Five Will Die, page 3
She had a reputation to uphold, though. A sometimes-scandalous reputation, but a reputation nonetheless. The last thriller she’d picked up hadn’t done too badly. With Lucius Barr on the marketing, she knew this next horror novel had a real shot at success. That’s where her focus was. Screw the severed limb or the danger that may or may not be coming their way.
She wasn’t going to let some psychopath ruin her chance. Evermore was her shot at rising above that garbage small-town she’d come from where everyone called her a slut and thought she’d be popping out babies by eighteen. Well, look at her now. Sure, it wasn’t one of the Big Five. But she had an office, a reputation, and a slew of successful books to her name. Chuck often told her she was keeping the place going—although, lately she was more and more sure that Chuck’s side enterprise was actually what was keeping the business going.
It didn’t matter, though. She just needed some wins, some career builders, and then she’d be off to the next greatest thing. Loyalty was never her concern or virtue.
Alex returned with her coffee, rattling on and on about the office gossip like he always did. She nodded enthusiastically while counting to ten in her head. She didn’t give a shit about the cubicle rats’ dramas. Not one bit. Well, maybe a tiny, infinitesimal amount on a very slow day when she needed a reminder of just how sad their lives were.
“Is Jesse Thorton out there yet?” she asked. Jesse was the author of the book she’d just picked up, Five Minute Nightmare. It was a slasher and had freaked her out, which was hard to do. But the grammar and style needed some work. She wanted to go over some changes in person since he was from the city and, perhaps, she was curious about what he looked like. It was a mixed bag with those horror types. You either got creepy or sexily mysterious, never both.
“Yeah, he’s in the conference room. I rushed him right in there because I didn’t want him catching word of the situation going on. Last thing we need is our authors hearing about the severed limb situation,” Alex murmured, his eyes alight. He could barely keep the grin off his face. Gossip and drama were his favorite elements of the business, and when he wasn’t helping Scarlet with her work needs, he was scurrying about befriending the office in order to get more dirt. She often wondered if Alex could write his own book about the place.
“And, what’s the verdict?” she asked, knowing he was anxious to tell.
“Sexy, I’d say. Dark hair sort of like those guys from the vampire show we were obsessed with for a while. Brooding eyes, pale, tall. Voice isn’t quite deep enough, though, for my taste. You can have him.”
“Well, thank you so much,” she teased, although she wondered if perhaps she would take him up on that. It had been a while now since Justin and other than a few one-night stands, and it was getting a little cold in her bed. She wasn’t a woman who needed to be attached, although it arguably helped the confidence to have a good play often. She didn’t work so hard on her physique for it to be hidden away.
A knock on the office door made them both jump, and they looked out to see Lucius Barr at the door.
“That Jesse is no Lucius Barr, that’s for sure. He doesn’t have the Christian Grey energy you like,” Alex added with a grin, rushing over to let Lucius in.
Scarlet readjusted her top, hoping her cleavage looked just right. She’d cracked the code of the best men in the office, all except one.
Lucius. It was like his hardened shell was impenetrable to her. She had yet to figure him out. Even Alex, the office gossip, knew little about his story. Married? Single? Gay? She didn’t know. She didn’t care, really. All she cared about was that her charm, her seductress chants didn’t seem to work on him, not yet. And that only made Scarlet tenacious about breaking through. She wasn’t a quitter in anything–and especially not with men.
“Hey, Scarlet. Just wanted to talk about Nightmares with you. Did you think about your marketing requests yet? I’ve got a few ideas.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Alex said, hanging around and giving Lucius an obvious once over that would have Chelsea, their HR director, start digging out those horrid sexual harassment videos again. Scarlet shot her assistant a glare, and he begrudgingly left, giving Lucius one more look and Scarlet a wink. Alone with the man with the impenetrable stare and impossible armor, Scarlet leaned closer.
“‘I’m sure you’ll handle it perfectly, Lucius. You’ve been such an asset to the team. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she whispered, hoping her lips had the pouty look most men couldn’t resist.
