Bought (Unchained Vice Book 3) (12 page)

Scarlet stood in the Finger Wharf restaurant’s cloakroom and reapplied her makeup. She was stalling, Marcus’s proposal looping in her mind. He’d been calling her since he heard her sing at the dinner party, and it had taken a week for her to say yes. Marcus was a dear friend, but she was sure his urgency had more to do with the fact that he had a business proposition.

A comeback.

One night. She would be one of the performers sharing top billing in a one-off jazz and blues show at the Opera House— a tribute to the great voices of the past. Marcus had gathered some of the world’s best musicians, talents she admired.

Serendipity was how Marcus put it. One of the stars booked to perform had canceled at the last minute due to health problems. That rarely happened; the show always came first, everyone in the business lived by that motto. And yet here was an opening. So close to the show, Marcus hadn’t given up the idea of finding the right voice to backfill and instead he’d been working around the gap.

But if Scarlet wanted it …

He’d send her some song choices, nothing he hadn’t heard her do before.

She’d be perfect.

Just one night.

No pressure.

Except that wasn’t quite true; it was
all
the pressure in the world.

She didn’t know how she’d gotten through lunch. Anxiety and excitement coiled and uncoiled in her stomach in a nauseating cycle.

This was what she wanted … everything back to normal, back to good. She’d been focusing on her relationship with Killian, but the singing was always there in the background. Waiting.

Of course everybody thought her absence had been because of Daniel’s death. In part that was true; she had taken the time to mourn him, but nobody knew the rest of the story. It was better that way.

One of the positives about the Australian media was that if you didn’t call attention to something, they mostly gave you your privacy. But from the outside looking in, the mourning period was coming to an end.

Her agent was starting to call more often with offers. So far, she’d turned them all down. She didn’t need the fame. God knew, she didn’t need the money.

But this … she wanted to sing.

She
needed
to sing. Ever since the dinner party, the desire had sat there fluttering in the cage of her chest, restless from waiting.

She blew out a breath as she studied the woman in the mirror. She looked more than a year older.

Are you ready for this?

Panic came from the strangest of things.

But she already knew … she was a survivor.

Her therapist told her she was strong, as if she’d been lucky to be born with it. Instead, being born poor had schooled her in it.

There was no art to surviving; there was only will.

Head down and one foot in front of the other, that’s how you kept going.

The problem was survivors seldom looked ahead. She’d failed at the fame game before. One big hit and no career vision, and suddenly she had been nothing more than arm candy for studio execs.

Killian had saved her, believed in her. He’d told her they’d come from the same place, but that didn’t have to stop them. He’d found her a second chance; he’d brought her Daniel.

Now she needed to reinvent herself again.

“Scarlet?” The surprised voice interrupted her.

Her eyes adjusted their focus in the mirror to the woman behind her. “Lana.”

Lana stood there awkwardly, mouth open but with nothing to say. They hadn’t seen each other since the dinner party.

Scarlet waited to feel something—hate, anger, pity, anything—but in the aftermath, there was nothing. What was said was said.

Lana could no more take back the words as Scarlet would allow them to keep power over her.

Acceptance? Forgiveness? Did it matter? Therapy had groomed her in letting go.

In many ways, she’d come full circle.

There was only now, only one foot in front of the other.

She pulled up from the mirror and turned to face the woman she used to call a friend. “How are you, Lana?”

“I’m …” Still at a loss for words, Lana ran her tongue over dry lips. She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry about what happened. I … it was inexcusable.”

It was.

It was also no longer of consequence.

“I never realized how you felt about Daniel.” How long had Lana loved him?

They’d all been close for a while. Lana had done some work with them on backing vocals, but it had been more than professional; Lana had shared her and Killian’s bed—creative muses, friends, and lovers.

But not with Daniel.

She knew he’d never taken Lana to bed, but in the end, what was that worth? She and Killian were proof positive love had nothing to do with sex.

