Blackbird

  “That one was a bullet.”

  My head snapped up at his reply. I hadn’t expected him to answer me, and I would’ve never expected that response. “What?”

  But no matter how much I silently begged him to repeat himself, hoping that maybe I’d heard him wrong, he just stared at me as a minute passed by.

  “Why were you shot?”

  Instead of answering, he turned the conversation around to me. “Why do you stop singing when I walk into the room?”

  As it had so often with Kyle, my body tensed. And just as I’d known I’d had Lucas not two minutes before, he now knew he had me.

  He didn’t wait long for a response, and from the look he was giving me, he hadn’t expected one. He curled his large hand around my neck and traced feather-soft circles against my throat with his thumb as he spoke. “You don’t need me to tell you that your voice is beautiful; you already know it is. But you stop when you know I can hear you, and you sing when you’re scared . . . like it’s an involuntary reaction you can’t stop even though I could tell in those first days that you’d wanted to.” Another sweep of his thumb across my throat had my fear receding and my breaths growing heavy. “Now tell me, Briar, why would someone with a voice like yours be so afraid of it?”

  Again, my body stilled, but it no longer had anything to do with the suspicion that crept through my body whenever anyone mentioned my voice . . .

  Kyle had asked me countless times what I’d had to be afraid of when it came to singing, implying that I was good enough to do anything I wanted with my voice. But he’d never once in the years we’d been together noticed that I sang when scared, just as he’d never noticed I was afraid of my own voice.

  But the man holding me . . . he missed nothing.

  “There are parts of my life that you don’t know,” Lucas continued, “but there are parts of yours I haven’t begun to understand.”

  I shook my head slowly, subtly. “You understand more than he ever did.” I didn’t have to say Kyle’s name. Lucas knew who I was talking about. “I used to love singing.”

  When I didn’t offer anything else, he asked, “Not anymore?”

  “I want to. I’m trying to—I’ve been trying to. I’ve sung a lot more for the fun of it in this last year than I had in the five years before. But most of the time I feel like I don’t know how to just sing.”

  His dark eyes searched mine for a few seconds before he nodded. “The night I was shot . . . a lot of people died and a lot of people lived. I’m just lucky that when it all ended, I was one of the latter.”

  I thought over his vague response as confusion flooded me. “Were you in the military?”

  He laughed softly, but something in the tone changed at the end. The sound made me feel cold even though it was warm and humid outside. “No to the military. You see who I am now, Briar? Who I am here with you?”

  I hesitated for only a second before nodding.

  “You saw who I was when you came here?”

  Another nod.

  “I wasn’t born into this. I had to fight to get into this. I had a rough life before I met William. The night I was shot was a live-or-die shootout within my family.” When I looked up at him in horror, he dipped his head closer. “Not what you expected from your devil? It was a necessity for William to take me on.”

  This man wasn’t just cloaked in darkness; he was darkness. I had feared him and that darkness, but I had never thought of him as dangerous. Panic slithered through me at his menacing tone, but I didn’t shy away. Because even though the fear was there, I couldn’t connect it to the man in front of me.

  “You . . . did you kill someone?”

  He released me and rolled so he was on his back and staring at the top of the canopy, but not before I saw his eyes. “I’ve killed a lot of people.”

  I knew from his steady words he wasn’t lying, but I also knew in the heaviness of his tone and the pain that flashed through his eyes he hated himself for what he’d done.

  And it was then that I knew I had been right: I didn’t know this man at all. Because that look and that weight pressing on him wasn’t the devil who’d bought me, or the Lucas who’d broken rules for me. He was someone else entirely.

  I sat up so I was sitting cross-legged on the bed and forced myself to remain calm when I asked, “Why?”

  As if he didn’t realize he was doing it, his right hand passed across his left forearm a few times, just over the large, swirling tattoo. “It’s easier to explain why I’ve killed people than it is to explain why I tried to break you, but that doesn’t mean I can explain it to you.”

  “Lucas, I’ve given my body and heart to you, and you just told me you’ve killed people—including members of your family.” I took a steadying breath when my voice took on a frantic edge and swallowed roughly before continuing. “You need to give me something.”

  He reached out for me, but he paused when I flinched. “I won’t ever hurt you again.” His hand stayed suspended between us for long, torturous moments before it fell to his stomach, and he looked at the canopy again. “Sometimes you don’t have a choice, Briar,” he said in a soft, haunted voice. “As for the family . . . like I said, it was a live-or-die situation, and my brother technically shot first.”

  I stared down at him as shock and confusion flooded and overwhelmed me. I didn’t understand how he could talk about these things so calmly. I didn’t understand how they could be true at all and wanted them not to be.

  “How could a family enter into a shootout in the first place?”

  “Because they wanted to hurt something I’d vowed to protect.” Lucas’s face had slipped into an emotionless mask, and his voice was a deadly calm when he responded, letting me know he was done talking about what had happened that night.

  I’d wondered so many times how the women who were forced into this world would ever want to stay, especially when they would never have the kind of relationship that Lucas and I had. After meeting William’s women and hearing their stories from their previous lives . . . in a way, I could understand. But only to an extent.

