Dark Mysteries (20 page)

“He
was my first boyfriend,” she started, her voice small, making
him strain to hear her, “and he was older and sophisticated. He
showered me with gifts and compliments. And within a few months, he
asked me to move in with him.”

“How
old were you?”

“Eighteen,”
Ellie said, shaking her head slightly. So naive. So easily persuaded.
“I stayed with him for two years despite...” her voice
trailed off, feeling the shame in a heavy, strangling wave. Because
there was no good reason. No reason that, looking back, she could
pinpoint. There were no children. Nothing to keep her there but
herself.

“It's
okay,” Xander said, his hand moving up her arm, “tell
me.”

“He
beat me,” she said, her voice sounding tear-soaked, though her
eyes were dry. “For no reason really. And, at first, not all
the time. Just when he thought I was being... disrespectful or
ungrateful. A backhand in an alley because I didn't do what I was
told. A broken rib in our bedroom because I didn't wear the necklace
he bought me...”

Xander's
arms went up and around her, holding her tighter. He had known a lot
of scumbags in his line of work. Low lives. People who hurt other
people for a living. People who hurt other people for fun. It never
got any less horrifying. But there was always something worse about a
man who put his hands on a woman. A man who took advantage of a woman
who trusted him. A man who used misused his strength.

And
the idea of little, fragile as a bird, Ellie being assaulted in an
alley and attacked in her bedroom made a tight feeling settle in his
chest. She had been so young. And she had put up with it for years.

“I
knew better,” she said, thinking of her father. Thinking about
the statistics. Thinking about the PSA's she had seen. The articles
she had read. “I knew all about domestic abuse. But I...
thought I loved him. And he said he loved me. And there were good
days or weeks... vacations and picnics in parks. He knew what he was
doing. He isolated me from what few friends I had. And my family. He
had me quit my job... drop out of college...”

Once
she started, the words just started tumbling out. She barely got a
chance to censor the details of Nick and his business before she was
mumbling away. “These,” she said, holding up her wrists
and looking at the scars, “are from the first time I tried to
get away. I had just found out I was pregnant. I... I couldn't risk
losing the baby because of the beatings. Or, worse yet, raising a
baby with him. If he was willing to hit me... he would be willing to
hit his baby too. So one day... I just made a run for the back
road...”

Xander
tensed underneath her. Knowing she must have gotten caught, trying to
not feel the hysteria that she must have felt when she saw him
coming.

“I
didn't get very far. It had been too rash a decision. I hadn't
planned enough. He found me within fifteen minutes and dragged me
back to the house,” she recalled, still able to feel the sting
in her scalp from him pulling her back to the house by her hair.
“He... threw me in the basement in... handcuffs. And left me
there for... a long time. Some days coming down to beat me, others
not.” Silently she added... he killed my father. And she felt
the tears then. Hot and furious.

He
wanted to tell her she didn't have to tell him. He wanted to tell her
to push the memories away, focus on the present. But she needed it.
He could feel the urge in her. The need to bleed the poison out. How
long had she been keeping it all bottled up?

“I
lost the baby in that basement,” she added, taking a long
strobe-like breath through her tears. “I think he only let me
out because I got a really bad infection.” She remembered the
fever, the bone-deep coldness that the cool cement walls and her
ripped clothing did nothing to stave off as she hung by her wrists
and shook, teeth chattering, sweating uncontrollably. “I was
hallucinating with a high fever,” she remembered. The
hallucinations being the only bright spot in her world at the time.
Images of her happy. Safe. With a squishy pink baby in a new town.
With new people. Her father by her side. One of the worst feelings in
the world was coming down from that fever and realizing it was all
fake, “and I was thrown into the maid's quarters for them to
fix me.”

Was
that too much? Too close to the truth? Revealing too much about him?
But there were plenty of abusive men with money. Nick could be one in
a million.

“As
soon as I got better, I started working on a real plan. For months...
and I ran. And... never stopped running.”

“Until
now,” Xander said, squeezing her tighter.

“Until
now,” she agreed. For now. It wouldn't last. She would have to
run again. She always did. But, perhaps for the first time since she
had to leave K, she felt sad. Not just sad, completely devastated at
the idea of having to go.

Xander
let her have her silence. Putting her guards back up. Sniffling and
wiping her tears. If he was being honest, he needed a minute too. To
pull himself back together. To push the anger away. To process what
she had said.

It
was, in ways, exactly what he had expected: an abusive relationship.
But it was worse. It was so much worse than the scenarios he had
worked up in his mind. Some kind of brute of a boyfriend who just
liked to push her around. And became a little too infatuated.

If,
like Faith suggested, Ellie's ex was a crime boss, he was a different
kind of monster. The kind of man who could break bones of people who
didn't settle their debts or kill people who threatened the
organization, was a lot more dangerous than the neighborhood drunk
with an anger problem.

Because
it wasn't the same kind of anger. The red heat that makes you lash
out. This was the cold, calculated kind of anger. The kind that made
you have a place in your house where you could truss up your
girlfriend for a weeks and no one would call the police, ask
questions, freak out.

He
was the kind of man that when he was done torturing the woman he
claimed to love, he could throw her at the help and they wouldn't
report him. They wouldn't help her escape. They just did what they
were told and patched her up so she could continue to get beat.

But
she had escaped, he reminded himself, almost choking on his disgust.
She had planned and calculated. She had withstood beatings while she
waited for the right moment. And she had managed to get away. And
stay away.

If
she had been eighteen when they met and she was with him for two
years... she must have been on the run for four or five years. He
tried to imagine that life. Different apartments. Different jobs.
Different paths to walk. Never making any connections. Never setting
down roots. Never being able to reach out to the family and friends
you left behind. Tell them you're okay. You're alive. You got out.