The threat of tears glazed Lana’s eyes. She had genuinely loved him. Had Daniel loved her back?

“After he died and you left for Europe, I never put two and two together.” Scarlet shook her head. “I never realized you were running away.”

The other woman cleared her throat. “I couldn’t be here.”

Scarlet nodded because she understood. “I couldn’t sing.”

One show.

Singing the songs they loved.

She reached for her bag. “Daniel would want us to move on.”

***

Jerricho stood on the deck drinking water while he waited for Scarlet to come down for dinner. She was late, and although she never really seemed in the mood to eat, she was, for the most part, punctual. Maybe after her lunch date today, she’d decided to skip the meal. Maybe he should stop looking forward to their evening dinner dates.

Maybe it was already too late.

He wandered back into the house to find her.

As he headed upstairs to the bedrooms, he passed a large display of tulips on the hall table—three dozen of them, a lovely mix of pink and purple. Killian.

The man had flown to Queensland this morning, but the delivery had arrived as soon as Scarlet had come home.

It seemed Jerricho was not the first to hear her exciting news about the show.

She’d seen the flowers and cried, explaining it was Killian’s tradition—tulips for every show.

The Baileys ran hot and cold.

Scarlet’s orgasm on the dinner table the night before was all fire. Killian standing up to pour and down a whiskey then leave the room was all ice.

And Jerricho was caught in the middle. A dangerous balance.

He had six days until he needed the next payment for Dado. Killian would be gone for two.

Four days and Jerricho had more than a problem. He’d have a full-blown situation.

Maybe he already had a situation; his discomfort was growing at using Scarlet as a means to an end.

It felt like a betrayal.

No surprise there. Just look at his history …

His mother had been right about him.

Upstairs, the door to Daniel’s room was ajar.

“Scarlet?” He waited a moment before slowly pushing the door wider.

She stood with her back to him in front of a small writing table facing the window.

“Daniel used to like to sit in front of the window and compose music.” Her hand swept over the empty desk, fingers lingering as if tracing the grain. “He didn’t do it at the piano like you would expect. He just sat here marking the notes on music sheets like he was writing a letter.” Her hand stilled, resting as she kept contact with the wood, the memory. “When he eventually sat down to play, there would be no awkward birth of sound, just this beautifully formed music, like the song had always existed and Daniel was just a channel to make it heard.”

Sometimes she looked so fragile, her body seemed to rise and sink on a single deep breath. There was a need to reach out and protect her, but there was also a darker need, a need to bend her and test her willowy strength.

“I love this picture.” Her hand moved to touch the photograph sitting in the corner. She and Daniel were leaning on what looked like an old farm fence.

“Tell me about him,” he asked softly, still standing on the threshold.

“He was only ever supposed to play the piano.” She laughed as if the thought were ridiculous. “Killian came home with him one day. He has this way of accumulating strays.” She turned around to face him; cheeks flushed at the parallel or insinuation.

He didn’t take offense; in his case, it was true.

“Did you become lovers?” It was the natural question.

“No.” She laughed. “Everyone thinks we were fucking because we were all so close. Killian loved Daniel like a brother, and I just loved him. But it wasn’t about sex. Daniel didn’t get sex. Oh, he liked to watch people doing it, but that was where it stopped. Sometime he slept in our bed. Touch was good, but sex …” She shook her head. “Daniel once said to me that, for him, sex was like jazz for most people, no matter how much they try, they never get the notes.” She smiled.

She walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. “I wish Killian was home.”

“What’s bothering you tonight?” He’d thought the news about the show was good.

She looked over at him with raw honesty. “What if I can’t do it on my own?”

He smiled. “You’re saying this to a man who’s heard you sing. You’ll have to forgive me for not sharing the same doubts.”

He was rewarded with a bittersweet smile before she looked at her feet. The gesture pulled him into the room. He sank to his haunches in front of her so he could study her face. “I promise you, Scarlet, your talent is not the problem.”