She noticed him staring at her lips, her face, and eventually, as if he couldn’t help himself, the rest of her, too. He kept a poker-face, but his eyes gave him away. They looked at her hungrily, as if he could devour her right there on the desk with all the spectators. She got a little hot at the thought of it. Maybe he wasn’t completely impenetrable to her, even if he wouldn’t admit it quite yet. He cleared his throat as if he needed to clear the tension in the air. It was palpable, even if he wanted to deny it. He took a step back, hands in his pockets.
“I just think this book has a lot of potential, and I want to do it justice,” he said, staring at her.
“I look forward to working with you on it. I’m sure we’ll rocket it to success. I actually have Jesse here, if you’d like to meet him. He’s already been asking about marketing. You know those newbie authors, thinking they’re getting Stephen King fame. He’s got some naive visions, but I think he’s a good one overall.”
“I’d love to meet him. After you,” he said, ushering her out of her own office as if he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
She smirked. Let Lucius Barr think he was in control of her. That was always a man’s first mistake, thinking he could command Scarlet Evans to do anything.
Still, she brushed against him as she headed for the door, a subtle yet blatant connection. She’d break down Lucius Barr if it was the last thing she did, no matter how long it took. She’d been meaning to stalk his social media a little bit more, see if she could find some clues on how to break through.
The man was an enigma, that was for sure. Why the hell did that make him so irresistible?
Chapter Six
Alex
People saw whatever they wanted to see. He’d known that since he was a little boy in that trailer in West Virginia.
Sifting through the dirt out front with a stick while his parents argued in that metal box, Alex Garrish chose to see love. People in love argued, he told himself. When it got really bad, he would look at the bike the neighbor had found at the dump and gifted to him, dreaming of riding away. But then he would comfort himself. They were in love. They wouldn’t argue, Dad wouldn’t get that mad, if there wasn’t love there. Love was something that you had to fight for. That was what his mother always said.
And then when his mother had her opportunity when Alex was nine, she took an ax to his drunk father’s skull. Alex had been in the living room when it happened in slow motion. He’d stayed frozen until the police came and took his mother away from the bloody display, his hacked-up father in a puddle. He’d learned from that moment on that love was fucked up, women couldn’t be trusted, and life was a never ending shitshow.
Later in life, a therapist had suggested this was why Alex was gay–he couldn’t trust women. Alex fought the urge to stab the bastard in the neck with the letter opener on his desk, visions of blood spewing from the moron’s neck a comforting thought. He’d left that office and never seen another therapist—and secretly feared after those fantasies that perhaps he was too much like his mother, a theory later proven oh-so-true. Nonetheless, he spent most of his years between then and now learning to control his angry urges himself, though, because no one apparently had any fucking answers. It strangely made him feel a little bit better.
He’d spent the next nine years floating through foster care, where he solidified those values even more. His high school years, he’d landed in a small town where a kid named Chuck took him under his also somewhat fucked-up but wealthy wing. Their friendship had been tested behind a bar at nineteen when Alex had gone in for a kiss and Chuck knocked his lights out. But after recovering from that, Chuck Morris had gone off to the big city and taken Alex with him, even finding him a place—with literally no qualifications—at Evermore Publishing. He was doing alright for himself, he supposed. His shitty apartment was still a far cry from that ax-murdering trailer. He was essentially an orphan now, his mother serving a prison sentence and Alex refusing to visit her for what she’d done. Evermore was his family now—still a fucked-up family, but weren’t they all?
He glanced over the top of his half-cubicle to see Scarlet strutting her way down the aisles. Her author meeting was over. He rushed to shove the flask in his hand back into the desk drawer. Scarlet knew he wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t need to know all his secrets.
To Evermore Publishing, Alex was the assistant who was hired as a favor from Chuck. He was the proudly edgy, always excited, sometimes inappropriate man who was good for the gossip. He was carefree and liked to party. They didn’t know his whole past, and he didn’t need them to.
