Chapter Thirty One
Thefrontdoorbuzzed, and I hopped out of bed, wincing as my sated state made me forget all about my battered and bruised body. Since my clothes were still scattered around the kitchen, I grabbed Jake’s discarded shirt and stole a pair of clean boxers from his drawers.
“Jake?” I called to him through the closed bathroom door. I could hear the shower running, so I cracked the door open, and steam billowed out from the room as I spoke again. “Jake, the pizza’s here.”
“Ah, okay, I’ll be out in a sec.”
I paused, watching Jake rub soap up and down his chiselled abs like a creep. Biting my lip, I twirled toward the bedroom door to pay the pizza guy with a spring in my step. I wasn’t exactly bouncing down the hall in my bare feet, but I was very close to it.
I reached over the couch and grabbed my purse, counting out twenty dollars and a tip for the delivery guy.
I opened the door, and instantly, my smile dropped. Two huge men stood in the entryway, decked in black, with balaclavas over their faces. One reached out as I scrambled backwards, dropping the cash as I ran.
Fuck. This had to be some sort of contingency plan put in place by my dad. The if anything happens to me, then the papers are leaked to the media sort of bullshit. Growing up, my dad was insanely clever, even while drunk; even more so when drunk. How had I not expected this from him?
I sprinted down the short hallway in the direction of my bag. I just needed to get to my gun so I could protect Jake. One guy dove for me, slide tackling me to the ground with a thud, my head bouncing off the floor with a sickening clunk. My eyes blurred and the urge to vomit was strong as my ribs screamed at the impact of the wooden floorboards.
I flailed my arms and legs like a baby deer on ice as I tried to skate away from my attacker.
I kicked out, my heel landing on his jaw with a grunt, and I scrambled to my feet. I could feel the warm trickle of blood slide from my eyebrow, but I didn’t have time to wipe it away. The second attacker jumped over his friend cradling his jaw, with the agility of a gazelle.
Fucking Alex making me watch too many nature shows.
“Stefany, did you–”
Jake came out of his bedroom dressed in grey sweatpants and nothing else. My eyes darted to him from along the hall, about to scream for him to run just as his eyes widened in shock. A burst of pain erupted across the back of my head, and I fell to my knees.
One of the two balaclava-clad men, I was unsure which until he walked in front of me massaging his jaw, backhanded me across my cheek. I winced as I dragged my eyes upwards just in time to see the butt of a gun come barrelling toward my head and connected with my temple.
I grimaced as a sharp pain coming from the back of my head pulsated. I tried to move my arm to feel along the injury or just try to rub the ache away, but they didn’t move.
I groaned, pulling on cuffs tightly binding my wrists behind my back as a low boiling rage started to bubble in my stomach when I recognised there was no way in hell I’d be getting out of these without help.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep, calming breath, then another, and tried to replay the previous hours or so before I woke up here. I opened my eyes, and the room slowly came into delayed focus. Fear arrived in waves as I remembered seeing Jake leave his bedroom, eyes wide in shock before I was smacked in the back of the head, rendered unconscious.
Jake.
I panicked, twisting in my binds again as my skin scraped against the rigid edges of the handcuffs, chafing my wrists. If they had me, would they have taken Jake as collateral? Who even were they? I worked so damn hard to keep my identity hidden when I was on an assignment, and I had always done a fucking grade-A job of it.
Until Jake.
I shook and thrashed my body to break the wooden chair secured to my confines. My head pounded and my shoulders stung at being held back at such an odd angle, but still, I tugged and moved pointlessly, trying anything to get out of my ties.
“Oh, sweet baby, you should stop doing that,” a soft female voice I thought I recognised said from a corner of the room. It was too dim to make out who else was here with me in my cell, because let’s call a spade a spade; I was in a cell like a fucking prisoner.
“Who the fuck are you? What the fuck do you want?” I snarled in the direction of the voice, my little ball of rage stoked into burning.
“Is that how your father raised you? To have the mouth of a dirty sailor?”
The clicking of heels indicated the woman was moving toward me, the solo lamp above my head casting a circle of light around me and setting the rest of the room in shadows. So when she stepped into my spotlight, her long toned legs were revealed first before moving up the full length of her body, advancing further into the light like some stupid dramatic reveal in a movie.
“Mom?” I whispered, my voice caught in my throat as I sat looking straight up at the woman who gave birth to me, the woman I hadn’t seen in twenty-two years. She looked incredible; clearly, leaving her young family behind had agreed with her.
She was tall, much taller than Chris or me, and looked like she could have been a model with her long limbs, perfectly straight dark black hair, and bright green eyes, the one trait she had evidently not passed to her daughters.
