I Choose You (The Billionaire Brothers Series) (33 page)

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Ohgodohgodohgodohgod,” Milo began crying.

The other three assfuckers who were being held down began whimpering, too.

Ruddy swung his gun through the air and knocked Milo in the side of his head. “Shut d’fuck up an’ think, ya idiot!”

Natalio straightened up and fixed his gun back in his waist. “Your sixty seconds starts now. We get nothing at the end of the sixty seconds, that gun aimed at the back of your head right now is going to take you out.”

Trevillo smirked at the prospect, while Ruddy began humming the Jeopardy theme song.

Milo’s face crumpled. “Okay … um … oh god, I dunno.” He started trembling violently, tears streaming down his face.

“Forty-five seconds,” Natalio warned.

“Um … um … ” He began mumbling to himself as if he was sifting through the events of his last four days.

“Twenty seconds.”

Ruddy’s humming continued.

Then Milo’s head snapped up as if a light bulb switched on inside it. “The storage house! Sarah sent me to pay for storage on Wednesday. She said it was to store Johnson’s stuff. Maybe that’s where she took Krissy?” Milo’s lips spread into a bloody grin, proud he’d managed to save his life.

But Trevillo knew Sarah too well. She was clever. She was brilliant. She was clean. She put a bullet in her husband’s head and no one even suspected her. She wouldn’t let finding Krissan be as easy as a damn storage house.

“That’s not it,” Trevillo told him. “She knew I’d suspect you and come to you first, so she had you pay for a storage unit so when we got to you, you’d tell us about it, and that’s where we would head off to. On a wild goose chase. Jog your memory some more.”

“Fifteen seconds,” said Natalio.

Milo’s grin faded, and he took a final sigh as if resigned to the thought he was going to die. Trevillo took pity on him. He really had valued the guy. Would’ve given him anything he asked for. Too bad he allowed greed to lead him off course.

“Did she have you buy anything we could track, Milo? A new cellphone, maybe? Was she always alone or with other — ”

“Yes!” Milo said gladly. “I went to deliver some documents to her yesterday. There was a group of hefty butches transporting duffel bags from the basement out to their van. Positive it was cocaine — ”

Ruddy knocked him on the side of his head again. “How d’fuck’s that helpful?”

Milo groaned at the blow but continued, not letting pain deter him. “One of the butches took on to me — obviously because I’m queer. She invited me to a house party and gave me her number. Maybe you could track her phone and see if they’re helping Sarah in this? Probably in exchange for the cocaine?” he asked hopefully.

Trevillo thought it weak, but what the hell else did they have to work with? Sarah was sharp enough to not need help with her dirty doings. But if she thought he’d come after her, he assumed she’d have a fortress to protect her.

Going by the tone of her note, it didn’t seem as though Sarah wanted to make Krissan’s death quick and painless, or else she would’ve just killed her right there and then outside her house. No. She had plans for Krissan. She was sick and twisted, he knew that much. Which meant he might,
just might
, have a chance of finding Krissan alive. “Yeah, that might be something. The number?”

Milo shakily nodded to a Samsung Galaxy on an ugly green couch. “It’s saved as Tammy.”

Natalio snatched up the phone and marched out the door.

“We’re still gonna kill him, right?” Ruddy asked, pulling back the hammer on his gun.

Trevillo shook his head. “Maybe. This trail is weak. But not now. Get him some pants and toss him in the trunk.”

When he started to leave the room, another man asked, “What about these three?”

Trevillo sighed. This was so Natalio’s type of shit and not his. But as long as he didn’t have his angel’s feather, this was going to be his shit. He was going to be the asshole everyone said he was. “Hog-tie them. Lock them in the basement. If Krissan’s dead, they’re all dead.”

He turned and strode out of the house, having no pity whatsoever on the sudden outburst of pleading.

Natalio had his gadget opened on the hood of his Bentley and was tapping away on the keyboard.

“Anything?” Trevillo asked on a thin whisk of hope.

Natalio tapped around a few more times, then nodded and turned the gadget so he could see. “Tracks all the way to the outskirts of Napa. It could take us over forty-five minutes to get there. And that would be a waste of time if — ”

“We got her,” Trevillo said quickly, his hope gaining vigor. “Johnson bought a piece of property out there. Planned on opening a winery.”

