Game Over Boys, page 55
Nobody answers Maxx’s question aloud.
I wrack my brain for more secrets that I might need to tell Tess. JJ comes to mind. Remember what I told you when we first met? There’s always a sense of dread in me when I think about the box. I try not to think of the box very often.
I clear my throat and look at Chasm.
“The box,” I begin, and he smacks himself in the forehead.
“Geureom. The box.” He glances at Tess, but she lifts her hand in protest.
“I have a feeling this is going to be a long night. Let me get a corkscrew.” Tess pads up the stairs and Parrish calls out after her.
“Bring four extra glasses.”
“I’ll bring you some sodas,” Tess says absently before opening the door to the kitchen.
“She might be marginally better than before, but she’s still Tess, isn’t she?” I ask and Parrish smiles. He doesn’t have to answer; we both understand now.
“Should I tell her about the corpse?” X whispers, and Chasm cringes.
“Somebody has to,” Chas admits, but then we’re all looking at Parrish and he sighs.
“I’ve got this.” He fortifies himself for his mother’s return.
When Tess comes back, she has five sodas in her hands, and looks a bit embarrassed about it.
“I’m not going to let him drive me to drink,” she declares proudly, passing the cans out.
“Not even if we tell you there’s a dead girl—that we didn’t kill—buried in grandma’s backyard?” Parrish asks and Tess looks longingly at the racks of wine before she cracks her own soda and takes a long swig.
“Okay, guys, start talking.”
And so we do.
“You can’t call it a gun,” Parrish tells me with a sly smile. We’re in his room, packing up his new tattoo stuff like the ink and the ‘machine’. I called it a ‘tattoo gun’ even though I know that’s not the right term. I can’t seem to stop myself from teasing him though. “It’s for making art not war.” His eyes are hooded, an invitation.
We’ve been in this room five minutes and the tension between us is already making my head spin.
If Justin hadn’t intervened in our relationship, it would’ve been me and Parrish alone forever. There’s a strange sadness to that even as I’m rejoicing at the idea of having Chasm and Maxx in my life. When I’m with Parrish alone though, it seems more like the former.
It hits me that I feel like that when I’m alone with Chasm or Maxx, too. I can imagine being with that one guy and only him. I pull in a sharp breath and Parrish stills, his mouth in a pouty downturn, his attention on my lips. I look up and under my lashes at his sharp face, at the guy I hated so much that I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and I know I’m the only kidnap victim in the history of life who’s glad she was kidnapped.
I have the Banks; I have the Vanguards; I’m not a sibling to Parrish even if we share a mom.
That makes me smile, and I look away suddenly. Parrish isn’t shy about hooking my chin and pulling my face back to his.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, and I have to blink several times to figure out what the expression on his face means. He’s genuinely concerned as to whether I’m okay or not. Guess … that’s what I get for trying to flirt with him and be all coquettish and whatever.
“You genuinely did not get that I was flirting with you just then?” I ask, and he wrecks me completely with a single smirk.
“Oh, I did. I just wanted to see how you’d react when I questioned you about it. As always, the pissy little gamer girl snob who stole the bedroom with the lake view. No wonder I didn’t like you.” I punch him in the arm, and he grabs me, yanking me roughly up against him.
“You push me down stairs, slap me, and now you punch me? You’re going to pay royally for that.” He cups me between the legs with one hand while his other arm curls around my waist. Lucky for that since my knees sag, and I almost fall to the floor. “How about I tease you until you’re apologizing profusely and begging me to make love to you?”
“Get off of me.” I shove at his chest, and he releases me, hands up in surrender.
“As you wish,” he teases as I gape at him and resist the urge to punch him in the back. What a total dick. He picks up the tattoo machine as I glare at him, putting it into a white leather duffel bag.
Laverne came home this morning from another one of her business trips, bringing the entire staff along with her. She wasn’t pleased that we were all still here, and she looked at her son like he was scum on the bottom of her shoe. No part of her believes he’s the Slayer, but she blames him for being framed somehow. Like, I do not understand that woman at all.
