Roses & Thorns Read online

  Lacey’s therapist leaves in ten minutes. That’s why I'm in a hurry. I’ve been planning this for a while. I wait in the dark corner of the hall, right outside Boss’ door. I wait and wait. Minutes past slowly.

  Five, four, three, two, one…

  “Bye Lacey. I’ll see you next time. Work on what he talked about sweetie.”

  “Thank you,” I hear her quiet voice reply.

  The second the therapist walks out I grab her by the throat. As planned, she lets a scream of terror. She scratches at my hands, but that’s irrelevant. Useless. What is relevant is that Lacey throws the door open, eyes wide. She takes in the scene in front of her first, before realizing it’s me. I let go of the therapist's throat slightly. I want her to know Boss didn’t command this so she tells him.

  And she will.

  “You… you… Let her go,” Lacey says, voice shaking. Feet not leaving the threshold of the room. I knew she’d developed agoraphobic tendencies since coming back. No one stays locked up in a room for weeks after being held prisoner for more than a year total. Not if they don’t have something going on in their head.

  “Hello Lacey.”

  Right then she realizes what I'm doing. She sprints into the room. I throw the therapist aside and trudge in, locking the door behind me.

  Lacey grabs the first thing she sees and throws it at me. She’s shaking so hard she gets no force. It drops weakly in front of her.

  “I don’t want to actually hurt you,” I say lazily.

  “I’ve been through enough. You’re his friend! He’ll kill you. Just go. I won’t say anything. Please!”

  I believe her when she says she won't say anything. Unfortunately, that’s not enough in this case.

  “Sorry, Lacey. It’s not personal.”

  “It’s never personal,” she says crying, frantically looking around the room for anything to defend herself. It’s honorable. Unfortunately, useless.

  “Rose will never forgive you. You’ll hurt her if you hurt me.”

  She’s unfortunately right. “Shut up about Rose!” I snap.

  “You know I'm right.”

  I ignore her. “Sorry.”

  I walk up to her. She screams. She cries for help, but like always with her sad life, no one comes for her.

  She kicks at me. I grab her arm and stick the needle in, subduing her. I throw her over my shoulder and walk out of the room. I cover her with a blanket so no one knows it’s her. Sounds stupid, but no man would question me unless they literally knew it was her. I want Boss to know it’s me anyway. I just don’t want anyone stopping me before I get off the property.

  She’s a dead weight on my shoulder. I get her in the car and drive off to the location I'm planning to hold her. A storage shed a ‘friend’ of mine owns. He’s a no questions asked type guy. I throw her in right as she starts to wake up. There’s a bed, several gallons of water and almonds in case I can’t get to her right away.

  I set her on the ground. She looks at me and her surroundings and starts to shake frantically.

  “No. Let me out! Take me back! Please take me back. You’re… his friend. What do you want with me?”

  “Sit down Lacey. You’re gonna pass out. I don’t want to hurt you. I'm not as violent as your lover. You’re simply a bargaining chip. This can all go very simply “

  She does take a seat, tucking her knees into her chest, making herself as small as possible. Tears are falling down her cheeks quickly. Her face is sopping wet.

  “He’s not my lover! He’s a monster. I just want to be free! Please, I just want to be free.”

  I smirk. “Fine. When that monster inevitably comes to your rescue I’ll grant you freedom before you have to see him. How ‘bout that?”

  I lean against the door and cross my arms over my chest. She looks stunned. Probably just realizing as awful as what Boss did to her was, she cares for him. She doesn’t want to leave him. He fucked up epically, but she’s found safety with him. She looks around the room frantically for anything to take me down with. When she finds nothing she tucks herself in tighter.

  “Just let me go Sven. If not for anything else, for Rose. This will crush her. She seems so…”

  “Shut up!” I snap. “I'm warning you Lacey. I don’t want this to be awful for you, as I do hold some sympathy for your situation, but mention Rose and I will change my mind. You have been warned.”

  She snaps her mouth shut and scrambles to the back wall like she’s trying to mold into it. She wraps her arms around her knees and starts rocking back and forth. I know she’s fighting memories. She thinks I don’t catch her, but I see her glance at her self-harm cuts and scars.

