Chapter 3 Hollie
HOLLIE
Despite my vocal protest, I’m thrown into the back of the sleek, black sedan and handcuffed to the door. Maxim doesn’t join me. He just gives me one last cold look and slams the door in my face, then the car starts moving and I’m dragged away from everything I’ve ever known.
What the hell is happening?
Over and over, that gunshot rings in my ears, followed by the sickening thud of that body hitting the floor.
His eyes, open and unseeing, pierced right through me and they repeatedly flash up every time I close my eyes.
Tears come swiftly after a few minutes of wrestling with the steel cuffs to no avail, and I sob into my hands.
I’ve never seen someone die before. Sure, it’s been on the news and in stories, but to see it with my own eyes sets a chill deep in my soul that I can’t shift. For two months, I searched for Maxim and seemingly, it’s the biggest mistake of my life.
He’s going to kill me.
I don’t see why he doesn’t just do it now.
Why drag this out? Whisking me across the city like I’m some kind of package and acting like it’s my fault for witnessing the murder and not his for committing it in the first place.
And those men around him? They were as calm as anything, like this is some kind of daily occurrence for them.
Not a single one of them seemed horrified by the murder.
Thoughts of Thanksgiving and my mother collide in my mind, but it’s too much for me to think about on top of everything else. That and my face hurts. I feel like I slammed face-first into a moving truck, but it was just a slap from that asshole.
Stu, I think I caught his name.
The car glides through the streets without a single stop, not even for any red lights that crop up on our path.
It’s either stupidity or arrogance, I can’t decide, but as the drive continues, the turmoil in my gut worsens.
Each breath scrapes against my throat, my heart pounds like a drum and shows no sign of stopping, my hands shake like I’m no longer in control of them, and nausea assaults me in waves.
Tears pour silently down my cheeks no matter how hard I try to stop them, but a sudden soft lurch of the car is the cork that pops it all.
Bile rushes up my throat and I’m barely able to haul my hair out of the way before I’m throwing up all over the floor of this luxury car.
The leather seats are ruined in seconds as another wave overtakes me, and what’s left of my lunch burrito ends up staining the soft felt floor.
Oddly, I feel miles better by the time I’ve regained control of myself and I sag back into the plush leather seat, panting.
Holy. Shit.
Two minutes later, the car pulls to a soft stop. Ten seconds after that, the door opens and one of Maxim’s men leans inside, holding a small silver key. His eyes widen when he sees the mess on the floor.
“Sorry,” I say weakly, although I’m not all that sorry. “Your driving was terrible.”
The man’s boyish face breaks into a brief smile as he unlocks my cuffs, then he grasps my upper arm and pulls me from the car. Any urge to bolt down the street fades when I see two men clad in black framing the golden entrance into a building so tall I can’t even see the top.
“Toto.” One greets the man guiding me with a nod of the head.
“Toto?” I croak, wincing around the acidic taste lingering in my mouth. “Like the dog?”
He glances at me but doesn’t speak while he drags me through gold-rimmed glass doors and into a marble foyer.
Several red couches sit around a small glass table to my left, and a deep red carpet leads the way toward a wooden half-oval desk where a woman sits filing her nails.
She doesn’t even glance up as we pass, and I stumble over myself all the way to the elevator.
Toto doesn’t release me until the doors close, and I immediately hug the wall furthest away from him.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Why, because you have a conscience?” I snap.
“No.” His blue eyes lock onto mine. “I’m under orders not to.”
Orders? What the hell is going on? “Do you always do what he tells you?”
“Yes,” Toto replies simply, and half a second later, the doors glide open once more. I barely even felt us moving. “This is where you will be staying.”
His arm sweeps out and on trembling legs, I step over the threshold, but Toto doesn’t follow. I turn back to face him as he presses an unseen number on the elevator.
“You’re not coming?”
“No.”
“You’re just going to leave me here?”
“You’ll be fine,” Toto says, and for a moment, there’s almost something genuine in his little smile. Then the doors close and I’m left alone.
Hugging my arms around my waist, I stand alone in a short hallway.
Black flooring leads to an open-plan lounge with white and blue furniture situated three steps down.
Three couches surround a coffee table piled high with magazines and several unopened packets of blank printer paper.
To my left, the black flooring leads to another hallway but just before the wall, a small kitchen is on my left and several tall potted plants surrounded by small glass stones are on the right.
As I approach, the sound of trickling water catches my attention and I glimpse a small stream weaving between the plants filled with an array of colorful fish calmly swimming around.
My stomach cramps and after a few slow breaths, I sprint toward the smaller hallway and throw open doors until I find the bathroom.
There are two bedrooms, a study, and then a bathroom at the very end, which becomes my haven as I sink to my knees and heave over the toilet.
There’s nothing left inside me to bring up.
