Thirteen
Kori
After the waiter came to refill his glass—mine was still full—Ian excused himself to go to the bathroom. I watched him make his way across the restaurant, pointedly ignoring my wine, wondering for the millionth time in the last twenty-four hours what Ian was looking for from Jake. And how I would be able to live with myself once he was bound, knowing I was the one who’d led the sheep to slaughter.
Halfway to the bathroom, Ian turned to speak to someone, and my heart nearly stopped when I saw Julia Tower stand from the table where she and Jonah had just been served their own appetizer. No doubt Jake had sent them to make sure I was getting the job done. Treating Ian right.
She and Ian spoke, and she laughed at whatever he’d said, and suddenly I desperately wished I could read lips. She would hear the truth—or lack of—in whatever he said. As a Reader, Julia was her brother’s best and most trusted source of inside information. And one of my least favorite people in the world.
After another minute, she let him escape to the restroom, and if he’d come to hate her half as much as I had, the urinals in the men’s room must have been a much more welcome sight than her face.
When he disappeared around the corner, she looked right at me, then started across the restaurant in my direction.
Fuck!
“I have to say, you’ve impressed me with this one,” Julia said, sinking into Ian’s empty chair uninvited.
“Because I’m still alive?”
“Because he actually likes you. And he thinks you like him.” She picked up my wineglass and sipped from it, then held it as she crossed her legs and leaned closer, like she’d let me in on a secret. “I must admit, you’re playing this one very smart. Jake will be pleased.”
“Um…thanks?”
I never knew what to say to Julia, because I was never quite sure what she was talking about, but if I lied, she’d know it. So I usually treated her like I’d treat any snake in red satin—I avoided her like the plague. And when avoidance wasn’t possible, I tried my best to dodge both fangs and venom.
She twisted the glass, swirling the red wine, and I found myself watching the way light shone through it. Anything to avoid eye contact with her. But I couldn’t stop her from watching me.
“Uh-oh.” She set the glass down and lifted my chin with one finger. I slapped her hand away, but it was too late. She’d already seen…something. Or maybe she’d pretended to see something. I never could tell with Julia. Her silence was as toxic as her words. “He’s right, isn’t he? You actually like him.”
I didn’t answer, because the answer didn’t matter. If I told the truth, she’d know. If I lied, she’d know. Silence was my only defense.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Kori,” she whispered while my blood rushed fast enough to make me dizzy. “You know this isn’t real. The reality is that he’s champagne, and you’re malt liquor.” She spat the last phrase like it actually tasted bad, and my fingers twitched in my lap, itching to curl into fists. But if I punched her, that punch would be the last I ever threw. “His career path will take him soaring, and yours has already landed you in the basement.”
“Shut up,” I growled, itching to call her all the names running through my head.
“I’m trying to help you, Kori. I’m trying to keep you from hurting yourself.”
That was a lie. It had to be. She would never help me, unless helping me somehow benefited her. But what could she possible gain from this?
“Just let him play his game. Let him fantasize until he’s satisfied, then he’ll sign with Jake and you’ll be off the hook. There’s no reason for you to get hurt by this.”
I shouldn’t have asked. I knew better than to ask. Just because she could read the truth didn’t mean she would speak it. But after everything I’d already shown Ian—everything I’d told him—if I’d given him that much power over me and he was playing some kind of game, I was screwed.
“What game?” I hated myself for asking. For giving her that opening. But I had to know.
Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped open in a staged display of surprise. She didn’t even try to make it believable. “Seduction, Kori. The game of seduction.” Fake surprise melted from her expression to expose her natural look. Malice. The snake was about to strike. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
I rolled my eyes. “He is not trying to seduce me.”
“I think this has gone beyond ‘trying.’”
“You are so full of…crap.”
She lifted one brow over my uncharacteristically tame language. “So, he hasn’t told you you’re beautiful? He doesn’t try to make you smile? He doesn’t look right into your eyes when he talks to you, so you feel important?”
“That doesn’t mean anything, except that he’s a nice guy.” Too nice for the syndicate. Too nice for me.
Julia leaned closer, looking deep into my eyes in search of what every predator wants: fear. “Then why did he lie about what you showed him this afternoon?”
Of course she knew he’d lied. She’d probably smelled his intent before he even opened his mouth.
“Why do you think Jake let him get away with that?” Julia demanded, her voice hard now, a little too angry to be truly taunting. “Why do you think he let Holt cover for you?”
