A Lovely Obsession: The Complete Debt of Passion Duet Read online

  I twisted the knob and smiled, prepared to greet someone, but… I leaned out of the threshold, squinting around with a frown on my face. “There’s no one here,” I called over my shoulder to Uncle Mack before looking down at the welcome mat. Maybe they just left the box.

  But there was no box. There, I saw something that made my stomach clench. It was a flower—not just any flower—a lily. Bright and beautiful, it was deceptively cheerful. Some might find joy in nature’s elegant display of petals, but I knew better.

  Wisps of a faint memory stroked my mind. Mom used to tell me about all the flowers and what they symbolized. She was working at a flower shop in the city when she met my father. He’d come in to order an arrangement of lilies, and they’d hit it off immediately. They fell into a fast affair neither of them was capable of falling out of. Mom was like me, constantly diving into a shallow pool of passions without a life jacket. She lost herself in the excitement of it all. Maybe that was why I was so weary of staying in love. I craved it and despised it all the same.

  During one of her...episodes...a few years after he’d died, she’d told me something. She said she should have known that the flowers he ordered the first day they met were a warning from God. He wanted an elegant bouquet, but she was too smitten to recognize the sinister symbolism hidden behind their pretty petals: death.

  Goose bumps pebbled over my skin, and a foreboding sense of being watched washed over me.

  “Get inside right now!” Uncle Mack yelled while wrapping his beefy arms around my stomach and dragging me out of the doorway. My feet skidded across the hardwood floors as my body flailed.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded as he set me down. Adjusting my tank top, I stared in bewilderment at my uncle. Why the fuck was he freaking out? Without answering me, he then twisted the deadbolt and locked the door.

  “Fuck!” he yelled before running a hand through his thinning hair. “Did you see anyone?”

  My eyes widened. “N-no. I didn’t. No one was there, just that fl-flower.”

  Uncle Mack quickly worked to close the blinds on all the windows, muttering to himself all the while. “What’s going on?” I urged him.

  “Was it a lily?”

  “Y-yes. How did you know?”

  Uncle Mack picked up his cell phone and spoke into the receiver. “It’s the Asphalt Devils. They left their signature.” I stared expectantly at Uncle Mack for a moment as someone on the other end of the line spoke. “Okay. Meet you at the coordinates we discussed.” He hung up his phone and slid it into his pocket before turning to address me.

  “You have thirty seconds to get dressed. Leave your cell phone here,” he replied before dropping to his knees and shoving aside the tattered red rug in our entryway. I watched on in shock, surprised to see that beneath the rug I’d obliviously padded across for the last eight years, there was a trapdoor with a padlock.

  “What the fuck?” I asked while taking a step closer.

  “You now have twenty seconds. Stop wasting time,” Uncle Mack argued before pulling his keys out of his denim pocket and opening the nook. He worked like he’d been preparing for this day his entire life. I sensed the threat in the air but wasn’t sure what he was so afraid of. Glued to the spot, I stared in dismay as he pulled a rifle and three handguns out of the compartment.

  “Wh-what is that for?” I sputtered. None of this was making any sense. Guns? We didn’t carry guns in the house. Instead of answering me, Uncle Mack checked his watch and huffed.

  “We’re out of time. We will go through the garage and get in the car. The second the door opens, keep your head ducked, got it?”

  He rose up and holstered guns to his body before heading toward the garage, not waiting for me to respond. I remained rooted to the spot, staring at his back in confusion. We’re leaving? Where? When? Why? What did that flower mean? And who the fuck was he on the phone with? Uncle Mack paused when he realized I wasn’t following him. “Get your fucking ass over here, Roe. I don’t have time to explain. Trust me, okay?”

  I studied his expression for a fraction of a second. I noted the seriousness in his grave eyes and the frown on his wrinkled mouth. His cheeks were flushed, and his fingers shook with adrenaline. “Okay. Okay, let me put my shoes on.”

  I grabbed my sneakers from their spot by the door and jogged down the hallway after him. Once I was at his back, he opened the door and led me into the garage and to his Camaro. He inspected the tires, the engine, and underneath the car like he was looking for something. He must not have found anything, because he then spoke to me.

