1. Knight
Chapter One
KNIGHT
Iwoke up when someone slapped my face with a chair.
No, not a chair, a furious Pixel who was about to hit me again. I grabbed his arm and twisted while his panicked eyes focused. He was spiraling. Clearly. Elevated heart rate, pupils dilated so far. Either panic or drugs. Maybe both.
“She took her!” he sputtered, grimacing like he had a toothache. “You’re going to kill her now, right? You can’t just let that psycho do whatever she wants with your wife.”
I looked down at my arms, which weren’t holding Trixie. The next thing, I was moving, pulling out my phone and bringing up the feed to the cameras around my compound.
She didn’t even try to blend in. I watched Jezabel Whiskey drop into my compound and then proceeded to take down my entire team, flipping off all the cameras as she went past them. Blow-darts to the neck. I still had two sticking out of mine.
“Charles?” I said out loud as I plucked out the tiny needles.
Pixel shook his head. “He’s still passed out over the desk.”
I frowned at him. There was something off about Pixel, why he wasn’t unconscious somewhere, but I had other, much larger concerns.
I called Nix’s personal number, still groggy and panicked when he answered.
“I’m going to kill her!” I growled, but the words were slurred.
There was a long silence. “Come again?” Nix finally drawled.
“Jezabel stole my wife! And blow darts! And what if she gets Trixie shot? She’s pregnant. Jezabel can’t go around stealing other people’s pregnant wives!”
“The pregnant wife who took your street bike over a long jump onto a rusted container? That pregnant wife? The one you don’t seem capable of protecting even when you have her in your arms?”
I held back a growl and let my brain process for a few seconds. “You sent Jezabel?” I finally said, and my emotions settled slightly, even while guilt ate at my intestines. I should have taken better care of Trix.
“No. But she notified me about it when she took the company helicopter, also Tom. He’s on guard duty while Trixie is in the hospital.
Apparently, another week of bedrest. I’d have to hurt Trix for being so careless, but caging her in a hospital is worse than anything I could do.
That’s where you should have taken her. You can’t let your natural weakness for her make you incapable of doing the right thing, however much she hates it.
You can’t worry so much about her hating you. We both know it’s inevitable.”
My blood ran cold. Was Jezabel finally going to reveal to Trix what I really was? “Naturally. Just to double-check, Tom is guarding Trix’s room at the hospital?”
“Yes. Someone planted a bomb on Dirk’s beast. I’m not happy about that, or this attack on Trix in your hotel.
Jezabel said that she’d take care of it.
Maybe I should step in and have my people clean things up, but sometimes they leave an even greater mess behind.
The problem is that if Trix really wants to put herself in danger, Tom isn’t going to be able to stop her.
You’re going to have to figure out how to do that.
Jezabel can and will do whatever it takes, but that’s its own issue. ”
I cleared my throat. “I’m not going to kidnap her against her will.”
“Horse, we both know that your talents lie in manipulation. So use that. Make her need your approval more than she needs an adrenaline rush.”
I was horrified, but also fascinated. ‘Make her need me’ was absolutely something I shouldn’t do.
But at the same time, everything I’d ever wanted.
If she needed me, maybe she wouldn’t throw me away even after she realized what I was.
A manipulative, lying psycho. No, that would be wrong.
Unless it also saved her from her own demons.
I cleared my throat. “Not sure we want to unleash that kind of monster.”
“Keep it on a leash, but definitely put your monster to work. Start by learning how to cook. Take a week, give her space, then crush her with your attention and charm.”
I rubbed my jaw, then my neck where it throbbed from Jezabel’s darts of evil. “What are you trying to do here?” Because honestly, I wasn’t sure with Nix ever since he’d gotten married to his little flower.
“Trix is family. Family is everything. It also tends to self-destructive. I don’t suppose you know anyone who could lend Jezabel an edge of caution, do you? Surely one of your heroic bunch could bring out the goodness in her.”
I snorted. “She’d unman every single person I know. And then stake them out in the sun. And then shoot them somewhere fleshy. If they survived that, she’d sick her animals on them so she could watch them eat him alive. But to reiterate, Trixie is safe, in a hospital, being protected by Tom?”
“Also some of Pinkie’s people, but I pretend not to notice them. I see how you keep looping back to Trixie’s safety. Good. I’ll get you some video feed. Just let her stew a bit before you sweep in all heroic.” There was an edge to his voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“You think she’d consider not seeing me for a week as a punishment for her risky behavior?” The heavens parted, and angels sang.
He gave a sharp laugh, “We’ll be in touch,” then hung up.
I was left holding a phone, standing in my compound filled with unconscious employees. Other than Pixel.
I found him adjusting Charles on the couch more comfortably with a neat pile of darts on his desk. I put a large hand on his shoulder, and he froze up.
“How come you’re not unconscious?” I asked in my calm, cool, late-night DJ voice.
He stiffened up before glancing at me with a hint of panic in his eyes. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, making his own green mohawk tremble. “You can’t throw me out!”
I blinked at him. “I could, but why would I?”
He froze and his eyes got bigger until he pulled away and then nodded. “Right? Why would you?”
But his accent, mannerisms, everything had changed enough to show me his cards. If I squinted at him and looked past the facial piercings, I could see the bone structure of old money.
I crossed my arms and frowned at him while he shifted, torn between continuing to play the role of an unstable adrenaline junkie who needed help with his demons, and the manipulative monster who was unstable for other reasons.
Finally he straightened up into his natural good posture and raised his chin as he glared at me. “I want to work with you. I tried to approach you at a fundraiser, but you refused me. So I adapted, became what you couldn’t refuse. Broken.”
I nodded slowly. “Except only a broken person would do that. So I guess you belong here after all.”
He glared at me, eyes glinting unnaturally.
Before he said or did something stupid, I squeezed his shoulder. “So that explains the dart not working on you. You have a natural immunity to poisons as well as whatever it was she used on us?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I can help you with your work, like the other guy, the one who flew the helicopter. I can do whatever you need. Just give me a chance. I did well with the drones, right? And all this time I haven’t once used my special skills in public so people would see. I’ve got control.”
I studied him. “Why don’t you work for yourself? Connolly, right? That’s your father’s family? Good family. Lots of interests that seem to make the world a better place.”
He sneered. “Boardrooms? Infrastructure? I want to go after evil and destroy it!” So much youthful passion. It made me tired.
“Why?”
His zeal faded a touch. “Because it’s right.”
“And because you want to destroy stuff, but you don’t want to destroy the wrong stuff. Because you’ve already done that and feel crappy about it.” I nodded as I remembered. “Didn’t a thief break into your house when you were a teen, and your mother…”
He grabbed my throat. He had a good grip.
He’d be able to crush it if I wasn’t what I was, a beast beneath a thin veneer of civilized flesh.
His eyes were wild, his pulse beating against his fingertips and into my skin.
“I thought she was a thief. She snuck in through the window, and I took care of it myself. And then…”
For a long, drawn-out pause, he blinked, realized he was strangling me, and stumbled away, panic and self-loathing in every line of his being.
Well then. He certainly qualified as broken.
And I, as resident white knight, would save him.
It would give me something to do while I waited for my week of gaping misery to come to an end.
It occurred to me that Nix was also punishing me for not keeping Trix out of harm’s way. He was terribly gifted.
“So, Pixel, what do you know about cooking spaghetti?”
He blinked at me, then shrugged. “How hard can it be?”
I smiled and grabbed him in a half hug, squeezing his shoulders until the bones creaked. “Exactly what we’re going to find out. How hard can it be?”