Chapter Twelve
Chains kept on kissing his woman. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight for a moment. Sitting in Bain’s car as they headed toward wherever Boss was living didn’t fill him with confidence. He wrapped his arm around Lori, pulling her in close. She settled against him, and he loved the way she just melted next to him as if she didn’t want to be anywhere else but at his side.
El Diablo chuckled, breaking the silence. “Any sane woman would be thankful for my help, but not this one. She went right on back to the loser that was keeping her captive.”
Lori tensed up, and Chains glared at Xavier.
“It wasn’t like that,” Lori said.
Chains kissed her head again, tucking her in close. It was exactly like that, but he’d given her a much better life than the one she’d been living.
“Yeah, because you’re suffering with Stockholm Syndrome or some shit,” El Diablo said.
“You’re a sick fuck,” Bain said.
“That better be directed at me.” Chains wouldn’t have any of them bad mouthing his woman. He was the one with the issues here, not her.
“Let’s keep this going. So, when did you two meet?” El Diablo asked.
“He came into the diner where I worked.”
“And how did you end up in his basement? I admit that it was a pretty nice basement, but still. Chains certainly likes to give his prisoners the best.”
Chains closed his eyes. He didn’t want nor did he need to hear this shit right now. “Are you done?”
“Seriously, Chains, what did you do?” Bain asked.
Glancing down, he saw Lori smiling up at him. “It is kind of weird how we met, isn’t it?”
“Do you regret it?”
“No, not for a single second.”
“He has her completely brainwashed.” El Diablo put a finger against his head, and gave it a turn.
“He’s never hurt me, or done anything that makes me fear for my safety.” He saw the smile in her eyes, the love shining back at him. This was his fucking prize for all those years of torture and abuse. “He’s taken care of me.”
“See, I’m telling you, cuckoo.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chains said. “If I didn’t have to deal with you I wouldn’t be heading to see Boss. He’s probably got a huge stick up his ass over this.”
Bain snorted. “He’ll get over it.”
“You’re telling me he didn’t sound pissed?” asked Chains.
“Oh, he sounded pissed. He wasn’t happy with what you did with Lori. That’s really put you on his shit list. All things considered, that’s an achievement. I don’t know if I should be proud of you or fucking afraid for you,” Bain said.
This didn’t bode well for him at all.
Boss demanded excellence. Not only had Chains taken a woman against her will, he’d also been completely sloppy at work. Boss didn’t mind a lot of things, and in fact, he often looked the other way, but sloppy work didn’t slide.
Running a hand down his face, Chains squeezed Lori’s thigh. Whatever happened, he would do what he could to protect her. He loved her more than anything else in the world.
She was his woman, and his very reason for living.
“You look worried,” she said.
El Diablo snorted. “He should be pissing himself with fear.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chains said. “I don’t need a lecture on shit from you when you don’t even know what you’re dealing with.” He stared down at his woman. “It’ll be okay.”
“Why do I feel like you’re lying to me?”
“Because he is,” Bain said.
“Enough, you two. Stay out of my fucking business.”
“It’s your business why I’m here, Chains. I could be with Scarlett right now, enjoying another long vacation, but as it is I’m dealing with this bullshit. Tell me why I would help you out or even stay out of your business?” Bain glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. “Did you even fucking think about the consequences of your actions? She could have family that went out hunting for her. Do you really think Boss would have handled a shitstorm that long or that involved? Killer of Kings is a secret organization, and you can’t just snatch people off the streets because you feel like it.”
He heard the anger in Bain’s voice.
The man was right.
If Lori had been anyone else, if her parents had given a shit about her, this would have ended a lot differently. It hadn’t though, and he wasn’t worried, not even a little.
“Did my parents try to look for me?” Lori asked.
“What?” This came from Bain.
Chains glanced over at El Diablo and saw the man looked uncomfortable, no humor on his face.
“You heard me,” Lori said. “You mentioned my parents. Did they go to look for me? Alert the cops? Anything?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bain said, looking tense.
“You’re the one to bring it up. I’m a big girl. I can handle myself, and I know the answer anyway.”
“Then you don’t need me to say it.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Chains didn’t know what his woman was getting at, but he remained quiet.
“Did my parents try to find me at any point? Even put out a missing persons report?”
“No.” Bain’s voice was muffled as if he was speaking through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t hear that.”
“No, there was no missing persons report or even a notice that you hadn’t been home.”
“It was like I just left one day, and they didn’t even care,” Lori said. She shrugged. “I don’t think you should be using my parents as an example. They didn’t even notice a daughter gone.”
She rested her head on Chains’s shoulder. Placing a finger beneath her chin, he tilted her head back.
“You okay, baby?” he asked.
She nodded. “There’s no point being sad about that. I knew my parents didn’t care about me.”
“Do you want me to kill them for you?”
“You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“No. I don’t want that. They don’t matter any more to me. All that matters right now is you, me, and that I’ve got to some way get you out of trouble with your boss.”
“His name is Boss.”
“So you’ve got a boss named Boss?”
“Yes.”
“And people think I’m weird. That is just a little more weird.”
