Kenzie

 

Kenzie put her key in the lock and silently slipped into the big house. Her father couldn’t be mad at her for staying out all night, not given what he had tasked her with doing, but she wasn’t ready to deal with him yet. She could only hope that he didn’t expect to drag every detail out of her. She needed a shower and a cup of coffee at the very least, and even then she doubted the jumping feeling in the pit of her stomach would go away.

 

Her night with Xavier had been nothing short of breathtaking. Kenzie hadn’t ever felt such an urge to be with someone physically, and it made her wonder just what was going on between the two of them. She had tried as hard as she could to resist him, reminding herself during their conversation at the bar that she had to flirt, but she’d soon discovered that she wanted to flirt. She wanted to touch him, explore him, please him.

 

As she rounded the corner from the foyer into the hall, something hard crunched into her eye socket. Kenzie fell backward, stunned, slamming into the wall before she slid down to the cool marble floor. Her stomach lurched as stars danced in front of her eyes. Her instinct was to turn and run away from the danger, but her legs refused to work. Barely holding onto consciousness, she tried to put her hands over the wound. The skin was too tender, and it only hurt more to flinch. A pair of meaty hands grabbed her under the arms and hauled her to her feet.

 

“Good job, Angelo,” said a voice that sounded very far away. “Your aim is perfect as always, although I suppose we should have asked her if the mission was complete first.”

 

Kenzie blinked and her vision slowly cleared to reveal her father, an expression of curiosity and pride on his face. He was already up and dressed in a suit for the day, and Angelo—dressed similarly—stood next to him. His face was twisted into a crooked grin, affected by the long scar that ran down his cheek. The hired man still had his hand twisted into a fist, ready to hit her again if the first shot hadn’t been enough.

 

“Well?” Matteo pressed. “Did you sleep with him?”

 

“Why the fuck did he deck me?” she demanded when she regained control of her tongue. A throbbing pain bounced around inside her skull, and it had nothing to do with the little bit of alcohol she’d had at Xavier’s place.

 

“I asked the question first,” her father replied calmly.

 

She could tell that whoever held her up was a big man, probably Tiny. She let him keep her weight, since she couldn’t handle it just yet. Her knees folded every time she tried. “Yes. Now why did he hit me?” Her voice sounded shrill, on the verge of tears, and she hated herself for it. Last night she had been her own woman, but as soon as she returned home she was once again just a pawn.

 

Matteo pulled her hand away from her face to examine the site of the punch. He cupped her face in his hand, his thumb pressing painfully at her flesh. “I’m just covering my bases. A nice black eye will make our rape story about Mr. Flynn seem all the more believable if we have to use it.”

 

“Who?” Her brain didn’t seem to be working correctly.

 

“The biker you were supposed to fuck!” he shouted, throwing his hands in the air and making her flinch. “Jesus, you would think after all this time you could figure out how this shit worked. Angelo, keep her under your surveillance until that bruise has formed, and then we’ll get pictures. Don’t let her put any ice on it.” Matteo pushed past the crowd in the hallway toward his study. Kenzie spit on him as he passed her, but he brushed it off his sleeve. “Your temper tantrums don’t help. I suggest you calm down unless you want your eyes to match.”

 

Angelo and Tiny brought her into the living room, where she collapsed onto a white leather couch. Her eyelids were heavy, and she wanted to sleep, but she knew that was dangerous with the wound she’d sustained. She tipped her head back and listened to the thugs argue about how to make her look even worse.

 

“We should put her face-down, so all the blood runs to the wound.” Tiny’s deep voice echoed painfully in her head.

 

“No, you idiot. We have to press on it to make sure all the blood vessels are broken.” Angelo leaned over the back of the couch.

 

“Touch me and I’ll bite your fingers off,” Kenzie muttered.

 

Tiny laughed, and Angelo punched him. It carried on like that for a while until they were finally ready for the picture.