The cramping is just from stress, but I don’t move from my hunched position until I’m certain the spasms inside me have stopped.
“Fuck.” Groaning, I stumble to my feet and fiddle with the gold-tipped taps until cool water splashes forth. Splashing it on my face and neck, I gulp a mouthful directly from the stream and swirl it around my mouth, then spit it in the sink and straighten.
My gray reflection hovers before me in the mirror. Water droplets run down my chin, my mascara runs in rivers down my cheeks from my tears, and a bruise forms on my cheek from that asshole’s blow. I look pathetic. A far cry from all the work I did to be presentable as soon as I made it home.
A soft, dry sob bubbles up inside me and I tear my eyes away. I can’t stay here. I need to get help.
The elevator doesn’t respond to my calls no matter how often I press the button, and despite the lavish layout of this luxurious penthouse, there isn’t a phone anywhere.
Not even a laptop, and the computer in the study refuses to turn on even after I spend ten minutes under the desk checking and following the wires to the sockets.
It’s like the entire apartment is working against me.
Frustrated, I retire to one of the couches and curl up around a cream tasseled pillow, determined to sneak a phone away from Maxim whenever he gets here.
Taking a moment to myself, to sit and rest and process everything I saw, results in overwhelming exhaustion, and I close my eyes to fight off the growing throb of a migraine swarming my temples.
It feels like a blink but when I open my eyes, I’m lying down on the couch with cushions around my head and a thick, brown blanket draped over my body.
It pools around me and is butter soft against my skin yet has a comforting weight that keeps me lying down as my sleep-addled mind catches up with the events that led me here.
The gunshot.
The dead body.
Maxim.
Metal clatters softly from beyond the couch, and I tear my attention away from the haphazard gold patterns weaving across the gold ceiling, slowly lifting myself onto my elbows.
Beyond the couch, Maxim stands in the kitchen with his back to me.
He’s topless and his broad, bare back shows an equally intricate pattern of tattoos as his arms. He’s absolutely covered in ink.
From this distance, they seem like nonsense, but as I slowly stand and approach, more detail comes clear.
There’s everything from flowers, birds, animals, flames, to a large dragon perched on one shoulder.
A few stars and a cluster of flower petals are visible at the base of his neck, and they ripple and weave as if caught in a breeze as he turns toward me with a silver spoon dangling from his mouth.
As soon as our eyes meet, anger surges up inside me and I storm forward until my body hits the island counter. Slamming both hands down, I glare as much hatred toward him as I can.
“Let me go!”
“I know you.” Maxim removes the spoon, and his gravelly voice would be like honey to my ears if I weren’t so twisted up.
“No you don’t,” I snap.
“I do. You had blue hair when we met, but I know.” He brandishes the spoon toward me and it bobs lightly between his fingers. “Are you hungry?”
His question catches me off guard and I falter, hovering back a step. “Huh?”
“Are you hungry?” He steps to the side, revealing several pots bubbling away on the stove. “I’m making curry.”
“You can cook?”
“Why does that surprise everyone?” His blue eyes crease at the corners. “Yes, I can cook. I won’t ask a third time.”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” He turns back to his cooking, but not fully. He’s angled as if every part of him is keeping an eye on me. “It’s good.”
“I bet it’s poisoned.”
Maxim scoffs. “So what if it is? I’m eating it too.”
My lips part but no sound comes out. So quickly, he engaged me in a light conversation and I almost forgot what the hell was going on. “I’m going to walk out of here.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Just watch me.”
“You can try.” He swivels back to me. “The elevator is biometrically coded. It won’t work for you.”
“What if there’s a fire?”
“Then you'd better hope I don’t succumb to smoke inhalation.”
“Stop!” I throw my hands up. “Stop talking to me like you know me! You’ve kidnapped me! Dragged me across the city after I saw you murder that poor man! You’re twisted and sick, and if you don’t let me go, then I’ll make you regret ever bringing me here!”
Maxim seems unaffected by my outburst and suddenly, his dark brows lift. “Hollie.”
“What?”
“I remember now. Your name was Hollie.”
Slowly, my hands lower and something else twists in my gut. Nerves. “You remember?”
“It took me a second because you look so different, but yes, I remember. We were at Leviathan. The club.”
“Mhm.”
“And now you’re here. In my line of work, that’s too much of a coincidence, so tell me, Hollie. Are you going to tell me who you work for or am I going to have to drag it out of you?”
The soft patter of rain rises up against the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the lounge. As the tantalizing aroma of the curry fully invades my senses, my shoulders slump and confusion mingles with the upset in my chest.
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“You walked in on something you never should have seen,” Maxim states flatly. “That’s a problem for me.”
“Then you'd better go ahead and kill me because I’m never going to forget your murdering some poor man in cold blood.”