Chapter 15
BANE
The private plane ride from California to Alabama takes about four hours, which is excruciating. And this is coming from someone who was tortured on a regular basis growing up.
Once, I had my fingernails removed.
That hurt a lot, too.
But this is somehow worse. Because it’s tied to a shady past that I can’t quite recall. Georgiy seems to sense this, and he links his hand with mine, making a flutter of excitement move through me.
He never touches me like this, but he is. He’s comforting me in his own way.
I appreciate it. It makes me even more obsessed with him. That ring now seems insufficient. Like a childish whim. I need something more. Like the arm of his archenemy. Something significant. I already gave him a head, but he wasn’t happy about the mess it made.
“What are you thinking about so hard?” he finally asks, noting the notch in my forehead.
“The ring I gave you.”
He cocks his head. “I’d have assumed it was about the woman we’re about to meet.”
“Oh, she’s there too, lingering like a bad smell, but I’m wondering if that ring is enough, you know? Do you think it symbolizes what we are?”
He twists it on his finger and purses his lips. “I think it’s perfect.”
“Are you sure? I mean, I could give you something better. Maybe one of my own fingers? I could carve a ring out of my own bones!”
“No.”
I sag, and his hand chucks my chin, forcing me to look at him.
“I don’t want you to cut off your finger. Save it. I may want to suck on them later.”
My eyes widen and my dick hardens slightly. He notices it, but doesn’t offer to touch it. Just lets it reach for the stars. It eventually goes down, though, defeated and overwhelmed.
Because the plane finally lands. I’m left to bounce nervously, Georgiy grabbing our bags from the overhead bins and hefting them down the stairs toward the waiting car.
“What did you pack in here?” he grunts as he opens the trunk and places the bags inside.
“Just some saws and some hammers. Just in case I need to cut her up and then pound her to bits. Oh, and we should probably stop by a store so I can get some chemicals if we need to dissolve her.”
“Bane,” Georgiy interrupts, opening the passenger side door for me. I nearly swoon at how gentlemanly this is. “We aren’t dissolving anyone. If we need a clean-up, Sebastian has said he’ll take care of it for us.”
My bottom lip juts out. “Oh. Well, that’s no fun.”
“It’s how we’ll operate.”
I sigh and slide into my seat, clicking my seatbelt on and waiting while Georgiy takes his seat behind the wheel.
“Fine, no chemicals.”
“No chemicals.”
My eyes take him in—his sexy, unrumpled suit, his perfectly brushed hair. “You look sexy,” I blurt, and he peers over at me.
“So do you.”
I wiggle in my seat, and he sets his hand on the console, turning it palm up so I can slide my fingers through his.
“I think you love me,” I tell him, and he huffs.
“I don’t even know what love is,” he says, his fingers curling around mine. “But I do care. And that’s all I can give you at the moment.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I’ll take it. Pretty soon, you’ll love me. I know it.”
I grin at him and he shakes his head, pulling the car forward and off the tarmac, following the GPS on his phone to Sue Mitchell’s house.
It’s on the outskirts of a small town, in the middle of a large field, a barn and a large outbuilding beside it.
It’s rickety and old, falling apart at the seams.
Have I been here before? I think as Georgiy parks the car.
I don’t feel anything when I look at it.
Perhaps Sue is just a very nice lady, one who bakes and hugs and loves every kid who comes through her door.
Maybe she’s the woman in my memory. Maybe she loved me.
Maybe she woke me up with songs and read me stories before bed.
Maybe she taught me to bake and to brush my teeth.
What if she taught me how to use a knife?
But not to kill. To slice into the cake she pulled out of the oven…
“Slow down,” Georgiy grumbles when I nearly rush to the front door, needing to meet this woman so I can see for myself.
But all that hope, all those dreams, die when I meet her. The door is ripped open, and a scowl greets me. Her graying hair is pulled back into a bun, her shirt a mess. She looks shriveled and sour, like a rotten grape.
“Who the hell are you?” she grunts, eyeing Georgiy and then me. “I’m not buying anything. So fuck off.”
Georgiy cocks his head in the simple way he does when he’s assessing how best to kill someone. He’s scoping out veins and tendons.
“We aren’t selling anything. We just have some questions about a few children you’ve adopted in the past. Can we come in?”
“You the Feds?”
“No,” Georgiy replies.
“Social services?”
“No.”
“Then, who the fuck are you?”
It seems she won’t give us anything, not without something from one of us. A guarantee or a bribe.
“We just have questions. It’s as simple as that. We can pay.”
