To the Ends of the Earth: A Stripped Standalone (6 page)

I’ve never been to Tanglewood, the city where Candy hid after she left Harmony Hills. All I know is what she’s told me—the strip clubs, the gambling. The fighting rings where Luca spends his nights.

My heart thuds, a heavy beat. Working my way through the small cities has been hard enough. Learning the street signs, the strange customs that everyone knows but me. Counting money. Buying food. Every single step has been a steep climb.

Now I’m going to the biggest city I’ve seen, the darkest.

We find another string of black SUVs waiting outside when we land. They drive us through the city, which alternates between mansions and tenements, skyscrapers and gutters.

Ivan’s house is like a castle in the center of the city, an urban fortress with high stone walls and sleek black cameras nestled into corners. Candy meets me on the front steps, eyes glistening with tears.

“Oh my gosh,” she says, her voice awed. “She’s beautiful, Beth.”

Delilah resisted going back in her car seat for takeoff, but the rumble of the engine put her to sleep immediately. Now she blinks up at Candy, eyes wide and hazy.

“Thank you,” I say, flushing with nervous pride. Motherhood isn’t something I ever wanted for myself. I never imagined a happy home because I knew that was impossible. Duty. Pain. Those were the things that led me here, but I can’t regret it. Not when I look at the trust in her dark eyes.

Candy pulls us inside, where marble floors expand for miles and chandeliers twinkle overhead. Luca excuses himself to look for Ivan, leaving me in a living room that could fit a hundred people.

“This place is like a palace,” I say, my voice hushed.

She laughs, the sound knowing. “Pretty different from the Great Hall.”

The Great Hall was kind of a joke, even among the true believers. There was nothing great about the dirt floors and the whitewashed walls. Bars on the windows made it look more like a prison than a gathering place.

“I’m afraid to breathe,” I admit. And unlike the plane, where flight safety had made it somewhat babyproof, there’s plenty that’s breakable here.

“Luca called and let me know that you were coming,” she says. “I got a room ready for you upstairs. And my friend Honor’s nanny is coming over tomorrow to help get the rest of the house prepared. She’ll be staying with us for a couple weeks to help me out.”

My heart clenches, thinking of leaving Delilah. It’s been hard enough leaving her with a babysitter when she’s asleep so I could work. This will be days. “Are you sure this is okay?”

“Of course,” she says with a wink. “It’s an honor having the blessed one in our house.”

I make a face. “Not you, too.”

“Hey, I think it’s cool that the savior’s a girl. It was time for a change.”

Pulling out a plastic toy that plays light and sounds, I distract Delilah from our conversation. Delilah examines the familiar toy with an unimpressed sound. Then she half scoots, half crawls over to a potted plant, grasping at the wide green leaves overhead.

“I don’t want her hearing about any of that.”

Candy’s expression softens. “I know it was messed up, but it’s part of her history. It’s definitely part of
your
history.”

“I wish,” I mutter. “That history has a way of following me around.”

“We’ll keep her safe, Beth.”

Cameras. Walls. Will it be enough? “I can’t lose her. I just…can’t.”

Tears prick my eyes. I put the heels of my hands to my face, trying to keep from crying. A soft touch on my shoulder shatters me. Comfort. Kindness.
God.

I try to turn away, but Candy doesn’t let me. She pulls me close, and I cry against her body, her breasts cradling me, her arms encircling me. I cry for getting attacked outside the Last Stop, for giving birth in a low-rent women’s shelter. I cry for the little girl I once was, trembling and alone on a dirt floor.

“We’ll keep her
safe,
” Candy whispers fiercely. “I won’t let her out of my sight. And no one will know she’s here. All they’ll know is that you’re in Chicago.”

“Bait,” I whisper, my voice thick.

“Trust Luca. He cares about you more than you know.”

I pull away, retreating, hiding my face behind a fall of blonde hair. “You know what he wants from me.”

“What’s wrong with that?” she asks, her tone playful.

My nose scrunches. “You know what’s wrong with that.”

She smiles gently. “I know more than you think I do. I know that being with Luca won’t be anything like what happened in Harmony Hills. And I know that he went crazy when you disappeared. He cares about you.”

“It’s a game to him.”

