Chapter Twenty-nine
Joshua
I smell it too. Gas. Poison gas, hissing out of the vents.
“Hold your breath!” I shout.
I suck in my own breath and grab her by the arm, and we run through the house, heading for the front door.
I never told her the end of Charlemagne’s story – which was that my father failed to kill him, after all. I was dazed with shock at killing my father, and I didn’t do a very good job checking my brother’s vital signs. After I staggered off, he crawled out of his grave and made his way out into to the world, same as I did.
I didn’t find out that he was still alive for years, though.
And when I did, I had him thrown into a very secure mental institution. Not secure enough, obviously.
How long has Charlemagne been out? How did he make Dr. Barnard lie to me and keep those fake videos online so I’d think he was still locked up? I keep tabs on Dr. Barnard’s family too – he hasn’t sent them anywhere to try to hide them from me. I know he loves them. And he knows I’ll kill them. How did my brother pull this off?
No time to worry about it right now. The first thing I have to do is get Toy and myself to safety.
Charlemagne is a genius who’s even more talented at computer hacking than I am, and he looks exactly like me and thinks like me. And he is very, very pissed, because he’s been in that mental institution for the last six years.
I had to do it, because he was killing people—not that I’d have a problem with that, except he was doing it in a very sloppy, public manner.
He tracked down and killed every social worker who’d come to our house and failed to remove us from that hellscape. Went right into their homes and butchered them, and then killed the head of the department of social services for good measure. He barely bothered to cover his tracks. That’s what happens when you let rage and revenge choose your kills for you.
When I saw the cluster of murders, I knew who was behind it right away—which meant there was an excellent chance that law enforcement would figure it out too.
With his self-indulgent killing spree, he risked getting caught by the police. That meant he risked exposing our entire twisted family life, and my murder of our father, and my assumption of a fake identity and fake social security number.
It wasn’t even that hard for me to track my brother down and capture him. I could have, should have, had Charlemagne killed instead of keeping him locked away. I spared his life when I didn’t have to. I’ve spent a fortune over the last six years, bribing Dr. Barnard to keep Joshua hidden from the world. It doesn’t matter to my brother that I spared him. He’ll want revenge.
Looking like me, and with his computer abilities, he will have been able to infiltrate my company at the highest levels. He’ll have penetrated every last system of mine. He may even have been in my house. He will have completely wormed his way into my security system.
He’s been fucking with me for months, drawing it out. He stole a hundred million dollars from me—a twentieth of my net worth. He ruined my Morton Media business deal. He fed the police just enough information that they’d start sniffing around, but not enough to convict me. Not yet, anyway. He could have ended my life at any time, but that wouldn’t be enough for him. He has bigger plans than that.
And somehow, he sent Toy into my path. I imagine he had the same reaction to her that I did—an instant, overwhelming attraction—and he sent her to me knowing that, as similar as we are, I would probably react the same way. All part of his long game, whatever that is.
Elizabeth is waiting by the front door, punching the keys over and over again, but the door’s not opening. I push her aside and punch in the code to the keypad, but it doesn’t work.
My lungs burn. Toy’s cheeks are puffed out and her face is turning red. Thank God for her breath-control practice.
I punch in a second code, an emergency backup code, and the door opens.
We rush into the airlock room. The door behind me stays open, although it’s not supposed to. That means the gas will pour in here too, from the hallway, even though there are no air vents in here.
Elizabeth’s eyes roll back in her head, and she falls to the ground.
I’m still holding my breath. I punch in the backup code. The front door opens.
The cold air hits me like a refreshing slap in the face.
I suck in gulps of oxygen as I bend down, grab Elizabeth by the wrist and drag her outside. I maintain a death grip on Toy’s wrist at the same time.
It’s mid-October, bracingly cold, and a chill breeze whips through the air. The minute we’re outside the front door, Toy goes mad. She lashes out and kicks me in the back of my leg, bringing me to my knees. Then she bites me on the hand so hard that my flesh tears and blood flows.
I have to let go of Elizabeth for a moment to control her. I’m forced to punch Toy in the head, hard enough to leave her half stunned, and then I start giving Elizabeth mouth-to-mouth.
