His Captive, The Unabridged Collection: Billionaire Dark Romance (18 page)

Her eyes whipped toward me. “What are you talking about?”

“On the street. I was waiting for you. When Bronson… found me. Did you see me?”

My tone was calm and measured, and it took every bit of strength I had to stay still enough to hear her answer. There was no way she couldn't have seen me, as blatant as Bronson was. If the plan was to get me taken, she would have watched. She always watched.

Rachel burst out laughing then, her head whipping back, eyes firmly on the ceiling. “Oh, God! That was the funniest fucking thing I think I've ever seen. You're so pathetic. It took like three seconds, you didn't even put up a fight. It was
perfect.
” She looked all around, grinning widely. “I didn't just watch, Jolie. I
loved
it. It was beautiful. My delicate little flower, wilting and dying right before my eyes.”

I glanced toward Rafe and found his gaze already on me. His eyes were filled with nothing but sadness for me. Not pity.

“I'm sorry, Julie,” he said softly.

“There's nothing to be sorry about, Rafe. You saved me. You... saved me.”

He spread his hands, palm out. “So you see—”

“— no,” I interrupted.

His eyebrows shot up and then immediately furrowed.

“Julie, why?” he said, his voice trailing off. Then he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Julie, I think you should leave now.”

“Rafe, are you sure that she was there? Are you sure that she really did anything to Gretchen?”

“It doesn't matter,” he said gruffly. “She's part of the legacy that needs to be ended.”

I stepped closer to him, standing up on the balls of my feet so I could be just a little bit closer to his face. I whispered, “I want you to let her go."

To my surprise, he cocked his head slightly to one side and pressed his lips together. He seemed to be considering it.

“Oh, this is priceless," came her voice behind me. I closed my eyes and shook my head in frustration. “What are you, like, his pet now? Are you kidding me?"

I whirled around, confused for a moment that the blade was still in my hand when the lights reflected off of it and blinded me for a split second.

“What, you're going to beg for
my
life now?
You
?” she sneered.

“Shut up, Rachel,” I whispered. The blade trembled in my hand.

“Oh please,” she drawled, “this whole thing is just too ridiculous. Jolie, if you had half a brain —”

I slammed the knife on the metal table, making the other blades jump in their places and silencing Rachel, if just for a moment. My hands trembled as I leaned toward her, hovering over her torso and meeting her at eye level.

“
That's not even my name
,” I hissed.

I stood straight and turned my back to her so that I could face Rafe. His hands were folded in a basket shape in front of his waist, and he looked me up and down curiously.

“I'm so sorry, Julie,” he said again softly. The sincerity in his voice made me quake. “I am impressed by your sense of loyalty and perhaps...
charity
, but I fear it's misplaced.”

I nodded curtly. Helplessness welled up in me like a flood and I bit my lips together to keep them from trembling. I wanted to be away, out of the chapel. Anywhere. I didn’t want to know any more than I already did.

“Why don’t you wait for me in your room,” Rafe said gently, reading my mind yet again. His hands stroked my arms sympathetically but his expression was quickly hardening back to its businesslike demeanor.

“Yeah, go to your fucking
room
, Jolie!” Rachel shrieked behind me. She could sense the shift in the air. The terror was rising in her voice again.

Rafe pulled me closer, pressing a brief kiss to my forehead. Then he pulled back, meeting my eyes and nodding. Once again, he was calm and determined as though called to duty.

Rachel continued her stream of insults, her voice rising shrilly. “This is just brilliant. This is perfect! After everything I did for you!”

“Don’t listen to her. She knows her time is short,” Rafe whispered. “I’ll be along for you soon. Perhaps to hear your question? Hm? Do you have one ready?”

I nodded. A small smile twisted one corner of his mouth.

“That’s good. We can talk. You’re a good pet,” he murmured. His hands pushed me away gently, turning me back toward the door he wanted me to walk out.

Rachel’s hair had gone sweaty and dark and her eyes were wide, white-rimmed as I stepped to the side.

“Somehow you get your fat ass in with this guy? At least Gretchen was pretty! At least Gretchen had a brain in her head!”

“You didn’t know her…” came a voice from the door.

“Goodbye, Rachel,” I whispered.

“You said you didn’t know her!” Bronson yelped suddenly, striding into the room with his arms out. Rafe sidestepped me, meeting him halfway and cutting off his path to Rachel.

“Don’t listen to her,” Rafe warned. Bronson grabbed a fistful of his own wiry, red hair in frustration.

“Oh is that the idiot from the bar?” Rachel called out sweetly. “Bronson? You look just like her, you know… but uglier…”

“Don’t listen to her!” Rafe barked as Bronson began to pace back and forth desperately. I flattened myself against the wall, unable to find a path to leave as I had been told.

“She said she didn’t know her!” Bronson yelled, his hands out as though explaining the obvious.

“Of course I fucking knew her! Do you think Gemma could seriously have hauled her ass through that tiny window?”

Both men turned, mouths agape. Rachel couldn’t see them but must have felt the air change. The smile that spread across her face was brilliant, triumphant.

“Oh… you poor fucks. Always think you’re the smartest guy in the room, don’t you, Rafe? Yeah well, at the end there she was begging me to end it… Said she couldn’t fucking stand you for another day…”

“What is she saying? What does that mean?” Bronson chattered. Rafe’s arm belted him across the shoulder, holding him back.

“Locking her up like an animal! Like a fucking animal! She begged me to do it! Begged me!”

“
You shut your mouth you lying fucking whore!
”

Bronson’s voice boomed through the room, shaking the metal tables. Rachel was cackling now, her mouth open so wide I could see her tongue and the spray of spittle as she spat out the words.

