Chapter Twenty-Five
Livia
My stomach does a complete rollercoaster cycle when I step out into the crisp winter air in my waitress outfit.
Just as Callen had been waiting for me the day before, it’s Mason who is waiting for me now. Of course, it’s a sports car. I wouldn’t have thought anything less.
“Hey, pretty girl,” Mason says as he opens the door for me. Dressed in their signature bespoke suits, Mason’s cologne drifts over, and my skin breaks out with goosebumps.
I hate it.
“Don’t call me that,” I say as a way of greeting. I also hate his smile. A lot.
He chuckles instead and, unperturbed, slips his body into the driver’s seat beside me.
It’s so ridiculous that I have to be chauffeur-driven to work. What am I saying? They’re doing this because I’m their prisoner, and they don’t trust anyone to not let me run away. That doesn’t make it sound as if they’re very confident in their abilities to find me anywhere in the world if I were able to escape, does it?
“How long will I have to be here?” I ask the question as if I’m asking it for the first time while Mason drives me to Jimmy’s BLT.
“You mean as our bride?”
“I’m not your bride. You married me as some sort of revenge against Kirill Yenin because you thought he was involved in stealing your painting and that my father and I were working with him. That wasn’t true. You said you believed me, so I don’t buy the whole ‘we found you in our cottage, so you either had to die or become our wife.”
”That”s how the story goes, though.”
“This isn’t a fairytale. It’s my life. How long are you going to keep me here?”
“Forever. And happily after.”
“Argh.”
Mason chuckles at my exasperation, and I hate it even more. He pulls into the same parking space that Callen had the day before, and I can’t get out of the car fast enough. His cologne drove me mad the whole time.
“Please don’t tell Jimmy and Babs we’re married. Callen already did that yesterday,” I say, full of annoyed frustration, before I slam the door shut.
My mood dissipates by the time I reach for my apron, and I see Jimmy thinly cutting some tomatoes. The shake in his hand is so much more pronounced now. He shouldn’t be working. And neither should Babs. They should be retired, enjoying themselves with zero money problems.
Having Callen there all through my shift yesterday, should have told me today was just going to be a repeat of it.
I deliberately ignore Mason—he’s taken the same seat as Callen had the day before, where he can keep an eye on the door, the rest of the patrons, and me.
Mason creates his own brand of drama, and of course, all the regulars are similarly curious about his presence in the diner, considering one like him was there just the day before.
And of course, Jimmy and Babs want to meet my friend because that’s what I said he was. Just a friend. Once again, I’m making introductions for the men who have kidnapped me to my elderly employers as if it’s normal.
“Jimmy, Babs, this is Mason Blackstone, my f—”
“Livia was going to say fiancé, but she meant husband. We’re married, aren’t we, sweetheart?”
I want to kill him right there.
“I… Yes, he’s also my husband,” I say as Jimmy and Babs look from me to Mason in utter confusion.
“But I thought you were married to that nice man, Mr. Andrews, who was here yesterday.”
“Umm….” I want to lie so badly, but I can’t come up with anything even remotely plausible.
“I have two husbands,” I say, lowering my head, defeated. For precious moments, Jimmy and Babs are speechless before they decide to just go with it.
“That’s... that’s good for you, Livia,” Babs says, patting my shoulder. Jimmy is still trying to work out the math.
“She actually has three husbands, Mr. and Mrs. Keppler,” Mason says, full of charm, flexing his killer smile like there’s no tomorrow. “You’ll meet the third one tomorrow.”
I really, truly want to kill him. And I totally give up on trying to gauge the Kepplers’ reaction that I do instead have three husbands and not just two husbands.
As soon as they saunter away, more confused than ever, I turn my annoyed-filled focus on Mason.
“You—” But I lose all my words to my ire and simply march away.
Unlike Callen, whom I took pity on and offered the menu eventually, I do an excellent job of leaving Mason without one until Babs takes him one and he orders half of everything on the menu.
Worse, I’m the one who has to take his vanilla milkshake, burger, fries, onion rings, meatloaf, and club sandwich to him.
“I would spit in your drink, but it’ll give Jimmy a heart attack, so be glad.”
“And you think I won’t drink it, pretty girl. I drank the milk from your breasts, tasted the wetness from your pussy when you came after Deacon spanked you, Callen held you down, and I penetrated your pretty asshole with honey butter, and you think a little spit from your sweet little mouth is going to scare me off?” He takes a deep sip of his shake while I turn blood red, looking around the diner, sure, at least the people in the next booth heard every word that Mason said.
“You’re a psycho,” I whisper softly but fiercely.
“Thank you for the compliment,” he counters before he takes some fries and then a bite of his burger.
I storm away for a second time that day, and I still have three more hours of this shift left.
After two hours, I’ve had enough.
”Please, can you leave? You can wait in your car. You’re distracting the customers.”
Because that’s exactly what Mason is doing. A bunch of girls who work as receptionists at the steel manufacturing plant nearby can’t stop looking at him and giggling but in that highly flirtatious way. If I roll my eyes any more back, they’ll never return.
He doesn’t leave, obviously, and I’m stuck with his gaze on me, following every move I make and every breath I take. I just barely endure it the same way I did with Callen yesterday.
At the end of the shift, with the kitchen cleaned and Babs just finishing up wiping down the tables, I gather up all the leftovers, put them into bags, and carry them out of the kitchen.
Mason is waiting for me and immediately takes the two bags of food from me and leads the way to the alley up the road.
“How do you know where I’m going and what I’m doing?”
“Callen. When it comes to you, we know everything that happens in our absence. I even know how your pussy hugged his cock when you came while still holding his grandmother’s ring in your hand.”
My mouth opens to say something, but astonishment kills my brain cells. This is why I can’t separate them in my mind. I don’t know them much at all, no, I don’t know them at all, but I know they present as one entity just in three different ways in my head and... my body.
But there’s something in the air that makes my nerves coil uneasily as I hand out parcels of food to my regulars––Rocky, Martha, Bobby, Chip, Queenie, and Lily.
I shake it off because, of course, I feel on edge. I’m lugging around a six-three crime lord in a bespoke suit who had me rattled just by existing. And there are two others like him as well.
But there’s something else... Rocky can’t look me in the eye, and Lily keeps murmuring to herself, more agitated than she normally is. Bobby and Chip keep looking over my shoulder, nervous and... scared. For a moment, I think it’s Mason’s presence. They didn’t react this way with Callen, though….
It takes me too long to act on my intuition that something is going to happen. As if my world stands still, I see a man with a crazed look in his eye and a knife in his hand. And he’s running straight toward me.