The only one who knew where he came from was Chuck, but he wasn’t telling. He wasn’t sharing his own dark secrets with the place. Alex and Chuck had an unspoken pact—their past would be left there. No one needed to know the dark truths they both harbored. Besides that, lately it felt like Chuck had forgotten who they were to each other. In the hall, he barely got a nod. He was preoccupied. Alex sort of liked it that way, though. He’d spent most of his life feeling like he owed everyone something. It wasn’t always a bad thing to be a little invisible.
Scarlet nodded to him and went into her office. He wondered if she’d sleep with the new author. She wasn’t one to break a trend after all.
Chelsea Rhodes appeared at his desk like a pink Barbie jack-in-the-box, interrupting his thoughts.
“Have you recovered from your incident?” he asked, fighting the urge to smirk. Watching that perfect little face melt into sheer horror had made the severed limb situation worth it, despite the obvious danger they were all in. He’d give his life, take one for the team, to see Chelsea Rhode’s too-happy demeanor tarnished again.
Chelsea skirted the uncomfortable question and the topic. She really would make a better PR manager, the way she famously avoided any controversy or unpleasant topics. Better to swipe away anything gritty—just like she had the girl they’d fired last week. Chelsea liked to wipe her hands (always sporting hot pink nails like some sort of weird tribute to Legally Blonde) of anything upsetting. That was her best tactic, and perhaps, looking back, why Chuck had hired her. It was a necessary morale boost in a dysfunctional place like Evermore.
“You look sad, Alex. Want to hear a knock-knock joke to cheer you up?” she croaked, hovering over the top of his half cubicle like she was posing for a face cream commercial, a huge smile that revealed teeth too white to be normal. He wished she were kidding or being sarcastic, but that wasn’t her forte. Unfortunately, the twenty-something woman was dead-serious about telling a knock-knock joke to a grown man.
“That’s literally the last thing on Earth I want,” he scoffed, rushing out of his chair to Scarlet’s office, a man on a mission—to get away from the most obnoxious woman. She just didn’t fit here with all the scandal and depraved employees. Plus, she was so fucking nosy. That was Alex’s job: to be in everyone’s business. Chelsea needed to stay in her cheery little office with the door shut and ideally little to no oxygen.
He shut Scarlet’s door behind him, taking in the sight of her. She was leaning back in her chair seductively. He didn’t think that woman knew how to sit in a non-seductive way at this point. If he found females tempting in any sense, he would be moved to act now and, honestly, probably about seventy-eight other times they were alone. The woman just sparked sexuality in ways that even made Alex question his own.
“God, save me. Chelsea’s at it again,” Alex declared, leaning his head against the door of the office and closing his eyes.
Scarlet laughed. “I knew it would be bad after the hand. I mean, for Christ’s sake, when the dead bird happened, I thought the woman was going to need therapy.”
“Right? It was the first time I’ve ever seen her wear black to the office. Hell, she wore pink to her mother’s funeral. This one might send her right to the nutty bin.”
“If we’re fortunate,” Scarlet said with a grin, and Alex laughed. Scarlet got his witty, sarcastic humor, and he loved her for it.
He moved across the room now, plopping down in the soft leather chair near Scarlet’s desk, his chair.
“How’d it go with Christian Grey and the new guy?”
“Jesus, you make it sound like a threesome,” she murmured leaning forward. She’d reapplied her ruby red lipstick, which on most redheads would clash. Assessing it silently, Alex decided it worked for her.
“Wouldn’t be the worst thing,” he replied.
“Good, I’ll send out a meeting invite for you. You need some action. How long has it been since the whole Sven debacle?’
“Ugh, really? Going for the jugular. Seven months and four days. Not that we’re counting,” he replied. He was fully counting. That had been a disaster worse than any of the other men who had waltzed in and out of his life. This one had nearly broken him. Or perhaps it did, if he were being honest.
