"Did you hear what I said?"
Dante is shaking his head, trying to come to terms with it. "You're pregnant. I can't believe you're pregnant. Do they know about this?"
"Jason Walker is dead", Sash says again, ignoring his question.
"Who is Jason Walker?" Dante asks angrily, trying his best to pretend not to know the name.
"Did you kill him?" Sash asks, exploding uncontrollably into fitful tears as she does so.
It's the question that has been going around her head ever since she heard the news. One minute Dante has no idea who he is and the next minute he's dead. Is taking her virginity for the first time going to be what's responsible for ending his life?
Dante looks over to her like she's lost her mind.
"Sash, what the hell are you talking about? Who is Jason Walker?"
"Did you kill him because he took my virginity?"
Dante is up now, trying to comfort his stepsister. Sash pushes him away, refusing to let him get in close until she's absolutely sure.
"Is that why you asked me his name?"
"Slow down a second, Sash. Jason Walker is the guy who took your virginity, and now he's dead?"
Sash nods her head. Tears babble out of her eyes like water running through a fast flowing stream. She looks completely overwhelmed.
"And you think I had something to do with it?"
"Did you?"
"why would I do that?"
"I don't know. Because I let him do something I didn't let you do."
"Jesus Christ, Sash, I'm not a monster. You're talking about killing someone. Do you even realize what you are saying to me."
"Please, Dante. Swear to me you had nothing to do with it."
"Sash, look at me. Come here and look at me."
Reluctantly Sash lets Dante get close enough to be able to hold her initially by the shoulders and then firmly under the chin. He tilts her head so she's looking up to him, directly into those magic, storm-filled eyes.
"I would never do anything like that."
A long moment passes while Sash holds his gaze. Finally, she looks away and sighs heavily, the weight of her accusation already bearing back down on her.
"Jesus, Dante, I'm sorry."
Dante can't help but laugh. "Why would you think that? Of all the crazy things."
Now Sash lets him take her in his arms.
"I don't know."
She rests her head against his chest. "It's just, I told you his name two weeks ago, and now he's dead. Why did you even ask me his name?"
Dante kisses the top of her head. "To know, Sash, that's all. To know."
"I'm sorry", Sash says again.
Dante smooths the hair over her ear. "I can't believe you are pregnant."
Now Sash giggles. She can't believe she thought her Dante was a killer. Just thinking it now makes it all seem so stupid.
"Are you mad?"
"Yes. You should have told me earlier."
"I know. I just couldn't ever find the right time."
"You didn't have to tell the whole world, you know."
Dante pulls away from her momentarily and Sash doesn't know initially what he's referring to.
"This? That wasn't me. I'm as shocked as you are."
"That ransom note wasn't you?"
Now Dante is confused. "If it wasn't you, who was it?"
"I have no idea, but we should probably work out what we are going to say."
Dante breaks away from Sash to refill his glass. If it wasn't Sash, and it wasn't Henry, who the fuck was it?
"You know I'm going to have to punish you. For telling me you were on the pill."
Just the thought of it makes Sash's knees weak. For Dante, he can hardly believe his stepsister has deceived him.
"You took what wasn't yours-." Dante continues, his back still to her.
She stole his seed and is carrying his baby. He'd never tell her, but the idea makes his cock tingle so much he might have to punish her right here on his private plane.
She's even more devious than he is. The perfect couple. Whiskey fizzes over the ice cubes while Sash can't wait for her stepbrother to turn round to her.
"-That makes me very angry."
Now he turns around. Leaning up against the bar, he casually brings the glass to his mouth.
The whiskey tastes peaty and warm as it slides down to his stomach. Sash holds her hands protectively over her belly. She feels weak in his presence, embarrassed by the way he knows she's looking at him. Her secret is out, and she's not sure if it's more dangerous now that it's in his hands or not. It's certainly more real.
"Will you let me have it?"
Sash is unsure where the question has come from.
Dante lets a long moment pass before he answers.
"Let's see what happens in New York."
Chapter 38
They have no idea what they expect to find in the trunk of the car, or indeed whether they'll find anything there at all. However convincing the call that came in was, they get a handful of these every month that lead to nothing, so Officer Lopez, the senior of the two men tasked with finding out, is skeptical at best.
The newish model Ford is parked in the lower section of a central underground car parking site, half disguised by shadow. From the outside it just looks like any other car, but despite that, the two men approach slowly, with guns drawn, in the event that the whole thing is a ruse.
There is just enough light to see through the windows, and a quick glance reveals nothing out of the ordinary. A coffee cup in the drinks holster, manuals stuffed in the glove compartment, a hi-vis jacket on the back seat.
What would the car of a construction worker be doing with a hostage tied up in the back?
Lopez nods to his partner and then nods to the trunk. Jones walks forward to try the catch, stepping back when he finds it locked. Lopez makes another signal. He balls his hand up into a fist and twists it silently against the air. Jones understands immediately. He heads back to the car, makes a strong fist and thumps twice on the metal.