  I now see why Boss spent so much time with her. She’s seriously broken. I am suddenly very glad I checked this room for anything she could seriously hurt herself with. I don’t put it past her in this frame of mine to do something really stupid. Something I can safely say a lot of people would regret.

  “Well, Lacey, I have to go get Rose. Can’t leave her alone with your soon to be an angry man. You know how he gets when people hurt you. Generally speaking.”

  Her eyes go wide. I wink.

  “No Sven! Rose! Let me out!”

  She jumps out of the bed. I shut and lock the door, hearing the sound of her fists pounding on the impenetrable door.

  “Let me out! What if he hurts Rose? What if he doesn’t care you have me? Then what? Please!”

  That sums up how Lacey feels about Boss. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see what I see. Yeah, he hurt her, severally, but he has learned something since then.

  He loves her.

  And men like us, well, when we love someone, when we learn that it’s possible for us to love, that shit is worth dying for. It’s worth taking down entire empires to save the person you love.

  Speaking of.

  I climb into my car to pick up Rose. I have to take her away from the house before Boss gets back. We can’t go back there until I own it. Until this is over. Rose isn’t going to like it and keeping her complaint will be hard, but I’ll figure it out. After all this, she’s the least of my worries.

  I flip my phone open and immediately the heart I thought was dormant in my chest freezes.

  Boss: You severely underestimate me. Did you really think I’d go more than a few minutes distance from Lacey? Fucking stupid. You want to negotiate? Fine. I have Rose. Let’s negotiate. Just remember, I am much more violent than you, and if you lay so much as a finger on Lacey, Rose will not live to see tomorrow.

  See you soon.

  This is when I learn I just made the same mistake Boss did, because power, planning, the game means nothing to me anymore. Not if Rose isn’t safe. Not if she’s hurt.

  It’s never good to exploit someone’s weakness.

  When you have exactly the same one.

  Love.

  Chapter 28:

  Rose:

  What.

  Was.

  I.

  Thinking.

  I know I'm leaving. I know I'm getting freedom for me and Lacey. My plan is flawless. I didn’t plan on sleeping with him. I planned to let him go. Be nice, say goodbye. Despite how everything, he’s been nothing but nice to me. Well, since he took me. Still. He’s made me healthier. For the first time since the cops showed up at my doorstep, I’ve felt alive. All that said I wanted to give him a proper goodbye before I left to save my soul and protect my fragile conscious.

  Then he started getting dressed. He carried his usual smug confidence. Totally okay with everything in his life. Even his feelings for me. I can’t lie and say I wasn’t turned on, but it was more than that. I wanted to sleep with him. I wanted to give him that before I left. I wanted to know what it felt like to have passion in the bedroom.

  He delivered tenfold. It was everything. But I have to leave. I almost don’t want to, but that’s exactly why I have to. I didn’t cut off communication with my dad to get involved with a guy in the Mafia. No.

  Lacey taught me how
to pick the locks. I told her about my plan but said I didn’t know what I would do if Sven locked me in my room again. I had no idea how to pick the lock, not since he added the second one. She waved her hand and said she knew how to pick them.

  Well, that surprised me.

  Here I am doing it though and click! It works. She was totally right. That girl is a pillar of strength, intelligence and hope. I want to be just like her someday.

  After the locks are picked, I sneak out of my room. Lacey said the Boss would be gone most of the morning so I could come by anytime. She’d make sure I got in.

  I don’t doubt her. The second I leave my room I know something happened. Everyone is scrambling around and looks panicked. Honestly, my only thought is that this will make it easier for me and Lacey to follow through with what we committed to.

  I'm in the familiar hallway that leads to his room. Where she’s staying. I'm so close. I'm so close.

  Whoosh!

  I'm flying through the air.