  “Get in the car, Roe,” he demanded while brushing his hands together. I hastily followed his orders and opened the passenger door, slipping inside while trying to control my breathing. He quickly joined me, and once we were both settled, he let out a slow exhale and shifted to face me. “Keep your head down. I’ll protect you, okay?” I nodded, then curled my torso until my lips were touching the top of my shaking knees. He put the key in the ignition and turned on the car before pressing the button for the garage. I listened as the low rumble of the gate rose.

  Time seemed to slow. I was functioning on confusion and shock, my body obeying Uncle Mack’s orders while my mind tried to come up with reasons he was acting this way. Did he do drugs? Was he in some kind of trouble at work? He’d mentioned the Asphalt Devils. Wasn’t that some kind of motorcycle gang?

  Uncle Mack put the Camaro in reverse and pressed the pedal all the way down, shooting out of the garage with a vengeance as I squealed. We accelerated down the driveway, and he slammed the car in drive before spinning out and down our street.

  I wanted to peek up and look around, see what he was running from, but I trusted him and kept curled down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Uncle Mack lift his phone up.

  “We have two tails. Headed to you now.”

  “Headed where?!” I screamed. “Who are you even talking to?”

  Before Uncle Mack could answer, the sound of shattering glass pierced my ears. Sharp slivers of the passenger window fell down like rain on my body. A shrill scream broke past my lips, and I felt the car swerve. “Shit!” Uncle Mack yelled while twisting the steering wheel to the left and hopping the curb. The engine whined, the wheels sputtered. I breathed in the scent of gun smoke, letting it coat my lungs as the Camaro lurched.

  On instinct, I peered out my broken window and took in the sight of a blacked-out truck swerving in and out of traffic and trying to keep parallel with us. “Get down!” Uncle Mack screamed while shoving my head toward the floorboards with his palm.

  I braced my arms over my head and tried to keep calm, but the jostling car made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. “What’s happening!” I shrieked when something crashed into us from behind. The sound of crumbling metal rattled my ears, and our car fishtailed out of control, sending us into a rolling pattern of suffering. The airbags deployed, smacking my skull and shooting my body backward. Glass grazed my lips. My mouth pooled with blood. My left arm snapped, and debilitating pain rocked through me.

  Finally, we stopped. My vision was a blur of shapes and colors. I tasted rust and smoke. “Uncle Mack?” my garbled voice tried to choke out, but my throat felt blocked by emotion and the trauma from our wreck.

  A groan answered my call.

  The earth shook.

  My body was shattered on the road. His old black Camaro, the same car in which he’d picked me up from the police station in New York, was nothing but crumbled metal and crunched memories. Footsteps on the pavement rattled against my brain, like a methodical warning.

  My eyes were drowning in blood, a wound on my forehead felt like an offering.

  Let your damage breathe.

  Let your damage breathe.

  Let it fucking breathe.

  Tears mixed with blood filled my nose. The footsteps were close.

  And then a shot rang out. Crisp and clear, it sliced through the air like a booming whip.

  T
he footsteps stopped.

  My eyes closed.

  ROE

  Ripping to the surface of my consciousness took considerable effort. My mind felt entombed, alive in a pit of splintered glass and pain. Thundering, pulsing agony echoed around my skull. Everything hurt. Everything ached. Massive, coarse stones seemed to settle on my eyelids, making it challenging to pry open my eyelids and take in the room.

  I knew almost immediately that something was very, very wrong. There was a peculiar unsettled feeling seeping into my bones, suggesting that something wasn’t right with my body. When I first roused, I’d hoped to be greeted with the smell of antiseptic and the sound of beeping hospital equipment. After all, that’s what people did when they were injured. They went to the doctor.

  I was familiar with hospitals. When I was a little girl, back when I still had a mother, every cut, bump, scrape, and bruise had to be looked at by a doctor. Mom knew all the emergency room triage nurses by name. It was one of the perks of having a mother obsessed with her fear of death.

