Denied (4 page)

Monster (Present Day)

Monster stood in
his kitchen drinking brandy, straight, from a heavy-bottomed glass tumbler. He stared out of the window at the grounds and the tall wall surrounding his property, lost in thought.

Despite spending his entire life in this house—only leaving its high walls for the first time a matter of weeks ago—this place no longer felt like home. He missed her with every fiber of his being, his Flower, his reason for becoming the man he was now. He’d made a choice—a selfless choice. He could have kept her here and lost himself in her soft flesh and warm kisses, but doing so would have been entirely selfish. Just because he’d taken care of the Gonzalez-Larrinaga brothers didn’t mean there weren’t repercussions for what he’d done. A death never went unpunished, and he’d taken lives of two important men here in Cuba. If she was here, it only put her at risk. These were brutal, ruthless people, and if they got any hint that she was someone he cared about, they would use her to hurt him. The idea of her being put in the same situation as she had been with the Gonzalez-Larrinaga brothers speared pain deep inside him. That whole thing could have gone so badly. What if he hadn’t reached her in time, if he hadn’t regained consciousness, and they had raped her? The thought of another man forcing himself inside her luscious body made him want to punch down walls and hurt people.

But that hadn’t happened, and he wouldn’t take the risk of it happening again.

He’d let her go because he loved her. He knew she’d be furious with him right now. She would be cursing his name and telling herself she hated him, and though it hurt, that was the right thing for her to do, too. If she hated him, she wouldn’t try to look for him. Cuba was a big place, and he didn’t think she knew what area she’d been in. That would help deter her from coming back and trying to find him. The other thing that would deter her was the extreme measures he’d taken to send her back. The drugs had been the kind doctors used when needing to put their patients under for a length of time. He’d hired an anesthesiologist to travel with her the whole way, and the doctor had reported back that though she’d come out of the anesthetic a couple of times, she hadn’t known what was going on, and they’d left her at her apartment safely. The doctor had even stayed with her until she’d regained consciousness.

Flower was home, and safe, and that was all that mattered to him. Even if someone came after him to avenge the deaths of the brothers, they’d never even know she was still alive.

The shrill ring of the telephone caused him to glance away from the window and toward the living room, which he’d turned into his office. Carrying his glass into the other room, he pressed down on the worry that rose inside him.

Monster set the glass on his desk and picked up the phone.

“Yes?”

“It’s Sean Hamilton, sir. I’m calling with a report on your mark.”

Something in his chest tightened. “Yes, thank you. How is she?”

“She seems to have recovered well enough from her ordeal, physically, that is. After she woke up, she broke a number of things in her apartment—”

“What do you mean she broke them?”

“I’m mean she was angry, sir. She shouted and smashed her belongings up.”

He’d expected her to react badly to waking up back in her apartment, but still the idea of her breaking her things twisted his gut. He remembered when she’d thrown his books at him in her anger when she’d been here. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised she’d reacted how she had.

And it’s good she’s angry,
he told himself.
It means she hates you. She won’t want to ever see you again.

“There’s something else, sir,” the man said down the line.

Monster picked up his glass and knocked back the remaining brandy. He needed to keep his emotions at bay. Feeling wouldn’t do either of them any good.

“What’s that?”

“She went to the police station and made a report. I’m afraid we haven’t been able to get hold of any files to find out exactly what she said, but I think we can be fairly certain the report would have mentioned you in it.”

He clenched his fist around the phone, his jaw tightening. “You need to get hold of that file.”

“We’re working on it. We have some contacts in the LAPD, but obviously it takes time.”

“I need to know if she’s said anything that might draw the wrong kind of attention to her.”

“I understand.”

“So what’s she doing now?”

“She caught a bus and went back to her apartment.”

“Okay, well, keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“I’ll do my best, sir, though I hope you understand it isn’t always easy to tail someone in a city this busy. Los Angeles is a big place, and you specifically said not to allow her to become suspicious in any way.”