  The sound of my head slamming on the hardwood and my teeth slamming together as the taste of copper fills my mouth racks my brain. I reach for my head and try and open my eyes. What just happened? Did I slip? What…

  I'm looking into a pair of dark eyes. Eyes I know. Eyes that terrify me. I scramble to seated. Does he know? Shit. Shit. Shit. He looks so pissed. Furious. Rage. Is it because I involved Lacey?

  I scramble back to lean against the wall, holding my throbbing head. I feel so dizzy. I hit the ground so hard.

  “Please. We were just going to talk. I just wanted to see her.”

  My feet slip on the wood as I try and slide further away from him. His anger is sucking everything from the air around him. All anyone can feel is his pure rage.

  “You don’t know, do you?” he says, voice calm, head tilted.

  If anything, it is more terrifying. The suppressed rage. It’s disconnected and cold and means he’s capable of anything.

  But I don’t think this is about me and Lacey’s plan now. That question means I don’t know something. What happened?

  “No. No. I don’t know anything! Please. What happened?”

  His face is one of pure darkness. “Your boyfriend took Lacey.”

  My eyes go wide. No! He wouldn’t. Why would he? Why… oh my gosh. Sven. No. His plan. Bosses weakness. The puzzles pieces start to fit together. They make me sick. My stomach swirls around like a taffy machine, making me violently nauseous.

  “I see you understand now. He has a lot to learn about negotiating. With that said, I'm sure you can figure you are coming with me.”

  “Please don’t kill me!”

  I try to scramble away, but he grabs my hair and yanks me back hard. I groan. Between that and the fall, my head feels like it might explode. I stop fighting him just so he’ll leave my head alone. I drop my head to the hardwood desperate for something cold. I hold the sides of my head trying to ease the pressure. I don’t want to throw up. Not in front of him. These people are so sick! Lacey and I are right to try and leave. That is if we live through this.

  “Whether or not you live all depends on your boyfriend. It will be interesting to see what he picks, you or power? I'm willing to bet he picks you.”

  He looks down at me like I'm scum.

  “I do not like that he involved Lacey in this shit.”

  He grabs my hair and yanks me straight to my feet with incredible force.

  “She has PTSD and can’t be trusted with herself right now. I’ve worked so fucking hard for her to even make the progress she has, and your boyfriend is going to ruin all of it!”

  “He’s not my boyfriend! Quit saying that! I didn’t choose to come here!”

  “Come on.”

  He shoves me forward. I follow. God, my head hurts. I hold it with one hand as I walk. He pushes me into the main room, the one I am so familiar with. It’s the first room Sven took me to when I got here.

  “What are you gonna do with me?” I ask as he shoves me onto the stone steps. I don't fight him. I’d be stupid to.

  He paces the floor like a caged lion, rattling off a series of texts. I'm shaking so hard. At this moment I can’t even begin to imagine all Lacey has endured. It literally hurts me to think about. It hurts me to think that Sven is subjecting her to more trauma for his own selfish desires. That hurts deeper than I thought. Not just for her. It hurts my heart, because I think like I did with my father, I held onto a small piece of hope that his crimes were petty. Things I could look past them. That he secretly had a heart. Compassion. But no. This proves it. He took her. Like he did with me. For selfish reasons. A stupid tear slips down my cheek. The Boss notices but gives me the small mercy of not saying anything even though he knows why I'm crying. The fear I'm feeling is because he’s holding me, and I have no clue what he’s gonna do. The tears. Those are for my broken heart. If anyone is going to love me, other people have to suffer. That’s not ever going to be a sacrifice I'm willing to make, and that’s gutting me. I feel myself go hollow like I was before I came here.

  I sniffle. Wow, this hurts so much. Why couldn’t it have just ended in beautiful denial? I choke on my cries, trying to keep them silent.

  The Boss stares at me. For a second some of the evil washes from his face. It holds a blankness, but I see interest there.

  “This is a mess,” I hear him mutter, wiping a hand over his face. When his hand falls back by his side the anger is back. Like it never left.

  A door slams in the distance.

  “Well, here he comes.”

  The quickest flash of sympathy crosses his face before he looks like a ruthless Boss again.

  “Let’s see what he chooses.”

  What was Sven thinking? This is not a man who loses.

