Spotless (34 page)

“Island, go back and do
not
move from there!” March’s roar was
answered by another round of bullets in the white material of the desk. Another guy moved under the mezzanine to fire a few more bullets at the glass, creating ominous flowers underneath my hands and knees. My legs were trembling so badly I could hardly move, be it either to go ahead with my crappy plan or back the hell away as March had ordered me to.

I recoiled in horror as the young black-haired man who had just shot into the mezzanine’s glass ran up the flight of stairs and toward me. March seized a moment of inattention from the man’s colleagues as they watched me crawl backward frantically through the glass, and moved away from the desk to shoot one of them. The bald guy with the automatic rifle was still standing, however, and March had to run for cover again behind a pillar as yet another round was fired in his direction.

Despite the situation, I still trusted we would somehow manage to escape, since March was now closer to the spiral staircase than ever. All that was left to do was to take on these two guys, and perhaps bitch-slap that receptionist who was still whimpering in fear behind another white pillar at the other end of the lobby.

I heard more gunshots, and I realized that March was trying to stop the asshole coming for me from reaching the top of the stairs, but he couldn’t get any closer because that Cue Ball guy with the rifle was still waiting for an opportunity to kill him.

I thought that young man with the gun was my biggest problem . . . until it became clear that even though the glass I was crawling on was super thick, too many flowers had bloomed across it already, and they were too close to each other.
Way too close
. That flower under my right hand and the ones near my feet were already spreading, and sharp cracking sounds announced that the glass mezzanine had taken all the shooting it could.

Crack
.

Crack
. . .

Fuck.

I felt several tiles of the transparent floor give way under me with a terrible noise, and I fell through the mezzanine. Brilliant shards were flying around me, and for a fleeting second, I anticipated the contact of my body with the white tiling of the ground floor, pictured my bones shattering in the fall. Panic raced through my veins, but the pain itself never came: that Cue Ball guy momentarily abandoned his quest to kill March and lunged to catch me—and what he believed to be the real Ghost Cullinan—in his arms.

I crashed face-first into his gray jacket, smelling tobacco and detergent in the fabric. There was glass in my hair, some minor cuts on my hands and on my neck, and a bloody gash on Cue Ball’s forehead—which I assumed was the result of a bigger shard of glass cutting him. I was in a state of shock, still clutching the fake stone, and I saw March running toward us in the debris of the half-destroyed mezzanine. Cue Ball dropped me like a rag doll to fire at him again, and all the sounds around me were replaced by a loud buzzing in my ears. It was all too much: too much noise, too much fear. My chest constricted violently as I saw March dive to the floor just in time to avoid ending his career right there and then, a few feet away from me.

I gathered March had to be out of ammo, since he hadn’t fired his gun in a while and seemed to be looking for cover instead. The young Asian guy who had been trying to catch me had joined us, and he dragged me kicking and screaming toward the white van while Cue Ball finished emptying his magazine in an attempt to kill March, or at least keep him at bay. I screamed my lungs out as the younger man threw me brutally into the back of the van, and the last thing I saw before the door slammed shut was March running toward us.

As soon as the van had started, that young guy gave me a resounding slap before tearing the stone from my hands. Dizzy from the blow, I scrambled away, and he watched me as we drove through Tokyo in the dark, cramped space.

The vehicle appeared to be moving fast, and it shook a lot, as if the driver were being chased. I had nothing to steady myself and kept rolling from one side of van to the other every time we turned. Meanwhile, the young guy’s smooth features contorted in an anxious snarl as he leaned against the van’s back door, gun still in hand. There, he moved one of the black plastic panels covering the doors’ windows to look at the street.

I focused on the way his bony fingers tightened around the handle of his gun, the sweat on his temple, the deep frown wrinkling his brow, and assumed that whatever he was looking at displeased him. The vehicle took a series of violent turns at some point, which sent my head slamming against the van’s metallic wall so hard that I nearly passed out, until it seemed to slow down somewhat: we now seemed to be driving smoothly to wherever these guys were taking me.

That bitchy youth with the frown relaxed; his fingers loosened their iron grip on his gun. We were no longer being followed . . . and, dammit, I had just been kidnapped for the third time in four days!

TWENTY-EIGHT

The Master

“Dayne was so powerful, so perfect and intimidating, Chelsee thought as she was led through his humongous mansion, entirely decorated with black marble.”

—Muffin Thorpe,
Slave to the Rich and Sexy Vampire

The van eventually stopped and my captors dragged me out, but I lost my balance and fell to the ground. The feeling of the hard pavement under my palms and the sight of blood on my fingers helped me focus. I had earned a few cuts during the mezzanine’s collapse, but I was otherwise okay. The glass skyscrapers and the cold atmosphere of the street felt familiar. We were somewhere in Tokyo’s business district, Ōtemachi, probably on the Eita Dori. Still carrying the stone, Cue Ball hauled me back up, and I noticed for the first time that he shaved his head to conceal a receding hairline. Bitchy-youth seemed to be more fortunate, with his mop of thick black hair, but those angular features were anything but inviting.

We entered an impressive stone building that was a strange mix of modern and gothic architecture. The first floors seemed rather ancient,
with a sculpted facade that reminded me a little of the Doge’s Palace in Venice, and a pair of nineteenth-century-style lanterns flanking a wide entrance. The rest of the structure, however, was more recent, made up of pure, straight lines and a sea of glass that reached too high for me to make out the top of the building from where I stood. We made our way across what looked more like a stone-and-glass cathedral than a lobby, and once in the elevator, the youngest of my captors used a key to lift us to the twenty-sixth and last floor. The elevator’s steel doors opened to reveal a dozen tough-looking guys guarding a long hallway.