  But I wasn’t in a hospital. No, I was in hell.

  Four midnight blue walls engulfed me. I sniffed the air and noted the distinct smell of fresh paint. After blinking the sleep away for a few moments, my vision cleared enough to notice that a single wooden door was in my direct line of vision. I wanted to get up and test the knob to see if it was locked, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. The space was so cramped; I felt cornered. Trapped.

  There couldn’t have been more than two feet between me and the wall. Claustrophobia creeped up my awareness like a serpent, crawling along the ridges of my spine as I became more and more aware of the deadly reality I’d woken up to. I was on a full-sized bed, and the frame groaned every time I tried to move my body. The soft mattress had no support, so lying on it felt like drowning in quicksand. A thick white duvet comforter cloaked my naked body. Oh my God, where had my clothes gone? I peered beneath the blanket and winced at the dark bruises coating my skin. No panties. No…nothing. Just bruised skin and dried blood.

  I struggled to lift my legs, but the uselessly numb limbs wouldn’t respond to my earnest demands. My left arm was a tingly sort of paralyzed and lay heavy beside me, wrapped in a hard cast made of plaster.

  What happened to me? I swallowed, my dry mouth painstakingly producing an insignificant amount of saliva. I eyed a clear, half-empty glass of water on the nightstand beside me but didn’t dare reach for it. This was wrong, so wrong. I felt half-dead. What if the water was drugged? I was almost thirsty enough to test it, though.

  Where the fuck was I?

  A single lamp with a lazy, warm glow was perched on the nightstand to my left, but it was so dull that I could barely make out the room. The floor was rough concrete, blotched with various rust-colored stains that I couldn’t make out. There was a slight chill to the air that made my teeth rattle and vibrate. I knew that if I somehow managed to get my feet to work, the icy floor would send a shock wave through me. I exhaled, wondering if it was cold enough to see my breath, but it wasn’t. A cold sweat completely painted my body, making the freezing bite that much more intense.

  My mind immediately started doing that timeless checklist, the one Mom used to burn into my brain. Look for all the things that could kill you. Observe your weaknesses. Fear everything. Trust nothing. I could feel the start of a panic attack coming on. Maybe I would survive the crash and this hell just to let my mind kill itself.

  “Uncle Mack?” my strained voice choked out, too afraid to yell and uncertain if I actually could. My mind worked to make sense of what it could remember, cataloging all the brutal moments that led up to this.

  The rolling car.

  Bullets slicing through the air.

  Blood.

  Strong hands dragging me across the asphalt and pulling me out of the Camaro.

  A soft, delicate touch to my tear-soaked cheek.

  Then nothing.

  “Uncle Mack?” I called again, this time stronger. My pleading cry echoed around the room. Vulnerability felt like barbed wire wrapped around my breasts. I was naked, bruised, battered, and weak.

  I focused my eyes on the single door directly in front of me while willing myself to get up and investigate the lock. There was a complex disconnect between my brain and my body. My limbs felt so fucking heavy. It was like they’d been replaced with bags of cement. There were no windows in the room, no way of fleeing. There were no other sounds except for my harsh, erratic breathing. I was thankful for the heaviness, though. At least I couldn’t feel the sharp pain in my arm. I knew it would come whenever the drugs wore off. But I couldn’t escape if I was writhing in agony.

  Just as I was about to scream out in stark terror, the single door slowly inched open, like a portal to hell slyly revealing itself. I held my breath and shot up in bed, gripping the bedding to my chest like modesty was something I cared about. I felt too defenseless, too weak.

  Too confused.

  “H-hello?”

  I blinked twice, trying to see who was on the other side.

  “You’re awake,” a voice answered me. Profound and brooding, the tone sounded authoritative yet somehow familiar. My chest expanded with air at his words, like he could command my lungs with a single syllable.

  “Who are you?” I rasped, my weathered voice grinding against my raw throat. My veins felt hollow, like I hadn’t had a drink of water in days. I debated taking a sip of water once more but refrained. I was too focused on the open door and the voice calling out to me.

