I stared at his profile, his dark gray suit and blue tie perfectly pressed as he focused ahead, refusing to spare me any eye contact.
“Someday you’ll be in a cage,” he said. “And hopefully sooner rather than later, so you can’t do any more damage. Mr. Kincaid will fill you in on the do’s and don’ts while my youngest is in attendance at this school.” And then he finally turned his head to look at me with disdain “Mark my words, if you fail to behave, I will end you, and it’ll be for good.”
Turning away, he left the office, and my lips twitched with a smile. Six years ago, his little girl and I changed each other, and while I couldn’t change her back, I could certainly give her some new memories of me.
Now that… I could do.
It was settled, then.
I heard Mr. Kincaid clear his throat as he held his office door open for me. “Mr. Torrance, if you please?”
Damon
Present
“Ten moves and you have me,” Mr. Garin told me. “Do you see it?”
I stared at the board between us, calculating the moves I needed to make for checkmate while trying to anticipate his counter moves.
Yeah, I see it. But what fun would that be?
I reached for my pawn at E2.
“Don’t,” he scolded.
And he shot me the same look I’d seen since I was a kid.
But I couldn’t resist. Unable to hold in my small smile, I ignored him and moved it to E4.
He let out a sigh and shook his head, exasperated with the lack of control and strategy he failed at drilling into me all those long afternoons after school, years ago, when he worked for my father.
Or he thought he failed at drilling it into me, anyway. People assumed I behaved strictly on impulse, when actually, it required quite a bit of strategy being this fucked up.
House music pounded downstairs, the club already packed with college girls, young professionals, and anyone else in the twenty-something set able to spring for the three-hundred-dollar bottle of vodka or champagne just to be able to sit at a damn table.
I’d spent plenty of time down there in the crowd and noise in high school with my friends. Now I just kept a private room upstairs on reserve to catch up with Kostya Garin, one of my father’s old bodyguards who now organized security for this club. Fifty-nine years old, gray goatee, and the same black suits he always wore when he worked for my father, he still had more muscles than me, and he was one of the few people I had, at least, some regard for.
I would do business with him.
I would trust anything he had to say.
I would attend his funeral.
There weren’t many people I’d sit through a whole service for.
But we weren’t friends, and we never discussed anything personal. He taught me things, but he never complicated it with trying to be my father. He was one of the perks I came here for.
The other…
“I want to leave,” a girl spoke up from the other side of the room as if on cue.
As Mr. Garin contemplated his next move, I turned my head toward her.
She wore a tight pink dress of sequins, glittering in the dim glow coming from the sconces on the wall, and her ass was planted on some little prick’s lap whose name I didn’t know. Her boyfriend across from them, on the edge of the black leather couch, watching his buddy putting his hands on his woman. I observed them, trying to put myself in each of their skin.
Did she like another man touching her? Was her boyfriend jealous? Turned on? Angry? Was his best friend living out a long-held fantasy for her? Was he enjoying this? Was he hard?
I blinked, waiting for it to come. His jealousy. Her degradation. His desire. Their fear and excitement at being watched.
But it didn’t come. Not yet. It was getting harder and harder to empathize over the years.
Fuck.
Maybe if it was my new little wife being fondled?
Or…
The guy touched her hips lightly and hesitantly as his mouth grazed a path across her shoulder, probably trying to hold back so they didn’t know how much he was enjoying himself.
“Can we leave now?” she asked me, the man underneath her not giving the slightest hint he wanted to leave quite yet.
But I ignored her, turning back to the board and seeing that Mr. Garin had matched my move with his pawn to E5.
I smiled to myself.
“Look closely,” he continued. “You can still get me. Ten moves.”
Ten? I grabbed my knight and moved it to F3, hearing Mr. Garin let out a sigh as he plucked his knight and sat him back down in C6 as if on auto-pilot.
“Damon…” he scolded, growing angry with me.
I could hear it in his voice, and my pulse raced a little as he continued the game, going through the motions as if we’d gone ’round and ’round about this for years, and he was done with my bullshit mistakes and impulsiveness. He just wanted to get the game and his inevitable win over with so he could get back to work now that my head wasn’t in the game.
My bishop to C4, his pawn to D6, my other knight to C3, and as he reached for his bishop, I stopped breathing as I watched him move it to G4, pinning my knight to my queen.
You idiot. That actually fucking worked, and he didn’t see what he’d done yet. I moved my knight to E5, snatching his pawn and leaving my queen completely vulnerable to his bishop. He saw the opening, shook his head, and captured her, removing her from the board and moving his bishop into my queen’s spot.
My heart jumped into my throat. He thought he had me.
But it was my move now, and as soon as I moved my bishop to G7, I had his king in fucking check.
He paused, realizing what had just happened and re-examining the board. His eyes flashed to mine.
As expected, he tried moving his king to E7, but the look of defeat was already in his eyes.
I slid my knight into D5. “Checkmate,” I said.
He stared at the board, scowling like he wasn’t sure how that just happened. “Seven moves...” he mumbled.
Yeah.
Not ten.
His eyes darted up to mine. “You hung your queen. I didn’t teach you to do that.”
Just then there was a knock on the door and my driver moved to open it. Erika Fane entered, and I stood up, fixing my jacket as the driver closed the door behind her.
“The queen is the most powerful piece on the board,” I told Mr. Garin, keeping my eyes locked on Rika’s. “Why not use her?”
Rika, the fiancée of one of my high school friends, stepped farther into the room, looking ready for anything except a night at the club. A smile tugged at my lips. Her tan baseball hat sat low, casting a shadow over her eyes, while her long, blonde hair spilled down her back. She wore jeans with the hood of a gray sweatshirt sticking out the back of a tan jacket, her hands tucked into the pockets. She stopped when I started to approach, no doubt trying to keep a safe distance.
I veered for the couch, sitting down on the opposite end as the boyfriend, who still watched—or tried not to watch—what his girlfriend and best friend were doing.
“Have a good night, Damon,” I heard Mr. Garin say.
I nodded, and when I looked up again, he was gone. Rika stayed back, watching me as I dug out my wallet from my breast pocket and pulled out a stack of bills.
“I want to stop,” the young girl said, pulling away from the guy’s mouth.
“You can stop whenever you want,” I said. “Door’s not locked.”
And I started slowly laying down one-hundred-dollar bill after another on the frosted glass table between us. Next to the cash I’d already paid them for what they were doing.
“Or you can stay there,” I continued, laying down another hundred and then another, “and keep doing nothing while your little boyfriend lets his best friend put a hand inside your dress.” I put down the last hundred. “And you can earn next month’s rent money while you’re at it.”
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Rika demanded.
I glanced up at her, seeing her shoot a glare from them to me.
“You can look,” I told her. “I won’t tell Michael. I’m good at keeping our secrets.”