Seeing her makes me feel sorry for Paul Vanguard, of all people, and Parrish, too. Laverne isn’t a very nice person. For example, she kicked us all out of her house, told Paul to handle his shit before he makes her look bad, and scowled at me as she stormed out of the kitchen.
Since we were planning on moving back to the ice palace today anyway, it doesn’t matter. Good riddance. Back when I was so excited about this house, after the fire, the boys warned me that I wouldn’t like living in a gothic palace because Laverne was going to be around. They weren’t wrong about that though I’d be remiss if I didn’t give credit to the secret vault with its keypad tucked inside a faux wine bottle.
They crept down the stone stairs, the sense of someone strange at their back. With only fat, dripping tallow candles, they couldn’t see much. The smoke was vile and dark, and the only things in that damp and dreary cellar that were viler and darker were the spiders that hung from webs in all four corners.
I chuckle. Okay, so the wine cellar and the vault weren’t as cool as all that, but the vibe was there.
“What the hell are you doing?” Parrish mumbles, staring at me like I’m crazy. “You’re so fucking weird.” He snaps his hands into the black latex gloves, grabs me by the face and kisses me so hard that my toes curl inside my shoes. I swear that I can feel the needle of that tattoo machine digging into my skin, marking me, branding me with his art.
I want another one. Is it because tattoos are addicting or because he is?
“Tonight,” he begins, his left hand slipping up and under my shirt to rub my bare lower back. His other one rests possessively on my hip. “Tonight, we’ll be back in our rooms.” He purrs this last part at me, lifting up a lock of my lime-green hair and twirling it around his fingers. His eyes are, as usual, a mouthwatering feast. Caramel and honey and black tea in a white mug. I put my hands on his chest as we gaze at each other. “What are you up to, Gamer Girl? Checking to see how much heart I have now?”
“Video game references this early in the morning, huh?” I ask, but I’m tickled pink. My body arches toward him, and the newfound intimacy between us sparks, making me feel grabby and needy toward him. My hands curl in his shirt fabric, and I yank him toward me for a kiss.
Parrish groans against my lips, but even the feel of my mouth and the grind of my hips as I lean into his erection, those aren’t enough to keep him from trying for a snarky comeback.
“What I meant was, I was born without a heart; I was heartless before you came along.” He nips my lower lip, and I swoon. But just a little. Like a tiny, itty-bitty swoon. “You gave me my heart.” Now I shove away from him. Or I try to. He doesn’t let me get anywhere. Parrish pulls me even closer, putting his mouth up against my ear. “Struggling with the truth?”
“You’ve always had a heart, Parrish Vanguard.” The serious nature of my words causes him to pull back just a bit, frowning prettily at me. He doesn’t want to hear this, but it’s true. “You and Chasm and Maxx, you guys have the ultimate bromance; there’s love there.” Parrish curls his lip at me, but he knows it’s true. “The love you have for Tess? From the beginning, you put her feelings first.”
“I—” he starts, but then there’s a loud rap of knuckles against the doorframe. We break apart, but just barely, looking over to see Laverne standing in the doorway. She looks absolutely disgusted to see us in such an intimate position. “Grandmother.” The word is so formal and dry, like Parrish is beyond done with her behavior.
“I see your proposal to Lumen Hearst was nothing but a farce.” Laverne scoffs. “You’re just like your father, you know that?”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing?” Parrish quips back, releasing me and turning around to face his grandma. “He has his faults, but at least he cares.”
This is literally the first time I’ve ever heard Parrish defend Paul; I’m impressed.
“I’d like to speak to Mia for a moment,” Laverne says, and there’s something about her use of the name ‘Mia’ that makes me wonder if I should refuse entirely. I don’t want to make tense family relations any worse, so I step around Parrish.
His hand comes down and grabs my wrist, gloved fingers squeezing hard.