“Because he didn’t know?”
Julia’s frown deepened, and I realized she hadn’t wanted Ian to get away with his lie. She’d wanted Jake to punish me. “Jake knows everything. I make sure of that. He let Holt lie for you because that’s part of the game. Holt was playing the hero, protecting the damsel to win her over, and you fell for it.”
“You’re lying.” But I couldn’t even make myself believe that.
“Think about it, Kori.” She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed confidently over her chest. “Why would a man like Ian tolerate a woman like you? Why would he put up with brash and impulsive when he could have friendly and willing from any girl in Jake’s stable?”
I couldn’t answer. I had no answer.
“He’s kept you around for the same reason a lion would rather kill its own dinner than eat from a dish. He wants the hunt. He wants to play the game. Even if the game is rigged.” She shrugged, and her eyes flashed with cruelty. “After all, he will win. He gets to pretend to win you over with no chance of failure, because in the end, you’re a sure thing. Right? The key is to never let him feel like he’s hunting caged prey. The harder you feign disinterest, the more he will want you.” Julia leaned even closer, staring into my eyes, enjoying whatever she saw there. “You can do that, right? You can make him feel like this is real? Like he’s really working toward a prize?”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think past the horrible ache in my chest. I didn’t want to know what that pain meant, or how it could possibly hurt worse than what I’d lived through in the basement.
“I’m sorry, Kori,” she said, her words sweet, her tone vicious. “I guess Jake just doesn’t understand how badly a girl can be hurt by a game, if she doesn’t know she’s playing.” Julia drained the wine from my glass, then set it down. “Or maybe he doesn’t care.” She smiled sweetly, then, and made her way back to her own table, where Jonah sat watching us both.
I sat at the table alone when she left, silently cursing Ian for accepting Jake’s invitation, Jake for forcing me into this assignment and Jake’s mother for giving birth to any of her three hell-spawn children in the first place. But by the time Ian got back to the table, just as the waiter brought out two bowls of soup, I’d moved on to cursing myself for ever believing a word any of them said. I could blame Jake, Julia and Ian until the day the sun devoured the entire planet, but that would never erase the fact that I’d broken my own number-one rule.
Trust no one.
Me, Kenley and Kris. It had been the three of us against the world since the day our parents died, leaving us with a grandmother who hadn’t wanted kids of her own, much less grandchildren. They were the only ones I could trust. The only people I could lean on. Except that Kris was an hour away, and now Kenley had Vanessa. I was alone in a mess of my own making. And I had no idea how to get out of it.
“You okay?” Ian asked, lifting a spoonful of soup to his mouth.
“I saw you with Julia Tower,” I said, stirring my own soup with my spoon. “What did she want?”
“She was asking about you,” he said, and I watched him carefully, wishing for the first time in my life that I was a Reader rather than a Traveler. Shadow-walking had always made me feel safe and kind of stealthy, because I could get out of almost any situation armed with nothing more than a decent shadow. But whether or not Julia had been lying, she’d showed me one thing for sure—I could shadow-walk away from danger, but I couldn’t walk away from the truth. Hell, lately I couldn’t even identify it.
What if I’d been wrong about Ian from the start? What if it was all a game and everything I thought I knew about him was a lie? What else could I have been wrong about?
“What did you tell her?” I asked, when he studied my face, frowning.
“I told her you’ve been the consummate hostess. That you’re beyond reproach, and that her brother couldn’t have chosen anyone better to show off his empire and its many, varied offerings.”
But Jake hadn’t chosen me. He’d just given Ian what he asked for.
“So, you’re enjoying yourself?” I heard the hollow note in my voice, but I couldn’t fix it. I didn’t know how to act like I was having fun when Julia had just pulled the rug out from under my feet and stuck around to watch me stumble off balance. I was angry, and confused, and more scared than I would ever admit, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from spewing profanity into the heavens.
Unfortunately self-restraint was a poor substitute for gratitude and a love-struck gaze, or whatever Ian expected to see, if Julia was telling the truth. And suddenly I realized she’d known that. Had she set me up to fail, by telling me about Ian’s game, knowing I couldn’t play along if I knew I was playing at all?
Or was the whole thing a lie intended to make me paranoid and even more shrewish than usual?
“Well, this isn’t exactly a vacation,” Ian said, answering a question I’d forgotten I asked. “Why? What’s wrong, Kori?”
