Under His Domain

 
 
 
Under His Domain (For His Pleasure, Book 21)

By Kelly Favor

© 2014 All Rights Reserved

Time had never moved so slowly.

Easton was gone, and he was with
dangerous people, people who might hurt him.
 
She never should have let him go.

Kennedy got dressed in her old clothes,
not having anything else to change into, and tried to wait patiently for
Easton’s return.

She set the timer on her cell phone and
told herself not to check it very often.
 
She told herself that he would surely be home in a few hours at the
latest.
 
Downstairs, she made coffee
and turned on the lights as she watched out the windows, seeing nothing but
darkness outside.

The coffee was dark and somewhat bitter
in her mouth, and she shivered every few minutes from a deep chill in her
bones, and the nervous energy coursing through her system.

Easton had gone away in the middle of the
night with such a strange warning—telling her the combination to his
private safe.
 
She would never open
that safe and take his money and run as he’d instructed her to do if he didn’t
return.

Kennedy wasn’t going to simply flee and
hide, especially not if Easton might be held captive or hurt somewhere, needing
her help.

Calm
down, Kennedy.
 
He’s not going to be kidnapped or hurt.
 
He’s going to be just fine.
 
Easton Rather is a man who can take care
of himself.

So she waited, talking to herself first
inwardly and then, as she felt more desperate, out loud.
 
“He’s fine.
 
He’ll be home soon.”

Kennedy paced around the first floor,
unable to sit down.
 
Time was moving
both slowly and quickly all at once.

In her mind, rapid images flashed one
after the other.
 
Easton, smiling at
her as he cooked food over the stove—Easton naked in bed, looking into her
eyes—Easton fighting the thugs who’d come to hurt her—Easton
standing up to Red Jameson in his office…and then, somehow, her mind flashed on
an image of Easton with a bullet wound in his eye, and nothing but an empty
socket where the eye should have been.

Kennedy cried out at the vivid image of
Easton dead, feeling in her gut that he’d been taken from her, taken from this
world before his time.

I
never should have told him about Dean and his troubles with the mob.
 
I’m the one responsible for Easton’s life
being in jeopardy.
 
I’m the
problem—I’m the cause of all the bad things that have happened to him.

Why
did I ever come to New York?

Tears poured down her cheeks and Kennedy
did nothing to wipe them away.
 
Time
was passing and still no sign of him.
 
She stared out the window at the street and saw people beginning to
emerge into the very early morning air to start their days.

Trucks passed by, ready for their first
deliveries.

Life was beginning again, which meant
that far too much time had gone by, and something was very wrong.

Kennedy went back to the kitchen and sat
down, her leg jittering beneath the table as she tried to control her frantic
anxiety, her racing thoughts, the fear that was building in her chest like a
dam about to burst.

As she sat alone at the kitchen table
drinking her third cup of coffee, and the light from the rising sun dawned and
then streamed through the large windows of the townhouse, her nerves became
more and more frayed.

Where
is he?
 
He could at least call me.

She checked the time on her cell
phone.
 
It was now 7:20 a.m. and
there was no sign of him.
 
He’d told
her to take the money from his safe and leave if it got this late in the day.

It hit her suddenly that this was a very,
very real emergency, and she had absolutely nobody to turn to.

You
have to at least text him, call him,
see
if he answers
you.
 

Kennedy took a deep breath and let it
out.
 
She was afraid to try and
contact him and get nothing back.
 
What if he was really gone?

Waiting was safe.
 
She could keep telling herself that
Easton would come home soon.
 
Maybe
the meeting had gone on a long time, maybe—

Her fingers seemed to take on a life of
their own, finding the right letters to the words and then hitting send.

Are
you ok????

That was her first message.
 
She couldn’t sit still anymore.
 
Her body was thrumming with crackling
energy like she’d never felt before—a high voltage tension that seemed
like it might explode her head.

Her breathing was rapid and shallow and
her hands were clammy as she resumed pacing the floor of the kitchen and into
the main living area of the townhouse.
 
Kennedy stared at the cell phone like it was a living thing, an oracle,
and she was a victim of its hideous, inert silence.

The cell phone was quiet, blind and
uncaring.

Easton’s
dead.

You
know he’s dead.
 
Just admit it, deal
with it.

She sent another text and another.

Now the dam had broken and she called
him.
 
It went immediately to
voicemail, as if his phone was shut off.
 

Easton’s calm, deep voice haunted her as
he began telling her to leave a message and he would return the call as soon as
possible.

Kennedy uttered a strangled shriek and
then hung up.

Her throat was tight, closing, and she
couldn’t breathe.
 
The time was now
after eight o’clock and the street was filled with people traveling to work.

The day had more than dawned and Easton
had been gone for much too long.
 
It
was time to do something.
 
Perhaps,
Kennedy thought, it was time to call the police and alert them to the
situation.

But what would the police do?
 
They weren’t going to get anywhere with
a slick mobster like Jimmy DeLuca.
 
He’d been eluding the police for years and years and he’d expect someone
to come looking for Easton, so he wouldn’t leave any obvious signs of whatever
he’d done.

“Oh my God,” Kennedy whispered.
 