Toy starts crawling away.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. She’s either going to find the cops and give up all my secrets, or get lost in the woods and freeze to death. But I can’t stop CPR; Elizabeth’s not breathing.
The icy survivalist in my brain howls for me to just leave Elizabeth to die and go after Toy.
Before I met Toy, I would have done so in a heartbeat and never suffered a twinge of conscience over it. Fucking Toy, she’ll be the death of me yet.
Elizabeth coughs and splutters and her eyes flutter open. She stares at me, searching my face for something. I’m not sure what. Then she reaches up and touches her mouth with trembling fingers, as if to savor the feel of my lips on hers.
I turn my attention back to Toy, who’s up on her feet and running like a gazelle.
My vision becomes laser focused. I leap up and run after her, and she’s surprisingly fast, but I catch up with her quickly and wrap my arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her off the ground. Again she does the thing where she wraps her legs behind my knees and makes me fall, and as we do, she rears her head back, and there’s a crunch and an explosion of pain as she breaks my nose.
My fierce, magnificent Toy.
She’s screaming and howling. “No, no, no! Never again!”
“Cut the shit!” I snap at her. “Who knows what the fuck my brother has done to the house? He could blow it to pieces! He could be out there waiting with a sniper rifle! We have to get the hell out of here, now!”
I climb to my feet and throw her over my shoulder, hurrying toward the Mercedes that I keep parked in the traffic circle in front of my house and praying that Charlemagne hasn’t sabotaged it. She’s writhing and kicking so hard I almost drop her.
As I reach the car, I don’t see Elizabeth there waiting for me. What the hell? I don’t have time for this! I glance back at the house and see that she’s running for the front door. She’s going back in.
“Elizabeth!” I yell at her. “Get back here! What are you doing?”
I run back to the house, still holding a wildly struggling Toy. Elizabeth runs right through the airlock room and into the house.
She turns around to look at me. She points at Toy, then gives me the middle finger. Then she opens her mouth wide and sucks in huge gulps of air.
And falls over backward.
I drop Toy on the ground with a thud, suck in my breath, and make it partway into the room, but whatever the gas is, it makes my eyes sting and I can’t go any further. I turn away and run back outside, leaving Elizabeth behind to die.
I feel a tsunami of a horrible emotion that I don’t recognize rolling over me. Oh God, I think it’s grief. I will never see Elizabeth again. Never.
What has Toy done to me?
How can I have these disgusting feelings?
I shake my head, blinking hard against the burning of my eyes, and look for Toy. Of course, she has run off again.
I run over to the car and fetch the Glock that I keep in the center console and tuck it into my waistband. Then I chase after her as she runs toward the woods, her bare feet slapping on the cold ground.
“Toy! Get the hell back here or I will cut your fucking tits off!”
Do I hear sirens far, far away? Has Charlemagne called the cops on me?
I need to get out of here, immediately. Toy is slowing me down.
The ice-hearted reptilian part of my brain knows what to do. I must kill her to save myself. This isn’t a game of cat and mouse anymore. This is the very real possibility of me going to prison or dying in a police shootout.
I fire the gun once, over her head. “Get back here or I’ll shoot!”
She ignores me and keeps running, so I point the gun at her, aiming for center mass. Shoot the torso rather than the head—it makes a better target, and there are all kinds of juicy internal organs in there. My bullets are hollow-point; they’ll make bloody confetti of her insides. I’ll toss her body in front of my house, flee the scene, and blow that shit sky-high, incinerating her and all the evidence.
I will do this.
I can do this.
Everybody exists to serve my purposes, and when they threaten me, they need to be eliminated. Simple as that. She’s getting further and further away from me, disappearing into the woods.
The iceman survivalist inside me pulls the trigger. But the new thing that Tamara created jerks the gun at the last second so that the bullet flies right by her left ear.
She trips and falls to her knees but gets up again. She limps away slowly. She must have wrenched her ankle.
I tuck my gun in my waistband and catch up to her easily and carry her back to the car. Desperation makes her wild.