“The pair of you can speak right here. There’s no way in hell that I’m letting you take Dakota away from me.” Parrish maintains his grip, his hazel gaze fixed on Laverne.
She stares at him for a long while, lips pursed tight, and then shakes her head.
“So be it then.” With a tired sigh, she moves into the room, heading for the windows on either side of the bed and yanking apart the heavy drapes. Sunlight floods the shadowed room, and I feel a strange sense of foreboding on such a bright and beautiful late summer day. “You’re aware that if you don’t marry Lumen Hearst, you won’t see a penny of my fortune?” Laverne unlocks one of the old windows and slides it up. They’re beautiful windows, paned with old wavy glass, on a weight and pulley system.
I glance sharply at Parrish as he releases my wrist, grabbing his bag and zipping it up before tossing it over his shoulder.
“If that’s what you came to talk about—to intimidate or threaten Dakota in order to get me to obey—then you’re wasting your time.” Parrish turns to head for the door, nodding with his chin at me to indicate I should follow.
“That’s not what I came here for,” Laverne continues, but we don’t stop walking.
As we’re moving toward the door, a portion of the wall—the fucking wall!—swings forward. Rather than a built-in bookshelf, there’s a hidden door and a man standing inside the wall.
I don’t recognize him at first, dressed in an impeccable suit with his hair slicked back, manner upright and aristocratic. But then I see the smile. I actually see the smile before the eyes, before the stag mask, before the bit of blood leaking through the white of his dress shirt.
It’s Amin Volli.
The man is terrifying. He hasn’t just changed his hair (slicked back black instead of curly mussy brown) or his clothes (tailored men’s couture instead of dorky tweed suit with a yellow bow tie), he’s changed his entire fucking persona. His aura is different.
But that smile—vicious, cutting, deranged—it’s remained the same.
Parrish reaches for my elbow, but then he’s stumbling as Laverne stabs something into his arm and injects it. He’s only on his feet for a few more seconds. Mr. Volli doesn’t just step out of the wall, he runs at me and grabs me around the neck, arm squeezing.
I can’t breathe, my fingers clawing at his expensive suit jacket, popping off a cuff link.
Amin doesn’t stay still as he’s choking me. He drags me back and into the wall with him, pulling the door shut behind us. Then it really is just me and something vile and dark.
My elbow comes back and hits him in the bloody spot that I noticed before he grabbed me, but the pain doesn’t do much more than make him grunt.
“Relax, Miss Prior. You’ll be home soon enough.”
I’m still struggling as he drags me through the dark passage between Parrish’s and Laverne’s bedrooms. No wonder that bitch tried to get me to use this specific guestroom! There’s a secret fucking passage!
Guess we know how Volli was getting around the house, how he was hearing things that should’ve been blocked by the signal jammer, picked up by the bug detector.
Good. Old-fashioned. Sleuthing.
Ugh. Hangovers are the worst. I haven’t had very many in my short sixteen years of life, but the few I’ve gotten have been brutal—this one especially. An ice pick digs at my frontal lobe, and I half-dream Danyella standing over me, waggling a scholarly finger.
“The prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until age twenty-five; consider and reconsider every move you make.”
I startle to a seated position, blinking myself back to reality in my fairy-tale princess bedroom at Justin’s place. For a whole minute there, I can’t remember if I’ve been here all along and never left, or … did I forget coming back here? But I wasn’t going to come back here.
No matter what: I wasn’t going to come back.
Not willingly.
“Good morning, Princess.” Justin is sitting on the edge of my bed, not looking at me. He seems particularly interested in the revolver he’s holding in his hand. He smiles prettily as he looks back at me, and every instinct I have tells me that I need to run. I’m not going to make it out of this house alive. Every cell that I have agrees with that assessment as well.
“How did I get here?” I whisper, trying to keep the fear from my voice. Justin feeds off the discomfort in others. Fear, anger, and pain are good nutrition in his book.
He laughs at me, like I’m stupid.
Then he puts the gun to my forehead.
