Etched in Stone (Six Degrees Series Book 2)

by Statham, Mayra

  Catching him off guard I stand up getting off of him. He stands up immediately trying to grab at me but I take a step back.

  “I’m nothing.” I start to tell him, hating the tremble in my voice, trying to coax some fucking courage, some of the ball busting strength I had before he ruined me. Before he made me believe in more. Before I was stupid enough to lower the protective walls around me and let myself believe I could actually have something good. “Nothing like the usual kind of women you fuck.” Realizing I’m standing topless in nothing but hot pink lacey boy shorts, my hands wrap themselves around my middle. “Nothing with no one, I am alone. You were out of your mind to believe that I could have been, someone.” I tell him, repeating his own words. I don’t know how I say it all with no fresh tears, my voice is a monotone. Completely void of feelings.

  “Angel….” His voice now so hoarse with emotions it hurts my heart to hear it.

  “I’m not, that’s the last thing I am, Parker. I’m not an angel, I’m not anything. I am a no one. You…,” I keep telling him, letting myself look at him. His eyes are glassy, his expression helpless.

  “Something happened,” he says, grabbing at straws deducing the situation. If he only knew!

  “No. You called it right. I’m nothing....” I shake my head trying hard to stay cold and unaffected by him.

  “Something happened and I’m going to find out what the fuck it is.” He says seriously and I believe that at that moment he really thinks it’s possible.

  “Nothing happened, honey. I’m just a stripper,” I tell him and he shakes his head. Stupid tears are still rolling down my face.

  “You used to be,” he says and I shake my head.

  “No. I am. I’m dancing this weekend.” I tell him taking another step away from him, grabbing an orange throw from my couch.

  “What? No. Don’t. I’ll….” He steps closer as I’m wrapping myself up and I flinch. He doesn’t miss that flinch and it causes him to stay away from me.

  “I have to, Park.” I whisper, what little strength I still have is weakening almost completely unraveling in front of him, and I wish I would. I want to unravel. I want to let him fix it, but he can’t.

  “Ellie, whatever it is, I can fix it.” He says and I wish so badly that he could.

  “I wish that was true.” Words that I let slip from my lips, his big body closes the space between us in two strides, one hand on my waist another warm hand on my face. I take a deep breath hoping that it would help with the tears.

  “I was an asshole. You are it for me.” He whispers and my breath hitches. “You are more than anything I could have imagined. Better than I deserve” he says sincerely as the pad of his thumb wipes away the tears on my face. Even though his words are sweet, I can’t give in. Tess and I would lose everything.

  “I’m really not, Parker.” I look at him coldly. I make my body stiffen under his beautiful touch.

  “You are. You’re smart and beautiful and so fucking giving….”

  “What I am is an idiot.” I tell him seriously, looking into his glassy greys, “I actually believed I deserved what we had. Reality is different. Remember that.” I tell him, kissing his lips hard. That was my mistake. I shouldn’t have kissed him. My hands have a mind of their own and cup his face, my lips against his, “You should leave before someone finds out you’re here.” He frowns, then as if a light bulb goes off, his eyes grow wide.

  “It’s about me, isn’t it?” His eyes narrow, “Someone is doing something because you’re with me?” He asks. Yes I am dying to say, but I can’t. I can’t because Duke also wanted more than just to have me stay away from his grandson.

  Not able to help myself I lean in and kiss him. I kiss him with everything that I am. I kiss him with everything I feel for him, even though he hurt me, I hope he can feel how much I care through the kiss, how much I love him. Reluctantly, I pull away breaking the kiss, I gently grab his face.

  “You have to go.” I whisper, trying not to let the tears fall again and failing.

  “Don’t push me away,” he pleads, his glassy grey eyes now red.

  “Please, Parker.” His arms tighten around me and for the most beautiful minute we stand in the middle of my living room, my arms around his body and I swear that at that moment I’m so tempted to give everything up for him. But I can’t. I can’t do that to my employees, nor could I do it to Tess.

