by Keta Kendric
The shrill yelling sounded again, the man screaming at the top of his lungs, leaving no doubt that pain was the conductor of his cries. I stepped out into the opening, took one step and froze.
Shock, horror, and awe hit me full-on, sending a seizure through me and sending my trembling hand knocking against my chest. My mouth dropped open, and I was forced to cover it with both hands to stifle my throat-tickling scream. My bladder fisted, shuttering in my lower belly, and only my clamped-shut knees kept a river of piss from flowing down my legs.
Khane’s style of dress was simple, but always neat and nice. A long-sleeve, button-up or polo shirt that gave him a professional touch with pants or jeans and boots. He always appeared refreshed like he was just waking from a nap. Even now, he maintained a relaxed look about him, covered by clear coveralls and clear goggles that were dotted with blood splatter.
A raised machete, a partially separated arm, blood, and mind-piercing screams filled my psyche. Khane stood above the man as his strong arm continued to swing the death instrument, hacking into the screaming man’s shoulder. The area of shredded human flesh he concentrated on had chunks of deep red flesh and blood flying away as the blade chopped deep enough for me to see the ebony white of bone peeking through.
My eyes refused to shut, although I swallowed my screams and choked on my horror. The man’s wailing continued to light the air, his eyes bucking out of his head, and body twitching mindlessly. Naked, his genitals were shaking along with his body from the terror rolling through him.
The scene touched something in me, reminding me that I shouldn’t have shelved the rumors I had heard about Khane’s deadly reputation. His rage wasn’t the kind that was in-your-face or loud. It was deliberate and meticulously expressed, the scariest type of silence that existed.
He didn’t yell at the man he was killing, didn’t even raise his voice at him. He left all the noise, all the drama, all the action up to the dying man as he gave life to his worst nightmare.
He sat the machete on an instrument table that contained an array of cutting tools, most of them bloody. Khane picked up a bone saw and placed it at the man’s gaping shoulder where I’d seen bone peeking through, and went about his task.
“I know you’re there, Desiree. Come closer. I need you to see if you recognize this man’s face before he loses the living expression you can identify.”
Was he crazy? He hadn’t even stopped sawing into the man’s shoulder as he talked. He had spoken with a normal tone, and somehow, his words overshadowed the loud screaming from the man and the sickening noise of the saw at work.
When he finally glanced up, a devious smirk rested on his face. I believe he wanted me to find him. He wanted me to see what he did to people.
My lids finally decided to fall and shut out the horrific scene, but the sound of the saw’s teeth gnawing through the man’s bone had phantom metal teeth scraping across my bone in the same area. The weird sensation had me gripping my shoulder.
I failed to shield myself from further horror when my eyes popped opened to the sight of the man’s arm hanging loosely in Khane’s hand. It teetered, rocking in his uncaring grip as blood dripped from the hacked up parts.
A few threads of skin and mangled tendons were all that was left of the connection the arm once shared with the man’s body. Khane lifted the appendage before tossing it onto the thick metal table he had the man strapped to.
The arm had landed so that the fingers appeared to be reaching for the man’s wide haunted eyes. Why hadn’t he passed out? Although Khane had tied a tourniquet over the man’s shoulder where he had taken his arm, there was blood everywhere: the floor, the instrument table, and all over Khane’s coveralls.
“Desiree.” I jumped at the sound of my name. One of my shaking hands covered my mouth as the other clutched my chest. “I need you to tell me if you know this man.” I couldn’t move. My brain was stuck and unable to process the commands I needed.
My heavy feet were dragged by my trembling legs as I edged closer to Khane and the mangled man lying on the table. I stood about ten feet away, seeing the man’s face clear under the bright lights.
Nothing about his face was familiar. However, with that much horror and pain riding his strained features and quaking body, it could have been my brother hiding under the display. Cuts consumed his body, gaping holes, deep punctures, and long gashes. There were big square patches of skin missing from parts.