“Is there something you want from me that you haven’t gotten?” I demanded softly, holding his gaze. Silently daring him to tell me the truth, if there was anything to be told.
“Well, yes.” He frowned. “Last I heard, you were still trying to figure that part out.”
Right. Whatever it was that would make him sign. “And what you need from Jake, it’s not some kind of game, is it? You’re not just playing a game here?”
Ian pushed his soup bowl toward the middle of the table and leaned closer, his gaze holding mine captive. “No, Kori. I know I joke a lot, and the truth is that I like to see you smile. You don’t do enough of that. But I’m not playing games with your boss. I came here with very serious intent. I swear on my own free will.”
And that I believed. But whether he’d meant to or not, he’d misunderstood what game I was talking about.
“What brought this up?” he asked, handing his half-empty bowl to the waiter who already held mine. I hadn’t taken a single bite. “Did Julia say something to you?”
“We don’t get along,” I admitted. “Which sucks, because Jake listens to her.”
“Well, I gave her nothing negative to report, so try to forget about her.” He smiled at something over my shoulder. “Your lobster is here.”
I made it through the rest of the meal without losing either my mind or my temper, mostly because the food—the parts I recognized, anyway—was amazing and when I got back from my own restroom break, Ian had ordered something with vodka in it to replace the second glass of wine I’d turned down.
I tried to tell myself that he was being nice, not manipulative, but that was hard to believe because in my world the reverse was almost always true. Even a second drink and a huge slice of the most delicious chocolate cake I’d ever tasted weren’t enough to completely settle my nerves. Julia’s interference led me to look for hidden meaning in everything Ian said. She made me overanalyze every smile, every second of eye contact. And she wasn’t finished.
After dinner, I ducked into the restroom one more time, and when I came out of the stall, she was standing at the row of sinks, watching me in the mirror. “It’ll be tonight,” she said, her mouth hardly moving as she dabbed gloss onto her lower lip. “He sounds like he’s ready to move in for the kill. So to speak.”
I squirted citrus-scented sanitizer on my hands. “What, you’re psychic now, too?”
“You don’t have to be psychic to see what’s obvious. When you drop him off, he’ll ask you to stay for drinks. Then he’ll just ask you to stay…”
She turned to leave, then twisted to glance at me in the mirror one last time, her palm flat on the door. “Don’t make it too easy for him, okay? Even a caged rabbit struggles a little before it’s caught.” Then she pushed the door open and left me staring at my own reflection, breathing too fast, my blood pumping fear and anger through my veins.
I tried to breathe, like Kenley had shown me. In and out, exhaling all the hate and pain. But this time it didn’t work. This time memories weren’t the problem, so burying them couldn’t help. If Julia was telling the truth, I was trapped as thoroughly now by my own bindings as I’d ever been by the basement walls. And knowing what was coming didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
You can do this. You have to do this.
I sucked in one last deep breath, then turned for the door, determined to cling to dignity until the last possible moment. But then the rage inside me crested and a wordless shout of fury erupted from my mouth. I whirled toward the sink and my fist slammed into the glass above it. The mirror shattered and slices of it fell everywhere, breaking into smaller shards in the sink basins and on the floor at my feet. And for about three seconds, I felt better.
Then I realized I’d just spilled my blood in a public restroom and had no good way to clean it up.
I snatched a cloth from the stack on the counter and tied it around my cut hand, then picked up the bottle of hand sanitizer and read the contents. Alcohol. I exhaled in relief, then upended the bottle and squirted a glob onto every single drop of blood I could find. I was still on my knees in the mess when the door opened behind me and the hostess came in.
She gaped at the destruction around me, her mouth open wide enough to catch a whole swarm of flies.
“The mirror fell right off the wall. Could have killed me,” I said, dropping the nearly empty bottle of sanitizer in the nearest sink. “I might sue.” Then I marched past her and out the front door to the sidewalk, where Ian was waiting for me.
He took one look at the cloth around my hand and lifted one brow. “Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not.” I lead the way into the alley again without offering further explanation.
“Do you find trouble everywhere you go?”
“Sometimes it finds me.”
I took him back to the hotel and he called downstairs for a first-aid kit, then refused help on my behalf from the man who brought it up. I cleaned and bandaged my cuts in the bathroom, then I stoppered the sink and dumped the bleach from Ian’s travel kit—no Skilled person travels without bleach-solution in a spray bottle, even if it has to go in the checked luggage—over the cloth stained with my blood. Bleach would destroy the blood enough to keep it from being used against me.
