Unorthodox (Sick Love Book 1) Read online

  I’ve been running for years. With a father who didn’t believe in mental illnesses and nannies that thought locking me in my room would cure my panic attacks, running was the only outlet.

  I actually ran away from home once.

  That didn’t last long. I didn’t get past the guards around my father’s property.

  Another time, I offered a guard a blowjob in exchange for my freedom. I did a few things like that. I invited the men that were supposed to protect me into my bed. Let them stain my sheets and use me how they wanted, hoping to get away.

  It never worked out in my favor.

  But I still did it.

  Even when I knew I wouldn’t escape, it made me feel something my father never did—wanted. Loved. Where my father didn’t give me a say in the matter, fucking my guards, I told myself, was my choice.

  Distracting me from those memories is another more recent one.

  Max could have killed me.

  Ben’s head, the gunshot, Max.

  Over. And over. And over.

  I close my eyes, nearly tripping and losing my balance, going as fast as I am. But before I can fall, as my eyes spring open, a hand is on my arm.

  I grab the console of the treadmill, position my feet on either side of the belt to steady myself, and try to catch my breath. I feel my face warm from the near-accident, and when I meet Dante’s green-brown eyes, the flush spreads down my neck, up to my ears.

  Dante keeps his hand circled around my arm, reaches across me to turn the treadmill off. Slowly, the belt comes to a stop.

  The only sound in the pristine, well-lit gym on the second floor, looking out over the pool, is my breathing, and the pounding of my pulse in my ears.

  I swallow, avert my eyes. I’ve only ever been around Dante when I was with Ben, or Max. And Ben’s rules were clear. Until they weren’t.

  Ben is dead.

  I cringe, my body tensing as I close my fingers around the hand grip of the treadmill, my other arm still in Dante’s grip.

  I think about Ben’s head coming apart. The warmth of what was always supposed to be on the inside spraying against the outside of my skin.

  How many more weeks? How many more people will die in this house?

  Someone will come for me. My mind whispers these words over and over, although I’m not sure my mind is all there anymore.

  Not with the way I let Max touch me in the night, drugged or not.

  Not with the thoughts churning in my head even now, when I’m completely sober.

  Someone will come for me.

  But if they don’t?

  I glance at Dante, finding his eyes still on me. His hand, too.

  If my family doesn’t come, I have to find someone who will.

  After the gym, I need another shower.

  Dante follows me into my room.

  He stands outside of the bathroom door. I swear I see him glance at my forearm, where I’ve marked the days with tiny cuts, but he doesn’t say anything.

  I shut and lock the door.

  It’s my first shower here—aside from the one with Max—without Ben standing right outside of it. Without him appraising my naked body every evening, when my training was done.

  I don’t enjoy the shower.

  I don’t even feel it.

  I get out, towel dry my hair. Get dressed in the plain black underwear, black sweatpants and a black t-shirt that I found in my closet, next to dresses that I’ll never wear for anyone here.

  I hang up the towel on the handrail attached to the glass shower door.

  I stare at the locked doorknob of the bathroom and imagine Dante on the other side. Imagine him watching me in the gym.

  His hand on mine, steadying me.

  He isn’t much older than me.

  He must remember what it’s like to have a heart. Then again, sometimes I almost forget too. Like the time I thought about sliding a kitchen knife against my nanny’s throat when we were out for mass.

  I could’ve escaped then.

  Asked God to forgive my sins.

  But not long after that, my father put a cigarette to my skin for smiling too freely with a guard, and I remembered God doesn’t exist.

  Taking a breath, I unlock the door, pull it open.

  And Dante speaks his first words to me. “It’s time to eat.”

  It’s my first time in the dining room.

  It’s dark, a dim chandelier of glass and obsidian hanging over the black wooden table. Mamie, the middle-aged woman who drugs me and has followed me around when Dante was busy today, is setting the table.

  Two places only.

