Chapter 7 #2
The question escapes me before I can think better of it, dragged out by years of learning that nothing in this world comes free. Victor taught me that lesson well. Every kindness has a price. Every helping hand comes attached to strings that will eventually wrap around your throat.
Drake's expression shifts from an unreadable scowl to a blank slate in seconds. "We'll get to that."
Hot shame and defiance mix inside my body to cause a light sheen of sweat to form over my skin.
I shove aside my false pride and press my lips together.
I know beggars can’t be choosers, but I think I’m entitled to an answer all the same.
"That doesn’t work for me." I plant my feet and raise my chin, refusing to be cowed by his size or his presence or the way my traitorous body keeps responding to the scent of cedar and bourbon that fills my small apartment.
"I don't want charity. I know how this works. Everything has a price. So tell me. What's yours? I’m not saying I don't want your help. I’m not stupid. I’m only asking for the price tag."
I pause and then add, “Please.”
He studies me for a long moment, his gaze tracing the lines of my face with an intensity that makes my skin prickle with awareness.
I feel exposed under that stare, stripped bare in a way that has nothing to do with my thin pajamas and everything to do with the way he seems to see straight through every wall I've built around me to keep people at a distance.
"Your debt to Victor Kedrov is paid." The words fall like stones into still water, sending ripples through everything I thought I understood about this moment. "Three hundred thousand dollars was given to him tonight. You owe him nothing from this night forward."
The floor tilts beneath my feet. I reach out blindly, my hand finding the back of the couch, and I grip it hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
There’s nothing fake about the way my mouth falls toward my chest in awe and shock. "You paid it?" My voice sounds strange to my own ears, distant and hollow. "All of it? You paid all of it?"
He shifts all his two-hundred-and-something pounds to face me fully. The move only took a couple of inches, but the electricity in the room feels like someone has placed a Tesla coil in the center of the room and cranked it up.
I swallow hard and wait for his answer, unwavering.
He gives a stiff nod. "Yes."
"Why?" The word cracks on my tongue, sharp with suspicion and something that might be hope if I were foolish enough to let myself feel it. "Why would you do that? You don't know me. You don't owe me anything."
"You made a wish." He says it like it's simple. Like it explains everything. "I claimed it. That's how this works."
He’s right, of course. My brain stepped outside of reality for a second and forgot the chain of events that has placed this man in my living room.
"It all seems set up and I’m the butt of whatever joke this is."
Drake’s chest inflates with a rough grunt.
"It’s not a joke. Believe me, I don’t have a funny bone in my body.
" He takes a step toward me, and I resist the urge to retreat.
"Your debt is cleared. Victor Kedrov will never touch you or your family again.
In exchange for this cleared debt, you now owe me. "
"What is it that I owe you? Details, please."
Drake's eyes hold mine, unflinching. "A year of your life. You'll work for me. Live under my roof. Answer to my authority."
My heart hammers against my ribs, each beat sending shockwaves through my chest. "Work for you doing what?"
"Whatever I require." His voice drops lower, rougher, and the sound of it scrapes across my nerve endings like velvet over raw skin. "At my side during the day. In my bed, if I choose. And eventually, an heir to carry forward my legacy."
The bat slips from my fingers.
It hits the carpet with a muffled thump that seems to echo in the sudden ringing silence of my apartment. My hands are shaking. My whole body is shaking, trembling with a fury so bright and hot it threatens to incinerate me from the inside out.
"An heir." The word tastes like poison on my tongue. "You want me to have your baby."
"I want you to give me a child, yes." He doesn't flinch or show any signs of actually feeling ashamed of his demands. Why would he? A Moses is nothing if not arrogant and entitled to the rotten core. Especially Drake-freaking-Moses.
The mammoth of a man stands there in my cramped living room like he hasn't demanded I trade my body for freedom.
"I need someone to inherit what I've built. To carry the Moses name forward."
I watch the mafia man for a second but he’s not letting the blank mask over his true feelings and thoughts slip a single inch.
