Pretty When You Cry by Skye Warren
Sarah Elizabeth moves from behind me, pushing forward.
Then Luca is there, holding her back. I hear a scuffling sound and shouting—then a gun goes off. I’m too frozen to move. Too shocked to even care if it’s gone through me. I can only stare in horror and fascination as Ivan pulls Leader Allen close and pumps three bullets into his stomach.
The older man slumps to the floor, already unconscious.
Already dead before his body collapses in a graceless heap.
My hands clap over my mouth, barely holding it in. Then I’m running, stumbling down the steps, racing out the door. I make it to the honeysuckle plants outside before I throw up, kneeling in the dirt as my body rejects anything and everything. I’m sick to my stomach, sick to my soul.
My mother knew. She must have known who he was to me. That must have been why she went with him. Even with his precious Harmony Hills, he’d found a young prostitute to fuck in the city. And when he’d knocked her up, he’d brought her and her small child to keep in his house—not as part of his family. As pretty little playthings.
My stomach heaves again, and I lean over the dirt, mouth open in shock and horror, but nothing is left inside me. I left them in that room. Ivan, Luca, Sarah Elizabeth. The dead body of Leader Allen. I can’t bring myself to think of him as my father.
Luca exits the house first, dragging a shrieking Sarah Elizabeth in his arms.
There’s blood seeping from his shirt, and I realize he’s been shot. It doesn’t seem to slow him down any or interfere with his strength. Sarah Elizabeth is fighting him off, but she’s losing. Even shot, he’s a powerful force. Why is he taking her? Where is he taking her? The questions float away, lost in the storm of my hatred, of my shame.
Ivan comes out next. He comes straight to me and helps me stand. He doesn’t say a word as we head back down the lane.
The first shot hits the dirt.
It takes me a second to realize what’s happening. Ivan realizes it sooner. He swings me into his arms as the second shot rings out and hits the ground, sending more dirt into the air. Oh God.
Luca still has Sarah Elizabeth with him, and the men from the other limos circle us, shooting back at the houses.
“No,” I scream. “There’s children.”
The worst part is those children might have guns. The women might too. They’re too brainwashed to do anything else. We’re demons, come to slay their mighty leader.
“Don’t shoot,” Ivan tells them as we reach the limos.
The men look angry but they shove us inside, and soon enough we’re heading back out.
The gate is closed when we make it back through—but the spikes are facing away from us, meant to keep cars out, not in. The first limo blasts through the gate at top speed. The next limo has Luca and Sarah Elizabeth, though I can’t see them. Ivan and I are in the last one.
We tear over the country roads for hours. For eternity.
Ivan confers with his men over the phone.
“No one’s hit,” they tell him. “Except Luca.”
My eyes shut tight against what I saw in that house, what I learned. I curl into a ball.
Only Ivan’s touch can calm me now. He’s the eye of this storm, the only thing that isn’t spinning and destructive in this whole mad place. We drive out of Harmony Hills much quicker than we came, while I shiver uncontrollably, held tight in Ivan’s lap.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I’m lying in the bedroom of a penthouse suite in the closest city to Harmony Hills, the same city where the social worker once took me, the same city where I first caught a bus. Large enough that we can be anonymous, though I didn’t ask how they managed to bring Sarah Elizabeth here. She’s currently tied up in the bed in the other room, a gag around her mouth.
It’s hard to imagine how this day could have gone worse. A man is dead. A girl is kidnapped. And I’ve learned something horrible, something that explains everything about me.
I did come from evil, and I do have a demon inside me—but not because I’m a woman. Not because I have breasts and a vagina. Not even because I like to get spanked by a man I call Daddy. No, I’m evil because of what’s running through my veins.
His blood.
His genes.
His teachings.
I’m a product of my nature and some very controlling, depraved nurture. It’s not something I can ever escape. It’s inside. Leader Allen is inside me.
Ivan comes in and washes his hands at the bathroom sink, his back to me.
“What are you going to do with her?”
He turns slightly. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“I don’t understand why you took her. Won’t that only link us to Leader Allen’s murder even more?”
“I had room service deliver some fruit and pastries. It’s outside on a tray. Let me bring it inside.”
“No. Stop. I’m not a child. I’m not a little girl you need to feed and spank and put to bed on time. I’m asking you questions, and I deserve answers.”
His eyes grow cold. “Fine, you want answers? We took her because she’d have been dead by now if we’d left her. The people there are going to go on a witch hunt when they find him—and she was standing there, holding a shotgun, in shock, wanting to put more bullet holes into a dead man.”
I swallow hard because he’s right. He may have never met the other men and women in Harmony Hills, but he understands how they work. Just like he understands how I work. We’re followers. Sheep. “Is Luca okay?”
“He’ll live.”
“Why did he take Sarah Elizabeth?”
“We’re going to question her. She was close to Leader Allen. She might have heard something.”
“I want to be there when you talk to her,” I say quickly. I know how intimidating Ivan can be. And I don’t think he’d hurt her. He knows that she’s innocent even if she knows something. But he can get feral when it comes to the Grand.
