Big Ben

by Nana Malone

  Adrenaline surged through me, making me desperate to tell her everything, but maybe talking on the phone about how I’d accidentally stolen state secrets or mining secrets or whatever was on the drive was probably not a good idea.

  Telly was a tech genius. She owned Brinx Technologies and was a brilliant developer. She might be able to help me decipher what the hell I was carrying around. “Only you would offer a night of wine and reading.”

  “Well, to be fair, by reading I mean gossiping about very fit celebrities.”

  I laughed.  “Yeah, we’re overdue. I haven’t seen you in a few weeks.”

  “We need to fix that. You think his royal highness will let you out?”

  I sighed. “Telly, be fair.” After the accident, Dex had struggled with post-traumatic stress. He’d also injured his hand and had to have some physical therapy.  “Monday after work?” By then I would have figured out what to do. Maybe it would have resolved itself by then. Like this is going to magically go poof.

  “I will put it in the books. So tell me, how was it?”

  I swallowed. What should I say exactly? “Fine. I was a bit anxious. But you know, nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  She laughed, knowing me all too well. “So, how long before you ran off? And did you have your shoes in hand?”

  I groaned. “One time I did that. Once. Why won’t you ever let me live it down?”

  “Because it was hilarious. You attempting to climb out the loo window with your Jimmy Choos in your fist.”

  “I don’t like you.” I’d begged her to go with me to the London Lords holiday party when I’d started as a temp six months ago. I’d had an anxiety spike and, erm, needed air. That was my story, and I was sticking to it. Besides, I’d at least texted.

  “So tell me, did you meet anyone even remotely cool? Or interesting?”

  “Uhm, meet is the wrong word I think.” I didn’t get a name for the Viking.

  “Dexter was supportive?” I hesitated a moment too long, and she groaned.  “Was he a twat?”

  “He wasn’t a twat, exactly. I just couldn’t find him when I wanted to leave.”

  She sighed. “You’re not home yet?”

  “No. I took the tube.”

  “You’re supposed to call me in those instances. I’ll come and get you.”

  “What? All the way from Central London?” Her flat was located right above Vauxhall Station. Dexter and I lived on the edge of Chiswick.

  “For my best friend, I will always turn up.”

  “I appreciate that, but I was fine. I mean after I broke the statue.”

  “What?” she gasped.  “You were at the Van Linsted estate, right?”

  “Yeah. Sure was. It was kind of humiliating. I didn’t know what to do, so I hid… in the closet.”

  She choked out a cough. “Liv. Are you serious?”

  “I know. Trust me I know. But then there was this guy, and he hid in the closet too.”

  “Oh, this is getting better. Please tell me. This is better than Pornhub.”

  “What? No. Boyfriend, remember?”

  “Oh, him…” Telly and Dex had never gotten along. She always said he didn’t seem right for me. “Okay, fine. At least tell me he was fit.”

  “We hid in a closet. I was hardly focused on his looks.”

  “Lies.”

  “Okay fine, he was tall.”

  “How tall?”

  Picturing him in my mind’s eye was remarkably easy. “Maybe six foot three. Maybe a little taller. Blond hair that looks a little bit messy, like it was too long, a ridiculously chiseled jaw with one of those cleft chins, you know? Ice-blue eyes. And he’s built like he’s got one of those V-things pointing directly to the promised land. And he walks like it too. Lean, looks excellent in a tuxedo.”

  “I love how you say you barely got a look, but you’re describing Eric Northman.”

  “What, from that show?”

  “Yep, Alexander Skarsgård. Otherwise known as my secret baby daddy if I were into blokes. Basically, the perfect human specimen.”

  “I guess he did look a lot like that. But I’m thinking more like Brad Pitt from Troy.”

  “Okay, that works too. Wait, so you were hiding out from the party with a guy that looked like a cross between a hot Viking and a Greek god?”

  “Basically, that’s it.”

  “Please tell me you broke up with Dexter and had hot sexy times in your secret hiding place.”

