Mask - A Stepbrother Romance (13 page)

“So you let Rayna be terrified and think she was either sleepwalking or losing her mind,” I said through gritted teeth. “You even told her she was just seeing things and lied about calling security. Way to go, Dad. And what about Elena? How did she fail to notice you had another fucking woman here in
her
house while she slept?”

“It’s not her house. It’s
my
house; she just lives in it with me. And she was away that night, at her friend’s B&B. I took the opportunity to have some…well, let’s just say some extracurricular fun.”

I shook my head. “How the fuck can you keep doing this to all these women? Elena doesn’t deserve this shit.”

He snorted. “Elena was nothing back in America. Now, because of me, she has everything a woman could ever want—money, a big house, a name in the social circles. So what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”

“Fuck, whatever,” I said, my voice tinged with disgust. His attitude was appalling; he seriously believed that all women wanted was money and a mansion, and love wasn’t important at all. He was like a relic from some misogynistic film from the 1940’s. “I don’t want to hear any more of this bullshit. Just help me get Rayna back.”

“So you agree to keep this quiet?” he said, gesturing to the bedroom again.

“Sure,” I said with a curt nod, although I was lying through my teeth.

I was gonna tell Elena about all of this at the first opportunity, and I was also going to tell her how coldly Dad had acted upon hearing that Rayna was in trouble, whether he’d believed it or not. He wasn’t going to get away with screwing up another woman’s life, not this time. Elena didn’t deserve to fall for his bullshit. She’d given up so much for him—even moved halfway across the world to be here—and I wouldn’t let him stay married to her, knowing what a fucking scumbag he was. My father didn’t deserve any woman, really, but he especially didn’t deserve one as nice as her.

He briskly led me into one of his home offices and fiddled with a safe in the back, and a moment later, he handed me a briefcase. “Here,” he said. “I trust this will be enough. It’ll come out of your account first thing on Monday.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. Giving me what I needed to save Rayna was probably one of the only decent things he’d ever done, despite the bullshit ‘condition’ he’d put on it. Then again, thirty grand in cash wasn’t exactly a big deal to him—it was all in a day’s work to him, really.

I hopped into my car and took off, not even caring that I was slightly over the speed limit. Now that I’d had a few minutes to think things through, I knew I needed to do something more than just show up at the warehouse with the money. Roy was unstable, and I had no idea what could happen if it was just me there tonight.

As I drove, a new idea slowly formed in my head, and I pulled my phone out of my pocket before taking a deep breath and dialing as I hit a red light.

This call could make or break everything.

Chapter 17

Rayna

“Jace? Liana?” I mumbled.

I forced my eyes open, wondering why Tom’s house was suddenly so cold. What happened to all the party people, and why was the music off? My head felt sluggish, my eyes were blurry, and every inch of me ached as I turned my head and took a proper look around. Shit, this wasn’t Tom’s house, or even my house. I had no idea where I was, and no idea how I got here. None at all.

I forced my head upright, wanting to get a better look at my surroundings. I didn’t feel like I was lying down, so it was pretty safe to assume that I wasn’t in my bed, but I had no idea where that left me. So what was the last thing I could clearly remember?

The party at Tom’s house.

Talking to Liana.

My phone call with Mom.

Going to find Jace to tell him how I felt…

That was about it.

As I glanced around, I quickly realized I was in some sort of factory. It didn’t look like it had been used in quite some time; there were dust-coated workbenches, some rusty broken-down machinery to the left of me, and a ratty old sign nearly falling off a big corrugated sliding door ahead of me. Jeez….how the hell did I get here? Was this some sort of Halloween prank everyone had decided to play on me? If so, it wasn’t funny.

Small sparks of memory began to flash in my mind, but there was nothing solid I could run with.
A taste of cinnamon. A Halloween monster mask. Stepping outside and breathing in the cool air before…before what?

As proper feeling started to return to my body, I noticed that my wrists were stinging, and as I tried to move them to find out what was wrong, it became abundantly clear that they were stuck. I twisted my body around and looked down to see that I was tied to a pole in the middle of the room I was in.

Who the hell would do this?

“Hey!” I called out, my voice weak as I tried to cling onto the desperate fantasy that this was all some sort of sick prank, and the perpetrators were right here filming me and laughing. “This isn’t funny!”