  He jerks me off the floor, nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process. He pulls me into him. The door swings open. I freeze when I feel the unmistakable barrel of a gun being placed on my temple. I freeze. My throat closes.

  I don’t want to die. I'm not ready to die. A tear of genuine fear slips out. I haven’t even lived yet. I haven’t lived. I’ve been locked in a prison with my father. One I hid behind my love for work.

  In walks Sven, looking dark and dangerous. By his side is Lacey, who he’s holding in his left arm with a death grip. That guts me. It’s real. It’s so real. Flashes of the cops talking to me fill my head. I feel the Boss tighten his hold, surprised, as the weight of my pain hits me. This hurts so bad. Immeasurably. The gun digs further into my skin.

  “Sven,” I squeak. Pick me. I'm not ready to die.

  I hear Lacey gasp. She fights hard against Sven’s hold.

  “Let Rose go! Let her go.” She looks directly at Boss and softens her voice. “Please let Rose go. Please.”

  Her face falls into one of desperation. Everyone in the room notices a fresh cut on Lacey’s thigh. That’s not helping my reasons to live case in the bosses eyes. I don’t recognize the Boss’s voice when he speaks next. It’s kind and desperate. So unlike him. At least the man that I’ve met. The one with a barrel to my head.

  “I can’t Lacey,” he says, voice pained, “I’ll have no leverage. Nothing to get you back.”

  “I’d rather be hurt again than have you hurt her. I’ve been hurt a lot. I can take it. I won’t be able to take it if you hurt her. I won’t… sir.”

  Boss looks at Sven. “Lace, he won’t hurt you. He’ll kill you.”

  A silence falls over the room. I break it with a choked sob. No. Please. This is ripping me apart from the inside out.

  “Just let her go.”

  “Lacey. No,” I whisper.

  I want to beg Sven to let her go, but I can’t even look at him. How is she so strong? I'm terrified, and I feel like my heart is being split open.

  “So Sven,” the Boss seethes, “what is your grand plan now? Didn’t factor her in your plans. Did you?”

  He jerks the gun against my head. I shriek. Lacey fights against Sven to get to me. So loyal when all I'm doing is
panicking. God, I hate myself. I hate this. This is sick. We are just pawns in their stupid game.

  “Did you factor her into yours?” Sven counters, pulling Lacey forward.

  Lacey makes direct eye contact with the Boss. Like she’s using him for strength. Which… makes no sense. It's undeniable though. She’s standing tall, shoulders back, looking directly into his eyes. She’s shaking slightly, but mustering all her courage at this moment. I know why too. For me. She knows if she looks terrified the Boss won’t be as rational.

  “What now?” Boss growls.

  “Take the gun off Rose.”

  The Boss laughs, hinting at his barely suppressed rage. “You took Lacey! From my fucking bedroom! You’re lucky she is still breathing!”

  The sound of a gunshot rings through the air. The room goes silent. The sound of Lacey’s screams fills the room. I feel unusually warm. It’s all fast. Sven is yelling something.

  Then the pain.

  It creeps up slowly. Shock. What’s happening? I look down at my foot and completely lose it. I’ve been shot. In my foot. I move to crumple forward but Boss pulls me back ruthlessly. Lacey is still screaming/crying. I can’t think. I'm shaking. I'm warm. I'm weak. I know something is wrong, but my body isn’t working properly. I'm shaking. I think it's shock.

  I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot. What do I do? Why doesn’t this hurt more? Why do I feel so weird?

  I'm shaking as the Boss holds me up.

  “Now. Give me back Lacey. Admit the this was stupid as fuck and we will get back to work.”

  Am I losing my mind? Is he letting Sven keep his job?

  I'm mid-thought when the pain just hits. All at once.

  “Oh my God!”

  I scream at the top of my lungs. My dad may be a serial killer, but my life has been sheltered to this stuff, and I'm not accustomed to being shot!

  “Make it stop. Make it stop. AHHHH! It hurts. It hurts.”

  I look up through my hair, eyes tear-stained, to the one person I know can take the pain away. Sven.