — what we all know but can’t remotely prove. And now, if she wasn’t even tested, that means she’s wiggled free again.

  I don’t know if I passed or failed Caspian’s test. But considering that one of the women needs to go, my loss won’t matter either way. It’ll have to be Bridget or Jessica — and despite what I told Bridget, I still need them both.

  We enter the Great Room to see an eerily familiar scene: two women with red faces, each being held back by one of the men. Logan has Bridget, and—

  Well, I guess it’s not like the Ivy situation at all. Because although Kylie seems to be the target of Bridget’s wrath, she isn’t being held back. Richard’s beside her, but his hands are to himself. He looks uneasy, as if Kylie might retaliate at any moment. But Kylie seems so at ease, it’s chilling.

  “You go, girl,” Kylie says to Bridget. “Get it all out.”

  Bridget is screaming. Screaming. I don’t know if she’s angry or panicked. It’s taking everything Logan has to hold her back as she kicks and thrashes and yells. He looks up when we finally enter, and Bridget breaks free. Logan catches friendly fire in the form of a kick to the knee and buckles. Tony — who might be big enough to hold her in check, if anyone is — reaches, but he’s not fast enough. Bridget connects with a fist. It’s not a slap. It’s a punch, like the kind I saw from the tough teen back at Lake Wanasee.

  You don’t fuck with Bridget Miller unless you want to bleed. True then, and true now.

  Kylie’s nostril leaks beneath her silver stud.

  Tony grabs Bridget’s arms. Her hair is in her face. She’s shouting and sobbing.

  Kylie rubs at the blood, looks at her finger, then calmly wipes a red streak across one of the couches. I’m suddenly, shockingly certain that it’s not the first time Kylie’s been punched. It didn’t faze her at all.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I demand.

  “Nothing, Daniel,” Kylie says in a kittenish purr, now sitting and crossing her legs. She has a huge smear across her already-puffing upper lip, and I’ll bet her eye will soon start to purple. Still manages a vamp’s smile. “Would you like me to suck your cock?”

  It’s not a dig at Bridget. Bridget’s already too worked up about something else and unable to hear; I can barely hear myself over her shouts of BITCH and FUCKING KILL YOU.

  No, that was a dig at me.

  The smile widens. She looks right at Trevor and says, “I’d offer you one, Trevor. But a girl needs to play the odds. Especially with men who break the rules.”

  That’s when I know.

  It’s when I know she knows.

  About me. About Jessica. About what I’m trying to do that even the board doesn’t — and can’t — know.

  I pretend to not hear her, deciding to deal with it later. Kylie clearly takes my silence as a victory. I know a man should never hit a woman, but Kylie’s superior little smile as I pass her makes it almost impossible to resist. And I’m sure that feeling will only grow when I get to the bottom of this — when I find out what horrible thing she’s done to the woman I love.

  With Richard halfheartedly guarding Kylie and Tony holding Bridget in what’s practically a full Nelson, Logan is the only person unpaired. I notice as I approach him that Jessica is here, too, but she’s made herself small, shrinking back from the action.

  “What’s going on, Logan?”

  “I’m not sure, boss. I was with Bridget, just telling her about some weird shit on her LiveLyfe profile, and all of a sudden she started running. Kylie was here with Richard and Tony — ” he looks over, thinking this requires explanation — “you know, just standing around, not … like … doing anything, and Bridget ran right at her, but she grabbed that on the way.” He points, and I see a black fireplace poker on the carpet — one with a sharp hook jutting out like a talon. “Lucky Tony was between them, or shit, I don’t know; it could have been bad.”

  I think but don’t say, No luck about it. Kylie knew she was coming. She knew Bridget’s location as well as her own. Of course she had Tony with her. And of course she just so happened to be on his far side when Bridget came at her.

  “Bridget,” I say.

  But she can’t hear me. She won’t hear me. I hear confusing babble about her mother and her sister. About a half-million dollars. About how we’re all blind, that Kylie isn’t really a person, that she’s a thing that must be destroyed.

  I turn to Tony and Logan.

  “What’s up with her LiveLyfe account?”

  They tell me, and it all slots into place bit by bit. I knew about the fixer Bridget and her sister hired from the tablet’s memory before I secure-erased it, but of course Kylie already knew that particular bit of trivia from somewhere else. I didn’t know Linda’s full name, her old home’s location, or especially the new one. But Kylie knows it all, down to assassin and traitor.

