Chapter 47 Sloane
Sloane
I don’t see Zeth for the rest of the day.
I don’t see anyone. No girls. No guards.
No one at all. Everyone seems to have vanished.
The villa has the feel of the Marie Celeste to it—meals half eaten and abandoned on the kitchen counters, television sets switched on, playing cheesy soap operas to an invisible audience.
Something’s going on, and I don’t have a good feeling about it.
I go out by the pool and read like I said I was going to, but my eyes skim over the pages, the print morphing into black squiggles as I rehash the past twenty-four hours.
I’ve been on the run. I’ve dealt with seeing my father for the first time in twelve months.
I’ve been threatened at gunpoint, suffered the wrath of an angry…
what, boyfriend? Associate? I’ve been spanked mercilessly for my disobedience, and now, to top everything off, I’ve informed the head of the Black Talons that I’m the one calling the shots with Zeth Mayfair.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Jacob must know I was lying out of my ass.
I mean, all you need to do is take one look at Zeth, and it’s obvious that he isn’t the sort of man to bow down to anybody.
Let alone someone so physically inferior. Me. A woman.
It’s past four o’clock by the time I see another soul.
The woman is tall and willowy, with hair the color of copper and cinnamon.
She struts across the courtyard, eyes hidden behind huge, darkened sunglasses as she makes her way toward me with a pronounced swing of her hips.
She wears a one-piece, but the cut-out sections at her sides expose most of her skin regardless.
Her boobs are the kind you see on music videos.
The kind you like to tell yourself are plastic, when you know all too well that they’re real.
They bounce impressively with each step that brings her closer.
When she’s standing right in front of me, her hands move to her hips, and she sticks one leg out to the side in a classic runway supermodel stance.
Her expression is at once intimidating and hard to read, especially with those huge sunglasses hiding her eyes.
“Marica Dela Rosa,” she says.
“Marica Dela Rosa?”
“Yeah.” The redhead sits down on the sun lounger in front of me with the elegance of a crane folding itself neatly into its own body.
“Jacob’s mother. She was an actress in the fifties.
She used to sing opera, if you can believe it.
Had the clearest Casta Diva going at the time.
She was the last person to piss off Jacob like you did this morning.
” She takes out a cigarette from the small swim bag on her hip and lights it, lips forming a perfectly round O.
“That was seven years ago. And he still gets mad about it even now.”
“And what did Marica Dela Rosa the opera singer do to upset Jacob so bad?”
“Well, she died, of course.” The redhead pulls at the cigarette, holds the smoke in her lungs for a moment, turning her face up to wash it in sunlight, and then exhales.
Wispy tendrils of smoke curl from her mouth and nostrils, like a ghostly hand caressing her face.
“Jacob loved that old bitch. I think he intended her to live forever. She probably did, too, now that I’m thinking on it.
” The redhead grunts, smiling briefly. “I guess the universe disappointed them both. She had a massive heart attack at breakfast one morning and face-planted into her French toast.” At this, she erupts into laughter—a laughter so perfect and feminine that, again, I instantly think it’s fake.
I mentally chide myself for being so ungenerous.
The woman is friendly, if a little abrupt. She nudges her sunglasses down her nose, revealing slightly angled, dark blue eyes. Cat’s eyes. And such an odd color for someone with such red hair. “I’m guessing you don’t know who I am?” she says.
“Unfortunately not.” Should I shake her hand or something?
Is that something sex workers do? Is she even a sex worker?
Jacob implied that the girls at the compound weren’t exactly free thinkers, but this woman seems bright and smart.
She angles her head, appraising me from head to foot.
“I’m Alaska. I’m Jacob’s mistress. You’ll be the crazy interloper who showed up in the middle of the night, trying to get herself killed, I assume? ”
I laugh, too, lifting one shoulder in an attempt to brush off perhaps one of the most terrifying moments of my life. “Yeah, that’d be me. Pleased to meet you.”
This small attempt at politeness seems to surprise her. “Are you?”
“Absolutely. Since I’ve arrived, you’re the only person who hasn’t screamed at me, shoved a gun in my face, or asked me to perform sexual acts in front of them.”
Alaska doesn’t laugh at this. An amused smile does tug at her lips, though.
