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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

T hese three men are real. But so is my dread and unease from being in this terrible house. I can’t think straight.

The house itself is spooky enough that it could have vampires sleeping in coffins in the cellars, but that’s not the horror that I’m feeling. Things happened here. Memories are in these walls. Memories I don’t want to rediscover.

The Warrior tries to settle me back into the pillows, I’m still reeling and resisting. The Mastermind steps into the light of the conservatory and moves to the other side of me. The Emperor is approaching.

My whole universe is in flux. I barely understand who I am, and everything tilts and shifts like some twisted fantasy of a theme-park ride.

The Warrior’s lips brush my neck.

My head spins.

I shout, “Wait!”

I jump up. “I can’t do this.” The three men are closing around me. There’s too much going on in my head.

Behind me, the Mastermind calls out a name. but I can’t hear it. I bust out of the conservatory, take the first turn, grab the handle of the first door I come to and twist it. Slipping inside, I shut the door behind me and lean back against it.

It’s a dark, masculine room. A wall of bookshelves, a dark rug — my heart stops, stuffed leather chairs, maps, I can’t breathe.

The big desk. No! This is where the attack was.

Turning, I grab the door handle and yank the door open again. The Mastermind is there, with his arms open. He wraps me in an embrace. Holds me in a hug that I’ve wanted, needed for so very long.

But not here. Not in this house.

The Warrior rushes up behind him.

Behind them, the Emperor. My eyes turn back to the room. The study.

I look in the Emperor’s eyes.

“He was your father.”

The Mastermind looks at me, questioning. “The Don?”

“Yes. I killed him.”

“No,” the Emperor steps forward. “Mrs. Jago killed him. The housekeeper. Well, supposedly the housekeeper. Do you remember her?”

“No.” But a pang of dread grips my insides at the sound of her name.

“She found out he was having an affair with a much younger woman. So she shot him. In the dining room.”

She shot him, yes. but I killed him. Sometime, I have to tell his son. I can’t keep the secret forever. But not now, for fuck’s sake. I can’t get into that now, when I can’t remember anything else.

The Warrior says, “You must remember her cooking.”

With a wry smile, the Mastermind says, “It would be a blessing if you didn’t. I wish I could forget that.”

Panic and terror rip through me. I pull free and then barge through, between them. They call after me. I run back up toward the entrance hall. The huge space makes my head spin and I swerve. Dive into a dark, paneled room.

Memories float around me, pictures without sound. Words without sense. Through there I come to the dining room.

Echoes of cold, heavy silences, and of black moods from the head of the table pour into my head.

And what happened here. That awful day. What I did.

Turning, dashing blindly, I slam straight into the Emperor’s huge frame and the hot bulges of his hard chest. His eyes blaze and the front of his suit pants is strained. He moistens his lips.

He holds the tops of my arms. Gently, he says, “Listen?—”

My head shakes.

“I have to get out of here.” I look up into his eyes. All the tenderness, all the strength and all the cruelty. The man you would do anything for, just to have him on your side. “Please.”

He holds me. His strong hands and arms and his massive chest feel like they could shield me from an army. Keep me safe in a hurricane. Carry me through fire.

But they can’t lift me out of the panic that I’m feeling here.

A spinning storm of tension starts to swell inside me. I swing and twist, pull and wrench myself free. And I run.

I hurtle through the horrible space of the hallway and slam into the big double doors. They’re locked. Over my shoulder, I hear the men. All three of them. Coming closer.

I jerk and tug at the door, the latch, the lock.

I feel like I’m going to faint.

I force myself to take a breath. A big hand lands on my shoulder. Recognizing the Emperor’s touch at last, closing my eyes for an instant, I turn to open them.

My voice is cool, like stone. I look in his eyes.

“Alessio. Get me the fuck out of here.”

I had the men all sit together in the front of the van. They argue about where we’re going. Our immediate destination is not very important to me.

I need to be alone, so I sit as far back as I can get. Most of all I need space to think and process.

Memories lit up in the house. They flooded into me, all at once. It was like I was seeing my whole life in a single instant. Everything, simultaneously. Seconds, weeks, months, years, all compressed into a single picture. In it I saw all the people, all of the elements, but without any order. No sequence.

The emotions and memories that are in that place and associated with it, for them as well as for me, could have been the sparks that lit the fie.

In the house, I felt the chemistry. It crackled between all of us. We could all have been ready to make a move into something I can hardly believe is possible. And it felt like a moment. Something I may never be able to recreate.

And half of my mind is still stuck on what happened there today. The scents of the suits, their colognes, and the sweat and testosterone buzzing behind. The living force and hardness of muscle, and the raw lust I felt for each of them. But separately and even more, for all of them.

But, whatever that moment was made of, I need to reproduce it. I need to light that blaze, or rekindle it. Whatever. I need them. I need my men.

Right now, more than ever, though, most of all I need me.

Somehow, I have to get me back, and fast. Whatever it takes.

My instinct is to be decisive. To act. To take what I want and let the others deal with it however they can. But I want these three men. All of them. It’s more than that, even. They’re all perfect – perfectly imperfect – but all together they complete me. They each mean something different. Each of them balances and stimulates something in me.

I’m feeling my way. Perhaps I can simply command them. In a way they seem like they would be ready for that. But I want more. Their strengths, their forces of will, of muscle and of mind make a combination that’s much more than the sum of the parts.

Their rivalries and resentments, the struggles for power and dominance between the three of them, their competitiveness after my affection, that’s all part of it. A vital part.

I want all of them. Completely.

Together.

And I want them to want it as much as I do. To need it. To need and depend on each other, as much as they do me.

Okay, perhaps nearly as much.

We’re all in something together. I know that much. The sense that I have of what it is scares the hell out of me. And I still can’t see any details. The shape is coming, though. Alessio’s name rumbles and echoes deep inside me. The others will come.

But, from what fragments I heard, what they’ve been saying about docks and trucks and shipments, not to mention precincts, clubs and bars, I believe we have some very big business interests. And it sounds like they’re all in pretty big trouble.

I wonder how much of that is because of me.

Voices drift back. “We know that everyone’s going to be looking for us up Turtle rise. We can go back to Blackridge.”

“That’s still going to be the first place everyone thinks of looking when they don’t find us.”

“The hunting lodge is safe, or as safe as we can get right now.”

“Shame we can’t just say in the old house.” Voices rise, “I know, I know. I’m just saying. The defenses?—”

I call forward, “I need to think. Can you please be quiet.”

“But where–”

“Get us on a boat. Can you do that?”