20. Dragon
Chapter Twenty
DRAGON
Iwoke up tied to a chair in the middle of an empty industrial hall, like we were on the top floor of a soulless office building. Maybe insurance. The dim sound of traffic came through the large, dark windows. New York. I’d bet my life on it.
“Hello?” I said, tugging lightly on my handcuffs.
My voice sounded rough, and I was thirsty.
My thoughts were foggy, and I was cuffed ankle and wrist to a heavy metal chair that I’d need serious tools to get through.
I’d been kidnapped? Again? Did I look like the kind of a princess that people kidnapped?
I yanked on my cuffs, but the metal was solid, and I wasn’t going to try too hard because it might hurt my baby.
If anyone hurt him… A rush of heat went through me, but I took an even breath.
Everything was going to be fine. Eventually.
“Hello,” Janice said, walking in all click-clack with her nude heels and business suit. Her hair was so sleek, blonde, bobbed and swept behind her ear. She held a clipboard and looked as dangerous as a pizza box.
She studied me with the usual irritation edged with judgment. “I work for Mr. Finetti.”
Finetti? Uncle Ni?o was a Finetti. So were Lucas and half of my cousins.
“You work for the family? Since when?”
She gave me a pleasant smile. “Since Mr. Finetti saved my life.”
“Really? Someone else saved? See? We do save.”
“He killed four people, and saving me wasn’t his goal, but I look at results more than intentions.”
“Of course you do. Was this before or after you worked for Horse?”
“Before. I worked for Mr. VanBuren as Mr. Finetti’s agent.”
“You aren’t obsessed with Horse, just Mr. Finetti? That’s good.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t suppose you’re talking about Uncle Ni?o.”
She pulled out a knife. It glinted weirdly in the dim light.
She’d had it underneath her clipboard? How unnerving.
“He should be entirely out of the picture, but you interfered with our efforts. You’re always interfering so stupidly.
You walk in blind and overthrow every subtle work, then go merrily on your way. ”
“You tried to get rid of Uncle Ni?o, but I messed that up? How disappointing.”
“You took the car with your friend’s body and made it disappear. He says you didn’t do it intentionally, like you didn’t seduce him intentionally.”
I stared at her. She sounded legitimately insane. Good to know where we were. “You have my friend’s body? Which friend?”
She waved a hand at my stomach. “The one who betrayed Mr. Finetti once you came along. He was supposed to join the cause that day in the club, but instead you were there, bringing chaos and destruction with you.”
I looked down at my stomach and then up at her. “Horse’s body?”
“Richard! Why are you always so stupid? You don’t understand inference, subtlety, or suggestion. You destroy everything you touch without the slightest idea of what you’re doing. You’re like a Godzilla toddler!”
I nodded. That day in the club meant the strip club by the hospital.
The one where I’d met the birth father of my baby.
“Right. You think I disposed of Richard’s body instead of letting Uncle Ni?o take the fall for it?
That must be frustrating. Wait, the sweet caddy was Uncle Ni?o’s? How did you get Richard? And why?”
She tapped the clipboard with her knife. “He came to visit you, to beg you to take him back. Mr. Finetti already ordered Boney to kill him, but this time he got to do it himself.”
“Lucky Lucas. I imagine that’s the Finetti we’re talking about. So these days he likes to kill people? Good to know.”
Her knife was at my throat, the sharp edge cutting the skin deep enough that a trail of blood ran down my throat and into the collar of my pickle and tiger lily pajamas. “You don’t speak his name.”
I stared into those eyes. Psycho. So, so psycho, and very obsessed with Lucas.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. “I’m here so he can kill me with his own hands?
Then you might want to lower your blade.
Accidents are terrible. You wouldn’t want to be a brainless Godzilla toddler, would you?
Accidentally killing me at the wrong time? ”
She stepped back, frowning at the knife and wiping it with her fingers, surprised at the blood and trying to pretend that hadn’t happened. “He’s not going to kill you. He doesn’t kill women.”
I nodded. “Just screws them over. Glad some things never change.”
She bared her teeth at me, gripping her knife like she wanted to throw it at my face. It would probably throw pretty well, a clean design without much of a handle. I probably shouldn’t antagonize her. It was way too easy.
The fact that I was here for Lucas made my stomach queasy.
I’d loved him so completely, stupidly, absolutely.
