12. Demi #2
This cupboard-sized space is where I would normally wait until the light above the door alerts me to the client in the adjacent room.
A bottle of water is on the table, catching the soft glow of the red light above the door.
The bodyguard’s instructions were so vague that I don’t know if I should go straight through or wait, but then I remember he said that Brian was already here, and I remind myself that no one can hear me, so an alert will never come.
I open the door, greeted by darkness as usual, but in that brief moment between one room and the next, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the man in the seat.
He’s wearing a suit, black socks, leather mask covering his face, but something about his presence wraps around my chest and squeezes like a vice.
Then it’s gone, swallowed whole by the darkness.
“Who’s there?” I hear him say, and my pulse gathers speed when I recognize Brian’s voice. “Nyx? Who was that?”
Confusion keeps me rooted to the spot. This is my room. I’m Nyx.
Only I’m not Nyx tonight. I’m floating, and someone has obviously taken my place, playing the part, keeping Brian here until I arrive.
Cold hands find mine, slender fingers guiding me deeper into the room. The other Nyx doesn’t speak; they might not be able to hear me, but they can hear her. She halts, squeezes my hands once, then says, “I’m over here, Brian.”
I don’t hear her move away, I don’t know who she is or why she’s helping me, I don’t even know where she has gone. Maybe she is working with Michael Douglas. Either way, she’s on our side.
“Nyx?” Brian’s voice makes me want to squeal with delight.
“Is this better?” I move closer, knowing that he’ll smell my perfume.
“You’re… on your game tonight.” He’s choosing his words carefully. After last night, he understands the rules a little better, and the danger of breaking them.
We must be quick. I need to keep Brian interacting with Nyx and get him out of here before they realize the conversation is totally one-sided. But I’ve no idea if Michael Douglas managed to hold off the guy in the corridor, and my thoughts are spinning, and…
“Tonight, you will listen and do as you are told.” The other Nyx’s voice slices through the darkness catching me unawares. I thought she’d left the room, but it occurs to me then that Brian wouldn’t be allowed to stay in here alone. “I am in control, Brian. Do you understand?”
I sense his confusion and cross the line circling the seat to whisper in his ear. “Answer her. Only her.” I’m not being tracked, I remind myself as adrenaline pumps around my body. They don’t know I’m here.
“I understand,” he says.
“We have to leave.” I keep my voice low, afraid they might hear me through Brian’s earpiece. “Keep talking while I unfasten your mask.”
“Anything you say, Nyx.” His voice is strong and steady. My frantic heart clearly didn’t get the same memo.
“Good boy.” The other Nyx’s distorted voice practically purrs. “If you want me to beg, you’ll have to earn it, Brian.”
“How?”
“Make me wet.”
His shoulders shake as he chuckles, and I want to yell at him that we’re currently playing The Hunger Games with a bunch of Bratva psychos who missed the part where they choose a winner that isn’t them. What part of this scenario can he possibly find amusing?
“That would be easy if I could touch you,” he says.
“What are you doing?” I hiss in his ear. It feels as if the mask straps keep multiplying; each time I loosen one, my fingers find another. And another.
“You’ll have to use your imagination then.” The other Nyx’s voice is closer.
Finally, I free the last strap from the buckle and hold the mask in place before it lands on the floor. Now, all I need to do is get Brian out of the room, find a hidden panel, and get us both down to the basement before anyone realizes that we’re missing.
No pressure.
It occurs to me in a moment of blind panic that we crossed a line between fantasy and reality with deadly consequences, and I don’t even know how it happened.
Because they manipulated it, a voice inside my head responds. This was their intention all along, to throw me and Brian together, force us into a situation that would cause us to bend the rules, and then pit us against one another. And that final step is what scares me the most.
It’s also what flips me from flight mode to fight mode.
This is what I signed up for when I joined the police academy.
If I’m going to stumble at the first sign of danger, I might as well hand over my police badge and go get a nice peaceful job in a library or arranging flowers or in a health spa where they play whale music all day and light scented candles and the visitors are all there to be pampered.
“Keep the mask in place until I tell you to drop it,” I murmur, my face close to his.
“Have you ever had an orgasm in a crowded place?” Brian asks Nyx.
“Sure.”
“How did it make you feel?”
I take Brian’s hand and guide him onto his feet. He’s warm, his hand swallowing mine and making me feel safe, and I wonder how it would feel to walk around Central Park with him, holding hands like we’re in love.
I mentally shake myself. This isn’t love. This isn’t even a game anymore, and if we get caught… Enzo taught me enough about how the mafia operates to know that we’ll have seen our last sunrise on a regular day.
“Uncomfortable.” The other Nyx dismisses the question.
“Then you were with the wrong person,” Brian says without a hint of alarm in his voice.
I squeeze his hand. “Drop the mask onto the seat and come with me. Now!”
I hear her say, “You think you would be the right person?” as I drag Brian across the room to the door Nyx would use.
I grip the handle, my fingers trembling. Any moment now, I’ll see Brian’s face, and I won’t even have time to react because…
A strangled groan reaches my ears through the mask I’m wearing.
Not Brian, even though he’s wearing a metal bracelet.
The sound comes from Nyx.
Brian’s hand slips from mine, and I know with a plummeting feeling in my gut that we’re not going anywhere. “Nyx? What happened? Are you hurt?” His voice moves away from me and back into the room.
Nyx is whimpering now, strange choking sounds that make bile rise in my throat. He’s right, we can’t leave her. She’s only here because of me, and I can’t walk away knowing that she’ll suffer for her role in enabling our escape.
I follow the disturbing sounds of her writhing and jerking on the floor. When I reach her, Brian is already there, murmuring, “Hang on in there, Nyx. I’ve got you,” and my heart cracks open for him because I was right all along.
Brian is one of the good guys.
He is cradling Nyx in his lap when my hands find them in the blackness. I saw Brian get shocked through the bracelet, but this feels different.
“Why isn’t it stopping?” I ask.
“Fuck!” Brian murmurs. “They’ll fucking kill her if we don’t get it off her.”
“I don’t know how. They have a key.”
“You sick fucking bastards!” he yells. “You want to take someone, take me!”
“No!” I cry out, but I’m too late.
I hear the hum of static through his bracelet and Brian’s body jerks away from me, as the door opens and what feels like the entire security team spills into the room.
I scan their faces in the faint glow from the corridor, but Michael Douglas isn’t with them, and then I spot snake-guy at the rear, his mouth twisted into his customary snarl, and I know that it’s over.
Strong hands haul me onto my feet and carry me from the room struggling and lashing out at muscles made of steel. “Let them go!” I shriek. “They didn’t do anything wrong. I broke the rules, not them.”
I watch the name on the door growing smaller as I’m carried away, tears of frustration streaking my face inside the mask, and realize how close I came to meeting the real Brian.