Ambition, page 8
Well then.
That makes me walk faster into the shadow space, and I don’t even think about what I might encounter until I’m already there.
I stop fucking short, right in the doorway.
There’s a long, rectangular wooden table. Dozens of black and blue candles scattered about it, flames flickering sensually and illuminating the room.
And there’s nothing else on the table, hardly anything more inside the space, except…
To my left, lined up against the wall, are half a dozen people in black robes, hoods pulled up and covering their faces completely. Hands clasped in front of them, but their sleeves are so long, they obscure any sign of their skin.
They are dead quiet, facing the table.
Therefore, facing me.
I’ve never seen any of Writhe in their robes. And I don’t know which one is Mads and I’m suddenly too scared to speak and—
Someone touches me on the shoulder.
I nearly jump out of my skin, spinning around, my back to the silent ones in the room.
A tall, towering figure is in front of me, dressed the same as the others, except his hood is pushed back around his neck and he’s wearing a red mask. It’s smooth, eerily so, with a thin cutout for the mouth and large holes for the eyes. Nothing along the nose, which kind of freaks me out more.
The blank expression of the mouth is unnerving, and so is the silence as the person drops their hand to their side. Red gloves, too.
“Mads?” I whisper, forcing the word out. Knowing I am outnumbered here but I am in a familiar house and no one will hurt me. Right? Right.
The man in front of me cocks his head. Then he nods once, without speaking.
Okay then.
Mads, I guess.
My heart feels as if it has jumped to my throat but I wet my lips then get on with it. “What did you come by to tell me?” I narrow my eyes, forcing myself to feel the irritation that drove me here in the first place. “What did you tell Von instead?”
Mads studies me and I make myself remember he loves me, and he will protect me, but I also think about the fact that he is my handler, sending me into the lion’s den to sleep with a notoriously violent dealer.
But I wanted to do it.
I want to earn my place here.
“Does he know you are here?” Mads asks quietly, and his voice sounds even more detached than usual. Robotic, as if it doesn’t belong to him.
I glance over my shoulder to the people in robes, but I feel Mads’s cold touch along my chin, and he slowly turns me to face him again, grazing his fingertips over my skin before he drops his hand by his side.
I shiver as I look at him.
“Answer me, not them,” he says in that same strange voice.
“No. He is not my keeper.”
Mads lifts his chin, the mask glaring down at me, obscuring his eyes. “Isn’t he?”
I shake my head, clenching my fists at my side. “No. I am my own.”
More beats of silence.
“But are you his keeper, Isadora?”
I think of the pitchfork. The way it felt, a cry leaving my lips as I rammed it into the man’s torso when he finally turned to check on me. When he dropped his stupid fucking phone. He didn’t think I’d fight back. He thought I would sit pretty and wait. But he said the wrong thing.
He threatened Von.
No one threatens Von.
Before I can say a word, explain this to his father, Mads tilts his head, indicating the doorway. “The assignment is yours. Everything will continue as planned.” He pauses, as if considering. Then he says simply, “That is all.”
VON
“What did he say?” I stand on the balcony, looking out over the eastern edge of Alexandria. Forest and rolling hills surrounding a concrete jungle far enough away we don’t have to hear the sirens rolling through the downtown district in the dead of night. My parents have a place there, in the heart of the city, and I remember distinctly how horrible the sleep is when you’re used to a blanket of natural silence.
Karia is quiet on the line, and I rest my forearms on the metal railings of the balcony, glancing up at the sky and squinting. Dark and dreary, but my eyes are sensitive. Isadora makes fun of me for it, but she also keeps a spare pair of Tom Ford sunglasses in her Jeep for me so it’s a fair trade.
Thunder rumbles over Alexandria, wind whipping cold across my bare chest. I haven’t changed since Isadora sauntered out with Karia and Cosmo. Tentatively, I lift my fingers to my mouth, running them over my bottom lip and biting back a groan.
They smell like Isa. They taste like her, too.
“I don’t know,” Karia finally says over the speaker of her phone inside her car. She’s already dropped Isa off at Nox to pick up her Jeep and Cosmo back at a house he shares with people shadier than he is.
“What?” I ask, straightening from the balcony railing and slipping my hand into my pocket as I keep the other cupping my phone. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I didn’t go in.” Karia sounds sterner, somehow. Like she’s found her fucking nerve. I care for her, considering she was always around when we were growing up. Her and a handful of others, children of Writhe. But she is more docile than Isadora, less stubborn, not so thirsty to prove herself. She’ll probably be set up in an arranged marriage because of her temperament, as a pawn to raise Writhe higher. Sometimes I think joining with her would be easy for me; our attitudes suit one another.
But then I think of Isadora, and that idea is shredded to pieces inside my head. Not to mention the fact I don’t mind that Karia fucks around with Cosmo, and if that fucker ever laid a finger on Isadora, I would ensure his death looked like an accident.
“Don’t make me ask any more follow-up questions. What do you mean, Karia?”
