Unorthodox (Sick Love Book 1) Page 19

“No.” There’s a pause, then he says, “Be careful, Bennett. I’d hate for you to get our girl killed.”

  Our girl.

  I know what he isn’t saying, too. If I fuck this up, it’s Ollie’s life that’s on the line.

  Motherfucker.

  I keep my head against the door, not speaking.

  “Make sure she looks her best next weekend,” the man says, and I feel my finger twitching on the trigger of my gun. If he knew what I did to her last night. How she looked her best on the fucking floor beneath me… My stomach twists into knots. If he knew, I might never see Ollie again. “I understand you’re a little…rough.” He laughs, and the sound grates on my nerves. “Bruises are fine. Marks from whips. But things like broken bones, permanent disfigurement? Don’t cross any lines, Max.”

  I still don’t speak. I don’t cross lines. I live on the other side of them. But I know this man does too.

  And I know who’s on the receiving end of his lines.

  “One more thing,” he says in the wake of my silence. “We won’t be meeting in Mexico. Too risky. The DEA works too closely with our neighbors to the south to make that worth the trip, not to mention the…unrest here.”

  I grit my teeth as I ask, “Then where the fuck—"

  “St. Petersburg. Russia. You’ll want to stay a while. Bring a companion.” A pause. “Or buy one.” I can practically see the man shrugging. “It won’t be safe for you to stay where you are now after the transaction is complete. Not for a while yet.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I have no plans to get on a flight to fucking Russia without proof of what this bastard is saying. Proof that Ollie will be on that flight too.

  Next to my brother’s safe return, the Sinaloa were my main concern in breaking any arrangement with this man. I know the Russians can be far more ruthless, but I saw known members of the cartel when I met with Elliot. I’ve yet to see any Bratva thugs.

  “Let’s just say I’m close to the family,” the man says softly. “But not close enough to save Christopher from a life in prison.”

  I think of the burns on Addison’s body. The scars on her hip. Her implants.

  Christopher London deserves to rot in jail. Then again, so do I. It’s not my place to put him there or keep him out. But if this man is telling the truth, St. Petersburg might not be so bad. I have contacts there from my father’s business dealings. If worst came to worst, Oliver and I can go back to South Africa on a flight from Russia. Harder to track that way.

  But I’m not folding all of my cards for him. I won’t have him make me beg. “I’ll think about it.” Before Addison’s buyer can say another word, I end the call. I dress in black jogging pants, a black shirt. When I’m ready and have my gun in hand, I open the door, and find Evora standing right where I left her.

  Her eyes widen and she opens her mouth to speak.

  I beat her to it. “I’m going for a run. Don’t leave this room.” I walk past her, heading to the hallway, down the stairs, toward Addison’s room. I want to know if she knows anything about her brother being a goddamn narc.

  After that, I meant what I told Evora.

  I need to run.

  I need to get the image of Dante’s blood on that forest floor out of my head.

  His words to me. “Tell him it gets better.”

  Ollie’s soft whimpers when my father took a baseball bat to his head for sneaking out of his room in the night to get a cup of water after we’d been confined to our room for two days for some minor infraction.

  I need to stop thinking about how Ollie had one good year. One good fucking year with me and Mom, then, because of a goddamn speech therapy appointment when he stayed home from school, his life got worse.

  I need to stop thinking about him.

  I need to stop thinking about Dante.

  To stop thinking about what he took from her.

  About how good it was to have her underneath me last night.

  I need to stop fucking thinking.

  Halfway to Addison’s room, as I walk past my office, I hear soft footsteps behind me and turn, finger on the trigger of my gun.

  Mamie is standing in front of me, the dim hallway lights—motion activated—illuminating the soft lines of her face, and the way her blue eyes are…swollen. Red. I glance at her right hand, see a tissue balled tight in her fist.

  Keeping the gun by my side, I force myself to wait for her to speak even though I don’t really want to know what’s wrong.

