Chapter 10 #2
I grip her by the chin and look into her eyes.
There’s something about the crying that strikes me as a little performative.
And there’s always been something about her that’s made my brothers particularly monstrous.
Is that because she’s been trained to bring that out in men?
Or is it just a function of my twisted family?
“What?” She sniffs.
“I told you not to cry,” I tell her. “If you’re crying, people will want to know why. It draws attention. The last thing you or I are going to do is draw attention.”
“Okay,” she says, drying her eyes.
“Tell me about your family,” I say.
She gives a little shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
She gives another little shrug, dismissing her pain before she even begins to express it. “I grew up in foster care. Back and forth between a few different places. Some of them were nice. Some of them weren’t.”
So she’s not being blackmailed to keep her family safe. The hair on the back of my neck is performing a slow rise. The tears that seemed so very uncontrollable a moment ago are now completely gone. Could be because she’s used to having to stuff down feelings.
“You don’t have any siblings, or what about close friends?”
More shrugs follow. “I’m not really a social person,” she says. “I just try to survive. You know? Get through the day.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “I get it.”
This is such a complicated situation. She’s done wrong, but she has also been wronged so deeply and for so long I don’t think she’d know what right was if she fell over it. Fucked-up things make fucked-up people. I know that. But some things are more fucked up than others.
“And then you met him? Pete?”
“Yes,” she says. “He said he could help me. And he did. He paid for stuff, and all I had to do was do some jobs for him sometimes. I got a degree, and I got a job… I’m going to be so fired from that by now.”
“Why?”
“Because your brothers have been holding me hostage for days, and I can’t call into work fucking kidnapped,” she says, allowing a little barbed tone to escape.
I keep forgetting we are not the good guys. There are no good men in this story. There are just bad men doing bad things in various gradients of gray.
I know she hasn’t been allowed to have her own feelings in forever. I know she’s been used, leveraged, and blackmailed. Holding her responsible for Teddy isn’t really fair. I know better, and Teddy should have too.
Harsh call, maybe, but we know who we are.
We know what kind of enemies our family has.
The reason we’re all single is because it’s fucking impossible to date without that person having designs on our wealth, or worse, being a honeypot for one of a dozen international governments or secret cabals.
You really can’t move for them sometimes.
Ella was once a normal girl caught in an abnormal situation, I tell myself.
She got caught up in forces far beyond her control and all she’s trying to do is survive.
At this point, she has to know her life is completely worthless to BP.
He has shown her that he has the ability to kill powerful men and nothing will happen.
That’s the way the world really works. Justice isn’t so much blind these days as knocked out and tied up behind the garbage cans.
If you go outside on a clear night, you can almost hear her scream.
Where BP has fucked up is not understanding what a pack of ruthless bastards we Levin boys really are.
We are an old family, and our lineage is full of men and women who would stop at absolutely nothing for revenge.
We have a queen in our bloodline who hunted down her enemies after her husband was killed and slaughtered them all with her own hands.
He is used to dealing with sheep, and we are wolves.
“I’m taking you to the family home,” I tell her. “More captivity, I’m afraid.”
“It’s okay,” she says, “I deserve it.”
I call for a car. One of ours, and we go home. The house is dark. I am sure that Aiden and Leo will be stirring, and if they’re not, I’m going to wake them up. But first…
“Come with me,” I say.
I take her to a room that I know should not exist in a civilized house. It’s a house with a good amount of rooms, many of them bedrooms, several of them stocked with more than just beds. All of which is to say, Aiden bought a person-sized cage at some point.
“I’d like you in here,” I say.
She looks unhappy, but she doesn’t want to resist too hard.
I can tell she is walking a very fine internal line between the guilt telling her she deserves terrible things to happen to her, and the simple fact that being put in a fucking cage is terrifying.
As cages go, it’s relatively comfortable, though.
There’s a big soft bed, because they make dog beds in adult sizes now, and the reason why they do that in mainstream pet shops could be studied, but probably won’t be.
There’s also a stand within reach of the bars that has a tap, a jug of water and a cup on it, not to mention a discreetly placed composting toilet in the corner.
I wonder if it’s more frightening to realize that this is a cage in which one could live for days and days on end, or if one is going into a box in which you die if you are not let out.
“Don’t you trust me?”
I’ve never met anybody who could be trusted who would ask that question.
It’s pretty much a dead giveaway that you’re about to be fucked, and not in the good way.
Obviously I do not trust her. She just drugged me and had me pulled out of my house by men who work for our mortal enemy.
No need to point that out so bluntly, though.
“It’s not about you,” I tell her. “In a house like this, with men like this, sometimes the cage is the safest spot. I am sure you understand.”
She steps in reluctantly. I smack her ass as she does.
“Good girl,” I tell her.
Something like a smile rises to her lips.
I leave her in the room, shut the door, and go to bed.