“You want to tell me what happened?” Ian asked, glancing at my bandaged hand from the doorway.
“No.” I didn’t want to tell him anything until I knew whether or not Julia was lying.
“Kori, I can see that something’s wrong.”
“I’m fine.” And maybe if I said it enough, we’d both eventually believe me.
In the front room, I glanced around at the view, and the couches, and the huge television, and the bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of ice on a tall table against one wall—it had obviously been sent up moments before we’d arrived. This hotel suite probably cost more than I made in a month.
No one had ever wanted me as badly as Jake wanted Ian. But I knew better than anyone that the more Jake gave, the more he’d expect in return.
Angry, I marched across the room and plucked the small, embossed envelope from the tray the champagne sat on, trying to guess whether it had been sent by Jake or by Julia. But before I could take the card from the envelope, Ian gently pulled it from my hand. I looked up at him and immediately wished I hadn’t. There was something there. Something in his eyes when he looked at me. Something important, but I didn’t know how to interpret it. I’d lost all perspective.
Julia had stolen my perspective.
Ian looked worried—nervous—but I couldn’t tell if that was because he genuinely cared that something was bothering me, or because his game wasn’t working out the way he’d planned.
He stared into my eyes, and my palms started to sweat. My head felt like it was floating above my body, not truly attached. I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling. Everything was all tangled up in a knot so complicated I couldn’t follow the threads. And I had no hope of untangling them.
He wanted me. I could see that in his eyes. In the way he stood close, but not quite touching me. In the way he kept glancing at my lips, like he wanted to kiss me.
Some part of me wanted to kiss him, and that scared me so badly I couldn’t breathe. I needed to back away. To put some space between us. But that same part of me remembered what things were like before the basement. Before every touch bruised and every mouth bit.
Ian didn’t look angry. He didn’t look nasty or cruel. He wasn’t stalking or skulking. He just looked…interested.
If we’d met somewhere else.
If my life and Kenley’s well-being weren’t in Ian’s hands.
If I were someone else, and he were someone else.
If the moment hadn’t been manufactured by Jake Tower.
If any one of those things had been true, I might have wanted more than a kiss from Ian. I might have wanted to be with him. For a night. For a week. Maybe for more.
But this was… I couldn’t do it. Not like this. Not when I had no choice. I couldn’t breathe past the bitter lump in my throat or make my head stop spinning. I couldn’t mute the voice in my head—my voice—shouting for me to run. Fight. Leave, before he said something neither of us could go back from.
“So, you all set?” I asked, and even to my own ears, my voice sounded brittle, like it might break any moment. Like I might break with it.
“Stay and have a drink with me.” Ian waved one hand at a minibar. “No champagne, I swear.”
I opened my mouth to say no thanks, and that’s when the rest of me discovered what my brain had already known, at least in theory. I couldn’t say no. Even trying to say it sent pain shooting through my temple, half blinding me. My hands started to shake. Jake had told me to do whatever Ian wanted me to do, and Ian wanted me to stay for a drink.
Just like Julia had said he would.
Ian was playing a game—I was his game. And I was going to lose.
With that realization, I knew what I had to do.
Turn it off. Turn everything off. Whatever happens, happens. But I didn’t have to feel it. I didn’t have to truly be there. No matter what Jake made me do or say, he couldn’t shove his greedy fingers into my head. He couldn’t control my mind, or where I sent it.
No one could.
“Fine. Just one,” I said finally, and my hands stopped shaking. My voice felt empty, like the prerecorded message on my voice mail.
Ian pulled the bottle of champagne from the bucket and scooped ice out with a plastic cup. I flinched when the cubes clinked into two glasses. I sat on the edge of the leather couch with my hands clasped in my lap while he pulled tiny bottles from the minibar. A minute later, he turned around with two drinks and gave me one as he sank onto the couch next to me. “What should we toast to?” he asked, holding his glass up between us.
“Whatever you want.” That was the game, right? The winner gets whatever he wants?
My glass smelled like vodka, a clean scent. Astringent. If I drank enough of it, could it make me clean on the inside? Could it wash the blood from my hands? Bleach the stains from my soul? If I started drinking right that moment and didn’t stop until it was over, maybe I wouldn’t remember anything in the morning. And if I didn’t remember what had happened, I could tell myself nothing had happened.
