I threw up a little bit in my mouth. I couldn’t answer her because I was too busy trying not to full on vomit on the table. Sex with Ben? She had sex with Ben consensually? And thought I might have been trying to do the same?
Warden put his hand on the back of my neck and rubbed, slowly. The action caught my attention enough that I managed to shove down the vomit before it came up.
The gist of this, and she was still talking, was that after she’d seduced Ben. They’d concocted the whole idea of the fake death and a taking over the Alliance. It was convenient because she just so happened to keep falling in love with men who could help her do this.
If either Mercer or Marcus—the ridiculous M men—saw that they were being used in this contorted plan, they didn’t indicate it. Neither did the two nameless jackasses who completed this ridiculous farce. Four men, all being used, being dragged around by their dicks in the name of love. It was pathetic, but it was also dangerous. These people were dangerous and they helped rule the world.
“To what end?” Trace looked bored, as though he’d already gotten over the novelty of faking one’s death and wanted to get the fuck on with this. It was amazing I could read him so well when it used to be so much harder. “You shot at me, shot at Warden. Why? Killed a man who you could have used for your own agenda somehow. What was the purpose? Or are you just floundering in the wind, hoping to feel important because you have somehow managed to pull the wool over the eyes of people who really didn’t care if you lived or died?” He held up his hand. “Sorry, Derrick and Judson cared, and I gave a shit that they were upset because even when I didn’t like them that much I kind of still did.”
Judson laughed. I was so surprised by the sound that I jumped in my seat. He shook his head. “Thanks, Trace. I sometimes didn’t hate you, too.”
Kade put his head in his hands. Somehow he was making this all his own fault. If I could have reached him under the table, I’d have kicked him in the shin. Kade had to quit blaming himself every time something went wrong. He didn’t control the world.
Alyssa pointed at me. “You are making them soft.”
“What do you want? We’re not here just so you could have a coming out of the coffin party. You’re not dead. Woo-frickin-hoo. What do you want?”
She sighed. “I need your father.”
“Do you have a Ouija board?” I wished I had bit my tongue the second I said it, but once I’d gone there I just had to keep going? “A medium? How about that woman on TV from Long Island? She might be available. Or that dude who talks to the dead in front of the whole room of people. What was his name?”
She slammed her hand down on the table. Okay, I’d pissed her off, but Derrick was grinning, so I’d call it a win. “I am trying to be nice to you.”
“You had two of my loves shot. I get pissed when people do that.” Kidnapping I could apparently forgive pretty easily. “My father is dead. I killed him the same time I took out Ben.”
I was pretty sure that Derrick had killed Ben. My memory of everything leading up to shooting my father was fuzzy. It was like a violent blur and then bang… Dad was dead… and I left the Letters. I’d needed space. They’d only pretended to give me some. It was our version of a love story, as fucked up as that was proving to be.
“I am well aware. Everly, I think we should get some things straight between us. I am trying to be nice to you. I didn’t have you killed when I could have that whole time you were wandering around Baton Rouge, a lost little girl pretending you could do it on your own. I respected the effort even if you would have fallen on your face without Derrick watching every step you took.”
He cleared his throat. “Not true.”
She shook her head. “No point in patronizing her, Derrick. She would have fallen apart in a heartbeat.”
We’d gotten off track, and I didn’t give a shit what this woman thought. “You were being nice to me,” I reminded her to get her back on the subject.
“Yes. Judson loves you, and I do love my brother, whatever he thinks right now. So I left you alone, and then I had you warned to just go about your business. You could have stayed alive and left alone if only you had stayed in your cheap apartment and worked at your nothing bar.”
Things were starting to add up for me, the small details that hadn’t always made sense. Alyssa interfered with things to a large degree, using her own twisted look at the world as some kind of roadmap. “You tried to have Warden and Trace killed. Why? I get why you left your brother and former husband alone.” And I noticed she left the fact that Derrick loved me out of her explanation. She clearly didn’t like that at all. Was Derrick supposed to pine for her forever? I bet in her mind he was. “And Kade? Was he because of your deep-seated love for Mercer over there?”
“Mercer asked me to not kill Kade. He did hope the two of them could someday team up to do brilliant things together.” She ran her long fingernails up Mercer’s arm, and he smiled at her like a dog might do with an owner who scratched him behind the ears. Any second now, he might actually start panting.
She continued. “And I did try to have Trace and Warden killed. They had no place in my new world order. Warden interferes too much in what I’m trying to do economically and Trace has always just pissed me off.”
That was pretty much what we’d figured. Warden ran his finger over the back of my neck. He was okay and didn’t want me to freak out over that statement. So much could be conveyed with just the smallest touch.
“And you want what now?”
She sighed, throwing her brown hair over her shoulder. What was it that the entire world had found so tantalizing about this woman that they were obsessed with her? Even her brother had thought she all but walked on water and was willing to forgive her all her faults. I didn’t have siblings, but I figured it was more common than not to actually dislike the person. Sibling rivalry and all that. Had it been a twin thing? And why was Derrick, who saw through people so effortlessly, taken with her? She must be really, really good in bed.
