Broken: Enemies to Lovers Romance (City Slickers Book 1)

by P Mulholland

  I left them to it and cleaned the bathroom of blood and threw Bryde’s clothes into a laundry bag. Then I took a shower. When I got out of the shower and dressed in some clean clothes, I could hear Farrah’s voice, quietly animated. I poked my head into Brydie’s room and she was sitting on my side of the bed reading from a book. She glanced up at me and smiled sympathetically.

  “Shouldn’t she be in hospital?”

  “Probably,” Farrah answered. “The police should’ve been called as well, but I bet a thousand M & M’s that they weren’t.”

  Bydie said something and Farrah lowered her dark head to listen to her. “She’s worried about you,” Farrah said. “She wants to know if you’re okay.”

  “She’s worried about me? I’m not the one who…” It just occurred to me that she might’ve heard me blubber like a pathetic eight year old who didn’t get a Wolverine figurine for Christmas. Fucking loser dork. “Yeah, I’m fine.” No, I wasn’t. “I’m going make some coffee. Do you two want some?”

  “Just water for Brydie, she just took some homeopathic medicine. Nothing for me.”

  Homeopathic medicine? I hoped the witch doctor knew what she was doing.

  “The dressings look good, Jake,” Farrah added as I was about to walk away. “You’ve done a great job coming to her rescue.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll let Brydie tell you when she’s ready. She probably doesn’t want to re-live it right now.”

  I realized I was talking about Brydie like she wasn’t in the room. I’m shit at this sort of stuff. Looking after people was never my forte, I can barely look after myself. It was easier to throw money at a problem, yet money wasn’t going to heal Brydie any faster. She was already heavily wounded from what life had hurled at her, a few more scars were either going to break her or make her even more cold and aloof.

  I made myself a strong plunger coffee without milk just to torture myself for crying like a dick. Muddy and bitter was what I deserved. I was too churned up on the inside to eat anything, so I sat in my own uselessness on the couch listening to the soft murmurs of Farrah’s voice reading to Brydie. The jealousy returned along with a longing for my ol’ pal Old Rip Van Winkle. I wished my mother did that for me when I broke my collarbone falling from the jungle gym. No. Wait. Trent pushed me off the jungle gym. Fucker. Or when someone slammed the door on my fingers. Trent again. Jeez! He must’ve hated having a little brother.

  Farrah appeared to fetch a glass of water. She’d taken her sandals off and made herself at home in my apartment with my girl, even though she’s not really my girl. Why the hell am I thinking this way?

  “Did you sleep last night?” Farrah asked, stepping towards me.

  I shook my head.

  She placed the glass of water on the coffee table and took my cheeks in her small, warm hands, looking closely into my eyes. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black, like a Louisiana Bayou, still on the surface with a mountain of mysteries underneath.

  “I was very close to kidnapping you when you were a little boy. You were such a sweetie and so well-behaved, until you went to high school. Then hormones took over.”

  “I wish you did kidnap me,” I said.

  She laughed. “Not sure if you’d suit the Malone status.” She brushed my hair back from my forehead and I wished at that moment it was Brydie who was touching me like that, not Malone’s wife. “C’mon.” She took my hand and led me into Bryde’s bedroom, climbing onto the bed and patting the space next to her. I followed carrying my cup of coffee, unsure what she had planned for me. “Open wide,” she said. I glanced at Brydes for reassurance, but her face was too swollen for an expression. I reluctantly opened my mouth and Farrah proceeded to drop several drops of some brandy tasting liquid onto my tongue. “You’re in shock.”

  “Is this going to get me high?”

  “No.”

  “Shame.”

  “Relax and close your eyes.” She started reading from a book with the title: All The Light We Cannot See, and I found myself drifting into a light sleep to the sound of her soothing voice. Although the story itself was heartbreaking; a blind girl left alone in a huge house during the Nazi invasion. The dollhouse her father made for her was a miniature replica of the house for her to memorize with her fingers, when she had to leave the confines of her room. I got the sense the book wasn’t going to end well and wondered why Farrah chose this particular story to read to Brydes at this particular time.

  An hour or so later there was another knock at the door that woke me up. Farrah had stopped reading and was applying ointment to Brydie’s face and body where bruises were starting to emerge.

  It was Isaac Malone this time, standing there like a prick with a pitchfork up his ass. I opened the door a crack. “What?”

  “I’m here to pick up my wife,” he said sharply.

  “You don’t want to see your baby sister? You don’t want to see what your friends did to her?”

  I didn’t wait for him to answer before I slammed the door back in his face, leaving him standing in the hall. I went to retrieve Farrah, but she was already packing her bag of tiny bottles ready to leave. She handed me two tubes of ointment. The Arnica ointment was for the bruising and Calendula ointment was for the cuts and grazes.

  “Don’t get them confused as the arnica will sting an open wound.” Then came a bottle of Arnica liquid with instructions to be taken internally.

  I followed her out into the living room and opened the front door again finding Malone standing in the hall with his arms folded. He was pissed off at me, but he had no right to be. I wondered when was the last time someone slammed a door in Ice Man’s face. I’d do it again a thousand times over even if it got me a bullet in my brain. It’d be worth it, just to see him squirm.

