Chad's Chase (Loving All Wrong Book 2) (18 page)

“W-where’s Mr. D?” the girl asked.

The Big Man in Black’s face hardened, but it wasn’t at her, it was at her words. She knew this because she’d overheard him telling another guard how much he hated Mr. D. And as the years dragged on by, The Big Man in Black had grown fonder and fonder of her. He was the one who advised her that all she had to do was obey the rules and things would be easier.

One day she’d been bold enough to ask him, “Will Mr. D ever stop coming to take his pay?”, and his eyes had glazed over as he said, “Wish for it, girl. Wish for it, and I’ll give it to you.”

The girl had closed her eyes and wished for it aloud, and The Big Man in Black had turned and left without a word.

But he’d never granted her the wish, because Mr. D came for his payment the following Saturday, and the next Saturday after that, and the next. Every Saturday for the past six months since she’d made her wish, Mr. D showed up.

The Big Man in Black never delivered.

But as he stood there in her doorway with the important-looking redhead beside him, the girl knew undoubtedly that today was the day.

When he opened his mouth and said, “Mr. D won’t be coming for payments anymore”, tears gushed from the girl’s eyes, as her body rocked with sobs, and it felt like two mangled, flaming trains had been shoved off her shoulders.

The Big Man in Black had granted her wish.

She fought not to throw herself at him and drown him in a profusion of “Thank You’s”, because that wasn’t allowed, which meant she could get in real trouble.

The Big Man in Black motioned to the pretty woman beside him, who was smiling benignly at her. “This is your new trainer. You may call her Miss B.”

Wiping away her tears, the girl smiled up at the woman. Because there just wasn’t anything else to do but smile when someone so beautifully entrancing was standing in front of you.

Later on, the girl would learn that her captor and Miss B’s employer had insisted that the payment for her training remained the same.

So Miss B came on Sundays.

But this Sunday payment wasn’t dreaded. It wasn’t roughness or pain. It was soft, slow and passionate. Pleasure the girl never knew existed.

And, although she knew it was wrong of her, the girl couldn’t help looking forward to Sundays.

On Saturday nights, she went to bed extra early and fell asleep with a smile, excited and impatient for the imminent bliss of the approaching day.

Sundays were payday for Miss B.

The girl
loved
Sundays.

T
hrough trained instincts, I felt the shadow of someone fluttering around me even while in deep sleep. Slow and deliberate, I cracked my eyes only a peek to determine where and who.

The environment wasn’t mine. I was in a strange place, pleasingly more open and airy. Sumptuous and comforting.

The passing shadow tickled my psyche again, and my eyes opened to their full almond-shaped view.

A plump, Hispanic woman was by the bed, contentedly setting a dress down and smoothing it over with her palm.

With light effort, I jackknifed up, and from that rush of movement the memories of the night before came back all at once.

Shit.

I was at Chad’s place. This room was mine—temporarily. I was still in my attire from the night before, still at the edge of the bed.

“Ah, good morning, Miss. You up. I just about to wake you,” came a heavily accented voice. “I am Vivian, the housemaid. I here to attend you. I now ran your bath, and choose fresh clothes for you to wear today. Light and airy, yes? If you no happy with what I choose, it is okay, you choose for yourself. Now I go make breakfast. Is there anything you allergic to, Miss?”

For a moment I just stared at her, unsure of what to make of this. “Mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, egg plants, and lima beans,” I lied.

I was allergic to neither. Not allergic, just hated. I hated them and would prefer if she didn’t use them in anything she was preparing for me.

“Ah,” Vivian said with a smile, “You much like Mr. Niiveux. He allergic to all those, too.”

When a laugh garbled in my throat, Vivian looked at me funny.

Chad was a liar, like myself. He was allergic to none of those things. Like Ricardo and me, he just didn’t like the stuff. We used to pull this allergic thing on my father. And I couldn’t fathom how my father didn’t question the strange coincidence of Chad, Ricardo and me all being “allergic” to the exact same things.

Though why Chad would lie to his housemaid instead of flat-out telling her he hated the awful excuse for healthy foods was beyond me. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Biting my lip to quell my amusement, I gestured for Vivian to carry on.

Nodding, she made straight for the walk-in closet and I followed. It was spacious, neat, and organized, filled with tagged new clothes and shoes. “Is this…all mine?”

“Sí,” Vivian answered. “Mr. Niiveux make room and closet new for you last week. Strange he never do this for others. You must be very special. Very special.”

Last week? He did this
last week
? Well, wasn’t he a cocksure piece of shit? To be so damn positive I would walk into his trap and he would succeed in capturing me. Like a bird. Locked in his cage.

Vivian led me to a safe in the wall at the very back of the closet. “Your cash and passports here. The temporary code be 0000. When you ready, you change it. Now I leave you to have good shower and change from your stinky clothes.”

Affronted, I glared at her. “Are you saying I smell bad?”

With a shrug, Vivian reached out and scornfully pinched my biker jacket, then fanned a hand under her nose as she reiterated, “Stinky.” Heading out of the closet, she spoke with hand gestures. “I choose lovely white sheer for you. Sheer will make you more like beautiful lady.”

Then she was gone, and I was left staring after her, wondering what I was supposed to make of her. She was neither nice nor mean, just neutral. She wasn’t old or young, just in between, and she was pretty, as most Hispanics were, while nicely dressed in a close-fitting maxi dress.

Shaking my head, I took the duffel bag from the safe and opened it. All my cash was still there in stacks of twenty thousand. Ten different passports, three burner phones, and an all-purpose knife. Fifteen different fake IDs and driver’s licenses. I searched around for my Ruger LCR small handgun, but should have known better. It’s a miracle he left the all-purpose knife.