  “You have an overactive imagination. No, no such thing happened.” I bit my lip. “I mean, he did do this thing.”

  I could almost feel Telly leaning into the phone.  “What thing?”

  “We were hiding, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” I could almost visualize her leaning forward as she listened.

  “And he had one hand on my ass and the other on my mouth.”

  There was a beat of silence, then she whispered, “Oh my God, so hot.”

  “Then people came in the office and we pretended they’d caught us… you know, in the middle of things. He ordered me to moan.”

  “Jesus. Did you?”

  I swallowed hard as I remembered that moment. “Yes, yes, I did. I did it so we wouldn’t be caught.” That sounded feasible… even to me.

  “That is… Wow.”

  “He did this thing where he kind of growled in my ear. It was very unnerving.”

  “Look at you. You are the most frustrating human I’ve ever met in my life. This happens and you don’t call me right away?”

  “Sorry. It all happened so fast. Weird thing though, he got into a fight with Bram Van Linsted before I left. Security escorted him out and everything.”

  “I mean, not that I don’t believe that twat would have an enemy, but an actual physical fight? It’s so un-English.”

  “Yeah, I know, right? And then the craziest thing was, he handed me—”

  I’d been so busy yammering away with Telly that I barely felt the inertia before the push from behind which made my next words lodge in my throat. I stumbled and crashed forward, my phone skittering away. And then my face was zooming ever so quickly toward the ground.

  I knew not to put my hands straight out and instead go forearms first and turn my head. But it was so hard to remember.

  Down I went. When I rolled over onto my back, someone jumped on me, his weight pressing me into the wet pavement. Fear coiled in my gut, and my stomach churned from the little I’d eaten. Then he snatched my purse right out of my hand. “Hey. Stop that.” I tried desperately to remember what I’d been told to yell. The only good thing was I managed to buck him off. Wrapping my ankles around his, I lifted my hips then listed to the side, and he rolled right off me.

  The bad news was he took off running with my clutch.

  Jagged breaths tore out of my lungs, and my head simmered. My heart tried to break free of my ribcage. When I was alone again in the middle of wet pavement, it occurred to me that all he’d gotten was fifty quid, a credit card, and my favorite lipstick. Raspberry plum. It looked gorgeous on my brown skin.

  Damn, and the shade was limited edition.

  Plus side is you have your phone and the flash drive.

  I patted my chest with trembling hands. It was still where I’d shoved it when I was on the bus. I didn’t understand the sudden wash of relief. Except now, I still had a reason to go looking for the Viking. Somewhere to my right, I could hear Telly calling out. I winced when I picked up my now cracked phone. My hands were scraped and were going to require some cleaning. “Telly?”

  “Jesus, what just happened?”

  “Well, it would seem I’ve been mugged.”

  Ben

  It could have been worse.

  Really? How? How could it have been worse?

  Sure, it smelled of piss and bad decisions, but if I was being honest, it was well worth it to hit Bram in his sorry face.

  A guard appeared at my cell.  “Mr. Covington?”
>
  I looked up and grinned.  “Mate?”

  “Well, it appears that you are being bailed out.”

  “Did you have any doubt?”

  He frowned at me as he shook his head.

  That’s it, fall for that nonsense. Just some rich kid here for kicks.

  The role I had played was a perfect camouflage. I was led through processing and had to sign my name to collect my things. My watch. My phone.

  Freedom. Now that I was out, I had to track her down. The woman in red.

  Before I was through the final gate, I caught a glimpse of East and Bridge waiting for me. East gave me a smirk as he spoke. “Did you have to hit him?”

  I shrugged.  “We needed time. It seemed like a good idea at that moment.”

  Bridge, however, looked well ticked off.  “That was a fucking risk with the device on you.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah, that’s the thing. I figured once I put my hands on him, I was definitely going to the nick, so I ditched it.”

  Both of them gaped at me.  “What?”

