Page 105 of Passion and Payback

Sure, you heard about how the rich and powerful supposedly felt like the whole world was their plaything, along with everyone in it. They felt immune and above anything your average person would call normal, including morality. It was something else entirely to have someone say that to me and own it as if it were something worth bragging about rather than something that should have been kept to himself.

“And why shouldn’t we? It certainly seems to have worked,” he said with a chuckle that held no warmth or real humor. “Youclearlydon’t understand, but it’s also hard for me to blame you for that. Your world and mine are galaxies away from one another.”

“Thank God for that,” I said, glancing at Kai but keeping my eyes away from Brooke. It was hard enough to keep focus, knowing our conversation was starting to reach its apex, and I still had no idea how I was going to get Kai and me out of this mess in one piece...or him, at the very least. The last thing I needed to do was look at Brooke’s body and feel the crushing weight of the moment as my life was once more crashing around me.

Or the realization that she was there because of me, not solely, of course, but my hands still bore the marks of her blood because of my decision. Callum and his buddies might have started the chain of events that ended in her death, but it wasinevitably me who decided to keep adding links to the chain. And now it was ending here, tonight, with her death and...God, probably mine.

He had caught Kai and me off guard, and I kicked myself for not realizing that was even a possibility. We’d considered he might have been the one who coaxed the cops to interview us, but it had never entered my mind that he might decide to take matters into his own hands. It should have occurred to me that a man in his position was used to having his own way and being thwarted had probably stung.

“You were a little too greedy and eager,” he said. “If you’d stopped at the first, none of us would have been the wiser. But then you had to go for Damon.”

“If you make yourself an easy target, you’re going to be brought down,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Didn’t the four of you say something similar to me? See? I learned more than one lesson.”

“He was always...voracious,” Callum said a little stiffly. “And he never was all that good at knowing when to quit. Had things continued, I might have had to step in and force him to take a break from all the whores. Especially after the last few.”

“Yeah,” I said with a snort. “I remember seeing they left out of the news reports that he had a whole sex dungeon that would have put the Marquis De Sade to shame.”

He blinked at that. “You heard that, did you?”

“C’mon, Callum. We’re about the same age. You should know that if something exists, it will eventually end up on the Internet. The trick is to know where to look.”

“I see. I was wondering how you managed to find Damon. It’s quite the maze he created for his fun houses.”

‘Fun houses’ made me want to throw up, but I kept it to a disgusted sneer. “Sorry, but just because you decided to grace me with your presence along with the thugs you probably paid aridiculous amount of money for, beat up and tied my boyfriend, and then murdered one of my closest friends, doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you how I did it. I will say figuring out where to find him was harder than getting to him. That part was insanely easy. His appetite was so voracious he’d forgotten all about me after a couple of years, inviting me right in.”

“Probably because he wasn’t expecting you,” Callum said, a new tightness to his voice. “He was always the most impulsive of us. Never learned much caution.”

“Oops,” I said with a shrug.

“You certainly didn’t learn any yourself,” Callum said coolly. “You might have covered your tracks as far as the police are concerned, considering I couldn’t get the idiots to do their job, even with pressure.”

“Really?” I asked, not surprised that Kai and I had been right but by the rest of it. “You managed to keep them hounding me two years ago to leave you alone, threatening everything I had, and you couldn’t manage to get me falsely arrested?”

“Falsely,” he repeated with a scoff. “You and I both know that isn’t true.”

“Just like we both know my accusations back then were true,” I said, momentarily forgetting my fear to take pleasure in his discomfort and frustration. “What, Daddy’s money and name didn’t go far enough?”

“It goes farther than you think,” he said with a surprising snap.

“Clearly not far enough for you,” I said and then blinked as a thought occurred to me. “Or...maybe you didn’t want to draw attention to yourself. It’s all well and good to turn to Daddy to save you when the mean ol’ victim starts siccing the police on you, but when you need a bit more corruption to get the police to do your bidding? Can’t have Daddy finding out and askinguncomfortable questions about why you’re so worried about someone you dismissed two years ago.”

“Brains, but no sense,” he said with a harsh sneer, pushing to his feet. “I would have figured you out eventually, even without Mitchell’s worry. You probably should have gone for him first. He was always more paranoid than Damon. He made the connection, and I’m following the line he traced.”

I watched him for a moment before snorting. “You didn’t believe him, did you?”

“Not until it was too late,” Callum admitted, and I could see something shift behind his eyes, fighting with the calm and in-control mask he wore. It made me think of when I’d been surprised to hear Mitchell had been so upset by Damon’s death. Under Callum’s warm, schoolboy charm was a twisted monster, and apparently, under that, there might be someone who really cared about his friends. “Once he was dead, I quickly realized my mistake, and now I intend to remedy that.”

I snorted. “All you had to do was shore up your defenses and keep an eye out for either of us. Then we would have been stuck on the outside, unable to get to you without getting ourselves killed, and I would have been going crazy at the thought that I couldn’t get my hands on you. That would have been torture.”

“Ah, but you see,” he said with a smile. “I’m going to get that with you anyway. And by the time I’m done with the both of you tonight, you’re going to wish I’d done that. Sadly for you, I don’t have a lot of patience left.”

“We’re going to call it patience now?” I asked with a sneer as he advanced on me. “Maybe it’s just a lack of stamina. I don’t remember any of you lasting very long.”

Callum reached me, shoving me against the wall, and I could see all my comments and digs were finally starting to get to him. Well, either that or they’d been getting to him the whole time, and I was finally starting to see it come to the surface now he’dofficially had enough. His eyes blazed with fury and hate, but I knew damn well it wasnothingcompared to what seethed in my chest.

“Trying to piss me off isn’t going to make me kill you any faster,” he told me, his fingers tight around my neck and his hand coming around to my back. “I’m more patient than Damon and less jumpy than Mitchell. I have all the time in the world to show you how much you should have stayed in your shitty little apartment, surrounded by all these flea-ridden animals where you belonged. And…what’s this?”

I hissed as he pulled the weapon from the waistband of my pants and held it up. For a moment, he looked amused until he pulled it free from the sheathe and got his first real look at the blade. His jaw tightened when he held it up to the light. All I could do was smirk at him. “Look familiar?”

---