Deep (17 page)

No, the hurtful part was knowing that my mother had learned who I was, where I was, enough that she could pass something to me via Shelly—and still had opted not to meet me herself.

“Throw it away,” I said.

“Ella…”

“She didn’t give it to me herself, did she? She didn’t call me up, ask to meet me. She doesn’t care about me, so tell me—why should I care about her?”

Shelly’s lower lip trembled, and I felt bad for putting her in the middle of this. She had done nothing but protect me, but this felt like a betrayal. But I wasn’t the one putting her in the middle of this. My birth mother was, this faceless woman who wanted to give me a necklace instead of love.

“I almost did throw it away,” Shelly said, her voice almost pleading. “So many times. I wanted to. But then I couldn’t. The same way I can’t throw away the stones from my mother’s jewelry. Legacy is a powerful thing, Ella.”

The necklace wasn’t a legacy. It was a curse.

But it was my curse. I took the necklace, still warm from Shelly’s hand. And I walked away, unable to respond to her whispered apology, unable to answer Philip’s questioning expression.

Of course he didn’t accept my silence.

“What did she give you? A listening device?”

“God. Are you always so paranoid? How do you live like that?”

“Very well,” he said, not the least bit cowed.

I clenched the metal and small stone in my fist until it hurt. “Not everything is about you.”

“What is it about then?” he challenged.

Family. “Legacy.”

He smiled faintly. “I thought you said it wasn’t about me.”

And because he was being so cocky, because I wanted to tear him down a notch—because I thought he would shrink away from any real intimacy—I told him the truth. “It was my mother’s,” I said, and then realized what I’d done.

Too late, I realized I had exposed a weakness to a man who would exploit it.

A man of opportunity,
he called himself.

Without another word I crossed the gravel driveway and climbed into the backseat. I folded my arms and stared straight ahead, impatient for him to join me. Being Philip, he took his time. He made me wait.

When he finally deigned to join me, he climbed into the seat facing me and shut the door.

The SUV didn’t move.

“You dislike it,” he said, his voice no longer smug, no longer challenging.

And only because of that could I tell him. “I
hate
it. If she wanted to meet me, to know me, she could have sent a message instead. A cell phone number. An email address. But this… this is, what? A pity gift?”

Philip said nothing.

“What?” I said, angry now. “You don’t agree?”

“What I think doesn’t matter.”

“That’s a first,” I muttered.

“If you don’t want it, throw it away.”

Except it wasn’t that simple, and he knew it. “Tell me about the ring, the one you wear on a chain,” I demanded.

I expected him to refuse me, and I was looking forward to the fight. He wasn’t the person I was mad at, but he was the only one here, in the shadowed backseat of the vehicle. Luke and Shelly had gone back inside their house, doors locked, lights off. The privacy divider was up, blocking Adrian from view. We were alone.

“It was my mother’s,” he said. “Her wedding band. I keep it as a reminder of what happens if I’m not strong.”

“Oh, Philip.” My heart clenched. “It wasn’t your fault, what your father did.”

“She died because I didn’t protect her.”

“How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“God, Philip. You can’t—”

He rapped twice on the roof of the car, and it immediately glided forward. “What I can and cannot do is not the question. The question is, what are you going to do with that, now that you have it?”

And the sad truth was, I just didn’t know.

Chapter Twenty-Five

W
E DROVE HOME
in silence, the necklace like a hot ember in my jeans pocket.

Tension ran through Philip’s body in thick, furious waves, radiating from him. His posture was relaxed enough, body leaned back, one leg slung over the other. He might have been a billionaire playboy coming home from a night of fast money and fast women. Only if you looked at his eyes would you see the banked rage over who had targeted him—who targeted my family to get to him.

We arrived back at the house just as dawn touched the horizon, spilling yellow over treetops and distant steeples. A thick fog made everything look hazy, like being a little drunk even if I hadn’t had a drink. I wasn’t sure whether it was tiredness or the stress of the past few days. We had spent the whole night chasing scary possibilities, nightmares, and I thought it was a metaphor for my entire time with Philip—a race toward some dark finish line.

