Authors: Courtney Lane
I stood upright, my heart aching for a man I knew didn’t deserve my pain. A figure to the right drew my eye.
“Whoops.” Smiling at me, Jory held up a screw driver and the screws missing from the safety enclosure.
I stepped toward the edge, looking down at Michael whose face was frozen in the same expression; an apology written in regret.
“Careful,” Catch pulled me back from the ledge.
I swirled around and began to throw unfocused punches at his face and body. It wasn’t about self-defense training, it was about hurting him. He hugged me tightly, suppressing my movements.
“Hush,” he hissed in my ear. “Michael Leone doesn’t deserve your tears or your anger. Save your energy. This isn’t over yet.”
-17-
M
EET
J
ORY
The dawning sun danced across my fingers, ushering in the beginning of another shortened day. It was the seventh morning since Michael had died. The seventh morning I was glued to bed and pulled the covers over my head until the sun set at three. My exhausted body tried to catch up on what was unobtainable. I couldn’t think. I had no idea what to do when the thing I wanted to do made the least sense.
In and out of sleep, every time I woke, the habits continued. All three meals with him, even if it meant eating in bed, and sleeping with him holding me at night and whispering, “Goodnight, sweetheart. I’ll see you soon.”
I wasn’t depressed. I simply didn’t want to accept what my mind wanted to show me and how my heart wanted me to proceed.
This time, chatter from down the hall, mostly one-sided as Jory’s screeching voice funneled into the bedroom, telling Catch he couldn't marry me, put an end to my hermit behavior. I pulled myself out of bed and showered.
I dressed and found a pair of suitable shoes for trekking and a jacket to keep me warm.
All sounds inside the house were still and the airiness made it seem as though I was the only one home. I stepped out into the hall, finding the door to the guest house open.
Shadows danced downstairs, indicating someone wasn’t where they usually were. I kept my back to the wall and went into the guest house, closing the door behind me. I whispered Jory’s name, hoping she wasn’t there. No one responded.
The guest house had a loft-like setup and left no room a secret. I rummaged through the downstairs area in search of anything I could find of informational value. In a desk of drawers, I found a scrapbook with floral print letters spelling out the words: “The women and little one.” I flipped through the book and immediately slipped down to the floor.
I recognized all the women. Deana had introduced me to some of them. All of them were sisters, mothers, mistresses, or friends of the Leone family. I thumbed through the pages, fingering pictures of the familiar faces—women that I met at the last party I attended, the last time I’d been able to spend time with Deana. They fit the description of the women Sam had said went missing. The others fit the description of a couple of women who were killed or missing from a little over a year ago.
A news clipping of a little girl with blue eyes and black curly hair, the only one I didn’t recognize, no more than maybe six or seven years old caught my eye. It stated she had been found dead at seven years old, after being taken from her home two months prior to her death. A picture below the article was clearly taken before she died and after she was kidnapped. The short months had aged her. Her face was badly bruised, teeth were missing from her empty and forced smile. Her name threw me, because it wasn’t any of the surnames I knew to be affiliated with any of the three families—Brenley Colson. I tore the page from the book and slipped it in the pocket of my jacket.
“Glad to see you’re up, sweetheart. I was beginning to get concerned.”
I jumped out of my skin and scrambled to place my feet flat on the ground. I turned to Catch, but couldn’t initiate eye contact. He had become a danger zone, threatening to hypnotize me and make me forget and remember all the wrong things. Averting my eyes, I kept the book behind my back.
He looked around the loft. I caught a glint of his smile through my peripherals that I was sure he presented in order to fuck with me. Looping his arms around me, he brought me closer. “Since you’re out of bed, you can have lunch with me. Afterward…I’m going to eat your pussy on top of the table for dessert.” His mouth caressed mine, distracting me. His hand snaked behind my back and tore the book from my hands. He flipped it open to the first page. “Ever the fucking sloppy one.”
“Why does Jory have this?”
He closed the composition book and curled it in his hands. Gentle and concerned blue eyes scavenged my face for more than I could reveal. “You slept a lot this week, but you still look so tired. Are you feeling all right?” He clasped his hand on my cheek and kissed my forehead.
“I’m fine,” I said, lying to the floor.
My chin fit between his fingers and my head was jerked up. I stared at him as intensely as he stared at me. The churning and aching inside my gut made me remember all the feelings I wished I could erase with a deletion key.
“I’m really exhausted,” I admitted the truth.
“Get back in bed.” His softening blue eyes held my hazel ones captive. Pulling me closer, he leaned down and rested his forehead against mine. The heat of his breath fell down my face, eliciting gooseflesh all over my body. “I’ll bring lunch to you. We have a long flight tomorrow.” He kissed me, sucking my lips and licked the taste of me from his mouth.
A simple kiss was anything but simple with Catch. Pieces of me were already standing opposed from each other, and he threatened to bring them back together for him again.
“Did you want to bring your father’s ashes with you?” he asked, slamming me out of my descent into his dark and decadent pool of seduction.
I blinked, dropping my eyes to the ground. “I want to go for a walk.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Last day here. No civilization in sight. I’ll be fine. If I get lost, come find me.” I held up my arm, wearing the bracelet. “Or you can poison me if I’m out too long.” I held out my leg with the ankle cuff.
He approached Jory’s refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. He returned to me and shoved it in my hand. Kneeling on one bended knee, he removed the ankle bracelet; it left a nasty chafing mark around my leg. As he stood, he smashed the vial of liquid against the counter, shattering the clear tube implanted in the metal. “Sugar water dyed with food coloring,” he said to me with a wolfish grin.
