TAKING OVER TROFIM (Dominion of Brothers series Book 4) (29 page)

He grabbed the router, pulled out a short length of Ethernet cable and hooked it in, to replace one of theirs. It was only a couple gauges thicker than the one he took out and would likely go unnoticed for a few days at least. He was just putting the box back in place when she stepped in, “Well?”

“Your connection doesn’t come into the house here. Do you have a basement?”

“Yes, why?”

“That’s probably where your junction box is. I’ll have to check the connection there.”

“Back out this way, it’s the door on the left before the living room. The light switch is on the wall before you step in. You’ll need a flashlight.”

Harper took the few steps it was from the office to the basement. He glanced over his shoulder to check if she was intending to follow him. But she had stayed in the office.

He flipped the light switch and a battered old-style tin shop light flickered on overhead. It wasn’t much, just enough to see where he was going.

The wooden steps were narrow and barren of carpet or furnishings, giving no hint that the basement was finished as extra living space. When he reached the bottom he saw it was nothing more than storage space. One step up from being a crawl space. One side was little more than a pantry. To the other it opened up into about the same amount of space as the office.

The room was dark, getting little of the light from the top of the stairs. Harper pulled out his flashlight and waved it around. He didn’t make out any other overhead lights. There was a desk to one wall with what at first glance looked like an old style power unit of some kind. He turned the flashlight around. There were only two other items in the room. A shop stool on caster wheels, and on the far wall an old barn door.

Harper stepped closer. Already the chills started to climb over the hairs on his back and neck. The aged wood planks bearing a worn layer of red paint just gave off waves of a macabre story about to be revealed. He stepped closer, then froze. The chills proved him right.

A set of hinged metal shackles were bolted into the upper corners of the old wood. Leather shackles and a hold down strap in the middle were ample enough to hold even a grown sized man down. On the floor lay a set of battery jumper cables with one end already reaching back to the desk and hardwired into the power unit.

He ran a finger over the desk and then the power unit, then rubbed his fingers together, not liking what he was finding. What bothered him most is that the dust on it wasn’t nearly settled enough to have been any more than perhaps a few months since the last time it was put to use.

Harper stepped closer, shining his flashlight on the door. It was certainly old. Its red barn-color paint had long since chipped and worn off, perhaps long before it was pulled from its hinge and brought down here. There were slash marks on the sides. Just faint indentations, where perhaps a cane or other implement hit too hard or missed the intended target if striking with rage. Harper’s blood grew cold. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen a private torture chamber in a person’s home. It wasn’t the first time he saw a sadist disguising his lust for cruelty inside the Bdsm world. But this was one man’s hate and he chose to target his son with it by calling it discipline. It had nothing to do with lifestyles.

Harper heard shuffling upstairs and decided it was time to go, but then something caught his eyes and he turned back to the barn door. He stared at it a moment, almost afraid of it. The shape was evident, but he knew he didn’t want to see what else was there.
Too long he had been doing this, always thinking that he was helping others just as his brothers did. However all Harper had found was the worst of the ugliness in the world that now he couldn’t bear to see the world at all. It ate at him, destroyed every good part inside him.
And as he stared at the jagged scratch on the upper corner just above the shackle, he knew a little more was about to be hardened inside him. And still he raised his flashlight as he leaned in. But what he saw didn’t harden him, it killed what little hope he might have had of there being any humanity left in the world. Least of all from the man upstairs.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

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Trofim waited until the room service cart was further down the hall before letting himself in at the hotel room. He suspected Shay would still be sleeping and he didn’t want to wake him just yet.

Sure enough, dead to the world but not in the bed where he should have been. He found Shay passed out on the couch which had been dragged over to the window looking out on the city, though the drapes had been pulled closed leaving only a sliver of light showing. Which seemed odd. Trofim knelt down beside him, brushed the blond bangs from his face and laid his hand on Shay’s cheek.

Shay’s sleeping body stirred and sucked in a deep breath, then like magic his arms unfolded, found Trofim, and pull him in.

“Why aren’t you in the bed?” Trofim whispered.

Shay let one eye crack open and he pointed out towards the city. “I had to watch over you.”

Trofim felt a warm tearing sigh come over him. He was so damn tired that he was weak. So weak that even the smallest thing from Shay made him feel better. “Thank you.”

“So what’d your brothers have to say about all this?”

Trofim shook his head and he chewed on his lip a moment, “I didn’t tell them.”

“What? Why?” Shay pushed to sit up and Trofim stayed at his feet looking up at him.

“Because it was bad enough when Darko got so mad when he found out we were back together, that I couldn’t bring myself to tell them we might be having some troubles already. We’re so close to the race and I really want us to win, Shay. If I tell them we had to leave the apartment and that your father’s been tracking you, they’ll flip.

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Please. Just for a little while. I can’t lose them too.”

Shay didn’t answer, instead he twisted, reaching over the back of the sofa and grabbed his back pack. He dug around a moment then set it back and held out the collar he had put on Trofim’s neck the night they’d gone to Club Pain to meet with the Dominus.

Shay leaned forward and placed the collar around his neck like before.

“Shhh, rest with me. I can’t make everything go away, but for right now, I can take the control and worry away. You belong to me, so it is my burden to bear. Trust me to keep you safe.” And then Trofim felt the buckle close around his neck and he breathed out everything that worried him and he surrendered his head to Shay’s hands. The soft caress of the surgeon’s hands stroking through his curls felt soothing. Petting away the fear and pain, relaxing him just as Shay said he could.

“Tomorrow, I want you to go stay with Pyotr for a while.

“But?”