The sound echoes around the concrete carport, spinning against the walls and disappearing up towards street level. The two officers wait for a response, but nothing comes. Jones places his ear to the metal lid to see if he can hear anything beyond it. If there is someone trapped inside, there is a chance he could already be dead.
Jones shakes his head.
Lopez shrugs his shoulders.
The two men stand side by side, looking at the back end of the car, as if trying to work out how best to proceed.
They have no tools to open it up. When they caught the call they were the closest patrol car to the spot. The request was to check it out. As far as Lopez is concerned, he's done that. If there is someone in the back of the car, and they didn't respond to the pounding on the metal, which anyone within a hundred meters will have heard, he figures they must already be dead, and if they are already dead, it's not his problem. While he thinks about this, ready to pack his gun away and send it up the line, Jones has approached the car again, and found the front door to be unlocked.
He clicks it open and looks at Lopez. Lopez gives him a shake of the head that means the last thing he wants to do is open the trunk up and find a body cut into minute little pieces. He'd prefer to wait for someone else to do that so it doesn't spoil his lunch.
Jones ignores his partner and proceeds instead. There is a catch to the right of the accelerator pedal that opens the trunk up when pressed. Jones makes sure his partner is prepared, which means he's stood at least five meters away from the trunk with his gun pointed directly at what might jump out of it, dead or alive, gets himself into a position from which he can quickly remove himself from and presses the release catch.
The lid pops and the trunk yawns open a handful of inches. Jones quickly joins his partner, and the two men stand there for a moment guns held high. When they are sure the lid isn't going to lift itself any further on its own, and they've made absolutely sure that nothing
is going to jump out of it, they look at each other, nod gravely and go to the car.
Jones is a little more confident in matters like this, and here he is the man that begins to take charge. At the edge of the car, and with one hand on his gun, Jones lifts the lid.
Inside the trunk, amongst paint cans and assorted items of an industrial nature, curled up in a fetal ball, hands behind his back, legs bound and tape wrapped twice across his mouth is Henry. His skin is gray, his eyes are closed and there is absolutely no sign of movement.
"Fuck", Jones says.
The two partners look at each other and then back to the stranger curled up in the back of the car.
"Do you think he's dead?"
Jones holsters his gun and reaches out to touch the bare skin of Henry's arm.
"He's cold. Really cold."
"I didn't ask you whether he was cold, I asked you whether he was dead. Check his pulse."
Lopez still has his gun pointed at Henry as though bound up and unresponsive is still cause to believe he's a threat.
Jones moves his hand up to Henry's neck, pushing insistently against the soft tissue to try to find a pulse. Lopez waits patiently, his own heart rate increasing so much both officers can hear it.
Jones looks at his partner gravelly and shakes his head.
"Nothing."
Just then, Henry's eyes flash open, and he begins to wriggle about in the trunk violently, like a fish just pulled out of water. Lopez shits himself so much from the surprise, he drops his gun and a round fires off accidentally, ricocheting against a nearby column.
Lopez hurries after his pistol, ready to stick it in Henry's belly for causing him such a shock. Jones pulls away too, his gun gripped firmly in his hands.
When both of them realize that not only is Henry not dead, but that he doesn't pose either of them a threat, they holster their guns again and go to him.
Jones cuts the rope away from his arms and legs, and pulls him upright. With his hands free, Henry rips at the tape that has been covering his mouth, before gulping down large intakes of air and composing himself.
"Am I pleased to see you fellas", Henry says, his arm rested casually on Lopez's shoulder. "I thought I was going to die without getting a final smoke."
Chapter 39
Even though he wants to, Dante makes a point of denying Sash sex on the plane back to New York. She has deceived him and he wants to punish her, even if in doing so he ends up punishing himself. There is nothing more he would like to do then fuck her hard at ten thousand feet in the air, but Dante knows how powerful anticipation is, and besides which, he can't show he stepsister that she can get away with what she has done.
He'll wait, and both of them will enjoy it more because of it.
There have been so many revelations in the last twenty four hours, Dante can hardly keep up. He's going to be a father again, this time with Sash. It is another perfect element to their incredible story so far, even though he would never tell Sash he felt that way.
He always wanted it, of course, even though he could easily have waited for a bit longer as well. If she's carrying his child, there is no way she'll want to fool around with anyone else. Just knowing that makes Dante's cock so rock hard it could pierce through lead. And it'll be their child together. A child with the only girl he has ever wanted to be with. Oliver will always be special, but the baby that Sash is carrying takes them to another level of commitment entirely. Not only has he taken her virginity, he's also impregnated her.
If there was anything better in the world, Dante didn't know of it.
The revelation to the world about their affair is something much less appealing, that leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Dante still has no idea who is responsible, nor what to do about it. Judging by the strength of the images, it already seems too late to deny it. His only hope might be to create a larger story to act as an attention deflector, or embrace it, and hope for the best. Dante isn't the kind of person that usually hopes for the best, but in this situation he might have to.
The other more pressing matters are the death of Jason Walker, which Sash seems to have taken particularly to heart, and the abduction of her father, which she might see as a little excessive in order to maintain their privacy. He'll deal with that, of course, when they come to it.
