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TWENTY-THREE
aria
The insideof the stretch limo is as welcoming as a morgue. Broderick perches at my side with one hand clenched over my knee proprietarily, and the other cradling his phone. He barks out orders to Antoni, who is supposed to be in charge of hiring Dougherty’s replacement and has yet to find a reaper as good as the one we lost.
I keep the leg Broderick touches as still as possible while the other bobs up and down. There is a guard in the passenger seat up front, beside the driver, and two more opposite us. They’re weighed down with guns and extra ammunition.
Will Naomi and Devan have enough bullets to overpower them? Especially without hitting me.
Every brain cell fires off a different possibility of things going wrong. I’m not cut out for this.Never in my life have I wanted the white picket fence and kid route, but right now, the fantasy is looking pretty peachy keen.
Broderick ends his call by throwing the cell across the car. It slams into the glass partition between us and the driver, bouncing to the floor with its screen black and cracked. The partition remains intact.
“What did he say?” I hazard to ask.
“He’s not doing his job, so it doesn’t matter what the fuck he says.” Broderick squeezes my knee hard enough to leave prints for each of his fingers, tattoos of blue and purple. “This better work out, Aria, or else I am going to be sorely displeased. I’m not in the mood to suffer more disappointment, either.
“I understand.” He slides his hand up toward the inside of my thigh, and I shudder, disguising the movement with a smile, turning terror into pleasure. “Trust me, Master,” I reply softly. “This is something you’re going to love.”
I don’t belong to you.
No matter what else, I have to remind myself of that simple fact: no matter what else happens today…. I belong to myself.
Only myself.
And maybe, if we make it out of this, one day I’ll convince Devan to take on a basket case like myself as an acceptable girlfriend. To be a real partner with someone who respects me for me, who knows what I bring to the table.
He didn’t have to let me go today. And if the roles had been reversed, then Broderick would have never let me out of the golden cage he kept me in. He’d have forced me to be small and assured me he was the only one who had things handled. Devan, as much as it hurt him, let me go.
Now he’s hopefully waiting for me.
“Where is this goddamn place? You said it was close enough to lure potential buyers with its proximity,” Broderick growls. “This is out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Yes, and we're almost there.” I caught myself on the verge of snapping, of lashing my teeth at my mentor and demanding he remove his hand from my inner thigh.
The others have watched this kind of behavior from him for long enough they don’t bat an eye at the liberties he takes with women. They don’t look at me because they know I’m beyond saving.
Hold on a little longer. It will all be over soon.
When I manage to glance up from my hands clenched on my lap, I find Broderick staring at me. I force a smile to my face, the one designed to assure him everything is great, and I am beyond reproach.
“You’re acting strangely, Aria. Is it still because you secretly disapprove of my new venture?” He arches a fuzzy brow and dares me to say something. To continue the argument I’d tried to make the other day.
“Yes.” The word slips easily from between my lips, and it isn’t a lie.
“And yet you’re still content to help me. My protege.” He squeezes my inner thigh a little before his grip softens into a caress. “You’ve been well trained. What would I do without you?”
One of the guards offers a snicker we all pretend not to hear.
The driver takes a left, and the limo pills along a gravel road, the small stones crunching under each tire rotation. I’d given him the address beforehand, and with night falling earlier and earlier, only the buttery yellow of the car’s headlights cut through the approaching gloom.
Up ahead, still too far to see properly, the outline of the old abandoned lumber mill slowly swims into view. Something hard with jagged edges clangs its way down my lower intestine and settles in my abdomen, those spikes digging grooves in my uterus. This is it. The make-or-break moment.
Death might not be the worst option. Worse would be what Broderick will do to me if he discovers my duplicity.
He catches sight of the mill and leans forward, scrutinizing the outline through the tinted windows. “Can’t see a goddamn thing,” he mutters.
“You will,” I promise.
