To Catch A Rook (All The Queen’s Men #1)

17. Chapter 14 - Hillary

I tumbled down the well in billowing skirts, my hair whipping around me on a strange, floaty breeze. I landed in the center of the earth; the land where my nightmares lived and forced me to play.

I hit the hard ground with a hard thump, but I didn’t feel any pain. The pain down here wasn’t physical—even when I was speared to death, or had my hair pulled out by its roots, I couldn’t actually sense it; this place was a mental torture chamber, a rolling display of all my past failures and those yet to come.

The familiar resounding sound of horse hooves racing toward me reverberated in my bones, and I braced myself for him.

A disjointed laugh echoed all around me as the black stallion stopped in my path, its rider cloaked in shadows. The bronze skeleton mask molded to his face hiding his features, but I knew it was him. It was always him.

“Are you lost, little girl?”

The dark resonance of his voice was soothing; coaxing me into a false sense of calm. I wrinkled my brow in confusion, looking down at my appearance to see what he saw. Who I appeared to be this time.

I wore a baby pink nightgown with white teddy bears stitched across the front; pretty hand-darned laced cuffs covered the lengths of my forearms; an exact replica of the one my grandmother had gifted me when I was five.

I shook my head at the rider and cast my gaze downward, clutching the soft blue stuffed toy elephant in my fist. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding it.

“Come.”

The rider beckoned me forward with a leather-gloved hand, and I felt an inexplicable pull toward him. He swiftly hopped down from his horse and placed two rough hands on my hips before lifting me onto the front of his saddle. I complied and said nothing, as if my ability to fight had somehow been taken from me.

I shivered, but not from cold. He pulled himself up and settled behind me. Grabbing the reins, he commanded the horse forward. Tears fell down my cheeks in a constant drip as we took off at a steady pace, traveling through a landscape of nothing but blackness.

The terrain changed; we hovered on the bank of a blood-red river, human-shaped shadows floating on top of the sluggish water. Wisps of hands reached for me, their anguis hed voices muffled by the burble and bubble of the liquid all around us.

His firm body loomed over me and his mouth hovered beside my ear. His gentle whisper was delivered softly, but the message hardened every vein in my body to ice.

“You see, little girl? It’s not so bad in the dark.”

I woke with a start, a sheen of sweat coating my limbs like a second skin. Tremors wracked through my body as I came down from the dream.

I wasn’t supposed to dream. The strong prescription sedative I took every night should knock out every thought from my exhausted brain, but every now and again, a slew of nightmares slipped through like trained warriors of terror.

Tonight’s dream had been different. I had never shown up as a child before—I was usually college age when the rider appeared to take me away. My visit with Alec was influencing me more than I thought.

I removed my eye mask and pulled out my noise-canceling ear plugs, using the sounds of my bedroom as a distraction to calm my heart rate.

The steady hum of the mechanical cooling system—breath—the faint beep of my security system at the elevator—breath—the drip of the faucet in my ensuite that I still hadn’t gotten fixed—breath.

Five minutes of sound meditation brought me back down to earth. I was in my bedroom, lying in my California King, under the softest duvet known to man, in the most secure building in the city.

Logic wasn’t enough. My mind kept dredging up memories I had spent years compartmentalizing. I needed a distraction.

I couldn’t scroll through my phone; news of more criminals, election candidates, and business stats would kick-s tart my brain into work mode, and I didn’t need that at—I looked at my phone for the time—3:30 a.m.

Fuck. I was many things, but an early morning riser was not one of them.

One thing always helped, but I hated using it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d needed it. My hesitation to send the text was a bitter battle between my pride and my desperate desire for a few more hours of sleep.

Sleep won. I sent off the message before I could convince myself it wasn’t worth the inconvenience, then threw my phone into my covers before I gave in to the sucking spiral of social media.

I regretted that decision immediately. Within moments, my phone buzzed from somewhere in the duvet, and I had to hunt through the pile of pillowy feathers to fish it out.

“Hey,” I answered, keeping my voice quiet even though I was completely alone in the condo.

“Hey, Hill.”

Logan’s normally arrogant tenor was soft, and I immediately regretted reaching out to him. He had a whole family at home; they all slept in the same room most nights.

“I’m sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t. It’s my turn with Noble tonight. I’m rocking this little monster back to sleep.”

The image alone was enough to make me smile. We’d known each other our entire lives; had lived together, slept together, waged war against our fathers together. In all that time, I never could have imagined he’d play the doting father. Perhaps because I could never imagine myself as a mother. Time and circumstances had changed him.

Despite going our separate ways, he had become one of my dearest friends. I was his sobriety partner and helped him beat his addictions. He had given me the evidence to send our fathers to prison; although Stanley had disappeared without a trace, and Camden was living the high l ife under house arrest. Our lives intertwined in an irrevocable way.

He didn’t know about my vendetta, or the events that made my vendetta the beating thrum of my heart. But he knew me.

“How are you?”

I heard a shift as he adjusted the phone to his ear.

“Really, Hill?” His familiar conceited tone came through my speaker despite its quiet delivery. I could picture the haughty raise of his dark brows and the self-satisfied smirk, a look I’d seen a million times. “You’re going to have a catch-up call now ?”

I ignored him. “How are the cravings?”

A long-suffering sigh blew into the phone, followed by a second of silence.

“The cravings are fine, Hill. Still in NA, still staying away from everything I need to. Winter’s doing better, Noble’s fine. Hell, the guys are also fine, and I even like Shane some days.”

Before I could get the chance to ask another time-delaying question, he spoke again. “Okay, great catch-up. Tell me about the nightmare.”

“I didn’t say anything about a nightmare.”

