Chapter 42: Chapter 42

JACE ‘JR’ ASHER/ TRIGGER

THE BOYFRIEND OR IN THIS CASE FIANCÉ was a piece of shit who’d glanced at his phone the whole time the princess tried to make small talk.

You’d think me knowing she had a fiancé and actually watching said fiancé kiss her sloppily would tone down whatever shit going on in my body about Lucia Amato but it didn’t.

On the contrary, it fueled this want in me that had turned primal when I saw her in that skimpy bikini by the pool.

Fucking gorgeous, wet, curvy and holding a paint brush while she was so lost in her world unaware that I was watching her, drinking in her features and wondering how a woman like her existed and how I hadn’t fucked her yet and gotten this over with.

But that’s the thing, she was a princess to everyone including me.

I didn’t give two shits about Nicolas Amato having my head on a silver platter if I as so much as touched his daughter’s ass. Naah that shit didn’t scare me.

I was going to touch her, yes enjoy the fuck out of wiping every memory she had of her fiancé away, but I was going to do it the way she deserved.

The way a princess like her wanted.

The waiter, some kid looking for tips and loose change, came back again asking if I was ready to order.

I glanced at the menu again pissed at whatever shit they were serving. Shrimps for two hundred dollars? I loved shrimp but I wasn’t going to be the motherfucker that wasted that much money on appetizers.

“I’m good”, I ground out, a frown ate his face before he disappeared to the couple with the matching Tennis attire behind me.

My eyes stayed on the princess.

She blinked a few times, swallowed an invisible lump of saliva, then looked sideways trying to see whether the people around her gathered what was going on.

And the truth was she had been stood up. Sort of.

Her boyfriend had come up with some silly excuse, kissed her like he hadn’t meant it and disappeared out of the restaurant.

I had kept my distance watching her process that shit for two minutes before I joined her on the table.

“That’s the fiancé?”

I had expected a Zegna suit clad lawyer of some sort. Fancy shmancy with a whole lot of gelled hair and an attitude that of a bitchy baby spoiled since birth.

He’d worn a Zegna suit as expected but the guy marrying her was nowhere close to being bitchy, a lawyer or having gelled hair.

He was among the crazy and dangerous lot and that scar across his face rested my case.

Either he worked for Nicolas Amato, had a lot of money that would unite the Amatos and his family or either and this was a big either: Nicolas Amato owed him big time and the debt could only be repaid by selling off Lucia to him.

Her eyes rose to meet mine and she pulled a smile. A forced smile that hid the burn in her eyes about to make her cry.

Ok, fuck this shit.

I stood up, loomed over her table and asked,

“You done with this?”

She looked at her food, confused.

“You want to leave?”

She did too. She was just embarrassed that people would talk and people talked all the fucking time that didn’t stop the world from going round.

“Don’t you?” I asked.

Her brows furrowed, she flagged the kid waiter who’d been helluva pissed I hadn’t ordered anything before she paid the bill and we were out of the lobster restaurant.

Standing just outside the restaurant, we waited for the valet to bring the car around and I stood beside her watching her six.

Watching everyone around like a hawk because her boyfriend had brought us to the throng of the city where a sniper would consider us sitting ducks and shoot us from a mile away without us knowing what hit us.

The valet brought the car two minutes later, I had already snagged the princess and put a seatbelt on her the minute her ass landed on the passenger’s seat.

Occupying the driver’s seat, we were already on the road. Too damn quiet.

“He was busy, something came up”, she suddenly spoke, I only half listened making a mental note to look into the fiancé.

Shit just didn’t feel right and this was the whole point of the mission. Take down Nicolas Amato, know who he associated with, report the comings and goings and every shit that didn’t feel right.

I was taking down the fiancé as well.

“Ah huh”

“He’s sweet and kind, he just has a lot going on”, she added and we both knew what she was doing.

Trying to convince herself what’s-his-name loved her, that she was doing the best thing marrying a guy who didn’t have time for her.

“Okay”

Then she huffed in her seat, her hands clasped together and resting on the thighs hidden by her long yellow skirt.

“You are taking me home?”

“That’s the idea unless you have another plan in mind”

Say anything, tell me to turn this car around and take you to heaven and I would.

She looked outside the window debating what I was hinting at.

I wasn’t treating her like a fragile little gnome, I was giving her a choice, a chance to make her own decisions without anyone making them for her.

“Papa will be worri—“, her words lunged in her throat the minute I shot her a glare.

I would take care of her father; she had no shit to worry about.

I was here and I was giving her freedom and she was hesitant to take it and it pissed me the hell off way more than the day I found Ontario having a threesome on my favorite couch.

“My mother always talked about the carnival. She loved the carnivals back in her home town in Italy, eating gelato, riding the rollercoasters. I’ve never been there—the carnival I mean”

“Your mother—”

“Died when I was eight, a car accident but I try as much as possible to remember her, to keep her memory alive by painting and now, I’m thinking of visiting her favorite places like the carnival”

“Nice choice”, I praised pushing the whole ‘mother topic’ aside.

“You probably think it’s stupid, she’s been dead for so many years-“

“I get it”, I gritted unintentionally letting it come out rude.

Her eyes pierced mine, she was reading me and I was trying so hard not to cave.

“You lost your mother too, didn’t you?”

She’d make a good cop. Reading someone like that.

“Yes”

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it”

I never talked about it. Not to Jason Bates. Not to Misha Bates. Not to my aunt Nance and Uncle Gunner. Not to Cassie and certainly not to the therapists and psychiatrists that tried to help me get over my trauma as a kid.

