Chapter Four
Jack
After years of plotting my revenge, I’d made my first mistake.
My grim face looked back at me in my car’s mirror. Red veins slithered through the edges of my eyeballs—reminding me how little I’d slept. After leaving the Golden Goose, I’d driven around for hours, trying to shake Harper from my brain.
It was a pointless effort.
I shouldn’t have spoken to her. That much was obvious, but I’d never been great at ignoring people in trouble. I’d thought she was just another dancer. Then I’d heard her humming… and that sound had burrowed into my memory. Suddenly I was back on that alley ground. Suddenly, the angel who’d shown me mercy was hovering over my broken body.
I couldn’t have predicted that I’d find her again.
Least of all, I wouldn’t have guessed she’d be in that filthy club.
She belonged on a stage meant for goddesses. Instead, she spent her nights twirling around a greasy metal pole for the lowest scum around. You’re no better, I reprimanded myself. You bought her body the same as the rest.
Harper had smelled like a sweet dream and tasted like glory. She’d reminded me of who I’d been before years on the street had hardened me.
That girl… my past… none of it belonged to me any longer. I had a mission. My second chance was all about revenge. I reminded myself of that as I scanned the sidewalk outside of my car, watching the condo for signs of my target.
If I did this right, I wouldn’t need to go back to the Golden Goose. I wouldn’t see Harper again. I’d make Mister Big pay. Then my conscience would be clear.
Thinking of the look on that man’s face when I ruined his world had my heart racing. Squeezing the steering wheel, I squinted at the condo doors. They were glass but the morning sun was reflecting in such a way you couldn’t see inside.
Movement; the doorman in his coat stepped aside to let a small girl out into the sunlight. Cena was tall for eight years old, her hair in a short bowl-cut that enhanced her round face. Cute. Sweet.
Would she cry when I kidnapped her?
“Slow down,” Harper laughed, chasing Cena out onto the sidewalk. The sight of the woman I’d screwed under black lights just last night filled my lungs with cement. She was wearing plain jeans and a loose pink sweater, her hair that had tickled my bare shoulders thrown up in a loose bun.
She was more beautiful than ever.
Why the fuck was she here with Cena Blunderbore?
Leaning back in the car, paranoid she’d see me, I ran through all the options in my head. I’d witnessed Harper entering the condo a few times since I’d been scouting the building. My guess was that she was screwing her boss, a fact that turned my insides into sour-mash once I’d realized who she was.
Mister Big had everything; even things he didn’t know belonged to me.
Sitting there, I watched Harper as she scooped up Cena’s hand and guided her down the street. The young girl attended an elementary school nearby. Normally, she walked alone. What had changed about today? Whatever it was, it was messing my plan up.
They were at the corner across from me when I made a snap decision.
Pushing my car door open, I stepped out, shielding my eyes from the early sun. Act natural. No one knows what you were going to do. “Hey!” I called, waving, dodging through the light traffic and over the double yellow lines.
Harper’s eyes went so wide I expected them to fall to the ground.
Good. We both got to enjoy some shock today.
As I grew closer, I noticed Harper had her hands clasped on Cena’s shoulders. They were closer than I suspected, which meant her and Mister Big were close, too. She had hinted last night that he’d never fire her.
He’s her sugar daddy. The realization made it hard for me to fake a smile. “Hi,” I said. “Funny running into you.”
“Funny?” she asked, arching one eyebrow. “That’s not the word I’d pick. What are you doing here?”
Before I could answer, Cena broke away from Harper, standing on her tip-toes to look closely at me. “I’ve never seen you before! Are you Hap’s secret boyfriend or something?”
Harper’s cheeks burned red. I fought down my urge to reach out and test how hot they felt. Crouching down so I was face to face with Cena, I whispered loud enough for Harper to hear. “You mean she didn’t tell you? That’s not very nice of her.”
“No!” she agreed, glaring playfully up at the older woman. “It’s not! Hap, why’d you keep him a secret? It’s not like he’s an ugly troll or something.”
Laughing heartily, I reconsidered Cena. “That’s nice of you to say.”
“I have good taste,” she chirped. “Are you walking your kids to school?”
That question threw me off, and I caught Harper grinning behind her hand. She liked seeing me on off footing… but that made two of us. “No kids for me yet, maybe one day.”