  Even more, I’d wondered how these men had ever entered this world, and how their minds had been warped and twisted into thinking this life was okay. I’d been sure they’d all come from money—given what I’d seen of Lucas and William, and knowing that they paid for all the women—and had disturbing fetishes. But after being given the smallest glimpse into Lucas’s past, I couldn’t help but wonder how someone like him had stumbled into this life, and why his past had been essential for it.

  “So, you’re dangerous,” I mumbled softly.

  “Not to you.”

  “In general.” I let my eyes gloss over the scars that littered his arms and wondered what all the other ones were from. “Why was that a necessity for William? What in this life would require you to be that way? The energy industry can’t be so . . .” My words died when he laughed darkly.

  “Not all of the men in this world work in energy. There are some in oil, gas . . .” He eyed me and dropped his voice. “The government, the police . . . which is why we’re able to live the way we do. We control Houston and everything that happens in the surrounding cities. Police, weapons, drug—”

  “Sex trafficking,” I added bitterly.

  Lucas made a face like he was going to deny it. “Human trafficking.”

  “There isn’t a difference—”

  “There is,” he argued. “It’s different than the sex trafficking that you hear about in the news. If you hadn’t been bought at the auction, you would have found yourself in a situation like what you see in the news. The sellers would have just sold you off to a brothel, or taken you overseas and sold you to a whore house where they keep their women of all ages pumped full of drugs so they can’t try to run.”

  My stomach churned. “Oh God.”

  Lucas nodded. “But I guess, in a way, we control that too. We don’t outright say anything to, or against, the sellers, and they don’t expose our
world. But since we have law enforcement in our world and in our pockets, every couple of years or so we tip detectives off when we know they have a shipment of children coming in or going out of the Gulf, and law enforcement conveniently looks the other way when we bring in weapons. And the cocaine that runs along the Gulf and up through Houston? It doesn’t get bagged or pass hands until it goes through William and then me, and it comes from an Irish-American mob.”

  “Comes from a what?” I choked out, my words nearly silent from the shock of his admission.

  His eyes searched mine for a minute before he spoke again, his tone soft, yet urgent. “So now you see, my work is so much more than just going and sitting in an office, and I am surrounded by the worst kind of people. That is why William was so interested in my past.”

  My head shook absentmindedly as I tried to comprehend all that he had told me.

  Knowing the man Lucas was behind the darkness, I couldn’t grasp why he had ever fought to get into this life at all.

  “I’d been wondering what had happened in your life to make you into the devil I saw so often at the beginning,” I began, my voice soft . . . almost hesitant. “But now I wonder how you were able to remain you, instead of letting the devil completely consume you.”

  “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that that part of me isn’t there.”

  “I couldn’t,” I said honestly and huffed a small laugh. “He’s always there . . . I see you fighting him all the time. Now, more than I have in a long time.”

  He held my stare, and his dark eyes burned with something I couldn’t define. “You’re afraid of me.”

  I wished in that moment for my room so I could have something to hide behind, at least for a minute, because I knew I couldn’t hide any of the emotions coursing through me, and I couldn’t lie to him. “Yes,” I whispered and hated that he seemed to not only expect my answer but accept it. Reaching out, I traced around the outer edge of his eye, thankful I wasn’t shaking. “I’m afraid of the eyes I’m looking into right now. I’ve been afraid of them for a long time. I’m afraid of what I know about you now, but I wonder if I haven’t always known. If you haven’t hinted at it before . . .”

  “Briar—”

  “But the things you see in your mind that force me to see these eyes? They’ve been there this whole time. They were there when I fell in love with you, and I knew when I fell that they would always be there.” I watched as he fought with whatever haunted him and lowered myself back onto the bed and curled against his side. “The darkest part of your soul can terrify me, but it won’t cause me to leave.”

  He gripped my hand in his, and mumbled, “Sometimes I wish it would.” Before I could react or respond, he continued. “If you think I’m dangerous, maybe you understand what my life is like, and maybe you can grasp the danger in throwing out the rules for you. Eventually someone other than William will see what you mean to me. And with who we are and what we do, we all have so many enemies who’ve been waiting for a chance to get back at us—to hurt us.” He raised our joined hands to kiss my wrist and let his lips linger on the skin there. “We don’t have weaknesses, Briar, but you are mine. They’ve been waiting for you.”

  Chapter 31

  Day 87 with Briar

  Lucas

  “Mr. Holt?” my driver called out in a reverent tone that bordered on terrified.

  I paused from walking into my house, my fingers still over the screen of my phone from where I’d been responding to an email, and turned slowly.

  His eyes quickly fell to the floor of the garage, and I rolled mine in response.

  My driver was lethal and willing to die for Briar, or any other girl I would have in the future. That was why I had him, why I trusted him, and why I paid him as much as I did.

  But he nearly pissed himself whenever he had to address me.

  Maybe it was the product of him witnessing my behavior for the last three and a half years, having seen the man I became in order to do my job well. The fear I saw in his eyes and heard in his tone wasn’t uncommon, and I’d had to prove myself to instill it in the men we dealt within our business, but it was irritating coming from the man I employed.