  East’s eyes bugged out.  “Tell me you’re kidding.”  He turned to Bridge.  “Tell me he’s fucking kidding.”

  Bridge stared at me.  He dropped his voice to smooth ice. “Where the fuck is it?”

  “The woman at the event, the one in red, if she’s smart, she has it.”

  Bridge sputtered. “If she’s smart? What the fuck, Ben? You realize you’re risking all of us, right?”

  “What the fuck was I supposed to do, mate? We needed more time. I got us some more time. You needed to download the information from both his phone and the device. I managed to do that. What would you have had me do? They were patting me down.”

  Bridge ran a hand over his face before scrubbing at his jaw.  “Who is she?”

  I winced.  “I don’t know.”

  East was generally an affable bloke. Easy-going. He’d give you the shirt off his back, but when he was pushed, he could be vicious. He stormed away, muttering curses that would make the most hardened prisoner blush. Bridge lifted a brow.  “Mate, tell me you’re not serious.”

  “I am. I had no choice. There was no way I would have been able to leave the building with it. So we just need to find her.”

  East came back after his mini tirade.  “Do you think?”

  I turned my gaze on him and pinned him with a hard glare.  “The way I figure it, you can stand here carrying on or we can go back and start looking for her.”

  I could see East doing his deep breathing, trying to calm himself down and keep his temper at bay. After everything we’d found out about Toby, he’d been a mess. We’d all been in bad shape, but East had taken it the worst.

  He’d internalized what had happened. And I could see him trying to work through his calming exercises before he lost his mind.  “Think, mate. Was it a clean handoff?”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  “It was as clean as I could make it. Van Linsted hit me, and she came running over. We both went down with security, and I shoved it in her purse. She might not even know she has it.”

  East blinked at me. “Bloody perfect.”

  “That’s all I’ve got right now. Are we going to yak on about it, or are we going to go do something?”

  I watched him take several deep breaths.  “Fuck.”

  “Do you have a guest list? She’s probably on the security footage. We’re going to need to ascertain who she was there with.”

  East muttered.  “It’s as good a place as any to start. In the meantime, we’ll need to also comb the security footage to make sure that no one saw you make the handoff.”

  “I don’t think they did.”

  “Thinking isn’t certainty. If anyone finds that drive and puts two and two together, we’re toast. Our lives are over.”

  “Like I was fucking around deliberately. I know why the drive is so important. I know what’s at stake.”

  Bridge opened the driver’s side door.  “Then let’s hope your mysterious woman in red has what we need. And you damn well better pray she’s not going to sell us out.”

  I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. “She won’t.”

  East glowered at me as he climbed into the Range Rover at the curb. “You better be right about that.”

  I don’t know what it was about her, but something told me that she wasn’t the kind of woman who would dick us over.

  But it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been wrong.

  4

  Ben

  3 Months Earlier

  The pomp. The circumstance. Some would even say tradition.

  I called it bullshit. My long-hidden tattoo itched and felt heavy under my ring. I often wondered what would have happened all those years ago if, when I’d been called to the Elite, I’d said no. What if I’d gotten the card that said only a select few are to be Elite and I’d burned the thing?

  What if I’d encouraged Toby to burn his too? Would he still be alive?

  The dim cavern of the initiation room made it difficult to see clearly. Or maybe I wished this was all a dream. The candles burning all around us sent an incense aroma into the air. And it was so thick I nearly choked with it. Sand-colored stone walls surrounded us in a massive circle, and above us, on the ceiling, was a tapestry depicting the first brothers of the Elite in their black robes and Bauta masks on a hunt.

  The same robes and masks we wore now.

  In the center of the room, the new initiates lay in their coffins.

  I forced myself to stand still. Next to me, I could feel the glare of Bridge on my right. He hated this shit as much as I did, but he was better at hiding his disdain. Maybe because he’d been hiding it for so long.

  To my left, East’s jaw twitched. Because of the mask, I couldn’t see his face, but God, I could feel his contempt. Drew, directly opposite of me, stood stoic. As if he bought into all the seriousness.

