Come To Me (Owned Book 3) (5 page)

I rubbed my temples. “Can we not today, Lennox?”

“It’s an insurance policy, Vic! It’s over a million dollars and it’s in my name! Why? Are you planning on killing me or something?”

“You got me.” I raised my hands in defeat. “This entire relationship is just an elaborate ruse.”

“You know what? Fuck you!” Lenny threw the papers on the floor. “Fuck you and your lies and manipulation. Fuck your secret lair and your secret life. Fuck all of this.” She turned around but I grabbed her and pushed her up against the wall, pinning her with one hand. Her drink tumbled to the ground, the glass making a
clink
against the hardwood.

“You think you’re the only one in this relationship getting mind fucked?” Lenny glared at my words, mouth pursed. “You’re not just in my head anymore, Lenny. You’re in my blood. You’re in my bones.” Her chest heaved and I felt it against my own. I felt her tits, I felt her stomach, I felt the way her body shook despite the way she kept her face calm. I felt
everything,
and it was driving me fucking insane.

I tightened my grip and arched my face over hers, ready to capture her lips with my own, when she spat in my face. Wiping the saliva off on her exposed neck, I did my best to hide the smile that played on my lips. The fire between us would burn us to damnation, but dammit if the heat didn’t feel good.

“Fuck you, Vic.” Lenny used her knee to try and shove me off but it just made me pin her harder. “Always thinking you can change the conversation with hot words and hotter hands.”

“Can’t I?” I shoved her harder against the wall, making sure to brand her belly with my cock. Her eyes hardened.

“You’re just a bully with a hard club.” I crushed my mouth against hers, silencing her next words. She bit at my lip, tugging hard enough to bruise and bleed. She made sure I tasted my own blood and she also made sure I was good and distracted before pushing me off.

We stared at one another, our breaths tumbling like rocks down a hillside. Our lips were marked with each other’s blood, our eyes in an unbroken stare as we waited…waited for something to give that neither of us wanted to let go.

Eventually Lenny looked away, heading back to the bar. She picked up the glass I’d knocked out of her hand on the way. I laughed, but there was nothing funny. When she turned back to me, she took a slow draught from the now very chipped glass and leaned against the kitchen counter.

“You’re very good at pretending, you know that?” I folded my arms, refusing to play her games. “In the beginning, you pretended you didn’t feel anything. After that, you pretended the reality you shaped around us was real. And now…” Lenny laughed. “Now, you’re pretending you don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lennox.”

“Sure you don’t. And this is just a multivitamin.” Lenny popped a pill, chasing it with the rest of her drink. As she moved past me, I grabbed her by the elbow.

“I don’t need this, Lenny,” I snarled.

Lenny yanked her elbow and smiled acidly. “Then go.” She pointed at the door. “All I wanted was to throw you a nice party. Then you threw a tantrum and tried to kick everyone out. For what? Where do you have to go?”

“All you wanted was to throw me a party?” I spat her accusation back on its head.

“Yes?” she said, but it sounded more like a question.

“Are you fucking with me, Lenny?” Apparently we were doing this. Apparently we were going to dig it up, just like all the other skeletons we’d hung out to dry. “Three hours ago you were talking about leaving me for good.”

Lenny waved a hand like what I was saying was frivolous. “Well I got over that.”

“Just like that?”

Lenny spun to face me. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, Vic.” Her statement hung like the Sword of Damocles. I knew what she was alluding to; I knew what this entire fucking conversation was. I knew it wasn’t a multivitamin, I could see it in her glassy eyes. It was obvious by the lilt in her step and the little slur in speech. It was obvious for so many other reasons. I’d had my suspicions for months.

But I wasn’t about to let her put that shit on me.

Especially
now.

“Fuck this,” I said. I had one hour to discover how to get out of a hit with no loopholes. I didn’t need Lennox Moore muddying up my already murky waters. I ascended the staircase, flipping her the bird over my shoulder.

“Whatever,” I heard her murmur as I entered my office.

E
ven though I kept my office hidden, complete with secret door, there were some habits I couldn’t break. Growing up with a crazy as fuck dad and a mom who wouldn’t do a thing about it, I’d learned to hide my shit under the ground. Anything from porn to music I shoved under the floorboards. I’d grown up in an environment where hiding was akin to breathing. Now, I didn’t need to hide my porn, but like I said, habits were hard to break.

I stared at the floor, ripped open and gutted. It was kind of apropos, because Lenny’s and my relationship was being torn apart more and more each day.

Sighing, I bent down and began to dig around in the floorboards, searching for anything that might help me get out of the hit. I kept all my paper records in the floor, names of people who owed me favors and the like. As I pushed aside another pile, my hand fell on something slippery and plastic.

“Shit…” I fell back onto the floor, stunned by the picture. I was smiling and hugging five other guys, wearing desert camo with an idiotic grin on my face. I knew exactly where I was—Afghanistan—and I knew exactly whom I was hugging: Dom Weathers and four other guys I’d spent nearly a year in training with beyond basic.

Just a week after graduation and we were so thrilled to be in the thick of it. We’d all completed MARSOC training and felt like gods. We were Marine Raiders, ready to kill and conquer. Only Dom and I made it back home.

