34. Archer
Chapter 34
Archer
M y eyes burn from the lack of sleep, but I refuse to let myself rest until I come up with a solution that doesn't result in losing anyone I care about.
Nothing makes sense and the more I try, the more unsettled I become. If I don't find clarity on something, anything, I'm going to drive myself insane.
I hate that it's come to this but I don't have any other choice. I'm going to make London mad, but that seems impossible to avoid.
I clear my throat, preparing for the argument that's about to happen.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" London asks me from her spot on the couch.
"Because I know you."
"No, you don't."
I tilt my head and wonder how I got here. For as long as I can remember, I have been feared, I have killed many, I have lived a life full of crime and zero remorse—and here I am, a foot taller than this woman, afraid of how she's going to react.
"Just spit it out," she says when I don't speak.
"I located Madison. I'm going to meet her. Seven is on his way here to sit with you. He should be here any minute. I'm not going to argue with you, I'm not going to change my mind. I need to do this. I need closure. You have nothing to worry about." I spit out the words like if I don't get them out quick enough, this whole place will explode.
London stares at me for a long moment and I hold my breath, waiting for her to say something, anything to give me any indication of what she's thinking.
"I don't need a babysitter," London mutters, crossing her arms. "I'm not a child."
"He's not a babysitter, he's a bodyguard. Those are two different things. If anyone's babysitting anyone, it's you babysitting him."
London shrugs. "Whatever."
"If he tries anything…" I hold out a switchblade, offering it to her. "Pull this on him. I don't care if you kill him, just try not to ruin the rug."
London takes it, flipping it open and pricking her finger along the blade. "Sharp."
"Be careful, please."
"Why not a gun?"
"What?"
"Why didn't you give me a gun?"
"Oh," I say. "I don't know. Guns are loud. I don't need the neighbors calling the police on you."
London narrows her gaze. "I'm your neighbor, big boy. Did you forget?"
I kneel in front of her, my hand on her knee. "What do you say, when we figure this out, you and me, we go away together? Anywhere in the world, you name it."
"Not London," she says with a smirk. "Anywhere but there."
"Anywhere but there or here." I pause. "You're okay with me going?"
"No, but I don't have a choice, so what's the point in arguing about it?" London exhales. "Don't be long."
"Why, going to miss me?" I grin at her this time, doing anything I can to lighten the mood.
"Something like that." She leans forward. "Kiss me."
And so I do, bridging the gap between us and pressing my lips on hers, my heart burning at not having found a way out of this yet, but determined to pull off the impossible. I refuse to accept that there's nothing I can do to save us all.
I walk into the hotel that I found Madison was staying at. She's using a fake name, but once I ran her picture through the facial recognition software I developed, it was a piece of cake locating her. I'll never forget the way my stomach turned seeing her strut across the hotel lobby floor as if nothing ever happened, as if she hadn't faked her death and left me to mourn the loss of her.
Combing through my thoughts, I try to reconcile what it is I want to say to her, but the only thing I can settle on is why. Why did you deceive me? Why didn't you tell me you were alive? Why did you leave me?
I pound my fist on the room she's inside and cover the peephole, obstructing her view out.
Like a fucking idiot, she answers, disappointing me somehow even more than she already has.
Madison's eyes go wide and before she can shut me out, I grab hold of the door and force it open, stepping inside and slamming it shut behind me.
I take her in, my heart pounding, my mind unable to comprehend that this is real, that London is telling the truth. There must be some kind of logical explanation for Madison faking her death and that's what I'm here to gather.
Only when I go to speak, that's not what I ask her.
"Why are you working with Joe Vito?" I go into the room, looking around and making sure no one else is in here. I had been damn sure of it during my investigation, but if recent events have taught me anything, it's that sometimes I'm wrong.
"Archer, I—I can explain."
"I'm waiting." I fold my arms and lean against the wall.
Madison's eyes dart from me to the door, back to me. She does exactly as I anticipate and makes a dash for it, but she's not as quick as she thinks she is, and I latch onto her arm and yank her away from it, throwing her onto the bed. She gasps and shuffles to scoot onto her elbows. "Archer," she mutters.
I wrap my hand around her throat, not so hard that it'll leave a mark, but enough she'll get the fucking point. "I'm not the same man you remember, Madison. He died when you supposedly did. Anything good you think you know about me, you need to fucking forget. I came here for the truth, and if you don't want to give it to me, I beg you to remember the bad parts of me, because that's all that's left. I will get it out of you one way or another. Now, you have a choice. Which would you prefer?"
She blinks up at me, a false sense of fear in her eyes. It took me until this moment to realize the moments I shared with her were fake, that it was all an act. Nothing about us was real, because if it were, she never would have left me the way she did. That's not what you do when you love someone.
"That doe-eyed look isn't going to get you anywhere, Madison. Cut it out." I shove her and step away, giving her a moment to compose herself and decide the path we're going to go down. "I don't care that we used to fuck, that means nothing to me. You mean nothing to me."
"Fine," she finally says. "But I want you to know, I did care about you."
"Did. Past tense. Let's leave it there and move on. Tell me what I want to know and I won't snap your neck." I have never hurt a woman in my entire life, but Madison crossed too many lines to not have it coming. First, when she betrayed me, and second, when she shot the woman I'm in love with.
My heart stutters, my breath catching. It was only a thought, and yet it still stunned me.
Love . I shake my head. I'm sleep-deprived, I must be losing it. I have feelings for London, but that doesn't make it love.