“Maybe, but Ivan insisted that he forget about you. We have more important things to worry about, all that jazz. And you know what Luca said?”

We met when we were kids. Both stupid, fucked up—sorry. Both of us dumb kids who wanted to get out of the
barrio. “What?”

“He told him to go fuck himself.”

I flinch and then smile. “That sounds like Luca.”

“Not before you. He was content to take orders as long as Ivan watched his back. They worked together for a long time without any problems. Then he meets you.”

“And he kidnapped me,” I murmur.

“He saved you.” She knows what it was like there more than anyone.

“I’m grateful to him,” I admit. “And I guess there’s some part of me that’s interested. But the most important thing in my life is Delilah. It has to be her. I’m not sure I can be with a man at all, especially one whose entire life revolves around violence.”

Her hand touches mine. “Beth, our lives revolved around violence.”

And mine still does. “I can’t make it stop,” I whisper.

“Luca will help you.”

Luca will help me and hurt me. He’ll use me in every way until I don’t know where I end and he begins. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be wary. He’s more dangerous than Leader Allen ever was. “You have to promise me something.”

“Anything,” she says promptly.

I glance at Delilah, who’s scooted back to her toy. A Mozart sonata plays through the plastic speaker. My voice drops. “If I don’t come back, you’ll take care of her as your own.”

She gasps. “No.”

“Promise.”

“You’ll come back. Of course you will.”

Except she can’t be sure of that. I can walk into the crosshairs when it means keeping Delilah safe. I could walk through fire for her. I just need to know that she’ll be taken care of if I don’t come back. “As if she’s your own child.”

She looks away, her lower lip trembling. For the first time since she left Harmony Hills, she doesn’t look self-assured. She looks like the young woman we both really are, forced to grow up too soon. “She’s my sister, you know,” she murmurs. “Both of us came from the same man.”

I shiver. “I know.”

“Besides, I owe you. If I hadn’t run away, it would have been me in those prayer sessions. It would have been me with a baby.”

Shame coils inside me. “I hated you for that.”

Her eyes turn glossy with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

“I hated that I couldn’t go with you. That I wasn’t strong enough or smart enough to run away like you.” It was a hollow kind of hate, weak and brittle.

Her mouth drops open. “Strong enough? God, Beth. I wasn’t strong enough to stay. I couldn’t stand the thought of him touching me, not for anything. So I ran, not knowing if I’d survive. Not knowing or even caring who had to substitute for me. That was weakness, not strength. You’re the strong one. You’re made of freaking steel.”

My throat feels thick. That’s what Luca said, but I didn’t believed him. He didn’t know everything that happened in Harmony Hills, and I prefer it that way. I don’t want to see the change in his eyes when he knows exactly what was done to me.

Candy knows. And she thinks I’m strong.

“Promise,” I whisper.

Her nostrils flare. “I promise.”

Relief flushes through me, swift and cool. “Thank you.”

“She’s my flesh and blood. I would always take care of her. It’s an honor, not an obligation. But you—God, you’re me. You’re everything that I am, that I’ve been. Come back, Beth. I know you’ll come back.”

Part of me expects Luca to have sex with me as soon as we were alone.

And that secret part of me even longs for his heat, his unexpected tenderness. Longs for that sense of comfort I drew from his larger body curved around mine like that night in my apartment.

But he doesn’t touch me in the black Escalade that takes us to the Tanglewood International Airport. He doesn’t touch me on the private jet we take to a small Chicago airport, a mile expanse of runway and flat green enclosed by city glass all around. And he doesn’t touch me on the limo ride into the city. If anything he seems to grow colder with every mile we take toward downtown.

Finally the frosty silence is too much for me. “Did I do something wrong?”

He glances at me, surprise flaring briefly. “Why would you think that?”

Maybe Candy told him that I was afraid of him. I don’t think she would do that to hurt me, but she might have been trying to help. “You seem different. Angry.”

Dark eyes study me. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Oh. Then why—”

“We’ll stop by the hotel. I’ll get you checked in and you can rest in the room while I’m gone.”

Alone.

Maybe that would be a relief to some people. You’re never alone in Harmony Hills, not even in sleep. And definitely not in those private prayer sessions I still experience in my nightmares. When I escaped, I was with Candy for a little while. Then Delilah. I don’t know how to be alone. The silence cracks me like a hammer to glass.

