Chapter 6 #3
Gideon shivered at the sensation of icy water sliding through his veins. He fought for self-control. “Can I ask you, please, to use any other voice?”
Rollins gave him an approving nod.
“But you know this one,” Ireland’s voice wheedled. “And I’m sure you miss hearing it. I know your sister’s missing you right now.”
Fists clenched, he struggled to keep his tone even. “Is Ireland alive? Is she unharmed?”
“Yes.” The voice had changed back to the one he’d heard in his nightmares. “And no.”
His breath caught. “Will she survive?”
“That depends on you.”
“Tell me what you want me to do.”
A horrifyingly delighted laugh piped through the speakers. “Ah, you’re following the rules now. It took you a bit. You’re too clever and yet a little slow.”
Rage and worry filled his mouth with harsh words, but he bit them back with a clenched jaw.
“Are you still there?” she inquired in singsong.
“I’m awaiting your instructions.”
“Hmm… You’re not as much fun today. Maybe it’s too early for you. Not enough coffee, maybe?”
“I’m prepared to do whatever you want to get Ireland back.”
“Prepared to do rather than prepared to pay?”
“Both are true,” he said as calmly as possible.
“Well, great!” she exclaimed. “That’s wonderful news. As a reward for good behavior, you’ll have your sister back later today. And I’ve got a way to make sure you transfer the money like you said you would. I’ll tell you all about it in a few hours.”
His bare foot tapped restlessly on the carpet, the furious energy coursing through him needing some outlet. “Tell me now.” He cursed silently for the slip. “Please.”
“We have to build trust first. I’m going to trust that you’ve turned a new leaf and you’re going to trust that I’ll call you later.”
“Have a care for Ireland. Please. That’s all I ask.”
“You’re not in a position to ask for anything,” she chirped. The call dropped.
Gideon spun around and put his fist through the dining room wall.
Ireland!
Ronan woke with a startled yell, his skin slick with sweat and hot. His heart was pounding, his breathing quick and labored. Tossing the covers aside, he sat up. A disgruntled muffled yowl from Blizzard had him searching through the sheets to unearth the cat.
Bliz gave him a baleful glare and started cleaning the back of a hind leg.
Raking his hair back with an impatient hand, Ronan found the roots damp and the strands tangled. He shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, his thoughts rioting.
The sky outside the windows was the color of a pink pearl. The time on the bedside clock was nearing six.
He couldn’t recall what woke him. Whatever the nightmare, his skin stunk of fear.
Rising to his feet, Ronan realized he had to get out of Ireland’s space.
Her presence was everywhere. Inescapable.
Heartbreaking. He’d initially sprawled on her couch, thinking the bedroom and her bed would make it impossible to sleep.
In the end, he missed her enough to want the illusion of her presence.
He showered quickly and dressed. He’d brought enough clothes for two days of casual wear plus the formal attire he’d worn to the masquerade. The clothes Marcelle had packed for him would arrive at Genevieve and Valentin’s in the morning. Monday morning.
Would his cher be home safe by then? It was maddening to even contemplate that question because he hoped for word of her recovery every second of every minute. To push that out to an entirely different day was harrowing.
Televised news was the only avenue through which he was learning anything.
He had even called Alina—who’d previously told him that if he ever contacted her again, she’d call the cops—and asked if she knew anything more.
She was, thankfully, not hostile and told him she was getting her updates through the media as well.
Ronan couldn’t even consider what he would do if Ireland never returned because the ferocity of his reaction to the mere thought wouldn’t allow him to.
When she was home again, she would need time away.
Certainly from work, possibly from him. He had the vacant condo in his Harlem building on hold.
Marcelle would enjoy helping him furnish it and spending time with her brother, but for how long?
As he rode the elevator down to the parking garage, Ronan acknowledged the likelihood that Ireland could withdraw from the world—and him—entirely for a while.