"Fine, fine, I'll talk. Don't get your panties in a bunch." Madison sits up and fixes her shirt. "You look worse for wear, Arch. You having trouble sleeping?"
"Don't be concerned about things that don't concern you."
"For the record," she begins. "I never meant to hurt you."
"You didn't," I lie and lean my back along the wall in this hotel room that seems to be getting smaller by the moment. I don't want to be here, not with her, not when London is across town and with someone else. I trust that Seven will keep her alive. He enjoys killing too much to let the opportunity pass if anyone tries to pull anything. Aside from me, she's honestly probably in the best hands. Seven might be out of his mind but right now, he's the only brother I’m willing to bother with something this serious.
"Let me start at the beginning," Madison says and lets out a big, overly dramatic breath.
I hold out my hand. "The short version, Madison. Stop wasting my time."
"The short version is that Ricardo Gardella bought me. I was to be his baby-producing pet."
I cringe at the thought of that man coming anywhere near her, or any other woman for that matter.
"He and Joe were friends, or well, business associates, whatever. Anyway, Joe came by one day and offered me a way out. Said he would vouch for me, that we had to find the right opportunity. I didn't see it coming until it was too late and Ricardo nearly killed me, but it was the perfect out. Ricardo thought he succeeded, and I had to make it believable, which meant leaving everything and everyone behind. I couldn't involve you, otherwise he would have found out. You have to understand that I didn't want to leave you, Arch. It hurt me as much as it hurt you. I loved you, I really did."
"Not enough, apparently, because if you did, you would have known that you could have come to me, Mads. I would have helped you figure it out. Why didn't you tell me?" I hesitate and decide I don't want an answer. "Never mind, forget I asked. I couldn’t care less. So that's why you're working with Vito, because he did you a favor and now you owe him one?"
Madison licks her lips and nods. "What else was I supposed to do, Arch? I thought he was going to kill me, to kill you. I had no other option."
"There's always another option."
"You don't get it. I mean, how could you? You don't know what it's like."
I glare at her, the idea of snapping her neck quite literally crossing my mind. I hate myself for how badly I've let her corrupt me, making me into somehow even worse of a man than I already was. "You have no idea what I've been through. I would have done anything for you, Madison. But now? Now I don't care if you live or die."
I nearly completely abandoned my family because I thought my involvement with the crime world was what resulted in her death. I gave up everything when she died, in some twisted way to try to right the wrong that was no one's fault but my own. Little did I know she was the one who put herself in danger, and she was the one who chose to solve the problem without involving me. She took that choice away from me and because of it, lost me forever, and here she is, ready to force London into the same life she was destined for.
"It's a little hypocritical, don't you think?" I ask her, not sure if she realizes it fully.
"What do you mean?"
"London faked her death to get away from Vito, the same thing you did to get away from Ricardo. And now you're stripping that away from her." I tap my finger on my crossed arm. "What's the connection between you two, anyway?"
Madison sort of stares past me like she's recalling a memory. "Part of me feels bad about it, since she was the one who almost died trying to save me. Man, he gutted her good as she begged for her life, for mine."
My nostrils flare as she tells me the part of the story I had no idea about.
That scar on London's torso, the one she won't talk about, it had to have been related to this, to what her father did to her. I can't believe I ever got mad at her for lying to me about Madison. How could she have told me when the entire thing was such a traumatic experience for us both?
"London bought it, too," Madison says. "You should have seen her face. It was like she saw a ghost. Kind of like what you looked like when you walked in." She smiles as if she's proud of herself for fooling us.
"You're sick, you know that, right?" I shake my head slowly. "What happened to you? You weren't like this before."
Madison shrugs. "You weren't the only one who changed, Archer."
"How did you find her?" I ask, trying to make sense of the gaps in the story.
"When Ricardo died, I finally gained my freedom. Well, the part that Joe didn't still have hold of. I came out of hiding and Joe made it clear I still owed him a favor." She rolls her eyes. "You guys and your favors." She uncrosses and recrosses her legs. "He had told me about London, and I have to admit, I was sad to hear about her death. Totally unrelated, I guess I got a little curious about how you were doing, so I started checking in on you, to see what you were up to. Lo and behold, I find footage of the two of you together, and that same look that was on your faces, it was on mine, too. Little London girl pulling a Houdini act in Manhattan with my ex. I had to come to verify it for myself." Madison chuckles. "I wondered how I was ever going to repay Joe for what he did, cash in that favor that felt impossibly hefty…"
"And you didn't care you'd be giving her up in the process? That you'd be ruining my life all over again?"
"With London out of the picture, maybe we could try again." She looks up at me and bats her eyelashes. "What do you say, Arch? For ol' time’s sake?"
"I'd rather chew on glass, Madison." I kick off from the wall and stand completely up, taking her in for what I hope will be the last time. I came here for closure, and I received that and more, the very presence of her making me wonder what I ever saw in her to begin with. I can't believe I ever cared for her, loved her, mourned her.
"That's hurtful, Arch." Madison hops off the bed and I snap toward her, daring her not to move another fucking inch.
"Choose your next words and move wisely, Madison. My patience is wearing thin and I can't be held responsible if you push me over the ledge. I don't want to be the one to end your life, but that doesn't mean I won't do it." I stare at her for a long moment, almost hoping that she tests me, my nerves needing something to take the edge off.
But when she doesn't speak, doesn't move, I know things are done here.