by L V Chase
Grayson
She's gone. Despite what Ally said, she's really gone.
I've scoured the campus looking for any signs of Cin. Her room's empty other than bits of trash or discarded old schoolwork. None of her art projects are in the art room. Even her damn gym locker is empty.
I try calling her but there's no signal or she blocked me, because my phone just keeps ringing and ringing until I get an error message. The call doesn't even go to voicemail.
Did she go to Brady? I didn't think that she'd be that reckless in the end, but nothing else makes sense. If she had to cut me off to get a job, that's one thing. But if she doesn't even have a place to stay, like Ally said...
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Desperation finds me back in my villa to meet the biggest asshole I know. Not me. Him. Damian. He's still living here, in principle, although I see him around less and less each time after he publishes one of his bullshit stories. Maybe he's afraid of me.
He should be.
I know he still comes back in the evenings to shower, so I camp out in the common area, waiting. I keep the lights off as I sit in the darkness, checking my phone every five minutes for any reply from Cin. Then, the front door rustles and opens.
Damian enters, flicking on the foyer's lights so that I have a clear view of his face. His eyes widen when he spots me rushing towards him from out of the darker common area.
"What the fuck—"
Damian barely gets out a shout before I grab him by the front of his dark jacket and pull him towards me.
"Where is she!" I yell into his face. Bits of spittle fly onto him. "Where?"
Damian has to know. He's had his fingers in all the shit ever since he showed up. If someone or something's hurting Cin, he's always involved. I shake him hard once and hear his teeth clack together.
He tries to push me away, but my grip is too strong for him.
"The fuck, Voss!" Damian bares his teeth. "Get off me!"
I seize him by the collar of his jacket with both hands. "Where's Cin?" I growl.
Damian laughs. "Why? She ditch you? Now that she sees what you really are—"
I bash my forehead into his mouth, then shove him towards the ground. He flails backward while crying out. When he lifts his head, there's blood trailing down his broken lips.
Damian touches his mouth, then stares at the crimson streaks on his fingers. For a moment, I think he's going to run away like the pussy he is. Then, he shouts something incomprehensible and lunges towards me from the ground like some wild animal.
He crashes into me, throwing me backwards into a lamp. All three of us, Damian, me, and the lamp, go tumbling to the ground. Something shatters. The back of my head hits the wall or the floor, and I see bright spots for a split-second. But then I see red, and I'm wrestling with Damian, rolling across the ground.
I get behind him, wrapping my right forearm around his neck in a chokehold. He bites me arm, and I can feel wet blood drip from the stinging wound, but I don't let go. I punch him twice in the side with my left fist, and he stop biting. I punch him a third time in the ribs, and he whimpers. The fight’s all out of him now.
I whisper harshly into his ear while still keeping in a chokehold. "If you don't tell me where Cin is, I'll kill everyone you care about. First, your mother. Shouldn't be hard to make someone in prison disappear. Then, your brother. Then, your father. I'll kill them all, one by one."
I don't know if I'm going too far, but all I have to do is imagine Cin at Brady's mercy—he won't have any—and I know I'll be willing to do anything to find her again.
Damian makes a gurgling noise, and I loosen my hold on his neck. He coughs twice and gasps before speaking in a strained voice.
"I don't know," he says. "I swear, I don't know where she is. Do you mind?" He coughs again and then tugs on my arm.
I let go of him and shove him away from. Damian lurches forward on this hands and knees, rubbing his neck with one hand. His face is red.
"Whatever she's doing," Damian says as he looks back at me, "it's all her. I had nothing to do with it." He looks at the floor and speaks more softly. "Check with Brady. That'd be my guess."
I glare at Damian but realize that he's likely telling the truth. Damian didn't make her do anything. He didn't arrange anything, either, from what I can gather.
No, this is my fault. I pushed Cin away when she told me about the Brady deal. Fucking hell. It was a crazy idea, damn it. But she must have gone behind my back to get to him. Fuck!
