Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
LIAR
Four times. Four “I love you”s that left me careening off the edge of the world. He was gone. Just like that. He sent me off with Daniel, like he was my nanny, and then he left with Tom, not looking back at me.
How could he just leave me like that? If he was a real psychopath, he wouldn’t just abandon me.
“Your brunch, miss,” a beautiful waitress said, setting up the cart next to my lounge chair.
I was in one of the private pool areas, surrounded by palm trees, somewhere I could be alone and think things through.
Not that I didn’t love Beastie, but I didn’t need a babysitter.
Ever since the check-up with my Aunt Willie yesterday morning, I’d been grumpy, tired, and I didn’t want to pretend to be happy with anyone.
That’s what Nix asked, if I minded suffering, or pretending to be happy while I was miserable.
Both, but probably the latter more than the former.
I wanted to be miserable and have someone snuggle me and make me feel better.
Nix. I wanted Nix to snuggle me and make me feel better.
“Is that all?” the woman asked, smiling brightly.
That’s when I realized that she’d brought me brunch for two, with very expensive champagne, and extremely fancy china. I sat up and leaned over to see the oysters.
“I didn’t order oysters,” I said.
“I did, honey. I hope you don’t mind if I join you.” The voice was southern charm meets elegant aristocracy.
I turned to see a woman in a powder blue skirt suit making me feel distinctly underdressed in Nix’s shorts and my sports bra. I stood quickly.
“Mrs. Hammer, I presume,” I said, giving her my most polite smile, but my heart was pounding too fast. I held out my hand.
She glanced at my hand and shook her head slightly. “I’d hate to hurt you. I wouldn’t want my darling son to think I’m a threat to his happiness. Please sit. I understand you endured the most uncomfortable situation the other evening.”
I cleared my throat and then took my chair, not on the lounge, but at the table where everything was set out just so. She knew I was delicate, that I bruised easily, which meant that she probably knew I was dying. How awkward.
She sat on the opposite side of the table and then started serving me.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, feeling incredibly uncomfortable. She wasn’t just cultured, she was gracious, and she was Nix’s mother, who terrified him. What was she doing here? Did she have news about him?
Her smile was so sweet and sincere. “Of course I do. Why, you’re family. I hope that after the contract is over at the end of the six months, you’ll consider staying with him.”
My appetite, which hadn’t been great, completely evaporated. She knew about everything, but her eyes stayed soft, considerate. Nix had learned how to look soft from her. “That’s so sweet of you to say that. From what I understand, my family isn’t quite up to par with what you were expecting.”
Her smile was so perfectly genteel, it gave me goosebumps. It was too perfect. “You’re more than I could have hoped for.”
“Why’s that? I’m not terribly educated, my fortune is one of abject poverty, and my manners are far from the perfection that you demonstrate so effortlessly.” I gestured at her and she poured some green tea for both of us so we were equally set up with the elaborate brunch.
“Nix would do anything for you. I don’t think you understand how rare you are. You’ve made him a changed man.”
“He didn’t need changing.”
“The world needed him to change.” She slid her phone over the pristine white tablecloth. A video played on the screen.
Video? Slaughter. That wasn’t PG violence. Nix was fighting four guys who were swollen and bloody, while he looked like ice, hard, sharp perfection.
“He’s been fighting for twenty-four hours. He hasn’t eaten, hasn’t slept, and is still the perfect machine. His whole life I’ve been waiting for him to achieve his full potential, but it took you to finally trigger it.”
I watched that small screen, mesmerized by Nix, the way he moved through his opposition so effortlessly. Violently. So incredibly vicious.
A spray of blood had me turning away while my stomach roiled and my hands shook. “You mean he’s been fighting all this time? Can’t you do something to stop him?”
I looked up at the woman who had spent years learning how to bend the world to her will.
She raised an imperious brow. “Stop him? There is no stopping him now. He’s finally who he was born to be. Thanks to you. Don’t worry. I’ll give him the guidance he needs to bring the world forward into a brighter future.”
What did she mean by that?
I barely saw her hand flick out towards me. It happened so fast. Someone hit the table, and connected with her hand, sending the table over and knocking me back to the patio while expensive china shattered on the cement all around me.