“I’m just …” She chewed her bottom lip. “No one knows about the kidnapping.”

Kidnapping?

He balked, neither had he. Keeping his face neutral as he curled his warm palm around one of her calves to comfort her.

“Well, the media doesn’t know. Our lawyer and my publicist handled things. It was easy to disappear out of mourning. It was just after Daniel’s death, like they struck when we were at our lowest.” Her grip on the edge of the bed tightened. “If I put myself out there, it might somehow come out, just when I’m trying to put it behind us. And there’s my finger … they’ll see my finger.”

The information hit him like a physical blow. He hadn’t connected her finger to the kidnapping.

His stomach muscles tightened. He’d entered the room, come this far. It was of no use pretending things still weren’t personal.

He wanted her stories.

“What happened to your finger, Scarlet?”

***

Scarlet swallowed.

They talked. They shared their favorite movies, books they’d read, songs they liked. They spoke about what was happening in the world. They’d spent an afternoon in bed playing along with game shows.

She’d sung for him since the party. In exchange, he’d read her one of his favorite poems out of that book he liked so much.

They talked all the time.

But not like this.

It seemed right for him to know, but she was scared he’d look at her differently. Scared it would come between them as it had with her and Killian.

She was scared of what talking like this meant.

Mouth dry, she braced herself and whispered, “About ten months ago, I was kidnapped.”

His hand squeezed her calf where it rested giving her comfort and strength.

“Some traffickers wanted Killian to carry sex workers from town to town. His trucking company goes everywhere, even where trains and planes don’t. They rotate them. Fresh faces for the customers, and makes it harder to trace the girls. I’m sure they’re illegal. I know what it says in the papers, but I don’t think they really stop all the boats. We’re an island for God’s sake, that’s a lot of fucking coast.”

He’d gone so still as he listened; it was as if he was holding his breath.

She was not going to break down in front of him. She didn’t want to give him a reason for pity. Chest tight, she pushed through. “God, they just come here looking for a better life.” Focus on them; it was easier to focus on them.

Buying time, she reached out to run her fingers through his hair. Hand trembling, she sank it into the luxurious waves. Soothing. She wanted to him brush his hair all over her skin, wrap it around her wrists and bind herself in the silk of him.

He didn’t rush her, just slid his warm hand up her calf to behind her knee as if helping her along.

“I was the bargaining chip.” Tears burned the back of her eyes, and she blinked them back. “I don’t know why they thought Killian would roll over and agree. You would think they would’ve researched him better.” She gave an empty laugh. “Sometimes I think that, after losing Daniel, maybe they thought that would make him more agreeable…”

“They cut your finger off?” It was much easier hearing it from him than having to say it.

She nodded.

“Because Killian said no?”

She laughed at the irony, because it was reasonable to assume they’d given him a chance to save the finger—that’s the way it worked on TV, wasn’t it? “The kidnappers cut it off as soon as they had me. They wanted him to know they meant business. They told me if he said no—” her voice cracked “—they’d send him my tongue.”

She looked down; at some point, their fingers had interlocked. She didn’t know who had reached for whose hand. She squeezed tightly. Holding him like this, being held, it made it easier.

“They gave him twenty-four hours to agree to their demand. They had watches and phones, but they pulled out this cheap, old-fashioned alarm clock and put it on the table next to me. It ticked so loud I could feel it throbbing in my hand like it was pulsing inside me. It made me crazy.” She’d screamed and screamed until they’d slapped her silent.

“I knew before the alarm even went off that Killian wasn’t going to make it. That’s when I started begging.” She had been frantic. “I would’ve given them money … anything.” She could only whisper it.

She closed her eyes, heart racing.

She’d practiced telling her story so many times. After struggling to tell her therapist, she’d practiced looking into her bathroom mirror and rehearsing the words until they were nothing but rote. Nothing but fact.

Nothing but sounds.

She wasn’t supposed to feel them anymore.

“What did they do, Scarlet?” His voice was quiet, contained fury.