Quick swallows were the only things keeping me from throwing up when the strong metallic scent of blood raced up my nose and tickled my throat.
Khane glanced at me with no readable expression on his face as the man uselessly cried and begged. He sat the bloody saw above the man’s lips, so that it was aimed to saw his mouth open, straight up his cheeks. My head shook in the negative along with the man’s, although Khane ignored us both.
“Tell me who sent you. What did you want with the women?”
“Please. We wanted the Bookkeeper and were told that one of the women could help us find him.” At those words, I knew this was about my father and not about the Vallins. I hadn’t heard from him in a week, and after he had left Mecca in charge of the Black Saints, she hadn’t heard from him either.
A few quick steps drew me closer. “Where is my father?” I questioned the man, enduring the strong scent of blood and fighting to ignore his severed arm. It wasn’t uncommon for me not to talk to my father for a week, but this man’s confession sent my mind chasing horror stories.
“Where is my father? Where is Raymond Evans?” I asked again. Khane remained silent, assessing me as I inched closer on weak and shaky legs. The horror sitting in front of me wasn’t enough to keep me from asking after my father. The man didn’t answer. He hadn’t even acknowledged me because his focus was concentrated on Khane with that saw aimed over his trembling lips.
Although my eyes were locked on the man’s desperate face, I sensed Khane’s eyes on me.
“What do you know about this, Desiree? I have been hacking into him for twenty minutes and all he keeps mouthing is something about some Bookkeeper. He and his partner were willing to go through you for this person. Who the hell is this Bookkeeper he’s looking for?”
My gaze met Khane’s. “No one knows who the Bookkeeper is. All I know is that he’s the walking equivalent of a little black book, a human safety deposit box. The Bookkeeper is like the priest my father confesses to. He knows all the secrets. If this man wants to find the Bookkeeper, it means my father could be in danger. He could be held captive as we speak.”
“How do you know about the Bookkeeper? Where is my father?” I addressed the man again.
I cast a glance at Khane. “Can you get him to tell you where my father is and how he knows about the Bookkeeper?”
Moments ago, I was ready to throw up and piss myself, but now that my father may have been in life-threatening danger, my fear had been swallowed by stress and worry.
Khane’s stringent glare caught and held mine. “You know more than you’re telling me, Desiree. Unless you want to take this man’s place, you better tell me why he would single you out to find a Bookkeeper that no one is supposed to know about.”
I swallowed. Khane was a scary man. There was no question about that, and I was just now realizing how deeply horrifying he could be. Would he strip me down and torture me for information? Yes. Yes, I believe he would, I decided.
“No one is supposed to even know about the Bookkeeper. If something happened to my father, the Bookkeeper would step in and keep the business going and appoint the next person to take over. If this man knows about the Bookkeeper, it means someone may have tortured my father for the information.”
I glanced at Khane. “My father has his faults, but do you think I would have subjected myself to an arranged marriage I don’t want if I didn’t love him? I think he is in trouble.”
Khane squinted, studying me over the man’s squirming body and pained whimpers. When he was done scrutinizing me, he sat th
e teeth of the bloody blade back against the man’s mouth. The man spat his words around the blade. “I don’t know where Raymond Evans is. He owed the house over five-hundred thousand. The only thing that saved his life was disclosing the knowledge of his Bookkeeper that could get us the money. When he was left alone, he found a way to escape the holding cell we had him in.”
The man swallowed, his lips quivering and his body trembling in distress as he shut his eyes tight in an attempt to gather and spit out more words.
“No one has been able to locate Evans and its why we are looking for the Bookkeeper who, based on his own admission, is worth more than Raymond himself.”
Khane appeared to be letting the information soak in as much as I was. His stress-inducing glare found me once more. “I don’t believe your father is dead. He is connected to the syndicate now. We’d know if he was. I think this man and his crew are taking advantage of him being away to find this Bookkeeper that apparently holds a great degree of value. If he feared for his life, would he have revealed to your cousin his whereabouts?”