“You text me in the middle of the night three times a year and it's always about a nightmare. Winter’s going to be upset you’re not telling her about this, you know.”

I slumped further into my bed and pulled the covers over me into a cozy cocoon. I pulled on my eye mask while I considered how to answer him.

“I don’t tell Winter because she’ll worry. You don’t worry about me.”

“Mostly true,” he agreed. “But its gotta be some fucking nightmare if you’re using me as your distraction. What gives, Hill?”

I c losed my eyes and described the nightmare in detail, down to the very last ghost of a human trying to grab hold of the rider’s horse.

Logan let out a low whistle, before muttering “shit, sorry buddy” when Noble let out a startled cry.

“Sounds like the nightmares I had in withdrawal. Winter sleeping next to me helped. Maybe you need a cuddle buddy.” He let out an irritated huff. “Fuck, I sound like Shane.”

I snorted into my pillow. “I can’t sleep next to anyone. A cuddle buddy will not help.”

“You slept next to me.” He laughed before I could get the words out. “Yeah, I know, we definitely weren’t cuddling. You made sure there were three feet between us at all times. But you have a huge bed in there, Hill. If the nightmares keep coming, try it. Probably isn’t hard to find a man who wants to sleep with you.”

“Maybe I’ll get four, like you do.” I teased back. The unorthodox lifestyle he’d chosen never failed to amuse me.

“Not as bad as it sounds, actually.” Logan let out a light chuckle. “I’ve got to go. Noble’s finally asleep. I have a short window to get him down before he notices I’m missing.”

I could feel my heart rate slowing, and my eyes getting heavier by the second. His advice was third tier at best, but our shared history had done its work to calm me back into a state of drowsiness.

“Thanks for calling,” I whispered, grateful he’d bothered to get back to me at this late hour. His loyalty and friendship were as precious to me as his son was to him.

“Of course.” I heard the soft click of a door and imagined him walking down the short hallway back to the master bedroom. I knew the layout well—it had originally been my house, after all.

“And Hill? Spend some of your billions on therapy. If a fucking shrink can help me, it can help anybody.”

The soft click on the other side of the state was all I heard through the line. I slipped on my earphones, nestled into the safety of my blankets, and promptly fell to sleep.

“Marco, lovely to see you again.”

The words were citrus to a raging canker sore on my tongue, but I maintained the professional smile I’d cemented to my lips.

He rose from his seat in the plush royal blue booth to shake my hand, an equally professional smile holding his cheeks in place. Pale gray eyes politely assessed me from the top of my curled blonde locks to the tips of my cream Louboutins.

I repressed a disgusted shudder at his attention.

I’d chosen Quintessence to talk business today. The familiar territory and common ground did little to assuage my nerves, but if all went to rot, Jeremy would have my back.

I scanned the bar as I settled into the comfortable booth seat, hoping for a glimpse of my favorite bartender. The crest of salt and pepper hair at the other end of the vast walnut bar-top settled my stomach only slightly, but I took the win.

Taming blood-thirsty sharks was a very routine part of conducting business at the top level of society; I was no stranger to swimming in their waters and leaving scarring bite marks when the situation called for it. Now that I knew the depths of Marco Alvarez’s depravity, I wanted to shred him into tough, blubbery pieces and leave him as chum.

I was an equally honed predator, yet, I was still a woman, biologically programmed to sense danger in the air from a man who felt he owned me and my sisters. The high-pitched wail no one else could hear warned we owed him for the gi ft of his attention, and he would take it by whatever means necessary.

I was definitely not into that kind of primal play.

“Let’s cut to the chase.” Marco’s slithering tenor slid over my skin like a poisonous snake. “Now that the Rodriguezes have joined our group of companies, you are no longer the power player. Shall we start making concessions now?”

Oh, ho. This was going to be fun.

“You mean, the elder Rodriguezes have joined your group of companies,” I said. “You seem to be forgetting that I have the true brains behind the operation as my partner. Not to mention considerable backing from the state.”

Marco’s stare was unblinking, keeping his hands clasped in front of him as if my position was of no consequence.

“Veronica and Vicente are a force to be reckoned with.” Pearly teeth flashed, an innocent smirk layered with malicious intent. “They have aligned themselves with a business they can trust.”

Armed with our drinks, Jeremy’s lean form stopped at our table.

What a saint.

I welcomed the interruption, and took a long sip of my dirty Martini to tame the boiling tendrils of anger seeping through my blood. Marco accepted the crystal tumbler of what looked to be bourbon from Jeremy’s outstretched hand, then turned his leering gaze back on me.

“We’re playing the game by giving Lane Enterprises the Power Chip contract, but we’ll be looking for other partnerships to better align with our … interests moving forward.”

It was pitiful really, how grown men seemed to think by dangling a carrot or a stick they could browbeat someone into s ubmission. As if the shriveled carrot or the gnarled stick had any authority over me.

I brought my shark to the surface of my skin, allowing the steely determination of a predator to leach into my tone.

“You seem to think that I’m desperate to be at the top. I’m not. I have power because people want to give it to me. I have alliances because people know that they’re betting on a sure thing.”

I licked my lips and pasted on my most condescending smile, no longer in the mood to play a game of pretense.

Marco Alvarez had the audacity to believe he was invincible. I had removed the cocks of many an invincible man, and he was next in line.

“I was crowned Queen, Marco. I didn’t need to take the throne to prove my dick is bigger than yours.”

I slid out of my seat and smoothed down my skirt.

“No need to threaten me,” I declared cheerfully. “I know exactly where I stand.”

My face was frozen in its perfunctory mask, but I couldn’t stop the challenging wink.

“I’ll see you at the ribbon cutting on Friday.”

And soon, I’ll see you at my black site.