"You're insane, Drake Moses." I'm laughing now, but there's no humor in the sound. It's sharp and brittle. "You're actually insane. I already have a job. I don't need to add one that has me on my back."
I bend down and snatch the bat from the floor, gripping it so hard my knuckles scream in protest. "I might as well stay with Victor's debt. At least he was honest about wanting to whore me out."
Danger flashes in Drake's eyes. Red lights go off inside my head warning me to be cautious. He pulls his phone from his pocket with movements that are deceptively casual, his thumb moving across the screen with practiced efficiency.
"What are you doing?" I demand.
He presses the phone to his ear, his gaze never leaving my face. "Luca. I need you to make a call. Do you still have all the details about where Katriana Bellrose works?”
He pauses to listen.
I rub at the pain stabbing into my chest. I swear if I drop dead right now it will be from the all-consuming rage Moses men cause me. “Let me get this straight. You snooped into my life? Is that Red Letter wish thing or a dirty, rotten Moses–”
“Good,” he cuts me off talking to whomever this Luca guy is. “Call her employer. Inform her boss that Katriana is handing in her resignation. Effective immediately."
No freaking way. I brush the edge of my glasses to push them back up my nose. "What do you think you're doing?" I surge forward, some wild instinct driving me to snatch the phone from his hand, but he sidesteps me easily, continuing his conversation like I haven't moved at all.
"Yes. Stacked Pages, the bookstore on Michigan. Her name is Rhonda. Tell her Katriana won't be coming back." He ends the call and slides the phone back into his pocket.
"Done."
"You can't do that. I need that money. It’s shitty, but I do like the noodle soups and books it provides me with.
" The words come out strangled, caught somewhere between rage and disbelief.
"You can't just decide things for me, Drake.
You can't just call my job and quit for me like I'm some kind of puppet whose strings you get to pull. "
"Hm. Three-hundred-thousand dollars says I can. And I did." His voice is infuriatingly calm. "And you're going to accept it because the alternative is going back to Victor Kedrov and explaining to him why you'd rather work in his establishments than with me."
"Work as in sleep with you?" I throw the words at him like weapons, desperate to make him flinch, to crack that impossible composure.
"Did you pay my debt as some cruel joke to your brother?
I had no idea you were part of the Red Letter Syndicate.
I never heard of it until yesterday. Had I known. .."
His lashes lower, and he considers me through narrowed eyes. "What?" Drake cuts me off sharply, his voice cracking through the air like a whip. "You would have let Victor use you as a fuck machine until you dropped dead or one of his clients killed you for entertainment?"
I jerk back like he's slapped me. The few bricks that threatened to tumble from my walls lock back into place. “You’re an asshole, Drake Moses.” Tears form along the rims of my eyes, but don’t fall.
The words hang between us, ugly and brutal. They carry a truth I’ve held onto for a long time. All Moses men are poisonous.
My throat closes around a sob I won't give him the satisfaction of hearing.
Drake's expression shifts. Something cracks in the granite of his composure, a fissure of regret that deepens the lines around his mouth. He inhales harshly through his nose, his chest expanding beneath the fine wool of his suit.
He steps into me and pulls my chin up until our eyes connect. "I didn't mean it like that." His gaze roams over the bruises on my face and neck. I’ve washed off the concealer so there’s no hiding the dark marks.
Goosebumps rush over my bare arms at the softness in his tone.
"Yes, you did." My voice comes out steadier than I feel, cold and hard as ice over a river that's still flowing underneath.
"You're no better than your brother. Cruel to the core, and always with an ulterior motive.
I wouldn't sleep with him, so he trashed me.
Now you're trying your luck with a different approach. "
"It's not like that." He steps past me, his shoulder brushing mine as he moves toward the window, and the brief contact sends electricity crackling through my veins despite my fury.
He pulls out his phone again, pressing it to his ear with movements that speak of barely contained tension.
"Change of plans. Tell Kon I need him at this address. "
The blood drains from my face so fast I feel lightheaded.