A deep shrug lifted my shoulders. “Mecca and I share everything. If she knew where my father was, I would know too.” The thick coat of stress I concealed had downgraded to a jacket at Khane’s words about my father being linked to the syndicate. Why would he spill a secret as well-kept as his Bookkeeper? Had my father gone into hiding?
When someone like my father disappeared, all sorts of scavengers lurked, attempting to find an angle to take over what he’d built, or to take possession of whatever assets he was leaving behind. They were in for the fight of their lives if they misjudged my cousin with ideas of steamrolling over her. The idea of her having extra protection from the Vallins eased a little of my tension.
Khane never dropped his gaze from mine. “So, this one has outlived his usefulness? You have any more questions for him?”
Was he asking me if he could proceed in killing the man? I didn’t answer, only glared down at the man whose whimpers grew louder at Khane’s statement.
When the saw sliced through the corners of the man’s mouth, splitting it open, tears of horror stung my eyes. It didn’t matter that I’d clasped my eyes shut because it was an image I was never going to get rid of, a new nightmare that would visit me often.
Even so, I knew, all too well, what had to be done.
Finding the Bookkeeper would render my father useless and put Mecca and the Black Saints in more danger. Khane had to finish killing the man, no matter how I felt about the situation. I spun so fast that I wobbled before jetting away from the scene on shaky legs.
I didn’t even want to know what Khane would do with the body. There was only one thing that put a soothing touch on my mind, if anyone else came looking for the Bookkeeper, they were going to die badly at Khane’s hands.
Where the hell was my father? Was he missing or hiding? Were there others out there looking for the Bookkeeper?
14
Desiree
Khane was staying at the house again today. The horror I had witnessed last night had kept sleep from finding me, but I still managed to slide out of bed when the scent of bacon found its way to me. It meant the other Khane was back. The good one.
The moment I entered the kitchen, and he allowed me to start helping him, the scene in the basement last night started to fade. I assisted him with breakfast again, which set a happy tone for the start of my day. The cooking lessons meant the world to me, and I acknowledged him for his patience and the time he was spending with me.
We ate and enjoyed pleasant small talk but chose to ignore our undeniable chemistry. The hot sizzle floated all around us, lighting up my body every time we touched. When our eyes connected, my heart knocked with force against my chest, alerting me to what I already knew. I was falling for Khane.
Although last night had its own locked room in my mind, I couldn’t deny that Khane caressed me in warmth and provided me a special kind of security. I had never felt so safe than when I was with him. I had never been inspired to embrace my own strengths. He made me want to be stronger for myself. He made me smile at a time when I would have otherwise been weeping at the events unfolding in my life.
At a glance, I could tell that he didn’t believe my perceptions of him. I was sure he had never embraced the good that had rested dormant within himself. I didn’t believe he had ever truly acknowledged that he possessed the kindness and goodness that I sensed, and that he bestowed on me in such abundance.
He was a raging flame, and I was a lowly moth, unable to resist the strong pull of his radiant energy. Instead of sitting across the large dining room table from him, this time, I had parked myself right next to him.
I would occasionally reach onto his plate, eating from it, and being way too comfortable with him. My actions gave him pause and caused him to flash me funny looks, but he didn’t comment, knowing it would spark a conversation I believed he was avoiding.
I kept hearing him mouth under his breath, five more days. It was the amount of days he had left before Arjen returned and he would be free of me.
Like now, I was sipping from his glass of juice while mine sat untouched. He stared, his eyes on my lips wrapping around the area of the glass his lips had just been.
The way he watched me, so quiet and unmoving, as he scanned my every move; every spoon lifted, every twitch in my seat. I’d never had a man watch me that way, as though I was the most exciting thing they had ever seen. Like watching me was a privilege he didn’t want to take for granted.
