CHAPTER 36
James was not James with a very perfect upper-crust, rich American accent. James was Yakov Petrenko with a Russian accent, and Cecily now knew this because he’d told her himself in his natural accent. Right after he’d grabbed her off the street and forced her into the passenger seat of his car.
The good news was that she was alive. The bad news was that James said he was taking her to see his boss. The boss of a Russian operative seemed like the sort of person Cecily did not need to have a discussion with.
Given that Cecily’s wrists were bound in front of her with duct tape cutting into her skin, this turn of events seemed net negative.
Having a guy fake a relationship with her for nearly a year was pretty gross and awful, especially when she thought about how many times she’d slept with him.
Having that guy not care that your circulation was getting cut off and blood was dripping down your fingers really meant that all pretenses were gone.
And if they weren’t pretending to care about each other, then James probably wasn’t too worried about what was going to happen when she got where you go when your fake ex-boyfriend wants to use you to get “intelligence” about your brother’s mercenary team to please some Russian bigwigs.
So Cecily was shaking—that was uncontrollable. But she was determined not to lose it completely. Ally and Dex would talk eventually and realize she’d gone missing. And Dex would tell Rothgar. And Shane would find out.
It then occurred to Cecily that Ally might not expect her by dinner, Dex didn’t call every day, and James was unpredictable to say the least. She took a deep breath.
James had buckled her into the passenger seat, with a warning that if she clued other drivers into her predicament, he’d use the gun now sitting in his lap. She wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but with a little luck, the car in front of them would stop short and he’d jam on the brakes and accidentally blow his balls off. In lieu of that unlikely though spirit-raising thought, Cecily decided to do everything he said until a better idea came along.
The way her hands were bound, she couldn’t open the door, much less open the locks. For now the best she could hope for was that the Hudson Kings had a way of tracking her down. And that they’d figure out something was wrong sooner rather than later.
She looked at James’s profile; strange she’d been with him for so long, was his girlfriend for almost a year, and now he seemed like a complete stranger. Not only that. Even when she thought of him at his best, all she could think was that he wasn’t Shane. Shane came back to me. He came back to me to see if there was a chance. There was a chance . . . but I didn’t take it.
She raised her shoulder and swiped away the sweat on her face. James leaned over and slammed her arms back down. “Don’t even try it.”
Try what? God.
Cecily didn’t answer. For the first time, all the blacks and whites were gray. Marvelously, deliciously bed-blanket-BMW gray. Bending the law didn’t seem so cut-and-dried. Shane and his jobs and his “dirty” money didn’t seem so clearly categorized into what was wrong and what was right, because at the end of the day, the Hudson Kings were the guys who were going to look after you.
The duct tape around Cecily’s wrists was definitely too tight—she could see her fingers turning patchy purple and white. Luckily, it was a little floppy at the corner; worse came to worse, she could nudge or maybe rip part of it off. Did duct tape rip off? Maybe not. Shit. I can’t even think. She was losing it a little, starting to let the panic creep in. For now she tried to be invisible.
James was sweaty now too. He smelled like fear. This would have surprised her a couple of months back, when she’d still thought of him as strong. But that was before she’d learned what strong really was. That was before Shane.
James furrowed his brow, muttering something under his breath.
“Are you going to hurt me?” Cecily asked in a small voice.
“Can you just not talk?” he snapped.
“I thought you wanted to be friends,” Cecily mumbled.
James rolled his eyes. “Cecily, obviously that was a line. Don’t be idiotic. I honestly don’t know what they are going to do with you, but I suggest you prepare yourself.”
Ice-cold fear raced down Cecily’s spine. James had hit her before. She knew what that was like. One guy hitting one girl. That was bad. But the idea of a “they.” That sounded worse.
“I never should have gotten into this shit,” James was saying. His lack of confidence did not make Cecily feel better. It just meant someone else besides James had the power to decide what to do with her. Not to mention, one of James’s big push buttons was feeling emasculated. She knew he liked having a woman around to make him feel like more of a man; now Cecily could see how weak he truly was, now that she understood that you already had to be a man. No one else was going to make you feel strong. You just either had it or you didn’t.
God, she would have done anything to be sitting next to Shane right now. Shane with his cool head and fiery heart.
“It would have been fine, if you’d just given me a fucking crumb or two, but you gave me nothing,” James muttered. “You’re pretty enough, fun, good in bed . . . all you had to do was talk about them, and we’d have had it made.”
“I didn’t know anything. I don’t know anything.”
“Bullshit.” His gloved hands convulsed around the steering wheel. “Can’t believe how much time I put into you—you made me look like an idiot. They gave me one job, Cecily. One job, and I was on my way up. Then your fucking brother and his fucking band of mercs got in the way. Now I’ve got to do this.”
“They should have asked you to kidnap one of the Hudson Kings if they actually want to know about them,” Cecily said.
James got a weird look on his face. “Probably should have,” he muttered.
She stared over at him. “You do know what you’re doing, right?” she whispered.
When he didn’t answer, that’s when Cecily really started to panic.