  She puts down black plates, rocks glasses, a pitcher of water and two cups. Then she sets the silverware that she retrieves from the massive, adjoining kitchen. She tucks a lock of long, black hair behind her ear, and for a moment, her deep blue eyes meet mine.

  I swear I see a brief smile flicker on her lips, but when I blink, it’s gone.

  She walks out without another word, past me and Dante standing in the doorway of the dining room.

  There’s a sliding glass door straight across from me that leads to the screened-in porch. The pool is beyond that, shrouded in darkness now that night has fallen.

  I tug at the hem of my t-shirt, flex my bare feet against the floor as I take in the place settings, across from one another. Taking a deep breath, I smell something that makes my stomach growl.

  I’m not sure what it is, but a glance at the grey marble island in the kitchen and I see several dishes full of food.

  That hollowness of my stomach quickly turns to dread as I wonder which dish is drugged.

  Then again, there are two place settings.

  Maybe tonight is different. Maybe Max won’t come.

  I turn to Dante, at my back.

  His green-brown eyes, flecked with gold, are on mine. His face is lean, almost hollow around his cheekbones, and it’s a structure that I find myself at once envious of and…attracted to.

  “Are we eating?” I ask him quietly, still fisting my shirt in my hands.

  Dante’s brow furrows. “Max is coming soon.”

  My stomach flips. The scent of the food is no longer inviting. It’s…oppressing.

  Will he watch me drug myself with each bite? Will he fuck with me here, for Dante to see? What hell will he punish me with tonight, for my aggression in the shower?

  Then again, I was allowed to wander today.

  And for one moment, my door was left unlocked and unguarded.

  That ended when I watched Dante lead a man out of the front door.

  The one I tried to run from.

  He led me back to my room afterward.

  I close my eyes, for just a moment, aware Dante is seeing everything I’m doing. Aware that he is Max’s eyes and ears when Max isn’t around. Aware that I can’t trust anyone in this fucking house.

  “Why?” I finally ask, opening my eyes to stare at Dante. I know he isn’t good, either. He works for a man that makes Satan look like a soft kitten. But Dante has yet to hurt me, to touch me at all, save for when he steadied me on the treadmill. “Why can’t we eat alone—”

  “Don’t ask Dante questions that he can’t answer.” Max’s cold voice cuts me off and I turn to find him coming down the hallway, dressed in a black button-down shirt, tailored pants, hands in his pockets. As he gets closer, I see him take in my sweats and t-shirt, and he furrows his brow, but says nothing. Instead, he turns to Dante.

  Dante’s spine straightens, and for half a second, I almost expect him to salute his boss like they’re in the military. But despite the guns and the torture and the mind games, this isn’t the military.

  The wars waged within this world may be as brutal, as depraved, but no one is fighting for a country. No one is fighting for a cause.

  They fight because they can.

  “The front door,” Max says quietly. “Evora will be here. Take her to my room.”

  I try not to react outwardly, but my mind is spinning. Ev
ora. Who is Evora? Is she a hostage too?

  Dante walks off down the same hallway Max came in from and we’re alone.

  I step back from him, like one would a wild animal.

  “Sit,” he says, ignoring my retreat, and heading to the kitchen.

  I wrap my arms around myself and try not to think about the basement. Anything that happened there. Or the shower afterward. My spine against the tile. His rough hands on me. The way he washed my hair. The way he held me after…

  Don’t think about it.

  I force my legs to move, and I pull out the sleek wooden chair and sit on the padded, black seat.

  I stare straight ahead, at the door that leads to the porch, my hands fisted in my lap. And just as Max comes from the kitchen with two serving dishes, his shirt hugging his biceps, the corded muscles of his forearms flexed with the weight of the food, I spot the steak knife at my place setting.

  Quickly, I look away.

  Max sets down mashed potatoes and grilled chicken in the center of the table, along with a bar of dark chocolate at his place setting. For one single second, my mind is diverted.

