Delusive (32 page)

I gave him a wry smile. “I’m not attracted to Skylar. I was under the influence of something that made me act out of character.”

His posture was stiff and immovable. I waited for him to blink before I could relax, and when he did, his even mood made way for indifference. “If that’s true, there shouldn’t be any issues with staying away from her.”

“There won’t be, Elias.”

“I’m…honored you selected me to be your first.” His entire face lit up as he gave me his signature smile. “I don’t have to tell you that if you’d told me beforehand, it wouldn’t have hurt as much.”

“It worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

“Not yet, Hanley. But, eventually, it will.”

The look in his eyes deterred me from digging at his statement, which obviously held a meaning beyond the surface. Yet, I knew deep within, despite all the bad he’d shown me, I had still barely removed the exterior and revealed the true person who lay behind it all.

TWENTY-ONE

THE MAN I ASSISTED had been ogling my breasts the entire time I tended to him. I was used to it at this point, but this particular customer went a little overboard. He spoke in circles and had a difficult time with deciding on what he wanted to get his girlfriend. At one point, he propositioned me, asking me to try on a few items because he said I looked similar to his girlfriend’s size.

I declined the trip to the dressing room but continued to play nice, making sure he was satisfied. My feelings were already on edge because I felt like I was under the strict order of a parent. When Elias saw me walk out of the bedroom dressed as I was, he made me turn around and change. The instant I stepped inside the store, I changed back into the strapless corset and pencil skirt I had purchased during one of our shopping trips together. I slipped the corset to the cashier while Elias wasn’t paying attention.
 

With the way the customer behaved, I began to wonder if I shouldn’t have bothered to change.

“Is there anything else I can get you, sir?” I asked, rushing him along. “I think she’ll really like this item.”
 

He fingered the teddy draped across my arm, but his eyes were on my cleavage. He reached forward and squeezed one of my breasts. “I don’t know. I’ve been shopping for you this whole time. Do you like it?”

Jaco was a blur of movement when his large arm went around the neck of my customer and sent him off balance. The customer’s face reddened as he struggled to fend off Jaco.

From behind me, while standing at the register, Penelope gasped sharply. When I glimpsed at her, she had a horrified look on her face, but didn’t lift a finger to call security. Quickly, she put her head down and pretended to be busy with a task at the counter.

“This woman belongs to Elias Cari,” Jaco growled. “Say you’re sorry for being a dick.”

“I’m sorry,” the man wheezed, straining to breathe.

Shortly thereafter, the customer was dragged out of the store and down the park. From my position at the open door, I watched as a few bystanders reacted in shock, standing frozen in place while they watched Jaco manhandle the customer, escorting him toward the parking lot. I expected the uniformed mall security officer to do something when he walked by. Instead, he gave Jaco a nod and let him go on with his business.

I held up my hands in awe of the whole interaction. “What the fuck was that?”

Penelope remained quiet—too quiet.

Full of fury and on the edge of exploding, I marched over to her. “Is Elias always like this?”

She slowly looked up at me, latent fear shown through her eyes. “I’ve never worked with or met a woman Elias dated. They are usually untouchable exports from Brazil or some other exotic place. You see them around for a while, and then they are gone.”

“Gone where?”

She shrugged. “Just gone, Hanley. Probably back to wherever he got them from.” She looked down at her spreadsheets. “I’ve never seen him use Jaco as a personal bodyguard for any of them.”

I leaned across the counter, giving her no other choice but to look at me. “Jaco is special how?”

“Everyone knows.” She gazed at me sheepishly from underneath her doubled-up false eyelashes. “Jaco is Elias’s best friend, and he only has one now.”

“Best friend? Is that what they call it? Jaco is a goon. Can you tell me why a supposed CEO of an architectural design firm has goons?”

“You can’t be that oblivious to the truth,” she muttered.

“Exactly. I’m not. I’m just waiting on someone to admit it out loud.”

“They probably never will. Go to a library once in a while. Look under the name of the people who incorporated this town. No one wants to rock the boat of the people who own the island we’ve all escaped to.”

“You.” Jaco charged at me, startling Penelope and me. “Since you won’t answer your phone, use mine.”

I picked up his phone, touching it as though it teemed with a communicable disease. “Hello?”

A long audible sigh was heard from the other line. “I’m not a fan of babysitting you, Hanley, but you perplex me to an extreme extent.” Elias sounded a mix of upset and exhausted, beneath his words I could hear a few men arguing in the background. “Is what I ask of you really that fucking hard to follow?”

I blinked, a little taken aback by his acridity. “Why am I being blamed because a man wasn’t able to keep his hands to himself? That man had no right to put his hands on me.”

“Your last sentence is correct, and I’m sure the man who touched you has seen the error of his ways now that he’s missing a few teeth. He will be missing quite a few more things when I’m done with him. When I give you an order, it’s not up for debate or negotiations. If you are continuously unable to handle following directions, I will stop allowing you to indulge in your need to work while you’re living with me.”

“Ugh!” I screamed into the phone. My anger got the best of me and I threw it. It hit the wall and ricocheted, falling into an ornate mauve, galvanized tin basket full of neatly folded lace panties. Holding my head, I persistently shook it. “I can’t do this anymore. I feel like I can’t breathe. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”

Jaco and Penelope looked at me as though I’d cracked, and maybe, I had. Whatever internal feelings I had for him, I wished they would stop. I wished I had never been given the burden of having to endure Elias and his madness. Roth was much easier. I tuned out his insults, made him pay for them later, and things were fine—I could handle him.
 

This man’s need to control every single aspect of my life, when I’d already lived as a prisoner, thanks to the crimes committed by his father against mine, had brought me close to losing my hold on my sanity.