  Addison fucking told her.

  “Dante,” Mamie says, her voice thick with emotion.

  I don’t want to think about Dante. “Is Addison being guarded?”

  She flinches at my cold tone and I start to turn around, headed to my destination, when Mamie grabs my arm.

  She fucking knows better.

  I shrug out of her grip and take a step back, my eyes narrowed. “What the fuck—”

  “You shot him, Max?” she asks, stepping closer, her eyes shining as she stares up at me. “You actually shot him in the head?”

  “Would you have rather I cut him into pieces, Mamie?” I close the space between us. “Let the birds fucking finish him?” I roll my eyes at the look of horror on her face, as if she ever expected anything better from me. “Did you want him to suffer, hmm? Is that it?”

  She shakes her head, her lips trembling, but she doesn’t back away from me. “Max,” she says, my name a whisper. “What in God’s name happened to you?”

  I don’t speak. She knows I’m not actually going to answer that question.

  “Did you tell her?” she presses, stepping even closer. So close I could reach out and snap her fucking neck without taking a step forward. “Did you tell her who was on that projector, Max?”

  I grind my teeth together, trying to keep myself in check. I lost one of my longest-serving employees today and I don’t want to lose another. But Mamie is fucking pushing it.

  “Or did you let her believe that you were always the worst sort of person?”

  At that, I laugh, tapping my gun against my thigh and shaking my head. “Mamie, in case you didn’t notice, I am always the worst sort of person.”

  The pity in her eyes makes my blood boil. I want to hit something. Hit her. Shoot her. Destroy this whole goddamn house.

  But then she says, “I know about the other videos,” and my body is frozen, unable to lift a finger. I can’t even fucking breathe as I stare at her, waiting for her to say something that cannot be true. “I know about the flash drives.”

  I take a step back, putting distance between us, my mind spinning. I shake my head, open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

  She steps closer. “I know what your father did to you, Max.”

  No.

  “I know you didn’t deserve it.”

  Maybe I did.

  “I know you’re not weak.”

  I am.

  “I know, too, about…” Her voice breaks, and I know what’s coming. I want to run. I want to stop those words from coming out of her mouth. I want to destroy her. I want to… I want to…

  “I know about that little boy, Max.” Her words are high-pitched, choked with emotion, and I hate her. As my throat tightens, my mind spinning, thinking of what she saw, of what she knows…I can’t fucking stand her.

  I can’t.

  I can’t.

  “And I know…” she takes a deep breath, swallowing down her emotions, and I hate her for it. “I know you’re not your father.”

  But I am.

  I can’t think about anything. I can barely breathe. My chest hurts and my throat is strangled, and there’s screaming in my head.

  Screaming.

  Oliver screamed.

  For the first time in his life, he made a sound that wasn’t a whimper or a groan or a cry.

  He fucking screamed. I’d never even heard him laugh, but I heard those screams.

  They cut deep.

  They fucking hurt.

  And I tried to get to him,
but I couldn’t.

  All I could do was watch. Watch what I caused.

  I hadn’t hid him. I’d been exhausted, always on the lookout. Watching him, hiding him, taking his punishments so my father didn’t kill him. “A useless fucking retard.” My father’s words, over and over, every day, at least once. A reminder of the son he hated.

  But he never loved me, either.

  I don’t know why. I’m not sure what we did to make him hate us so much, but god, he did.

  “Max, you are not him.”

  Mamie’s words are jarring. I hate her for the pity. I hate her for all of it. For knowing my deepest secrets. The private moments that no one was ever supposed to see.

  Most of all, I hate myself for keeping the evidence. For not being able to let it go.

  My father was a monster in every sense of the word, and he had cameras in every room of our house.

  When I went back to kill him, I learned they existed from a guard that wanted me to spare his life—I didn’t—I retrieved the ones from my bedroom, and the film, too.

