Bound for Nirvana: (The Bound Trilogy Book 3) (36 page)

As I pressed send, the elevator came to a halt and the doors slid open. No sooner than I stepped out, the phone was buzzing in my hand with an incoming call—my words clearly hadn’t appeased him. I was about to answer when I noticed the door to the apartment slightly open. Feeling suddenly irked that the realtor must have given the viewer a key and they’d entered without my presence, I silenced the call, dropping the cell into my purse, and strode forward, pushing open the door.

“Hello?” I called out as I entered, allowing the door to hang slightly ajar.

The light in the apartment was muted, the slight gap in the curtains allowing a small amount of natural light to filter through, but there was no immediate sign that anyone was inside. I glanced right, down the corridor toward the bedrooms, but was met with nothing but an eerie silence.

Suddenly, I couldn’t remember leaving the curtains closed last time I’d swung by and my scalp began to prickle with the first murmurings of unease. That’s when I noticed a flicker of movement in the kitchen. I narrowed my eyes, squinting across the shadowy open space to the breakfast island, unease switching to fear as I focused on the gently recurring vacillation atop. The object began to take shape, materializing so visibly that I wondered how I could have possibly missed it. Feeling drawn, I moved further into the room, my gaze fixed on the tiny orange fish swimming absently around an insufficient glass bowl.

Images of Ponyo and her wretched fate swarmed my mind, the memories triggering a trip wire of warning to my brain, and just as I was about to turn and flee a voice suddenly invaded the silence.

“It’s my parting gift to you, do you like it?” Rebecca Staunton’s polished and pretentious accent infiltrated my senses like a poisonous toxin, the shock of the impact causing me to turn so swiftly toward it that I stumbled backward, slamming into the countertop.

As soon as my eyes found the outline of her shape sitting in a chair in the shadows, I could smell her. That sweet, sickly, familiar fragrance was suddenly thick in the air, the pungency causing my stomach to roil in disgust. “What the hell are you doing here?” I spat.

Her repugnant chuckle was steeped in sarcasm. “I said it wasn’t over,
Angel
.” She enunciated my name like the sound of it amused her. “So I’m here to finish it. I warned you about an auxiliary plan. Although, I’ll admit I decided to shelve Plan B. I mean, why let someone else have all the fun?”

The muffled sound of my cell buzzing inside my purse began again. She stood suddenly, moving around back of the chair to the patio doors and tugging the curtains open, the unexpected brightness momentarily blinding me. “You’ll be glad to know, I did try my best to initiate a plan that wasn’t too terminal, but my goodness you are hard to please.”

Inside I could feel simmering anger beginning to boil, taking possession of the initial shock and fear to flood my heart with adrenaline. She appeared to be fiddling with something in her hands, her fingernails absently scraping over it in an irksome way, but from the angle of her body I couldn’t see what it was.

My cell quieted, the silence lasting mere seconds before it started up again. Ethan would be getting frantic if I didn’t answer soon. I was tired of this shit. “Rebecca, your superciliousness bores me. Get to the point, or get out of my fucking house.”

“The
point
,” she hissed, “is that if you’d been a good little girl and fallen for Dominic’s charm, this would have been a lot easier on you. All you had to do was prove to Ethan that you would do anything for money and reveal yourself to being the gold-digging whore that we both know you are, and he would have dropped you like shit-stained rag.”

Dominic? What in fuck’s name was she bleating about?

I was about to sling a caustic remark when a cold, sinister blanket of realization folded around me. Sloane—Dominic Sloane.

Pushing the anxiety out of my voice, I fixed her in a resilient stare. “What has Dominic Sloane got to do with this?”

“Ah!” She laughed excitedly, as if she’d been waiting with bated enthusiasm to reveal her cards. “Poor Dom. Dom, the master of dominance.” She laughed again. “You see, Dom has a penchant for the seediest sex clubs in New York. The stuff he’s into would make even Satan’s toes curl—he was right up my street actually. But you know me, never look a gift horse in the mouth, keep your eye on the goal and so forth. You should have seen him crumble at my submissive feet when I showed him copies of his photos. The guy’s got balls of steel in the dungeon, but Jesus, toss him a few threats of blackmail and he turns into a fucking pin-dick.”