Monster snapped. “I don’t want to hear fucking excuses. Just do the job I’m paying you for.”

“Yes, sir.”

He hung up the phone, his heart beating hard.

What the hell did she go to the police for? Did she really think he’d send her back to the United States without employing people to keep an eye on her? He’d thought she had more sense than that. He’d hoped she might have lain low and taken some time to herself. With the money he’d sent, she didn’t even need to go in to work if she didn’t want to.

Still, his heart ached for her.

Monster wished he’d been able to ask Sean the things he really wanted to know.

He’d wanted the other man to tell him every little detail about Flower. Had she been crying? How did she look? Was she hurt and did she miss him? He wished he could see her and ask her those questions himself. He wished he could wrap his arms around her, and hold her, and tell her everything was going to be all right.

Monster pushed away the surge of emotion that rose inside him. He lifted his glass, planning on taking another drink to try to dull the pain, but the glass was empty. With a growl, he tightened his hold, squeezing harder and harder, until finally the glass shattered in his fist. Shards of glass embedded in his flesh, and he let the remaining pieces crash to the floor. Blood ran down his palm and dripped onto the desk, but he didn’t care.

The sight and the pain slicing through his hand was a welcome distraction from the ache in his heart.

Four

Lily hammered her
fist against the door, hard enough to hurt. The number 20 in a gold embossed figure was attached to the center of the wood, but it lost part of its nail as she banged and slipped so it hung crooked.

“Hey!” she yelled. “Get out here.”

Her anger toward her interfering neighbor had built with every step she’d taken toward home. If he hadn’t called the cops ahead of her, they would never have heard the story about her having trouble with a bad boyfriend and would have taken her story more seriously. He should have stayed out of her business instead of sticking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted.

She didn’t hear anything, so she banged again.

“Come on, you son of a bitch! Face me!”

Maybe she was taking her anger out on the wrong man, blaming him for what had happened when he was only a tiny piece of the jigsaw, but right now he was the only one available.

Footsteps approached from inside and the door swung open. His hair was wet, long and dripping in his face, and a towel was wrapped around his waist. She tried not to notice the defined muscles of his chest and abdomen, or the way a dark line of hair ran from his navel and disappeared beneath the towel.

His eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, it’s you.”

No, she would not let herself be distracted by a good body again. She had something to say, and she was going to say it.

“What the fuck do you think you were playing at by reporting me to the cops?”

His eyebrows drew down in apparent confusion. “Huh?”

“You called the cops and told them I was back, and that I had gone off with some thug of a boyfriend who had smashed up my apartment.”

“I thought you were in trouble.”

“Well, I wasn’t, and I don’t need some stranger interfering in my business.”

“Okay,” he said, placing his hand against the doorframe. She wished he’d put on a shirt. “First of all, we’re hardly strangers. We’ve lived in the same building for three years now, and even if you don’t take much notice of anyone around you, I do. I know your name, and I know what you do for a living. I even know you like Chinese food on a Saturday night.”

“Sounds more like you’re a stalker to me,” she muttered, but she could feel her cheeks growing red. “Anyway, you might only know all this from the newspaper.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m a normal guy who notices the world around him, including the pretty woman from down the hall, despite the fact she doesn’t seem to notice much about anything except going to work.”

“I notice stuff!”

“I bet you don’t even know my name.”

He had her on that one.

“It’s Cameron Hastings, by the way.”

“I knew that,” she muttered, but didn’t meet his eye.

“And secondly,” he continued, “I thought you were in trouble and I wanted to help. Are you saying the next time I think a woman is being hurt, I should just turn a blind eye? If a guy is beating up his girlfriend in the street, I should keep walking?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Are you sure? Because I thought
you
were that woman, and I was trying to do the right thing.”

She exhaled a sigh, her shoulders dropping, her anger deflating. “You’re right and I’m sorry. I was just angry because I didn’t tell you the truth when you came to my door, and then you passed on that lie to the cops. I went to see them myself, but because of what you’d already told them, they didn’t want to believe the truth.”

