Wrong (39 page)

chapter eighteen

The reality of how long we’d been gone sunk in as the elevator beeped down from the penthouse.  Guilt hit me.  We hadn’t even tried to be timely.  Abram had spent a solid few minutes kneeling at the end of the couch, admiring my glistening breasts like his favorite piece of artwork.  He’d kissed my lips as he wiped my body clean and cursed about how gorgeous I was as he helped me get dressed.

He didn’t come back to Earth till his phone buzzed on the table.  I realized it had been doing so for awhile but now it kept going, someone incessantly calling.  “Nate. We have to go,” Abram muttered when he looked at the screen.  And though he was pensive in the elevator, he still held my waist, sliding his thumb into the slit under my bust, stroking the underside of my breast.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of him the entire ride down, for some reason struck with a fresh wave of awe for his beauty.  Maybe he felt it, because he flashed me a little smile before the doors opened.

But I knew something was off the second we stepped out because Abram stiffened and walked in front of me, shielding my body with his.  The hall was darker than we’d left it, and so eerily quiet it felt like the entire hotel might be empty.

“How long were we upstairs for?” My question was a whisper.

He looked down at his phone.  “Over an hour,” he said.  I could tell he couldn’t believe himself.  I could hardly believe it either.  It had felt as if we’d been upstairs for twenty minutes at most.

“Abram, I’m sorry – ”

“Don’t.”  He stopped me in the still darkness.  His voice was stern and his body rigid, but his touch was tender on my cheek.  “No matter what happens, you need to know that none of it is ever your fault.”  I heard footsteps behind us and as Abram’s gaze flicked past my shoulder, he held me tight, his voice hasty when he spoke.  “Just go back to your room okay, Isla? I’ll check on you in a bit, just turn around right now and go– ”

“
Fucking knew it!”
I heard Nate’s dog-like growl two seconds before I felt him yanking my wrist.

“Nate!” Abram charged but stopped in his tracks just as I noticed it too – the streams of bright red running down Nate’s face.  I gasped at the wide-open gash on his left temple, still trickling blood.

“What? What do you want to say to me right now? Besides the fact that you were upstairs
fucking
her while I was down here realizing that those assholes aren’t here for us, they were here for Toro and they’ve been giving his men cues about us
all fucking night.
”  Nate shoved a blood-covered phone into Abram’s hands.  “Jesse sent them to fucking bring us to him so he could take his time killing us – just like he did to Gavin,” he snarled before dragging me down the hall like a speed demon, my feet barely able to keep up.

“Nate, stop!”

“You wanna act like this is a game, little girl? Let me show you how fun it is,” Nate hissed, taking me to the end of the hall and kicking open the door to reveal a scene that made my knees give out.

Dark puddles pooled at the feet of the two men Nate and Abram had sat with at that VIP table.  Their faces were hardly recognizable.  Crisp and polished before, they were now slumped over, bound to chairs with their eyes so swollen shut they looked like fleshy golf balls.  Blood wept from the head of one and trickled out the mouth of the other.  My hand covered my mouth so hard I nearly smothered myself.  Nate sneered as I had to hold onto him for balance, watching one of Abram’s men tie up a third person.  He stepped away to reveal the petite woman whom I’d been so furiously jealous of an hour ago.  She was unconscious now.  Her mascara ran down her cheeks, her lip busted so wide open I felt sick to my stomach.

“
Fucking psycho
,” I shoved Nate, flying into a rage.  He absorbed every one of my blows until Abram had me held back.

“Isla, stop.  You have no idea what’s going on right now!” he said viciously.

“Look at what he did to her!” I fought Abram’s grip when I saw the fingerprints starting to bruise around her neck.  For some reason, I could stomach the men’s injuries but I couldn’t hers.  Barefoot now, she was under five feet.  Her bouffant undone, she looked like a little girl.  “Look at what he did to her! How could you fucking
defend
this, Abram?”

“You don’t know who we’re dealing with, Isla.”

“She’s half my size!”

“I’m glad you noticed but not every person who kills looks like me!” Abram hissed with a fury that pierced my stomach.  Nate cursed under his breath.

“Get her to her fucking room,” he finally said before stepping toward the more conscious man of the two.  I watched him spit out blood and grin.

“Fresh collateral.”  The words were lazy and muffled from his swollen lips.  “I’ll let Jesse know.”

I had no idea what he meant but suddenly Abram released me and went to him.