She smiled broadly and clasped her hands in front of her pristine white bodycon dress, which stopped just above her knees.
“Stefany, my beautiful girl,” she cooed. Her smile extended bigger and seemed like it wouldn’t fit on her face much longer, it was that huge. My heart felt like it was being crushed and expanding at the same time until she said, “I’ve missed you, baby.”
Missed me? Fucking missed me?
The fireball inside swelled to inferno levels, and it must have been written all over my face as Mom’s smile dropped slightly.
“You missed me?” I hissed. “Fucking missed me? You haven’t tried to reach out for over twenty years, Mom, so how the fuck could you miss me? You don’t even know me.” I watched as she opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water, her hands falling to her sides.
“I couldn’t visit, Stefany. I was scared,” she said in a small voice, her eyes dropping to the floor before she took a step toward me. “Your father wasn’t a nice man, darling. I had to get to somewhere safe before I could even think about taking my children with me.”
“Did you know what Dad used to do after you left?” I asked, unable to keep the bitterness out of my tone. She had feared my dad, so she ran but didn’t stop to think that maybe the abuse would move on to her young children?
“I can only imagine, and I will try to make up for that for the rest of my life.” She dropped to her knees in front of me and placed her hands on my legs, stroking her manicured thumbs over my bare skin that was caked in something dark and dirty looking. Maybe mud from when they moved me, or perhaps my blood. “But I’m going to keep you safe now. I couldn’t keep Ronan safe, but I can keep you, Christina, and little Nathaniel safe.”
“How do you know about Chris’s son?”
“I kept an eye on you all from afar. Or at least I could until Christina disappeared. I assume that was your doing?”
I nodded, the movement sending a shooting hot pain across my shoulder blades. I cringed and tilted my head back, hoping to relieve some of the pressure.
The door to my room opened, and a man walked in, the light behind him shrouding him in darkness. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see his muscular build from under a suit. He locked the door and remained in the shadows, listening.
“You had me abducted and tied up,” I stated more than asked as I looked over her head to where I now knew the door was. Mom reached up and brushed my hair behind my ear so freely, like she had done that daily and hadn’t been gone for over two decades. I bit my lip, hoping she wouldn’t see me flinch.
With a slight nod, she replied, “I had to, honey. I didn’t know if your father would have turned you against me, and I couldn’t risk you running to him, telling him I reached out.” She dropped her head, and a tear landed on my leg. “I just want to be a family again. I’ve already lost my son. I can’t lose my daughters.”
“You know about Ronan?” I asked hesitantly as it dawned on me this was the second time she mentioned him like he was past tense. Surely, she wouldn’t want me if she knew I was the reason behind that.
“I wish your father kept a better eye on who you were friends with. If you never knew the Jones boys, he’d still be here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That little thug you hang about with, Stefany,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “Alex’s brother, William. I know he was behind his death.”
What the fuck?
“Will didn’t kill Ronan,” I said, confused, straightening up against the back of the chair. The wood creaked, and the legs swayed with my movements. Mom gave me a patronising, tight-lipped smile and sighed.
“Oh, honey, I get it.” Her voice was light and full of sympathy that didn’t sound genuine. “You hold a level of loyalty to that family, but they are dangerous. They are cold-blooded killers, and William took away your brother. My people saw him discard my son’s lifeless body.”
I laughed a dry, humourless laugh. There was no way I was letting her think her precious son was taken away from her by someone else. I owned that shit. That kill was mine.
“He never killed him, Mom,” I said in a slow, calculating tone, my lips curled up at the sides with each word as I said clearly, “I. Did.”
Mom’s hands dropped from my knees like she’d been scolded. Her eyes flared with something akin to hatred, but it was masked as quickly as it appeared. I looked at her flawless face and noticed she lacked any lines on her skin. No laughter lines or frown lines, and even her eyes were empty of emotion, like she was a robot.
“Why?” she breathed out, leaning away.
“Because he was a disgusting, evil predator, and he deserved to die,” I sneered, baring my teeth as I looked into eyes the exact same colour and shape as Ronan’s.
Mom stood, releasing a shaky breath, and brought her hand to the tip of her nose, deep in thought. She reared her hand back and crashed it across my face, the sound echoing around the desolate room.
“You bitch,” she seethed, rubbing the palm of her hand with the other one as she stared down at me, the remorseful, loving mother who wanted to make things right, suddenly long gone. She straightened her dress and flicked her glossy black hair down her back. Loudly, she called to the man behind her. “Turn on the light now.”
Four excruciatingly bright fluorescent lights flicked on, causing my eyes to sting. They had gotten used to the dim bulb that was hanging above me, so my eyes forced themselves shut, needing time to slowly adjust. I opened them, fluttering them until they focused on the man now standing just behind my mom.
