Page 37 of Fear Me, Love Me

“Are you trying to help me drive?” Tyrant utters a soft laugh. “You’re a trusting little fellow. Let’s hope your father comes through with my money by the deadline. I’d hate for anything bad to happen to an innocent little baby.”

There’s not a shred of mercy in his laughter. Tyrant won’t think twice about hurting Barlow if he doesn’t get what he wants, so why should I agonize over whether it’s wrong to hurt him? A monster like him doesn’t deserve to go on breathing. I won’t feel a shred of remorse as he lies bleeding at my feet.

12

Tyrant

Irealize that someone is hiding in the back of my car when I’m still eight blocks from my home. My coat has slipped from the back seat to the floor, which isn’t where I left it when I got out of the car.

I’m driving one-handed, with one hand around the baby to keep him on my knee. My free hand grips the steering wheel as my eyes narrow at the road ahead. Could it be an assassin? There are plenty of people who want me dead. Or is it Merrick’s daughter? My annoying little stalker. Irritation washes over me at the thought. My men have told me that the Merrick girl has been turning up at my clubs, hoping to catch my eye. The last thing I need is a desperate, weak little idiot who wants to give me incompetent blowjobs and spend my money, and I’ll slit my own throat before I’m linked for life to a politician.

As I take a right-hand turn, I glance into the back of my car. As the streetlights move across the coat, I see a foot poking out the far end.

A slim foot in a pointed ballet flat.

Not an assassin. If this is Merrick’s daughter, I will drag her home by her hair and slit her throat in front of her father. As I turn into the long, winding driveway that leads up to my home, the wrought iron gates slide open, revealing gardens with high hedges. My house with its white columns and long windows rises beyond.

“Call the housekeeper,” I say to the voice recognition software on my phone, and when Angela answers, I tell her to meet me down by my car. The garage is separated from the house, either by a long walk through the garden, or a shortcut via an underground passage and a locked door.

The garage doors roll up, and I park in an empty place. Angela, a woman in her fifties and wearing a neat gray dress with a white lace collar, is waiting for me.

I open my door and get out with the baby in my arms. “Take this up to the house.”

“Yes, Mr. Mercer.” Angela doesn’t even blink as she accepts the child from my hands and carries him up to the house via the shortcut. I’ve asked her to do stranger things than this in the past. Once she had to feed a leopard for a week. Most days she has to clean bloodstains off my clothes. Like everyone else in my employment, she’s well-paid and fiercely loyal.

The garage door grinds as it closes, and now we’re locked in together, my little stowaway and me.

I pretend that I’m going up to the house by entering the code for the shortcut and opening and closing the door. Then put my back against it and wait. The automatic light in the garage flicks out, and the only illumination is the moon coming through the skylight.

Several minutes pass, and then there’s the sound of fumbling inside my car. The passenger door opens, and a cautious foot reaches toward the floor. Like a scared rabbit emerging from her burrow, a dark-haired girl peeks out. With exaggerated care, she closes the door quietly behind her and glances around. She looks around eighteen or nineteen years old, and she’s wearing a short, pale slip dress that looks like it was made about fifty years ago. The small, faded T-shirt underneath has been washed a hundred times or more. Her shoes are dated, but cute. Everything about this girl is neat and pretty, but vintage or secondhand, right down to the cream satin bow in her long hair.

I doubt this is Merrick’s daughter. The photographs I’ve glimpsed as he’s waved his phone in my face are of a glamorous and very modern blonde.

I slowly reach into my jacket and unfold a knife. Girls don’t need to be threatened with guns. They’re more afraid of knives, especially pretty girls who care about their lovely faces. When her gaze pans over me, I smile in the darkness. She gasps as she sees the gleam of my teeth.

I step forward into the light, twisting the knife in my fingers. “Well, hello. Who the fuck are you?”

The girl has her mouth open, and for a moment she’s frozen in shock. Then, in a surprisingly determined voice, she straightens up and says, “That’s my brother you took.”

Her brother? This is Owen Stone’s daughter. I didn’t see anyone else at the house, so she must have hidden from me and listened to our conversation, the tricky little bitch.

I put the tip of my blade under her chin, forcing it up. “You’ve intruded on my property. What did you even think you were going to do here?”

There’s fear in her moonlit eyes but she remains calm. “I was going to steal my brother back, of course.”

I put some weight on the knife, enough to threaten that I will break the skin and plunge it into her throat. To my surprise, Miss Stone reaches up and wraps her hand around the blade.

“If I pull, I’ll slice your hand open,” I point out.

“But you won’t be able to cut my throat if I hold on like this. I don’t care if you hurt me, but I do care if you kill me because then there will be no one to save Barlow.”

My gaze drops to her pretty, lush mouth. What a strange girl she is, holding on to my blade like she’s never been scared of a knife and she’s not about to start now. “How badly do you want him?”

Miss Stone swallows against the blade, and it nicks her skin. A single drop of blood runs down her throat and soaks into the neckline of her tee. I twist the blade again, and another droplet runs down her perfect skin. My tongue moves against the roof of my mouth as I imagine gripping her tightly by the hair and licking it up.

“You…you can have me instead. I’ll trade places with him.”

“You do realize that your father hasn’t got any money, and at the end of the week, I’ll kill you.” I lean down toward her, smiling coldly. “I think I’ll hunt you down for sport. You must have a beautiful scream.”

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