  Farrah graciously thanked me for my hospitality, not that I did anything that resembled being a host, and walked out the door to her husband. Her expression turned icy and I detected a shudder run across the Ice Man’s shoulders. He held out his hand to escort her, only to receive the cold shoulder. I quietly sniggered. The dude was going to get several days of icy silence from his wife and he deserved every minute of it.

  I was then witness to one of the most beautiful things I had seen in a long time. Farrah stopped dead at the elevator, swiftly turned to him and slapped him hard on the cheek. I mean, it was so hard, I almost felt the throb myself. Malone yelped not just from the pain but the humiliation. I closed the door on that conflict; I had my own problems to sort out. But I heeded the warning to never get between that mama bear and her cubs.

  “Farrah just gave Malone a good swipe,” I said to Brydes when I crawled onto the bed next to her, picking up the book Farrah was reading. Brydie snuggled in closer to me, laying her head on my shoulder. “Do you want me to keep reading?”

  “Yep,” she said huskily. I understood her that time.

  “Can I get you anything? Food? More water?”

  She shook her head.

  “Brydes, I’m not good at this sort of stuff. You’ve got to tell me what to do.”

  “It’s not your responsibility to look after me,” she whispered in a croaky voice.

  I kissed her forehead. Then I kissed it again, pressing my lips against her warm, soft skin for several seconds. I wanted to ask her if she heard me blubbering like a snotty little brat last night, but I was too embarrassed about it. I’d rather forget it even happened. Besides, thanks to Farrah I quickly concluded that I was in shock and out of my mind. In-san-ity.

  “Is it inappropriate for me to say that you’re still fucking gorgeous, even though you’re bruised and broken?”

  “Liar,” she croaked. “I’m too afraid to take a pee, ’cos I’ll catch a look at myself in the mirror.”

  I examined her face. The swelling and bruising had increased and looked worse than last night after I wiped the blood off. I hoped it was simply the healing process, the wounds getting worse before they get better. Otherwise, Farrah’s witch medicine m
ight speed up the process. Either way I was there for her.

  “I think you’re going to have some color on your face for while. Purple, yellow and red.”

  “Like a rainbow,” she whispered.

  I almost choked up again, but managed to take deep breaths to ease out the annoying emotions that accompanied this incident.

  “For the record, I’m going to kill whoever did this to you,” I said.

  She licked her split lip. “I suspect that’s already been arranged.”

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Brydie

  Everything hurt.

  Walking, peeing, eating, drinking, even breathing hurt like a hungry dog had feasted on me, ripping chunks of flesh from the bone. That’s what it felt like, although the reality was the exact opposite. I had a few fractures, grazes, and superficial bruises, nothing serious. The episode itself kept playing in my mind over and over and that hurt more than any savage dog bite or broken bone. It made me angry and depressed, but worst of all it made me frightened.

  The following week the bruising and swelling died down and my face was starting to look reasonably normal. But I became fearful at the thought of having to leave the apartment. Jake was wonderful. My hero. But when Monday morning came around I told him he must go back to work. He argued, but I insisted. It wasn’t his responsibility to look after me. He was my twenty-one year old roommate, not my nurse or caregiver.

  Weirdly, he seemed to enjoy fussing over me. He changed my dressings every day even though they were covered in pus, helped me dress and undress and sliced my food up into small pieces because I couldn’t do it myself with only one hand. Okay, so the helping me dress part was because he liked to perv at me. I knew that; I wasn’t born yesterday.

  Bras were tricky. I couldn’t reach behind my back to undo them, so I didn’t bother to put them on. Jake didn’t complain about that. Just like he didn’t complain when he helped me put my tee shirt over my head and bare chest. At first he tried to look away, but it was challenging to help dress me when he wasn’t looking at me. Then as I quickly got used to him dressing and undressing me, I got comfortable with him seeing me topless for two seconds. That’s when he stopped looking away, and that’s also when I found myself liking it.

  Luckily I could manage the bottom half of me, slipping elasticized shorts and sweat pants on. Easy. Actually, it wasn’t easy at all. Nothing was easy that first week.

  I spent the entire seven days either lying in bed or blobbing on the couch watching daytime soaps and feeling useless. I couldn’t go for a swim or go to work and pain was a constant in my life.

  “We’ve got to go food shopping tomorrow,” Jake said, while eating pizza on Friday night. Bought, not homemade. “We didn’t go last weekend ’cos…you… Anyway, the cupboards are bare.” He frowned at me. “Do you think you can manage it?”

  “I’ll try.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and sighed. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  I cleared my throat. He deserved an explanation. “These guys turned up and started smashing the place apart. They had already shot the glass doors in so they could slip in easily.”

  “Wait. Shot?”

  “Yes. Shot. With a gun.”

  “Fuck, those Malones are bad news.”

  “Leon locked me in the Dust Room, but they broke in while I was trying to pull the grill off the air conditioning system. I was up high and the guy pulled me down. I landed on my side and that’s how I fractured my ribs and elbow.”