It takes me over half-an-hour to track down the address of Brady's condo in the city, then another half-hour to drive there, but there's no sign of him or anyone else. The shades are drawn and the lights are out. I ring the doorbell and pound on the front door of the apartment for a good ten minutes until someone calls the police on me.
I'm tracking down assholes, one after another. Damian was useless, and Brady was missing, so I head to the next one.
Dad.
When I head home, I find Dad in his home office as usual. I barge into the room without knocking. Dad's sipping a glass of wine while reading through some papers. He looks up with an angry expression, ready to say something, but he must see that I'm not fooling around, because he presses his mouth shut.
"Where's Brady?" I ask. "He's not at his place in the city. Where is he?"
Dad sets his glass of wine down and purses his lips. "This is about that girl, isn't it? She was holding you back—"
I step forward and grab the wine glass roughly off the table, sending dark purple liquid scattering across the desk and papers. Splotches of purple liquid stain Dad's clothes.
"Grayson!" Dad roars as he stands up, his fists clenched.
He starts lunging towards me across the table, but I smash the wine glass on the table, and the sudden violence brings him to a halt. I hold up the jagged stem in my hand, bringing it to Dad's neck. A sharp edge presses into his skin.
"Where's Brady?" I push the glass stem harder into Dad's neck. "I'm not fucking around. Neither should you."
Dad speaks in a surprisingly calm voice. "I never fuck around, as you put it. Brady is none of your business."
He's calling my bluff. I want to slice him open, pour all my frustrations into one, quick jab. But that's not who I am. Not yet, at least. But there's more than one way to kill a man. Some less wrong than others.
I lower my hand. Dad smirks, thinking that he's won. I speak before he can, though.
"I'll tell everyone," I say. "I'll hold a press conference and confess everything I know about you, your corruption, your sex ring. Everything."
Dad narrows his eyes. "You know how stupid that would be? There's no way you’d get away unscathed."
"I'm willing to go down, as long as you do, too."
I'll give up everything if it means saving Cin. I still hate it that she's the one risking everything to go after Brady because of me. That's not how it should be, fucking hell. I don't care if I burn as long as Cin is safe.
Dad studies my face for a minute, then steps backwards and sits with a resigned sigh.
"You fucking idiot," he mutters under his breath.
I shrug. "Alright. I'm calling Damian fucking White. He'll be thrilled to set this up." I reach for my phone.
"Enough!" Dad slams his fist into the table. He winces as the fragments of broken glass pierce the side of his hand. He frowns in silently. I hold my breath, waiting.
"Your girl is with Brady at his summer house on the beach," Dad finally says. "He keeps it in his aunt's name to avoid trouble from cases gone awry."
"Cases?" I ask.
"He works for the DA's office, remember? Criminals. Payback and so on."
I shake my head. "Whatever. Give me the address."
Dad reaches for a notepad and tears off a page. He scribbles an address, then slides it over to me. I take the paper and read the note. It's about fifteen minutes away.
Dad's saying something, but I don't waste another moment with him. I leave to find
Cin, praying that she's unhurt.
29
Cin
I crawl back and forth in the wine cellar. My knees sting enough that they must be bleeding, but I haven’t seen any blood on the cement yet, and I know I can’t look back and check without breaking rule number twenty-one.
“Stop,” Brady orders. “Push-ups.”
I kick my legs back, mechanically starting the push-ups again. When he’d ordered me to scrub the floor, I thought he had been just taking advantage of the situation, but now it’s evidently a way to break me down, physically and mentally. And enjoy watching the breakdown.
Brady’s shiny Oxford shoes stride in front of me. He crouches down, his knees spread apart. His crotch is so close to my face that the smell curdles between us.
He watches me, my arms trembling as I lift myself up. His head tilts, concentrating on my face.
“Squats,” he says.
I pull myself up, starting the squats. I feel tiny rocks fall off my knees along with a trickle of blood.