She snatches the gun from my waistband and jams it into my throat, and I stop moving instantly. Her finger is on the trigger. It doesn’t take much pressure at all to fire a Glock. She could do it without even meaning to.
“Put me the hell down!” Her voice is trembling.
“Take your finger off the trigger,” I snap at her.
“You don’t give me orders anymore, asshole. Never again. Put. Me. Down.”
I should have shot her through the heart when I had the chance.
But no. I couldn’t ever kill her. Even now.
I very carefully set her down and back away from her. She’s holding the gun in a two-handed grip. Not a very good one, but she doesn’t have to be good at this distance.
“Tamara.” I keep my voice steady. “You’re right, you’re not Toy, you never were. I apologize, Tamara. I am sorry for what I did to you. And you’re not going to shoot me. That’s not you. You’re pure good, Tamara. You live to help people, to make things better. We need to get out of here, baby, before my brother shows up. He won’t kill you, Tamara. He’ll torture you to get back at me. He’ll peel your skin off. He’ll burn you alive. You wouldn’t be the first woman he’s tortured to death.” No, after what he did to those social workers, she’d be at least the fifth.
I start walking toward her, slowly.
The gun wavers in her hand, and her eyes go wide and desperate. She steps back, wincing in pain from putting weight on her ankle.
“Please don’t make me kill you!” Her face twists in panic. “I can’t be your slave again, Joshua. I can’t! Just leave!”
“You won’t be my slave.” I’m almost on her. I reach for the gun.
She shoots me in the foot, then screams in surprise at what she’s done.
Instantly, I compartmentalize the pain. And I glory in the fact that she couldn’t find the strength to kill me.
I lunge forward and snatch the gun from her hand. I wrap my arms around her as she howls and cries.
“Tamara. It will be different. I want you to come with me right now, I want you to stay with me of your own free will.”
“Never!” she howls. And the pain of it squeezes my heart.
This is what heartbreak feels like. No wonder people whine and cry about it so much. It’s vile. It makes me angry and sick to my stomach. It makes me want to kill people.
My shoe is filling up with blood. Even with my ability to compartmentalize, it’s getting hard to ignore the throbbing agony in my right foot. I feel a little lightheaded.
Yes, those are sirens I hear.
“I understand.” I stare at her so she’ll see the truth in my eyes, but she’s twisting away from me. “Whatever happens, I’m sorry for what I did to you. And I thank you for what you did for me. You made me almost human, Tamara. If I could feel love for anyone, it would be you. You are love in human form, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been privileged to know. You broke down my walls and set me free.” I kiss her neck gently.
Every word is gulping up time that I don’t have, but it doesn’t matter, because I had to tell her that. She needs to know how I feel. She deserves that, and much more.
But I’m also not ready to surrender yet. It’s not in my nature. We’re going to drive away. I’m going to blow up the house when we’re at a safe distance, and then I’m going to move us to one of my other hideouts. And I will find and kill my brother.
I am sure of all these things. I am not a man who panics. I am not afraid at all.
I open the trunk and drop her in with a thud as she screams. This isn’t my sound-proofed trunk; that car is in my garage, and we don’t have time to go in there. Also, I don’t know what Charlemagne might have done to the garage. He could have messed with the locks, and he could trap me in there.
This is a fun game for him. He’s somewhere close and he’s watching. I’m sure of it. Will he be forced to kill Tamara? Can he do it? Will he go into the garage so I can lock him in? Will the police catch him before he can escape?
Everything about this situation is fucked up beyond belief, but I will adapt and survive. If I survived my father, I can survive anything.
“Listen,” I tell her. “Just keep quiet, and when we’re safe, if you still want to leave me, I’ll let you go as soon as it’s safe for me to do so.”
In response, she tries to lash out at me with her foot.
And I slam the trunk shut.
I hear her kicking the trunk and screaming.
I need to leave, I need to get the hell out of here as fast as I can, but instead I yank the trunk open and look down at her, at a face that’s still beautiful to me even though it’s contorted with utter hatred.