  Jake clenched his jaw and made a hissing sound like air being let out of a tire. He was looking a little nauseous. “Were you trying to escape?”

  “Yeah. Failed attempt. Do you want me to carry on?”

  He hesitated, then said, “Yep.”

  “When he grabbed me by the arm to pull me up off the floor, rage came over me and I started kicking him. We’re talking defensive kicking, on my back with both legs in the air ramming my feet at him. I have good flippers with all the swimming.” I tried to make light of it, but he wasn’t buying it. Steely anger was cemented into his young face and his hands were tight fists. I never considered Jake to be a fighter until now.

  The next part of the incident I found difficult to talk about so I took a moment.

  “Did he hit you?”

  I nodded. “A couple of times in the face and dragged me…” I stalled, desperately holding back the tears.

  “He didn’t, you know, try to…?”

  “Rape me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  Jake covered his face with his hands and breathed out; he’d been holding his breath as I told the story. “I’m gonna fucking kill them. Didn’t you say Malone’s heavies have dealt to them?”

  “That’s what Farrah said.”

  “So they know who they are?”

  “I think so. They’re not who they first thought. Leon assumed the dead rat-doll was from their competitors and went down and threatened them, only to find out it wasn’t them.”

  “Jeez! I wonder how Leon likes to threaten his competitors?”

  “With blood on his hands, that’s how.”

  “Who was it then?”

  “I think they had something to do with our release from the Costa Rican prison.”

  Jake frowned. “Did they say something about it?”

  “I heard the name Estrada thrown about, unless I imagined it.”

  “Estrada?”

  “I know it’s a common surname so I might be wrong, but he was the Costa Rican foreign minister who signed off the release. Although that doesn’t make sense either, ’cos why would they come after Malone?”

  I looked at Jake. He was shaking his head, caught on a thought.

  “Are you okay?”

  “You were gone for hours, Brydes. I waited outside Malone’s building for ages. So what happened between the break-in and Leon bringing you home?”

  “Leon.”

  “Leon?”

  “The man punched me again and must’ve knocked me out.”

  Jake groaned.

  “I woke up on the carpeted floor of Leon’s office. The place was smashed to bits, including his desk and phone. The entire floor was steeped in darkness and it was quiet. The only light was from the streetlights outside streaming through the window. I was too scared to flick the lights on, for fear someone was waiting in the shadows for me to emerge. I assumed my cell was still in my bag in the Dust Room, so I began the arduous journey of crawling to the Dust Room.”

  “So when I came to get you, you were in his office?” His voice broke as he spoke. “I tried to go up there, but a security guard said everyone had left. And I just assumed,” he took a moment to pull himself together, “I assumed because the lights were off that no one was up there.” He rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms. I reached for his hand and he batted me away, instead pushing his chair back and leaving the table.

  “Jake, it’s not your fault.”

  He leaned against the kitchen bench with his arms crossed. “I should’ve barged past the security guard.”

  “You haven’t got a keycard,” I argued. “You couldn’t have done anything. Stop blaming yourself.”

  “And Leon went back for you?”

  “Yes. He found me outside the Dust Room door. I had crawled there. It took me so long because I had to keep stopping to breathe through the pain and I couldn’t use my left arm. And my head was heavy and hurt like I’d been hit by a freight train.”

  “Where had Leon been?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to Leon since that night.”

  “So, he just left you there to die?”

  “No. I think he was trying to protect me.”

  Jake’s eyebrows shot up. “You reckon? It looks like he went off to sort out his own shit, then came back for you three hours later.”

  “Why are you getting angry at me?”

  “I’m not.” He calmed down. “I’m just angry at the situatio
n. No, I’m not angry, I’m fucking outraged.” He roughed up his hair with his hand again, taking deep breaths. “Where does he live?”

  “Who?”

  “Leon fucking Malone.”

  “I don’t know. Jake, you’re stepping into dangerous waters.”

  “Where does he live?” he repeated.

  “I said I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know where your own nephew lives?”

  “No. Jake please, don’t go down this path. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

  “I need to get out of here.” He snatched his car keys from the kitchen bench and stormed out with saying goodbye.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Jake

  I went straight to his swanky apartment, the filthy rich piece of shit that he is. His door was open a crack as if he was expecting someone, probably left open for one of his lady friends.

  The lights were dimmed in the smoke filled space while Nina Simone played in the background. I could hear distant laughter of the feminine variety coming from up the hall where the bedrooms were. I glanced at my watch. It was only 6.50pm but he already had someone in bed. The rotten scoundrel probably wanted her out the door early before the next one arrived.

  I took a moment to have a look around. It had been months since I was last here. Framed movie posters from the 1960’s and 1970’s still adorned his walls – The Sting, Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Hustler, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt.

  The furniture was straight out of the 1960’s which could be deemed tacky if it was anyone else but Corey Austin. A single lava lamp in the large spacious living room beamed out a red light. Chicks loved his style. Chicks loved him.

  I turned back to the front door and slammed it shut, then waited for the piece of shit to emerge. And eventually he did. He swaggered out with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, his hair was a mess and he was wearing nothing but boxers and a tee shirt.