I started trying to move, kicking my legs out and pulling my back away from the pole in the hopes that the rope on my arms would break or come loose, but it achieved nothing. I was stuck. Then a shadow appeared in my peripheral vision, telling me that I definitely wasn’t alone, and my heart pounded painfully in my chest as I tried to turn my head further around to see who it was.

“I think it’s pretty funny,” a soft masculine voice said from somewhere in the darkness.

“What?” I managed to choke out as I gulped down my fear.

“You said it’s not funny. But I think it is.”

The speaker stepped out of the darkness and into the moonlight where I could finally get a good look at his face.

It was Roy, Jace’s friend.

I suddenly remembered our conversation at the party, the strong drink, and the promise of help when I started to feel sleepy, but after that, it was all blank. Roy must’ve slipped something in my drink to make me pass out. I thought back and realized I’d turned my back on him for a few seconds when he’d pointed across the room and said he could see Jace, and I mentally kicked myself for being such an idiot. I should’ve never kept my eyes off my drink; not even for a second. Then again, it hadn’t occurred to me that one of Jace’s old school friends might be some sort of date-rapist.

“Please don’t touch me,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper now. “I’ll do anything.”

He grinned. “Relax, sweetheart. Jace’s cast-offs aren’t exactly my cup of tea. I didn’t bring you here for any of that.”

“Then why am I here? Is this some sort of joke you and Jace are playing? Because it’s not funny, and you’re hurting me.”

“It’s no joke. Jace has something I need, and he hasn’t been willing to give it to me so far. So you’re going to help me get it from him. Just my luck I ran into you tonight.”

“Huh? What is it you need from Jace?” I asked, becoming increasingly convinced by the second that I was trapped in some sort of nightmare. Surely this wasn’t real. I felt like I was starring in some sort of early nineties slasher film.

“You’ll see,” Roy replied softly. He turned around for a second, and I saw him get something out of his pocket before sniffing loudly. I wasn’t exactly an expert on illicit substances, but I immediately knew what he was doing—he was snorting something, probably cocaine or speed. God, how the hell had I not put two and two together earlier? I’d thought he was just naturally skinny, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that he might be one of Jace’s old drug addict friends from school. No wonder he’d just been conveniently carrying around pills to slip in my drink to knock me out; he probably always had all kinds of things on him.

“Roy,” I said, hoping I could reason with him before he got too high on whatever it was he was currently snorting. “Let me go, and I’ll talk to Jace for you. Whatever he has that you want, I can help. Just untie me.”

He turned back to me. “Why? You think he’ll listen to you because you’re fucking him?” he spat out.

I winced at the ugly way he’d worded that sentence. “I’m not sleeping with Jace.”

“Bullshit. You know, you’re nothing to him, whether you’re his stepsister or not. He’s a fucking dickhead. He’ll fuck you and then toss you aside, just like he does with every single skank that jumps into bed with him. He’s a shitty person and a shitty friend. You might think that he’s there for you, but he isn’t. He only cares about himself.”

“I’m not sleeping with him,” I repeated. It was true; Jace and I had done other sexual things, but we’d never gone so far as full-on sex.

He smirked. “Actually, that makes sense. If you
had
fucked him already, he wouldn’t give a shit about you—he’d have already moved on to the next slut. So the fact that he’s on his way here to get you shows that he’s obviously still trying to get you into bed. Lucky you….but mark my words, when he’s done with you, it’ll be like you never existed to him.”

I felt a stinging pain in my heart as the darker parts of my mind wondered if that was even remotely true, but I didn’t let it show. “Okay, Roy, I get why you think that about him. I’ve heard all about his past. I have no idea what’s gone on between you and him, though, and I assure you, it has nothing to do with me.”

He rolled his eyes, and I pressed on.

“Please, you must be able to see that what you’re doing is crazy. If this spirals, you’ll get in so much trouble. You’ll end up in prison. Is that what you want?”

“That won’t happen. I told him not to involve the cops. And on the off chance something goes wrong, well, I guess that’s just fucking life. Not all of us are rich fuckers with daddies who can buy us out of trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you ask your precious Jace when he gets here with my money?”