His forehead creased in concern, a line appearing between his eyes. “Look, do you want to come in for a moment? This doesn’t feel like the sort of conversation we should be having standing in the hall.”

She lifted her hands in defense and took a step back. “Oh, no, it’s fine. I obviously interrupted you, anyway. Please, just forget I said anything.”

“No. Come in, please. I’ll make you coffee. And I’ll put some clothes on, I promise.” A hint of a grin appeared at the corners of his lips. She didn’t even have any milk in her apartment—or if she did, it was a month old by now. The idea of coffee did sound good.

“Okay,” she relented. “As long as you get dressed.”

He laughed. “I will, I swear.”

Cameron stepped away from his front door, heading into his apartment. Cautiously, she followed, pushing the door closed behind her.

“Just give me a minute,” he called out as he walked toward another room—his bedroom, she assumed. “Make yourself at home.”

Lily looked around at his apartment curiously. It was comfortable, homely. A brown leather couch that appeared to be well loved, the material cracked, was strewn with cushions and throws. Books piled on shelves reminded her of Monster, and her heart clenched. Numerous photographs of Cameron with groups of friends were positioned on the tops of the bookcases. She spotted one of him with a blonde girl, his arm casually looped over her shoulder. Was that his girlfriend? Did he even live alone? For some reason, she’d assumed he did, but she could be wrong. She hoped he did—not for any romantic reason, of course she wasn’t interested like that, but because she didn’t want to explain to anyone else what had happened.

Cameron reappeared dressed in jeans and a long sleeved, v-neck t-shirt. He headed into the kitchen, and she heard the hiss of a kettle starting to boil.

“How do you take your coffee?” he called out to her.

“Black with sugar, thanks.”

The rich aroma of the coffee propelled her into the memory of being rewarded with espresso after she’d first treated Monster’s face. The recollection caused her eyes to fill with tears, a painful lump lodging in her throat.

A hand touched her knee, and she jerked away from the contact, an old familiar feeling of discomfort and awkwardness settling inside her. She’d been so lost in her memory, she hadn’t noticed Cameron setting down the carafe of coffee on the table.

“Hey, are you okay?”

She nodded and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I’ve been through a lot, and I guess I just haven’t had time to process it all yet.”

“You want to tell me the truth now?”

To her horror, she realized the idea of telling this man she’d been taken by sex traffickers humiliated her. Would he think she had been forced to be a prostitute, that she’d been forced to have sex with numerous men?

“I was abducted,” she said, carefully. “They were traffickers, but they didn’t want me for the sex trade. They wanted me to work for a man who had a large port wine birthmark down one side of his face.”

“Because you’re a laser therapist.”

She quickly looked up at him frowning. “How did you know that?”

He shrugged apologetically. “I told you. We’ve lived down the hall from one another for three years now. Plus, it was in the papers.”

She gave her head a slight shake. “Oh, of course.” Lily gathered her thoughts and continued. “The man they took me for was a criminal, and he didn’t want to go out into the regular world for treatment, so he paid these men to take me.”

“This man, he let you come home again?”

She nodded. “Yes, he treated me well enough.” She tried not to think about the days on end she’d spent in solitary confinement, hungry and afraid, or the days following when she’d spent most of the time in bed with him, or with him fucking her on the kitchen counter, the floor, the stairs ... “But the men who took me initially were bad guys. They had other women—girls, really. They hurt them and were selling them for the sex trade. The thing is, I don’t think they thought I would be coming home, and if they find out, they’re going to come after me.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, you can say that again. They took my purse, so they know where I live, and they know I can give descriptions of them and their business.”

“You think they’ll track you down?”

“I’m sure of it. And because of the call you made to the police, they’re not doing anything to try to protect me.”

He looked down at the ground and shook his head. “Hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I was only trying to help, I swear it. If there’s anything I can do …”

“I do need your help,” she admitted. To delay what she was about to say, she picked up her cup and took a sip of the hot coffee. “I need a gun.”