I’d avoided him for over a decade and avoided the feelings surrounding him by drinking and making bad decisions.
Seeing him face-to-face might upset all the progress I’d made with Horse, and on my own, dealing with feelings.
At least I couldn’t get drunk while I was tied to a chair.
“Janice,” a low, warm voice said from the shadows. And then there he was, tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, in a suit that said mob. That face, though. It said pediatrician.
I squinted at the man coming towards us. “Dr. Williams?” I asked cautiously.
The man smiled at me, devil, mischief, with a hint of instability. “Not Dr. Williams. You didn’t recognize me. That hurts, Trix.”
I swallowed hard. Lucas was Dr. Williams. “I am way too dehydrated for this. You pretended to be a pediatrician? How random.”
“Not at all. I was outside the hospital and your friend Minx asked me if I was a doctor. I said of course I was, and then she proceeded to try to set me up with you. How could I resist such fate?”
I stared at him. “But you were actually there for the strip club. That’s much more your speed than saving kids.”
“Much,” he said with a charming smile and twinkling eyes.
“Look at you, the Dragon, wearing the most ridiculous pajamas I’ve ever seen, and yet still utterly, unbelievably delectable.
I watched the video of your dance in my club every night for a week afterwards.
In the entire world, there is no one else like you. ”
He watched my drunken pole dance? There was no accounting for taste. Or lack therof. He wasn’t the same Lucas I used to love. Used to love? Didn’t I still have a haunting ache for him? No. I wanted Horse. The end. There was no one else, and there never would be. I loved him.
I raised my chin. “There’s no one else like anyone. Everyone is singular.”
He laughed and gestured his large hand towards me. “You would say that. You genuinely find value in all people.”
“Yes. I’m amazing. That’s why you dumped me. Why am I here if it’s not so that you have the pleasure of killing me with your bare hands?”
He glanced at his hands and then gave me another smile.
“That’s not what my hands would be doing.
Offer me your body to save him.” He stared at my pajama-clad body in a way that was more objectifying than any other man had ever been.
Sell my body? After he dumped me and had it for free?
What an idiot. Some people were just pure ego.
I smiled back at him and gave him my own once-over as objectifying as I could be. “Sure. Take my body to save him. Hm. Maybe I should know which ‘him’ we’re talking about. I have no capacity for inference. Just ask Janice.”
He looked at his secretary and her blood-glazed knife. “You can’t damage bait,” he told her in a soft voice, but she stumbled back a step and went pale.
That was the same paleness Theresa and my mother had when talking about him.
Did I have to watch him strangle her to death?
He was a much bigger creep than I remembered.
What was wrong with me, falling for a shallow psycho like him?
If I were going to fall for a psycho, he should at least be obsessed with constellations.
He turned back to me, the threat made. But I was bait? For who? My parents? Probably the person he’d had Janice watching. Horse. Would he come to rescue me? Of course he would.
I yanked on the manacles and snarled at him. “If you touch him, I’ll kill you.”
His eyes lit up. “Touch? Of course I’m not going to simply touch him.
I’m going to break him. And you’re going to watch.
He’s going to walk in here and offer himself in your place.
I’m going to accept, and then I’m going to beat him to death.
It’s going to be very slow and satisfying.
He thinks he deserves you. I’m going to break every bone in his body for that. More than your thirty-seven.”
“He definitely doesn’t deserve me,” I said, glowering at the monster I’d been stupid enough to give my heart to.
He smiled at me, looking more like Dr. Williams. “I’ve missed you. I tried not to because you’re so troublingly good that it can’t help but infect those around you. Even now, I want you to think that I’m not entirely fallen. But I want you to watch Horse get smashed to death even more.”
“What do you have against Horse?”
“When you saw me in that hospital, you thought of him instead of recognizing me. And then on the stage you danced for VanBuren. That night, you took Richard because you wanted Horse.”
“Great. Now that everything is cleared up, you can stop talking.”
He leaned close, cupped my chin in his palm and tilted my face up so I could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes. “Should I kiss you instead? Do you remember the first time you kissed me? I was driving, and you climbed on top of me so I almost crashed.”
“Go ahead and kiss me. The world would appreciate you missing your tongue and most of your face.”
He laughed and released me, putting his hands behind his back. “So tempting. But he’s almost here.”