“Tamara,” I say to her. “I meant what I said. I know you don’t believe me, but if you just do what I say, I’ll set you free soon. I’m taking up valuable time when I should be driving the hell away from here, and the cops are coming, and I don’t have to tell you this, because I’ve already got you trapped in my car trunk. I’m saying it because it’s true. You’ve made me feel things I never thought I could feel. I’m not the man that I was when I first took you. Please just trust me. I’ll get us out of here, I’ll keep you safe, and once my brother’s locked up again, I will open my front door for you and you can go anywhere you want.”
“Lying bastard. Why don’t you bleed out already?” she spits at me. I slam the trunk again.
She hates me, but it doesn’t change my feelings in the least.
I blink hard as I quickly pull off my shoe and use my sock to bind my foot wound and slow down the bleeding, then I limp over to the driver’s side car door and climb in. My eyes are watering.
Am I crying?
Elizabeth is dead, because of me, because of my monstrous selfishness.
Tamara might not choose me. If I keep my word to her and let her go, she might leave. After everything I did to her, she’d be insane to stay with me, and my beautiful girl is many things, but she is not insane.
Yes. I am crying. I am a man who is capable of sorrow, who is able to shed tears. There is something astonishingly freeing in this. I wish I could have cried for my brothers. For my mother. They deserved my tears. This feeling is like a scouring fire, cleansing and painful at the same time.
“Thank you, Tamara,” I whisper, and I turn the key.
* * *
Tamara
It’s suffocatingly hot and dark, and I scramble wildly, trying to find a trunk release latch. Joshua probably disabled it. I kick the trunk lid, uselessly.
Will he really set me free?
Of course not. He’s lied to me before without even blinking. And he’s not the kind of man who’d sacrifice his life for someone else.
He called me Tamara. He opened up the trunk again, and I could hear sirens. He took the time to tell me how he felt about me, even when it meant he was risking prison, or death.
I want to believe.
If he were willing to let me come and go as I pleased, would I come back to him?
I can’t possibly be thinking that. Not after what he’s done to me.
Me, in an empty apartment… Going to work, talking to people on the subway… I’m trying to picture it in my mind, but all I see is a blank screen. What would I do without him? Where would I go? I can’t imagine life without him anymore. I don’t know if it’s because I forced myself to stop thinking about the outside world in order to survive, or if it’s because I’ve developed some twisted, symbiotic attachment to him.
Or a terrible mixture of both.
The car starts to move.
Elizabeth is dead, and shockingly, that makes me feel awful. I was vile to her, but she was as much Joshua’s victim as I was. She was so wretched that she killed herself to escape her eternal torment.
We’re bouncing over rutted roads. I’m trapped. It’s dark. It’s like a coffin.
Calm down. Calm down.
The car stops.
I coil my legs back so I can lash out with a kick when he opens the trunk. Nothing happens.
The car sits there for a long time. Have the police pulled us over? That must be it. I start kicking the trunk and screaming at the top of my lungs.
The thought of Joshua being arrested makes me feel queasy. That’s ridiculous. It’s so stupid. I will tell the police everything. I have to.
Would he really have set me free?
I want to believe it. After all this time, after everything I’ve been through, I still want to believe in the basic decency of humanity, and more, I want to believe in him.
I don’t understand my snarled, tangled feelings for him, but I don’t want him dead. I had the chance to kill him, but I couldn’t do it.
What will I do? What will I say when I’m freed? I don’t even like the idea of him being in a jail cell for the rest of his life, but I refuse ever to be a prisoner again.
I will have to tell the police what he did to me. It’s like Joshua has shaped me into his own image; made me hard and selfish, a survivalist. It’s either him or me, so I choose me.
Nobody is answering me, and I can’t hear a thing. My throat hurts, so I stop screaming.
The trunk opens, and I lash out, and someone grabs my legs and drags me out of the car.
I look up at the handsome face looming over me.
He drops me on the ground with a painful thud.
“We need to change cars,” he says to me.
The sirens are closer. We’re on a dirt road hemmed in by trees, and light snow is drifting down on us now. I shiver and hug myself.
I look up at him, keeping my voice steady. “Joshua. The police are here. Just let me go, and I won’t say anything. Just like we agreed.”
He shakes his head, smiling.
“No need to pretend, princess. You know I’m not him. But I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Charlemagne. Or I was. I go by a different name now. You may call me Micah.”
