Chapter 8 Hazel
Hazel
Damien crosses the room and crouches in front of me, removing the gag from my mouth.
“Good news. Your boyfriend should be here soon.”
I glare at him.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Not anymore,” Damien replies with a shrug.
“Not ever,” I reply. “So if you’re trying to use me as bait, good luck. We were never an item. I’m nothing to him and he’s nothing to me.”
Damien tilts his head.
“Nothing is a strong word,” he says. “So extreme. He really means nothing to you? Nothing at all?”
“Nothing,” I repeat.
The lie tastes metallic on my tongue.
Or maybe that’s just the blood in my mouth from hitting my lip on the side rail of the elevator while I was thrashing around, fighting for my life, even when it seemed pointless.
Damien had my hands fastened behind my back in the blink of an eye.
Kristen gave a good fight, her best moves learned in the self-defense course she made us take together, but was ultimately subdued as well.
When we got to the hotel’s laundry room, his men separated us. Me, bound to a pillar, right here out in the open.
They dragged Kristen away, out of sight behind a door across from me where Damien joined her, slamming the door behind him, his eyes murderous as the blood continued to flow from his nose where Kristen had struck him in the elevator.
I don’t know what happened while he was behind that door with her. All I know is that when Damien exited, the violent malice had temporarily left his eyes. Instead of being angry, he seemed…amused.
“Really?” Damien asks. “Wow. I must have read the situation all wrong. But that’s fortunate. If he really means nothing to you, you won’t mind watching him die.”
My eyes widen and Damien laughs, a warm sound from deep in his throat that’s much too pleasant for the dark situation.
“There it is,” Damien says, his eyes dancing. “I knew it. You’re both terrible at this, you know. Pretending that you don’t care for the other.”
“Maybe I care about him,” I say. “But trust me. Vincent doesn’t give a fuck about me. Never has. You’re wasting your time. He’s not coming for me.”
And if he’s not coming, then what? Damien just sets us free? Two kidnapping victims who can identify him to the police?
“Odd that he’s worked so hard to hide you from me, to keep you safe, if you’re nothing to him,” Damien muses. “He even relocated your job to the west coast, as though that would stop me. Who knows what strings he had to pull to make that happen? But then, Vince was always good at pulling strings.”
He ends the sentence on a bitter note, violent promise in his eyes. Whoever this man is, he’s terrifying. And apparently he and Vincent have a history. I wonder what kind of history, what kind of reason Vincent would have for crossing paths with a man like this.
It seems like I didn’t know him at all. His past was never something he shared with me. He always had a knack for changing the subject, steering us away from topics he’d rather avoid so subtly that I never realized he had evaded my original question until much later.
“I’ve had my eye on you for a while,” he continues. “Never could get close though. You have no idea what surveilling you has cost me. Time. Money. Several lives, thanks to his men taking out my men.”
His men? Vincent has “men?”
“But I’ve got you now,” Damien continues, his handsome face pulling into a wicked smile. “Do you think it was a coincidence, being invited to this thing at the last minute?”
My stomach lurches.
“Not a coincidence at all,” he continues. “We had to do it this way. Vince and his inept watchdog were keeping tabs on you at all times. The morning you and your friend left for the airport, we had a body double pretend to leave your apartment and go to your work.”
“No,” I say. “That’s insane. I’d know if someone was stalking me for the last year, following me around all the time.”
“You’d think,” Damien replies. “Just like you’d think Vince’s men would notice that the brunette leaving your apartment that morning was two inches taller than you are, and that her backpack wasn’t the same shade of blue as yours.
But people get used to routines. They see what they expect to see, their minds filling in the gaps and overlooking slight discrepancies. ”
My stomach is in knots once again at his mention of my blue backpack, the one I carry on my commute to the office every day.
Is he telling the truth? He and Vincent were both following me for the better part of a year? Damien with harmful intent, Vincent with the goal of protecting me?
It’s dizzying to think about, but then again, I’m already dizzy from the altercation in the elevator.
My head pounds, aching where it collided with the metal wall panel of the elevator.
My vision blurs at the edges from time to time.
I squeeze my eyes shut tight, then open them and focus once again on the door across from me, the one my best friend is behind.
The door across from me opens and a large, muscular man dressed in all black steps out.
“Boss, she keeps saying she needs the bathroom,” he says.
“I have to pee, like, really bad!” Kristen’s voice calls from behind him.
Unlike before, she’s using her I’m-just-a-helpless-girl voice. The one she uses to get out of speeding tickets, score free drinks at bars, and - just last year - secure our business a loan at an impossibly low interest rate.
Damien narrows his eyes.
“She can piss in the corner,” he says. “I’m not taking any chances with that one. She’s smarter than she lets on. Stronger, too.”
He’s referring to the solid punch that Kristen managed to land on his face right before she kicked him, narrowly missing his balls, the pointed toe of her stiletto digging into his inner thigh.
“Boss,” the guard says. “Come on. There’s a bathroom back there, right behind the towels. I’ll go with her and make sure she doesn’t make a run for it.”
“I need to go now!” Kristen says. “Please? I can’t pee in the corner, are you serious? That’s, like, so gross.”
The man in black looks at Damien.
“No fucking way,” Damien says. “That one is stupid like a fox. I'm warning you. You can’t turn your back on her for a moment.”
“Oh my god,” Kristen groans from behind them. “I think I just started my period!”
The men look at each other, Damien with a dubious expression, the guard wrinkling his nose in disgust.
“Oh hell no,” the guard says. “I’m not staying in there with her while she gets period on everything. Let her take care of that woman shit. This isn’t part of my job, man.”
“She’s lying and you’re a fool,” Damien quips. “But fine. Make it quick. And don’t turn your back to her.”
The guard marches Kristen out of the room, and I’m relieved to see that she appears to be totally unharmed.
“I can’t put a tampon in with my wrists bound,” she announces to the men primly.
The guard looks at Damien.
“Go ahead,” Damien says, his eyes glittering as he looks at Kristen from head to toe, a hint of a smile on his lips. “It’s your funeral.”
The guard cuts the plastic tie around her wrists and Kristen sighs happily, laying a hand on the guard’s forearm.
“Thank you,” she says. “I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here. This is all so scary!”
The guard seems to puff up a little now, growing in height in an instant. I’m staring at Kristen, but she doesn’t dare look at me.
Damien’s gaze follows her ass as she and the guard walk away.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warn him.
He turns.
“Think about what?”
“Her,” I answer, trying to hide the wobble in my voice. “Touching her. Don’t even think about it. I’ll kill you. I swear to god, I will.”
His smile grows as he walks back to me.
“My, you and Vince have a lot in common,” he says.
“He said the same thing to me on the phone about you. Of course, if he would have faced me like a man, then none of this would be necessary. I don’t enjoy trapping my enemies like mice.
There’s no honor in it. But he left me no choice.
Now he’s coming to his death voluntarily. For you.”
My heart clenches at the second mention of Vincent dying. This can’t be real. Can it?
“Why are you doing this?“ I ask him. “What did he do to you that was so bad?”
The entrance doors open and we both turn our heads. It’s Vincent. Immediately he’s seized by a nearby guard who pats him down, checking for weapons.
“There he is!” Damien says, clapping his hands together. “The guest I’ve been waiting for. Hazel and I have been chatting and getting to know one another. She just asked me why I’m going to kill you today. Would you like to answer that question, or should I?”