  Almost as if reading my mind, that I’m done torturing myself with his touch and about to back away, he buries his face into the crook of my neck. His hold hard and strong, he whispers into my ear.

  “I’m going to find out what’s going on and I am going to fix it. I swear to you, Ellie.”

  “Park…,” I start to say but he backs away from me, buttoning his shirt up. My stupid hands itch to fix his crooked tie.

  “I’m going to fix this.” He says lifting my chin with his fingers, his lips lightly grazing mine, making the nerves on my lips come alive. Leaning in he kisses me. Sweet and soft and then he leaves my place without another word, closing the door behind him.

  I walk over and lock the door. My legs then miraculously take me to my couch where I just sit. My legs folded up to my chest. The living room’s dark and quiet and somehow I find sleep. I fall asleep on my couch, my burnt orange throw covering me.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Parker

  Once my driver drops me off at home, I walk in. Instantly the coldness and silence hit me. It’d felt that way since Ellie had left yesterday and I’d drowned myself in booze.

  I’d watched her from my window, clearly upset and pissed in her car, but I’d been too pissed and self-absorbed at the moment to think about what it meant. All morning long I’d been in meeting after meeting, of which I had no idea what they were about because all I could think about was her and her meltdown in her car. If she really wanted to let Thompson get in there, why the fuck would she have been that upset? The thought ate at me until I gave in and by noon, I had Joan cancel all my meetings. All afternoon I spent reading and rereading the entire fucking file that Tim had made on her. He’d been through too.

  She’d lost her parents in a fire the night of her tenth birthday. She’d been placed into the foster care system after no close living relative wanted to take her in. She’d been placed in numerous homes, one in which her foster dad had beat her.

  The pictures of the small defenseless fourteen year old Liz staring back at me, bruised eyes and arms were haunting. In the notes that Tim had made for me, it said that she hated being called Lizzy. She’d told me that. That was what her foster dad had called her, the one who’d beat her black and blue. After that she’d miraculously been placed in nicer foster homes in nicer areas. She kept to herself, did well in school. Had great grades and had received a scholarship and financial aid to go to USC.

  There she studied art. When her financial aid ran out, she left school. This I knew. What I didn’t know was what Tim somehow found out. Was that not only had Thompson and Liz lived together, she’d also helped him get through school. She had worked two and three jobs at a time. When Thompson left for London, she stayed here. Her savings ran out and she started to work at Shine.

  She’d danced, waitressed and had tended bar at Shine.

  I knew of Belle Garibaldi and her girls. I’d even been to shine in the past for business meetings and knew that the place crawled with the mighty and powerful of California and other West Coast states. I knew that Belle had girls that did a vast array of services for the right price. What Tim didn’t find was any evidence that my angel had done any of those extra things, but he also hadn’t found evidence that she hadn’t.

  I’d had a couple of drinks while I’d re-read her file, trying to figure it all out. Trying to figure her out and why I could not stop thinking about her.

  Broke and desperate she’d taken the job at Shine. Then I remembered what she had said about the girls who worked at Shine when we had been driving to the airport after brunch with my parents. N
o one made them do anything they didn’t want too.

  All day she’d been in my fucking head. Anger, frustration and sheer primal desire had fueled my mind. I’d had a car pick me up and I’d had a few more drinks on my way to her place, where I’d waited for her. My eyes landed on her coming towards her apartment before she’d made it there, and my gut had clenched. She looked terrible. Broken!

  Then I’d been a total asshole to her.

  I wasn’t sure how things had happened. One moment I was kissing her then the words just slipped out of my fucking mouth. I’d been a complete ass. I hated what I’d said to her, the insinuations I’d made that I owed her for the things she’d done with me. But the fucking shit of it was the joke was all on me. My girl’s platinum shell instantly went up around her, shielding her from me she’d brought me back to her apartment to prove a point.