“You think you’re so smart! So smart the cops couldn’t get to you? So smart that they couldn’t be on their way right back? Like I didn’t see your ugly ass coming, Bronson? Like I didn’t relish the stupid fucking look on your face!”

“Don’t listen to her!” Rafe commanded, but it was too late. Bronson’s mouth half-opened in a sneer and he dodged under Rafe’s arm, twisting his wiry body like a diver. In moments he was at the table, his fingers curling around the blade.

“You lying fucking whore!” he screamed as brought the knife over his head.

“NOOO!”

The blade flashed blindingly as Bronson brought it down in a swift, punching arc. Rachel’s body seemed to almost curl around it as it plunged through skin and bone with a sound that was almost absurdly understated. She sounded like a melon being cut. She sounded like almost nothing.

But then there was silence. Bronson stood over her, panting, his eyes wide and shocked as the blood began to ooze around the hilt of the blade, puddling there and then pouring over in a swift crimson river toward her throat.

Rafe wasn’t breathing. His lips parted and he said again, “No.”

Bronson nodded.

“
What have you done?
”

Wincing, Bronson’s features twisted in a snarl of rage.

“What have I done?? I finished it, Rafe! I fucking finished it!”

Rafe’s hands clenched and unclenched over and over.

“You had no right!” he snarled. Lunging forward, he shoved Bronson back and stood over Rachel’s dimming, silent flesh. His fingers clawed the table’s edge.

“This isn’t right. This isn’t what was supposed to happen,” he muttered.

Bronson slammed his hand flat on the metal table, making Rachel’s form slosh grotesquely sideways.

“This is the end!” he hissed. His pulse hammered through a twisted vein at his temple. “It’s done, Rafe! Now get rid of
this trash
, here!” He flung his arm toward where I cowered against the wall, still shocked and quaking. “And let’s get out of here! Now!”

Rafe shook his head slowly. “No.”

“What? You heard the bitch! Even money says the cops…
the feds
are on their way right now—”

“—no,” Rafe said again. I knew that tone in his voice. The answer was plain.

Bronson slapped his hands against his thighs. “Fine! You win. Keep the trash, but let’s get the fuck—”

“We’re going, Bronson. We are. But not with you.”

Rafe stood up finally, tugging his shirt into order and straightening regally. He took a deep few breaths as he stared at Rachel, his eyes lingering over her outlines as though memorizing this moment.

I could hear Bronson’s teeth grinding together.

“You always said—”

“I think you have work yet to do, hm?” Rafe said smoothly, his eyes cold and impersonal. His hand gestured politely toward the corpse on the table.

Turning toward me again, Rafe glanced me over as though assessing my fitness and attitude before he approached me.

“That must have been terrible for you, Julie. I can’t apologize enough,” he said in a low, controlled voice.

“Rafe, don’t you dare!” Bronson bawled from behind him, but I could only look into Rafe’s deep, bottomless eyes. He was the only certain thing in the room. The only thing that made sense and I reached out yet again for that connection. There. It was a spark, timid and remote, but it was there. I was sure of it.

“Take my hand, Julie,” he said, politely offering his arm to me. “Don’t be afraid to lean on me. But we must hurry now. We have so much to do.”

Gratefully I hooked my arm through his and leaned my shoulder against him as he led me so swiftly through the halls that I had to nearly run to keep up. We paused in the cavernous library and he released me with a small peck to the forehead. I stood there swaying like an untethered buoy for several seconds as he slid a panel back in the wall and punched the code into a keypad that opened the safe. Drawing out two large leather duffels, he glanced back at me with a reassuring smile.

“It's all going to plan, truly. Just bear with me a moment longer, won't you?"

I nodded with more confidence that I actually felt and resumed hurrying behind him as he traced a new path through parts of the house that I had never seen.

“We're… Not taking Bronson with us? Where we’re going?" I said when I had worked up the courage. I wanted to let him know that I understood that we were leaving. That I understood I was coming with him. Of course I was. Hadn't I already promised I was his?

Rafe answered me with a curt nod. He stopped abruptly in the middle of a sunlit hallway that was lined with curved windows on one side overlooking a swimming pool. Somehow I felt a twinge of remorse that we weren't going to be able to swim in the beautiful blue water of that pool. Then he nodded silently to himself as though some small puzzle had been solved, some detail had been satisfied. He resumed his swift pace down the hall and I followed doggedly behind him.

I listened intently for sounds of Bronson behind us. At any moment I expected him to arrive in the hallway, calm and completed with whatever task he had remaining to do with Rachel's body. I didn't think he was going to let us go that easily.

You have no idea what I can do. That's what he said.

I wanted to ask Rafe if he really believed Bronson would stay behind, but swallowed the words before I could get them out. Too many questions and I risked his anger. I had to trust that he knew what he was doing.

As we rounded another corner, Rafe's fingers slapped the wall, bringing a bank of overhead lights suddenly to life. We were in what looked like a warehouse or showroom but lined with large doors on one side. Apparently it was a garage, occupied with at least a half dozen gleaming, new-looking cars, some of which I didn't even recognize.

There was a Hummer and a Porsche emblem on some kind of car I had never seen before. Two blood-red sports cars sat at diagonal angles to each other. And then there was the black SUV that Rafe had been driving. My breath caught in my throat.

“Oh, how insensitive of me,” Rafe muttered as his eyes darted to the SUV and then back to me. “I'm sure you must understand, that's the best vehicle for our needs today. I will happily exchange it for something with less… attachment. As soon as possible.”

I raised my hands as if the whole thing meant nothing. I simply brushed the thought away.

“It's all right," I stammered. “Think nothing of it. Just tell me what I need to do.”

Suddenly he dropped the leather satchels to the concrete floor and swept me into his embrace. He buried his lips in my hair, holding me tightly so that I could feel his heart pounding in his chest.