  We were inducting a new class, none of whom had any idea what they were in for. That their lives would no longer be their own but would be dictated by a preset ledger of fate and destiny. If you were lucky enough to be chosen, you would thrive. If you were unlucky, well, no one ever wanted to talk about what happened to the unlucky.

  To our left, Marcus Van Linsted, the current Director Prime, some would say the most powerful man in Britain, closed out the session. “To our newest brothers, lift your masks and know that now you are amongst the Elite. Your lives will never be the same.”

  Marcus had said the same words to us some time ago. We’d still all been reeling from Toby’s death, still shell-shocked, unable to function. And we’d been forced to wear those masks and act as if we hadn’t just lost one of our best friends.

  We’d been told how powerful we would be, how we would be called upon to serve our brothers. I had brothers in the room, absolutely. East. Drew. Bridge. But those were the only ones I counted. To my far right, in the corner, I could feel the glare of my father. Almost like he could tell the direction of my thoughts.

  I twirled my signet ring around my thumb, dying to get the bloody thing off. The moments when I wasn’t in public were the best ones because it was the first thing I took off. Possibly like many women took off a bra. I could always feel the weight of it, digging into me.

  The final sacred words were the signal that I was almost free.

  When the ceremony was over, I tried to relax, but a scowl leaked as Bram Van Linsted clapped his hand on his father’s back. The Van Linsteds had been in the Elite since the first class over two hundred years ago. Everyone liked to forget that those Dutch fuckers made their fortune on the backs of slaves and then increased it by pillaging a continent that had already lost so much for diamonds. Nope. Everyone likes to pretend they were on the up and up, but I knew the Van Linsteds. After all, I’d spent over a decade hating them.

  As always, after the induction ceremony there was a reception, one the new
recruits always looked forward to. Top shelf booze and women, carefully selected for them, of course. No one was allowed to bring their current girlfriend if they had one. All these women were escorts, discreet, and knew the game.

  They were all compensated for their time and efforts. They’d been selected based on each new member’s desires, predilections, and personal tastes. It was ingenious.

  For the very few that had never known such wealth, it could be a heady experience. Every year, the selection committee chose one from an underprivileged background. Almost like their own sick Trading Places experiment. It didn’t usually turn out well. Our year, that token recruit was Bridge. The joke was on the selection committee, though. Bridge was as steady as they came, and he’d made not a single misstep. Now he was richer than half the membership combined.

  Just when the recruits were out of their minds with whatever booze and drugs were on hand, they’d be taken away, separated into pairs, and pulled into their bonding ceremony. Then, to their bonded brother, they would make their confessions.

  They’d leave their sins on the table in a process that would continue throughout the years. There was always an even number of recruits. In our class, there had been five pairs. Bridge and East had been paired. Drew had been paired with someone else. There had been two other pairs, and I had been paired with Toby. Since Toby had died, I’d had to make my confessions to my father. That awkward moment when my biggest confession was that I hated him was one I would never forget.

  One by one, in a sea of black and gold, all the brothers filed into the vestibules to hang their cloaks and shelve their masks, then up the spiral staircase at the end of the darkened hall to the level that was composed of elevator banks to the upper floor. There was no other way up to the estate.

  The clipped sounds of our polished oxfords on the marble floor built like an orchestra crescendo while we loaded onto the elevators. I never felt I breathed more freely than when the stainless-steel elevators gave way to the white marble, chrome, and glass of the massive foyer.

  I was free once again.

  Above us, the enormous crystal chandelier gleamed. The cool forced air reminded me that I would not die in that tomb after all. Beyond the wide expanse of marble and the glass wall, I could see into the acres of garden, lit up with tea lights for the occasion. The miniature fountains lining either side of the double Olympic sized koi pond also had all the lights turned on. And the drawbridge leading from the house to the mini island in the middle, complete with seating and a Champagne bar, was drawn to allow guests use of the outdoors.