Eleven
M y heels hit the closet door as I fling them, trying to get them as far away from me as possible. I can’t breathe. Not in those shoes, not in this dress, not in this house.
The suffocating blue fabric fights to stay glued to my body, but I rip it off and fling it toward my forgotten heels. Fuck that. Fuck this ring on my finger, the dainty necklace choking me, all of it.
I can’t strip down fast enough.
I need air.
The moment I’ve got pajamas on, I rush to the sliding glass doors to let myself out onto the balcony and grip the railing. I’m on the second floor so a fall wouldn’t kill me, but the thought is tempting anyway. I—
I’m not alone out here. There’s someone in the corner.
Holy shit.
Whirling around, what’s left of my heart leaps into my throat until I realize it’s just Draven. Sitting cross-legged on the chair in the corner, almost completely obscured by shadow. It’s just Draven.
“What?” I snap, adrenaline coursing through me. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to see if you were okay.”
There aren’t any hidden motives in his tone, but I find myself wary anyway.
I’ve been bitten by him before.
“I’d be fine if I could get two minutes to myself,” I mutter. “It’s the happiest night of my life. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”
He doesn’t respond right away. He sits there staring at me like he can clearly see through my mask, and then he holds out his glass in offering.
There’s a fingers worth of amber liquid swirling around, calling to me.
Offering peace in more ways than one.
I take it, drain it, and hand him the empty glass. “Cheers, big brother.”
The sideways smirk he returns has my gaze traveling up to that scar and wondering how he got it, but he doesn’t give me an opportunity to ask. “Miss Maddy always tells me it’s okay not to be okay. I’m still trying to believe it, but it pops into my head every time I’m feeling how you’re looking right now.”
He hands me a bottle of sleeping pills with a passing comment on how he knows I haven’t been sleeping well, but I find myself wondering what he thinks he sees.
I don’t know how I feel right now. Numb, I guess. Sure, I’m scared and disappointed and maybe even a little angry, but there’s a blanket over all of it. A blanket dulling it down, drowning out the noise. Numbness.
“What do you think he’ll do to me?” I ask, popping the top off the bottle and dry-swallowing three of those little magic pills. “In the end, when he realizes he won’t get what he wants. You think he’ll send me away?”
A frown overtakes his face. “Possibly, but I don’t believe he’d harm you. The chief of police is an enemy he doesn’t need, but unfortunately there are ways to make shit look like an accident.” He isn’t helping me at all, but there’s a calmness that comes with his honesty. “He doesn’t care if what you two have is real, he just wants another heir that isn’t me. Morella is the one in danger here, because if she was out of the picture, Alex would be a good boy and do what he’s told. He always does.”
He’s right. Morella is the problem here, not me. Not Alex. Not even Ephraim. If she’d loosen her grip enough to let him fuck me just once, just one time on the right day, this would be put to bed. She could have him in the shadows while I hold his arm in the daylight.
But women like her, headstrong, proud women like her don’t bend. They don’t break. I know next to nothing about her except that she reached up from the gardens she built and wrapped her hands around Alex’s heart so tightly, he doesn’t care what happens to any of us. She won’t bend. She won’t break. And she won’t let him go.
I wouldn’t.
Dray leans forward to brace his elbows on his knees, eyeing me closely. “You look like you want to kill her yourself, little keeper.”
Do I?
There’s no use in denying it. It’s the clearest path to fixing my problem. He’d grieve, sure. For a while. But when the dirt settles on her coffin and his world begins again, I’d be there. Waiting. Smiling. Offering him something she never could.
A life in the open.
A real life. A real marriage. A real family.
It’s almost ironic that I’m thinking of killing someone who has brought so much life to these grounds. Like with every plant she nourished, every flower she brought to bloom, she buried a little of herself in the soil. A little of her own life, just pieces at a time waiting for this inevitable end.
Waiting for the day I’d come to finish it.
“I wouldn’t do that. I’m not like you,” I say softly. “It’s not her fault she fell in love. She didn’t ask for any of this. I can’t just kill somebody because they’re in my way.”
He stares at me a few minutes longer before he nods, sitting up straighter again with a sigh like he’s the one who’s carrying the world here. “Why do you think I killed Jake?”
“Because he was in your way. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but it’s the only thing that makes any sense at all. Ephraim didn’t know you did it. Alex didn’t either. It couldn’t have had anything to do with me because you didn’t know me until after you thought you killed him the first time, so... he either got in your way or refused to give you something you wanted.”
Pulling a phone from his pocket, Draven types something out and then hands it over. “See for yourself.”
On it are photos of his family, documents of Ephraim Creed’s coming and goings, and when I meet his gaze again, he shrugs. “He was a good hacker, but my boy Damian is better. I don’t know what he planned to do with that information and I don’t really give a fuck. You should probably thank me for it, because if I had run this through my father, he would’ve just told me to cut both of those loose ends. Instead I made sure you were spared. You can keep that phone, by the way. I have others.”
I don’t give a shit about the phone.
This was happening right under my nose and I didn’t see it. I didn’t even come close to doing my job. I was trained to see the signs, to burrow my way deep enough that people let things like this slip. But I didn’t see it. I didn’t know. And if he’d have used this against Ephraim, against Alex or Draven himself? It would’ve been my fault.
“I see. I don’t have any use for the phone, though. I don’t have anyone to talk to.”
“You can talk to me,” he offers. “And don’t be so hard on yourself. I have a feeling he didn’t have any use for this information yet, but he was waiting on the day. I just didn’t let that day come.”