  I still have them, on a thumb drive in my office, locked away with my most important files in a safe that’s bomb proof, hidden under a floorboard.

  Under my bookshelf.

  I haven’t watched them yet. I don’t want to get rid of them until I do. Until I face it.

  What I really am.

  Nothing.

  What I really did to save Oliver.

  Nothing.

  “How did you know?” I ask her, the only question that I can voice. “How did you fucking know? How did you—”

  “You had me change the code to the safe.”

  “You’re lying.” I would’ve never done that.

  “It was over ten years ago. You had me change the code.” She steps even closer but doesn’t reach for me. “It was three in the morning. You were…” She shakes her head, runs a hand through her dark hair. “You had been up for three days straight. I knew you weren’t…quite right. But you were exhausted, and you couldn’t even get out of bed when you called for me. You had me change it, and I had to shove the bookcase aside, find the right floorboard.” She takes another breath. “And they were just sitting there, splattered with blood.”

  My own father’s blood, still warm on my hands.

  “You watched them?” I ask her, incredulous. I don’t feel the anger. I feel…nothing. Numbness. “You watched them?”

  “I’m sorry,” she says quickly, but she doesn’t look at all sorry. “All this time I’ve been with you, Max.” She bites her lip, puts a hand over her mouth.

  I want to kill her.

  “I watched you grow up. I watched you turn from a lost boy to…” she gestures to me, then drops her hands. “To whatever it is you are now. And I thought there was something good in you, all this time. After everything I watched you do. I knew you were hurting, but I thought something would heal you, Max.” Her voice is hoarse, and she breaks off into some sort of anguished cry.

  I grip the gun so hard my hand hurts. My arm is shaking. I want to kill her.

  “I saw what he did to you, before you got involved in…” she gestures past me, and I know she’s talking about Addison, and I hate her all the more for it. “Before you got involved with people, Max. I thought it was temporary. And maybe I was blind, and maybe I cared about you where your mother left off.”

  I clench my jaw so tight it aches, cross my arms over my chest to stop my hands from shaking.

  “And you never brought anyone here. Not like that. And Evora…and all the other girls…I saw the bruises. I heard them cry. I saw the blood on your sheets. But I always thought it was…what you each wanted.”

  “They did fucking want it,” I tell her, and I mean it.

  “She doesn’t,” she counters, glancing past me, toward Addison’s room again. “She doesn’t, and you’re using her as a pawn—”

  “I’ve used many people as pawns, Mamie.” The anger returns, and I keep thinking about it. About her watching what was mine. About her seeing me sodomized. About her seeing Oliver, hiding. About her fucking pitying me. Seeing what I really am. Nothing.

  “Bad people,” she corrects me. “You’ve used bad people—”

  “You mean people just like me?” I point the gun toward my chest, the barrel against my heart.

  Her face goes pale, her hands fluttering to her mouth again.

  I laugh at her look of concern, but I don’t lower the gun. Instead, I raise it higher, point it to the side of my head. “You want this, don’t you? After everything I’ve done? Everything you saw? After Dante?” My voice breaks on his name, but I don’t think about it. “You know I’m nothing, Mamie. You’re going to leave, aren’t you? That’s what this is?” I gesture toward her with my free hand, to the tissue in her clenched fist. “You’re leaving. Why is that, hmm?” I press the gun harder against the side of my head, my finger still on the trigger. “You don’t see the good in me anymore? That boy that got fucked, you don’t see him, do you?” I lean down to get in her face, keeping the gun to my head, my entire body trembling. “That’s because he fucking died, Mamie. He died, and he’s never coming back.”

  She grabs my face in her hands, and I freeze, her touch making me feel physically sick. But I can’t move. I can’t think.

  “You’re still in there, Max.”

  I’m not.

  “You’re still there. They didn’t take your heart. They didn’t take your soul.”

  They took everything.

  “You don’t have to become what they wanted you to be.”

