Love the Way You Lie (Stripped #1) (16 page)

The Madonna. It’s not in the window anymore. It’s gone—and so is Clara.

Everything in me slows. My heart. My head. I even blink slower, eyelids dropping, blotting out the sight of that empty window. I’m swaying where I stand, off balance, and I don’t care. That was our signal. If she was ever to run, she would take the Madonna with her. Then the wall is behind me, cool brick holding me up. I lean my head back and let the guilt and shame and sorrow wash over me.

There’s gladness too. Relief that she’s gone, away from me. She’ll be safer without me.

Maybe I have always known she would be.

I hadn’t been able to let Clara go, though. I loved her too much, needed her more than she knew. Or maybe she did know, because she fought me about leaving. Every time she’d tell me no. But it looked like she listened to me anyway.

Dawn broke over the tallest buildings, rays fracturing around broken spires, bathing every crack in orange and pink. And she left, just like I told her to.

Kip can’t get to her. He’ll never find her.

And neither will I.

Something moves in the room. A brush against the drapes. They sway, just slightly. I wipe my tears so I can see more clearly. Is she still there? Have I caught her before she’s left?

I take a step toward the room. Another.

“Clara?” I whisper.

The landlord wouldn’t have started clearing out our room already. Clara wouldn’t have stopped to tell him she was leaving. And anyway we’re paid through the week. Cash, of course.

Then the door opens. A man stands in the doorway. I would recognize him anywhere. Hadn’t he stood in the doorway to my room enough times, blocking me, frowning?

Daddy.
This time I don’t whisper. My lips move, but I don’t make a sound.

He looks up anyway, right at me, where I stand in the shadows. He sees me. His body shifts, moves toward me. He is old now, with knees that ache, and back problems, but he was a warrior once. A killer.

He still is.

I run.

*     *     *

So much for
eighteen years of ballet lessons and long hours spent on the pole. He is old, but he is a born hunter. All I want is to get away. I run toward the Grand. Strange—I shouldn’t feel safe there. But I do. He must have anticipated it, because he cuts me off in an alley.

A hand on my wrist, clamping down hard. “Honor!”

That hand had tucked me into bed. It had rested on my head while my fiancé fucked me over the desk.

That hand had killed my mother.

I’m holding the Taser but he’s got my wrist. He squeezes—hard—and my grip loosens. The Taser clatters to the ground. My father kicks it into a pile of trash bags. Disappeared into the shadows and muck.

“Be still,” he snaps.

“Did you take her?” I demand. I twist away, but I can’t get free. “Did you take Clara?”

“She wasn’t there. The room is empty.”

I don’t even know if I believe him. “Let me go. Just let me go.”

Even though there’s nowhere for me to go anymore. Not after the motel room has been found out and violated. I can only hope he’s telling the truth about Clara being gone before he got there. Did she get some idea that they were on to us? Is that why she left, when she always swore she’d wait for me?

He wrests me back—and down. I fall onto the concrete, knees scraped in a blinding flash of pain. It’s like going onstage. He leans over me, breathing hard, eyes wild. “Why did you leave?” he demands.

I laugh and shudder at the same time. The result is a broken sound. A cry. “You know.”

“I didn’t care if your sister was gone, but you—”

“And that’s why I had to go. Because you didn’t care about her.” I wrench my hand away, but I’m kneeling now. I’m lost. We’re in the middle of the sidewalk in the shitty part of town, but no one will interfere. No one would lift a hand to protect me. “You didn’t care about me either. Not when you gave me to Byron.”

His face is twisted in rage. Or guilt? “You should have come to me.”

I laugh. Maybe it’s the wrong thing to do in this moment. Lord knows I would never have laughed in my father’s face back home, in the mansion, running across Aubusson rugs in my ballet slippers as if they could somehow transport me somewhere else.

We aren’t in the mansion anymore. The ballet slippers did take me somewhere else. They gave me a way to support us as we ran. “You saw, Daddy.” I’m bitter. And too tired to lie. “You saw what he did to me and patted my head. Like I was a
pet.
”

“You are my
daughter,
” he shouts, and the way he says it, it means the same thing.