“So much more fun you can have with a pretty gi – ”

Blood spattered wet on the wall.  I stumbled back, in shock as Abram stood in front of the man, wiping off the gun he’d whipped him unconscious with.  He’d had a gun this entire time.  Of course he had.  How hadn’t I known? I watched in heart-wrenched terror as Abram simply stood there for a moment, as if admiring his handiwork – a collapsed cheekbone, smashed in by the barrel of his pistol.  As he then ambled away, the petite girl stirred, her small, bloodied arm falling off her lap into his path.

My stomach turned as Abram flung it out of his way like trash.

With that, I was gone – out the door and ready to leave the Monarch.  Forever.  I had been so damned blind, so foolish to believe that Abram was good despite what I’d seen him do that one night.  I was a idiot to think that he wasn’t just a brutal, cold-blooded murderer – one who wouldn’t so much as blink twice at the notion of hitting a woman.  And a woman he’d been affectionate with just an hour ago.

The floor was spinning.  My whole world was as I made my dizzy way to the elevator, my skin cold, disgust and panic rising in my throat, threatening to suffocate me.  I had slept with this remorseless monster.  I had let him into the parts of my life that I told no one about.  My trust was elusive and yet I’d just handed it over to him. 
Shame on you
, I berated myself as I got into the elevator, jabbing my finger at the buttons and shaking violently the whole way down.

Once I was out, I walked on shaky legs to the exit, trying to blend in by furiously wiping at the mascara that streamed down my face.  I tried to disappear among the regular guests, so full of smiles and laughter, completely oblivious to what took place on the highest floors of the hotel.  But I gasped when I peered over my shoulder to see Nate rigid, stalking me six guests back.  My heart hammered as I turned sharply into the women’s bathroom, locking myself inside a stall.  I must’ve stayed there for thirty minutes.  A couple women giggled, making jokes on their ways out.  I listened for their voices when they got back out into the lobby – for the sound of squealing or gasping or any sort of reaction that would indicate that Nate or Abram was there.  But there was none, so I finally let myself leave.

I’d barely pushed open the door when Abram grabbed me.

chapter nineteen

“There are some things about me that you need to understand.”

I sat at the end of his bed, swaying in fear and disbelief as I watched him lock the door.  He had said nothing the entire way up to the penthouse, his hand on my mouth until we got into the elevator – the same one he’d had me pushed up against, his hand in my skirt and his fingers inside me.  That was maybe two hours ago – two hours but a thousand worlds ago, when I’d been angry with Abram for touching another girl.  The one who now bled downstairs, duct tape strapping her doll-like ankles to the legs of her chair.

I kept blinking hard to wake up but it was no nightmare.  I couldn’t believe what was going on.  Nor could I think of anything Abram could say to justify the side of him I’d seen downstairs.  But then he started with two names that put a chokehold on my attention.

“You lost Elle last year.  I lost someone by the name of Gavin Theroux.”

What the fuck
.

I knew Gavin Theroux.  Not personally, but I admired him as every teacher in New York did.  The most beautiful school libraries in the city were built by him.  He funded enormous scholarships and my students wrote thank you cards to him every year.  I’d helped them spell his last name.  I was no longer teaching by the time he died but I had coworkers mention it in emails, about the tragedy and how the Theroux family chose to hold a private funeral but thanked the hundreds of teachers and school board officials who wanted to attend.  They disclosed few details of his mysterious death, which was unlike them.  They were usually open with the public, down-to-Earth and famously honest.  Despite having some of the oldest money in Manhattan, Gavin and his parents worked in education – he at a public high school, his parents at city universities.

I knew all about Gavin Theroux, and I knew he was an only child.  I looked to Abram accusingly.  “I thought you said you lost your brother.”

“I have no biological siblings.  My father was the driver to the Theroux family.  They let me stay at their townhouse while my parents worked.  I grew up with Gavin and his cousin, Nate.”

I swallowed as Abram sat on the chest at the foot of his bed.  I pulled my hand away when he reached for it.  I could feel myself thawing but I didn’t want to.  “You said he didn’t pass.  What did you mean?”

Abram leaned forward, torment shadowing his face.  “That he was kidnapped and tortured for three days before Jesse Toro slit his throat.”

A chill cased my whole body.  “What are you talking about,” I breathed.  “Gavin Theroux was a teacher, he was a good man, he had nothing to do with – ”

“I know.”  Abram shut me up with a severe look.  “He was a teacher and the best man I knew, and he had nothing to do with this world but he had everything to do with me.  That was Gavin’s only downfall.  Me.  I had something the Toro Family wanted and I wouldn’t give it up.”

“What was it?”