Khane had the ability to make my skin hum songs to him, and my pulse dash off into a race with my heartbeat. I wasn’t myself around him. I was bold and aggressive in a way that I had suppressed. There was something inside of him that called so strongly that I answered every time. He either wasn’t as aware of it as I was, or his strength kept him in line. How could he resist a pull so strong?
At times, I found myself helpless, consumed by infinite thoughts of him. His effortlessly tossed dark hair. His brutally manly physique. It all summed up to equal a beautiful living portrait for my imagination, and havoc for my desperately starved sex.
After breakfast, I put in a few hours of work and ended up at the lookout where I found Khane. The first sight of him stopped me in my tracks as my breath caught in my chest. Shirtless, with his back to me, he was doing pull-ups. The muscles drew taut in his back and arms as the delicious image tugged on the loose thread holding my sexual urges in check.
However, bulging muscles and the sexiest back I had ever seen wasn’t the kicker. The most shocking part of the whole situation was where he had chosen to exercise. Two parallel bars with a crossbar at the top had been mounted into the ledge of the balcony. I had previously glanced at the bars sitting off to the far edge of the balcony and ignored them.
Khane continued lifting his body in mid-air, clinging to a metal bar cemented into the balcony that dropped off the side of the mountain. If he slipped, lost balance or strength, he was dead. Over the cliff he would go, and it would be goodbye to my fiancé’s super-hot brother. I stood admiring the view. How many of those things could he do?
The bar was high off the six-inch-wide ledge below him. How was he going to dismount? He lowered one last time and swung a few times, sending my heart into my stomach as it appeared he was about to leap to his death. When his body swung back, he released and jumped down to the balcony floor.
Choppy steps drew me closer to him. He had scared me so badly that my hands were shaking. This scared me more than seeing him torture someone. When he turned and saw me, he reached for and quickly yanked on his shirt. Even through my fright, I had taken visual snapshots of his devilishly tempting body. I eased up to him, my hand still over my heart.
“You scared the shit out of me. Why would you do that? Do you have a death wish?”
He had the nerve to laugh, and I swatted at his arm for doing so. When his smile deepened, so did mine, although I tried to suppress it to look serious.
“Sorry
I scared you. I thought you knew what the bar was for.” He pointed at the thing that appeared to be the open metal doorway to death.
I stepped closer to the balcony and allowed the view to settle my nerves. Khane lingered near the death bar, peering out at the mountains.
After a silent moment and only after my heart had resettled, did I glance over at him. I sidestepped closer, unable to resist the pull, an invisible line that always led me in his direction. I didn’t say anything right away but stalked him with my eyes while sneaking in snatches of the splendid view. His towering height, his big strong body, and his bulging muscles worked under all of that nicely-inked and tanned skin to seduce me.
The man was sinfully appealing, every part of him demanding I reach out and touch. A deep shoulder-lifting inhale had me soaking up his devilishly alluring scent that was glazed over by a light dusting of his cologne and now, a light sheen of sweat.
The whirling tension between us had me swallowing my desire before I ended up trying to kiss him again. I had given into temptation and lost control of myself. The most dangerous thing about the situation was that I wasn’t sorry about it.
Nipples hard and aching. My pulse jumped in all the areas I wanted his mouth, my body’s way of begging for what it couldn’t have. My own body was telling on me, inching and leaning closer to him, the need intensifying the longer I was within his reach.
I craved him, needing to know how his lips would feel against mine, and how his big hands would feel sliding over my hot skin. My fist clenched tighter as the urge to touch him grew stronger the longer I stared.
“This is your favorite place, I see.” I decided to speak or end up embarrassing myself.
“One of them,” he replied, avoiding my gaze, although I was standing close enough for his warmth to break through the easy flowing wind and touch me.
He took a few steps away, putting distance between us and breaking apart the gripping tension that was growing stronger by the second. I gave him points for being strong because all I wanted to do was give in. I had never had this connection with anyone, so it was difficult for me to fight the pull as I was certain it was something rare. Otherwise, I would have experienced it before now.