A lie is always easier to believe if there’s no evidence against it.
“Oh, come on. There must be something you want to toast. Dinner on someone else’s dime? Low heels?” Ian glanced at my sandals. “Borrowed blouses?” He touched the short, flared sleeve of Kenley’s shirt, and my hand clenched around the glass. He wasn’t going to let me check out. Ian wanted to hear the wind-up doll speak.
“To free will,” I said finally, looking right into his eyes.
He laughed, like I’d made a joke, and chills broke out on both my arms. “To free will,” he repeated. “That most fabled of civil rights. May we all one day truly understand what we’ve lost.” He bumped his glass against mine with a clink, and my stomach clenched around my lobster dinner.
“You don’t know what real loss is,” I said through clenched teeth, refusing to drink. He couldn’t possibly.
Ian’s smile died and he lowered his glass, frowning at me over it. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I said. You don’t know a thing about loss. If you did, you wouldn’t be sitting here in a suite paid for by a man who’s just waiting to teach you what that word really means.”
His gaze hardened and he set his drink on the coffee table. “You’re not the only one who’s ever lost someone, you know.”
“This isn’t about dead parents,” I snapped.
“Then what is it about? What did I say wrong this time?”
“Nothing. I wish you would say it. I wish you’d quit with the drinks, and the chitchat, and the deep eye contact. This doesn’t have to be so much work. I’m a sure thing, Ian. No seduction required. Didn’t you get the memo?” I turned my drink up and drained it in several long gulps, and when I finally set the glass down, he was frowning at me, his expression stuck somewhere between confusion and exasperation.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I needed another drink. If he was playing the game Julia said he was playing, I’d just ruined the illusion of the hunt. And possibly tied a noose around my own neck.
“Nothing. I just… I’m sorry.” I stood and headed for the minibar. “I just can’t pretend anymore. Playing your game is one thing, but pretending it isn’t a game is too much.”
“What game, Kori?” The couch creaked at my back as he stood, but there were no footsteps.
“You. Me. Recruitment. Fringe benefits.” I plucked another tiny bottle from the minibar and cracked the lid without even glancing at the label. Then I turned and met his gaze from across the room. “I’m what you asked for. I can’t say no. So I wish you’d quit trying to make this feel like something it isn’t and just tell me what you want me to do, so I can get it over with.”
His eyes widened. Then his dark eyebrows sank low over green eyes and his hands curled into fists at his sides. I knew that look. Hell, I’d perfected that look. He was going to hit something.
Me? Was he going to hit me, because I’d ruined whatever fantasy he was playing out in his head? And if so, how many punches could I throw before the resistance pain kicked in again? Would this be like it was with Jonah, brutal and violent? Or would this be a civilized conquest, grown-ups playing pretend, polite until the last stroke?
In the basement, I’d been trapped by dead shadows and crippled by direct orders. Mentally fighting hands and teeth I couldn’t see, crushed by weight I couldn’t bear, pinned, humiliated, hurt. Wishing for death, but too scared to reach for it.
Would I have the guts to end it this time? To fight back until I couldn’t move, drawing death closer with every punch I threw, in spite of the pain…
“Kori, what are you saying? Whatever I tell you to do, you have to do?”
I rolled my eyes and drained half the tiny bottle, wincing at the burn. “You knew that. You’ve known it all along.”
“No, I… I hadn’t thought about it like that. I hadn’t realized…” He closed his eyes and sank onto the couch, his head in both hands. Then his hands fell away and his head snapped up. His gaze met mine and held it. And I realized I believed him.
Ian truly hadn’t known. There was no game, except the one Julia was playing.
His forehead wrinkled, and each breath he released sounded angry. “Tower told you to…?”
My stomach tried to revolt, and I held down my dinner with nothing but willpower. If he hadn’t known what I’d been ordered to do, then he hadn’t thought of me as a whore. Until now.
“He told me to do whatever you want. He said if I wasn’t the best you’ve ever had…” But I couldn’t finish that sentence. I couldn’t admit the consequences to him. Not with him looking at me like that. Not with disgust dripping from his words, revulsion written in every line on his face.
It was obvious what he thought of me now. I may as well have a red chain link tattooed on my arm.
“That soulless son of a bitch.” He stared at the floor, fists opening and closing. Then he looked up at me with something new shining through the surface of his obvious anger. Was that…disappointment?
