Chapter 1 #4
There’s just enough light falling through the short doorway to illuminate the bottom half of Widow’s sultry mouth. He’s smirking, but it lacks all heat. It’s a menacing sort of smile.
“Fuck Jonas,” he says, so vehemently that the sound startles Ash back to life.
He has the sword halfway unsheathed before he comes to and remembers where he is and what’s going on.
“I think Ash should know, but I didn’t want to wake him up just for that.
” A tense pause as Widow turns his head to the right to look at the man in question. “And he doesn’t need to see the video.”
“What video?” Ash asks, his voice going cold. “I’ve seen the…I’ve seen me and Alexei. What the bloody hell is it now?”
I scoot back, leaving room for them to exit into the closet. I’ve got Widow’s phone in my hand, my eyes on the shot of a dead maid, still in uniform. Her white apron is soaked with red. Her face blank and unseeing.
Widow climbs out first, rising to his feet with mussed hair, amber gaze caught on me.
He brings with him that wild smell, like he belongs in a forest. He’s shirtless now, the fabric tied around his split knuckles and stained with blood. It’s not been all that long since he fucked me over a desk in Alexei’s bedroom. That, too, I can smell on him.
“What did the cops say?” he asks, a strange note in his voice when he picks up on my reaction to him.
“You’re wanted,” I say a little breathlessly, forcing a tight smile. “Parole violations.” I cringe a little because, um, how very Prescott of us. Honeymooners wanted for hooliganism.
“Not murder though?” Widow returns with a sharp laugh, ruffling up his hair in annoyance. “Cute.”
“Scarlett, the video,” Ash repeats, crawling from the panic room into the closet. He doesn’t stay on his knees for long, frantically climbing to his feet so he isn’t sitting at Alexei’s. The pair of them purposely look away from one another. “Spare me the misery of my own imagination.”
I look up at him, my hands settling on his shoulders.
The urge to trace his lips with my finger is haunting me.
God, the sight of this pink mouth stretched open on Alexei was…
transcendent. I know I’m fucked-up. I only liked it so much because they both hated it and weren’t into it. I might be jealous if they were.
“You understand that you’re never leaving me, don’t you?
” I ask Ash playfully, coquettishly. It’s not a joke though.
I need to make sure he’s fully submitted before I keep going with this.
Any spontaneous acts of heroism or self-sacrifice will be punished severely.
“Also, you declined to have a safe word so…”
“Please just tell me. Onegai-yo.” Ash shuts his eyes, letting his head fall back. Breathing through it. He knows this has something to do with his father, I’ll bet. We were all there for the phone call where Jonas had the goddamn audacity to call Ash his property. Make no mistake: Ash is mine.
“Jonas is killing a member of the house staff every hour until you come home. But…since you’re not going home, they’re all going to die.
” I don’t mince words, but I keep my voice gentle.
Soft. I learned this from taking care of my girls for so long.
Meltdowns can be averted with the right tone and delivery.
“It’s not your fault: it’s mine. You are not allowed to leave here. ”
Ash drops his head, opens his eyes. He smiles at me, all broken and confused and humiliated.
His smile is agony to my heart, innocent and pure.
Protected by the violent defiance in his eyes.
A refusal to be broken. This is what I fell in love with from the start.
This is also exactly why Aspen and Ash were so easy to tell apart.
One had nothing behind his eyes and the other had it all.
“It’s okay,” he says innocently. It’s not. “They’re probably already dead. I mean, I hope they are—for their sake.” He pauses and shakes his head, reaching back for his hood and trying to pull it up like a safety blanket. I slap his hand away and he gives me a look with big, dark eyes.
“Yua Ito?” I ask and Ash cringes. That woman was like a mother to him when he really needed one.
Sad how easily Aspen was able to turn her against his twin.
“You don’t have to talk about it right this second, but we will talk about it eventually.
” I turn halfway around and find Widow standing close, scalding me with his heat. “Same for you.”
“No. I’m done.” Widow holds up his bloody hand and Alexei chokes, turning away and cursing under his breath in Russian.
Bohnes is performing an additional sweep on the room while we talk, checking under the bed and inside the attached bathroom.
“I punched the feelings out, remember?” WIdow flexes his hand, trying to keep the pain from showing on his face and failing.
“Let’s just figure out the life-or-death shit before we start therapy, okay? ”
“You’re all going to learn to unpack in front of one another.
” I spread my arms out to the sides, like an all-encompassing hug.
Trying to change the mood and the subject, so that Ash doesn’t have to fixate on the idea of someone he cares about dying because he dared to live.
“To bare your bodies, souls, and spirits. Really, if you think about it, this dicksucking was just a bonding exercise.”
Both Ash and Alexei gag at the same time. Widow is emotionless, practicing that same restraint he used to show in the hallways when boys would throw paper clips at him. He’d strum his guitar and refuse to give them the time of day. It was hot then, and it’s hot now.
“Cock didn’t do it for you, eh?” Bohnes pops into the closet’s doorway and looks pointedly at Ash, lifting a single black-nailed finger to point at him.
His pale blue eyes are slits but his mouth is playful.
Ash offers a surprising laugh, low and rough and husky.
He likes Bohnes. Genuinely. If I were to be honest with Kellin, I’d tell him this: you’re more likeable than you think you are.
He doesn’t give his morbid personality enough credit.
That dry wit is impeccable. “I don’t blame you. I may have bitten it off.”
“I’m grateful that Mr. Kelly has restraint, truly.” Alexei sighs, adjusting his gloves again and peering at the master bedroom with a mixture of appreciation and melancholy. “Let’s…shower. All of us. Then we can go downstairs. Adrian’s wound is a festering mess and should be cleaned. Immediately.”
Yeah. Alexei and I seem to have different definitions of ‘festering’.
“We got any cash around here? I’ll send my girls for groceries.” I pause on my way out of the closet, picking up what looks to be a gold ashtray with real jewels embedded in it. Huh. Fuckin’ rich people. “Never mind. This’ll go for big bucks at the pawn shop.”
“Use my money for now, dove.” Bohnes runs his finger across the back of my neck and simultaneously stuffs a wad of cash into the pocket of my jacket.
“We won’t have access to Borisov money until Hype gets it back for us.
And you know the little bitch is going to shake us down with an exorbitant fee.
I would never treat a loyal customer so poorly. ”
“Groceries. So…we’re staying here?” Widow wets his lips, gold eyes darting around the room like a wolf in a trap.
“We’re living here,” I correct, observing the sterile room with a keen eye.
The furniture is real wood, heirloom type shit.
Not really my style, but hey, beggars can only be choosers after they get their husband’s stolen money back.
Or after their questionable mob-connected uncle-in-law ponies up a proper employment contract.
“Alexei, you must be…quite well-known in the family.” Ash rubs at the side of his head, processing a whole new arc in his life that he never saw coming. Fifty times over he expected to be dead before ever reaching this point. “For me to still be alive, I mean. I wasn’t aware.”
“Yeah. Uh.” I give Alexei a look as he collects a fresh towel from a cabinet and sniffs it, as if to ensure it hasn’t been touched since he was last here.
“You might’ve mentioned you were like the it-boy in the Borisov family.
They want you to take over the whole operation someday.
Don’t you have cousins?” I complain, running my hand across the surface of the enormous bed.
It’s not a king. No, this is more of that rich people shit and it’s huge.
We’ll be snug as thugs in a rug, won’t we?