Whatever Boss wanted to say to him, he’d handle it.
He’d been handling everything all of his life. There hadn’t been anything worth fighting for then, but with Lori, she was worth everything.
“You’re really ready to take on Killer of Kings?” Chains asked El Diablo, changing the conversation. She didn’t need to know that when they met Boss, it could end really badly for him. Their outcome depended on Boss’s mood.
“May as well now that he has me by the balls. Pay sounds better, and there’s a lot more benefits.”
“The work is harder, more challenging. Boss demands total loyalty,” Chains said. “Whatever you wanted to be before, or whoever you were taking targets for, they will cease to matter.”
“The world is full of bad men. It’ll be interesting to see what you guys do. You all keep going back to him, so he must have golden balls or something,” El Diablo said.
Chains chuckled, and rested his head back. When he met Boss, he’d been a shell. His skills rivaled all, but he’d been dead inside. There hadn’t been much there until Boss brought him back, and gave him focus, and a reason to kill.
Now that he had Lori in his arms, everything seemed complete to him.
“I wouldn’t have hurt her,” Bain said, speaking up.
“What?”
“Lori, I wouldn’t have hurt her. Boss gave me a few simple instructions, but none of them were to kill her. As a matter of fact, he wanted me there to protect her from those hitmen. He’s not as bad as you think.”
“You told me you were going to torch my house, and to start breaking bones.”
“I told you what I’d been told to say. Boss said that I was to take her to him, and that he’d deal with you there.”
Lori took hold of his hand, squeezing it tightly. He didn’t want to let her go, not now, not ever.
“Are we going to die?” Lori said.
“No, we’re not.”
Chains was more determined than ever before to make sure Boss listened to him. He’d been loyal to the man and to Killer of Kings. Every single job he’d been assigned, he’d completed. All of him, every part of him, had been all about the company. There’s no way he was going to give up the one thing that made him human.
Boss had helped to make him a man, a human killing machine.
Lori was the one who made him better; she made him feel.
El Diablo raised a brow when he looked at her.
“You can’t guarantee that shit.” He spoke in a way not to alert Lori.
Chains smirked.
These two men had been near his woman a handful of minutes and already they didn’t want to hurt her feelings or scare her. She had that aura that drew men, making them want to protect her.
It also helped that her own family had cast her aside.
Killer of Kings were men with dark pasts. Their histories were what nightmares were made of.
Lori had a past.
She’d been forgotten, and the men felt guilty for highlighting that.
The drive toward Boss took way too long. The sway of the car made him sleepy. It had been a long couple of days. All he wanted to do was curl up with Lori in his arms and go to sleep. There would be time for that soon enough. For now, he had to protect Lori with his very life.
****
Chains had lied to her, but that was okay. Lori knew he was doing it to protect her, not that she needed all that much protection. Whatever happened, she was going to take the few weeks she’d been with Chains with her. They were the best weeks of her life, and that meant a lot to her.
She never thought that she’d fall in love, or that happiness would ever be within her grasp.
The car was pulled into a hotel parking lot, which did surprise her.
“A hotel?”
“This is a Killer of Kings hotel, Lori. This is where we make bad shit happen and can clean it up without anyone noticing.”
This made her shake. Chains didn’t let her hand go as they climbed out of the car. Bain stood by her side and El Diablo next to Chains. They headed toward the main doors where men with guns were waiting.
This didn’t bode well for either of them. Biting her lip, she tried to keep the fear locked inside, but again, that wasn’t helping.
The men looked at them with that horrible smirk that she’d come to associate with all of their colleagues. Chains held onto her shoulders as they entered the elevator. She smiled at him in their reflection of the mirrored box. If he was there with her, she knew she’d be safe.
Placing her hands on top of his, she saw him smile back. When they first met, Chains’s smile was … scary. He didn’t really know how to do it, and he always looked so sad. That was changing, and she was pleased to have been part of it.
“I love it when you smile,” she said.
“You’re the one I smile for, baby, all the time.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, and she closed her eyes, loving his touch. She’d gladly stay in his arms all day long.
“I love you, Chains, so much.”
His arms moved from her shoulders to around her body.
“I was thinking about our wedding,” he said.
She smiled, liking this conversation. “Am I in a white dress?”
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
She saw Chains had surprised his friends.
“Would we get married in Vegas?”
“No. It would be a small wedding. Something modest. A couple of witnesses. We’d have a big cake, and I mean a huge one.”
“I like that idea.”
“Me too. I love cake. You’d have to work on your vows.”
“Would you write your own?” she asked.
“Of course. I’d say how much I love you and that I would work to keep you safe, and never hurt you, not ever.”
She leaned back against him. The elevator was taking such a long time.
“That sounds so beautiful.”
“Do I get an invitation to this wedding?” El Diablo asked.
“I don’t know. If Boss doesn’t shoot your ass, we’ll see.”
The elevator doors opened, and she felt Chains tense behind her. He tried to hide it, but she always felt a difference in his body, and right now, every part of her was screaming to protect, to keep him safe. It was probably weird considering he was the one with the experience in weapons.