Natalio nodded. “Perfect. Now let’s try connecting this number to a face. We might need some kind of leverage.”

Another round of tapping started, until he said, “Name’s Tamara Wallace. Ex-soldier. Got kicked out of the army for being outed as a dyke. Married to a twenty-two year old girl and has two adopted daughters — ages three and seven. Lives about ten minutes away from here.” Natalio closed down his gadget and turned to him. “Let’s go grab her wife. Use her as leverage if we can’t get into wherever Sarah is.”

Trevillo really didn’t want to stop anywhere, he just wanted to get to Sarah so he could bust her fucking skull open. But having leverage is always smart, so he nodded and pushed off from the car.

Then he caught Natalio glaring at him and shaking his head in that judgmental way of his.

“What, asshole?” Trevillo snapped. “What have you got to say now? If I wanted criticism, I would’ve called Love instead of you.”

“Nothing. It’s just … when you introduced Krissy to us, I thought you were serious about her, you know.”

Trevillo rubbed his forehead. “Are you kidding me? Is it not clearer than a goddamn crystal ball right now that I’m serious about her?!”

“Then why’d you continue with Sarah?”

“I didn’t. The bitch is crazy. Why the fuck would she even kill her husband?”

“For you. Obviously,” Natalio replied. “He was an obstacle. And so is Krissy.”

Trevillo dropped his head in his hands and groaned. “I was weak. So weak. She came into my office and … I just let her … it was … ”

“I know,” Natalio said, clapping him on the shoulder. “The psycho ones are usually the hardest to resist. ‘Cause they’re the ones who fuck the best.”

Because I could not stop for death,
He kindly stopped for me —
The carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.

-
Emily Dickinson

C
onsciousness was slow in coming. I felt dazed, dizzy, and my eyelids were too heavy to open. My head lolled to one side and hung with a bob when I tried to move.

That’s because I couldn’t move. At all.

A burst of female laughter crashed through the fog in my head, and I tried again to open my eyes. My heavy lids lifted just a fraction.

Through my narrowly slitted eyelids, I could see a group of men sitting around a table playing cards — or maybe they were women. They sure as hell sounded like women to me. But they wore men’s clothing: baggy jeans, loose shirts, and boots. Two of them wore black bandanas around their heads, one wore braids, one had a red ball-cap turned backwards on her head, and another had short blonde spikes.

Who the hell were they, and where the hell was I?

Forcing my eyelids to lift a little higher, I tried to take in the surroundings through my hazy vision. It was an expansive, wide, but dark space. The ceiling was low and arched like an underground bunker, and stacks upon stacks of wine vats lined the area. Walls, ceiling, and floors were a uniform of raw, red bricks, and the air held a mixed odor of wet dirt, grapes, and mold.

I tried to move again, and my head rolled on my shoulders, lolled to the other side, then hung and bobbed. That’s when I realized I was manacled. My arms were spread wide and so were my legs, stretched stiff. The aches in my muscles started to penetrate.

Lowering my gaze, I noticed each foot was manacled to a huge, immovable block of wood. I tried looking up — my hands were connected to thick chains suspended from the ceiling.

Holy shit! What was happening?

A sharp pain whipped across the bareness of my ass, and the heaviness fled at once from my eyes. They sprang wide open to the sight of the tall, striking beauty that was Sarah James. Just like that, she materialized out of nowhere.

Holding a long, braided whip in her hand, she was dressed in a teeny black leather skirt, black thigh-highs, and a black leather bra — if one could call it that, seeing that her pink nipples were poking out through heart-shaped cut-outs. Her hair was pulled up in a neat ponytail and still managed to graze her mid-back. It was a rather odd time to be admiring Sarah James’ beauty, sex appeal, and flawlessness, but it was impossible not to.

I’ve never exchanged words with this woman before. I merely knew her as the top designer at TDR. All the big contracts went straight to her. She was also the wife — now widow — of a wealthy man who used to have a name in San Fran, and she probably didn’t even need to work, so she strutted around like she had diamonds in her heels. The one time I ever crossed the woman’s path was when I walked in on her blowing Trevillo. And I wouldn’t consider that even as ‘crossing her path’. It was more like interrupting. Sarah never turned her head to see it was me who’d walked in on them, so maybe I could just go ahead and I say, I’d
never
crossed her path before.