  The moment she’d started to play Latch, even if it was a different version, I knew I’d been wrong. I knew why she was playing it for me to. She was making a point. Shit, I knew I was wrong the second after the words I’d said to her had slipped out of my mouth. But the sick part of it was that knowing that, I’d still let her dance for me.

  When she straddled me, topless, our song playing in the background, I couldn’t hold back and I’d called her angel. That alone did something to her. I broke something in her. Tears rolling down her face, she didn’t stop moving her sexy little body over mine. My angel was determined to teach me a lesson, and it worked.

  I’d never felt more ashamed of myself than at that moment.

  Something’s going on. Because of me, she had to go back to Shine. Someone was making her let me go. Question was who and why?

  I have enemies. I’m not stupid enough not to know that in the business I’m in, I have people who aren’t very happy with me. I’d been stupid to not have her somehow protected. I needed more information and fast. I didn’t like the one name that kept coming to mind that might know something. The one person who could give me the information I needed. We didn’t like one another but we did have one thing in common.

  Picking up my cell, I stare at my backyard. Its pitch dark. In my mind I see the early spring day we’d enjoyed two weeks before we’d gone to Miami. She’d been in cut off denim shorts that had a tiny bit of soft fringe at the edges, an olive green tank top covering her blank bikini top, and knowledge that beneath those cut off shorts she was completely bare. She looks at me over her shoulder, smiling brightly at me as I made us drinks, and she planted some fucking flowers she’d heard didn’t need too much care. The sun was shining bright over both of us.

  I want her back in my space. I need her here.

  I’d known from the moment I had laid eyes on her who she was to me. I might have doubted here and there, but in the deepness of my soul I knew. I knew she was it for me.

  With that thought, I press call to the contact on my cell I’d already scrolled too.

  “What?” The deep voice said on the other end, clearly not amused.

  “I need your help.” I admit, grinding my teeth. I don’t have time to fuck around.

  The line is silent, but I know he’s there.

  “Yeah you fucking do.” He finally spits out.

  “Yeah…” I sigh, “I do.”

  “Meet me in the morning. I have an idea of how to fix it.”

  “You know what’s going on?” The thought of my angel going to him for help instead of me hurts.

  “Lucy dude, not Liz.” He clarifies as if he knows what I’m thinking and I relax.

  “She told me…,” I start to say but he cuts me off.

  “She lied,” he says sighing. He then continues, “She’ll hate me for this, but I’m okay with that. This shit isn’t good, Stone.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah, meet me in the morning at a Diner off of Figeroa by Wind,” he says and hangs up.

  Jake fucking Thompson was going to help me. If he thinks shit is bad, it means it’s really bad.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Liz

  I’d been at Izzy Tizzy’s since two in the morning and Tess had been there since four. The morning went by too quickly and Tess told me to go home early, so that I had time to get ready for the night that waited for me. So I did. We didn’t talk about how nervous the other is feeling or how scared we are. We don’t have to. We know.

  It was a little after ten thirty in the morning. My skin smooth and silky, my hair on top of my head, I’m in a pale blue satin robe that hits right above my knees.

  Looking into the box of costumes that I’d hoped I’d never have to look at again, I search for four costumes for tonight. Belle had assured me that she’d try to keep me on stage. Something told me that the Judge somehow had something on Belle that made it difficult for her to guarantee it.

  A soft knock came to the door just as I had chosen a lacy hot pink pair of boy shorts a matching thong and a cutesy 1950’s inspired apron. Leaving the costume on my bed, I go to the door looking through the peephole. With a sigh and quick tug at my robe to tighten it, I open the door.

  “What do you want?” I ask with the most unamused expression I can conjure, even though my heart’s beating hard against my chest. Duke Keates' large frame is at my door, with two big burly guys behind him and all together they scare the living daylights out of me.

  “Wanted to make sure you were getting ready,” he tells me smirking slightly.

  I stay quiet looking at him, trying to look unaffected as I wait him out.

  “There’s going to be a bachelor party tomorrow. You need to make sure you treat the guys...really nice if you know what I mean?” He tells me, bringing a big hand to my face, and I immediately straighten up, clenching the robe closed.