I must have been tired as all hell from the ordeal of being drugged and abducted, because when I wake up, most of the next day has passed. I open bleary eyes to see the clock by my bedside reading 6.15 p.m.
I pad out of bed, shower, get dressed, check on Ella.
She is fast asleep in her cage, snoring softly and curled up in the bed with a light blanket over her.
It looks comfortable. She has her head resting on the raised roll at the edge of the bed.
I wonder why all human beds aren’t shaped that way. Something to do with sheets, I bet.
“Where did you come from?”
The question comes from Leo as I wander downstairs and into the dining room. It’s Sunday evening. Family dinner time.
“Where did you go?” I rejoin the question, referencing a song he probably won’t remember. Sure enough, he gives me an irritated look.
“Nice of you to join us,” Aiden says. “You must have gotten in very late, or early?”
My mouth is watering. Dinner has been set out, beef Wellington with a side of fries. The fries are in honor of Teddy. He didn’t like to eat much but them and instant ramen. There was still a stack of his favorite flavor in the pantry last time I looked. I want noodles. I want comfort.
I wander into the kitchen, set some water to boil, grab a pack of noodles, and return to the dining room.
“I,” I announce, “have just been kidnapped. But I was freed on the condition I kill the two of you.”
“If you dare make noodles when beef Wellington is available…” Aiden growls threateningly.
He is so secure in himself that the fact I told him I was kidnapped and bribed to kill him barely registers.
I crinkle the packet at him while the water boils in the copper kettle on the stove top. It starts to whistle while he threatens me. Even if I wasn’t going to eat noodles, I’d do this anyway, just to fuck with him. I don’t enjoy being told what to do, and he damn well knows it.
“Christ, you are an insufferable heathen,” he says in a tone I choose to interpret as affectionate.
“Did you hear what I said? Or are you too busy freaking out about your mushrooms and beef wrapped in a bit of pastry and pretentiousness?”
“You’ve been spoiled,” he says.
“You were kidnapped,” Leo says calmly. He has sat down and started to eat. He seems to be savoring the beef Wellington, which is no doubt cooked to absolute perfection. Aiden would have it quite literally no other way.
“Yeah. By BP.”
“BP? He’s back? And targeting us? He didn’t learn from his last attempt?” Leo snorts.
“Well, that’s the thing. I think he did. He killed Teddy.”
A silence settles over the room so complete that the scream-whistle of the kettle sounds like a screech from the depths of time itself. As it fades away, nothing replaces it. My brothers are dead still.
“Excuse me,” Leo says, patting the corner of his mouth with his napkin. He stands up, walks out of the room, and a moment later, something ceramic breaks.
Aiden clears his throat and folds his napkin, once, twice and then three times.
“So we kill him,” he says. “And his associates, and any stragglers he might have left that he considers family, though his wife took the kids years ago and frankly the poor little bastards have suffered enough under the burden of being related to him.”
Aiden’s empathy isn’t really for the children. He’s acknowledging the fact that unlike most people, BP wouldn’t be terribly affected by an attack on his family. He’s too pathologically selfish and small.
“He needs to be eliminated,” I agree. “But there’s more.”
“There’s more?” Leo strides back into the room, sits down in his chair, and cuts another mouthful of his meal.
“Ella was in on it. She was being used by them. As an agent. Our initial instincts were correct.”
Leo chews once or twice, staring into the very particular abyss that belongs only to him. Then he gets up and strides away again. A moment later, there is another sound of crashing and smashing. Two things this time.
He comes back a moment later, sits down, and resumes eating. I also resume talking.
“She’s in on it. She’s been in on it from the beginning.
They arranged her initial meet with Teddy, I assume.
And though she was sad about that, apparently, she drugged me and she had me picked up by his men.
And you, Leo. You got drugged, right? She left you cuffed to a bed. That’s psychotic behavior, unless…”
“Unless?” Leo lifts a brow at me.
“Unless she intended to have someone pick you up. I think if Aiden hadn’t gotten to her before she made contact with her handler, you would have woken up in the same place I did.
I think she was going to go through us one by one.
We all decided to chase her after we saw her at the cemetery.
What if she was smart enough to bait us all in that one meeting?
She found us at a vulnerable moment, and she made an impression.
Then we all found her, one after the other. And we took her, or did we?”
Aiden listens to me, nodding slowly. His expression is one of calm malevolence and complete control.
“Where is she now?”
“I put her in your kinky little cage room,” I say. “I didn’t want her getting loose before we had a chance to talk. She came with me willingly, but it’s safe to say we cannot trust her. She works for the enemy. I don’t think she wants to, but I think he’s in her head.”
“Well,” Aiden says flatly. “Just as well none of us have fallen in love with her, right, Leo?”
“You think I fell in love with a woman who dosed me on psychosis-inducing meds and left me to die in a cabin in the woods?”
“I think that’s your love language.”
Leo gives me a death stare, further proving my point.