Things were beginning to form into some semblance of coherency. The sly, poisonous bitch had been up to her old tricks again—this time with Dominic Sloan at her mercy. My cell began a new round of relentless buzzing, and I noticed her stiffen with unease before continuing.

“All he had to do was lure you into a compromising position, take the photos, make sure you cashed his check for services rendered, and leave the rest to me. But no, the gullible bastard had to go and fall for your damaged little girl routine. He actually thinks he might have fallen for you, per se.” Her voice dripped with incredulity as she eyed me up and down before shaking her head. “Like I said—pin-dick. Anyway…” she checked her watch and began to move slowly out of the shadows “…long story short—because I suspect we’re running out of time as your phone is ringing off the hook—but poor old Dom has now left town with his pin-dick between his legs. Of course, when the photographs hit the media, they will paint him as psychopathic time-bomb, a violent sexual predator. You see the women in the pictures don’t look like willing participants—but of all people, you’d know about manipulating an image to make it work for you. Obviously, he’s had no choice but to resign from VS Network Solutions. His ex-wife and two beautiful children won’t want to know him anymore. His reputation’s in tatters and he’s pitifully suicidal—poor Dom.” She feigned concern. For a fraction of a second. “So, that taken care of, it leaves me with just one minor detail to worry about before I finally leave this Godforsaken city with my deserved treasure…” She stepped into the light, her pointed features sneering with malevolence, not a perfect hair out of place. “You!” She held her hands out in front of her, and for the first time I saw what she was holding in her grasp.

The clawed hand of fear gripped me by the throat as my gaze locked on to the gun she was pointing at me. My instinctive reaction was to cross my arms over my chest, my hands covering the base of my neck to shield myself.

In an instant, her face contorted with rage, and she took a step back as if I’d shoved her. “What… the… fuck… is… that?”

I realized the cause of her fury when I followed her fiery gaze to the dazzling gem of my engagement ring.

“Noooo!”

Her temper seemed to fulminate from her seething body as it shook visibly, and within seconds she’d covered the space between us and struck me in the side of my head with a force too brutal for her pathetic frame. The pain which lanced through my skull was beyond excruciating. It reverberated through my entire body, incapacitating me so completely that I felt my knees buckle, my body crumple to the floor and then… blackness.

I must have lost consciousness, if only for a few seconds, but the pain of being dragged to my knees by my hair yanked me from obscurity into a spiraling blur. My eyes refused to focus on the shifting room as it tilted and wobbled, and as the blood trickled from the side of my head, down my face and neck, I had to fight the overwhelming urge to vomit. The reason the blow had been so staggeringly painful was because she hadn’t struck me with her hand. She’d hit me with the gun.

I’d foolishly underestimated Rebecca Staunton, and on top of that, I’d cheated death—twice. Something told me I was about to pay for both of those things.

Fighting to think past the swelling mass of pain in my head, or the persistence of my ringing cell phone was virtually impossible, I knew I had to focus if I had any chance. Both Ethan and Jackson would be sure to be on their way by now, all I needed to do was stall her. I could hear her voice breaking through the fog as it cleared, the extent of her insanity being crudely revealed as she ranted wildly about how I’d stolen the only man she’d ever wanted by cunningly fooling him into falling in love with me.

I could feel the barrel of the gun pushing into the back of my head with force, the digs becoming firmer, deeper, as if they were a way to systematically enunciate each word.

Then, without warning, she shifted, the hand with the gun swinging out to point toward the door, as if she’d sensed or heard someone approaching. I tried to move my head to see but it refused, and then suddenly I heard a voice.

“You lay one more fucking finger on my daughter and I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

My father?

His words echoed loudly in my fuzzy mind.
Daughter—my daughter
. My father was here and he was protecting me?

Rebecca laughed, but the tremble in her tone was hard to miss. “Oh look, she’s even got Daddy eating out of the palm of her hand now. How does she do it?”