I expect him to fight me, but he simply nods. “Come then.”
I follow him into the other room.
Sarah Elizabeth’s eyes are cloudy as she watches us come in. There’s a small dark vial on her nightstand, and I realize that’s how they kept her asleep through all this. Did he use it on me too? Or is this sluggishness just part of the shock from this morning?
Ivan settles into a chair in the corner, and I stand awkwardly in the center of the room, trying to figure out where to go. It feels like choosing sides. How they’re treating her isn’t right. But the Grand needs to be safe again.
Then Luca comes in, and I realize why Ivan is sitting. Luca has a bandage across his stomach and no shirt on. He looks angry. He looks terrifying as he pulls a folding knife from his pocket, and I gasp. Sarah Elizabeth gasps too, and squirms away on the bed. With her hands bound behind her back and her ankles tied together, she doesn’t get far.
Her gaze is wide now, all sleep drained from them, and so are mine.
Luca grasps her hip, and she goes very still.
I can see her chest rising and falling from beneath the shift. I can see more of her body than I expected to, the shadowed outline of her breasts, the dark circles of her nipples. I never realized how revealing the shifts were. Or maybe it just seemed normal to me back then.
With a rough jerk, Luca slices through the gag around Sarah Elizabeth’s mouth. She coughs the fabric onto the bed and then spits into his face, making him laugh. It’s a cruel sound, and I realize I’ve never seen Luca perform his job—as a bodyguard, as an enforcer. He’s occasionally been stern with me, but in the end, no matter how much I protested and pretended, I was too obedient to need anything worse. There’s blood seeping through the white gauze, making him look savage. He’s a wounded animal, and wounded animals lash out.
Sarah Elizabeth has no intention of being obedient. She’s glaring at Luca like she’d shoot him again if she were still holding that shotgun. “Let me go.”
“Not until you tell me who he sent to fuck with Candy.”
<
I can see plain as day that she knows the truth. Whatever happened to toughen her up, to make her sad, to make her wield that gun, it didn’t manage to make her a better liar. Ivan watches the proceedings from the corner, expression intent but remote.
Luca studies the tip of his knife. “I’m sure he didn’t tell you.” Then he turns to her, using the knife to wave in her direction, as casually as if he held nothing at all. The metal catches the reflection from the lamp. “But you would have heard something. You lived in the same house as him.”
Her eyes are on the knife. “I don’t—”
“It’s okay,” Luca says softly, even more sinister for how reassuring he sounds. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He doesn’t want to hurt her, but he will.
“I—” Her voice breaks, and fear has replaced the defiance in her eyes. This is the expression Leader Allen would have seen when he taught her how to pray.
It makes me angry. “She said she doesn’t know. Leave her alone.”
Ivan stands, drawing all our attention. He has a way of commanding a room with just a look. The look he gives me now tells me to shut the hell up. He sits on the edge of the bed, resting a hand on her shoulder.
She freezes, and I can see her pulse jump in her throat.
“Sarah Elizabeth,” Ivan says softly, testing out her name. Then he focuses on her. “You have to understand, the Grand is my business. The people who work there, I’m responsible for them. And I should watch over them, shouldn’t I?”
Her head nods slowly, eyes never leaving his.
“Someone broke in and left threatening messages. I can’t let that go on. I can’t let anyone get hurt. Can I?”
She shakes her head no, just as slow. Her eyes are wide. There’s still fear, but it’s tempered with something else. Understanding. Because Ivan protects me the way Leader Allen never would have protected her.
He leans down and whispers something in her ear. I can’t make it out, and I glance at Luca. I expect him to be annoyed that his interrogation was interrupted or maybe just in pure business mode, but he’s watching them both with a brooding expression. No, he’s watching her with a brooding expression.
She swallows hard, looking up at the ceiling. Then at me. “He would talk about you sometimes. He didn’t like how…devout I was.”
The way she says the words leaves a chill in the air. Every one of us here knows what she means. It has nothing to do with faith.
“He said that you would be better, that he was going to find you, bring you back.”
I shiver at the thought of being in that room again. The truth is, I don’t believe he could have contained me. I would have gotten out or died trying. I’m different than I was before. Different than Sarah Elizabeth, because she’s never been outside. She’s never tasted freedom. We were born in captivity, bred and raised to be what he wanted.
“Why didn’t he just…take me?” I whisper.
“He said you had demons guarding you.”
Ivan raises his eyebrow. Of the names he’s been called, demon wouldn’t be the worst one. And he was guarding me. By sending his men to shadow me, he made sure I was safe. Watched over. Even when I ran away, he found me.
Does that make it okay, then, that he doesn’t let me leave?
Sarah Elizabeth presses her face almost into the pillow, as if ashamed. “He said he was going to draw her out. He would call her home. And I—I’m so sorry. I wanted him to. I thought when he got you back, he would want you enough that he would leave me alone. I’m sorry.”
“Who did he send?” Ivan asks.
“My brother. My brother, Alex. He’s never been… never been quite right. Something was always off about him. It was some kind of test Leader Allen sent him on, but the last time he left, he didn’t come back.”
