Chapter 22 Andre
TWENTY-TWO
Andre
“Where are you?”
At the sound of Noah’s gruff voice, my thoughts try to slide sideways, but I have to talk to him.
“Home,” I answer woodenly. I’m sitting on the floor, leaning back against the island. “It’s, um, SoHo. On the harbor near—”
“You’re at your warehouse?”
That stalls me. He knows where I live. In spite of everything, he’s kept track of me.
“Yes,” I reply.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Are there bodies?”
“Two.”
“Is one of them Elias?”
For some reason, I start shaking so hard that I can barely hold the phone at my ear even with my elbow resting on my drawn-up knee.
“Andre. Is one of them Elias?”
“No,” I rasp.
“Where is he?” Noah asks.
“Here.”
Noah is silent for a moment. I expect questions about Elias, but he just says, “Okay. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I’ll have someone with me to help.”
Noah ends the call. I set the phone on the floor.
It’s too dark to see detail, but there’s enough light from beyond the high windows that I can make out Elias’s pale form. He’s still curled up on the floor. He hasn’t moved.
My eyes skip away from him. I don’t know what to do with him. I’m supposed to kill him. That’s why I brought him here.
He’s one of them.
He’s one of them and he made me love him. I didn’t realize it until I had to hate him, but it’s true. I love him. He said he loved me, but I know it was a lie—and I know I have to kill him.
I start shaking so hard that I have to put my head down on my knees.
I know there are things I should be thinking about, things I should be doing, but I used up all my energy and focus calling Noah. I have nothing left. I can’t even think about the fact that he’s coming here. I just can’t.
Time must pass, but I lose track of it. I jolt at the sound of a knock and the distant glow of my motion-activated doorway light.
I use the kitchen island to pull myself to my feet. I walk through the dark converted warehouse to the door, realizing that the door has been open this whole time, ever since the Valenci men broke in. Noah knocked on the doorframe, and he’s standing outside it, waiting.
I halt at the sight of him. He’s wearing a brown canvas jacket and worn-out jeans. His brown hair is threaded with gray and so is his beard. His body language is carefully neutral, but I can see that he’s ready for anything I might do.
“Hello, Andre,” he says.
My chest starts heaving. I start shaking my head.
Noah closes his eyes for a second. “I just want to help you.”
Rafael said that too, about Noah, and I know it’s true.
Noah has only ever wanted to help me. But that’s why I can’t handle being around him.
Because he knows that I need help and he knows that I can’t be helped and, most of all, he knows what I look like while I’m being raped.
He knows because he killed the man who was doing it.
But that was only one man and only one time. It wasn’t the first.
But Noah … he made it the last.
Noah is the one who saved me. He’s the one who saved all of us.
Fifteen years ago, Noah was an FBI agent. He was investigating the Society and he got too close. So they took his son.
I’m not sure how long it took Noah to find the Island. Long enough to destroy his career. Long enough that his son was dead by the time he got there.
But he saved the rest of us.
And I … I was tied to a bed when he and a team of mercenaries stormed the resort. It was Noah who broke into that room and shot the man who was fucking me. It was Noah who saw … too much.
And that’s why I can’t see him. Because when I do, that’s what I see. Myself, through his eyes.
And I can’t.
I fucking can’t.
He makes me into that boy again.
That’s why, when he would come see me in the group home where I got placed after returning to New York, I would just scream and scream until he left.
“Please,” Noah says, his voice breaking. “Let me help you, Andre.”
I need his help. I have two bodies in my apartment and I don’t have any choice. I don’t have anyone else to call.
Who would come to help me with this?
Only Noah.
It doesn’t matter that almost fifteen years have passed. It doesn’t matter that I said terrible things to him the last time I saw him.
He’s here. For me. He’s never written me off.
I don’t understand it, but I can’t deny it, so I say, “Okay. Yes,” and I turn aside to let him in.
But then I see who’s leaning against Noah’s truck.
Noah said he was bringing someone. I didn’t really think about who, but I guess I expected Rafael or Dominic. But it’s Wes.
What the hell does Wes have to do with Noah?
I know Wes through ForbiddenX. I don’t know him through Noah.
“What the fuck is he doing here?”
Noah halts mid-step when I suddenly block his path. He sighs. “Yeah. He said you didn’t seem to remember him. Wes sometimes helps me with cleanup, and I sometimes help him.”
I stare past Noah to Wes. I don’t see it. I don’t understand. I don’t want to.