  I already am the monster.

  “You could change—"

  “Max.”

  Mamie’s eyes dart past me at the sound of that voice, the soft one with the sweet fucking Southern accent.

  I close my eyes, swallow down the lump in my throat as I straighten, gun to my head.

  “Max,” Addison says from behind me. “What are you…” She trails off, and I hear her footsteps across the wooden floors, running toward me instead of away.

  Mamie steps back and Addison is in front of me, her green eyes wide, her lips parted as she takes in the gun against my temple.

  I half-expect her to tell me to pull the trigger.

  I see the bruises around her throat. The ones I put there.

  The burns on her chest, just above the white tank she’s wearing.

  As she lifts her hand to me, I see the scars on her inner forearm, the tiny marks to keep track of the days I left her with Ben.

  I expect her to tell me to kill myself.

  I almost wish she would, so I could hate her a little more. So I could hate that innocence she still has, that faith that someone will be good to her. That someone will come for her, and someone will love her.

  I want to hate that part of her, because it isn’t true.

  No one is coming.

  No one will save her.

  No one came for me.

  No one saved me.

  And I couldn’t fucking save Oliver.

  She should tell me to die. She should tell me I deserve it.

  She doesn’t.

  Instead, she slowly wraps her fingers around my wrist, and pulls my arm down.

  I let her.

  Then she steps closer but doesn’t touch me. She keeps her arms by her sides as she looks up at me, her eyes shining.

  For a moment, she doesn’t speak.

  But when she does, all she says is, “Don’t take the coward’s way out, Max. You’re far too brutal to hide like that.”

  And I don’t hate her.

  I don’t fucking hate her.

  Instead, I grab her, pulling her to me, and for a long moment, I hold her against my chest.

  She doesn’t touch me back. Doesn’t hug me.

  But she doesn’t try to get away either.

  Because that part of me, that innocence Oliver and I lost as boys…she still has it.

  She still has it, and every day, I’m stealing a little more of it.
<
br />   I’m not sure I’ll ever stop.

  Someday, everyone has to learn there are monsters in the world. At least I could teach her that lesson far better than my father ever fucking taught me.

  He was small.

  He also didn’t speak.

  My father thought that meant he was stupid. He was anything but. Oliver was whip smart in all the ways my father thought didn’t matter: He learned to read when he was three, learned to sign shortly after, although he preferred picture cards to sign language.

  And when my mother brought out the playing cards, well, he carried an ace in his pocket every day, slapping it in my hand without looking at me when we cuddled together on the couch at night to watch movies.

  Movies with car chases, because he was obsessed with them.

  Before we left, when my father would beat us black and blue for doing something like watching television and being idle, he could entertain himself for hours on end, alone with nothing but books, earthworms, and dirt. Sometimes he hid the worms in his hair and my mother would laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe as she peeled them all out.

  That’s on the days my father wasn’t there.

  But when he was...

  When he was, I hid Oliver away.

  He liked small spaces and prying open a floorboard was easy enough.

  It was the times when our father was drunk it became more...difficult to hide Ollie.

  I became more vicious.

  I’d do whatever my father wanted to whatever woman he wanted me to do it to. When he started screaming Ollie’s name, “You fucking retard! Get in here!” I’d come instead, and I’d hit the slave he’d brought out to entertain his friends in the lounge room.

  I was a teenage boy, but with brass knuckles against a woman’s face, her chest, between her legs, it didn’t matter.

  She’d be coated in blood by the time I was done with her, my father beaming with pride, knocking the glass of his beer bottle with his friends’ as the slave would lie comatose on the floor, naked and spent.

  I’d do it again and again.

  Better a nameless whore than my brother.

  And to save Ollie, I’d do anything. To save myself, I’d do anything.

  But that day I slipped in my mother’s blood, that day Ollie had a speech therapy appointment and was home early with Mom, and I ran through the apartment.