Which would leave him living in a city that didn’t suit him, trying to save a company he’d worked hard to destroy, while he waited for a woman who’d cast him aside and had never committed to a relationship to possibly want him again.
From the garage, he walked up the exit ramp to the street and was relieved to find it mostly deserted. Just around the corner on Fifth Avenue, he knew the lobby entrance was still shadowed by the mass of people and news vans clustered on the street outside.
He flagged a passing cab. When it pulled over, Ronan slid inside and gave his destination. “48th and 7th, please. Vidal Records.”
Gerald John Crosby, called Gerry by those who knew him, was five years old when he first killed something. It was a neighbor’s stupid cat who kept shitting in the apartment complex’s playground sandbox, the one place he could have fun while johns visited his whore mother for drugs and sex.
The rush was powerful. Something like the first time he’d licked white powder off the cigarette ash-littered coffee table.
Gerry had an anger problem, or so his teachers and school counselor had said when he entered kindergarten. His temper was always simmering and could flash boil at the slightest provocation. As the years passed, it exploded more frequently and with more violence.
Terrorizing his classmates and stray animals helped soothe the rage that burned in him, but that was nothing compared to when his twelve-year-old self decided to show his slut bitch mother who was actually in charge.
She finally figured it out as he choked the life out of her drugged and drunken body with his bare hands.
The most exhilarated he’d ever felt was watching the terror finally dawn in her unfocused, red-rimmed eyes. Resignation followed, then relief, and finally sightlessness. When she’d gone slack, it’d made his dick so hard it hurt.
The idiot cops blamed her murder on one of her johns and shuffled Gerry into the foster care system.
He’d been stuck with a couple of families who had rules, curfews, and expensive shit to fence for drug and whore money, but then he was placed in homes not unlike the one he’d escaped from.
Some weren’t terrible, and some were even fun, if other kids were housed with him that he could fuck with.
He was sent to juvie for the first time at fourteen.
The only people excited about that were the head shrinkers.
Talk talk talk… that’s all they wanted him to do.
But he’d made some friends along the way.
People with connections and skills. Others like him.
He slid in and out of jail over the years, but he got smarter.
Found people who liked how he handled his shit and wanted him to handle their shit, too.
They helped him get better at leaving no evidence behind.
He preferred spontaneity—there really was nothing as exciting as killing someone on a whim—but he conceded that planning and preparing kept him out of jail.
Which was why he and Livi made such a good pair.
She liked the plan and prep bullshit. He’d say she liked it too much, was too focused on the details, and was sometimes too cautious.
If he’d had his way, they’d be living large at some foreign beach resort right now, fucking like feral cats on piles of untraceable cash and occasionally drinking something with those idiotic umbrellas that poked you in the nostrils. She appreciated flourishes like that.
But she was too busy enjoying the power of having someone completely at her mercy, and that was screwing everything up.
She’d never told him why she hated the Vidals so much. She hated their privilege for sure, but it seemed a lot more personal than envy.
Picking up his phone, Gerry called her again.
He’d been calling her all morning, but she wasn’t answering, and he was getting more pissed with every hour that passed.
The television was airing nonstop coverage of the kidnapping, and if he saw another replay of Gideon Cross spouting his bullshit, he might just throw the television out of the window.
He didn’t want to admit that he was worried Livi had already bailed and left him behind to face the music alone.
She was just as much a faithless cunt as any other woman.
He liked her because they were simpatico.
Twin flames, she said. Her temper was worse than his, and she had a mean streak a mile wide.
She let him be who he was, helped him get away with living as he pleased, and she could take a pussy pounding like no other bitch he’d ever met.
She let him do things to her that he’d killed other women for, so they wouldn’t turn him in to the police.
“Hello, my love,” she answered. She sounded happier than a pig in shit, but that was just the modulator she used to hide her voice. He liked her real voice better. She said his phone disguised his voice, too, but he’d never called himself to hear what his alter ego sounded like.
“Where the fuck are you?” he snarled. “I’ve been trying to call for hours.”