“NO buts. You’ll be safe with them, and you’ll have a ride to the boathouse. My father won’t try anything with Pyotr around. Trenton said they’d keep me here for a couple of weeks if need be. And that will give us some time so I can put an end to this.”

Trofim nodded, but struggled to not suck all the fretting back inside him.

“Shhh—” Shay hushed Trofim’s mind, “Come up here and lay with me so I can make love to you.”

Trofim crawled up as told, laying down on his side and spooned into Shay’s arms. A firm hand pushed his sweatpants down past his bum and Trofim felt the hard cock slide against his ass until nestled between his ass cheeks. Shay’s arms coiled around him and pulled Trofim further back into a near crushing embrace. Then he let out a long heavy sigh against Trofim’s neck that said he was going to go to sleep now.

“I thought you wanted to make love to me?”

“Mmmm—” Shay hummed against his head, “I already am.” Shay purred and snuggled in deeper against him.

It was just one more thing that this man did to make him feel loved.

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CHAPTER TWENTY

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He was exhausted. For the last two weeks he had not only been working his own rotation but filling in a good half of the shifts to cover for another doctor who was out sick. The added hours and the strain of keeping Trofim safe was taking a toll on him.

Shay was rubbing at his eyes when he stepped off the elevator to the garage floor for his car when he walked right into two large men. He stumbled back mumbling his pardons with every intention of moving past them when something struck him clear across the jaw and sent him down to the ground.

“What the—?” But someone was quickly grabbing his ankles and dragging him away from the elevator. They had him around the corner before he managed to kick one of the men and get back to his feet only to have a right hook catch him in the gut followed with another hook to his mouth.

Shay tried to shake the stars from his eyes and gain some focus just as one of them grabbed him up by the shirt and slammed him back into the wall while the other stood behind the first with a sinister grin on his face.

“Your father wants you to call him.” One said, then abruptly released Shay and walked away.

Shay licked over his lip tasting a good bit of copper. He glanced up at one corner then another finding no cameras watching the small alcove of space next to the utility room. The damn goons were getting smarter; this time staying out of sight of the security cameras.

Shay stepped out, watching them as they drove by in a white Escalade. The one in the passenger seat shot him a condescending grin as Shay swiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand.

He waited until they were well out of sight then walked up the ramp toward his car but never stopped, just checking to see if it looked touched or not. He looked out over the wall of the garage to the street below and to the garage across the way. Several cars working their way up and then down. One could easily be them, just waiting for him to get in his car so they could follow him.

But as far as Shay knew, his father didn’t know what kind of car he was driving now, so to be sure he didn’t give it away he went right past the Cadillac Deville. And made a decoy trip down the stairs and out onto 82
^nd
Rd. He hovered on the curb, faking a phone call and watching the street traffic drive by. If they were watching he didn’t want them to blink and miss him while he crossed the street and then walked into the Pavilion.

Once inside Shay used the crossover tunnel to return back to the hospital and made his way back to the garage. A family of five was just getting into a van ahead of him so he rushed to his car started it up and pulled out right behind them.

He was beyond exhausted now. Dawn was already discoloring the sky into a grayish-blue with an under belly of yellow, against wisps of white clouds and smog.

He wiped at his face to stay alert as he drove out in the wrong direction of the city; well past Rockaway, before turning north and catching the freeway back in, by the time he turned off for Astoria he was risking nodding out. He felt the bob in his head, the fractured focus of blanking out.
No, you have to make it to Trofim’s home. Stay awake, damn you.
The thoughts argued in his mind, but he wasn’t winning.

Ahead he spotted the coffee shop Trofim had already gotten him hooked on, so he pulled in to get a cup, hoping it would see him home safely. Shay parked, but then sat there, and just closed his eyes—

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Pavle glanced at his watch then at the coffee shop ahead, he was already running late, but trying to transition the first day in his shift switch without coffee and a pastry was a madness he didn’t care to explore. Not with how the last few days had gone.

Trofim was now taking up shelter at the house, which didn’t bother him or Pyotr in the least, there was plenty of room, but his little brother wasn’t saying why and that part
did
have him on edge. And then adding to it was Shay keeping a low profile, coming over so seldom was taking its toll on Trofim. It was as if their world had gone underground to take shelter when there had been no call for an approaching storm. Though if he were given three guess he’d bet all his money that he’d get it right on the first guess.

Nevertheless it was 7:23 am and damned if he was going to start his day-shift week without coffee. The day when Shay finished his internship couldn’t come soon enough
. The hospital was short staffed as usual, but being short two surgeons was everyone’s burden, including his. The only way to cover it was to roll everyone around, and that made everyone unhappy two weeks out of the month.
Shay was perfect to set on the late night shift. He handled patients well and was top notch in the ER when decisions were critical. It also came with a plus where as he could kick Trofim out of bed in the mornings in time for practice—

Pavle’s thoughts died off when he pulled in next to the Deville parked in front of the coffee shop with Shay sound asleep behind the wheel.

He hopped out, his thumb thoughtlessly clicking the remote to lock his own car as he ran around the other side to where Shay was. Grateful to find it unlocked. “Shay!”

Shay’s head lobbed over to one side before his eyes popped open with a startled expression, “No, I’m good. Just stopping for coffee.” He stammered, but his eyes whirled in his head blindly.

Pavle snapped his fingers in front of Shay’s face then grasped his chin and brought him around to face him, “Shay! Look at me.” Pavle pulled the pen light still clipped in Shay’s lab coat, breast pocket and used it to test the dilation of Shay’s eyes, as well as inspect the swelling yellow and red bruise developing around his left eye with another to match forming on his lip and on his jawline. “Hey. Look at my hand, how many fingers am I holding up?” Pavle held three fingers up about twelve inches from Shay’s face.