Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
ANVIL
We’ve switched hotels, and we’re alone in an elevator when Rachel asks, “What’s wrong, Sasha?”
The corner of my mouth cocks up. She knows me well. I reach into the inside pocket of my suit jacket and retrieve a platinum locket on its chain and hold it out to her. There’s a feather engraved on the front.
Her eyes widen.
“Wait,” I say before she has a chance to react. “It’s tech. GPS. So I’ll know… so I can find you if we get separated.”
She looks at the locket. “It’s beautiful. Do I have to do something to turn it on?”
I shake my head, waiting.
She doesn’t say a thing about the fact that I’ll be able to track her every movement every minute of the day. She’s as cool as ever about the things that are fucked up in her life.
She opens the front door to the locket. It’s empty inside. “I need a picture of you,” she says.
I frown, unable to imagine that. “Maybe. Or one of your mom,” I say.
She hooks it around her neck and lets the locket fall between her breasts. I think about the taste of her nipples and want to chase the locket’s path with my mouth.
“You’re mine, too.”
I drag my gaze from her chest to her face. “What?”
“A part of me belongs to you and always will. And a part of you belongs to me and always will.” Her fierce expression challenges me to deny it. She is a hundred and five pounds soaking wet. I could pick her and a hundred-pound kettle ball up with one arm. But facts are facts.
“You own every inch of me,” I say seriously. “Blood and fucking bone, down to my crooked left pinky toe.”
She smirks, glancing down at my polished black wingtips. “That toe is weird. What happened to it?”
“Nearly tore it off when I was eight. Collided with another kid on a bike and caught it in the spoke of his back tire.” I don’t know why I tell her. Or maybe I do.
She grimaces. “Not good. Be careful. Now that I own that body, I don’t want it damaged.”
I like the way she teases me. I like everything about the way we’re becoming with each other.
The elevator door opens, and she steps out. My gaze follows the column of her bare spine to the edge of the dress where it covers her taut ass. She’s got the prettiest pink asshole hidden away by her sweet little cheeks. I’ve put my thumb in it. I want to stretch it around my monster of a cock.
My arm slides around her and pulls her body against mine.
I lean down and whisper, “I’m going to train your body, so I can fuck you in the ass.”
She stiffens. “You’ll tear me apart.”
“No. I’ll do things right. I’ll teach you to take me that way.”
“We’ll see,” she says.
I kiss the side of her face, tasting the makeup she’s painted on. She’s like a toy doll and the longer I hold her up against me, the more I want to unwrap her and play with her.
“Come,” I say, taking her hand and leading her to the penthouse door. I lay the keycard against the lock and it clicks open.
When we enter, I pause at the end of the hall, trying to block her view. Trick has two naked girls in the room. A brunette’s lying face down on the bed, her ass striped from being whipped. A blonde’s on her knees, her hands cuffed behind her back while she sucks his dick.
“Wow,” Rachel says, causing three heads to turn toward us.
“Fuck,” Trick says, jerking out of the blonde’s mouth and turning away to put his cock back in his pants.
“Turn around,” I say, taking Rachel’s shoulders and forcing her to face the door.
“C’mon, ‘Vil. A little warning,” he says, uncuffing the blonde. To the girls, he says, “Get dressed in the bathroom.”
They scramble to their feet, grabbing their clothes on the way.
“You called this meeting.”
“Yeah, hours ago, and I told you I had plans before.”
“Assumed you meant off site,” I say, not sure why he’s bothered.
Rachel looks over her shoulder. “Scott Patrick, you’re such a pretty boy. I should’ve guessed you were the worst.”
Trick and I are silent because we know that any of the three of us—C, him, or me—could be the worst on any given night.
“So, I’ve got news,” Trick says. “Let the girls go, and I’ll break it down.”
RACHEL
When the bathroom door opens and the girls emerge, Trick ushers them down the hall and out. Are they prostitutes? They’re both gorgeous. If they are, he must have paid a fortune to do kinky things to them.
“Rachel, can you do me a favor? Can you go out on the balcony and close the sliding door behind you,” Trick asks.
“Sure,” I say, but Sasha’s big hand stops my progress by gripping my arm.
“Not outside. I didn’t check the roof of the building across from here.”
“You think there’s a sniper with a night scope waiting to get a shot at her?”
Sasha doesn’t respond.
“You’re goddamned paranoid, Anvil.”
“You and I can go out there. She stays in the room.”
Trick laughs. “You can’t use me as a human shield, you know. My head would only block your chin. The top of your skull would be a perfect target.”