No one had ever tried to save her man, and she wanted to be the first. She wanted to prove to him that she did love him, and it wasn’t about some stupid kidnapping thing. This was the real deal.
Yes, he’d taken her.
In the beginning she’d been scared of him. Who wouldn’t be? She’d woken up in a house she didn’t know with a strange man. Her love for him hadn’t been instant. It had taken her time to see that he was just lonely, and broken like her.
They stepped off the elevator, and turned a corner.
Down a long corridor, she saw a door. It was made of glass. Everything seemed to be made of glass.
Chains took her hand, and she squeezed him, trying to offer him comfort.
Entering the office, she saw a man sitting behind a desk. He was staring straight ahead at them, his gaze on Chains before moving to Bain then to Diablo. Finally, his gaze was on her, and she knew without a doubt this man was Boss. The one they all feared and that was easy to see why.
There was darkness in his eyes and nothing else.
He didn’t speak. No one spoke. The air grew tense, and Boss just sat there.
There seemed to be a standoff going on, and Lori didn’t know what to do so she stood a little in front of Chains, hoping to direct the other man’s rage away from her man.
“Did you get the file?” Boss asked.
His voice was clipped, straight to the point, and demanding respect.
“Yes. El Diablo is now officially a Killer of Kings employee. Congratulations,” Chains said.
Bain stepped away, holding out the paperwork to Boss.
He didn’t take it.
Another scary looking man with a twisted lip took the file from him, opening it up. “He did it. El Diablo now belongs to you.”
“Hold on one fucking second,” El Diablo said. “I don’t belong to anyone. Not now, not ever.”
“That’s not what was agreed. You’re still your own person, but your ass belongs to me and Killer of Kings,” Boss said. He turned to Diablo. “The information I got for you didn’t come cheap. I know you think you’re the fucking devil, and you can do what you want, but that ends. You’re not going to best me, so don’t even think of trying. Do you understand me?”
He waggled a finger in the air. “I don’t know who the fuck you—”
Before El Diablo could finish, Boss had taken a gun and shot him in the forearm he’d outstretched.
Lori gasped, holding onto Chains even harder.
“Oh fuck!” El Diablo cradled his arm, pain clear on his face. Blood dripped down to the tiles.
“Now, that hasn’t entered a major artery. Nothing’s broken. You’re good at what you do, I will grant you that, but you’re nowhere near the best. I demand the best, and that is exactly what you’ll give me, do you understand?”
She saw the inner battle in El Diablo, but the man finally nodded.
“Good, I like having you on the team.” Boss’s henchman held his hand out, and El Diablo looked more like he wanted to stab the man than take his hand. “Don’t be a fucking pussy. We’ve got plenty of nurses that will be more than happy to patch you up. If you want to use them for more, do so. I don’t care, but get the fuck out of my office right now.”
El Diablo wasn’t offered any more assistance. He left the office without a backwards glance.
“Did you think that was smart?” Bain asked. “He’s a deadly motherfucker.”
“He’s all bark and no bite. He’ll get the work done that I need.” Boss’s gaze finally turned to Chains, and then his gaze was on her. “Now, I have to deal with another problem.” The gun he held in his hand was directed at the both of them. Boss kept changing the person he pointed at. “Now what do I do with this problem right here? Because this is a problem.”
“It’s not,” Chains said.
“You kidnapped a woman off the street, took her to your basement, and now you think you’re going to live happy fucking after?”
“Yes, I did all those things.”
“You nearly ruined the reputation of Killer of Kings, Chains. Do you know that? You nearly fucked with what I have. I don’t like that.” Boss held his gun out steady, and Lori gasped, putting herself in front of Chains.
“No, don’t kill him.”
“You need your bitch to fight your battles for you as well now, Chains? You’re not man enough to take me on by yourself?”
She shook her head. “No. Please stop. You’ve got this all wrong. I love him. I love Chains. Yes, our beginning was a bit weird, but who cares? He loves me, too, and we’re going to be together. We’re going to get married. I’m not going to say anything about what you do. Please, don’t kill him.” She felt her tears suddenly building, and before she could stop them they were streaming down. “I don’t want to live without him. He’s been the only one that has ever cared about me, and I don’t want to lose that. He means everything.” The moment she started talking, the reality of losing him was just too great. She couldn’t handle that, nor did she want to. All of her life she’d been pushed aside, unloved, unwanted.
Chains was the only one to see her, to care about her, to love her, and she couldn’t let anything happen to him. She wouldn’t be able to survive it.
With tears blurring her vision, she stared at the man that she knew could end her happiness with a single shot from his gun.
Staring into death’s eyes, she placed herself in front of Chains. “Please, I’m begging you, don’t kill him. I couldn’t … I don’t…” Words were failing her. She only felt this overwhelming sense of grief.
“It’s fine,” Chains said. His hand banded around her. He tried to move her out of the way, but she refused to budge. Not this time. She wasn’t going to let him be taken from her. She couldn’t.
Licking her dry lips, she kept her focus on Boss. He looked bored, as if this was all a little tedious to him.
“Kill me instead.” The words left her mouth, but the moment she said them, she knew she’d surprised him.
Was that a good thing?