She’s quiet, the sound of her tires on the road a soft whirring over the line. Then she says, “Isadora knows what she’s doing, Von. Whatever spying you wanted me to do, it’s not like Mads would let me listen in anyway. So I don’t know anything about that, and all I do know is she came out smiling.”
I grip my phone tight in my hand, listening in disbelief. Karia has always favored me over Isadora because we’ve fucked around more than a few times, despite this thing she has with Cosmo. But it’s like I can hear Isa in my head, telling me sex doesn’t mean shit. Something I apparently haven’t grasped.
“You know nothing?” I make myself ask anyway. When Isa went to get changed before she left with Karia, I spoke to the latter, telling her to keep an eye on what Isa and Dad would discuss. She nodded, promised she would.
“No, Von. Look, whatever it is…” She trails off. “I think you should just let her do her job.”
I lift my middle finger even though only the darkening skies of Alexandria can see it. Then I end the fucking call and decide I’ll have to do this the hard way.
I grab her when she walks in.
It’s dark in our condo, rain is coming down in sheets against the windows, and she wasn’t expecting this. We used to do surprise drills often; her to me, me to her. Especially in those first few months we started living together, the memory of the warehouse still heavy over us both.
But it’s been a long time since this.
I had a dinner of beer, and I spent the day pacing, wondering where the fuck she went but refusing to text her or call. And now she’s here, it’s nightfall, and she’s got lingerie bags swinging from her arms.
Well, she did.
They slide to the marble floor of the foyer, and she doesn’t even shriek or gasp or scream as I hook my forearm around her neck and tug her into me.
She stills, actually, but only for a moment.
Then she kicks me in the fucking knee cap, and I grunt, loosening my grip on her hip and her neck.
She takes the opportunity to twist out of my hold and she isn’t content to walk away. In her sweats and her cropped shirt, flashes of brown skin revealing the lines of her obliques, she looks ready to spar, hair pulled back out of her face. She darts for me immediately, shoving me with both hands so I crash against the black door, the ornate silver knob digging into my spine.
I laugh, the taste of alcohol still on my tongue. Her eyes flash in the darkness and she shoves me again, slamming her palms against my chest.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she snarls, her nostrils flared, her cheeks turning a deep red color, and I know it’s from anger and not embarrassment.
She lifts her hands like she might hit me for real, but then she spins, holding up her arms, like she’s trying to talk herself out of touching me. I glance at her packages and see a dark red umbrella too, scattered on the floor alongside a deep green lace bra spilled from the pale pink bag, and a red one as well, sheer.
The laughter leaves me, and I stay pressed to the door, my chest heaving as I stare at her back, the muscles around her low spine.
She drops her arms suddenly then turns to face me again. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she snaps once more, but this time lower.
It’s hot, how her voice is deep with her anger.
I place my hands on my thighs. “Preparing you for tomorrow.” I shrug. “I started part one on the couch earlier, you know?”
She puts her hands on her hips, narrowing her dark gaze. “Von,” she says, like a warning. “Are you drunk?”
And I’m not. Only slightly tipsy, but it makes my tongue loose. “Did you fuck my dad too?”
“Von.” It’s barely a word at all this time, a ghost coming from her mouth.
“Is that where you were? Is that what they’re doing tonight for Solemn?” I jerk my chin toward her. “Fucking the new whore?”
She clenches her jaw. I see the bones jump as her full, red lips press together.
“All of them? Or just him? Cosmo get a turn too? Did your dad—”
“Sometimes I think you grew with me that night. At the warehouse, you know?” She says everything so calmly.
Unease churns in my gut, and I just watch her, unspeaking.
“Sometimes I think it was a pivotal moment. I know my parents think my brain glitched, and your dad is a little scared of me. I know that’s why they took me off the violent assignments and fed them all to you. But the guard, he spoke about you. He said I was a setup to get to you. I wasn’t bait for our parents. I was a lure for yours. That’s why I grabbed the pitchfork, Von. That’s why I swiped the tines through his abdomen, then twirled the handle, clawed out his insides. Do you know it took a lot of force to do that? The tines were sharp, but our skin wants to keep us alive, you know?”
I’m not breathing as she speaks.
I didn’t know about the guard, speaking of me. She never explained why she attacked him and in the aftermath, I wasn’t sure I could handle finding out. In the end, we knew the assholes were trying to extort money from Dad, from Writhe, but… I thought she was the lure, being a girl.
“It didn’t matter, eventually, how much his flesh wanted him to survive. Because you were inside my head. If that man intended to hurt you, he had to die, naturally. And I thought when you found me, when you picked me up like I weighed nothing, when you saw the blood on my face from an artery I slashed through… I thought you grew with me. Maybe in a twisted way. Maybe even downward, like toward hell. But I thought you were with me.” She rakes her eyes over my body in dismissive assessment. “Now, though, I’m not so sure. Asking me if I fucked my handler, treating me as less than because I did a job same as you do?”
I grind my teeth, wanting to lash out. Physically, emotionally.
But I keep it in for once, with her.
I say nothing.
“Go fuck yourself, Von. No matter how much of a whore you think I am, God knows I won’t be doing it for you, but thanks for one last orgasm.” She glances down at her spilled things, then shakes her head like she doesn’t want to deal with it right now and predictably, she turns her back on me, leaving even the red umbrella on the floor.