  I look at Kylie. Her face is puffing a bit, but erase the puff and the blood on her lip, and she could still grace the cover of Cosmo. The pages of a porn site
. She’s completely at ease, everything here going exactly to plan. Her poise ices my blood. She’s looking me right in the eyes, seeming to fuck my brain with the utmost assurance, a chilling absence of fear or concern.

  She’s not a person. She’s a thing that must be destroyed.

  And I know, now, that we made a mistake by bringing her here. It’s not that Kylie isn’t what we we were looking for, as the ultimate manipulator, the ultimate strategic outlier. The problem is that she’s exactly what we wanted. She’s too much of what we wanted. And it’s clear that at this point in the game, she doesn’t just have her sights set on Bridget. Now she wants it all.

  Me.

  Trevor.

  Every last bit of it.

  Roxy wasn’t our sociopath. Kylie is fifty times worse, a hundred times as dangerous. I look at the poker on the carpet and for a half-second’s fantasy, consider picking it up and beating her to death. But of course I can’t. I’d never do that. Kylie knows it, and will use our weakness against us — until the moment she can hold the metaphorical poker, and do the same without flinching.

  I look from Kylie to Bridget. From Bridget to Kylie.

  “Take your time, Daniel,” Kylie purrs.

  There’s a knock at the Great Room door. It’s a strange sound because it’s a common space through which everyone comes and goes. The doors can be closed; that’s how Bridget and I had our encounter in front of Kat. But knocking? It’s so odd. And, in fact, as our eyes all follow the sound — including Bridget’s, and Kylie’s, surprised for once — something occurs to me. I’m sure the door we’re staring at was open when we entered, and that whoever’s there closed it in order to properly knock.

  “Come in?” Trevor says in what sounds like a confused question.

  The door opens to Caspian White. As always, he looks clipped from a GQ photo shoot.

  Kylie’s male equivalent. The ego to her id, or the id to her ego.

  Shit. I knew it was an unforgivable idea to let him come, let alone find his other half. If Kylie completes Caspian White, we might end up with a bomb.

  Without waiting for an invitation, Caspian takes a few steps forward. His eyes flick over the assembly: Tony holding a suddenly stilled, fearful-eyed Bridget, Kylie on the couch with her bloody nose and blackening eye beside Richard, Jessica cowering, Trevor and I in the middle, either impotent or confused. Then he raises his left hand to his waist, bends his elbow, and uses his right fingers to deftly straighten his perfectly starched shirt cuff.

  Placid, he says, “I forgot to give Kylie her test.”

  Then, a beat of silence. There’s little he could have said that would have struck me as more absurd. But now he’s patiently standing there, as if we’ve all been waiting for the games to continue — instead of bringing blood, talking matters of life and death and espionage and betrayal.

  Kylie smirks. “I think we all know you’re not going to give me any test.”

  I imagine this will elicit anger from Caspian, but he gives a small laugh.

  “Oh, of course I won’t test you.” He gestures to the doorway behind him. “I’d like my friends Mikhail and Vyacheslav to do it instead.”

  I follow Caspian’s gesture and see two men enter the room — one large and the other thin, both with expressionless Slavic faces.

  As the two Russians escort Kylie out of the room, through the foyer, and out the front door to a waiting car, no one breathes a word.

  Not even Kylie.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bridget

  Only in the aftermath do I finally meet Sammy — the man who’s apparently been slipping envelopes under my door, inviting and instructing me toward this and that. Out of all the peripheral staff — those not hired to have sex with all comers — Sammy is the only name I’ve heard more than once. He’s the only single-serving helper who isn’t single-serving. Maybe the only masochist crazy enough to stay here rather than serve once and run away screaming.

  Sammy isn’t what I expect. He’s maybe eighteen. Overweight. Shy. He seems as out of place and awkward here as a young man named Gerald Daniel Rice once seemed at Lake Wanasee, before he became the god he is today.

  “Shh,” he tells me as the room shifts, not knowing what to do with itself. I felt Tony release me a while ago, but my hair is still in my face. My eyes are still wet. I recall all that’s happened and remember nothing.

  “Shh,” Sammy says. “This will make you feel better.”

  I don’t think I’m being loud, in need of shushing. And I don’t think I feel bad. But isn’t that what they say happens with car accident victims: that they’ll sometimes walk away feeling fine, and only realize later that they’ve broken ten bones?

  My fear feels like shock. I don’t care about the wasted money. I care about all the people who will now know exactly where to find Linda Fiori, and the inevitability that the wrong person will discover her whereabouts. Or be told directly, if I know Kylie at all.