Theo would’ve spanked me raw for missing it. Josiah would’ve cut me off for a week, and Beau would’ve starved me. My Keepers were ruthless, unforgiving. My father would’ve punished me too, in his own way. He’d have looked down his nose at me and told me to be more observant, to stop living with my head in the clouds. He’d have tsked and shook his head, then told me how disappointed in me he was. And Ephraim? I daresay he’d have had his own cruel way to handle it if he found out.
But here’s Draven, telling me not to be so hard on myself. It doesn’t feel like I deserve it.
“Why? Why stop him if you hate your dad so much?”
“Because this is what I was raised to do. Alexander is the perfect show dog, and I’m the mutt behind the scenes keeping the family protected. Either way, we’re both trained to know our place, and if the Creed dynasty falls, where does that leave me? A bastard that’s 90% sure he’s not in the will. Call it selfish if you want, I call it self-preservation. People have to have their own back when they stand alone, otherwise they’d just crumble underneath it all.”
I turn my back to him to look over the balcony. The view isn’t much from here, but it gives me something else to focus on as I feel my eyelids getting heavy. “Is that why you throw those parties? Because you feel like you’re crumbling?”
He doesn’t say anything for a few long seconds. “I guess so. The masks let us all be whoever we want to be for a little while. There’s a weightlessness to it.”
“Masks?” Turning slightly, I watch him in the shadows. “What do you mean?”
“The party is anonymous. People go there to unwind, to be no one but the animals our bodies are meant to be.” He leans forward again, looking so damn good in the moonlight I have to grip the railing tighter. “Our carnal urges and desires are released without judgment or shame. The masks make that possible.”
Possible for me, too? I... no.
I can’t.
“How often do you have them?”
Stop asking questions. Let it go. It doesn’t matter.
Draven chuckles, a dark one that has my legs clenching of their own accord. “Every night whether I’m attending or not.”
Fuck. That’s a lot of drugs, a lot of sex.
A lot of women getting exactly what I want. “Good for you,” I say honestly. “I mean that. Take pleasure from this world when you can.”
“I do. You should too.”
“Yeah, that’ll go well, I’m sure,” I scoff. “He wants me to start taking pregnancy tests every morning. Shay told me last week that he asks them for my movements every day. Makes sure I’m not flirting too much with Leo or Dane, that I’m spending enough time in Alex’s room. He might not have said it out loud, but I’m not stupid. If I look for any sort of pleasure that doesn’t come from your brother, he’ll know. Tonight was a mistake.”
“Was it?” he asks curiously. “Why? No one saw.”
Someone had to have seen. There’s no way they didn’t. And even still, it sets a bad precedent. “Because it was risky. You might be willing to play with my life, Dray, but I’m not.”
“Your life is safe, little keeper. I’d know if it wasn’t, because it would be my job to take care of you.”
The thought almost makes me smile. “So you’ll be my own personal Grim Reaper, huh? That’s poetic.”
“I do like poems.” He tosses me a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. “But I guess you aren’t wrong. This has been my job since I was fourteen. Some have called me Ephraim Creed’s shadow, but I like Grim Reaper even better. You think a reaper ever takes anything for his own? Or is he just a conduit for bigger entities?”
“Both,” I muse. “He’s a conduit, sure. For whatever god actually exists, or the universe if nothing else. He’s the scythe that sets things right. But why not take a little something for himself? Who, really, would tell him no?”
“Fair point.” Dray bites his lip and looks me over. “What would make you happy right now? And get as crazy or as boring as you want to with your answer.”
My bones are heavy with exhaustion. From life, from the pills, from knowing what I want is an arm’s length away and completely out of reach. “You’ll call it boring, but I just want a little comfort. That’s all. Just a comfortable bed, no one spying on me. Maybe a machine that’ll rub my back for me until I fall asleep,” I huff. “I’ve been stressed out and so tense that I can’t sleep at night, can’t walk through the halls without clenching my teeth. You say my life isn’t in danger here, but I’ve seen what Creed does. I’ve heard the stories. It’s hard to find any comfort at all.”
Nodding, he stands and closes the distance between us, his hand extending out in offering. “I don’t have a back rubbing machine, but I’ve got hands. Let me put you to sleep, and no, that’s not a euphemism. I’m not asking for anything in return.”
I’m too tired to be skeptical. In the morning, when I wake up alone and this all feels like a fever dream, I’ll probably wonder why I trusted him. Men don’t do favors for women, not without expecting something in return. And this isn’t just one. It’s two. The mess he made of me at dinner was the first.
But I do decide to trust him. I let my fingers slot with his and step in, close enough to smell his cologne, feel the heat radiating off of him. And it feels good.
He doesn’t say anything else until I’m lying in bed mostly on my stomach, hugging a pillow like it’s a person.
“Close your eyes, little keeper. I’ve got you tonight.”
Too exhausted to look deeper into his words, my eyes flutter closed as he joins me in my bed, and his hand slides under my shirt. The first touch sends a jolt of lightening throughout my entire body, and when I hear him sigh like he’s as content as I am, I feel my shoulders relax.
I don’t care what the consequences are. This, right now, is the only thing that matters. Wrenching an ounce of comfort from a lifetime of chess games and servitude, a moment that’s just for me.
He doesn’t want anything from me. I’m not owed to him, I’m not trying to pry secrets from his silver tongue.
It’s just... comfort. Tickling, soft comfort.
For me.
And if consequences come for me because of it, I’ll kick them in the fucking teeth.
This is mine. Just for tonight.
This is mine.
MARCH