“I believe you know Jacob, darling.”
My heart stopped.
My breathing stopped.
The whole fucking world stopped.
The man I had been worried about mere moments ago was standing untouched beside my mother, his face stoic and his big blue eyes cold and unyielding in a way I’d never seen before.
Mom’s lips curled into a cruel smile as she turned and slowly circled Jake, running her hand along his back as she stepped behind him, moving it across the shoulder and down his arm that bore the lion tattoo for his deceased brother. I may have only seen it twice, but it was ingrained into my brain just as permanently as the ink was onto his skin.
Bile rose to my throat as I watched her link her hand with his, pulling it up to her lips and kissing the tips of this thumb, index, and ring finger before running her tongue down his middle finger, then sucking it between her lips, her gaze seductive and trained on him. She released his finger and moaned, the noise making my stomach sour.
I kept my eyes on them, my chin high, and my teeth gritted together, unable or unwilling to look away. My veins pulsed with a pain so caustic my whole body ached, no longer alone in discomfort from the head wound or the tightness in my arms at being held.
“You always did have a thing for the tall, muscular men, didn’t you, Stefany?” my mom asked as she continued to grope Jake in front of me, running her long fingers over the front of his shirt and down his covered abs. “First, Mac, then Jake. Alex must be so disappointed that you never showed any interest in him. Following you around like a lost puppy,” she mocked, sticking her bottom lip out in a pout. “The most you could have done was open your legs for him every once in a while. A loyal soldier like that deserves a taste of his queen.”
Jake didn’t flinch at the mention of my past with Mac, or the idea of me with Alex, even though that was as likely as diamond-shitting unicorns coming into the room to save me. I also didn’t fail to notice his lack of confusion at the mention of Alex. Of course, he would have known who Matt really was if he was working with my mom this whole time.
And then another stomach dropping realisation crashed into me.
Jake played me.
Jake was my assignment, but I was also his.
Tears threatened to fill my eyes, but I bit the inside of my cheek until I drew blood. I was not ever crying in front of that bastard again. The same bastard that held me days ago as my fractured heart sobbed for my past and somehow started to mend at his touch. The same bastard I had started to fall for.
I was such a fucking idiot.
“What do you want?” I asked drily, forcing my expression to stay unreadable.
“I want my grandson,” she replied plainly, like it was the simplest request in the world. “You took away my only heir, but I guess Christina provided me with a spare. Purer than I could have ever imagined.”
My mouth dropped open, unable to hide the shock that our mother knew who Nathan’s biological father was. She gave a wry chuckle, stepped away from Jake, and walked to stand before me. She bent down so her lips were at my ear, and I could see over her shoulder as Jake watched us both intently.
“Obviously, I know who sired her child, Stefany,” she whispered, the overpowering smell of her perfume saturating the air around me. “I told you, I kept an eye on you. All of you. Who do you think gave Ronan a little nudge? He was so terrified and creeped out that he didn’t love his sister like a sister, but he knew the importance of keeping our bloodline pure. So tell me, where is she?”
I lurched my head to the side, my temple cracking into her perfectly put-together face, and she released a shriek. I thrashed in my chair, trying to get to her again, all the while annoyed at myself for letting her provoke me.
My mom cupped her cheek in her hand, circling her jaw and trying to soothe the twinge in the side of her face. She looked at Jake and nodded.
He took two strides forward onto the mat where my chair had been positioned and punched a fist into my bruised ribs.
The crack of bone resonated in the room, and I whimpered, panting frantically as the burn of punishing damage replaced the memory of the light touches he’d stroked down my side when he learnt of my injury. I sucked my lips between my teeth and bore down, ready for the next blow.
It came just as expected, with just as much force to my other side. I inhaled and exhaled deeply through my nose, the breaths causing my head to spin. I scrunched my eyes shut tight, refusing to let myself see Jake, my Jake, pull back his fist again.
I braced myself again, praying he wouldn’t hit the now-broken side again. A feather-light brush of a thumb pad against my cheek had me pausing, such a soft glide that surely never happened as he gripped my hair at the base of my skull.
“Are you going to answer her?” he asked in a voice that didn’t sound like his own. But then again, did I truly know what his voice sounded like at all? Was his usual deep timbre that made my skin spark and my heart beat faster all a lie?
I opened my eyes and looked up at him. Staring back at me was a man I did not know. There was no kindness or compassion behind his eyes, not even the bossy CEO could be seen in the depths of whoever stood before me.
“Fuck you,” I growled, and he sighed. Straightening, he walked behind me, and the excruciating pain in the back of my head amplified as he hit me in the same spot as before, and darkness took me again.