  But there was something about Kylie that changed things. It’s all so confusing.

  “Please,” Sammy says, raising the tray and its cargo as if I might not have understood.

  “You’re a good kid, Sammy.”

  Sammy’s response is rote and without feeling: “Thank you, Miss Miller.”

  Only he doesn’t say “Miss,” not really. He kind of slurs it toward “Mrs.” because I guess nobody taught him the difference. “Mrs. Miller is my mother,” I say, trying the joke I’ve often heard from middle-aged men, the genders reversed. But it’s a lie. Mrs. Miller was just the one who let me take her name, as if I was part of her family rather than something closer to a pet.

  Sammy offers me pills, and I take them, sipping water from a small metal cup.

  I sleep.

  Just as the scene before my chemical nap blurs in fear and anger and panic, so does the handful of minutes preceding the nap itself. I don’t remember those minutes when my eyes finally open. For all I know, I fell asleep the moment I swallowed those pills, right there in the Great Room. For all I know, I had to be carried up here to my bedroom.

  My bedroom.

  I let the words play a few loops in my mind as I blink awake. The sun is strong through the thin draperies, but the angle is odd, like I’m waking at the wrong time of day. I’m slow to gather my bearings. I don’t like to nap; it throws off my sense of reality. Seeing those strange sunbeams makes me feel weightless.

  But: my bedroom.

  It is. For better or worse, this is my bedroom and has been for months. I’ve paid the thinnest of lip service to letting Brandon and meaningless others know I’m okay, but the sad truth is I’m comfortable here. This horrible place must be where I belong. Just what I deserve.

  The bed shifts farther down my legs, and I realize that someone has been sitting there all along. It’s taken me a full ten seconds to make sense of what I see, but now I do.

  “I’m sorry. I woke you.”

  Daniel.

  It takes several tries to come up on my elbows. Apparently, I needed sleep, but my body didn’t agree until it was under. It’s funny: the pills were like Daniel, forcing me into something I wanted but wouldn’t allow myself to desire, or have.

  “How’s your head?”

  “My head? Why? What did Sammy give me?”

  “It’s not the pills.” It takes me a moment to match his voice with emotion, but when I do, I realize it’s on the spectrum of embarrassment. “It’s the wall I accidentally smacked you into.”

  “When?”

  “When I carried you up here.”

  “You hit my head on a wall?”

  “It was Logan’s fault. He was grabbing Jessica’s ass, and I got distracted rounding a corner.”

  Jessica. So she came up here with him, Logan in tow.

  “I can’t believe you ran me into something,” I say.

  “I was trying to use you as a battering ram to hit Logan.”

  “Hey, my head hurts here. That’s not funny.”

  “It’s a
little funny,” Daniel says.

  I yawn. I sigh. I shift then sit up against the headboard. I realize I’m still in my clothes. My head is actually fine, despite what Daniel said he did. But every time I move my right arm, my hand throbs. I hold it up. My fingers seem larger than normal and slightly purple.

  “It’s not broken,” Daniel says, looking at the hand. “Just bruised.”

  “Did you ram that into a wall, too?”

  “No, you rammed it into Kylie’s face.”

  Kylie. Shit, now I remember. The thought startles me upright, and I move to stand, but Daniel puts a pacifying hand on my chest.

  “Stay put, Bridget. You’re going to be unsteady on your feet for a while.”

  “But Kylie — ”

  “Won’t bother you anymore.”

  More comes back to me, arriving in dribs and drabs. The Russians. The car. Kylie being driven away like cargo.

  “You don’t know her,” I say. Which is absurd because he selected her for this. He’s some sort of a psychology expert. If anyone can know someone like Kylie, it’s Daniel.

  “I know Caspian White.”

  “You told him what I said. What Kat said, about Kylie messing with his business in the Ukraine.”

  Daniel makes an almost-laughing sound. It’s not much more than a sharp exhale. “I didn’t have to. He just knew.”

  “What’s he going to do with her?”

  “I think the question is what the Russian Mafia is going to do.”

  The words are chilling. I turn away from the thought. I’m pretty sure Kylie would kill me without a thought if it suited her, and her actions might amount to murders in my family — and that’s assuming she only ratted out Linda rather than sending someone to do damage herself. Whatever she gets, it’ll be what she’s spent years sowing. But it’s an odd victory, and one I’d rather forget.

  “Don’t worry. The Linda Fiori profile has been erased from LiveLyfe. As have all the posts on your page.”

  “But people shared it. They thought it was good news, this friend of mine moving up in her life.”