  Dark chocolate is the only kind I eat.

  Distracting me from that thought, Max takes his own seat, smoothing down his shirt. Once more, I catch sight of the scars on his hands and his veiny arms. I think of the ones on his body.

  I don’t dare look at the knife again.

  Max doesn’t say a word as he uses his own knife and fork to serve me. The meat looks tender, topped with spices. He scoops mashed potatoes opposite the chicken, then he serves himself.

  When he’s done, he stares at me.

  “You need to eat.”

  I dig my nails into my palms. I think about Ben this week, his hands all over me, the whip against my back. The punishments. Eating from his hand.

  The stairs.

  It took me two days.

  Two days for him to break me.

  I was already halfway there, but still. Two days.

  I was weak.

  But Ben is dead.

  “I’m not hungry.” I’ve found my voice again. And as long as I don’t think about Ben, or the basement, or the stairs, or the gun in my mouth…I’ll keep it. Max is waiting on my father to pay him back, and without me, there will be no payment.

  If he wants to kill me, so be it.

  But I’m not going to break again so easily. Not for Max.

  I push every horrible thing he let happen to me this week into a box in my mind, much like I did as a child. And later, when I was thirteen and my father came up behind me while I was watching a documentary on government conspiracy theories in his room, waiting to go eat with him. He started caressing me, kissing me. Not too long after that, my virgin blood stained his sheets.

  I watched the documentary the entire time.

  Before that, someone shoved a gun down my throat too. Someone told me to do terrible things. Someone took mine and Danik’s innocence, cleaved it into pieces, shattered it in a way that it could never be put back together again.

  I put all of it in a box to survive.

  I can do the same with Max.

  He studies me for a moment, brow furrowed, hands clasped together, under his chin. His elbows are on the table.

  “Would you like to go back to your father in one piece?” he asks me quietly.

  I don’t want to see my father ever again in my life. Still, fear threatens to break through my new mask of calm, but I push it back, clenching my fists so hard my knuckles ache. I don’t answer him.

  His eyes narrow. “You don’t want to play this game with me.”

  I steel my spine, lift my chin. “I’m not playing a game.”

  He arches a brow, as if to ask, Really? But he doesn’t say a word.

  I glance at the food on the table. “I’m not hungry,” I repeat my words from earlier. “I’m going to bed.” I stand to my feet without looking at him. The chair legs scrape against the wooden floor, loud in the quiet room.

  I turn to head down the hall when he speaks. “You don’t want to do that.”

  I almost laugh. Instead, I turn to face him, chest heaving. Again, I see the knife in the corner of my eye, but I don’t let my gaze linger. “You have no idea what I want to do.”

  He leans back in his chair, his hands going to his lap. “Tell me.” His words are mild, and I find myself caught off guard, all of my bravado slipping away.

  I ball my hands into fists. “I want to go home.” It’s only partly true. What I really want to do is leave this state. This country. This fucking planet, if it meant I could escape my father. My life. Max.

  He nods his head, as if urging me to continue. As if he knows I’m not done.

  “I don’t want to be drugged.” I glance pointedly at the food.

  “You’ve earned the right to sleep with your nightmares,” he says quietly, cruelly. “This food is not tainted.”

  I ignore him. “I want to know what’s going to happen to me.”

  He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, glances at the chandelier over the table. “Your father is going to give me the money he owes me,” he finally says, flicking his cold gaze back to me. “You’ll go home then.”

  I will never go home. When I’m free, I’ll run. “How long?” I ask Max, breathing hard. “How long does he have?”

  He shrugs. “It’s best if you don’t know.”

  I tense, thinking of my father’s threats to clients, partners, backstabbers. Thinking of how much time he ever gave for betrayals. How long he ever waited for me to correct my mistakes before he punished me for them.

  Not long at all.