“Oh, we’re counting. You were a wreck. Thought you were going to drink yourself to death,” Scarlet replied, seriously. “But honestly, Alex and Sven just don’t roll off the tongue well. You were never a great match, in my opinion.”
He tried to nod and hide the guilt that was creeping up. He thought of the flask in his drawer. He thought of the hefty bill Scarlet had footed for him to go to rehab a few months ago when he’d almost drank himself to death. He thought of how he wasn’t really any better off than his trashy family. Maybe he should turn himself into the system now, sit behind bars where he belonged before he hurt someone.
Correction. Before he hurt someone else.
Scarlet yammered on about meetings and emails she needed him to send. His mind wasn’t focused. Soft and warm, it floated between them, thinking about how messed up his life was. Thinking about the hand in the box. Thinking about his mother, which he tried never to do.
After half-listening to his duties, he marched back to his desk, relieved to find Chelsea gone. He sat down and stared at his screen saver for a while. His cat, Freddie, looked back at him from the computer and made him smile. Freddie was the only constant in his life. How fucking sad was that?
He talked to a few of the cubicle rats, as Scarlet called them, and made jokes. Everyone stopped by his cubicle when they needed a pick-me-up. They saw him as the fun one, the guy who had it all together and you could depend on for work but also for a fun time. He was the gossip monger, the fashion advice go-to. He was wild Alex, the gay guy you could slap on the back when telling a joke.
Little did they know, though, he thought as he eyed the drawer. Little did they know how often he fought his demons, past and present. Little did they know that the gossiping office assistant was always holding an ax an arm’s length away, fighting the urge to follow in his mother’s sadistic footsteps.
A few emails later, and a scream like none even he’d heard before rang out through the office. The cubicle rats came running once more as if it were the dinner bell. This time, it wasn’t Chelsea “Barbie” Rhodes whose voice pierced their ears.
It was Scarlet’s.
Alex went running, his stomach sinking like it had once before in his life. Only once before.
Chapter Seven
The Past
Popularity is power.
My mother always used to say that, which is ironic because popularity was never hers to own or define. A wayward woman born into a system of poverty, abuse, and weakness, she was no stranger to the fringes of society. Maybe that’s why she had such a glowing view of the Populars and what membership with them could do for you. Perhaps like many, she told herself “if only” in order to assuage herself that her miserable life wasn’t her fault.
Whether we like it or not, we are all products of our lineage in some respect—either we follow in their footsteps and ascribe to their belief system, or we spend our resources bucking the system we were born into. Now, I believe I can fairly say, even appreciate, that I am the latter. However, back when I was young, like most children, I thought my mother walked on water and had all the answers. So, I ascribed to her beliefs at all costs.
Truly at all costs.
So, when the Fab 5, as they named themselves, became the “it” crowd in seventh grade, I wanted nothing more than to become the sixth member. I dreamed of what it would be like to be in the crew, to walk down the hallway and have everyone part ways for you. They were going places, everyone knew. I wanted to go places, too. Like right out of that trailer court, right out of our foodless pantry, my hole-filled shoes. I had dreams of bigger things, and the Fab 5, to my naive, pre-pubescent mind, seemed like the answer.
The five rose to fame in different ways, all superficial reasons, as one might guess. Then again, for pre-pubescents, it’s always the pointless that makes someone admirable, right? There were two girls and three boys in that group of the elite, all with their claim to fame that allowed them entry into the group.
There was the charming football player, strong and sexy. He was the ringleader, the one who had approved the entry of the other four as if he was born royalty, born wielding all the power. Perhaps he was, in some ways.
There was the hippie-like boy whose parents let him wander and do as he pleased. He started smoking in fourth grade, was the bad boy of the group, and set the bar for coolness.
There was the French boy who had come over straight from a French chateau in the third grade. He was cold-hearted, had a penchant for being ruthless, and was essentially the leader’s henchman. His family was also fabulously wealthy and could get him and the entire group out of anything.