"Kon?" The name tastes foreign on my tongue, heavy with threat. "Who is Kon? One of your murderers for hire?"
Drake turns to face me, and something in his expression shifts. The hardness softens, just slightly, around the edges. "He's going to sit outside your apartment and make sure Victor doesn't show up to put a bullet in your head out of spite for what I did to him tonight."
The words take a moment to penetrate the fog of fear and fury clouding my brain.
"What you did to him?" I repeat slowly. When he goes to walk away from me, I place a hand on his arm. He stops, turns to me and for all of three solid heartbeat, I see the real man under the cold mask he’s worn since stepping into my apartment.
A man made of flesh and bone. Of love and hate.
Of pride, yes, but of desire to protect those weaker than him.
And then the coldness is back and Drake Moses removes his arm from my touch.
"What did you do?" I ask again, firmer this time.
"I walked into his restaurant and publicly humiliated him in front of his clients and his employees."
Drake's voice carries no regret and definitely no remorse. "I broke several of his men and made it clear that you belong to me now, not to him. Victor Kedrov is not a man who takes that kind of embarrassment lightly. Until you're under my protection, you're vulnerable."
I splay a hand over my quivering midriff. The puzzle pieces of this entire encounter all fit together now and I feel like a babbling idiot.
"Oh."
The word escapes me in a small exhale, all the fight draining out of my body as the implications of what he's saying settle into my bones. Victor knows. Victor knows someone else has claimed me, has paid my debt, has taken away the leverage he's held over my family for five years.
And Victor is not going to let that stand without retaliation.
There’s only a half breath between us. His aura of energy brushes against mine and all I have to do is inhale deeply to feel the warmth of his body inside me.
He reaches for my hand and slips my palm over his. He turns my hand and places a kiss on the back. I don’t know what to do with that so instead of saying something that will put my foot firmly in my mouth, I hold his gaze and wisely stay silent.
“Be at Redthorne Holdings by eight tomorrow morning, Katriana." Drake slowly releases my hand, the warmth of his touch slowly fading as he moves toward the door. He pauses with his hand on the knob to look back at me over his shoulder. "Sharp. I don't do well with tardiness."
"And if I refuse?" The question is pure defiance, empty bravado that we both know means nothing.
Gray meets brown and the second our eyes lock, electricity passes between us that has my heart racing instantly.
"You won't."
With that, my new freaking mafia boss is gone, the door closing behind him with a soft click that sounds impossibly final in the silence he leaves behind.
I stand in the middle of my apartment, the bat still clutched in my hands, my heart pounding against my ribs like it's trying to break free. The scent of him lingers in the air, cedar and smoke and bourbon, mixing with the familiar mustiness of my home and transforming it into something foreign.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Gemma's name flashes across the screen, and I answer with fingers that won't stop trembling.
"Kat! Oh my god, you scared me half to death. What happened? Are you okay?"
"False alarm." The lie tastes sour on my tongue, but I can't tell her the truth. Not yet. Not until I understand it myself. "But... I feel like all my bad luck is about to change."
"What does that mean? Kat, you're freaking me out. Like good change or I need to raise bail money kind of change?"
Both, maybe.
"I'll explain later. I promise. Go back to sleep, Gem."
I end the call before she can argue and let the phone slip from my fingers onto the couch.
My eyes find the door Drake just walked through, the cheap wood and the crooked numbers and the locks that have never made me feel safe. My chin tingles where his fingers held me, with a phantom warmth that refuses to fade.
I stand alone in my small apartment, surrounded by the evidence of a life lived in survival mode, I realize that for the first time in a long time, I'm not afraid of Victor Kedrov showing up at my door.
I'm afraid of something else entirely.
I'm afraid of the way my body responded to Drake Moses, even as my mind screamed warnings. I'm afraid of the way his voice made my skin prickle with awareness. I'm afraid of the way his eyes traced the shape of me through thin cotton and made me feel seen in a way I haven't felt in years.
I'm afraid of wanting him.
And that terrifies me more than Victor ever could.