Like the best blow job giver in the world…
“I want to get into your father’s inner vault in the Alliance headquarters.”
What the fuck was that? My confusion must have shown on my face because Kade answered my unasked question. “In New York City, it’s where the records are kept. The ones that your father forged so that we all got kicked out.”
I sat up straight. “Were you sleeping with my father?”
“Well, you’re sleeping with my brother so I don’t see what the difference was.”
In all of the years that I’d known my dad, he had never brought a woman home. Ever. He had seemed like he was too consumed with his work to be dating. And he’d never been powerful enough to be one of her top men. But that hadn’t meant she wasn’t sleeping with him.
It was hard for me to digest this. Alyssa had a lot of men in her life, and more power to her for liking a good fuck, but she wasn’t in a closed unit like I was. I would never… stray from the five guys I had. It was us and only us. That was how this worked for me.
Alyssa wielded sex for power as many people had done before her throughout history. And that seemed to include my father.
“Did you sleep with him to get him to mess up the background of these guys so they’d be thrown out of the Alliance and then let him spin in the wind when it fell in on his face?”
She rose and walked over to me. Warden tensed while the others all got to their feet. I put my hand out in the sign of stop. I wasn’t afraid of her. She needed something from me. I wasn’t going to die right now, and I knew how to survive hurt. I didn’t want to have to do that again, but if the scars on my back indicated anything, it was that I might have once been a girl made of sand but I was a woman with steel in my spine now.
I wasn’t the one feeling so bothered by this moment I’d had to get up and move. I wasn’t the one with the nervous energy.
Her own men hadn’t budged.
I was a woman who’d jammed a knife in
the eye of a woman who held Trace prisoner. They should be quaking in their boots to let her near me, armed guards or not.
Still, I kept still, and I smiled. Two could play the charming woman game.
“You were a surprise, Everly. I didn’t see you coming. I didn’t expect you to be kidnapped and brought into this. Ben and I had to figure out what to do about you. Your father was frantic as he should have been. Not for your safety, of course. Other than me, all women are expendable in the Alliance. You should know that by now. When the five of them no longer find your pussy exciting, they’ll dump you because you’ll have nothing to offer them.”
I blinked. If she had a point, she should make it. Emotional wounds could still be inflicted on me it would seem. Not because she’d stated that my loves would be done with me when they got tired of me—that could happen to anyone in any relationship, and I felt as solid in mine as was possible to be—but because she’d told me that my father was more concerned with her not being found out than with what happened to me.
There were more important things to be said than how I felt. I’d told Jud to hold it together. I had to do the same. So I forced myself to swallow. When I spoke, I actually sounded calm. “Why throw them out to begin with?”
“I wanted my brother back. I wanted Derrick back. The others I didn’t care what happened to them, but I wanted them powerless so they couldn’t investigate what happened to Derrick and Judson. The fact that they had pseudo-friends was an inconvenience for me. But then you came around.”
She acted like I’d done that. They’d fucking taken me from my apartment. Derrick had drugged and kidnapped me. I was the poster child for Stockholm syndrome, which was neither here nor there at the moment.
“Then you were such a problem. We were chasing you all throughout the country. You kept moving. You didn’t die when…”
The door opened, and a woman I expected never to see again entered. Was this just the week for people who should be gone to reappear? Constance, Judson’s housekeeper who had given me to Ben, came in carrying coffee.
My mouth fell open. Damn it, I should have known she was with Alyssa. She’d all but told me that. She was loyal to the Smythes. She always would be.
Judson pounded on the table in a movement similar to his sister and stormed away to stare out of the window. He was breathing deeply, evidenced by the up and down movement of his shoulders. He hadn’t known she was here either.
Constance put the coffee down on the table and embraced Alyssa like she was family. Alyssa held the older woman close before she let her go. “Come on, Judy, come say hello to Constance. She practically raised us. Surely you can forgive her for what role she played. She tells me she gave your little girl a warning and sweet Everly didn’t take it.”
Alyssa walked over to her brother and placed her hand on his shoulder. He jerked, and I rushed forward. She wanted to mess with me, fine. She wasn’t going to hurt Judson or any of them while there was breath in my body.
“Oh, brother. Still got that problem being touched?”
He turned around slowly, pushing her hand aside. “E, it’s fine. Seriously.”
“What a cute nickname. You call her E?”
She didn’t know they were the Letters, hadn’t known they would take me, and what plans they’d made since then.
But Constance did. She smiled. “They all made her call them by their first initial. Seems he’s adopted that for her. You will forgive me, Judson. You and your sister belong together. The two most beautiful babies I’d ever seen. You were both towheaded as children. Bright. Funny. You did whatever she said. And I swore to your mother I would always protect the family. I’ve done that.”
Judson kept his thoughts to himself. He put his hand out, and I took it. He linked us together, silently indicating to his sister he had no issue being touched. By me.