She’s crying by the end of it, sobbing into the pillow. She looks so small curled up on the bed, her wrists and ankles still bound, helpless. Of course she would want him to leave her alone.
“Thank you,” Ivan says gently. Then he turns to Luca, “She’s all yours.”
I follow him into the spacious living area of the suite. “What does that mean? She’s all yours?”
Ivan pours himself a drink. “It means exactly what it sounds like. He can decide what to do with her. She shot him.”
My mouth is open because I can’t quite comprehend this. Even as harshly as he’s treated me, the way he’s dragged me back, the truth is that I always wanted it. This is different. Sarah Elizabeth doesn’t want anything Luca would do to her. And she only shot him because she was afraid. “You have to let her go now. She told you what you wanted to know.”
He takes a sip from the crystal-cut glass. “I never said I’d release her.”
It enrages me, the way he moves people around like we’re dolls in cardboard houses. He has no respect for her—and none for me. In one fast motion, I knock the cup out of his hand. Amber liquid flies through the air and splashes against the cotton-white rug. The crystal glass lands noiselessly on top of it, then rolls onto the marble floor.
Ivan looks at the spilled alcohol, as remote as ever. He takes a step toward me, and I can’t help but shrink back. Of course he catches me. He catches me by the chin, his thumb and forefinger holding me still with that single point of contact.
His eyes are frigid as he stares at me. “He wants her. I’m sure you could tell. You always did know how to read men. Allen taught you that much at least.”
I flinch. “It’s not right,” I whisper.
He places a tender kiss on my forehead. “I reward loyalty, little one. You would do well to remember that. Now go stand in the corner until I feel like spanking your pretty ass for spilling my drink.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The last times I tried to run, the odds were against me. A lesser man might not have been able to find me at all—and definitely not as quickly as Ivan. He has a web that includes dirty cops, kingpins, and good old-fashioned paid informants.
Of course, that was in Tanglewood.
We aren’t there right now. Ivan still has money and weapons. Not to mention that intimidating, persuasive charm. He will be able to track me better than most men, but not like he could back home. No one in this city even knows who I am. They definitely aren’t going to call him in a twisted version of bros before hos. There will be no GPS to track, not on a random cab that he’ll never be able to find.
Ivan owns every piece of hay in the haystack that is Tanglewood, so finding this needle was easy for him. But here…God, here. We can get lost here. Never to be found.
Food arrives under silver-domed lids on a wheeled cart. The bellhop takes one look at Ivan and Luca and starts sweating. He’s gone the second the tip hits his palm.
The dining table seats exactly four people: Ivan. Luca. Myself. And an angry Sarah Elizabeth with her wrists rubbed red. At least Luca untied her for dinner. I’m not sure I could have even gone along with the false decorum if she had been tied up, hands behind her back while Luca fed her.
As it is, I’m the picture of a flirty hostess. I bring each plate to the table and open it with a flourish. “What would you like to drink?” I ask Ivan.
The look he gives me isn’t fooled for a second. I have years of experience fooling men. Ooh, that’s so interesting. I’d love to hear more. You’re my favorite client. They eat that shit up. Ivan just gives me a measured look. The same look all his enemies get, because that’s all I am. Not a beloved wife or even a cherished lover. I’m someone to bend to his will. All he’s doing now is waiting for me to reveal a weakness.
I smile. “A gin and tonic?”
“A bottle of the wine for the table,” he says, and he’s definitely suspicious. He would prefer a gin and tonic over merlot any day. He stands and retrieves a bottle from the bar, along with a bottle opener. I sit down, as serene as ever.
He will never see me sw
It’s the woman Ivan wants who sits at the table, submissive except for the private moments where he wants a reason to punish me. He knows me well enough to know it’s a game. That knowledge won’t help him, though. Not tonight.
Sarah Elizabeth barely touches her food, but I eat everything on my plate. We’ll stop for food only when it’s convenient, not when we’re hungry. I can’t tell her that. So we eat in relative silence. The only breaks are when Ivan and Luca murmur over their plans, a limo ride we’ll never take and a plane we’ll never catch.
Luca doesn’t eat at all. He looks fatigued, the lines of his face drawn tight with pain. He won’t take any pain medication because that would make him fall asleep. That’s fine by me. Now I don’t have to worry that I’ll overdose him.
My chance comes right after dinner.
“I think I’ll have that gin and tonic,” Ivan says to me.
“Of course.” His wineglass is only half empty. I stand with a demure smile. “Luca?”
His dark gaze flicks to Sarah Elizabeth and then away. “Sure, why not.” Then under his breath, “What else would a lowlife thug do but drink.”
I can’t help but smile at that. It sounds like Sarah Elizabeth has been giving as good as she’s getting.
Mixing the drinks only takes a few minutes.
Slipping it in the drinks takes a half second—and a flick of my wrist.
Waiting for the drugs to work…now, that does test my patience. Partly because I know Ivan will understand what I’ve done in the seconds before he passes out. Of course he would figure it out when he woke up to find me gone anyway, but somehow it’s those first seconds before that worry me most. It will be a true betrayal, in the way that running away never was.