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  "No, doll." I would back out if I had a choice. I didn't.

  She nodded, lips pursing. "Any chance you would be willing to slip me something right before the hand off to Lex?"

  "Come again?" I asked, brows drawing together.

  "It sounds like you know Lex," she said, watching me. "And if you know him at all... then you know the sick, horrifying things he does to women. A lot of women. Random women who mean nothing. Now, imagine what he would do to me... someone who has obviously pissed him off somehow."

  She had a point.

  Poor fucking kid.

  "So you're asking me to..." I trailed off, wanting her to fill in the blank.

  "Give me something to kill myself with. Before he gets a chance to play with me first," she said, her pale skin looking almost green at the word 'play'.

  "You fuckin' serious?"

  "Yeah," she said, her voice firm. "I don't know much about drugs. But I think heroin is really easy to overdose on. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to come across some. It's cheap. It won't hurt your bottom line," she babbled on as if she wasn't talking about suicide. "I've never done drugs so I wouldn't even need all that much. I can just like... snort it, right?" She looked at me as if waiting for an answer, but went on without it. "I don't know you. And maybe you're no better than him. Maybe you don't give a damn about me at all. But I don't think you're that cold. I don't think you'd be okay with the things he would have in mind for me."

  "You want me to help you kill yourself."

  "Yeah."

  "Fuck," I said, pushing off the wall and pacing the small space.

  She was right. I was a cold fuck, but I wasn't heartless. Just knowing I was holding her against her will was chafing me, settling with a lead feeling in my belly. It was the rule. I didn't mess with women. It wasn't a fair fuckin' fight. And I couldn't think of a Goddamn thing a woman could do to warrant what Lex would do to her.

  "Is that a no?" she asked, sounding defeated.

  I turned my head, seeing she was watching me pace, her body rigid.

  "He comes for you," I said, walking up to her, my boots almost touching her bright purple toenails, crouching down so I could look her in the eye so she could see the genuineness there, "I will give you something to end it with."

  At this, she nodded, her eyes swimming slightly. "Thank you."

  Then I stood, turned, and got the fuck out of there.

  FOUR

  Alex

  Okay. There was no reason to freak out. It was always a possibility. From that first day that I sat across from his coffee shop on the steps of the museum, pretending to read some paperback I found discarded on the subway when I was actually making a mental note about every mannerism, what he drank, what he ate, how many cigarette breaks he took.

  From that first glance, there was always a chance that he would find out. I probably should have been shocked that it took him as long as it had to figure me out. I mean... ten years. For someone as hyper vigilant and observant as him, that was an insane amount of time. And if he had any clue how long I had been keeping an eye on his operation, he would have felt like every kind of fool. If there was one thing a man as prideful as Lex Keith wouldn't tolerate, it was being made to feel foolish.

  By a woman.

  Shit.

  A part of me was floored that I was sitting in some abandoned train car instead of in one of Lex's torture rooms (of which I knew three: one in a basement at a dry cleaner, one in a shed off some abandoned piece of property, one specially built in a storm shelter in the woods. Incidentally if you found yourself in the first two, you would probably get the spit kicked out of you and be on your merry way within a night or two. If you ended up in the third one, well, you were in for a long stay. And you probably weren't ever getting out alive).

  Why was he wasting time keeping me in someone else's custody? That just didn't make any sense whatsoever. He had to be itching to get his hands on me. If for no other reason than because I'm a woman. Because he really didn't need any other reason to brutalize someone.

  Was it some kind of scare tactic? Sic the big, scary (but hot in a dangerous way) guy on me, make him hold onto me, let me worry myself sick about what would happen to me before he showed up?

  That might have worked. If there wasn't something about Breaker that said he was just as unhappy as I was about the whole situation. Given that he was like... contract muscle, that said something. It said that maybe he wasn't down with the way Lex operated. With what he did to girls.

  Breaker had obvious issues with his assignment.

  Which scared me (marginally) less.

  He was still going to go through with the job. Leaving me to wonder if maybe Lex wasn't just paying Breaker. Knowing him, Lex had some kind of backup plan. Lex always had things lined up. If plan A didn't work, there was a B, then a C. So on and so forth.

  Maybe Lex had something on Breaker that was making him compliant.

  But he was still going to help me off myself.

  So he had my everlasting gratitude. Even if he was keeping me in a filthy, bloodstained train car that was freaking freezing. I cursed my choice of pajamas savagely as the shock wore off and I felt the cold sink in through my bare feet and into the thin material of my yoga pants and tee. If this was the worse torture I was going to go through at Lex's command, well hell, it wasn't that bad. I would live through it. Or catch a cold and die. Either one was fine by me.

  No matter what, I was going to die.

  I wish I could say this revelation was met with heartbreak. That I had so much to live for. That I had hopes and dreams. That I wanted to meet a man, fall in love, have two-point-five kids and live in a safe neighborhood. That I wanted to see Paris at night. That I wanted to have espresso in a cafe in Italy. That I needed to dig my toes into the sand of a tropical island. That I wanted to publish a book. Or create art.

  But that wasn't me.

  That wasn't the life I led.

