Violets & Violence (16 page)

“Damn,” I exhaled. And I meant it, too.

She looked good. Gorgeous even.

Focus, you fucking pervert
.

“Well?” she asked, stepping toward me, placing one foot in front of the other like a runway model would. She stopped a couple of feet away, a confident grin on her face. I hadn’t seen her look like this since the day we met at the Imperial, the day she facilitated my abduction.

I reached out toward her face, but she stepped back and shook her head, allowing her insecurity to drown out that glimpse of confidence. “Still focused on my scar.”

“It doesn’t define you,” I promised. “It lends you a quality of normalcy.” I pointed out her figure, nodded at the red silk with the white lace. “Without it, you’re untouchable with a body like that.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “You’re more of a charmer than Rinker.”

“Except you’re blushing,” I noted. “And, I’m being honest. I’m not a snake like he is.”

We exchanged something of a glance right then. If I hadn’t been involved with Violet for as long as I had, I might’ve acted on it. But I didn’t. Instead, I focused on the sounds around us, or the lack thereof. I breathed through my nostrils and while I looked straight at Lindsey, I didn’t quite see her. I expected to hear Rinker or some other threat –
does she have a knife, a gun, or some other weapon nearby, is someone else in the apartment, listen, for fuck sake, pay attention
– that this convenient, slutty distraction might conceal.

But I hear nothing.

After swallowing the lump in my throat, I watched the smirk of achievement flash across Lindsey’s face before she spun around and started back toward that bedroom. As she went, she itched her hip, hiking up the lower edge of her slip to reveal a quarter-inch of her ass.

I gulped again and looked away.

I waited for the door’s latch to catch before bolting into action and standing just outside the bedroom again. I listened. I heard more rummaging as she stripped out of the red slip and got into the black.

Returning to the kitchen island, I held my breath and watched her emerge, one hand behind her back, the other on her hip. I didn’t have to say
wow
for her to know what I thought of her wardrobe change; my jaw hitting the floor was evidence enough.

Lindsey burst into laughter. “You’re full of shit, Luke.”

I rubbed my hands down my face and stared at her like a proper pervert would. “I’m in a relationship right now,” I warned her. “Otherwise, I would…”

More laughter.

I shifted on my feet and gave her a playful wink, the kind you might give an eager child. “Aren’t you going to walk toward me like a lingerie model again?”

Grinning, she took those tentative steps forward, both of her hands behind her back now. “Like this?”

I nodded at her legs. “You know, all kidding aside, you have some pretty nice curves, Lindsey. You’ve got the strut, and the way you move your hips…”

“Are you drooling over me, Luke?” she asked, then laughed and did a little twirl, all the while keeping her hands out of my sight. We felt like old friends here, except I didn’t know what kind of weapon she held in those pretty little hands of hers.

I raised my attention to her face again. “You’re beautiful. Always were, Lindsey. And if Rinker hadn’t seen you first, if he hadn’t…” I shook my head. “You’d be happier right now, I guarantee that.”

She stopped a few feet away. Not close enough for me to jump on her –
in case she can read my thoughts and know that I want to see what she’s holding –
but close enough that I could smell her shampoo when she flung her hair over her shoulder while twirling.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she tried again to negotiate. “I’ve already told you he won’t look at me after what happened underneath that stage. This mark on my face…”

I stepped closer to her, and she closed her eyes. Her hands dropped to her sides, empty.
Nothing? You’ve got nothing?

“It’s like you’ve stolen what beauty I had,” she whispered, and I started to feel a little sorry for her.
Maybe she wants a better life after all, not
this
bullshit, dark fairy tale spent living with a crazy banker looking for some kind of sad, desperate revenge.
I reached down and squeezed her right hand, allowing her left hand to return behind her back.

“Listen to me. You’re stunning, Lindsey,” I told her. “You’re smart, and you don’t deserve this. You can have so much more.”

“No,” she begged suddenly, turning her head away and pulling her hands back. “Stop. He’s good to me, you have no clue.”

“Lindsey, we both know—”

“Stop,” she repeated, except this time, her voice came out as a hard, demanding order. I turned away, and that was when something equally hard and demanding pressed into the side of my head.

Fuck
. A gun.
Where did you hide it when your hands came down?

I closed my eyes and said a quick, silent prayer for what I was going to have to do.

When I opened my eyes, I saw the rage in hers.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. I swore I could sense that same tremble through the cold metal muzzle against my skull. “You’re a nice guy and everything, and you said some nice things about me, but you cut my face and now you think you know my—”

I moved quickly. Before she could finish saying whatever craziness she had on her mind, I twisted her wrist so forcefully that the gun dropped out of her grip and onto the countertop.

“Ouch,” she whined as I spun her around and held her from behind. “Is that an erection, Luke? What would Violet think of this?” She tried to sound like a badass, but obviously failed.

I ignored her. “What’re you
doing
?” I shoved her forward toward the living room sofa, keeping myself close so she couldn’t do anything stupid that would get either of us (or both of us) hurt or killed. “I didn’t come here to hurt you, but now…”

She began sobbing, and said nothing as I forced her onto the white, leather sofa.

“Don’t you dare say anything,” I warned her, bringing my face so close to hers that I bet she could feel the fire on my breath. “Don’t even move, you ungrateful bitch!”

She allowed an angry peek, then turned her head away so she could stare out the window facing Park Avenue. There wasn’t much of a view from that angle, just the upper half of the building across the street.

“You’re going to face a decision soon, Lindsey,” I warned her in a terse voice before returning to the island for the gun. It was a pistol, looked like one of those kid’s guns from a 1980’s cowboy kit. I glanced back and caught her fingers tracing the scar on her face.