“My business.  The gambling ring.  I started it before opening the Monarch, hosted nights at other hotels.  But the security wasn’t good enough at other spots.  I had Dante Toro out for me because I wouldn’t give him a cut of my profits, wouldn’t accept his offer to become partners.  He tried starting his own ring but I still had the biggest high rollers and the best fighters.  I had the better business and he hated it.”

I blinked hard.  “He killed Gavin because he wanted your business?” I didn’t understand.  Torturing and killing an innocent man out of envy for his friend’s business didn’t seem like punishment that fit the crime.

Abram’s back was rigid as he stared down at his folded hands.  “No.  I killed his men first.”

Cold dread twisted inside me.  “Why?”

“They came for me after one of our biggest nights.”  I could see Abram reliving it all, the memories dimming his eyes.  “Dante told his men, his friends, anyone who worked for them that my business was off limits.  No stepping foot in the Monarch, no matter how big the pot, no matter who was fighting.  But Dante’s other son, Stefan – maybe he got in an argument with his fiancée, but she came with two friends to the Monarch on our biggest fight night to date.  Had the time of her life, stayed till closing, wound up cheating on Stefan.  Couple high school kids found her dead in the street the next morning and around the same time, Toro sent four men to kill me.”  His forearms flexed as he closed his palm around his fist.  My eyes traveled across every muscle and ridge on his tensed body.

“What did you do them?”

Abram turned to me with a dark look and suddenly I didn’t need his answer.  I wasn’t sure why I’d even asked.  He was here, alive, and I’d already seen what he could to do people.  “So for that they killed Gavin,” I murmured.

He nodded.  “They couldn’t get me so they went after the one person I loved and filmed every second of pain they inflicted on him.  For me to see.”  His blue eyes burned into mine, soaking in the pure horror and pain I felt for him.  “So in case you’re wondering how I could possibly hurt people the way I do, it’s because Jesse Toro kidnapped the only person I knew with only love and kindness in his heart, and he mutilated him for three days straight, before having him bleed out on a bathroom floor.”

I shivered through my angry, mournful tears.  “I’m so sorry,” I cried, my heart aching for Abram.  For Gavin and the Theroux family.  They were too purely good.  They didn’t deserve to know this kind of misery and ugliness.

“Jesse Toro’s been on the run since Gavin died.  Dante sold him out to me the next day.  When I had a gun in his mouth.”  Abram’s fists shook as he muttered the name. 
Jesse Toro.
  “He didn’t even come back when Dante got sick.  He knew he’d stand no chance in the States.  I’d have him within days.  But overseas, he manages to stay a half step ahead all the time.  I’ve tracked him for a year but I’m done now.  I’m going to have him come to me.”

“How?”

“By killing his brother.”

My hands covered my mouth as Abram explained it.  The man I’d seen in the alley was Stefan Toro.  He was the prince of the Toro Family – the spoiled party boy who spent his nights clubbing, drinking, posting to Instagram.  But he had blood on his hands, too.  He and his friends had been the ones to swing a pipe at Gavin’s head and throw him into their car.  He had played an important role in the murder and for that reason, Abram didn’t hesitate to use him as human bait.  Stefan’s death would lure out Jesse Toro from hiding.  Dante was on life support for heart and liver failure, making Jesse the unofficial first in line.  His brother, a Toro, had been murdered.  He was expected to thoroughly even the score, no matter the cost.

Now, it was just a matter of who would kill who first.

“The people downstairs had every intention of taking me and Nate tonight.  They were here to bring us to Jesse, so we could spend our last days in the same warehouse that Gavin did.”

I gripped the edge of the bed, feeling as if the room were whipping in circles around me.  “Fresh collateral…” I slowly realized what the man downstairs referred to.

“Gavin was my only collateral before.”

My fingers curled around my neck, my pulse flaring under my palm.  The people downstairs had assumed I was someone close to Abram.  Someone he might love the way he did Gavin.  Suddenly, my heart was ramming into my chest, slamming against my ribs as if trying to get out.  “So then,” I could hardly speak, “if they can’t get you again, they’ll come after me?”

Abram stood before me now, holding my face in his strong hands.  “I would never let it happen, Isla.  Jesse Toro will never find out about you.  Nate is taking care of the three downstairs.  They won’t be giving him any information.”

His words relieved me but I was still shaking.  “What now, Abram?” My desperate whisper hung in the air.  He knelt at my feet and pulled my face close to his, pressing a kiss to my forehead, right by my scar.

“I’m sorry, Isla,” he murmured softly.  “Everything’s going to change again.”