Inside the safe house I crossed the cream marble floor to the far wall. Windows stretched from the ceiling to the floor, my reflection staring back at me. Only up close could I see the trees and city lights. They seemed small from where I stood, as if I looked into a curio cabinet of little figurines. This was how Philip must feel every day, as if we were small—as if I was small.

I watched Philip as he approached me, a shadow looming over the curio-cabinet city.

“Can I call my parents?” I asked softly.

“Of course,” the shadow said.

I hadn’t been sure of his answer. He knew better than to be offended, but at least his answer was resolute. There was a fine line between being helped and being held captive by a man like him.

He held out a simple black phone, and I took it. He remained standing in the living room, watching me. Not leaving, then.

No, not much difference at all.

“Tyler?” My mother. My
adoptive
mother, one who had never given me a necklace, one who had never really loved me—but she had also clothed me and fed me. She had helped me pick out a dress for my middle school dance.

“No, Mom. It’s me.”

“Oh, honey. They sent us a note.” Her voice cracked. “For ransom.”

My breath caught, and Philip’s gaze sharpened. “How much?” I asked.

“One million dollars.”

God, twice as much as last time. “Is that how much Dad owes them?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sobbing now. “He came back drunk two nights ago. And then last night, he didn’t come back at all. I don’t know where he is or if he’s e-even a-a-live.”

She broke down crying, and I clutched the phone, my eyes burning and my throat tight. My brother missing, now my father. Our family had ripped apart at the seams. And I had fallen into my own rabbit hole, one with mysterious creatures and everything upside down.

“Where’s the drop?” Philip murmured.

All business. Even in the midst of heartbreak, he was a rock—and I was grateful for it now. I asked my mother, and she told me the cross streets of a church deep in the city. Or at least it had once been a church with a large youth center. Budget declining donations meant the only kids nearby were selling drugs.

“St. Mary’s,” she said. “Sunday night. Midnight.”

“Two days,” I whispered to Philip. “At St. Mary’s.”

A strange expression flickered across his face, almost like worry. A second later, it was gone without a trace. Unease tightened my stomach. Nothing made Philip worry.

I spoke into the phone. “Have you called the cops?”

“They said they’d kill him if I do.” A pause, then a whisper of quiet despair, “What will we do?”

They didn’t have that kind of money. I had the faint hope that Philip could give it to me, but how could I ask him for that much? Not even my body was worth that much.

Fifty bucks a hole.
Words I’d never forgotten. Philip might value me at more than that, but there was nothing about me worth a million dollars.

“I’ll go to the meeting,” I said quietly, ignoring the way Philip’s eyes narrowed.

My mother made a fretful sound. “Without the money? They could kill you.”

The words were hesitant but not a refusal. She wanted me to go. Someone had to. Someone had to show up empty-handed and possibly be hurt in retaliation. And I was the lesser daughter, the one who wasn’t really hers. “Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the cops?”

I doubted they would be able to help; even Luke hadn’t pushed the issue. He’d seemed to know we were up against something darker. God, even Philip looked wary—a strange expression on him.

“No,” she said softly. “They would only kill him faster.”

“I’ll call you after.” Hopefully I’d be alive to call.

She sounded tired now, world-weary. “Tell them we can sell the house. The cars. It won’t add up to a million dollars, but it’s everything we have. It will take time, that’s all.”

I hung up after heavy goodbyes, knowing it might be the last time I spoke to her, knowing she’d rather Tyler came back than me, caring about her despite that. And where was my father through all this? Drinking himself into a stupor, probably. Gambling even more.

I put the phone down beside me and looked up—and was startled to see Philip’s fierce expression, determination and something like possessiveness burning in his dark eyes.

“You’re not going,” he said softly, his words like iron.

“He’s my brother.” I ran a hand over my face, bone-deep tired,
soul-deep
tired of facing down evil—and losing. Always losing. “And we had a deal.”

“Our deal was that I’d give you the money. Not that I’d let you leave.”