The transfer through the airport is smooth enough. Through Alex, Dante has promised to give a press conference and answer all questions put to him by a selection of invited journalists, knowing the longer he leaves it to answer, demonstrates a much greater chance of guilt, but there are still a huge number who want to force the story out of him. They are there on the concourse, inside the terminal and surrounding his private car when he gets to it.
Alex had suggested putting on a fleet to confuse them, but Dante didn't see the point, considering they knew exactly where he was going to end up anyway.
During all of this, Sash keeps one hand on her belly, the other firmly clasped in her stepbrother's hand, keeps her head down away from the camera lenses, and tries her best to do everything her stepbrother has asked of her.
She had no idea it would be like this. Yes, he's her stepbrother, but they are both consenting adults, and nothing they are doing is illegal. They are old enough, they love each other, so what exactly is the problem?
Abbey's tried to call her almost a hundred times. She's had so many messages from friends, colleagues and acquaintances, she's had to give up reading them and delete them as soon as they come in.
Her facebook has exploded with posts, half of which have just been plain offensive, the other half a mixture of positive and negative messages and questions. The one person she hasn't heard from and doesn't know why, is her dad.
The car cuts quickly through the New York city streets pursued by a swarm of journalists on motorbikes that look like angry wasps. There are hundreds of people gathered outside Dante's obelisk, ready to shout or cheer him as soon as he steps out of the car. Alex watches the pandemonium from her penthouse office several storeys above. Police have formed a cordon and are working hard to keep people under control. Journalists seem to have been given special priority and sit in a separated section to the side, their cameras poised.
Finally, Dante's private car arrives. Once outside, he ignores the chants that come towards him fiercely, and with his stepsister firmly in his grasp, he makes his way into his office.
Chapter 40
"Shares have plummeted", Alex says. "Actually, they've not just plummeted, they've fallen off the fucking chart completely."
She's pacing up and down the room, high heels digging into the expensively laminated floor. There are pock marks all over from several years of doing the very same thing.
"Five hundred million wiped off the value of Hix Industries. It's a fucking shit storm, Dante, how did you let this happen?"
Sash can feel Alex eyeball her with a stare that would melt lead. Dante directs his gaze to Caulder, who is sat in a separate part of the office, filing his nails with an expensive looking, monogrammed emery board.
"I don't know, Caulder?"
He shrugs, and with his arms out, he says, "I did my best."
"You fucked up."
Dante points an accusatory finger at him.
He swipes the air and turns the corners of his mouth up at the edges. It isn't quite a smile, not quite a snarl. It's an emotionless gesture at best. I'm not the one fucking my stepsister is something he'd like to say, and might do, if Sash wasn't present.
Alex ignores the two of them.
"You could have paid a hundred of that and saved yourself this issue. You might still have to."
"What does that mean exactly?"
Alex pushes through the double doors, retrieves something from her desk and drops it into Dante's lap. Sash doesn't need to look more closely to see where the photos were taken, she recognizes the building immediately.
"Who sent these?"
"Does it matter who sent them?" Alex snaps at her, before returning her atten
tion to Dante. To her, Sash is nothing more than something rotten they've all trodden in. According to Alex, they wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for her.
"The damage is done, Dante."
"This is L.A. Who the fuck knew I was in L.A.?"
"Everyone in this room, and everyone else you told about it", Alex says, as though it's obvious. "Does it matter? They want the same, otherwise they are threatening to publish those as well. The first one was a threat, Dante. A warning shot. This could topple you completely. Hymen reconstruction surgery? Fucking hell."
"Careful, Alex", Dante warns, his voice showing the first strains of anger at her approach. "I don't employ you to comment on what I do in my private life."
"No, you employ me to sort it out when everyone else does."
There are so many photos, it's obvious it could be nothing else. Dante feels a sharp snap of irritation cut through him. These photos represent a personal invasion on his private life, and he wants someone to be punished for it.
"Caulder?"
"Yeah, I know."
Dante drops the photos on the empty seat to his right and relaxes back into the couch. Sash makes a point of putting her hand on his leg, doing it slowly and deliberately so Alex can see.
"Anyway, that's only one of the problems we have. The other is what you are going to do about this... problem."
Her arms go up to indicate Sash as the intended recipient of her remark.
"Hey!" Sash says, angry she's being directly accusing of doing something wrong, and sick of sitting there and keeping quiet for the sake of her stepbrother.
"It's a fuck up, Sash. Do you even have the slightest idea what you two being together does for Dante's worth?"
"I don't give a fuck what it does for Dante's worth."
"Yeah well he does. And I do too."
Sash shakes her head in disbelief. Where does Alex get off talking to her like that, and why isn't her stepbrother defending her already? There is an uncomfortable silence that hangs in the air, the sound of the emery board rasping across Caulder's nails the only semblance of noise, other than Alex and Sash's tense breathing.
Heated: A Stepbrother Romance (Full Length Novel) Page 20