  My life had been taking care of my mother. A mother who had always been fragile. Delicate. Emotionally unstable. A mother who cried if I was five minutes late walking home from school, terrified that something horrible had happened to me. A mother who had never been well enough to hold down a steady job. So our cabinets had mostly been empty. Our lights went out every other month- leaving me doing my homework outside sitting under a streetlamp.

  There had been no such options as dreams. Just the promise of never ending hard work.

  I vaguely remember when I was young having a wish to sing. Always secretly wanting to learn to play guitar, but knowing I never could because we could never afford lessons.

  But that desire got squished when I walked in from school that afternoon and found that my mother had finally given up whatever battle she had been fighting my whole life.

  Then the desire got replaced with a need for vengeance when I learned the truth.

  Every second of my life since that day was full of that goal. To avenge my mother and the hell she had been forced to live through.

  So my only regret in life was not accomplishing that goal.

  But it was a hollow kind of disappointment.

  In the end, I might as well have not even existed.

  That sounded depressive and pitiful, but it was the God's honest truth. No one would miss me. No one would grieve because I didn't share their air anymore. Death was only sad when there were people left behind that cared that you once lived.

  No one cared about me.

  And no one had for over a decade.

  There was really nothing to be sad about.

  I'd take whatever drug Breaker promised to bring me, suffer through whatever kind of experience an OD was... then drift off into nothingness.

  I wasn't of the mind to believe in a after life. To put faith in the idea of floating up into a place of no pain, only peace and happiness. It seemed the stuff of fairy tales. Something to spoon feed scared children. Something to use to convince people that life was some magical experience dreamed up
by some all-seeing God.

  But life was shit. Life was pain and sacrifice and disappointment. It wasn't a test to pass or fail. It was a swirling mass of time where the lucky few knew a little happiness, but most lived in fear and pain and emptiness.

  No God would allow that.

  At least no God I would choose to believe in.

  Soon, and there was no telling how soon, but soon... I was going to not exist anymore. There would be no afterlife. There would be no reflecting on the life I led. Or reincarnating to try again (what a cruel freaking concept that was).

  One minute, I would breathe and think and feel.

  The next, I would stop breathing, stop thinking, and stop feeling.

  Case closed.

  But there was no reason to sit and wallow about that.

  I got slowly up off the floor, my bones aching from the cold. I moved around, trying to shake some warmth into my limbs. Trying to shake the cold out of my soul.

  It was hard to live with the weight of knowledge on your shoulders. To know what was really going on around all of us daily. To know that there were men out there who stole girls off the streets, good, sweet, innocent girls, and raped, mutilated, and discarded them. And never got caught. Never got punished. It was impossible to not feel your shoulders slump with that. Or to know that there were men who stole a man's family, slicing off fingers of children to get his way – and not feel like the world was an awful, twisted place to live.

  I didn't get the chance to see the sun. Because I lived in the fucking gutters.

  There were times that I wanted to leave it behind. Nights when I would lay in bed, staring at my wall, feeling tears stinging my eyes. Wanting nothing more than to pack my stuff and take off. Go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Get a real job. Find a good man. And maybe he would ignore me during football season and I'd have to bitch at him to bring out the trash. But he would call me pretty and kiss me like he meant it.

  I could wash the filth of my twenty-six years away. I could be clean.

  But that wasn't an option for me.

  Some people needed to wade in the muck so that others could live untouched by it.

  My life was a sacrifice to a greater good.

  I had no right to be sad about that.

  "Cold?" Breaker's voice said behind me, making me jump, my heart flying upward. God, he was good at that. I guessed that was what made him good at his job.

  "Yeah," I said, turning toward him.

  To find him standing there with clothes. Clothes. And blankets.

  "Here," he said, holding out a pair of men's socks to me, I practically lunged at them, slipping my feet in and pulling them up my calves. Next he handed me a pair of sweatpants. Men's. Blue. Way too big. But warm. I slipped into those as well, reaching for the dark blue sweatshirt and pulling it over my head. "Better?" he asked once I was swallowed up in the new material.

  "Yes. Thank you," I said, meaning it.

  "Don't thank me, doll," he said, shaking his head.

  "Why not? You did something nice."

  He exhaled his breath, running a hand down the side of his head. "After kidnapping and holding you against your will. You can't say this was nice."

  "How many other hostages have you brought clothes and blankets to?" I asked, watching him. His head shook and I had my answer. "Exactly. So thank you for caring about me not dying of pneumonia. You know... before I OD on heroin." I meant it to me kinda funny. In a morbid way. I even smiled as I said it.

  All I was met with was a tightening around his eyes, a ticking in his jaw. He looked almost... angry.

  "You really ain't got shit to live for?" he asked, his voice low.

  I felt my shoulder shrug. "I really don't have shit to live for," I affirmed. "I mean... I'm not exactly happy about dying before I even reach my thirtieth birthday. But I get to choose how to go. Better at my own hands than being scraped off the pavement after a drunk driver hits me while I am crossing the street. Or choking on the horse pill sized vitamins I take alone in my apartment, not to be found for days until my landlord comes looking for rent."