 

“That’s it,” her father crooned, having come out of his office to supervise, “look nice and pissed off. Those tears are a perfect addition. Everybody will believe you.” He stood just behind Angelo as the digital camera snapped the images, acting like a director on a set. Matteo was obviously proud of the work “he” had done.

 

Kenzie thought about firing back at him, asking him how he thought this was possibly okay. But she knew without saying a word what her father’s reply would be. They were doing this for the family. They were doing this because that bastard Xavier Flynn had stolen several of their sources of income from him, and it was time that he paid. It was just work, just business. It always was.

 

When she was finally released to go to her room, Kenzie slumped down at her desk. She had a paper due later in the week, and she knew she’d better get it done before her father needed anything else from her. She flung open her notebook and scanned the notes she had already jotted down, but the words blurred in front of her eyes.

 

“Stop it, Kenzie,” she whispered to herself as she grabbed a tissue and dabbed carefully at her eyes. “You’re tougher than this. It’s over now, so just get the work done.”

 

Still finding it almost impossible to focus, she tried reading the words out loud. “The relationship between poverty and crime rates is one that should be thoroughly examined in order to … in order to …” But she couldn’t finish. It didn’t matter that she had carefully avoided the other suggested topics that explored the relationship between mental health and crime, or whether criminal behavior was hereditary. All of it came back to her father and the family, and she couldn’t possibly research something that hit so close to home. She couldn’t get away from it, no matter how many classes she took or how much she tried to educate herself.

 

Kenzie carefully touched the tender flesh around her eye. Even without looking in the mirror, she knew it was bad. How would she cover that up for school? She could do a good job with her makeup, but it wouldn’t hide the bruising. She’d have to miss class unless she wanted to endure questions from a concerned teacher, which would only make things worse. The last thing she needed was to sit down with a guidance counselor and pretend that everything was all right.

 

One tear and then a second plopped onto her notebook, blurring her rushed scribblings from a study session in the library. What had her life come to?

 

By the next morning, she had cried all the tears her body was capable of making. She was bruised all to hell, but she could handle that. Crying and feeling sorry for herself weren’t going to make anything better. She’d been hurt worse before. While she usually wore her hair in a ponytail to keep the dark, silky locks out of her way, that morning she brushed it carefully down over the offending eye. Concealer and foundation only did so much, but they helped. It was time to act like nothing happened and put it all behind her.

 

But that was impossible to do when her father sat down across from her at the breakfast table and grinned at the handiwork his man had done. “That’s a beaut! Should’ve waited to take a picture until this morning; I think you’re even more swollen now. The time stamp had to be right, but I guess we could have always changed it. That doesn’t matter. It still works, since you’re going to Flynn’s house today.”

 

“What?” She set her coffee mug down slowly; she was going to need all the caffeine she could get just to make it through the day. “I thought my part in this fiasco was done.”

 

Matteo laughed as he cut into his eggs with the side of his fork. “What makes you think that? You still have the most important part to play. You’re going to Flynn’s house, and you’re going to tell him to pay up.”

 

“You never said I would be the one to extort the money,” she countered. The very last thing she wanted to do was to see Flynn with this shiner on her face.

 

“Trust me, it’ll be much more effective if he can see you in person. He’ll know just how much hot water he’s in, and he’ll shove money at you faster than you can take it.” Matteo laughed again, and his ever-present thugs laughed along with him. “You’ll have to take that makeup off, though. I need you to look like you’ve been dragged through hell.”

 

Kenzie already felt like she had been, and that she hadn’t been able to escape yet. She closed her eyes and shook her head. There was no arguing with him when he believed he was right, and she just wanted to get this over with. “Fine. I assume you have a plan?”

 

“Of course, I do. We’ve been watching Xavier, so I know just when you can catch him home alone. And you’ll have a wire on, so don’t think you can say anything other than what I tell you to.” He shook his finger at her in warning. “Xavier Flynn will play right into your hands.”