Catch was the master of the game. There was no point in conceding when he knew he had won. “Can I go?”
“You have one hour.”
He nodded to the front door of the loft.
I staggered toward the door, glancing back at him and the book he held in his crushing grip. He gave me a tame smile, likely meant to assure me that everything was all right. I didn’t keep my eyes on his face long enough to dissect what was behind it.
The knob turned easily and opened to a beautiful scene of plush green grass in suspended animation and spruce trees that hadn’t lost their needles; touches of the snow lingered on the surface of the greenery. The faint sound of rushing water called my eye to the left. Wedged in a mountain cliff, a glacier of ice had begun to melt and created a waterfall.
As I walked up the path following along the creek until the temperature became too cold on my legs, I let my mind run wild. I settled down on a large rock to take a break and work through my jumbled thoughts.
Michael didn’t deserve to be mourned, but a piece of me longed for the father he could never be. The reason he protected me—I wasn’t sure I’d ever know. It could’ve been selfless, or it could’ve been selfish. All I knew was the world was a better place without him, even if it left me to grieve for what I never had.
Deana painted an uglier picture of him than he created himself. She was a wild child who never obeyed him. She became pregnant when she was seventeen and told Michael the news. He had his men hold her as he punched her in the stomach until she bled and lost the baby. How she was able to somehow ask him for a job, and him give one to her, I wasn’t sure. She was dedicated to her dreams of someday going against tradition to take over the Leone family.
I had inadvertently given her the keys to her greatest wish. With Michael gone, I had nothing holding me back from finding her and reconnecting with her. We could be the sisters we were again, and no one would tear us apart. Her purpose in discussing all things concerning me with Catch and their connection kept me from fully actualizing a brighter future.
“You must be fit,” Jory huffed as she walked up the path. “I’ve been following you for awhile back there and you didn’t see me once. It’s deceiving.”
“I was in my own head,” I said, my voice scratchy as I forced myself to play nice, but was annoyed that she wouldn’t leave me alone.
Plopping down next to me, she grabbed the bottle of water from my hands, and almost drank all of it.
“Why am I still here?”
“Beats the fuck out of me.” She swiped her hand across her lips. “The plane will take you wherever you want to go. So? Where are we dropping you off?”
“I don’t know.”
“Want to know what we did with your father’s body? We cut it up in pieces and burned it in the incinerator. Do you want his ashes? I can get them for you…but I can’t promise they will only be his ashes. There were about two other guys we had to burn. Acid is hard to transport. Harder than a bunch of mafia fuckers. Isn’t that funny?”
I was already hollow, and her clinical recollection of what she did to Michael scooped another piece out of me. Behind my shuttered eyelids, I could see his hateful face as he boasted about killing my stepfather. The anger threatened to take me over. “I don’t want to know about Michael…I want to know about Catch.”
“Sure you do,” she said with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. “Won’t let it go.”
I couldn't help but wonder about what happened to the women in the syndicate. “I heard you two talking this morning.”
A sliver of surprise lifted her features. “So?”
“You love him…don’t you?”
“I don’t love him.” She leaned down and rested her chin on her palm.
“Did you fuck him?”
She took too long to answer, when I knew a woman like her would boast if she had swapped bodily fluids with him. She gave me an answer without giving me one. “You aren’t the first. He’s taken other women—a means to an end, he always says. That’s how he works the women. He takes down the men by taking the women they love.”
“And what happens after he’s done?”
“He lets them go to live a better life away from the men they secretly want to get away from. Neat, huh?” She slammed her hand down on mine. “You shouldn’t have fallen in love with him.” The smile of a maniac contorted her thin face. “It’s dangerous to love someone like him. They use you, and wreck you when they’re done.”
They?
Shaking my head, I remained on my path toward answers and steered away from the off ramp to crazy land. “The book in the guest house, was he with all the women in that book?”
Her smile lifted and she sat up straight. “Did you ever figure out where you know me from?”
“No,” I said, glaring at her hand.
“Look again,” she leaned down until her face was in my view.
“I don’t remember.”
“You were very fucking drunk that night. The night your father carted you away from the party. He really didn’t want you there.” She cupped her hand over her mouth. “Rumor has it you lost your V-card to a stranger to piss off your father at the party. Someone tattled on you, and that’s why Michael showed up.”
I snatched my hand back from her grip, eyeing her carefully.
“I was there,” she whispered when it wasn’t necessary to lower her voice. “I was chatting with your sister and you asked how she knew me.” A lazy smile stretched her lips. “Your sister wouldn’t say, like she was keeping it a big secret. Then, you wandered off and…”
The foggy memory began to clear. Jory was my sister’s stalker—the one she’d been using to do things for her.
“You should probably think really hard and remember,” she warned me. “You might figure out why Catch bothered to choose you when he didn’t need you.”
Leaving her to investigate my memories in silence, I walked down the path, heading toward the house.
“Hey!” she called after my back.
“What?” I snapped, turning around.
“You might want to stick around. Catch is letting the doctor go today, and he might be a little pissed if you see her.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She rolled her eyes to the sky and exhaled. “Um, she was one of the ones in the boxes and the only one he let go.”
“How the fuck would I know that, Jory? Why is he letting her go?”
She slid her hands in her pockets and cast her eyes to the waterfall. “She used to work for your father. She was the doctor for the girls in his little kiddie dens. She gave them exams and put them on the pill. He let her go because she did him a few favors.”