Club Saturday: Contemporary Menage Romance (Sarasota Sin Series Book 2) (26 page)

Vania lost sight of Alan, and then the winding screech of metal on metal whirled next to her. She fought not to turn her head, didn’t want to see the corpse he was sliding next to her. But her body wouldn’t listen.

“Still,” Alan continued, “I had no trouble until you came along. Did I, buddy?” He patted Matt on the face with his gloved hand. The instrument glinted under the bright lights. A scalpel, Vania realized in horrified awe. Alan was wielding a scalpel around.
 

Matt swallowed and looked over at Vania. His eyes rounded to saucers but his pupils remained pinpricks. Obviously, he’d been drugged, too, but with something far stronger. If she could move her hands, Vania could touch him; Matt was that close.
 

“Let…Vania go,” Matt wheezed. His voice was beyond recognition. Vania dropped her gaze to Matt’s neck, spotting bruising and swelling. So he’d been handled far rougher than the shot it took to bring her here. “She was ignorant in all… of this.”

“
You
were ignorant in all of this,” Alan corrected serenely as he slid his gloved hand down the column of Matt’s throat, the tip of the scalpel slicing easily through the tender flesh found there. “Made so many stupid mistakes, I lost count.”

“Oh! Fuck no! Please, Alan,” Matt begged through the pain. “I don’t want Gayle. Take her back!”

Vania turned her face away, knowing what was coming for her next: Death and dismemberment, not in that order. She wished she could cover her ears and not hear Matt squeal like a pig.
 

What could she do?

What the hell could she do!
 

“Alan,” Vania pleaded. “Talk to me.”

Though gaining the immediate attention of a lunatic froze her heart, she forced her eyes to Alan’s maddened ones, keeping them up and away from whatever he’d done to Matt. The broken sobs told her Matt was alive. The way thick blood dripped from the gleaming scalpel’s tip suggested it might not be for long.

 
“Just talk to me.” Talking was better than letting him work with his scalpel. “What happened?” She fought to sound strong, to iron the waviness in her voice. “I deserve to know what I’m involved in, the lies that were told to… to
us
.”
 

Alan blinked a few times, cocking his head as he walked back to her. “You don’t know?”

“No, but I’ll believe only you,” she coaxed. He slid the bloody scalpel up the sheet covering her. Adrenalin shot through Vania’s heart. “Please, tell me.”

Alan leaned down to her face, his mouth inches away from hers. But gone was the man who provoked her in the elevator, gone was any semblance of the beloved Dr. Murphy who delivered bouncing babies for local families. This man, Vania thought, was not in his head now, had been pummeled by life’s curveballs.

He pursed his lips. “Matt wanted Gayle for so long, wanted to play our swapping games. But I knew better than to invite a man who refused to involve his fiancée. That’s cheating.” He took the edge of the sheet that covered Vania’s body and wiped the blood away from the scalpel. He appeared so unaffected, so completely detached, as though he’d merely cleaned a fish with the damn thing.

 
There was a word for people who had nothing to lose; most would say dangerous.
 
But Alan Murphy was her Angel of Death, the grimmest reaper for which she could not escape. God help Evan if he even thought to walk through the door.

“Then Matt finally… offered me,” she breathed, her words sticking in a throat clogged with blood and fear.

“Yes, offered to go the mild way by using Club Saturday. Fifteen or twenty minutes of sin, no true penetration was my one stipulation. But Matt broke the agreement and lost my trust by screwing my wife.”
 

He turned his head to glare at Matt. Blood splattered Alan’s shoulder and the side of his jaw. The only way she knew Matt remained alive was from his rushed panting and low moans.

“I thought Matt was you,” she whispered, watching as Alan’s fingers tightened around the scalpel, his hand inching up her chest. “I didn’t know.
 
Matt lied to me.”

Alan pulled at the autopsy scale hanging above her, his free hand fidgeting with the chain. “He was too busy having an affair with my wife to bother with honesty.”