She takes another drag from her cigarette and dispatches the smoke in my direction.
“Oh, honey. Just give it time.” She pulls a face, then, glancing disgustedly at the cigarette in her hand before flicking it into the pool.
It hisses when it hits the water and goes out.
“Too fucking hot to smoke, anyway.” She stands up, shoving her glasses back up her nose, hiding those intelligent cat’s eyes of hers.
“Jacob says you’re free to decline given your arrangement with Zee, but me and the other girls are all beginning to prep for the party tomorrow.
If you’re not an asshole to them, they’ll play nice.
Entirely up to you.” The change in her tone is subtle, but I hear it.
She isn’t pleased to meet me. She definitely isn’t happy about my arrangement with Zee.
Perhaps she heard about me claiming ownership of him this morning.
Perhaps she just thinks I’m his piece of ass.
Either way, I’m smart enough to know she doesn’t like it.
“We’re meeting in the ladies’ house around back after dinner. Tell the guards Jacob’s okayed it before you go over there, though. They’ll shoot you if you don’t.” Before I can reply, she pads over to the pool and dives in, her body curved into a perfect arc so that she doesn’t make a splash.
I pick up my book and head back inside before she can swim the length of the pool.
There’s something about her I don’t like.
I get the feeling I haven’t met the real Alaska yet.
I very much doubt that the real version will be an improvement on the version I was just introduced to.
After all, she said it herself: Oh, honey.
Just give it time. And I can totally picture the redheaded Alaska with a gun in her hand.
ZETH
There are few things in life that put me on the back foot.
I’ve come to expect shitty things from shitty people, so it’s no surprise when one of Charlie’s boys, or even one of my own boys, does something fucked up.
But Sloane? Shit, Sloane keeps on surprising me.
Sometimes in really entertaining, really fucking hot ways.
Sometimes in desperately stupid, idiotic ways.
I haven’t decided which category her little stunt from this morning falls under yet, but when I do, I’m gonna make sure she pays for it.
She needs to know she can’t pull that shit here.
Not if she wants to survive. And I may not be much, and I may not have much, but I’m kind of attached to my life.
I’d like to keep hold of it for as long as I can, too.
I’m not gonna tell her about Jacob’s reaction after she left his study.
She’ll think it’s okay to speak to him that way, and it’s so not okay.
It’s not okay for me. Not for Alaska. Not for Charlie.
I straight up thought he was gonna pull out his gun and shoot her in the back of the head, but instead he’d laughed like a fucking drain.
Told me he understood why I was fucking her and then some.
“She wears you out, man, you send her straight to me, okay? I wouldn’t mind being toyed with by a feisty piece of pussy like that.”
It had turned out that Sloane was only half the issue with Jacob, and once he’d decided she wasn’t a threat, he’d moved swiftly onto his other concern: Charlie.
“I’m gonna need you with me today, Zeth. I need you to explain exactly why you’ve run away from home like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs. Plus, your help wouldn’t go amiss. I have some business to attend to.”
There wasn’t much I could do or say to refuse him. If I had, it would only have made me look guilty as fuck. “Fine. Happy to help.” Happy to bury a bullet in the back of your head. Happy to set this place on fucking fire and dance around the inferno like a madman. “What kind of business you got?”
“Is there more than one kind?” he’d said, shrugging.
And that’s how we ended up in his basement.
I’ve never been down here before. A man hides his darkest shit in his basement.
You end up somewhere like this, you’re either inner circle or you’re royally fucked.
I’m hoping for the first, but in all honesty, the latter is more likely.
It’s clear what goes on down here. Below the compound is a series of small rooms. Bare concrete boxes with no furniture and naked light bulbs dangling from the ceiling.
There are large drain grates in the cracked floor of each cell. Easier to hose away the debris.
In the third room we pass, a hospital bed has been set up, and Anton Medina is laid out on it, hooked up to an IV with his right arm in a cast. He’s watching television, his face is set into a permanent scowl.
He’s definitely still mad that I kicked his ass.
Didn’t know I’d broken his arm, though. That makes me deliriously fucking happy.
Bitch should never have laid a finger on Sloane.
Anton notices us passing and tries to sit up, but too late. We’re already gone.