And that wasn’t the largest issue; he’d gotten inside my head and my heart. Both were saturated with Elias. I craved his cock, his tongue, his touch, his lips…his body. I needed the way he looked at me in those small moments I witnessed his vulnerability and crushing sadness. I needed him to inundate my ears with his beautiful way of making me feel on top of the world.
 

The least desired seemed to be the things he wouldn’t stop exhibiting around me. The control. The extreme possessiveness. The violence and the volatile nature. Scenes of him “firing” an employee still haunted my dreams.
 

When he used to touch me, he left me stupefied. Now when he touched me, I remembered his brutal hits between my thighs. I had to fight the urge to recoil, and sometimes, failed. I thought I could pretend the awful things he did and said never happened by wishing the worst things out of existence. It all fell apart when he showed me the parts I hated, because it was a reminder of every one of his bad deeds.

A gnawing notion directed me to borrow Penelope’s jacket and continue to work. Another wanted to curse Elias and Jaco at the same time, calling them both every name that rang true to their natures. Promptly after, I’d find Skylar and fuck her without a care as to whether or not the word got around to Elias about it. His fingertips were grasping a part of me I tried to protect. My well-played and groomed façade had cracked and there was barely any shred of it left.

Jaco continued to stare down at me skeptically. “You seriously just fucked up. You know that, right? He’s on his way here.”

Slowly closing and opening my eyes, I rubbed my temples. “I won’t be here when he arrives.”

Jaco’s eyes widened. “Don’t make me do what I need to do to keep you here, Hanley.”

With both hands, I pulled up my skirt and swiftly kicked him in the groin, making him double over and dry-heave.
 

Through watering eyes, his face fixated in grimace, he looked up at me in awe.
 

“Sorry,” I said quickly and left the store.

I needed to get to Skylar. She had a way of making me remember who I was and forgetting about the woman I had to be to lure her prey.

I USED THE phone at a restaurant many blocks away from where I had left the Camaro to contact Skylar and ask her to pick me up. It took three hours before her car skidded into the parking lot.

I got into her car and slid into the passenger seat. I looked her over—she looked beautiful, as usual, and was dressed as though she was ready to work at La Dentelle. “Where have you been?” I asked.

“I got called in to work the rest of your shift. Thanks for that, because I thought Claudia was going to fire me before then.” She chuckled hard enough to hinder her ability to drive. “What the fuck did you do? Penelope was gulping back more Vicodin than usual during our shift. I know that bitch wants to fire you, but she’s waiting for permission from you know who.” She glanced over at me. “Where am I taking you?”

“I’m escaping. Take me wherever you want to go.”

Sinking deeper into her seat, she hesitated. “I’m…staying with my mom right now. I really don’t want to take you there.”

“What happened to your place?”

“It was my
aunt’s
place,” she said, failing to be convincing. “Her landlord kicked us out for too many lease violations. Milton is at my mom’s right now, and he works under Elias. Way, way, way under Elias. Like the janitor of the mailroom under. If you’re trying to run away from him, that isn’t the best place to go.”

“Where else can I go?” I questioned, bubbling with raw anger. “I had to kick Jaco in his balls to lose him. Everywhere else I can go, Elias will find me. I want to go home and see my father, but he’s probably moved already.”

She shook her head no. “Claudia’s sister doesn’t live too far from you. She drives by your house every morning when she goes to work. She never mentioned anything about moving vans. There are still two cars parked in the driveway, last she said.”

I reached inside my clutch, but remembered I’d left my phone in the car, because I knew it was being tracked. “Take me to your place and hide me from Milton.”

SKYLAR PULLED UP to a double wide mobile home situated in a park with similar looking homes.
 

When we entered, the stale scent almost knocked me over. The appearance of Skylar’s mother was unexpected, from what I saw of her. Her head was planted in the lap of a man half her age and he was as physically torn down as she was. I surmised whatever they were hooked on ruined the looks they might’ve once had.
 

Skylar hurried me along, taking my hand down the hall to an even narrower room. The sound of our feet hitting the floor echoed throughout the space, sounding hollow. The walls seemed to shudder with our every movement.

She shoved me fully into a room. With the advent of boy band posters and lavender decor, I questioned if it was her childhood bedroom. I laid down on her bed with my arm behind my head, staring at the picture of a half-naked guy on the ceiling.

Closing the door, she sighed and sank back against the door. “My mother keeps it like I left it…a hellish mess.” She flopped down on the bed to lay next to me. “I warned you about that asshole. He acts like he’s so much better than everyone—‘cause he wants to make everyone feel small around him. Wants everyone to see him as some fucking king. He doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t deserve any woman with half a lick of sense.”

I gave her a grin and reached out to hold her hand. “You’re sweet to think that.” I fingered my temples with my other hand, working out the tension that formed there every time I spoke about Elias. “There is more to why I’m with him. It’s not as simple as me ‘playing the player.’”

She propped up on her elbows, grinning at me as though she knew a secret when she couldn’t have. “Oh, I figured that out in the car. Sharing is caring.”

“He’s exhausting,” I admitted through a sigh. “More exhausting than my father. Things are so easy with you. I don’t have to pretend or constantly be on my toes. I feel like I’m entering the ring when I’m with Elias. I have to say the right things at the right time. Not the things he wants me to say, or what I want to say, but things to purposely throw him off his perch.
 

“You were right; he has this intimidating way about him from the way he speaks to the way he acts and moves. His actions… I can’t figure out what to do when he acts…crazy.” It was the only time my calculated dance made major missteps. I abhorred when he acted that way, it reminded me of Luther. My body had a visceral reaction, which in turn, opened me up when I wanted to remain cold. In an odd way, I surmised that’s how he was able to break through to me.