Cue Ball shoved me forward as one the guards opened a set of large doors, revealing a double staircase plunging down into a bright and vast living room. I realized that there was, in fact, no twenty-fifth floor. It had been merged with the twenty-sixth to create a penthouse of epic proportions. The windows I had seen from outside formed an invisible wall that gave me the impression I was standing inside a giant cube, one side of which showcased a breathtaking view of the city. I was led down the minimalist black staircase and into the room, where more guards awaited.

There, waiting for us near a white sofa that seemed straight out of
Star Trek
, was a tall man in an elegant gray suit. He walked to me, his lips stretching to reveal a carnivorous grin. Now, I know it’s a stupid idea, but I’ve always assumed that everyone who possesses the same type of gap-tooth I have is a nice person, like we all belonged to a secret gap-tooth club presided over by Lauren Hutton. That guy’s smile, however, was challenging this theory. I recoiled, but Cue Ball stood behind me, blocking any possible escape.

“Pleased to meet you again, Island. People call me—”

“Dries,” I murmured before he had the time to serve me the same introduction March had days ago, down to the intonation.

His deep voice petrified me. For a moment I was fifteen again, huddled under the covers of my bed while he left my mom’s room,
bidding her goodnight with the same posh accent that spoke of a privileged Afrikaner background.

“You’re the man from Pretoria . . . the one who used to visit at night,” I said, suddenly struggling for air.

He let out a dry laugh. “I see you remember me. We’re practically family after all.”

I stared at him, my mind conjuring memories of a broad-shouldered shadow. He was still buff, and his sharp features were easy enough on the eyes, but his brown hair was graying, and the lines on his tanned face and hands were proof that even powerful assholes couldn’t cheat time. Now a grown woman myself, I could see what my mother had found so attractive, but those eyes . . . How had she ever been able to trust them? They were almost the same hazel as mine, but the golden flecks in their center made them seem yellow, and somehow, they made me physically ill.

“Are you going to kill me?” I was amazed at how calm I sounded, given the situation.

My host took a few steps forward until he was standing too close. He smelled spicy, like sandalwood maybe. His scent stirred the same kind of unpleasant feeling inside me that his eyes did, so I tried to focus on his hands instead and counted the tiny moles there. Much like me, Dries was probably constantly wondering if—or when—he would develop skin cancer.

“I was in fact hoping to have a pleasant meal and, who knows, perhaps get to know you better.” He had tucked a strand of hair behind my ear as he said this. I felt a chill travel from the nape of my neck all the way down to my back.

“I doubt you really want to spend quality time with me,” I muttered, squirming away from his touch.

A deep baritone laugh filled the room. “God, you’re exactly like your dear mother. Why wouldn’t I enjoy your company?”

I pointed my chin in Cue Ball’s direction. “Tell him to give me the bag. I’m gonna show you why.”

Raising an eyebrow, he nodded for his henchman to hand me the black satchel he had been carrying. As I pulled out the heavy stone from the bag, I wondered if it was the same feeling people got before jumping in front of a train—the feeling that it’s game over anyway, that it no longer matters if they live or die.

I looked at Dries as I raised the Cullinan over my head. His eyes lit up, and he moved to stop me, but I jumped back before he could touch me and hurled the fake diamond to the ground with all my strength. It hit the smooth concrete with a loud crash, shattering in thousands of shimmering shards.

I saw the bare hate in his eyes.

“Checkmate. Looks like she didn’t want anyone to have it, not even me!”

He might have been an asshole, but he did possess some serious self-control, I had to give him that. He didn’t even blink. He merely took a deep breath and let out a low chuckle. “Oh . . . you’re quite something, little Miss Chaptal.”

As he said this, he cracked his knuckles, and I thought he was getting ready to beat the crap out of me—I mostly worried about my teeth—but he didn’t. He pulled out a phone from his pocket and dialed a number. Someone answered, and he spoke in an icy voice. “Transfer me to him. No questions.
Now
.” Whoever was on the other end of the line seemed unimpressed by Dries’s display of virile authority, which prompted him to switch to hateful baboon mode. “Listen to me, bitch, pass him to me
immediately
if you don’t want to find your son’s heart on your doorstep tomorrow.”

I shuddered at the explicit threat and listened, stiff, as he greeted his interlocutor in Afrikaans. “Goeie môre, broer.”
Good morning, brother.
Brother? March? If so, the woman he had called a bitch must be Phyllis. “I give you thirty minutes to bring me the real diamond. I’ll send you
my instructions. Try not to run away this time . . .
of ek gee haar ’n
forty-five.”

I frowned as Dries hung up. There was a part he didn’t want me to understand. Too bad for him that the sticky gruel of Dutch, Flemish, and Afrikaans I had stored somewhere in my brain as a child was enough to get the general idea. Said idea being that if March didn’t bring him the Ghost Cullinan, he intended to give me a . . .

“What’s a forty-five?” I tried to sound badass and almost uninterested, but believe me, it wasn’t easy.

“I thought you already knew.” He smirked, pulling me into a loose embrace and tracing the nape of my neck with his thumb. “We cut between the fourth and fifth vertebras. You’ll keep the ability to breathe on your own. Everything else is lost.”

As he said this, I thought of Rislow, who had called Dries March’s master before getting forty-fived himself. Nice. I can’t say I looked forward to becoming quadriplegic, but I couldn’t stand the idea of cowering in front of this bastard, so I summoned what little courage I had left.

“You’re wasting your time. He’s gonna give the real Cullinan to the Queen. Then she’ll pay him to forty-five
you
, asshole!”

Damn, Rislow had made me tough. Not super tough like March, but enough to face my demise with some semblance of dignity . . . I hoped. Dries laughed again and pressed me closer, his lips grazing my earlobe. “Perhaps. You’ll be my consolation prize then, little Island. I’ve never fucked both a mother and her daughter.”