Page 18 of Don't Say A Word

The bar was busier than usual that night, which meant there were maybe thirty people there. A live band that consisted of locals was playing on the small stage. I knew the members like I knew just about everyone else there. The man behind the bar had been the same person that served us when I was little and my parents brought me here for Friday night drinks. I used to play on the pool table while they and their friends laughed and drank the night away. I went to school with the barmaid. My father was friends with the men who sat at the slot machines. But there was a man who didn’t belong. He was dressed all in black and leaned alone against the bar, bottle clutched in his hand.

Roxy insisted I sang that night. Just a single song as people laughed and drank and danced. The man kept looking over at me, his eyes stuck on me as though it pained him to look away.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t approach, but there was something in the way he looked at me. Something hungry. I never saw him again, that I know of, but maybe he has been lurking in the shadows, waiting for his time to pounce.

I sit for so long with my arms wrapped around my knees and my back against the cold concrete wall that my shoulders ache. I stretch, testing my muscles, forcing them into submission. Hours have passed, and he hasn’t returned. I pace the room, not sure if I should be pleased my defiance has meant he has left me alone, or scared of what he is planning. So, when the door opens, I brace myself, prepared for punishment. But it isn’t my captor who enters.

Instead, it is another girl.

ryker

CHAPTER NINE

RYKER

I knock and wait. There is only silence on the other side of the dark mahogany doors. I’ve been summoned but I know better than to enter without invitation. Glancing at my watch, I know I’m late. I wasn’t when I arrived but now the clock has ticked past his specified time. Maybe he’s decided he no longer needs me.

Then his voice reaches through the cracks. “Enter.”

Pushing open the doors, I stride through the doorway and over to stand before his desk, hands behind my back, feet spaced apart like a soldier at ease.

“Ah, Ryker. You’re here.”

Mr Atterton sits behind his desk, leaning back in his leather chair, hands resting behind his head and one ankle hooked over his knee. No matter what the situation, he always looks relaxed. I think he does it to unnerve people. The more nervous they get, the more relaxed he becomes. Then, just as they are beginning to feel comfortable, he will surprise them with uncoiled aggression.

But not me. I’ve worked for the family for too long. I know how things work. I’m not fooled by his laid-back appearance.

“Yes, sir.” I nod and stare at the oversized painting that covers the wall behind him. It’s Grace. The horse that started it all. The one with which his father made his first million. It’s easier to look at her than at him. The under-wrinkled and over-tanned skin stretched over his face reminds me of a corpse.

Mr Atterton gets to his feet slowly and strolls around to the front of the desk, leaning against it and crossing his arms. “Take a seat.” He nods toward the plush leather chair behind me. I sit, but I don’t relax my stance like he does. I’m on duty. Unlike the image Mr Atterton portrays, I’m always alert.

It’s only as I lower myself that I notice the girl kneeling at the side of his desk. She’s naked. There’s a collar around her neck, the chain attached padlocked to the leg of his desk. Her eyes are trained to the ground. The left side of her face is swollen, the imprint of Mr Atterton’s hand outlined in red. Thick bloody lines run down her forearms as though someone has dragged their nails across her skin. She is beautiful. But they always are. His collection.

He sees the direction of my gaze and chuckles. “Don’t mind her. She’s here to learn a lesson. Can’t be trusted to be left to her own devices.” He pushes himself off the desk and walks over to her, reaching for her arm. She doesn’t shy away when he lifts it high above her head, holding it out for me to inspect. “She forgot that her body is no longer her own.” He lets her arm flop back to her side then pats the top of her head. “Over the next few days she will remain here, under my watchful eye until she can be trusted not to hurt herself again. Isn’t that right, my love?”

She moves for the first time, but only her eyes. They flick upward, acknowledging his words. “Yes, Master.”

He presses a kiss to her head, lingering as though he’s inhaling the scent of her and whispers in her ear. I don’t hear the words, but from the way her body stiffens I know they are not words she wants to hear.

Walking back to resume his position leaning on the desk, Mr Atterton squares himself before me. “I’ve got somewhat of an unusual request to make of you.”

He likes to use the word request. It implies choice.

“Whatever you need.” It’s my standard response.

He lifts himself away from the desk and walks over to the window. Below him, a horse races around the track, the trainer timing each lap and stable boys eagerly watching with their arms hooked over the railing. He falls silent and I wonder if there is something I am supposed to say. But Mr Atterton is comfortable with silence. He often pauses mid-sentence, waiting for the other person to grow nervous before continuing.

Then, as if shaking himself from a reverie, he turns back to me. “Junior has made somewhat of an odd request.” And there’s that word again. Request. The Atterton’s don’t request anything. They demand.

“Something I can help you with, sir?”

Mr Atterton considers himself a collector and I’m often asked to source the things he wants. Even though officially, I’m his personal bodyguard, I occasionally travel, finding the beautiful objects he craves then hides away in the dark hallways and rooms of this house. People claim his collection rivals many museums. But it’s not a museum. It’s a mausoleum. A place to take the pretty things of this world and bury them.

Reaching back over his desk, he slides a photo from a plain manila folder and holds it out. It shows a girl, young, late teens-early twenties at a push. She has dark hair, dark eyes, full lips. She is beautiful. My insides twist a little at the thought of what he is going to ask me to do, but I push the feeling away. I’m good at doing that. Switching off. It comes in handy in this line of work.

“Her name is Mia Cooper.”

I scan the documents, raising my brows in surprise when I see she’s a local girl, living only a couple of hours away. Not something he would usually mess with. The Atterton family business has many fingers in many pies, but they mainly deal in two trades. Horses and women. To the outside, they are known for their horses. But to a few, to the criminal underworld they dabble in, they are known for the auctions they host late at night. People from all over the world descend to peruse the goods on offer, trading, selling and swapping. The Atterton’s themselves are more of a boutique compared to the large operations of the people they deal with, but the isolated location and alternative reason for business make the mansion the perfect gathering place.

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