  “I want to know,” I press, stepping closer to the table, my fingers curling along the back of the chair I was in. “I deserve to know. You took me here, you gave me to…you gave me to Ben,” I say, chest heaving, pressure building behind my eyes. I try to keep my voice even, but my words are shaky, despite my best effort. “He hit me.” I close my eyes tight, swallow down the lump in my throat. “He kicked me, when I didn’t eat the food your maid forced down my throat.” I keep my eyes closed. “And he whipped me and you—”

  The sound of a chair scraping against the floor has my eyes flying open, the words dying from my mouth.

  Max is on his feet, his palms pressed flat on the table, anger in his gaze. “And if you don’t pull yourself the fuck together, I’ll do all of those things to you too.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek, grip the chair tighter.

  “Do you wish to know what happens to you if your father doesn’t pay me back, Addison?” His voice is almost a croon. Almost gentle.

  I say nothing, feeling cold all over, praying silently that he won’t tell me. That he won’t make it real.

  “Answer me.”

  I can’t blink. I can’t even look away from him. I open my mouth, nothing comes out.

  Max smiles at my silence. A cold smile that causes the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. “Your father will pay me back, love, or you will forever be what Ben tried to train you to be.”

  I feel as if the floor is falling away from me. As if the room is spinning. As if I’ve lost all sense of up and down, right and wrong. I stumble against the chair, my mouth opening, words bubbling on the tip of my tongue, but nothing comes out.

  “That was only a taste, love.” Max’s voice is little more than a whisper, but I can still hear him over the roaring in my head as I squeeze my eyes shut tight for a second.

  I knew it.

  I knew it would be true. I knew what Ben was doing, what he did—break me—was preparation for my future. For what I would be…if my father doesn’t pay Max back.

  But he will, my mind pleads with me. He will, or Danik will. Someone will.

  That won’t be my life. It can’t be. I’ve…I’ve been there. I’ve lived it. And I’ve seen my father with sex slaves. The only women I ever saw treated worse than I was in my own home.

  “No,” I say, and I don’t know if I’m talking to
Max, or myself, my mind. “No!” I say it again louder, holding onto the back of the chair so hard, I’m surprised the wood doesn’t splinter in my hands. “No, no, no.”

  Without thinking, as if my body is moving of its own accord, my eyes spring open and I grab the chair and hurl it across the room. It skitters against the wood, collides loudly with the wall. Max makes to move around the table, but I move faster, snatching up the steak knife and brandishing it as a weapon.

  He still advances, moving toward me like a predator, completely unafraid of his prey.

  I back up, nearly stumbling, but right myself by gripping the back of another chair. I shove that one forward, trying to put distance between me and Max, but he knocks it aside and it crashes to the floor.

  His expression is terrifying.

  It’s empty.

  Blank.

  I can read nothing from his face, even as I know panic is written all over my own.

  I hold the knife out in a shaking hand, then the wall is behind me, and I’m trapped.

  Max keeps approaching, stopping about a foot from the knife. He glances at it like one might an annoying fly. A minor inconvenience. Nothing to be concerned about.

  I grip the knife tighter in my sweaty hand.

  “Put down the knife.”

  I shake my head. “Fuck you.”

  Max’s rosy lips turn up into a smile, and he looks truly amused. “Such a brave girl.” He steps closer, until the tip of the knife is digging into his shirt.

  I glance at it, feel the resistance of his body against my weapon.

  “Go ahead,” he says quietly, “stab me, love.”

  My arm shakes, my knees, too. I step toward him, feel the resistance grow, see the tip of the blade nearly disappear against the material of his shirt.

  His expression doesn’t change.

  I think of the scars on his body.

  He’s not afraid of me.

  No one is ever afraid of me.

  “What are you waiting for?” he taunts me, stepping even closer. So close, I gasp, even though he’s the one at the end of the knife.

  “Max,” I whisper, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what I’m asking for. “Max, don’t…”

  “Don’t what, Addison?” He reaches for the knife, closes his hand over the blade, squeezing it, hard.