Five
years was a long time to be looking around corners and checking the
locks.

But
she must have never slipped up, gotten sloppy. Because she managed to
slip away. Narrowly maybe, he thought, recalling the night she came
to him bruised and bleeding. But she always escaped.

And
he never gave up.

Was
it pride? Why would a man who was obviously rich and powerful, chase
after his ex-girlfriend for years? To save face? In front of his
friends, his connections? People who had seen them together over the
years. Wouldn't it just be easier to say she had an accident? She
started talking too much? He took care of it.

But,
no, he kept looking for her. Taking off to new cities to find her
when he thought he found a trace.

That
was obsession. Or possession. She belonged to him. She wasn't allowed
to leave him. He would find her and he would drag her back.

He
needed to figure out who he was. He couldn't help until he knew.

And
he didn't want Ellie to leave. He wanted her to stay right where she
was... wrapped up in his arms...

What
the hell? Xander shook his head. He wanted to help her because she
needed help. No other reason. He certainly didn't want her to live
with him forever. Definitely not.

Xander's
arm slid down her arm and to his side where he stroked his scar.
“This,” he said, making her jump because they had both
been silent for a long time, lost in their own thoughts, “is
from one of my first jobs. I wasn't exactly... licensed at the time.
But I had a reputation...”

“How
old were you?” she asked, unable to think of Xander as anything
other than the giant, hulking, dangerous-looking figure he was now.

“Probably
about... twenty. There was a stockbroker who heard about me. He grew
up in this neighborhood before he got his life together. He had a son
who used to come visit here, see old friends. But as they got older,
the friends started joining some of the local gangs. And you know how
teenage boys are,” he said, thinking of himself, “always
full of displaced anger and testosterone. Drawn to all things stupid
and dangerous... no matter how comfortable their lives are. So he
decided he wanted to join one of the gangs.”

“And
his father wanted him out,” Ellie guessed.

“Not
at first. He came to me and asked me to keep an eye on him. I think
he thought the gangs would be like the gangs he had grown up
around... viscous and with no tolerance for rich kids who wanted to
play ghetto on the weekends. He thought his son, Derek, would piss
the members off, get his ass kicked, and be sent home with a bruised
ego.”

“That
didn't happen?”

“No.
It was weird actually. The existing members acted like his best
friend, taught him some of their secrets, took him out to bars and
clubs. Got him laid. Made him feel like part of the group. But it was
all just an act. One night I got a call from the dad who told me one
of the guys had called him asking for ransom for Derek back. There
was a video, Derek with his face all messed up.”

“He
didn't want to pay?” Ellie asked, not wanting to believe a
parent would prefer to keep their money and let their kid be beaten.

“He
would have paid,” Xander said, smiling a bit at the memory.
“But that wasn't the point. The point was...”

“He
hired you,” Ellie said, propping herself up on his chest and
looking down at him, smiling. Headstrong Xander.

“Exactly,”
Xander agreed, reaching down and putting his hands on her ass. “So
I did some looking around, found a group of them hiding down an
alley. They had him stashed behind a dumpster, half conscious. So...
young and invincible as only a twenty-year old guy can be, I barreled
into that alley and took them all on. One of them got this one me,”
he said, looking down at the scar, “before I knocked him out.”

“You
got Derek back home to his parents?”

“Mmhmm,”
he said, remembering the huge chunk of cash he had gotten. “Derek
still keeps in touch. Calls if he needs any help with anything. He's
a lawyer now.”

“Good
job,” Ellie said, leaning down and planting a kiss on his chin.
Xander was silent, watching her for a moment. “Guess what?”
she asked, a strange glint in her eyes.

“What
baby?”

“I
think it's your turn to be in charge,” she said, rising up onto
her knees and enjoying his eyes raking over her skin. She moved and
laid down on the bed, waiting.

Xander
chuckled, reaching across from her for the condoms before kneeling
down by her knees. “Spread your legs,” he said, looking
down at her. Her legs fell open on either side of his legs,
unashamed.

He
lowered himself down on the bed, grazing his teeth over her inner
thighs. Her hands reached down, grabbing at his hair. His tongue
found her clit fast, stroking in slow circles, barely a whisper of a
touch, making her hips wise up to meet him, begging for more as her
hands reached down and fisted in his hair.

“Oh,
my god,” she panted, her feet running up and down the sheets
impatiently. One of his fingers slipped inside her, tilting, crooking
to stroke the sensitive spot on the front roof of her depths. He
rubbed against it in fast swipes, his tongue on her clit spinning in
quick circles. A desperate plead escaped her lips and Xander pulled
suddenly away, looking up at her with a wicked smirk. “No,”
she ground out, trying to push him back down to finish. She was so
close. Just another couple seconds and she would be falling over the
cliff.

“You
said I'm in charge,” he said, smiling at her frustration. He
stroked her calves, grabbing her knees and pulling her legs up in the
air to rest on his shoulders. Turning his face, he planted a kiss on
the inside of her ankle. Chaste in comparison to what he had just
been doing, but she felt the intimacy somewhere deep inside her
chest, unfamiliar yet recognized and welcomed.

He
reached for her hips, grabbing and pulling her slightly up onto his
bent legs, her legs on his shoulders. He took a deep breath and
thrust deep inside of her, hearing her gasp, her hands reaching to
cover his.

But
he didn't move. Just stayed there, buried deep inside her until she
was whimpering, trying to move her hips against him. “You're
evil,” she said, lowering her brows at him.