“I’ll stay out here,” Wes calls to me. “It’s fine.”
It’s not fucking fine, and it snaps the fragile threads holding me together.
I blow past Noah and storm out into the loading zone where Noah’s truck is parked beside the Valenci vehicle. Wes straightens from his lean against the side of the truck.
I see him clearly for the first time. His stern, handsome face. His violent readiness. The militant harshness that never really fit with his business.
“You’ve known all along,” I demand. There’s a lot missing from that sentence, but Wes doesn’t look confused. He understands me.
“From the second you applied to ForbiddenX, yes.”
“So you fucking spied on me for Noah?”
“He’s here to help you, Andre, and so am I. So instead of being a dick about it—”
“Answer my fucking question!” I slam Wes into the side of the truck with all the anger that I can’t unleash with Noah or Elias, the anger that never has any real outlet.
Even when I killed those two men, it was controlled, purpose driven. This isn’t.
Wes reacts so fast that I don’t even know how I end up the ground—but it is everything I need. I fucking lose it.
We twist and wrestle. There’s shouting at the edge of our fight, but I ignore it.
I manage to get behind Wes and hook one of his legs with mine. I’m halfway to getting him in a headlock when he slams his head back into my face. I lose my grip on him, and he’s quick to take advantage of that fact. His elbow drives into my ribs.
Shit happens too fast for me to track, but I end up on my back with Wes on top of me, his hands at my throat.
I ram my knee into his side. He squeezes harder.
His teeth are bared in a rictus of fury, and I understand it so fucking well that it takes all my anger right out of me.
It just flips a switch in my brain, turns it off.
I stop fighting. I let him choke me. My thoughts slide away.
Distantly, I hear shouting.
Wes suddenly releases my throat but unleashes a wordless, vicious scream in my face. He shoves up from me and goes stalking off.
“Go inside,” Noah orders him as I roll onto my side, coughing and choking. “Now, Wes!”
Noah doesn’t touch me, but he hovers at my side as I get to my hands and knees then to my feet. I’m lightheaded, dizzy, but I feel strangely calm. Things have broken apart inside me.
When something crashes inside the apartment, my heart skips, disrupting the calm. I push past Noah and hurry inside. Elias is in there.
I’m halfway across the dark space when the kitchen light blazes on behind me, revealing two dead bodies amid the mess of toppled furniture—two dead bodies and Wes, pacing. His expression is still furious and his dick is pressing visibly against his black combat pants.
But Elias is nowhere to be seen.
Then I spot him in the loft, peering through the bars of the black railing.
I calm back down. I go to stand at the bottom of the cast iron staircase.
“Oh, you’re fucking fine now, are you?” Wes shouts at me.
“He’s not fine,” Noah says, “and neither are you.”
Wes flips an end table and stalks off to the gym area. He disappears into the shadowy recess and goes quiet. Noah watches in that direction for a moment, then he focuses on me.
“We need to ID these bodies,” Noah says, getting to business, “and we need to figure out what to do with Elias.”
“Elias is mine,” I say.
Noah’s eyes flick up to the loft. “Is he a prisoner?”
“He’s mine.”
Noah studies me. I don’t know what he sees. I don’t know what there is to see. I don’t know what I’m feeling. Everything still feels broken apart inside me.
But this one piece is clear to me. Elias is mine.
Noah lets it go. He goes to look at the first man I killed. He crouches and rolls the body over in the pool of blood. He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling.
“Shit,” he mutters. “I think this is Ernesto Atolli.”
“Yes,” I confirm. I recognized him the second I shot him. He’s the one who was at Lush.
Noah rummages inside Ernesto’s jacket and finds Ernesto’s phone. Picking up Ernesto’s limp right hand, Noah presses Ernesto’s thumb to the biometric scanner. He starts scrolling.
Noah says, “It doesn’t look like he was communicating with Piero about this. His calls and texts are to Sylvester. Andre, check that other body for an ID.”
I don’t want to leave my spot guarding the stairs, and it makes me hesitate long enough that Wes emerges from the workout area. His dick is still hard, but he’s under control. His face is stony.
Wes goes to the body, which is pretty close to me, but Wes doesn’t look my way. He digs out the dead man’s wallet and finds his driver’s license.
“Sylvester Frinzetti,” he reads.
Noah is still scrolling on Ernesto’s phone. “That buys a little time, but not much. This location has to be considered compromised, and we should move fast. Wes, can you help me with all this?”