Of course…this was about money. Roy was obviously desperate for it to fuel his drug habit, so he’d taken me in the hopes that Jace would give him anything to rescue me. I hoped to god he was right about that.

“I thought Jace was your friend,” I said, trying to keep Roy talking for the time being.

That was probably a mistake, because he came right up in my face and practically screamed, spittle flying out of his mouth and hitting me on the cheeks. “Shut the fuck up! You don’t know shit, so stop talking!”

I swallowed hard and kept going, knowing I needed to push through this. “Then please enlighten me, because this all seems totally crazy to me.”

“Jace is a fucking bastard. That’s all you need to know.”

“No, it isn’t. I want to know what he did to you that was so bad. If I’m getting dragged into it all, then I deserve to know why. Tell me.”

“Okay, fine. You really want to know?”

“Yes. The more you tell me, the more I can try to help,” I said, trying to keep my face as calm and neutral as possible. I wasn’t really going to help this asshole with anything, but if he believed I was going to, then it might keep me out of any immediate danger.

“Jace fucking abandoned me when I needed him the most. He just left. I had some serious drug debts, and where was he when I tried to ask him for help? He’d dropped out of uni and fucked off to live in Scotland. I got two ribs broken and my leg was fucked up for ages because he wasn’t there to lend me the cash I needed. So he used to help me, and then
bam
, he fucking vanished and left me to fend for myself.”

I didn’t want to say that I had no sympathy for him at all and that it was his own fault, because I knew that’d make him even angrier, but how could he not see it for himself? Did he really expect his friends to pay off his debts? That was ridiculous.

I kept my lips sealed firmly shut and let him carry on.

“Do you know what it feels like, to be left on your own like that? Can you even begin to imagine how that is?” he asked.

Okay, silence clearly wasn’t going to work. I had to say something. “Roy, I’m really sorry that happened to you, but Jace was trying to better himself by moving away from Manchester. I don’t think he meant to hurt you.”

“Really?” Roy’s eyes snapped up to meet mine, a fire blazing behind his expression. “Was he really trying to better himself up there in Scotland? Because from what I heard, he got a lot worse up there.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I remembered a conversation I’d had with Jace weeks ago, one in which he told me he’d ‘totally fucked something up’ in Edinburgh. I hadn’t pressed him about it at the time because it seemed like it was none of my business, but now I was more curious than ever. Just what was it that he’d done?

It looked like I was about to find out.

“You know he killed two people, right?” Roy said, a smug smile turning his lips up now.

What?

What the hell was he talking about?

He saw my eyes widen with horror, and the smile turned into a full-on grin. “Aww…you really didn’t know. How adorable.”

My mouth turned cotton-dry. “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your precious Jace was driving around stoned off his face in Edinburgh, just a few months ago, and he crashed right into another car and killed two people. I can’t believe he didn’t tell you…that’s kind of a big thing to leave out of your sibling ‘getting to know each other’ chats, isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “That’s not true. He’d be in prison for manslaughter if it was.”

Roy snorted with derision. “Or maybe Daddy’s money got him off the hook when Mommy called to beg him for help,” he said. “Why do you think he came back here? He didn’t want to stay in Edinburgh anymore, because then he might have to face what he did.”

His earlier words suddenly made more sense.
Not all of us are rich fuckers with daddies who can buy us out of trouble.
But still, it couldn’t be true. Jace was a decent guy; if he’d actually killed people while under the influence of something, he wouldn’t have accepted his father paying off the authorities to keep him out of jail.

Or would he?

“It’s not true,” I said, although my voice was shaking now. Roy was slowly getting to me, and he knew it. “Jace couldn’t do that. He’s a good guy.”

“Why would I make this up?” he replied. “I told you, I’m not interested in you. I’m not trying to get in your pants by turning you against him.”

He had a point, but I still knew what he’d told me was a lie.

“What I’m saying
is
true,” he continued. “Ask him yourself when he gets here. Just ask him about his accident. You’ll see.”

“You’re making this up; he never caused any sort of car accident, and he never hurt anyone. It’s not true!” I insisted, tears streaming down my face now.

Jace’s voice suddenly pierced the air from somewhere behind me.

“Rayna…it
is
true.”