“Well, Hap doesn’t have any babies either, so maybe—”
“Cena!” Harper grimaced, lightly nudging the girl along the sidewalk. “Let’s get going.”
Grabbing my belly, I followed close by. “I’ll walk with you.”
“No,” she said softly, “You won’t. We’re safe.”
“But Hap! He can help keep us safe! Want to be our knight, Sir…?”
“Jack,” I chuckled. “I’ll be Sir Jack. It’s an honor to guard you.”
Cena beamed, but Harper looked unimpressed. The small girl was almost skipping around us both as we walked. “Sir Jack,” she asked, giggling, “Did you bring anything for Hap? Good guys always bring things to pretty girls, like flowers, or fancy cars.”
“Would you like those things?” I asked, talking to Cena, though I was watching Harper with a wry smile.
Shaking her blonde bob of hair, she said quite matter-of-factly, “Nope! I want a ride to the moon!”
At my blank expression, Harper shrugged one shoulder. “She loves space. Wants to be an astronaut someday.”
“I can’t take you to space,” I said to Cena, sighing. “Does that make me a bad man?”
She stopped on a dime, peering up at me with her nose all scrunched. “You only look a little like a bad man. Kind of like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.”
Harper didn’t bite back her laugh that time. The longer we walked, the more she seemed to relax. “Cena adores old movies.”
“Okay, we’re here!” Cena squealed, hugging Harper tight. She waved at me frantically. “Bring me to space next time! Bye, bye! See you later!”
“So,” I said, watching Cena jog into the school building, “Your boss pay you extra to play babysitter, or is that just written in the fine details of your contract?”
Instead of answering me, she snatched my forearm, digging her nails in. “What the hell are you up to?” she hissed.
I laughed uneasily. “Good grip you have there.”
“I’m not joking around.” Her grip didn’t loosen; she rose up, speaking an inch away from my mouth. “Why were you waiting for me in your car?” A flash of something passed across her wild expression. “If you’re being paid to make sure I don’t run off with Cena, you can tell Callum I know better than that.”
Firmly, I grabbed her hand and pried her fingers off of me one by one. She didn’t fight back. “Now why would he think you’d do something like that?”
“Answer me: do you work for him?”
The suggestion curdled my guts. “He didn’t hire me to do shit.”
Harper searched my eyes for a long minute. Whatever she saw satisfied her, because she breathed in deep, hands hanging at her hips loosely. “Then why are you here? We had one dance, Jack. You shouldn’t be so hooked on me.”
Her suggestion hit too close to home. Grinning so wide my cheeks hurt, I rustled my hair. “Yeah, well, it was a really good dance.”
Harper laughed, the sound so clean I wanted to bottle it up and save it for my darker days. “I see what’s happening here. But just because you saved me from one stalker doesn’t give you a free pass to become one yourself.”
“Do you really think I’m a creep?”
“It’s possible. The part of me that’s supposed to give off warning bells if someone is dangerous has never worked.”
“I believe it,” I said, following her as she started to walk back towards the condo. “I’m definitely a terrible person and you’ve clearly got the hots for me.” She covered her mouth to muffle her giggle. My ears ate up every sound she made, the vibrations swimming in my heart until it thrummed like a live wire. “I know I keep saying it, but your voice is beautiful.”
There was a hiccup in her pace. Harper shot me a furtive look, then stared straight ahead. “You said last night that you heard me perform. Where?”
Here it was—a direct question that would reveal our connection. Would she remember that night, and if she did, would that help or hurt my plans? “There was a place back in Sommersville, the Copper Tub. You performed that night… first and only time I heard you sing.”
She pulled up short. We were alone on the street, so it struck me as odd how she darted her eyes around before settling on me again. Why did any talk about her singing make her so edgy? “I hated that place. What were you doing there? That club was known for dirty deeds.”
I looked down my nose at her. “You’re right,” I whispered. “You can make an educated guess why I was there. Dirty business.”
We faced off; her, staring up at me with what I kept expecting to be disgust. Instead, her features softened, the edge of her ruby lips creating a curious smile. “Huh.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s just funny,” she said, half turning away from me. “You’re set on trying to make yourself sound awful. I don’t believe any of it.”
