Chapter 12
Victor
“He’s a fucking maniac.I vote we take the money and blow.” This is from Kill Zone. He paces back and forth, waving his hands. “Did you see him smile? My cousin told me he smiled like that when he killed the bean counter at the wedding. Just bam. Dead.”
Uzi sits in a corner, cradling his gun like a teddy bear.
Bruiser is nowhere to be seen.
Spiro has the briefcase splayed open on a table, counting stacks. “He could’ve killed Bruiser. And he didn’t.”
“He could’ve killed us all,” mutters Joe from his guard post at the door.
I lean back in my chair, watching the blurry shapes of the men on screen. The lagging feed makes them look like puppets, moving jerkily around the room. The visual is poor, but the audio comes through crisp and clear.
“It’s all here.” Spiro sags into a seat. “Half the advance Stephanos gave him. He wasn’t lying.”
That gives them all pause. Stacks of cash speak louder than words.
I mute the feed and watch them deliberate. They are on the spectrum between fear and awe, with a little curiosity mixed in. A few of them might cut their losses, take their share of the cash, and leave town. But my bet is that a core group will remain. Their leader, Spiro, has an aging mother in the area, which would make him reluctant to move. He can contact Stephanos. And if he carries the briefcase anywhere, I’ll be able to track it.
It’s just one tendril, one silken thread I’ve woven to make my spider’s web. In time, I will have Stephanos trapped where I want him. Not today. But soon.
In the meantime, I have sweeter company to keep.
To my right, a smaller screen shows the small room and king bed where I left Lula. The doctor reported that she remained asleep all this time. Her eyes are still closed, but she’s more restless, her fingers and toes twitching. I rise and leave the computer room and its monitors. I only have a few minutes to get ready.
My beautiful prisoner is about to wake.
Lula
I blink my eyes open,feeling like an elephant is sitting on me. A heavy blanket is on my lower half, and when I shove it off, I’m able to breathe, but my limbs are still heavy with the languor that comes from a long, uninterrupted sleep. I’m in a big, four-poster bed in a plain, dimly lit room. There’s no way to tell what time it is. My prison isn’t the worst hellhole I can imagine, but the lack of clocks or sunlight is driving me mad. In this stifling, windowless space, with no markers of night or day, I’m lost to the world. Adrift in a timeless space with no direction to tell me up from down.
The only constant is my body, my nakedness. And Victor. I hate how my thoughts go to him immediately and constantly. I hate even more how my body revs up at the thought of him.
I could spend a few minutes lying here imagining shooting him properly. His eyebrows are darker than his silver and gold hair, a honey color. A bullet between them would kill him instantly. But then I’d feel the tangle of emotions when I watched the light drain out of his ice-blue eyes.
Suddenly, the bed is too soft and confining for me to stay in a second longer. I stretch and metal clinks. My right wrist is handcuffed to the headboard, but other than that, I’m free.
I’m free!
I swing myself out of bed and brace against the heavy wooden post. Gritting my teeth, I pull my hand against the steel circle of the handcuff. With the right amount of joint-screaming pressure, I pop my thumb out of its socket and wrench it through. Fire blazes up my poor thumb, and I have to swallow my scream, but with my thumb out, my fingers follow easily. Shuddering, sweating, and panting with the pain, I clutch my throbbing hand to my chest and head for the door.
It’s unlocked. I stop breathing and turn the knob slowly so as not to make any sound. The space beyond the bedroom is a smaller version of Victor’s penthouse. There’s a kitchen with a giant quartz-topped island with four black leather-topped bar stools pushed under it. The rest of the area is bare, with a thick plush rug and a single, deep black leather armchair. Doors line the walls, thick and utilitarian. Probably locked. One of them might lead back to the large room where Victor’s been holding me. Even if escape lay that way, I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to enter the dungeon-like space again.
The first door I open leads to a small bathroom. My bladder screams at me, but I ignore it. Next door, locked. The next, by the kitchen, opens to a dark hallway. I’m through it in a flash, racing down. It’s dark, and I pat the walls with my good hand, finding door after door, each one locked.
He comes out of the shadows, his silver-gold hair lighting up the dark. “Lula.”
I scream, and he grabs me, tugging me back the way I came. Maybe back to the dungeon?—
I kick, and he grunts, then lifts me. I’m a wild thing, thrashing and flailing. I’ll do anything to escape him. I can’t go back to the dungeon; I just can’t?—
He drags me down to the rug, his weight falling on me. A few feet away, the open door to the hallway swings shut. I feel the final click, like a guillotine blade slicing down, severing all hope.