Yet, now, here I was in an underground cellar, spread eagled. Butt naked. About to be crucified for God knows what. The hell did I ever do to piss her off?

“Hello, Miss Krissan Kingston,” Sarah said in a smooth, sultry voice. “How are you feeling, dear?”

As I started to open my mouth, another sharp pain whipped across my stomach, and I cried out like the bitch I was.

The question was rhetorical, I realized.

“You know what tonight is?” she asked, as she began walking around my stretched-out, nude body, trailing the tip of her whip lightly against my skin. “Tonight is the night you die.”

Another whip ensued, then another, and,
holy mother-flipping shit
, each lash was more painful than the other.

As she continued walking around and whipping the shit out of me, the group of women or men who were playing cards all got up and screeched their chairs up to where I was on display in the center of the room. Now up close, I could see they were indeed butches. All lined off, cigarettes burning, ball glasses of alcohol in hand, they looked on with eager eyes as if this was a highly anticipated movie.

This was utterly embarrassing. Demeaning. Degrading. I had no idea who these people were or
why
this was happening to me. Did they know me? Why were they so excited to see me suffer? To see me die? This was a freaking nightmare!

“Why are you doing this, Sarah?” I dared to ask. “What d-d-did I ever do to you?”

In return, I got three steady lashes on my ass, and my eyes started squeezing out tears. The pain was becoming unbearable.

“You don’t speak!” She whipped me again. Harder. “Don’t ever speak unless I say you can.”

Sarah circled and came back in front of me, her face showing no sign of rancor. She looked sweet, normal, innocuous. Yet her words and actions were so brutal.

Raising her right foot above my left foot which was manacled to a block of wood, she slowly brought her foot down to my toes and pressed on them. Hard. My toes throbbed excruciatingly, feeling like they were about to splatter out on the wood and send blood gushing everywhere. I bit down on my lip to swallow a groan of pain.

“You stepped on my toes, Miss Kingston.
That’s
what you did.”

A relieved flow of breath rushed from me when she eased her foot up from my aching toes and stood straight.

“As much as I’d love to cut your toes off one by one, it would be too messy. And I don’t do messy. Plus, my bitches here are expecting something erotic, that they can fuck themselves to. So blood’s not allowed.” She trailed the tip of her whip up the seam of my folds, then brought it to her mouth and licked it off. “I also promised my fiancé, Trev, I’d make your death a pleasurable one.”

My heart stopped beating, my blood ran cold, and every hair on my skin stood up.

Trev?

They were engaged? He set this up?

Fuck! No wonder he was so calm about me cheating on him. He showed no emotion because he
really
didn’t care.

Sarah answered my unasked question. “Yes, Miss Kingston. Trevillo set this up. Said you were getting too clingy and nagging, as you whiny young girls tend to do. He took care of my husband, and I, in return, am supposed to take care of you.”

Tucking her whip in the side of her thigh-high, she reached up to pinch her nipples between her fingers and began tweaking them.

“You didn’t know my fiancé was a dangerous man when you decided to let him fuck you, did you? You didn’t know he was so twisted, you could drive a knife through his heart and he’d have an orgasm instead of dying from it, did you? You didn’t know once he grew tired of you, he’d want you dead, did you?”

At this ignominy, I hung my head. What on earth did I get myself into? I’d known Trevillo was different, but not
this
different.

Sarah dragged one hand down her body, straight to the hem of her skirt, where she inched it up to her waist so I could see her bare snatch.

The butches who were lined off in front of us began wolf-whistling. “Oh fuck, yeah! Let the show begin.”

Sarah whipped around to face them, and sternly hissed, “
Nobody
talks but me. Got that?”

“Do we at least get to taste her?” the butch with the braids asked. “I mean, look at that cunt. I been wantin’ to lick that pussy since we picked her up.”

Sarah made a threatening step towards Braided Butch. “Do I need to tell you again to shut the fuck up, Tammy? Or would you rather I tell your wife tha — ”

Braided Butch held up her palms in defeat. “A’ight, Sarah, do your thing.”