  “Belle doesn’t let bachelor parties….”

  “Belle’s okay with this one. There is one guy in particular… John Davenport. Be … extra nice to him.” He says taking a step back.

  My stomach churns.

  John Davenport is a regular at Shine when he’s in town.

  He is a businessman, middle-aged, rich, handsome and very successful. More than successful, he is hideously wealthy. It’s widely known that he prefers Belle’s girls that went the extra mile. Duke is asking me to be extra nice and I only hope he doesn’t mean what I think he does.

  He steps in close, and I hold the door as tightly as possible. I can feel his eyes roam my body and immediately he makes me feel dirty and the need to throw on a snow suit.

  It isn’t that the Judge is bad looking, he honestly isn’t. He is older, his brown eyes have a hazel tint with deep lines at the side that hint that he laughs a lot. Dark, thick hair that’s now peppered with a healthy amount of grey sprinkled through it. He has dimples on both sides of his face, a full dark mustache that is also sprinkled with grey and an extremely masculine bone structure.

  All of that plus his height, at least six foot two maybe three, and his body hinted that in his younger years he’d once had a great body. He was solid, but not muscular.. Now with his age, which I guessed had to be in his early seventies at least, he’s thicker than he’d been, especially in the midsection, but he was still handsome. He also exuded power and he carried himself confidently.

  What had made my stomach churn since the first time I laid eyes on him years ago was the way he looked at me. Like he wanted to do things to me things that my own imagination couldn’t even come up with and I was a very creative person. He was also married and had a reputation for stepping out on his wife on a regular basis.

  His wife, who’s Parker’s grandmother, I remind myself. The world is too small.

  Luckily for me, he was married and he didn’t use escorts for public events. He only hired Belle’s girls who were okay with going the extra mile. I’d heard from the rumor mill, he liked it rough and weird. One of Belle’s girls had been hurt in such a way that when Belle had kicked him out of the club, she had done this publicly on the floor of Shine and in front of all the rest of the powerful men in California
that were there that night. I knew because I had been there dancing. That had been almost three years ago.

  Before the Judge had been banned, he’d always requested private dances. Sometimes he requested more than one, back to back. He had relentlessly asked me to take things to another level, offering vast amounts of money and on occasion various materialistic things, like cars or condos. I’d always respectfully declined his offers, sleeping with him a very clear line I would not cross.

  He steps forward snapping me out of my thoughts, his hand going back to my face, his thumb over my cheek.

  “So damn pretty…,” he whispers, the pad of his thumb still on my cheek. Looking around he leans forward. “Tell me something, does Belle know you give private dances out of your apartment?” He asks. His face is close to mine. My stomach is roiling, fear freezing me in place. He knew Parker had been here.

  Leaning his face closer, his face at my neck, I stand completely still, my hand gripping the doorknob. I hear him take a deep breathe at my neck, his lips at the base of my neck and my body shakes in fear.

  “Parker’s a good kid. I think you can understand why I think he needs to…. aim higher. Right?” I nod, swallowing hard, not sure what else to do. “It would be a shame for something to accidentally happen to him don’t you think?”

  “Are you threatening him?” I ask softly, my eyes on the two burly goons behind him. Both of them had eyes on me. One of them was creepier than the other, since he was being obvious about checking me out. He reminded me of the bouncers that were always quickly fired at Shine for watching the dancing rather than taking care of the girls.

  He had beady, pale blue eyes, a broken nose, and was slightly paunchy. He was average height with clearly muscled arms and was bald. The other one was tall, lean with a power radiating off of him that you knew he could do serious damage and a look in his eyes that tells you he wouldn’t think twice about it. He has great hair, thick and shiny and freshly cut. He has a neat beard covering his squared jaw, hazel brown eyes that are serious but something about the way he’s watching, I can read he doesn’t like. If I had seen him out on the street I would have definitely looked at him twice. He wasn't classically handsome. He’s rugged with an air of danger around him.