“None of this is my fault, Alan,” she said evenly, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

“That’s why I tried, Vania. I tried to take you, thought I could replace Gayle with you.” He gripped her face, squeezing slightly. “You’re lovely but this can’t happen. Lust is vague and fickle. Body follows lust.
 
But my heart belongs to Gayle.”
 

“Then let me go.”

“I can’t.” He sighed, releasing her face. “I’ve taken back Gayle and you still tempt me.” Alan lifted the scalpel and brushed her bottom lip with the thumb of his opposite hand, the latex sticking to the blood on her mouth. “We’re starting over, so I must eliminate all my temptations for my marriage to work.”

“Don’t!” She started begging as the scalpel came down. “Please, Alan. No!”

“Shh, your sins are small, only a little bit of pain for you and it’s over.”

“Stop!” Tears blurred her vision. “Help! Help me!”

Suddenly, Alan fell sideways, hitting a wall and knocking aside a wheeled cart filled with steel tools. Blood oozed from his temple but his scalpel remained in his hand.

“Evan!” She shouted as Evan charged with a portable dissecting light in hand, readying it like a bat for strike two. “Scalpel! He has a —"

“Fuck!”

Alan pierced Evan’s thigh right before the second swing struck. But Evan managed to crush Alan’s face, mangling his nose and front teeth. The scalpel flew and both men started rolling on the floor.

Drake came barreling through the door. A wash of horror on his face coupled with swift relief when he spotted her.
 
He lunged to her, tore off her sheet, and tried to disengage the sliding tray from the drawer on which Vania was tied. His moves frantic, it took him a second to realize she wasn’t budging.

“Just untie me!”
 

Quickly, he worked her ankle free and moved to the next. “Hold on, Love.”

“Help Evan!” she pleaded.

He ignored her, unfastening the second ankle with trembling fingers. When he finally released her left wrist, she sat up and pushed away Drake. “I have this one.” She spotted Evan beneath Alan, with Alan reaching for a small but effective hammer. “Help him!”

In a flash, Alan lunged atop Vania with the hammer in hand. Evan jumped up and jerked him back with a forearm to the throat.

“She’s mine to… kill!” Alan roared as the last tie came away from her wrist. The hammer swung out and barely grazed the side of her face. “Must take away the… temptation.”

Vania jumped off the table, landing on her knees against the floor.
 

Drake tore the autopsy scale from its stand and met Alan’s next crashing blow. “You won’t touch her again!”

Evan fought Alan back, his forearm still across Alan’s throat with his other banded around his stomach. Alan managed to swing the hammer again, but Drake struck Alan’s face with the scale. Cracking bones sounded beneath the clatter of metal. Then Alan convulsed several times before he slumped in Evan’s arms.

“Don’t trust him.” Drake helped Vania up. “Hit him again.”
 

Evan dropped Alan to the floor and swung back his leg. Vania looked away, mashing her nose against Drake’s chest, while Evan kicked Alan in the head.

“Matt,” she whispered. “He must be dead by now.”
 

“He’s fine. The bastard’s cut up but it’s all superficial.” Drake sighed, his body trembling with hers.

“How did you find me?”

“You didn’t come back and Matt wasn’t in his room. This place is so large that we had to split up five ways, three bodyguards along with Evan and me.”

“I heard you screaming,” Evan whispered. “I never want to hear that sound from your mouth again.”

Drake nodded. “I was on the elevator when Evan called. He was shouting in the phone. But somehow, I managed to understand what he was saying.” He exhaled a harsh breath. “Thank God.”

Evan told them, “I called the police.”
 

She turned her face to the side, pressing her ear to Drake’s chest and was immediately soothed by his heartbeat. “Thank you. Thank you both for saving me.”