  Especially one I saw daily.

  He, of all people, should know if I was going to shoot him, I would’ve already done it long ago.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Holt, it’s just that I was wondering if you’ve noticed the date?” His eyes bounced up and down, each time holding my blank stare longer and longer before he eventually stopped looking away.

  My mind raced as I held on to my calm, bored façade.

  I knew it was the end of July, and a quick glance at the date on the email I was responding to confirmed that, but other than that, the date meant nothing to me. Briar had been there for almost exactly three months—and that was when I wondered if I’d missed her birthday since I didn’t even know when it was.

  Before I could ask my driver what exactly the date meant, he cleared his throat and said, “In all the time I’ve worked for you, you’ve shipped a package on the twenty-eighth of every month, Mr. Holt. That was yesterday, sir.”

  I stilled as I fought back memory after memory and wondered how I could’ve forgotten—

  My blackbird. Of course she’d be the one to make me forget.

  No one and nothing else had ever made me forget about her, but Briar had.

  With one look, with one plea, she could have me forgetting the world.

  I swallowed thickly and nodded. “We’ll do it tomorrow.” Without waiting for his response, I turned to walk into the house, and went back to tapping on my phone as I called out, “Take the rest of the night off.”

  But my mind wasn’t on my driver or the email I was sending or the package I had to ship—all I could think about was the girl I could now hear singing from upstairs.

  The girl who could make me forget.

  The girl who made me want dangerous things I couldn’t have.

  I shrugged out of my jacket, draping it over the banister of the stairs as I headed up, loosening my tie, and rolling up my sleeves as I followed that voice.

  Soft, but commanding. Full, with a hint of hesitation that made it alluring, made you want to follow that voice anywhere, even to your death.

  As I rounded the corner into her bedroom and took in my blackbird, I knew I would do just that.

  I knew the moment she felt my presence, knew it in the way the song abruptly ended, as it always did.

  A siren terrified of her own voice . . .

  I was a few feet from her when her words stopped me.

  “My nanny taught me to sing.” She turned to face me, a sad smile playing on her lips before falling. “I can’t remember a time with her when she wasn’t singing or teaching me. Her name was Nadia . . . she had such a beautiful voice.” Her words were thick with emotion, and every instinct told me to pull her into my arms, but I didn’t move.

  Briar tensed if I mentioned her singing or her fear associated with it, and never volunteered anything about her past to help me understand that fear. Now that she was talking, I wouldn’t do anything that would hinder that.

  “One time when I was young—I think I was four—my parents decided to go on a vacation without her and quickly realized they didn’t know how to be parents. We were at a park that had some kind of farmers market set up. There were vendors everywhere. And they . . . well, they didn’t lose me . . . I lost them because they forgot I was there at all and just left.” She laughed sadly and looked up at me. “They were so used to being alone, and so used to having someone else take care of me, they didn’t even realize I wasn’t with them for hours.

  “I’d been so afraid when I couldn’t find them that I’d found my way back to the parking lot and ran around it screaming for them. Whenever anyone tried to approach me to ask if I was okay, I’d run away and hide. By the time they came back to look for me, it was dark, and a police officer was already trying to get me to go to the stat
ion with him. I remember my parents telling the officer that our nanny had lost me that afternoon and had been too afraid to tell them until then.”

  My arms were folded across my chest to hide my fisted hands and the way my body was beginning to shake with anger at her parents—an anger I knew all too well. My mom hadn’t been around, and my dad had destroyed his life, leaving me with the wolves without so much as a “Hope you survive.”

  “I was terrified of everything after that,” she whispered. “Terrified of being alone, terrified of the dark, just . . . everything in a way I’d never been before. My parents left for business trips so often, and every time I would scream and scream, so sure they were never coming back for me. But Nadia was always there, and when I was completely inconsolable, she would hold me close and tell me to sing with her. And then she would start, and she wouldn’t stop until my thrashing and screaming had ended, and I was singing too.” Her downcast eyes held mine, and her shoulders lifted in a faint shrug. “And that’s how it began. Any fear, no matter how big or small, she would scoop me up and tell me to sing until it became second nature.

  “And then not long after I turned fifteen, Nadia woke me up in the middle of the night, and she looked so worried. I remember that look so clearly and the way it made me feel . . .” The corners of her mouth tipped up, but there was no amusement in her eyes. “I automatically began singing as soon as I registered her anxiety, and I didn’t even know what was going on. And then she said to me, ‘Every fear and every worry fades to nothing when you sing, Briar Rose. Your voice is your comfort and your security. Don’t let anyone take it from you.’”

  Silence fell between us, heavy and smothering. When a minute passed without Briar continuing, and then another, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Why was she worried that night?”

  “Because she knew what was going to happen the next day.” When Briar looked at me again, the weight that had been pressing down on her was gone, and her sadness had been replaced with bitterness. “For the first time in . . . years, my parents were interested in me. Wanted to be with me, do things with me. They planned this whole day out with me. I remember being so excited, and then the next thing I knew, we were going from place to place, and my parents were making me sing for people. Telling me how they were going to make me famous, how I was going to make them rich—like they didn’t already have so much money they were drowning in it.