“Yes.”
“If that changes and you need to leave—”
“I’m fucking fine.”
Noah sighs. “All right. Does he have the car keys?” When Wes digs them out, Noah says, “Pull it into the garage so we can load them up. Andre, go open it.”
I look up at the loft to check on Elias. He’s still at the railing. He’s looking down at me, but there’s no expression on his face.
Noah says, “He’s fine here with me. Go open the garage for Wes.”
I do what Noah says, but I don’t stay with Wes as he walks out to where Ernesto’s SUV is parked. I go back inside, where I can hear Noah talking to Elias.
“Are you sure?” Noah asks.
I don’t hear Elias’s reply, but I hear Noah sigh and say, “All right.”
I go to the guy with the broken neck and pull him up, hefting the body over my shoulder. I carry it out to the garage, where Wes has parked the SUV beside my Escalade. The back of the SUV is open and I sling the body inside.
Wes, meanwhile, walks into the apartment with a folded-up sheet of plastic. I follow behind and watch him and Noah roll up Ernesto’s messier corpse. When they cart it out to the SUV and throw it in the back with the other, I linger in the garage doorway.
Wes gets in the driver’s seat and starts the vehicle. He backs it out and keeps it idling beside Noah’s truck.
Noah walks back my way, digging keys from his pocket. “You can go to my place,” he says.
“I’ll go to my hotel.”
“You think that’s secure enough?”
“More secure than your place probably.”
I can tell that Noah wants to keep talking to me, but he has to leave. So he just says, “I’ll be in touch.”
I nod. I owe Noah more than that, but it’s all I can manage.
It’s enough for him. He walks out to his truck and gets in. Wes backs into the street. Noah does the same.
Then they’re gone.
I feel strangely desolate as I hit the button for the garage door. It groans and lowers. Then there’s silence.
I walk back into the apartment. Elias is still in the loft.
“Come down here,” I order.
He’s slow about it, but he obeys. He moves in a crouch, creeping down the steps in an almost animal-like way. Noah asked if Elias is my prisoner, but Elias clearly understands that it’s not that simple. Or maybe, in a way, it’s simpler. He’s mine.
That doesn’t mean I won’t kill him. On a certain level, I’ve always known that our game would end that way. It was inevitable even before I learned the truth about him.
Wes once said that I was obsessed with Elias, and I am. His guilt hasn’t changed that. It’s changed things around that, but it hasn’t changed that.
I don’t know what things will look like when all the broken pieces inside me settle and fuse. I’m still calm because they’re still floating, and I’m glimpsing this or that piece.
That Elias is perfect for me.
That Elias is a liar and fraud.
That I love him.
That he’s part of a world that I do not allow to exist.
And now, that world, that reality, is drifting around inside me with all the other broken pieces, dark and sharp-edged.
It might kill me.
It might kill Elias.
I don’t know. I just know that he’s mine.
So I hold out my hand to him. He’s crouched on the bottom step now, his head tilting back so he can look up at me. His eyes are big and dark. He knows exactly how dangerous I am. But he loves it. This part of him is real. He takes my hand.
I pull him up and lead him to the closet under the loft. I find him a pair of my sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He puts them on, covering the traces of cum on his torso and between his legs. Elias’s height and build are pretty average, but my clothes make him look small and vulnerable.
I feel a surge of a strange, unfamiliar emotion. I’ve felt it before with him, but I really don’t understand it. I let it float away. Just another broken piece among the others.
I go to gather up weapons and my phone and other things, stuffing it all in a duffel bag. Elias is hovering by the bloodstain and the nearby traces of cum.
I decide to clean it up before we go. I get out the cleaning supplies and get to work. Elias watches me. His fixation is almost eerie. Shock, maybe. This is all that’s left of his cousin. Maybe they were close.
But when I’m done and I hold out my hand, Elias takes it like he did before, like he’s not upset that I killed a member of his family.
Another lie?
I lead him out to the garage and we get in the Escalade. On the way here, he was unconscious in the back, but I let him ride in the front now. I do, however, engage the child locks so he can’t try to escape.
It’s a short drive back to The Axis. Elias doesn’t give me any trouble on the way or in the parking garage. He’s calm even as we take the elevator up to the penthouse, where I lead him through to the bedroom. He seems almost happy.
But then he realizes that I’m going to leave him. His eyes widen.
“Stay,” he whispers.
But I can’t possibly stay in this room. So I step out and shut the door and leave him safe inside.