“I keep my phone powered off when I’m out so it’s not pinging off any towers near that rich asshole. I told you that.”
Yeah, she had. He didn’t understand how that crap worked and kind of resented that she did. He couldn’t stand stuck-up, entitled bitches, but the clever ones really got his goat. “I need to get out of this fucking place, Liv. I’m bouncing off the walls here.”
“I know, I know. But don’t worry. I’m on the way with takeout. And your favorite beer. Got a couple of joints, too, so you can relax a little.”
Gerry hated that his temper softened at hearing she’d been thinking about him. He liked it better when he was angry—it made him feel like a fucking god. “I can’t stay here forever, but I can’t show my goddamn face in public!”
“I told you to wear those facial prosthetics.”
“I can’t hardly breathe through my nose as it is! That rubber shit was suffocating me.”
“Baby, we’re going to get all that money, and we’ll fix your nose. Your scars. Whatever you want. You can look like a movie star. I’ve always wanted to fuck Brad Pitt.”
“Fuck that guy. I happen to like my face, and now it’s got a target on it!”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Gerry hated that it caused a little spurt of fear. “Livi? You still there?”
“Are you done whining?”
His fist clenched hard around the phone. “I’m going stir crazy, Liv.”
“I know you’re bored. But there are a couple of things I need you to do that’ll keep you busy until I get there.”
“Screw you. You do whatever you want done.”
The laughter that came from the receiver made his teeth grind.
“Screwing you is exactly what I intend to do when I walk through that door,” she cooed in that fake, delighted voice. “You know how excited this kinda thing makes me. I’m so wet right now. I’ve got my fingers inside me as I drive, but it’s not enough. I need your cock, baby. I need it real bad.”
Gerry growled as his dick hardened into a pike in his jeans.
“Fucking slut,” he bit out, hating that she could rouse him even when he wanted to strangle her.
And he would strangle her. He’d slap her face, too, while he screwed her.
He liked seeing her all red, teary, and blotchy when he blew his load. “What needs doing?”
“We’ll need a video of her. It’s all set up in the second bedroom.”
“Yeah, I saw,” he groused, palming his hard prick. “Video of what?”
“Of you shoving that hard-on of yours into every hole she has.”
He froze. “What?”
“You heard me. That bitch’s family won’t feel enough pain if they only lose money. They’ve got too much of it to mean anything to them. They need to lose something that hurts.”
Although the modulator made her sound like she was happily discussing something inane, like the weather, Gerry could hear her real voice in his head, and the sharply honed malice that would be threaded into her words.
“So, have fun, baby,” she went on. “Give it to her the way only you can. And you keep giving it to her until she never wants another man anywhere near her for the rest of her life. I’ll get there as soon as I can, so I don’t miss the whole show.”
Gerry’s heartbeat began to gallop at the thought of Livi watching him. It always drove him crazy when she directed the action because she was much more creative than he was. He got too frenzied. Lost track of what he was doing. “You told me not to touch her. That my DNA would get us caught.”
“We’ll clean her up before we make the trade later today,” she assured him. “Just think, we’ll be out of this shithole city tonight.”
“They’ll see me on the video, too. My tattoos and scars and shit. Even if I change my face, I can’t change my body.”
“We can blur anything that identifies you. It’s easy, babe. Leave the details to me and enjoy yourself. Just don’t kill her, or we’ll have much bigger problems. We want her broken, not dead.”
His blood heated as he remembered how the hoity-toity Vidal cunt had attacked Joe in the garage. Rest in peace, you dumb bastard.
Their captive was dehydrated now and hadn’t eaten since he’d snatched her.
Livi was the one who said they had to weaken her, so she’d be less dangerous.
He was sorry about that now. Bitches who chose to fight rather than cooperate were the most fun to break in.
When they finally went limp and unresponsive, their eyes glassy with horror, they reminded him of his mother the last time he ever saw the slut.
Glancing over at the crate in the corner of the living room, Gerry licked his lips.