Georgiy pulls an envelope out and hands it to her. She peers inside, her tongue snaking out and wetting her chapped lips as she counts what’s inside.
“Fine. I’ll answer some questions, but don’t expect nothin’ when you come inside. The brats living here are useless.”
She steps back, and the door swings open, a scent filling the air. Dirt and damp, musty, as if the windows are never opened. As if the people inside here were left to rot.
My mind swirls, trying to place the things I’m seeing, but I have nothing. Not a single recognition, not even a blip. I must not have been here long.
I step inside, taking in the grungy, dark walls and furniture, the crooked pictures hanging on the wall, the dead plants on the windowsill. But still nothing.
She leads us further inside, and we follow, a figure in the shadows scurrying away as we pass. A child, I think. Definitely not an animal.
“You can take a seat if you want,” she says, gesturing to a couch that sits lopsided on the floor. It’s stained and torn. There’s not a chance Georgiy would ever touch it.
“We’ll stand,” Georgiy replies, and I nod, stepping near him. My eyes swivel around the space—the ratty curtains, the discarded shoes, a cat hissing at us from the top of a bookshelf. This place is dreary.
And I should know.
I live in a dirt temple, a place filled with rocks and grime. With bones.
And I’d rather be there than here.
“Do you have children here now?” Georgiy asks when he hears a door slam above us.
“Yep, sure do. They’re shy, though, and like to hide. I can assure you they’re well taken care of.”
My chest constricts at that, not trusting a word she says.
“Can we meet them?” I blurt, and Sue scoffs.
“That’s not why you’re here, so fuck no. What I do with them is none of your business.”
That makes my shoulders bunch, my hands fisting at my side. I touch the hammer in the back of my jeans and stroke it to remind myself I can kill her at any time. Or at least incapacitate her if I don’t like what she says.
And I think that may actually happen if she keeps opening her mouth. I don’t like the way she speaks.
I want to take out her throat while she is still alive.
Force her to never utter another word again.
“You’ll speak to him respectfully,” Georgiy says, his voice low.
“Or what?” she asks mockingly.
“You don’t want to know.”
She stares at him and takes a step back, realizing she invited danger into her house. That she’s made a grave mistake. But we’re not leaving without answers.
We always get what we want in the end.
“Well then, get on with it. What are you here for?”
Georgiy’s hand moves to the back of my neck, bracing me, knowing this could be painful. “Twenty-four years ago, you adopted some children from Armenia. Samvel and Emma.”
She purses her lips again, folding her arms across her chest.
“Yeah, I did adopt two brats like you said.”
Georgiy’s fingers twitch against me, my chest deflating.
“What about an Ara?”
“No. Never heard that name before.”
My chest constricts, and I rub at it, feeling slightly faint. So, she didn’t house me? This was never my home. Either that or she forgot about me entirely.
“What happened to Samvel and Emma?”
She shrugs, as if their lives never mattered to her. “Dunno. Sold them to the man who wanted them. Money is all these brats are good for.”
I blink at her, my heartbeat ramping up, the thud of it lingering in my ears.
“What man?” I ask, almost breathless.
“Like I’d tell you,” she laughs. “If I say what I know, he’ll hurt me worse than you would. I guarantee you that.”
Georgiy’s hand leaves me for a moment, my body drifting slightly.
“I don’t know about that,” he replies, and Sue scoffs.
“I do. Now is that all? I got nothing else.”
Georgiy considers it for a moment, and as he does, something catches my eye. I turn slightly, seeing a thin boy, about seven years old, in the corner, almost entirely hidden by the shadows. He looks dirty and hungry, and a part of my past rears up.
The way my stomach would rumble, the ache I’d feel inside.
Unloved. Unwanted.
My eyes dart back to Sue, and something inside me snaps.
A second later, a loud crack erupts in front of me, and I see her fall to the ground, blood seeping from her temple.
Georgiy sighs, staring down at the unconscious body on the floor. “Bane.”
“I had to,” I murmur as the bloody hammer in my hand is gently taken from me.
“Da, I know. We’ll question her somewhere more”—he looks around and his nostrils flare— “suitable for the work we can do.”
I nod as he tucks the hammer into my back pocket and nudges Sue with his shoe. She doesn’t move. She’s completely out cold.
“The kids,” I whisper, and Georgiy nods.
“Find them.”
It’s all the permission I need, moving toward the boy, who shrinks back in the shadows. Afraid, wary, far too old for his young years.
“Hello,” I say kindly, offering him a small smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
I see him peering around me, watching as Georgiy reaches down and grabs the envelope of cash from Sue and stuffs it back into his suit pocket.