“Fuck you,” she hissed, mostly to herself.

I focused on the gun again, snapped the cylinder open. There were no bullets in any of the six chambers. “It’s not loaded?” I asked.

She said nothing.

What the hell is wrong with this girl? Even a Manhattan princess would know the gun wasn’t loaded. But Lindsey wasn’t a princess; she was Rinker’s girl. Why?

Just then, the main door opened – we couldn’t see it from here, but we both heard it. I snapped my attention to Lindsey and raised a finger to my lips, urging her to stay quiet.

“Or what?” she whispered back, nodding at the gun. “You just said it yourself, it’s not loaded.”

“Just… shut the fuck up,” I threatened her, crouching low behind the counter, and walking to the far end so that it concealed me from Henry Rinker’s line of sight as he entered his home.

I listened to his approach, heard him stop, and then he asked, “Jesus, Lindsey, what’re you doing?”

“I wanted to surprise you,” she answered, her voice betraying a mild fear. “Do… do you like it?” I imagined her standing up and pulling out the lower edges of the slip to show just how sexy she was.

“Yeah,” he answered, and then his keys landed on the island’s granite countertop. Despite his words, he didn’t exactly come across as convincing, let alone impressed with the visual candy before him.

“You’re not even looking at me,” Lindsey said from the sofa. She sounded hurt.

“Sure I am,” he chuckled. “Stand up, let’s have a peek at
all
of you, hmm?”

“Come here, Henry.”

“Huh?” he answered.

“Put your phone down and come here,” she said, a little more deliberately this time. And I knew this was where she would try to warn him.

I glanced back, over the edge of the island and noticed him standing close enough to me that he should’ve seen me crouched behind the island. But he was far too concerned with reading a text or whatever he saw on that fucking phone.

“You know that—” he started, but she cut him off.

“Henry, put that thing down and come take me,” she begged. “I’m not… and I want…” she had tears dripping down her face. “Henry, why don’t you see or hear me?”

“Give me a fucking minute, will you?” he barked.

She sobbed, then looked back out the window again.

“Goddamn it!” he grunted, placing the phone on the island as gently as possible, the way a true psychopath would because anyone in a state of rage like his would have slammed it.

“Henry,” she begged, still looking outside.

I watched him hesitate, but then he sighed, relaxed his shoulders a little and started toward Lindsey. After watching him take a few steps, I jumped out from behind the island and lunged at him from behind, surprising him and tackling him to the floor.

Lindsey screamed and dropped to her knees, reaching out to him.

“Don’t hurt him!” she pleaded.

I didn’t intend on hurting Rinker. Once I had him on the floor, I restrained him. He was strong, given his age, but not as strong as I was.

“Now what?” he grunted, surrendering to my force.

I punched him in the face, hard enough to break his nose and stain his white carpet with a bit of blood.

“Now it’s time to talk,” I grunted.

The problem with men like Rinker was that nothing stopped them. Motivated by greed, these people tended to prefer New York City over any other place on Earth. They married more than once, each bride progressively younger. Now, Rinker hadn’t married Lindsey or anyone else, not even a woman his own age, but he loved her. From the moment he saw her, he loved her, and I could see that despite the scar on her face, he
still
loved her; the hurt and betrayal in his eyes right now confirmed it.

Backing up from the kitchen chair where I had secured him with twine and electrical tape, I knew that he was worried about what I might’ve done to the young lady that I had met in my office at Quotient all those years ago. I figured that, seeing her wearing the lingerie she had purchased as a way to get
his
attention when he walked into the co-op, he figured I had capitalized on the desire he had refused to feed.

“I never hurt her,” I told him.

“Fuck. You,” he spat at me.

I considered hurting him the way he had tried to hurt me in that horrible room underneath the Imperial’s stage, but that wasn’t why I had come.

He knew it, too.

When I turned my back on Rinker and walked over to where Lindsey remained seated on the sofa, still in that sexy black lingerie, he laughed at me.

“You called yourself Violence,” he said with a sneer. “You’re a joke. I never should have let them hire your ghetto ass, some fucking inner-city, white-trash, inbred brat out of high school. She thought you were so special, your pathetic awards. All your mom had was an insurance payout,” he laughed. “Couple hundred thousand, she thought she had a bit of pull at Quotient. All she had was a mouth and a skilled tongue.” He made some crude noises that I ignored.

Sitting next to Lindsey, I sensed her body tense next to mine; her back became straighter, arms tighter, her foot bounced on the rug. Clearly, she didn’t want me here.

“You’re pathetic, Kemble. Even more pathetic that that whore mother of yours.”

I studied Lindsey’s smooth thigh, tilting my head as I hooked a finger underneath the lower lip of that slip and edged it higher up toward her crotch. I didn’t bring it high enough to reveal anything. I was a gentleman, after all.

“She was a white trash whore…” I could hear the pain in Rinker’s voice, his caring for Lindsey.

I finally pretended to notice Rinker at that point, but I found it difficult to focus. Feeling another woman’s soft flesh underneath my finger caused my heart to race. I had only truly known Violet… Swallowing, I reached up and turned Lindsey’s scarred face to me. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered.

She gulped, bit down on her lower lip and glanced at Rinker in the chair.

“Just look into my eyes,” I told her, bringing her attention back. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t. I promise.” I lowered my hand between her legs, my eyes locked on hers, and slid my fingers up her thighs.

In the chair, watching this exchange between us, Rinker grunted and moaned, the hatred unmistakable. “You’re going to
die
for this, Kemble! You’re going to die!”