“No,” I growl.
“Lula,” he murmurs in my ear. “You can’t have thought it’d be this easy.”
I jerk away, but he holds me fast. When I try to free my arms, the move hits my dislocated thumb, and my body seizes with the pain.
I cry out, and he rolls me to my back, pressing me into the floor with his hips heavy on mine.
“Oh, krasiva, what have you done to yourself?” He pins me and reaches for my hand.
I try to wrestle him one-handed, breathlessly pleading, but he immobilizes me.
“Shhhh, precious one. I’m not going to hurt you.” He shifts his weight so he’s not crushing me.
Whimpering, I let him take my hand and study it.
“Correction. This will hurt for a moment.” He searches my eyes until I nod and pops my thumb back into place. My whole body seizes, screaming, and then I slump, panting.
He bundles me in his lap, and I settle there, draped against his chest, while the sweat dries on my back, and my body gets used to the empty feeling where the pain used to be. The fight’s gone out of me. . . for now.
After a few minutes, my breathing matches his.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I tell him quietly. He rises effortlessly, still holding me, and carries me to the bathroom. For a moment, I’m afraid he’ll stay with me in the small space, but he sets me down, waits until I’m no longer wobbling on my feet, and, with a brisk kiss on my forehead, leaves me. I sink down onto the toilet, feeling pathetically grateful.
I spend long moments in the bathroom, finger-combing my hair and scrubbing my face with one hand, scolding myself the whole time. He’s the enemy. He’s the worst.
But when I warily exit the bathroom, I can’t help searching for him. And when I see him, barefoot and broad-shouldered, standing in the kitchen area, my heart flutters.
“Hello, beautiful.” His eyes crinkle as he smiles. Behind the island, tending to something on the stove, he’s the picture of domestic bliss. A boyfriend welcoming me home.
I’ve never had a boyfriend. If I had, he wouldn’t be model-pretty like Victor. A sense of satisfaction hums through me, pleasure that this beautiful creature is, for the moment, mine.
Which is stupid. I’m his prisoner. I have to remember that, and resist.
The scent of sautéed onions hits me, and my stomach cramps.
Victor signals me forward. I halt at his stupid hand gesture, but he doesn’t seem to notice as he’s too busy plating something mouthwatering and sliding it across the island to a place setting. “You must be hungry.”
An omelet. He’s made me an omelet sprinkled with finely cut chives. And it looks like something out of a cooking magazine, damn him.
I cross the space to him, feeling the pull toward him deep in my belly.
In this mundane setting, I feel my nakedness even more. Again, I’m naked while he’s clothed, and the powerful contrast makes my core throb. When I slide onto the stool, the cool leather makes goosebumps break out over my body.
“Cold?” he asks, and I nod.
He unbuttons his black shirt and comes around the island to help me into it. It’s huge on me, draping over my thighs like a shirt dress. He has to roll up the sleeves so I can eat. My heart slams happily in the cage of my ribs as he dresses me. He purses his plush lips and fiddles with the fabric, his nimble fingers tucking and straightening the black silk.
And when he returns to the stove, leaving me sitting there in the soft shirt that smells of him and still retains his body heat, I want to cry.
I stare at the shirt buttons. I get it now. This is how he’s going to break me. Not with cruelty. With kindness.
Shirtless, Victor finishes cooking his own meal. The muscles in his back and shoulders ripple with each lazy movement. “You’re not eating,” he says with a frown, and my heart leaps. Will he punish me? Drag me back to the cage?
I glance at the heavy door that leads to the hallway. If only I had made it out.
“Lula. You must eat.”
“Or what?” I ask, my stomach roiling. “You’ll hurt me?”
He drops his elbows to the white quartz on either side of his plate and leans in. “No. I won’t hurt you again unless you beg me.”
I hiss in a breath. The scent of the food is making me so weak I might fall off the stool, but every cell in me wants to fight. “Are you insane?”
“Probably.” He picks up his fork and digs into his eggs. “The official diagnosis is antisocial personality disorder.”
“I’m not going to beg you.”
He smiles at his plate.
“I’m still going to fight you,” I say, testing the words.
Okay, he signals. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I dig into my omelet.
It’s fucking delicious.
Victor finishes his food before I do. I take my time, savoring each buttery bite, hoping if I draw out this meal, I’ll be able to put off whatever happens next.
He watches me with a half smile as if he knows what I’m doing but finds it amusing.
“How long did I sleep?” I ask, less hoping he’ll tell me and more to stretch meal time.
“Long enough. I would’ve stayed with you, but I had business.”