Although I’d given up on trying to escape while on assignments, I always traveled with a just-in-case duffel bag of cash. I had about three and a half million dollars scattered around the world in safe deposit boxes. Cash that I took with me to each country I was sent to, then rented a safe deposit box and left it there…Just in case.

The Voice forced me to kill, but he also paid me for each successful hit. Depending on the risk and difficulty of the assignment, after the job was done, I would receive anywhere between two hundred to five hundred thousand dollars.

However, I wrote the payment shit off as a tease and a headfuck. If I didn’t have freedom, what purpose was money to me?

Zipping the bag shut, I stuffed it back into the safe, changed the code, then went to the bathroom, where a warm bath was waiting for me, just as Vivian had said. Shedding my clothes, I looked at myself in one of the full-length mirrors on both sides of the long, marble vanity.

Below my ribs, on my right side where Chad had kicked me, was a disgusting purple bruising, but it was nothing I wasn’t used to. Thank hell he hadn’t caught my ribs, or I’d be in some serious pain right now. My cheeks were still red and slightly bruised from his slaps, but gratefully, they weren’t black and blue discolored or swollen. Nothing a little extra make-up couldn’t fix.

Climbing into the warm tub, I kicked back and allowed myself to soak and relax without a care or worry for a steady, undisturbed twenty minutes before draining the water from the tub, and going over to the rain shower. After another fifteen minutes under the rain shower, I blow-dried my hair, caught it back in a ponytail and went back into the bedroom.

On the bed Vivian had laid out black lace underwear with matching bra and a flirty white dress. Almost barfing at the thing, I went to the closet and chose black leggings and a white, sleeveless turtleneck that clung to me like a second skin.

Scary enough, the apparels were all a perfect fit. No idea how he knew what sizes to get.

Chad was a very peculiar man. And repulsively arrogant.

Fluffing my ponytail, I trekked out the bedroom, intent on taking liberties. Mainly because hunger was seriously starting to do a number on me.

When I got to the end of the hall leading out into the open-floor-plan penthouse, I halted, just for a second, to admire my captor.

In dark denims and an extra-slim fit navy blue button shirt tucked inside his denims, held up by a dark brown Emporio Armani leather belt, he was sitting on a bar stool at the breakfast bar, hunched over the morning paper while stuffing a strawberry in his mouth.

There was something about the way he wore his clothes that gave him this irresistible allure. More than the average man, his clothes were always extra-slim-fitted. And because he was lean built instead of heavily muscular, it just worked. On anyone else, the close-fitting style would probably come off as queer, but not Chad.

Chad owned it. Owned his style, owned his body, owned his appeal.

Just like no one wears a suit better than Matt Bomer, no one did tight-fitting semi-formal better than Chadrick Niiveux.

His dirty blond hair was damp and finger-combed backwards, the length a little too far down his neck than I preferred. One leg stretched out to the ground, the other propped up on the stool leg, his attention given solely to the newspaper on the counter in front of him.

Why did it please me this much to see him? To stare at him? I was supposed to hate this man for ruining my life. Not get hot and bothered for him, or beg him to kiss me, or dream of him making sweet, passionate love to my body.

He was not a good man. He could not be trusted. He was a liar, a manipulator, and a murderer. Not that I was any better. I was all of those things, too. But this particular man, Chadrick Niiveux, was not supposed to be trusted. Period.

Yet I did.

It was like that horrible episode from twelve years ago never happened.
That’s
what happened whenever I looked at Chad: I saw nothing, I remembered nothing, and I thought of nothing…but him.

How did he do that? I didn’t know.

But frighteningly enough, I
liked
that he did that to me. That he made me forget things. Made me forget purpose and reason. That he made me feel ineffable things. Things that made me believe there could be a better ending to my story.

This was sick, and fucked up.

Then again, my whole life had been sick and fucked up, so maybe sick and fucked up just had a certain appeal to me because I knew no better.

Chad’s brand of sick and fucked up, I liked it, I wanted it, I craved it.

After a year and three decades of standing and staring at him, I resumed walking, going to sit next to him at the breakfast bar.

The morning paper still held his attention. I wasn’t worthy of it.

I reached over and tugged his overgrown hair down his nape. “You need a haircut.”

Biting into his strawberry, Chad slowly turned his head to share his attention, and his eyes narrowed in on my face, seemingly assessing the mild damage caused by his own hand the night before. As a glimpse of remorse flickered over his features. He dragged his gaze from my face and swept it down my body before saying, “I see I got the sizes right.”

“To a T,” I agreed.

Vivian materialized, asking, “Coffee or tea, Miss?”

“Coffee.”

Vivian portioned me a decent breakfast—a dish loaded with something from each food group, poured me a cup of coffee and then disappeared.

Alone with Chad again, I turned to fire up a conversation, but he was already on his feet, closing the paper and readying to leave.

“Where are you going?”

An eyebrow winged up at me. “Here’s a fun fact: When Chadrick Niiveux’s not busy dodging hits at his head, he actually
has
a life.”

Just like that. Going about his normal life as if a couple of hours ago he hadn’t blown up my bike in Excelsior and set my fucking apartment on fire. And on the topic of last night, was any of that shit even necessary, or was he just one of those dramatic criminals? Blowing things up for effects and epics.

Cocky little shit.

“Being a dick doesn’t suit you,” I sneered at him.

Chad scooped up his cellphone from the counter, glanced at the screen and started in the direction of the elevator.

I hopped off the bar stool and followed him. “Am I supposed to just stay here and chew my fingernails all day?”

“A normal girl would paint them.”

“I’m sure you know by now I’m not a normal girl.”