“Where are you going?”

“To the gym. I need to check in with some of my team. And I need to start training.”

For the fight. Because that’s what he does—he hits people. And he gets hit. “Can I come with you?”

It will be even worse now that I’m missing Delilah. Candy will take good care of her, but that knowledge does nothing for the hole in my heart.

His eyes narrow. “It’s a rough place.”

“I worked at the Last Stop.”

He quirks a smile. “Yeah. I guess you can handle yourself.”

Until the end. I desperately needed Luca’s help then. But I don’t think anyone will attack me when they know he’s in the vicinity. I may not trust him completely. I have a lifetime of experience telling me that men are dangerous, that violence breeds violence. But I know he won’t let anyone else touch me.

In that way he has something in common with Leader Allen.

He had been possessive, too.

Even though Luca warned me about the gym, I’m still surprised when the limo glides to a stop in front of a warehouse. If it weren’t for the faint light pressing through grime-coated windows, I would have thought the place abandoned.

It doesn’t look much better on the inside, the walls sprayed with something that looks like cotton from far away, a large expanse of concrete broken by squares of thin, fraying mats. Colored duct tape creates divisions in the massive room, making it clear that the practice isn’t haphazard even if it is low budget.

I expected rough men like Luca, but in a gentile setting. Something with granite and leather. This is a stark contrast to the luxury with which he travels.

Luca gives a low laugh beside me. “Thinking of backing out? I can have the driver take you to the hotel.”

And sit in a cold room by myself. “No, thank you.”

“MMA is only barely legal in Chicago. And there are a lot of restrictions. To keep fighting the way we do, with this kind of money on the line, they’ve kept it underground.”

“Oh, so that’s why it’s so…”

“Jacked up?” he offers.

“I was going to say stark.”

He snorts. “I’ll be here a couple hours. You can sit on the bleachers over there. If anyone tries to talk to you, just tell them you’re with me. Any questions?”

“One. If this fight is underground, how are you sure that my brother will hear about it?”

Appreciation flashes through his eyes. “Because the purse is the biggest. The prize. And that means the best fighters come out for this. Whether you’re in the fight scene or not, people come to the after party. It’s a free-for-all. We’ll set a trap for him there.”

“Oh.” An underground fight and a party seem so far removed from our old life at Harmony Hills. My brother, Alex, and I had never been close. He’d been a true believer long before I had been forced to be Leader Allen’s personal attendant.

“He’ll be there,” Luca says, sounding certain. “If you’re a dirty motherfucker—sorry. If you’re mixed up with a bad crowd, you’ll hear about it.”

I manage a wan smile. “I guess you can swear now that Delilah isn’t here.”

“You don’t like it.”

It’s a shock to realize he knows that about me. That he can see right through me. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s a shit—a bad habit. And the fact that I’m joining the fight this late in the game will make all kinds of news. People have been training for six months.”

My eyes widen. “And the fight is next week?”

He cracks his knuckles, looking like some kind of Spartan warrior. I can imagine him in gold and red armor, fierce in the face of catapults and arrows. “I’ve got some ground to make up.”

I blink. “But if you usually fight, why weren’t you already signed up for the fight.”

“I was looking for you.” He turns his head away, shielding his eyes. “Besides, I’ve been trying to fight less.”

My heart clenches. “You don’t like it anymore?”

Then he looks back at me, showing every vicious thought, every carnal desire for violence. “I love it.”

“Then why do you want to stop?”

He nods toward the bleachers, where a few other women have set up shop with shiny phones and smoothies in Styrofoam cups. “Have a seat. I’ll try to keep it quick today.”

“Wait.” I put my hand on his arm, amazed anew at the incredible strength that flexes beneath my palm. “You shouldn’t fight for me. It’s dangerous. And you haven’t trained enough.”

“Have a little faith,” he says, gently chiding.

“I lost my faith a long time ago,” I tell him honestly.

He sizes me up. “Yeah. I guess you did, little bird. Well, rest easy. Fighting’s in my blood. This is what I was born to do. And you’re the best reason I’ve ever had to do it.”