I use my fork to cut a piece of omelet into a perfect golden square. “What sort of business?”
“Tracking down Stephanos.” He says it calmly, as if he didn’t just drop a live grenade into the conversation.
“Why?”
“He owes me. The last payment for my last job.”
“David,” I say, and he nods.
“He paid the first half promptly. But before I could collect the second half, I was incapacitated.”
Because I shot him. “That’s a shame,” I say with a straight face.
“Indeed.” He clears his plate and washes it right away. It would take me a few seconds to rush around the island to jab my fork into his kidney. But I doubt he’s distracted enough to let me. Besides, the pale, muscled expanse of his back is so pretty. And I want to keep eating.
“Stephanos has gone to ground,” Victor tells me as he cleans up the cooking area.
“I know.” I grind my teeth.
“But I found several members of his gang and spoke to them today. One way or another, they will lead me to him.”
When Victor turns from the sink, I’m gripping the fork like a weapon.
“Lula, breathe.”
“What will you do when you find him?”
“Retrieve what is owed to me. One way or another.”
“Will you kill him?”
“Do you want me to?” He looks me dead in the eye. It’s a genuine question.
“No. I can’t afford to hire you. Left my wallet in my other pants.”
His expression doesn’t change at my little joke. Which is fine. I don’t feel like laughing, either.
My appetite is gone, but I poke at my food, unwilling for the meal to be over. “How many people have you killed?”
Victor tilts his head as if he’s doing mental math. “Men and women?”
I have a horrifying thought. “Do you kill children?” There’s a metallic taste in my mouth.
“No. No one under the age of twenty-two. There are rarely contracts on children unless they are heirs.”
I feel the tiniest bit of relief. The psychopath has standards.
He’s still a monster, I scold myself. I don’t want to think about this dark world that Victor lives in, but I can’t help myself. “What you told me last night. The story of the little boy. Was any of it true?”
“There are no lies between us.” He leans over the island, and that slight movement is enough to send his winter-fresh scent wafting my way.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
I want to protest, but he’s staring at me so intently, gaze scalpel-sharp enough to dissect me, that I have to look away.
“Everything I told you was true. My mother slept with men for money. She did her best to survive. A butcher took us in and gave us food and a place to stay. In return, my mother did whatever he wanted, and I worked for him in the shop. He taught me everything I know.” He’s leaning into the island counter, gripping the edge. It looks casual, but his fingers tighten until they’re almost as white as the quartz. “One night, he hit my mother, and I killed him. I used his favorite knife to cut him into pieces. A graduation of sorts.”
I swallow. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
I blink rapidly. My heart bleeds for the young, tow-headed boy. “And your mother?”
“Dead. I had to run, you see, and she had to hide. She found another man, but he hit her, and it was fatal. I killed him, too.”
“My god.”
“There is no god.” He stalks around the island to stand over me. The wound in his stomach is on display, the bullet puncture a half-healed pink. His head is bowed and shadows lie in the hollows under his cheekbones. “Are you finished?”
Yes, please, let’s change the subject. I lean back to let him take my plate and invite a new danger. My skin prickles as he reaches over me. In this setting, it’s easy to imagine him as a friend or a lover. I’m not a hugger, but all that beautiful muscle, godlike in its perfection? I want to draw him close under the pretense of comfort. Lay my head on his pecs. Slide my hands up his strong back. There’s an ache deep in my gut, one that will only dissolve if I touch him. He’s so close I’d only have to move an inch. . .
I swallow and deliberately angle myself away from him.
I can sense him silently laughing as he carries my plate away.
“Is this some sort of plan to make me care about you?” I ask sourly. “To make me empathize with you so I feel like we’re on the same side?”
“We are on the same side.”
He’s at the sink again, his back to me, but I shake my head. “I mean some sort of psychological conditioning.”
“Stockholm syndrome?”
“Yes. Except Stockholm syndrome was developed by a cop-sympathizing psychologist to discredit a witness’s testimony. A woman’s testimony. It’s more likely she felt real empathy for her captors.”
“You are the expert.” A smile hides behind his dry tone.
“Shut up.”
He finishes the dishes and returns to me. I slide off the stool, not wanting to act too nervous but needing something physical between us. My hands fist at my side, and I will myself not to run. Not to look towards the dungeon door.
“What now?” I finally ask to keep from screaming.
“More training.” Before I can throw myself in the opposite direction, he says, “Not that sort.” He flicks his fingers, and where they were once empty, they now hold a shining blade. “I’m going to teach you how to throw a knife.”