“Not worried,” Sasha says, walking to the sliding glass door. “Have a drink, Raven. Or some food.”
“Not the fruit,” Trick murmurs.
Sasha’s gaze slides to the buffet. “Don’t eat. I’ll feed you later.”
When they have gone out, I walk to the food, curious. There is white powder dusting the tray between the strawberries. Some of it has likely melted onto them. Cocaine? Heroin? Trick is a bad boy indeed.
My thousand-dollar Saint Laurent sandals are pretty, but they’re hurting my feet.
I sit on the edge of the couch and wait.
When Sasha and Trick reenter the room, they are talking in one-word exchanges. I have seen the guys in C Crue this way before. They have a shorthand of codes. The words change, but they mean one thing. Something dangerous is happening.
“I’ll be right back,” Sasha says, catching my hand in his and leading me toward the door.
When we’re in the hall, I’m surprised that Sasha takes me past the elevator to the stairs.
“Where are we going?”
“Down one floor,” he says.
We walk down the stairs, and he uses a keycard to open the stairwell door on the next floor.
He leads me to a room directly below Trick’s.
He opens his wallet, takes out a different keycard, and uses it to let us in.
I know C and his crue use different hotels around the city.
It makes it harder for law enforcement or others to predict where they’ll be, but he seems more tense than usual.
Sasha leaves me near the door while he checks that no one’s hiding in a closet, under the bed, on the balcony, or in the bathroom. He might be my lover now, but apparently he’s still always my bodyguard too.
“All clear, Raven,” he says, waving me over.
“I thought we had a dinner reservation at Gigi’s?” I say, glancing down at the black Saint Laurent open back halter gown I’m wearing.
“Change of plans,” he says, sliding his jacket off and setting it on a chair. He takes the holster and gun off next and sets it on a bleached wood dining table. “Room service all right?”
“What’s going on?” I ask, glancing around. The room is gorgeous, but it’s not where I expected to have dinner.
“Leone’s getting desperate. He’s got mercenaries waiting at the south entrance to the restaurant. One of the valets knows Trick and called to let us know.”
“What is Alberto planning to do?”
“I can’t say.”
“Kill you? Take me?” I say, bewildered. “This is unbelievable. He’s insane, right?
This is beyond anything…” I tilt my head.
“He doesn’t love me anymore, if he ever did.
The way he treated me when he was jealous was so brutal.
That’s not love. So is he taking these risks out of spite? No wonder he and Frank get along.”
“He’s trying to save face. He doesn’t want to look weak or foolish.
He can’t afford to. He wants to take over his family’s organization one day, but he’s not the toughest or the smartest. Word is he’s run his segments of the business into the ground.
And he’s got bad debt on real estate deals in Vegas and Phoenix.
His family isn’t going to give him another chance.
Trick thinks he planned to use your image and brand as a foundation to build a social media business, to redeem himself. ”
I stare at him. “He lied then. He told me over and over that he was negotiating lucrative deals for his family’s organization. He claimed he was really successful and was only biding his time before taking over out of respect for his dad and uncle. “
“He’s a liar.”
I shake my head. “I wish I had control of the money from the contracts from the Instagram account. I’d give it to him just to make him go away and leave us alone.”
“We’re not paying him shit.”
“Sasha—”
“No, Raven. Not after what he did to you.”
“So we’re going to hide out in hotels and the complex?
On lockdown? And have to look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives?
” I shake my head sharply. “No,” I whisper, thinking about my plan to leave Massachusetts.
I’ve done research on San Francisco and Houston, but also on Vienna and Berlin.
What if I went really far? To a place with an exceptional orchestra?
“It’ll be over soon,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, not wanting to argue.
Sasha takes out his phone and hits a couple of buttons.
When Trick picks up, Sasha says, “The valet slipping a GPS on the mercs’ car might not pan out.
I want to know where Leone is right now.
Call in favors, Trick, and promise people cash.
Someone’s seen him. I’ll pay a hundred grand for solid information.
And two hundred and fifty thousand to anyone who can produce him, dead or alive. ”
Sasha pauses and listens.
“I don’t care,” he says. “It’s time to end this.”
He sets his phone on the table. “If I can’t get to him in forty-eight hours, I’ll find out who he owes and how much and I’ll settle up for him. I’ll get him out of your life, one way or the other. All right?”
“I don’t want you to pay off his debts. That’s not what I meant. What I should do is leave.”
“No.”