“For a week.”
I shrugged. “She was good.” I suspected it had been my frequent flights from Toronto to New York that had tipped her off. Even though I’d been assigned to watch London’s father, Dr. Westbrook, I’d gone more often than necessary.
“And better now, I imagine. Or at least obedient.”
Fuckin’ bitch. I resisted taking my knife and gutting her. Instead, I chuckled, but it was harsher than I wanted and I suspected she knew she’d gotten to me. “Why did you do it?”
But I guessed the answer. Because I’d been with London. I hadn’t just fucked her. I’d been with her for a week and Mother had found out and didn’t like it. So, she wanted to destroy London, and she had succeeded. She’d stripped her dignity and left her broken, a shell of a girl with nothing remaining of the woman I’d been with.
Mother would’ve thought that was the end of it. Another girl lost in the sickening world of sex trafficking. Vault was rarely involved in that type of criminal activity, except to take out the individuals who became problematic. I volunteered for those jobs.
I’d never fuck a girl who was trained to please me and I certainly didn’t get off on forcing one to suck my cock. I got off on a girl begging for it with desire smoldering in her eyes.
Mother tapped her finger on the top of the pile of papers. “You’re a lot like your father. Intelligent and arrogant. Women are drawn to you… like this girl.”
“London.” She really had an issue with London.
She shrugged her slender shoulders draped in a black suit jacket. “Her name is no longer significant.”
Fuck. They were going to kill her. I kept my face impassive, the way I’d practiced in the mirror a million times before when I was a kid.
A branch scratched against the stained-glass window to the right, and then I felt the slight breeze as the air leaked through the seams of the window. Still leaning against the desk, I crossed my ankles and lowered my head, appearing not to care about what she just revealed, but inside I was a crackling fire. The building rage played with my control, but if I reacted I would destroy my chances of getting what I needed from her.
“She must have been good in bed for you to come here and beg for her life.”
I scoffed, shaking my head with a half-smile. “I don’t beg.”
I knew her all too well. The way her spine stiffened, indiscernible to most, but it was there all the same. Fuck, I’d been studying her gestures at every opportunity since the day she brutally killed my father in front of the Vault board members, my sister and me. It was that day I realized the core of her was far worse than an unloving mother. She was pure evil.
She’d shoved her knife up between his ribs and watched him die. And the entire time, her face remained the same—expressionless. But there was one thing that gave her away… the twitch of her right leg. She did it when she was upset. Not sad. My mother was incapable of sorrow; no, it had been disappointment in my father.
“Are you sure about that? Seems to me like you may… care about her.”
She was suspicious, but I expected that. “She was an exceptional fuck.”
That splintered her stone expression and she smiled. “I’d prefer if my son didn’t end up like his father over a woman.”
And there it was, why she hated me. I had parts of me that reminded her of him. My father fell in love with another woman, but that wasn’t the only reason Mother killed him. It was just her excuse to kill him. She thrived on power and control and when she killed him, she took his place on Vault’s board. Then everything changed.
No longer nine board members, but five. Two of whom she brought into the organization, Peter Dorsey and the man whose identity I had yet to figure out.
“Tell me, Kai, what makes a killer like you fuck a weak woman like her.”
London was anything but weak; at least she wasn’t until the violent and cruel men, Jacob and Alfonzo, broke her. It was time to end this bullshit. I had one chance at this and if I failed I was sealing London’s fate. “Your cruelty knows no bounds, Mother. And it was stupid of you to ruin a potential asset. I told you she was valuable and to leave her alone, but you couldn’t trust me.”
She leapt to her feet, her composure breaking. “How dare you!” Her face contorted into the bitch sneer that always lay just beneath the surface.
I met her eyes, steady and calm. “I dare because you’re getting old. And you made decisions based on assumptions.” Her cheeks were red and her face a mask of fury, but this was exactly what I wanted, to turn the tables. “She is young and intelligent. A scientist whose father developed a drug you want more of. Sorry, you need more of. We agreed on this after she was brought back from that shit you put her through. We were going to have her take over for her father.” It had been my only way to make certain London stayed safe. Make her valuable to Vault.
“She was useless after her… experience.” I wanted to rip her cold heart out from her chest with my hand. London had been broken, destroyed, ruined after two years lost in that cruel world. “And I recall telling you to bring her in, but instead, you hid her away in a house we didn’t know about.”
I smiled because if I didn’t, I was going to kill her before I had what I came here for. It was time for my ace. “Dr. Westbrook is dying of cancer.” That got her attention. “Doctors give him six months. From my last visit, I’d say closer to three.” The ruptured steadiness began to crumble as her eyes wavered from mine.