  The door opened further, and I gasped at the imposing shadow on the other side. The hooded figure was so towering that I felt tiny in comparison. His shoulders were proud and muscular, veiled by the thick material of his sweatshirt. Gray sweatpants hung low on his hips as he calmly walked toward me. I squinted at his face, trying to find any recognizable features, but he kept it hidden completely from view. Something told me that was intentional. He didn’t answer my question, the man simply hovered over the foot of my bed and stared at me in silence.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked while inching backward until my back hit the headboard. Every movement made a dull ache pound through my sore muscles.

  I was plotting my escape, trying to figure out if I was capable of running around him and outside. He was big, and my body was battered. I wasn’t sure I could fight him off even if I tried. “Are you just going to glare at me?” I asked after a long moment had passed. I stared right back at him, speculating if he was even real. If it weren’t for the persistent rise and fall of his chest, I’d think he was a phantom of my drowsy imagination. This felt more like a nightmare than life.

  He took a step closer, and I gasped, forcing myself not to squeeze my eyes shut in terror. He took another stride, and my heart galloped like it was trying to pump a lifetime of blood through my veins in a matter of seconds. My body trembled. Anxiety and adrenaline swirled in my gut, floating along my nerves as I watched the shadowed figure stalk closer and closer and…

  Once he was about a foot away, I smelled him. He was earthy, like patchouli and rosewood. The masculine scent was subtle but memorable. I felt suspended in time as he leaned even closer. I wanted to fight, to run. But my soul was trapped in his orbit, and I was too disoriented to make sense of what was happening or who he was.

  “Are you going to hurt me?” I croaked. His shoulders lifted, and I wasn’t sure if it was the tension that forced that movement or if his answer was a shrug. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  “I already have, Roe.” His clipped response confused me. How did he know my name? Unsettled certainty unfurled in my throat. This was who Uncle Mack was running from. This was the man that shot at me and caused our car wreck.

  “Why? Please just explain what’s happening,” I urged while crossing my arms over my chest. Every single movement depleted my energy. I felt like a popped balloon, lazy and languid and utterly useless.

  “No,” he replied. I let out a shaky breath as he lifted his finger. Slowly, ever so
slowly, he cut through the remaining space between us and pressed the pad of his index finger against the side of my neck. His touch landed directly on top of the centimeter-long discolored scar that I’d had since my childhood. The second our skin touched, I felt a zap of awareness and heat travel down my exposed collarbone and flow throughout my body. They say terror is chilling, but the response this stranger had evoked from my body felt like the burning fires of hell. It was uncomfortable, smoldering with intensity.

  He paused, lingering on that spot on my neck for another long, penetrating moment. It was as if he were shocked to be touching me. Goose bumps pebbled over my skin, and I went rigid with fear, not wanting to provoke him with any sudden movements. He was touching me, fucking touching me. I assessed the dim situation I was in, the nakedness of my body, and the unfamiliar setting. This man had me in his fist and could squeeze me till I cracked if he wanted.

  He let out a slow and steady exhale, like he’d been holding his breath, before speaking. “When you were nine, a little boy pushed you off the top of the slide at the park,” he whispered. My mouth dropped open in shock. How did he know that?

  “Y-yes,” I replied with a flinch, trying to put more space between us.

  “You cut your neck. There was a lot of blood. You’re so easily broken, Roe.” His bitter voice made me gasp.

  I remembered that day, though it seemed so long ago. My pink dress had been soaked with blood. I remembered the little boy crying in shock. He hadn’t expected to hurt me. We were a bunch of stupid kids testing the boundaries of our mortality. Mom rarely let me go to the park. She said it was a death trap, and falling that day had proved her point. She stopped taking me after that. Eventually, she stopped leaving the house.

  “Who are you?” I asked again. “How do you know that?”

  “I know lots of things.” He trailed his fingers down my neck and over my shoulder, leaving a blazing trail across my arm until he landed on my outer wrist on my uninjured arm. “You burned this when you were thirteen. You wanted to cook Mack dinner, yes?” I stared at where our skin connected for a moment too long before turning my gaze to my other arm, and the cast currently covering it.