“Don’t…just don’t.” Drake’s mouth was in her hair, his hands touching her everywhere. Then he started searching her gently with prying fingers, trying to see from where she bled. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

“It’s only a cut.” She rested her chin on his chest, staring into his tortured eyes. “It’s not your fault.” She turned to look at Evan. “Or yours.”

Evan’s hands came up, his fists clenching. He wanted to hold her, too. But he was bound to stay over Alan’s unconscious form, until the police arrived.
 

Matt groaned, “I’m sorry, Vania. I’m so… sorry.”

“There’s no way to apologize for what you’ve done,” Drake snarled at him. “But when the police come and take statements. You will not mention Vania and Club Saturday’s elevators. You got that?”

“Yes.”
 

“You will include her in nothing, understand?” Evan pointed to the floor where Alan remained nearly lifeless. “Even if this psychopath ends up living and starts running his mouth, you will deny everything.”

Matt coughed. “I… will.”
 

Vania couldn’t look at Matt’s flayed throat but she turned her head sideways and kept him in her peripheral. “I nearly walked in on you and Gayle, Matt, here one night at the hospital.” Now wasn’t the time to say what she was about to say.
 
Even so, shock replaced logic and she needed to release this to move on. “Alan came to my side and prevented me from confronting you two.”

“I’m… sorry.”

Apologies didn’t cut it. Nothing but moving on would help her now, which was exactly what Vania was doing with Evan and Drake. “Then I found out about the bait and switch inside Club Saturday’s elevators — heartless and disgusting move on your part, by the way.”

“Vania…”

“You’re a careless, selfish dick. I’ve been betrayed and humiliated by you. If that wasn’t enough, you inadvertently set loose a violent stalker on me, one who nearly took my life.”

“I was so… wrong.”

Evan gritted his teeth to keep his mouth shut, and Drake tensed against her but held her steady.
 

 
“Wrong doesn’t touch it, Matt.” She pressed a kiss to Drake’s chest, leaving a bloody print on his shirt. “The only thing, the best thing that came from this disaster was discovering I was never in love with you.
 
I loved you, but I wasn’t
in
love with you.” Footfalls sounded in the corridor, the pounding echo of boots suddenly making her head hurt. “I wonder if someone as selfish and mean as you will discover it one day for yourself, because you sure didn’t love me.”

“I do… love you, Van.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Evan snarled. “Never tell her that again.”

“I wouldn’t care, Evan,” she said, “even if it were true.”
 

“For reasons of not fueling the press, I won’t place a restraining order against you for Vania,” Drake told Matt. “But if you ever think about coming near her after this, I’ll finish what the insane doctor started on your throat.”

“I…know.”

“Drake?” His face blurred, though Vania could still smell him, could sense his strength grounding her. Her eyelids fluttered. “I’m in …”

“Vania?” Drake lifted her in his arms.
 

“I’m… okay,” she whispered as Drake tightened his grip on her.

“She’s in shock,” Evan said, and then started barking out orders.
 

“Drake?”

“I’m here, Love.”

“Don’t put me back on the —"

“I won’t,” he vowed. “You’re staying right here in my arms.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.” His lips found her forehead. “God, yes.”
 

Chapter 29

Three Weeks Later

“You’ve done wonders with the firehouse, Vania.” Payton took a sip of lemonade.

“Thank you.” Vania placed a tureen on a table she’d situated next to the Koi pond. She’d decorated it earlier with white votive candles, a red gingham tablecloth, and several hand-painted jars filled with Gardenias.
 

“Why not stick around and manage the place for us?”

“Hmm.” She lifted one of the jars. “See this gorgeous piece?” Payton nodded in admiration. “Seventy-five elementary students, all under the age of ten, painted these yesterday. We assigned them two jars each, one to take home and the other to leave here for future fundraisers.” Vania gestured to where a professionally painted mural of a whale graced the children’s art building. “Next time, you should allow them ten jars each.”

Payton laughed after she spotted hundreds of colorful handprints overlapping the mural. “Well, they definitely added character.”