And suddenly I understood that I wasn’t the only one hurt by this. If Ian’s jokes, and obvious desire, and genuine conversation weren’t part of some game he was playing, then…he’d meant them. He’d meant it all. And somehow that realization cut even deeper than the latest knife Jake had shoved into my back.
“So, this isn’t real?” Ian demanded, anger edging out whatever pain I’d glimpsed from him. “Dinner? Telling me about your family? Was any of that true? Did any of that mean anything to you?”
I inhaled deeply. Slowly. I could admit that in spite of my orders and my own common sense, everything I’d said and done with him was real. That I liked him, and that’s why I’d tried to paint an accurate picture of life in the syndicate, even as I roped him tighter with Jake’s noose. But that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. We couldn’t be together, ever, even if Jake hadn’t ruined anything we could have had by ordering me to sleep with Ian. Julia had been right about that much. Once Ian officially joined the syndicate, he would quickly outrank me. And even if my lower standing didn’t put him off, association with me would do him no favors.
So I put on my work face. My stone-cold-bitch face. Because he was hurting just like I was hurting, and this time, the truth would only make that worse.
“This is a job. You are a job. Nothing more.” It was the most difficult lie I’d ever had to tell. And it wasn’t over. “After you, there will be another job. I don’t know what that job will be, since I’m clearly the world’s worst recruiter. But whatever that next job is, I’ll do it. Just like I’m doing this one. So…” I swallowed and met his gaze, refusing to let mine falter. I could do this. I had no choice. “So just tell me what you want me to do—what it’ll take to get you to sign with Jake—and I’ll do it.”
“I don’t believe you.” He said it softly, but his words were drenched in anger. I closed my eyes, desperately wishing I’d heard him wrong. Wishing I hadn’t seen the pain in his eyes. The denial. “I don’t believe you, Kori. The reason you’re a horrible recruiter is that you’re bad at selling something you don’t believe in, and you don’t believe in what you’re saying right now.”
“Yes, I do.” I turned and reached for the tiny bottle again, but he was there in an instant, pulling it out of my grip.
“No, you don’t. I can tell when you’re lying, and you’re doing it now.”
“Don’t pretend you know me,” I snapped, reaching for the bottle, but he tucked it behind his back. “We just met. You don’t know anything about me.”
“The hell I don’t. I know you love your sister more than you love yourself. I know you hate Jake Tower, even if you can’t ever say that out loud. I know that you cuss like a fish swims, but you haven’t spoken a single profanity in the last seven hours, and as near as I can tell, the only thing stopping you is the fact that you gave your word. I know that he makes you do things that rot your soul, and that you do them because you have to, but that you’ll never really forgive yourself.”
I stared at him, stunned, knowing I should argue. Knowing that for both of our sakes, I should have the courage to lie and tell him he was wrong. That he didn’t know me and he never would. But words had deserted me, for maybe the second time in my entire life.
“And I know they did horrible things to you. Things you never talk about. I know they tried to break you, but they failed, and that’s why Jake talks about you like you’re trash, when we all three know that’s not true. I think he hates you because even though he tried his best, he couldn’t break you. Which means he won’t ever really own you, no matter what he tattoos on your arm or anywhere else.”
His face blurred right in front of me, and it took me several seconds to realize why. To realize there were tears standing in my eyes and that I couldn’t get rid of them without letting them fall.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. He does own me.” And he would, as long as he owned Kenley.
“No one owns you, Kori. People like you can’t be owned. Putting chain links on your arm is like putting a lion in a cage. He may be locked up, but he’ll always be wild, and he’ll eat his handler the first chance he gets. You’re that lion, Kori, and I see you watching. Waiting for your moment. And it will come.”
“No, it won’t, because it’s not just me in that cage, Ian. Kenley’s there with me, and she can’t bite.”
He blinked, and something passed over his expression too fast for me to understand. Something complicated and…conflicted. Then he shook that thought off, whatever it was, and captured my gaze again. “So you bite for her, too. You fight for the people you love, no matter what.”
I shook my head, and to my horror, those tears fell. “I can’t.” I hadn’t cried in the basement. I’d screamed. I’d even begged. But I’d never cried. Yet here I was in no danger whatsoever, and I couldn’t stop the burning in my eyes, the hot trails down my cheeks. “I can’t.”
“So you’re just going to give up? You’re just going to do whatever he tells you to do? Let him pass you around to all his friends like a lit joint, until you’re all used up and worthless?”