Unsure what to do with her observation, I followed at her side as she walked. “You said it yourself, you can’t read people.”
“Maybe,” she mused. We approached the condo, the doors reflecting our images back at us. In the glass, we were all stretched out and wobbly, our hands warping, almost touching in their imperfection. I loved it. “This is my stop,” she said, jerking her thumb at the building.
“Wait, you live here?”
She made a face. “Of course I do.”
This was a new twist. Did it mean Callum paid for her rent, or did she get a discount because he owned the place? Maybe stripping really did pay the bills. “Are you chasing me off? Cena told you, I’m not a bad guy.”
Harper’s eyes moved to the doorman, then back to me. “Give me one reason to invite you up to my place.”
Cocking my hip, I chuckled warmly. “We could play twenty questions.”
I’d meant it as a light joke, but her expression said I’d intrigued her. Perhaps telling her that I’d heard her sing would actually turn out to be a good thing. “If you come up,” she said slowly, “You’ll behave.”
“What did you say last night?” I asked, so softly she had to strain to hear me over the cars driving by. “Something about… not biting unless asked?”
Harper’s lips parted; I ached to fill the gap with my mouth. Whirling, she pressed a key card to the door, motioning for me to go inside. The lobby was wide; bright from all the windows. A large elevator reached up from the middle of the room, gold and crystal. The stripper poles at the Golden Goose kept entering my mind.
Callum owns all of this. It was impossible not to think of this place like a stone tower. And at the top was Mister Big, ready to crash and burn once I toppled him down.
“This way,” she said, leading me towards the elevator. We passed by the security desk as we went. There was a man there, his face jagged, too thin in all the wrong ways. His hands were harmlessly holding a phone to his ear. But I knew exactly what cruelty they were capable of.
He watched me as I walked by, but no recognition flashed in his face. Between us both, the only reaction was my ribs straining with the memory of old injuries.
“You okay?”
Blinking, I stood next to Harper in the elevator. “Fine. Just thinking about how small of a space we’re in.”
Her cheeks turned a dusky pink. “I said behave.”
“I am.” Purposefully, I set my hand on the smooth wall right above her head; she flinched, breathing deeply. “I’m just riding up with you. That’s tame. I’m definitely not thinking about how much time I have to kiss you and get your clothes off before we… ah.” The doors dinged. “Never mind.”
Harper gave me a slight shove. “You’re something else.”
“Flattery is always appreciated.”
The walk down the hallway to her condo was short. She clicked a key in the lock; the entryway opened straight into a wide, brightly lit room. A chunk of speckled marble formed the island in the kitchen; I could see it from the door thanks to the open floor plan. No question, these condo arrangements had to run a high five figures a month.
“Your boss pay for you to live here, or do you take care of that with your dance money?”
She didn’t bristle, though she did look away from me. “He pays for it.”
The knife of jealousy cut deeper into my heart. I was right; sugar daddy arrangement.
Harper went into the kitchen, draping her purse onto the back of the chair. “Callum paid for everything. It started slow, but soon, everything was in his name.”
My mouth went dry. “Why would you let him have that much control over you?”
Running water from the sink, she snorted loudly. “Sorry. It’s not like I had a choice. Mom wasn’t exactly old fashioned, but what wife turns down her husband’s gifts?”
I grabbed the island to balance myself. There was no way I’d heard her right. “Husband?”
“Yeah. My mom was married to him before she passed away.”
Impossible. Callum is her dad? But… when I researched Mister Big, I’d learned he only had one daughter: Cena. How was this possible?
“Here,” she said, setting a glass of water on the island. She’d poured one for each of us. When I didn’t immediately take it, she squinted at me. “Jack, you okay?”
Regarding the room… Harper… everything with more distrust, I sat on a stool next to her. “I didn’t know your boss was your dad.”
“Stepdad. He married my mom when she got pregnant with Cena. I kept her last name, I’d had it my whole life, why change it when I was nearly sixteen?”
Then Cena is her half sister. I was reeling, absorbing all this information at hyper-speed. Everything made more sense; Harper coming here at night wasn’t to fuck her boss, it was to be with her sister. Walking her to school wasn’t a job. They were flesh and blood.