“You think you’re the only one who changed that night?” I call out after her, staying by the door but unable to let her walk away yet.
Her shoulders tense, hands balled into fists at her side, but she doesn’t look at me.
I gaze over the lighter brunette shades of her hair, coiled in with the darker brown. Long and thick. Beautiful. The dimples on her spine are too, the curve of her hips.
I swallow hard, imagining all of that against me on Halloween, cradled in my arms.
“You think you’re the only one who thinks about it? You were worried about me, you say, but do you not remember why I found you in the first place?” I whisper the words, my voice hoarse, adrenaline pumping but I don’t move an inch.
She is frozen, too, and she doesn’t say anything.
“I was running through that warehouse for you as soon as Dad had your location, and sent it out to all of us. You know the fire caught when we ran out, when we got to Mom and Dad and Rig? But I saw the smoke when I parked outside. And I didn’t even think about it. Because all I thought of was you.” If I close my eyes now, I’ll be running through that warehouse with my mask on again, a precaution that didn’t matter but maybe I just wanted something routine to hold onto when I dove in that burning building after my best friend.
“And now?” she whispers, her voice hard. “Now you think because you worried about me once, I should sit at home and stay trapped in here while you do all the work for Writhe? They probably never told you, but it was you they would’ve taken if they’d found you instead of me at the hotel party.”
Guilt swallows me whole, because I didn’t know, but I know why I wasn’t found and that’s what I hold onto, since it’s easier. “But they didn’t, because I was outside on the balcony sulking over you fucking a stranger, once again.”
“Sorry I got kidnapped for you, asshole.” She turns then, facing me with her chin tilted down and her eyes a glare. “But don’t you think you should be the one to sit shit out, since it’s your dad at the top of the food chain? Why me, huh?” She gestures toward me with one hand. “Why isn’t it you?” Her voice breaks a little and I rub the back of my hand over my sternum, hearing the sound.
Maybe she’s right.
The night of my first kill, I came home a whimpering ghost. This was after the warehouse, and she was there to hold me tight when I fell apart. It should be her out there doing the work, getting the jobs, taking charge of Writhe.
I know that, logically.
But imagining her going to Theo’s compound again tomorrow night… Thinking of his teeth and hands and dick all over her while she’s surrounded by people who couldn’t give less of a fuck about her…
Logic doesn’t fucking matter.
But I can’t explain that to her. She’ll say the same about me and we’ll both be at this stupid fucking standstill that neither of us asked for. We were born into this. What options do we have?
So I don’t say anything. There’s nothing that’ll make this better. Instead, I straighten from the door and start putting her things in her shopping bag; lace bras with only scraps of fabric, and inside my head, I’m imagining her in Theo Sancte’s lap like she was in mine today, on the couch.
Once everything is together, I walk past her, soft ribbons of the bag’s handles against my fingers.
She doesn’t stop me, and I catch that dark rain scent of hers when my arm brushes her shoulder.
And I continue past the living room, down the hallway and into my room where I have more than a few fucking knives.
ISADORA
There’s a chandelier above our heads, glittering silver and blue in the back lobby of the hotel. Hotel No. 7, it’s called. A Writhe member owns majority shares in all of No. 7’s hotels and thus, here we are.
Von and I left the row of suites our friends and I have taken residence in for the night. Just for a moment, to get air the night before Halloween. Although I know that’s not the real reason even though it’s the excuse Von gave me when he looked at me with those big gray eyes and asked if we could look around the place.
It’s beautiful, the entire Alexandrian building done in aqua and indigo and aureate and silver. Here, there are black and silver striped floors beneath our feet in marble and when I tilt my head down and study it, I feel like I’m looking at the mouth of a circus. It’s circular too, this exit lobby, the tinted glass doors leading out to the employee parking lot and high iron fences which try to stop the encroaching city from creeping into this oasis.
“There’s a pool on the roof, did you know?” Von asks quietly beside me as I stare at the flooring, the buzz of alcohol coursing through my veins. I’ve only had a couple of drinks and I saw Von with a beer in his hand earlier in the night, but neither of us are drunk.
I fold my arms over my body and lift my head, grinning up at him. He’s dressed so formally; crisp gray dress shirt, deep burgundy slacks, his red curls out of his eyes as he stares back at me.
I’m in my white pajama shirt with the pumpkin, and blue booty shorts. A little more trash than his class, but that seems accurate for us.
“Did you want to go swimming?” I counter, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth as I arch a brow. It might be October thirtieth, but this is North Carolina, and when Von wheeled our suitcases into the main entrance earlier, the cold surprised me, and so did the way I shivered in it.
Von tilts his head. “Maybe. Will it keep you away from London Hamilton?”
I roll my eyes but my smile tips higher despite myself. I like it sometimes, when he gets like this. Slightly jealous but still only teasing about it. Overprotective, but calm. Sometimes, the idea of falling into him is overwhelming. I want to reach out and strangle him, force him to breathe into me, if he gasps at all.