My heart seized on those words:
let you leave
. “I had sex with you. That was the deal.”

A cruel smile. “Once? Twice? Were you keeping count, kitten? Do you have a ledger somewhere with the number of times I made you come?”

Much more than that. I had given him a down payment, in his own words. And I’d paid multiple installments, even if he had pleasured me during all of them. “There isn’t a choice. What good is the money if I can’t give it to them?”

“I’ll go.”

God, how I wanted to agree to that. Let him handle it, like I had when I was a teenager. But I was a grown woman now. This was my responsibility. “One look at you and they’ll know they’ve been found out. They’ll kill Tyler rather than expose themselves.”

He looked away, which meant I was right. “I swore I’d keep you safe. How the fuck can I let you meet someone who wants to kill me?”

I placed a hand on his arm, feeling the ripples of tension in his muscles. “You’re not letting me do anything. I’m doing this of my own free will.”

He shifted abruptly and stared out the dark window, his agitation filling the room like water, thick and heavy.

He wasn’t really turning away from me. He was turning away from closeness, from intimacy. From caring about someone who might end up hurt.

“I could lock you up,” he said, low enough that I barely heard him. “No one would ever be able to find you.”

My heart clenched. He wouldn’t… would he? The safe house was far out in the country. No one would hear me scream. No one would find me if he didn’t want them to.

Control.
He fought any man that tried to hold control over him—whether they were other criminals or cops. Something dark tainted his past, something deep. And that experience would mean he knew what it was like to be made helpless, to be used and twisted and held down like had happened to me. How could he do it too?

“Don’t,” I said softly, my hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat.
Don’t threaten me. Don’t fight this. Don’t push me away so that you can keep me safe, because it’s really you who’s scared.

“I want to,” he muttered. “It’s hell wanting you, needing you. This is hell.”

I pressed my cheek against him, feeling his shirt grow damp. “I don’t want to die, Philip. But this, sitting, waiting. Letting them scare me. Letting them
control
me. That isn’t living.”

He cupped my face in his large hand, holding me still for his dark gaze. The callused pad of his thumb rasped over my cheek. It felt more like a claim than a caress. “And what about me?”

He said that I had control over him.
That isn’t living,
I’d said.

“Do you wish you hadn’t come to me?” I asked.

His fingers tightened on my face, five points of pressure, of pain. He leaned close. “I should have come sooner. I should never have let you go back, all those years ago.”

My whisper came without thought, without warning. “I wanted you.”

Without a word he led me to the sofa—thick cream and white bars with a dark wood frame. Large hands touched my back and gently shoved. Soft cushions caught my knees as I fell. My hands grasped the square wooden backing as I held myself up.

He grasped my hips, his voice low. “This is what you get, understand? This is what I can give you. My hands on you, my mouth on you, my cock deep inside. This is
all
I can give you.”

Only sex. “Please.”

He made a low sound—abruptly cut off, as if he stopped himself. Of course he did. The control wasn’t only for me. It was for himself. He kept the whole world like that city out there: under glass, both protected and possessed.

His arm snaked around my waist. His other hand smoothed up my side and cupped my breast. I gasped at the sudden warmth of him, the surprising tenderness. It was as if our bodies had been made for each other, gears interlocking, space filled. I rocked my hips back and met the hardness of his body, hands reaching back, grasping for him: the breadth of his chest, the plane of his abs. The jutting cylinder of his cock.

That much couldn’t be controlled—desire.

He undid my jeans and pulled them down.

I shuddered as cool air brushed the bare skin of my ass, taunting me, exposing me. “God, kitten. Look at you. Every morning wood, every goddamn shower. This is what I imagined. And it wasn’t even close to how lovely you are, how fucking beautiful.”

My sex clenched at his words, muscles tightening around nothing. I wanted him inside me, hard and unforgiving—exactly how I had imagined him in bed and in the shower.

His hands brushed over the top curve of my ass and down the outsides of my thighs. I felt him kneel behind me, and squirmed at how close he must be—how much he must see of me. He leaned in, and I felt his breath warm against the lips of my sex.