“No, you’re right,” I say, sarcastic now. “I’m sure you would have protected me if I’d asked you to. You’d have protected me the same way you did my mother.”

He grows still. His eyes narrow, and for the first time since he’s caught me, real fear slices through me. Even in the depths of my sorrow, my sister gone and my lover’s betrayal, I don’t want to die.

“What of Portia? I did not beat her.”

“And that’s the gold standard, is that right? What about a gun, did you shoot her? Or a knife—did you stab her?”

He reaches for me—my hair. He leans down, his hand tightening, tilting my head back. “What do you mean, bambina?” His words are low, silky. “Are you afraid of me?”

I’m trembling, panting. “Should I be?”

Abruptly he releases me. My head jerks with the impact, but I’m still kneeling, and I catch myself on my hands. Loose gravel slides under my palms, reminding me of the roof above the Grand.

“Of course not,” he says. “I’m your father. We’ll go back home. Everything will go back to the way it was.”

It can never go back to the way it was. Not only because I don’t have Clara now. I’m changed too. Dancing at the Grand has changed me. Kip changed me.

Oh God, Kip.

If I go with my father now, I’ll never see Kip again. And that’s a good thing. He’s a bastard, just like he told me he is. I have the strangest thought that I should have let him bring me in. At least then he’d get the bounty on my head. After all his work finding me…fucking me…

A tear rolls down my cheek.

“There now,” my father says, pulling me up by my arm. “Everything will be okay. You don’t have to stay here anymore.”

That’s why he thinks I’m crying. Because I don’t want to live in this motel. What he doesn’t know is I’d give anything to go back to the way things were a week ago. Clara and I safely in the motel. And me walking with Kip after work, having no idea he was only there to betray me.

Maybe it could have been enough, to return to that life. If only. “Why did you kill her?” I whisper.

“Portia?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know where you got this idea, bambina. I would have killed her. Should have, maybe. But I never hurt one hair on her pretty head.”

“You expect me to believe her death was an accident? The wife of a mafioso, an accident?”

He looks sad suddenly. And incredibly old. I can see in him the pain in his joints and his back from chasing me. I can see the toll these months have taken on him, searching for me—missing me? “I never told you the truth. I thought I was protecting you. But maybe I was only protecting myself.”

I swallow hard to hear him admit it. “Then you did kill her.”

Pain flashes through his eyes. “I didn’t kill her. No one did.”

“Liar,” I say, shaking with fury.

There’s no way she’s alive. That was just a childish dream.

And I think, I won’t need a Taser to bring a man down. A swift, hard kick to the nuts can do that. And God, my legs are strong. My thighs are fucking weapons after dancing onstage every night. I left my father on the ground. I am practically a black widow, leaving men broken and in pain wherever I go. In those seconds I feel powerful.

And then he says something that is my downfall. “I won’t let Byron touch you again,” my father says. “I shouldn’t have let him touch you at all.”

It was what I always wanted from him. Protection. Caring. I guess a little girl never stops wanting her daddy. But mine is just an illusion. I know, because a second later Byron appears behind him.

I would have expected him to grow scarier in my mind, as if my fears could morph him into a monster. But he seems almost more sinister in that suit and that smile, cat got the cream. “You found her.”

My father’s hand tightens on me. He turns halfway, caught between us. “Byron. I need a moment with my daughter. Then we’ll talk.”

He advances on us, and both my father and I shrink back. There is a new confidence to the man. I’m assuming it has something to do with the gang of muscle-bound men behind Byron, armed and cold. Mercenaries.

“The time for talking is over,” Byron says. “And so is your usefulness. I’m sorry your daughter shot you, though. That’s a rough way to go.”

I scream and yank my father down, but Byron is fast. His aim is perfect. He blows a hole in my father’s head, and the blood spatters on my hands.

Y
ou have to
look on the bright side. I learned that early. There’s always a bright side. In this case, the bright side is that Clara definitely got away safe. If I wasn’t sure before, now I know she’s definitely gone. Her books are missing, and the Madonna is gone too.

And I know Byron doesn’t have her. Because he’s torturing me trying to find her.

It’s such a relief that I have no fucking clue where she is.