I sprawled there, shocked for a second before I scrambled up to see Flowers whirling around on Nix’s mom.
Was everyone insane? He got his hands around her throat, but she shook him off easily, like he was an annoying pest. He stumbled back before he brought up a knife.
She disarmed him, sending the knife to join the broken plates and oysters.
I was going to cut my bare feet so ridiculously in this mess.
How was she so fast? And strong. Flowers was moving slower with each lunge until she had his head and neck, like she was going to twist off his head.
It was such a bizarre thing to see the chic older woman in her powder blue suit trying to break someone’s neck.
Flowers apparently had a very strong neck, but threads of dark purple and green were spreading up from his shoulder where a little syringe still stuck out of him.
She’d actually tried to stab me with a needle? Like I didn’t get enough of that between Aunt Willie and myself.
Speaking of needles, I had a little pack in the bag I’d brought with my salt water and sunscreen.
Morphine would slow her down, wouldn’t it?
Maybe. She was killing Flowers, and she’d tried to stab me with whatever was making him look so bad.
That thing sticking out of his shoulder was what she’d flicked towards me.
No one was paying me any mind. I grabbed my bag, wincing when I stepped on glass.
I picked up the knife because it was close to my bag, and a knife seemed like a good idea.
The weirdest thing was how quiet everything was.
She was so focused on him, her face filled with this gleeful hatred that screamed psychopath much more than sophisticated belle.
I crept around her and then stabbed her in the thigh with my needle before leaping away from her.
She whirled around on me, leaving Flowers in a crumpled heap. At least she hadn’t ripped his head off. No, she’d do that after she finished with me. Her eyes narrowed at me and my handful of needles.
“What are you doing?”
“You should calm down. Relax. Enjoy the sunshine,” I babbled in my friendliest voice. “I just gave you a bit of my favorite morphine.”
She frowned as she came towards me. “You were supposed to die quietly of natural causes.”
I limped away from her towards the pool.
“Agreed. But then someone came and tried to inject me with something very unnatural.” I glanced at Flowers to see that most of his face was covered in the creepy purple and green veins.
I gulped and then refocused on the woman.
“Why do you want to kill me? You said you wanted our contract to last longer than six months.”
She gave me a pitying smile. Her voice was soft when she murmured.
“So adorable. He’s mine. You played your role, bringing alive his beast, but now, you’d only get in the way.
You’re going to die anyway. This is a mercy.
” She sounded so sincere, I almost believed that she believed what she was saying.
Then Flowers made a choking sound. Yeah, he didn’t sound like he was enjoying his mercy killing any more than I would. I took another step away from her and then winced as I stepped on glass. Those shards were everywhere!
She smiled slightly and flexed her fingers.
She was going to kill me with her bare hands.
And she’d like it. She grabbed for me, but I blocked her grab with another injection of morphine before diving to the side.
Ow. I rolled across pavement and glass until I was back on my feet with a good six feet between us.
I might be dying, but I was still young, and I didn’t want to die a second sooner than I had to.
I particularly didn’t want this monster to control Nix’s beast and keep him fighting as long as she could. She really was the worst.
She winced and pulled out the needle, sniffing it before throwing it to the side. “You’re quick. I suppose you do take after your father in some respects. Pity you aren’t more malleable or I could use you for the next generation.”
Excuse me? She was going to breed Nix to create another weapon?
Stina would volunteer. I was suddenly incredibly nauseous.
No. He was mine. And if this monster thought she could enslave him for her cause, well, I had one more needle.
That was good morphine. She was moving a little more slowly, but it was hard to tell if it wasn’t just because she was thinking things through more carefully or because the drugs were hitting her system.
“That’s positively uncivilized,” I said in my most starchy judgmental tone. “Trying to murder your daughter-in-law is just tacky.”
Her lips thinned. “Yes. It should be done, but I didn’t expect Flowers to interfere. Apparently, he doesn’t want you dead.”
I glanced over at the fallen man. He’d really come to my rescue like a hero. She took my moment of distraction to leap at me. I brought up my hand automatically to block her, and she twisted away at the last second, barely brushing her arm against the edge of Flower’s knife.