My hands curl in the blankets as a gentle sea breeze rustles the lace curtains on my windows. I can hear the waves of Lake Washington hitting the shore, the distant sound of a family on a boat, Caroline’s laughter from the garden. I guess the windows aren’t not nailed shut anymore. Good sign? No, very, very bad sign. He doesn’t think a secure tower room is necessary anymore. Because—
Justin isn’t smiling anymore.
“How many times have I warned you?” he asks me, but I can’t speak. My mouth is too dry—not just from fear but from being strangled to the point of passing out. Where is Amin Volli now?
“Warned me?” I ask, trying to decide if playing dumb is even an option. “About what?”
Justin isn’t amused by my antics, not anymore. We both know what he’s talking about. “Good girls get rewarded; bad girls are punished.” I am the latter girl in that statement now. I am a bad girl. I’m going to be punished. Possibly killed.
Killed. I’m going to be killed. I’m so scared. I’ve never been that scared for my own life before. Maybe Maxx was right? Maybe I believed deep down that Justin would never actually kill me. Like, I’m a main character in his story, aren’t I? You can’t kill off main characters.
But I’m not. Tess is the main character. Justin is the main character. Nothing else matters.
“Where should I start, Dakota?” Justin asks with a sigh. He moves the gun from my forehead and rests it in his lap, staring at the floor before he looks back at me. The rage in his face contains depths that rival the deepest underwater caverns in the ocean. No living thing could escape those depths. I’m already drowning in them. “Did I not tell you to choose your pawns wisely? You did the exact opposite of that, using coincidences and crushes to make your choices.”
I crawl out from beneath the covers, throwing my arms around the man who fathered me.
It’ll be the last time I ever hug him.
“Please, Dad. Fly to another country, somewhere without an extradition treaty. Live there peacefully and start over. Just let this revenge stuff go.” I squeeze him even harder, and he lets me. He’s not even tense about it. That’s how little it matters to him. “It’s going to destroy you.”
Justin turns to me, his face just inches from the top of my head.
“Get on your knees and beg for forgiveness.” He’s dead serious. His voice is a cold warning, a threat. My pride is wounded immediately because I know that I’m going to do it. If I don’t, he might shoot me. I think he cares less about getting caught than he does about being disobeyed.
I slide down to the floor, still wearing the same outfit I had on at Laverne’s. I hope Parrish is okay, but I can’t imagine Laverne would allow anything serious to happen to him. What is Tess thinking right now? Will she save me? Will she come here? Or maybe Saffron will break in and rescue me, spirit the princess away from the tower?
“Daddy.” It’s the only word that’ll work on him. If anything will work on him at all. I look up at Justin as I sit dutifully on the rug with my palms on my thighs. “Please forgive me for whatever I’ve done. If you could explain—”
He places the barrel of the gun against my forehead again.
“Is this your idea of begging?” he asks with a sharp laugh. It’s not the only thing sharp about him today: his outfit, his watch, his hair, his shoes. He’s a thirty-six-year-old self-made multimillionaire. He rose from the ashes of his destroyed life like a phoenix, but instead of embracing his second chance at life, he’s squandering it. “I find it sorely lacking, Mia. Where is your sincerity, hmm?” He puts his finger on the trigger as sweat rolls down the sides of my face. “I told you that dogs weren’t allowed at the hunt, but you brought two bitches with you anyway, didn’t you?”
I swallow hard, wondering if it’s best to stay quiet or speak up. I decide on the former. The more Justin talks, the more I can understand which parts of the last few days he’s the angriest with. I don’t want to implicate myself in more things than he knows about.
“Maxim and I had a deal, but he broke it. If you want to blame someone for the events at the hunt, then blame him.” Justin sighs and uses his free hand to push back some of his dark hair. The other hand remains firmly on the weapon. He leans down toward me. “I don’t make empty threats.”
Justin pulls the trigger, and I choke on my fear.
My vision goes white around the edges, and I nearly fall to my side on the floor.
Only … I’m still here. There was no bullet in that gun.