“Please, please, someone help me.
 
Please, somebody…”

She didn’t know if there was a God or
not, but in that desperate moment, she prayed like she’d never prayed in her
entire life.

And strangely, at that very second, her
phone began to vibrate and the ringtone chimed loudly, startling her into
opening her eyes.

Kennedy was shocked to see that Nicole’s
number was showing on the caller ID.

Shaking, she answered in a small, quiet
voice.
 
“Nicole?”

“You have a lot of explaining to do,”
Nicole said, her voice cold.
 
“You
should be ashamed of what you’ve done.”

Kennedy burst into sobbing tears, unable
to even speak.

Nicole’s voice took on a different
tone.
 
“Kennedy, what—what is
it?”

“I—I—I’m in trouble…” Kennedy
said, hardly able to get the words out.

“Are you safe?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.
 
Easton’s gone.
 
Something bad…” she started to sob
again, partly in relief that her sister actually sounded concerned despite
everything that had gone on between them recently.

“Red and I are coming to get you right
away,” Nicole told her.

Kennedy tried to talk but words were
becoming difficult.
 
“I…I can’t
breathe…”

“You’re hyperventilating,” Nicole told
her, sounding even calmer.
 
“You
need to slow down, Kennedy, and tell me exactly where you are.”

“I’m at Easton’s house,” she said, the
words sounding faint to her own ears.
 

“Easton’s house?
 
And he’s not there?”

“No, he’s gone.
 
He’s in trouble.
 
He’s…”

“Just stay there.
 
Stay there and don’t leave, okay?”

“Yes.”

“We’re coming to get you straight away,
Kennedy.
 
It’s going to be all
right.”

Kennedy got off the phone and went to the
couch, curling up in a ball, shaking and shivering, her mind seeming to snap
into a million pieces.

***

There was a loud knock on the door, and
Kennedy sat up on the couch, her eyes wide with fear.
 

For a moment, she was sure she saw the
outline of a thug’s gun in the window by the door, but then she saw Red peering
in the window, his hands clasped next to his face to try and cut the glare.

Kennedy got up off the couch and walked
to the door, opening it and allowing Red and Nicole to enter.
 
They walked in slowly, looking around
the room as if they thought it might be some sort of trap they were entering.

“Kennedy, is anyone else here?” Red asked
her.

She shook her head no.
 
“I’m sorry,” she was able to utter, and
then the tears and sobs wracked her body and she began to sink to the floor.

Nicole came next to her, hugging her,
whispering soothing words in her ear, brushing her hair.
 
“It’s okay, honey.
 
Tell me what happened.
 
It’s all right, you’re safe now.”

“It’s not me,” Kennedy told her, in
between sobbing gasps for air.

“
What’s
not
you?”

“I’m not the one in trouble.”

“Something happened to Easton?” Nicole
said.

Kennedy could only nod, embarrassed that
she kept crying and sobbing, but she was going to break down if she had to say
the words aloud.
 
Saying it to Red
and Nicole would make it all too real.

Red left the room and came back a few
moments later with a box of tissues.
 
He handed them to Nicole, and Nicole held the box while Kennedy dried
her eyes and wiped her nose.

The two of them were on the floor
together, and Kennedy suddenly had the most disorienting experience of déjà
vu.
 
It was as though she could
remember them as children together—toddlers—playing on the floor of
some old house, and the way the carpet smelled and how familiar Nicole was,
like they’d known each other forever.

“I think Easton’s been hurt, or
maybe—maybe even worse,”
Kennedy
said, finally
able to keep from bursting into tears again as she said the unthinkable.

“Where did he go?” Red asked.

“It’s a long story,” Kennedy told him,
looking up, almost afraid to meet his gaze.

He was staring down at her, his face a
mask of impatient concern, his stare heavy with controlled emotion.
 
“You better start talking, then,” Red told
her, checking his watch.
 
“Every
second counts in this type of situation.”

Nicole glanced at her husband.
 
“Don’t frighten her,” she said.

“I’m not trying to frighten anybody.
 
But we need to act quickly if we think
something’s happened to Easton.”

“Okay,” Kennedy said, nodding and getting
slowly to her feet.
 
Nicole stood
with her, holding one of her hands lightly.

“Just start at the beginning.
 
Why don’t you sit down and tell us?”

“I’ll tell you everything I can
remember,” Kennedy said, walking to the table by the window where her and
Easton had just eaten that wonderful dinner the night before.

Now, he was gone and in his place was a
worried looking Nicole and a barely composed Red, waiting for her to begin her
story.

“It started,” Kennedy said, swallowing
hard as she sat in the chair that faced the window, “when this woman came into
the office and demanded to see Easton.”

And so Kennedy began telling them about
Sheri, and how Kennedy had followed her and gotten her license plate,
researched her, found out the sordid details of the money she and Dean owed to
creditors.
 
Kennedy didn’t spare any
detail, didn’t try to make
herself
look better.
 
Instead, she told them all of it, only
leaving out the sexually explicit moments that had transpired between her and
Easton.

By the time she got to the part where
Easton told her he was going to meet with Jimmy DeLuca, Red stood up.