Thwack.

I can’t be sure I wouldn’t give her up. I love her more than anything. More than my life, not that it’s worth much. I would gladly die for her, but the thing about death is, it’s not easy. Not when I’m tied up in a motel room. I can’t exactly swallow some pills I don’t have or slit my wrists when they’re tied down with rope. I can only endure every strike of Byron’s belt. I can only survive.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Two of the men sit at the table where Clara and I ate meals together. I have the unsettling feeling they are waiting for Byron to be finished with me. That they are waiting for their turns.

“Where is she?” Byron says. I almost think he knows I don’t have the answer. I think he doesn’t care.

I shake my head.

Thwack.

My body jerks in the bonds. I’m tied at both wrists and ankles, face up. The whole bed shakes with the impact. And the pain…God, the pain is unbearable. It’s blinding. It’s all the lights onstage and all the hands touching me. It’s a snake bite, the lash of the tail and the sting of the teeth biting into my flesh.

But I have to bear it. Death isn’t easy. I can only survive.

Thwack.

I have more empathy for Candy than I could have before. If she’s felt even a fraction of this pain, no wonder she shoots up. I’d do anything to feel numb.

“Please,” I whimper.

I didn’t mean to say it. Didn’t mean to beg. He doesn’t deserve the satisfaction.

He does pause. He sets the belt on the bed. The mattress groans as he leans down toward me. “What was that?” he says, his voice deceptively gentle.

There are more men waiting outside, standing watch. I wonder if they’ve bothered to clear out the whole motel. It might be safer, just to make sure there are no witnesses. On the other hand, why bother? No one will have seen anything by the time the police come through. And if they did, Byron’s friends’ connections would cover it up.

“I don’t know where she is,” I whisper.

He leans closer, his mouth just inches from my ear. “Why should I believe you?”

I taste something metallic on my tongue. Blood? “Because I’m telling the truth.”

He leans back, smiling. “I’m not in a hurry, sweetheart. I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on you again. I intend to savor this. You’ll be praying for death before I’m done with you.”

What he doesn’t understand is that I’m already praying for death. I’ve lost everything.

My sister. I’ll never see her again.

Thwack.

And Kip. God, he was never really mine. But the hope of him was so sweet.

Thwack.

Even my father. I had waited so long for him to stand up for me. Did he mean it about my mother? That would mean he didn’t kill her.

Thwack.

But if she’s been alive all this time, it means she left me. Abandoned me to this life.

Thwack thwack thwack.

It’s too much. The physical pain. The emotional. My soul is on fire. My skin is ablaze. The edges of my vision turn crimson.

Byron looms over me, a smile on his face. And I am more afraid than ever. It’s never good when he’s pleased. “I know what you’ve been doing here. A stripper. Fuck, I’m glad I didn’t marry you. I’d have had to kill you. I guess I’ll kill you either way.”

Don’t let him get to you.
He can fuck with my body, but I don’t want him to fuck with my mind. I have a sick feeling he’ll do both, and I won’t be able to stop him.

“I know about your little boyfriend too.”

My stomach turns over. “Your brother?”

Byron laughs, and dread settles deep into my core. “I’m surprised he told you about that.” There’s a gleam in Byron’s eye. “Did he tell you our family secrets too?”

A little. I know about Kip’s father and how he left them. I knew they grew up poor. Is that why Byron seemed to hate me from the beginning, because my family had money? “No.”

“The fucking jewels. They belong to my family. To me. I thought they were gone…but then you came here.” He leans close. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know where the jewels are. Don’t know where your sister is.” He snorts in disgust. “You’re not much use to me, are you?”

“Then let me go.”

“You were going to be my consolation prize. You and your father’s entire fucking empire. Did you know that? I couldn’t have the jewels, but I could have everything else.” He runs a finger over my breast, taking my nipple between thumb and forefinger. Rolling. Squeezing. “And you were my little jewel, weren’t you? I polished you, didn’t I?”

A tear rolls down the side of my face. “No,” I choke out, but it’s a lie.

Because he did polish me, until I shined, until I was both flat and sharp. He used me like a jewel—a thing to be worn and then tossed into a drawer.