“Go lower.”
With the lingerie, it’s hard to do, and harder when I’ve been doing this long enough that I feel like my muscles could detach from the rest of me, falling off like dead leaves.
“Are you tired yet?” he asks.
“No, sir,” I say. Rule number twenty-six: refer to Brady as sir.
“This could be over in a few simple words.”
He wants to break me. He wants me to fall to his feet, begging for him to get it over with and fuck me. I’ll play along that we’re all having fun and this is just a kinky game, but I’m not going to ask him to fuck me.
“Back to push-ups,” he says, his voice starting to sound bored.
I fall back onto my hands and my toes. My arms wobble as I start pushing off the ground.
“Elbows tucked back,” he says.
I finish three before my left arm collapses, followed by the rest of my body.
“You know the rules,” he says. “That’s a failure.”
I roll over, staring down at my battered knees, so that he won’t see the rage gathering in my face. I crawl to the mattress. I pull the bottom half of the lingerie to my knees. To give him some credit, he’s broken me enough that I’m not ashamed of my own nudity in front of him. I press my hand against my vulva, rubbing against my clit. I think about Grayson, his smile flickering in and out of my mind.
“A little more enthusiasm,” he says, though his breath sounds labored now. “Grab the cushion and ride it.”
I kick off the underwear. I pull the cushion underneath me, my arms barely functional. The cushion is saddle-shaped. I clamber onto it and start grinding up against it. I close my eyes, trying to think of Grayson, but it’s hard to think of him when I hear Brady’s breath so close to me. He moves in front of me.
“Open your eyes,” he orders.
I open them.
“Tell me what you’re thinking about,” he says.
“You,” I say.
He smacks me. The pain barely registers.
“Liar. Hump it harder. I know you don’t fuck this slow,” he says.
I rub against it faster. I’m dry and the friction burns.
“Tell me what you’re thinking about,” he says again.
“You,” I repeat.
He smacks me again, harder this time. “You’re thinking about Grayson Voss, aren’t you?” he demands. “You think he actually wants you? They all think that. Diana did. She was so disappointed when she realized he didn’t. Keep humping.”
My thighs are burning. The edges of my vision are blurry.
“When I’m done with you, Grayson won’t ever be in your thoughts again,” he says. “It’ll be my dick you think of every single day, and how it fucked you up. Grayson thought he could save you from me. Did you know that? And I’ve turned him into a fool. I got Diana and you. And when you go back into the world, he’ll never want you.”
“You said he never wanted me,” I say.
He hits me again. This time, I nearly fall off the cushion and blood coats my mouth. He grabs my hair, yanking my head back.
“God, you think this badass act is helping you,” he hisses. “But it just gets me off. I have to deal with uppity bitches like you in my courtroom all day long. I used to play Courtroom with Diana, and I’d fuck her senseless against a table, pretending she was one of those goddamn defense lawyers or those bleeding-heart judges. She’d pretend she didn’t like it, but we both know it’s how men and women are made to fuck.”
He stands up, wrenching me up by the hair. He half-drags me toward the stairs. I try to keep up, but I stumble on the stairs. My fingernails scrape at the steps, trying to push myself up, but he just keeps dragging me.
We get to his kitchen. He lurches me forward by my hair before letting me go. I stagger, catching myself on the counter.
“You’re making dinner,” he says.
I turn, seeing strands of hair littering the white tiles between us.
“You’re making shrimp linguine with white wine,” he says. “If it’s decent, you can make yourself a sandwich.”
I don’t have any energy left, but I could absolutely garner enough to hit him. I focus on finding the right pots and pans. I have no idea how to make shrimp linguine with white wine, but his kitchen has one of those tablets. As he leaves, I consider trying to send a message out to somebody, but the only person I would message is Grayson, and nothing I could say would be a good enough explanation to him. I deceived him. I threw myself into the fire that he fought so hard to quell.