It wasn’t like in the movies. We weren’t kings of our hills. It was quid pro quo. We killed one of theirs, they killed one of ours. Despite what the propaganda machine wanted us to believe, there was no winning side, there were only losers. I killed children I had no right to kill. We were invaders, so of course they wanted us dead.

I never understood the people who came up and thanked me when I was in uniform. There was no honor in dying for some old man’s lies and money. Sometimes, though, you would find honor in the men and women who did the dying. A person who didn’t want to kill. A person who didn’t care about the prestige. A person who had no other mission than morals.

Those guys usually died first.

At least working for GEM, we didn’t pretend. When I did recon, when Dom did his dealings, when the hitmen killed, we knew what we were. We didn’t pretend we did it for some greater cause. We acknowledged we were the things that went bump in the night, just like we should have back then. I gripped the picture, unable to stop the wash of memories.

Sometimes it felt like night was hotter than day. Maybe it was because I was so used to the temperature dropping at home, that when it didn’t, the sweat stung harder. In any case, nightly patrols were the worst. I’d been distracted. Earlier that day a woman dressed way nicer than anyone should be in a war had come up to me, a smile on her face and a water bottle in her hand. She’d asked if I was happy where I was.

What the fuck do I say to that?

I’d said “Yes ma’am.” Hours later, I was still thinking about her. It was probably just some goddamn test. They were always testing us, even still. It was because I was thinking of that woman in a pantsuit, with a face so done up she looked like a china doll, that I didn’t see him.

I don’t think he saw me either, maybe because he was thinking of a woman of his own. We came face to face before either of us recognized the other.

We were enemies.

We were supposed to shoot.

I was tired, though. I was tired of shooting people I didn’t know. I was sick of anonymous death.

I think maybe he was sick of it too.

When I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see the enemy. I just saw another person going for a walk. It was happenstance that we were alone. You don’t go alone on patrols; you don’t go alone period. But there we were, in the middle of a battlefield, alone. We didn’t smile or anything, but I guess it was what we didn’t exchange that mattered. We didn’t exchange bullets.

We passed each other like two ships in the night.

The next morning I was on aid and litter. I saw him again, except that time his eyes were closed and he had bullets in his chest.

I crumpled up the photo and shoved it into the trash. When Grace had first arrived, she’d talked about being plagued by memories. I was starting to feel like I’d caught the infection.

Memories were hitting me like bullets. With no rhyme or reason I bled the recollections. I used to believe I’d forgotten my past. Now I was starting to think that perhaps I’d only built a dam and the waters were seeping through.

I glanced at my watch. Only twenty minutes left and still no clue what to do.

“Lennox?” I called out, ready to at least apologize. When she didn’t respond I walked from the room, still calling her name. At first I figured she was giving me the silent treatment, however out of character that was. When I reached the overlooking balcony, my eyes swept the first floor. It was empty, her coat and keys gone. I looked from the ticking numbers on my watch, back down again to the empty apartment.

“God fucking dammit.” I grabbed my keys and headed out the door.

I
was officially one hour in the red. When doing a hit there are certain protocols you follow, certain timelines you need to stick to. I’d already missed checking in on the plane, and now I hadn’t checked in at Mexico City.

Red flags were rising.

Growling, I turned down the next street in my search for Lennox. Rationally, I knew I had no right to be angry with her. She hadn’t forced me to take the job. She didn’t even know I
had
taken the job. It wasn’t her fault at all; it was mine. Maybe that was why I was so angry. I’d made the cleanest break I could from GEM and the minute I felt something was wrong with Lenny and me, I fell back into old habits.

I’m always accusing her of being the fuck up…

Once I’d enabled Lenny’s GPS, it led me right to her. She was holed up in a bar—
our
bar—a few miles down the road. I drove at least twenty over the speed limit trying to reach her. Maybe it would have been faster to walk, or run, considering she was less than five miles away.

It felt good to grip the wheel; it felt good to punch the acceleration. It felt like I finally had control over something. I needed Lenny by my side. I needed to know she was safe. At least when I was with GEM, I knew no one would touch me, and by association, her. Without GEM’s protection, it was like walking through a lightning storm holding a metal pole.

I was always putting her in danger. If I had been a better man, I would have cut her loose. I would have stuck to my guns years ago when I said I was no good. Nothing had changed since then. I was probably worse for her now. At one time I’d been tough as steel, but Lenny and I were so hot and cold I was made brittle. I was weakness masquerading as strength.

I can still remember the moment everything changed, the moment she tore her shirt from her body. It was game over then. Sure, I acted unaffected for a few more weeks, but that moment a part of me snapped. An integral, raw part of me broke free. I ran a red light just as my phone began to ring.

“What?” I yelled, picking up the call.

“Tell me you’re in Mexico right now.” Dom’s nasally voice came loud and clear through my car’s speakers.

“I think you know the answer to that, Dom,” I said, turning into the parking lot of the bar.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line before Dom said, “What the fuck, dude?”

“Something came up.” I glanced out at the bar doors. Inside Lennox sat, probably drinking until her liver shriveled. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was talk to Dom Weathers.