My shoulders slump in despair.
“So Joshua is dead?” The thought makes me want to weep, or vomit.
I don’t want him to be dead.
I want him back. I want to hit him and hurt him and forgive him. I want to believe him. I want to trust him. I want to destroy him. I want him to really, truly love me, so we can be together forever.
“Of course not.” Charlemagne’s eyes glow with madness. “Don’t be an idiot. That would be way too fucking easy. He had me locked up like an animal, Tamara. Now that he’s fallen in love with you, I finally have the perfect weapon. I’m going to pay him back.”
He scoops me up in his arms. We’re on a narrow dirt road, and there’s a car parked up ahead—no, a van. I scream and struggle wildly as he opens up the back door, but he holds on to me easily.
Lying on the floor of the back of the van, I see a woman, hog-tied and gagged.
The shock of recognition punches me in the stomach. Heather.
No wonder she didn’t report me missing. Her eyes are huge with fright and she’s making desperate grunting noises.
It’s my fault she’s here. She’s going to die in agony, because of me.
Charlemagne holds up a syringe and horror rips me apart, and I scream and scream.
“Night night, Tamara.”
…Be sure to read part 2, The Trials of Tamara, to be released May 7!
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Also by Ginger Talbot:
A monster doesn't know how to love.
But maybe she can teach him...
If he doesn't break her first.
WILLOW
My uncle handed me over as collateral for a $5 million debt...
And the beast who claimed me knows no mercy.
I don't know if he has a soul, or if I can melt his frozen heart.
Sergei is a Russian mob boss, a cruel, evil man who draws pleasure from my pain.
My time to find the man inside the monster is running out.
If I don't save him, I won't be able to save myself.
SERGEI
Willow is just a pawn in my war against the Toporov family.
A delicious, sexy little pawn I can't wait to hurt in all the ways I know by heart.
I'm going to make her every nightmare come true.
But Willow has a hidden fire. She has a tender heart.
Too bad for her... Because I'm about to put her light out.
I'm about to make sure she never, ever loves me.
This is a dark romance, complete with trigger warnings! Part 1 of a complete 3 part series.
No cheating, HEA guaranteed at the end of the series. If you love heartbreaking cliffhangers, now!
The monster draws pleasure from my pain.
Now, it's time to fight back.
SERGEI
30 days of pain have pushed Willow to her limits.
My pretty prisoner is no longer meek. She's trying to resist.
But my precious prize doesn't know what I know.
Nobody has ever won a war against me.
Nobody has ever bested me.
And she's not going to be the first.
Good luck, little Willow...
Now you're not fighting to escape anymore.
You're fighting to survive.
WILLOW
My captor's rules have changed.
I'm still a prisoner, and freedom seems further away than ever.
I have endured every blow, every harsh word, every kind of hurt Sergei threw at me.
But now I've betrayed him, and I've awoken the monster within.
I have to pay for my sins...or my family will pay the price.
This is a dark romance, complete with trigger warnings! Part 2 of a complete 3 part series.
No cheating, HEA guaranteed at the end of the series. If you love heartbreaking cliffhangers, now!
Secrets and lies tore us apart. Can love keep us together?
SERGEI
Willow thought she got away from me, but she was wrong from the beginning, wrong about everything. I find her trying to take down a human trafficking ring, unsure whether I'm there to help her, or drag her down. But from now on, Willow doesn't have a choice. She will be my wife. She will submit. She will play her role. 30 days until she becomes mine forever. 30 days for her final chance to run. 30 days, and Willow will be my wife, mine until the end of days.
WILLOW
Sergei wants me to trust him. He orders me to marry him, and he’s giving me no choice in the matter. But our enemies are circling in, enemies we didn’t even know we had. Evil is closer than ever, so close I can feel its hot breath on the back of my neck. He's hunting me, and there's nowhere left to run. I'll have to face the devil himself - and I have a feeling he will make me pay in blood. I don't know who to trust. Is Sergei the perfect liar... or the perfect lover?
This is a dark romance, complete with trigger warnings! Part 3 of a complete 3 part series. No cheating, .