From the edge of my blurred vision I could see her pointing the gun in my father’s direction. I blinked rapidly, trying to see through the red haze of blood trickling into my eye, willing my head to clear as I scanned the space for a potential weapon. But there was nothing other than furniture left since Jackson and I had packed everything away. Shifting the weight on my knees, I tried to stand, but the dizziness caused me to wobble unsteadily. The movement caught her eye and she shifted her attention back to me, shoving the gun viciously into my shoulder.

Then everything happened so fast.

First there was the rush of movement, then my father screaming, “I said, leave her the fuck alone.” And then the raucous sound of gunfire reverberated through the building and he was falling.

The piercing scream which echoed through the room was my own as I stared helplessly at my father’s crumpled form only a few feet away. The blood pumped through his fingers as he clutched his chest, sweat misting his face as his color drained to white. His eyes locked with mine, and in that moment something passed between us. They were swarming with words and emotions that for years I’d longed to hear but knew I never would. His lips parted, moving only barely as he seemed to summon his waning strength. He was trying to tell me something.

A swift, surreptitious glance at Rebecca revealed the madness in her eyes, her tremulous hands still holding the gun as she ranted crazy incoherencies. Lowering into a crouch, I crawled slowly on my hands and knees, covering the meager distance between me and my dying father. Fear pumped through my system, begging my body to freeze, to protect itself, but the need to know what he was trying to say was too great to ignore.

His words came out in sharp hisses of uncontrolled breath, his pain evident in every syllable. “If I’d known… I’m sorry, so sorry… Forgive me, Angelica… You were my little girl, and I… I let you down.” He grimaced, his eyes clenching tight as he sucked in a strangled breath. “I should have loved you all these years… Please…please know… that I love you now.”

The pain and grief that was etched in the deep lines of his face began to smooth, the life behind his gray eyes fading, just as if his power switch had been flicked to off.

“Wait…” I whispered. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, I just knew I wasn’t ready for him to leave. “Dad…?”

But it was too late. He’d already gone.

My body began to shudder with sudden convulsive sobs, the tears coursing down my face to meld with the blood and sweat that soaked my skin. But I was permitted only a second of grief before a hand was fisting into my hair and I was being yanked to my feet, the force pulling me backwards toward the breakfast island. Rebecca was wielding her gun again, pointing it at the open door, her fingers clawing and fisting into my hair as she directed me to look at the person standing in its space.

“Put the fucking gun down, Rebecca.” Jackson aimed his firearm with a steady hand, his eyes darting from me to her.

“Where is he?” Her voice was high-pitched and wavering as she turned the gun back to me, pressing it into my temple. “I wanted him here when I put the bullet in her. Then he’ll know. He’ll finally see what I’m prepared to do for him. And when she’s out of the way, he’ll be free to love me.”

“He fucking hates you, you crazy bitch.”

“You SHUT your mouth. You’ll see! When she’s gone, he’ll be on the first plane back to London with me.”

“There’s only one place you’re going and it’s not London. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a dead man on the floor. These things are noisy motherfuckers…” He motioned at the gun in his hand. “Those sirens you can hear—they’re on their way for you, sweetheart.”

“Then I guess I’d better get the job done.” She shoved me, releasing my hair and moved around to face me, gun pointing in my face, her finger hovering precariously over the trigger. “Say goodbye to dear old Jaxy, sweetie.”

My eyes focused on the barrel of the gun as she shifted her stance, and with cold determination aimed it straight between my eyes. All I could hear was the pounding of blood in my ears, so loud I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I clenched my eyes closed and focused on the image of Ethan’s beautiful face that was forever burned into my memory, the words
I love you
resounding in my head.

Then without warning, I felt something slamming into my side, the impact sending me hurtling to the floor. The crack of gunfire pierced the air once again and as I opened my eyes to take in the scene unfolding before me, I felt a sudden surge of anger and adrenaline scorching through my veins to kick-start my strength.

In seconds, I was on my feet and grabbing the only moveable object within reach. My fingers closed around the goldfish bowl, and swinging it as hard as I could, I smashed it into her face. She staggered back away from me, hands reaching out blindly as she collapsed to the floor, her eyes flickering as she fought to remain conscious.