A sharp bolt of anger shot through me and I swiped tears from my face with both hands. “That’s not… This is the first time. It’s not a regular thing.”
“And you really believe it won’t be?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I hadn’t thought beyond getting through this one job, because there was a significant chance that wouldn’t actually happen, and if I was dead, I wouldn’t have to worry about the next assignment.
Ian studied my face, looking for something, and when he didn’t find it, he set the small bottle on top of the minibar. “So, if I’d asked you to stay the night, you would have done it? Not because you wanted to, but because he told you to?”
I sucked in a breath so deep my chest ached. “I wouldn’t have had any choice.”
“And last night, after the party? After knowing me less than eight hours? Would you have slept with me then?”
I could only nod miserably.
“And if I was a real asshole who hurt you and called you names? Would you be allowed to stop me?”
“Stop it. You already know the answer.”
“Yeah, I know it. I’m waiting for you to hear yourself say something awful enough to make you want to fight back.”
“I do want to fight!” I shouted, fury buzzing beneath my skin like an army of wasps. “But it doesn’t matter. That’s the real problem here, Ian. After everything I’ve shown you and everything you’ve figured out on your own, you still think fighting back is an option. You still think that if I close my eyes and wish hard enough, I’ll suddenly be able to break an oath sealed by one of the strongest—quite possibly the strongest—Binder in the world. But if there was a way out of this, you can bet your fancy rental car that I’d have found it myself. But there isn’t. Kenley and I are stuck exactly where we are, doing exactly what we’re doing, for the next four years.”
Assuming I lived that long.
I exhaled and met his gaze again, digging deep for the anger that fueled my heart like gasoline in an engine, because I’d rather be mad than wallow in the pain my next words would bring. “Now unless you’re actually planning to make me do what Jake told me to do, I’d like to leave. But as much as I hate to say it, I can’t go without your permission.”
He watched me, and emotions flickered over his face too fast for me to identify. But in the end, there was anger. Raw, pure anger of the highest quality. Rage. Ian wasn’t just angry, he was enraged.
I knew exactly how that felt.
“Go home, Kori,” he said through clenched teeth. “I think you should go home. Now.”
I nodded in acknowledgment, because I couldn’t bring myself to thank him for doing the only decent thing. Then I stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind me, and too late I realized I should have gone through the shadows in his bathroom. But I wasn’t going back into that hotel room. I couldn’t. Not after that.
For several seconds, I couldn’t move. I could only lean against the wall outside his suite, sucking air in through my throat over and over, only to lose it an instant later. He hated me. Worse, he pitied me. I’d seen it in his eyes. He was disgusted by what Jake had turned me into, and even more disgusted that I’d let it happen.
And the worst part was that I couldn’t argue with a damn thing he’d said. And if he told anyone—if Jake found out what I’d told him—Ian’s recruitment would be reassigned and I would wind up in the basement again.
I couldn’t survive it again. I couldn’t.
You should have just let it happen. I should have just kept my mouth shut and stayed the night, and he’d never have known I was under orders. So what if he thought it meant more than it ever could? So what if letting Jake dictate what I did with my body made me sick to my stomach? So what if just thinking about that brought memories of the basement roaring to the front of my mind, so vivid and horrifying I could smell the sweat and taste my own blood?
I raced for the elevator, but my stomach lurched after less than a minute of staring at my own reflection in its mirrored wall, so I punched buttons until the elevator stopped, then ran down the last four flights of stairs. I burst into the alley behind the building, but I couldn’t make it to the Dumpster. My dinner came back up in the middle of the alley, all over Kenley’s sandals. I vomited until there was nothing left, trying to purge the memories along with the food, but they wouldn’t go. I felt every blow. Relived every humiliation. I saw Jake closing the door on that very first night, leaving me alone with his brother, half-naked and still oozing blood from a gunshot wound.
When the retching finally stopped, I sank onto the concrete with my knees pressed against my chest, curled around the ache deep inside me. But finally I could breathe again. Finally the pain was gone, and in its place was a blessed numbness.
My stomach was as empty as the rest of me. That was the only way I knew how to be.
I closed my eyes and I heard Jake’s words again, echoing from my memory. He’d pronounced my sentence in three words with one hand on the doorknob, a cruel smile on his face.
“Don’t fight back.”
That’s how my hell had begun. And it had yet to end.