  "Jesus Christ you're dark."

  At this, I felt my lips quirk up. "You kidnap and hold people hostage and probably kill them. And I'm dark?"

  "Yeah, doll. You're dark. I work in darkness. I don't live it. I don't wrap it around myself like a blanket, hiding from the fuckin' world."

  "I don't hide from the world!" I objected, though I knew it was true.

  "I sat on your apartment for three days and you didn't come out once. Not even to get food. Not to talk to another person. Not to get laid. Nothing."

  "I was working," I objected.

  "On what? Ratting out porn-addicted men to their suspicious spouses?"

  Okay. I was getting a little bit angry.

  Unfortunately for me, there was no such thing as a little bit angry. One kind of angry was just as bad as the next. And when I was pissed, there seemed to be a disconnect between my lips and my sensor.

  "Trying to bring down a friggin criminal empire you asshole!"

  Oops.

  That was the wrong thing to say.

  His brow quirked, his eyes got curious.

  And I knew there was no way he was going to let that one go.

  "Come again?" he asked, his voice deceptively mild.

  "Nothing. Never mind."

  "That ain't gonna cut it."

  "Well, too bad. Because I'm not telling you."

  "Doll..."

  "No. And you can't make me."

  That probably was another wrong thing to say.

  I knew that because of the smile that seemed to touch his eyes, but not his lips.

  "Wanna bet?"

  "Are you going to hit me?"

  To this, he flinched. And I knew he wouldn't. He wasn't one of those men.

  "No. I'm not going to hit you."

  "Then I don't see how you can make me tell you anything."

  "No?" he asked, the smile finally catching the side of his lips as he ever so slowly started moving toward me.

  Better sense told me to stand my ground. But my body wasn't listening. I was just as slowly moving backward, away from him. But then my back hit the wall. And he was still coming.

  My heart was hammering hard, my chest feeling oddly constricted. And part of it was fear- fear of the unknown. But part of it was something else. Something I didn't quite recognize or understand.

  There was only a foot between us, his ice blue eyes focused on mine, his face giving nothing of his intentions away.

  Of their own volition, my hands went up, palms out, pressing into his abs as he started to close the small gap between us.

  His eyes slid down to my hands, then back up to my face.

  "What are you doing?" I asked, my voice a little shaky. Weak.

  What the hell was going on?

  He pushed closer, making my hands press harder into his abdominal muscles. And I realized I was right back in my apartment when I thought he was strong under his clothes. He was like a brick wall beneath my palms.

  My eyes slid back up to his, a strange fluid sensation swirling around in my belly when they landed, finding him watching me.

  One of his hands went up, caging me in from the side. The other rose more slowly, hovering in the air for a second, before skimming his fingertips lightly across my jaw.

  And my whole body shuddered.

  Hard.

  Because the butterfly-light touch felt like it skipped over every inch of my skin.

  His head dipped slightly, his warm breath tickling my cheekbone. But his eyes never left mine.

  "Breaker..." I tried, not sure what I was asking, what I was feeling, what he was trying to do.

  "Ain't gonna hurt you, doll," he said, his voice low and rumbling.

  Then his eyes finally left mine as his head tilted lower.

  The fluid sensation in my belly intensified and twisted in an almost sickening swirl... just a second before his lips closed over my earlobe.
/>   The air flew out of my lungs and my hands dug into the muscles of his stomach instinctively.

  I wasn't a scared little virgin. As fate would have it, that flew out the door ten days after my mother went in the ground.

  That being said, I wasn't exactly experienced either. Mostly because I stayed away from people like they were possible carriers of bubonic plague. And also because I was pretty sure I had some kind of medical condition that made a normal twenty-something female libido just... disappear.

  I didn't crave sex.

  I barely even thought about it save for the times I was grimacing at the porn sites clients unwittingly made me visit.

  But there was no mistaking it.

  It was in the weird, fluttery heartbeat. In the hypersensitivity of my nerve endings. In the way goosebumps were rising on my neck and chest and arms. In the fierce, almost painful tightening deep in my core.

  I was turned on.

  By my Goddamn kidnapper.

  Holy crap.

  What was wrong with me?

  "What crime lord?" Breaker's voice asked, making a shiver run through my body, his teeth nipping into my earlobe.

  "Lex," my voice breathed out. To me, it was barely even audible.

  But Breaker responded like I had shouted it through a megaphone.

  His other hand slammed down beside my head, completely caging me in, his head moving backward, his eyes pinning me in place.

  "You fuckin' serious?"

  Shit.

  His tone pulled the desire backward, leaving me feeling shaky and cold and unfulfilled.

  And maybe a little, just a tiny bit, disappointed.

  What can I say? It had been a long, long time since I knew what desire felt like. And I kind of liked it. And I wanted to see where it led. That may have made me a slut, but I was okay with that.

  But the fact of the matter was- he used me.

  He used my body against me.

  And that was pretty messed up.

  Especially considering I was his damn prisoner.

  "I can't believe you just did that," I accused, my voice almost a little squeaky with a mix of indignation and humiliation.

  "Did what?" he asked, looking confused.

  "Used... used... sex to get an answer!"