Fuck.
This will mess up my plans, won’t it? I dug my fingers into my knees. No, it won’t. It can’t. I can still go through with everything. I have to, I…
“Jack? Jack!” Harper grabbed the front of my shirt, holding my shoulders tight. “What’s wrong, you’re so pale.”
I circled my hands on her forearms. I’d zoned out, but when I zeroed back into the moment, I saw how close her and I were. I could count her eyelashes, see the fine lines in her plump bottom lip. The fear in her eyes made her blue irises glint with silver.
Her shirt was loose enough that my angle gave me a view of her lavender bra inside. She was breathing quicker; she’d noticed our proximity, her body’s signals giving her anticipation away. It was exactly how she’d reacted when she was giving me a lap dance.
The memory made my jeans too tight.
She started to back up; my hands became a vice. “Wait.”
“Okay,” she said nervously, “Just tell me what’s wrong.”
Closing my eyes, I took a slow breath. The particles in the air were all her. “What’s wrong,” I said, my voice thick with need, “Is that I haven’t felt your lips in over ten hours.”
We came together like a wave on a beach. I wanted to kiss her until she eroded my fears. I needed her wetness, her warmth, the sweetness of her taste buds on my own… and I needed it more for my heart than for my body.
Kissing Harper the first time was a mistake. This? This was suicide.
Cupping her cheeks, I rubbed my nose on hers. “Dammit,” I hissed. “How can you be this perfect?” Catching her hip, I lifted her knee and pressed it against my ribs. She was standing; I was still sitting. I’d rooted myself to the spot, as if I was sure, if I rose to my feet, duty would force me to end everything.
I wasn’t ready for an ending. For years, I’d been sure I was; the end was the only thing that gave me meaning. I fell asleep each night thinking about how I’d crush Mister Big. It was my drive, nothing had threatened that.
Cena is her sister.
Fuck.
“Jack,” she said as I pulled out of the kiss. Her nails cut through my hair; each motion created tingles in my bones. My muscles went taut, cock raging in my boxers.
Nearly panting, I released her leg. “I can’t,” I said. “We can’t.”
“What?” My rejection shocked her almost as badly as it did me. Harper stroked my bicep and I stepped off the stool. Both of us saw me adjusting my painful hard-on, her confusion making my heart ache. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, of course not. I just… I just need a minute.” My neck twinged as I looked around the room. Behind me was the exit to the main hall, in front of me was Harper, and to the side was the bathroom. Go out the front door, leave her. This won’t work—you can’t have her. Fuck, you’re going to kidnap her sister to use as blackmail.
She’s Mister Big’s daughter. Maybe not by blood, but… for all it counts… family.
You can’t get Cena today, but there’s always tomorrow. Unless you chicken out.
Harper is your enemy.
The angel who’d saved me was looking at me like I’d cut out her lungs. I’d had plans to do so much worse. “I’ll be right back,” I mumbled, dodging around her and into the bathroom. Closed away there, I could still feel her with me. The walls, the door, they did nothing to separate me from Harper.
The room was pure white marble and silver fixtures. Bending over the sink, I ran the water, cupping it in my palms. It slid between the gaps in my fingers. That’s my resolve, I thought, fighting the urge to laugh. How could I possibly go through with kidnapping Cena now that I knew she was Harper’s half sister?
Splashing my face, I gripped the edges of the basin and stared at my reflection. The sight of my own uncertain features strangled my heart. Flaring with anger at my own weakness, I filled the sink to the brim. I shoved my whole head under.
Idiot.
I let the water fill my nose.
You’ve forgotten everything you struggled for.
The sensation of drowning cleared my head. When my chest seared like I’d filled it with tar, I ripped myself upwards, drawing in oxygen with pained gasps. Palming soaked strands of hair off of my forehead, I smoothed my hands over my scalp. My eyes throbbed, but I could see clearly, think sharply.
When I’d been left to die in that alley, I’d learned the only time we’re capable of awareness is when we’re balanced on the frayed wire of death.
And that was the only reason I spotted what I did above the mirror.
Freezing, I squinted in disbelief at the spot between the two large light bulbs in their silver casings. What I saw made my veins run with acid. It infuriated me in a way few things could.
I knew exactly what I had to do.