I find a shrimp linguine with white wine recipe online. I start to boil the water. I massage my thighs, staring at the stove’s little blue flames. I hear something smack against the floor in another room. I focus on the task. I’m going to need to find something to stir the noodles with. I open a drawer, finding rows and rows of knives—butter knives, steak knives, butcher knives.
God, I might just want to stab Brady over and over.
I run my hand over the handles. One of these could have been used to stab Diana. I never looked into the murder case enough to know if they narrowed down the weapon to a certain type of knife, but at this point, I’m certain it was Brady. The question is whether he’d be arrogant enough to keep the knife.
The drawer abruptly slams shut, nipping my fingertips. I spin around. Brady is standing right behind me. He’s apparently more nimble-footed than he looks.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks, stepping close enough that his knee forces my legs apart. “You don’t need any knives to cook shrimp linguine.”
“I’m—I was just going to go downstairs to get the wine,” I say.
I try to move past him, but he grabs my arm, stopping me. His lip is curled up, but lights dance in his eyes with entertainment. His erection rubs up against my abdomen.
“If you think you need a knife for this dish, you need some sense knocked into you,” he says. “I’ve heard a good skull fuck will improve a woman’s mindset.”
He unbuckles his belt with one hand.
My only chance is to get to the knives, but my back is pinned up against it.
Time ran out.
30
Grayson
The road to Brady's beach house turns into a gravelly path when I'm almost there. I can hear the ping of pebbles kicked up by my tires as they ricochet off my car, but I don't care. I gas the accelerator, bouncing over the rough road until I see the two-story white building at the edge of the beach, a couple hundred yards from the surf.
There's no driveway or parking lot, just an open area of dirt and gravel. A black sedan’s parked there. I screech to a stop, my bumper inches from hitting the other car. I'm out of my car, racing towards the white door.
I don't bother ringing the doorbell or knocking. I slam my shoulder into the door. It takes two tries before the door splinters away from the frame. I kick it once to knock it clear.
A man's voice is shouting.
"Brady!" I shout back. "Motherfu
cker!"
I'm inside the house. I instantly spot Brady standing still in the middle of a kitchen. Cin's huddled to one side, her knees up to her chest, her arms crossed over her knees. She’s barely wearing anything.
I sprint towards Brady, running through the kitchen area. I spot a flash of metal and grab it as I run by. It's a steak knife. Good enough.
Brady's still frozen for a second. "Lawrence's kid? What the hell—" He spots the knife in my hand and his eyes widen. He finally thinks to back away, but I'm already on him.
I grab him by the arm sleeve as he tries to whirl away from me, tugging him back towards me. I slash at him with my other hand, but I miss, and the knife glances off his shoulder without cutting him.
Cin screams. "Grayson! Stop!"
Brady dashes into the next room and leaps over a sofa like a fucking pole vaulter despite his thick frame. I stab at his face when he pauses to stare at me, his eyes wide and disbelieving. He recovers from his shock fast enough to duck, and I miss his eyes, stabbing at empty air instead as he hides behind the sofa.
Cin grabs my arm holding the knife. "Don't. Grayson, don't. They already think you stabbed someone to death. Don't do this."
"Doesn't matter." I want to stop and embrace Cin, check to make sure that she's unhurt. But there's no time for softness, not while Brady's still there. Cin won't let go of my right arm, so I drop the knife from my right hand and catch it by the handle with my left. I lunge once, but I can't reach Brady without dragging Cin along.
"Grayson!" Cin cries. "Please! It's not worth it for him."
The desperation in Cin's voice finally reaches me. I had a plan. I had a hundred fucking plans, but they all went out the window once I saw Brady with Cin. He peeks out from behind the sofa again, then ducks quickly when I make a small motion towards him.
Fuck. I have to get my shit together.
"Yeah," I reply. "But it's worth it for you. Let go of my arm."
"Grayson—"
"Let go of my arm, damn it. Trust me, Cin."