“Get to your point, Alyssa.” He spoke to her. “You want into the vault. Go ahead and do it.”
“I can’t.” She put her hands on her hips. “If I could have, I would have. Although Jeb was more than happy to end Everly’s life—I think he thought he was sparing you another round with Ben—he left his entrance coded for your fingerprints. I think at the end of the day he didn’t trust me that much. He wanted me to have to… persuade you to open that vault for him.”
I swallowed. My father had wanted to kill me. I’d suspected it but now to hear it from someone who knew…
Trace was up against me, taking my other hand. He brought my fingers to his mouth. “Fuck her. She doesn’t know why your father did anything. Even if she was sleeping with him. Only he knew what was in his heart. We can suspect his motives, we can believe he was going to do the wrong thing, the awful thing, but none of us know. He might have been coming to kill Ben.”
I appreciated what he tried to do. I really did. And I wanted to be cold inside, to be dead to pain, to be strong. The one tear that fled my left eye that I quickly batted away was all the pain she was getting from me today.
“You want to negotiate for the use of my fingertips?” I held up my hand. “To open my father’s vault because somewhere in there he has something you need. What is it? Proof that a woman can be in the Alliance? Proof that your family should have leadership of it? Something you need is worth negotiating with me.”
Mercer finally spoke as the totally bland Marcus sipped his coffee. “I designed the lock for him before I fell in love with Alyssa. It requires you to also speak into the door and show your eye.”
“How did you get all that information to code it? Never mind. Of course, you’re Alliance. You got it through satellites or something else that is going to make me never want to get naked and get in the shower again because someone is always watching. Don’t tell me.”
Kade shook his head. “Probably simpler than that. He recorded you.”
That was only slightly better. “The bottom line is that you could get that open by cutting off my finger and using recordings of me to open it and a visual representation of my eye, but you are afraid something will go terribly wrong and you’ll never get it. Mercer made it Mercer-proof and you don’t think you can get Kade to cooperate since he is probably the only one who could undo what he did if you kill me.” I took a long breath. “Better to negotiate with me to get me to cooperate. That’s it right?”
“Why, Derrick.” Alyssa clapped her hands together. “Your little whore is also smart.”
I rolled my eyes. “I won’t even consider doing it until you promise me certain things, and I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not sure I can trust your word. So I’m going to need some assurances. Some lethal assurances. Are you ready to deal with me like that, Alyssa? Because I’m not playing around. You want that lock open? I’ll give it to you. I don’t give two shits what’s in there. But we’re not leaving here until I have what I want.”
We stared at each other, and for the first time, I was one hundred percent certain we understood each other.
17
There was silence in the room. Alyssa finally spoke again. “We have guns to your head. Why would I negotiate with you?”
She knew the answer to that, she just wanted to hear me say it. “Because if you kill me or if I decide to end my own life to stop you from doing what you want, you may never get in that vault. And, yes, I could be pushed to such a place that I could decide to go that far. I’m not suicidal but don’t assume that doesn’t mean I won’t take any means necessary to screw with you the way you have with me.”
Alyssa crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you want, Everly?”
“I’ll go with you to New York, and I’ll get that vault open for you. When I’m done you’re going to let us all go and be done with us. I don’t want the Alliance. I don’t want anything to do with it. I want to go off with the five of them and live some kind of life that you stay entirely out of. We won’t mess with you, we won’t tell anyone what you did or how you did this. You can have whatever life you want—as long as you stay away from u
s.”
She smiled but showed no teeth. “That’s not fine. You have my brother. You have my husband. I’ve never let them go, not really. It’s fine if you want to sleep with Derrick, but he remains my husband. Mercer wants Kade. We can’t just separate.”
We’d stalled at the first point, and I hadn’t even gotten to the hard stuff yet. “Then this is over. That’s non-negotiable.”
She grabbed onto her brother’s arm, and this time he didn’t wince. Maybe it was because he still held my hand or maybe he had just been ready for it. “Do you want to be out of my life, Jud? Do you want me to be dead to you again? I know you’re mad but this is you and me. You know you’re going to forgive me. Do you want this… this no one… making deals that involve you never seeing me again?”
“Alyssa…” Judson sounded exhausted. “I’d be thrilled if I never had to see you again. Give Everly what she wants so she can give you what you want. Then we can all be done with this charade.”
Derrick spoke from across the room. “We’re not married. If you want me to actually kill you to put a period on that sentence, we can go ahead and get there right now.”
Her two men jumped to their feet. The two whose names I didn’t know stayed seated. They sure didn’t seem loyal to her. I filed that away in the back of my head as something that might or might not be useful later.
I met Derrick’s gaze. He was serious, but he had to know as well as I did that if gunfire started right now, he’d be dead, along with Warden and Trace, and not the fake kind. They’d keep me alive until I wasn’t useful. Judson would remain with Alyssa so she could prove some kind of point, and I didn’t know how it would eventually end for Kade. All of that was unacceptable to the nth degree.
Deadly Truths: Kiss Her Goodbye #3 Page 19