She didn’t say shit afterwards and I found myself squirming to tell her.

“She died. My parents, they died when I was five”

Her lips formed an ‘ooh’ and I didn’t know what to say next. I never said anything about my parents because the minute I fucking did then came the pitiful gaze and that pitiful gaze conjured up self-hatred, grief I hadn’t processed for years.

“It must have been hard for you”

It was.

“It wasn’t, I got new parents”

Jason and Misha took me in and although I never had the guts to call them my parents, they were pretty alright.

They raised me, fed me, educated me, treated me like one of their own and I was thankful for them.

“You don’t have to lie to me, it’s not like you are trying to impress me or anything”, she quipped, I smiled along with her.

“What if I am?” I fired the question. Would a princess like her possibly have the stomach to sleep around with a guy like me?

Her bodyguard?

Her sleeveless magenta top seemed a little tight and I tried focusing on her face rather than her chest.

“Trigger”, my name escaped her lips like a plea and it went straight to my dick and suddenly I was picturing just how it would feel to have her say my real name. To hear her soft as fuck voice, call my name.

“Jace. The name’s Jace”, I told her turning my eyes on the road.

“Okay, Jace. Grief takes a lot of time to process. After my mom died, I wouldn’t let anyone see me, I wouldn’t eat for a week, it took a few months to fully understand she was gone and when I did, I let go of the anger”

“Anger?” I questioned.

“You know, my father, if you’ve read what the media says about him, isn’t a good man. I knew that when I was five, when h—he pulled a gun on my mom. They were arguing and I was hiding under the table and let’s just say when she died, I thought he killed her and I hated him for it”

“How do you know he didn’t?”

I’d bet my lucky Glock; he had something to do with his wife’s death. Nicolas Amato didn’t strike me as the type of man who wasn’t capable of anything but for the sake of being her confidant, I played along because somehow her words were getting through to me.

“I didn’t. I still don’t know to this day but I decided it wasn’t worth ruining my life over it. Holding onto anger that long can mess someone up. I didn’t want to be messed up; I was tired…of everything”

What if holding onto that anger was the only way of remembering them?

Of reminding me why I woke up in the morning? Of keeping my father’s memory alive?

Callan Asher would have done anything humanly possible to avenge my mother’s death and I was doing it for him, for her, for them.

Sure, I had been held back for years and by the time I got the necessary ammo to go after Lucas Hawkins, the bastard had died. Connor wasn’t with him. Connor had never been with.

Since the bombs went off in that forbid island, the guys in B&A had never found my brother.

Him missing was the official report. A couple years later, he was reported dead and up until this day I didn’t know whether to grieve or be fucking happy he was six feet under.

This was his fault. My shitty life. Aunt Nance’s depression. Our whole fucking lives ruined because of Connor.

“But you don’t want to process that grief, do you? I can see it in your eyes, you want to hold onto that anger, to be driven by it”

I didn’t say shit partly because she was right.

Then as if the universe could sense it, my phone buzzed in my pants and I reached for it pressing it near my ear.

“It’s Cassie”, Jason spoke, my senses leapt into overdrive. What about Cassie?

“What’s up?” I spoke, my hand tightening against the steering wheel.

“I didn’t want to worry you but I can’t help but be worried. She’s been off the grid for a while, I tried to call her and it shot straight to voicemail”

Cassie might have been stubborn and hot headed but she never ignored calls from her parents. From me, maybe but not from them.

Something was up and dread cascaded down my back at the thought of some shit happening to her.

“What can I do to help?”

“Call her, if she doesn’t pick up, I’m rounding up my own buddies for an urban search and rescue”

And an urban search and rescue meant he was convinced shit had hit the fan with Cassie, I prayed it hadn’t even as I hung up, scrolled through my contacts searching for my little sister’s number.

“Everything alright?” Lucia asked beside me and I mentally groaned a ‘fuck’ remembering I had to take her to a shit carnival.

LUCIA AMATO

“KEEP THE CHANGE”, I told the man dressed in white pants, a white tee and a sweater vest with stripped red lines like those of a swirly candy cane.

He smiled, appreciating the hundred-dollar bill before I turned around spotting Trigger—Jace by the haunted house.

He was still engrossed in his phone since someone called him moments ago and I felt a tad bit disappointed in him because it was like déjà vu again with Kade.

Focused on the phone and not on me and ouch it hurt.

Though my bodyguard wasn’t like my fiancé. I didn’t exchange more than fifty words with my fiancé but with Jace it had come as natural as talking to my stuffed dolls when I was younger.

He listened, he paid attention and he flirted without even being scared of who I am, who my father was and somehow deep down I liked that.

Unbelievable to even say such a thing but I liked the guy. The brooding black knight who saved me the other day and was now fulfilling one of my greatest wishes.

“You want one?” I asked pointing the fluffy pink cotton candy in his direction.

I pinched a piece of it, smiling as it melted in my mouth. I hadn’t had one of these since—never. Maybe when I was four but the memory was hardly etched in my brain.

This—I could hardly remember ever feeling like this. The feel of the warm sun hitting my skin, the echo of the kids and parents running across the grounds without a care in the world.

The ka-ching sound of the machines people were playing on for a prize and suddenly I wanted to try everything.

The water guns hitting the targets, I wanted to try that one too. For a prized teddy, an elephant.

There was also the game of whack a mole, I had seen a man throw his toupee down to the ground with frustration after spending a whole lot of money on the game and not winning.

There were also the rollercoasters, the ones behind the haunted house where people screamed shrilly and later on came from the rides puking their guts out.

I wanted to puke my guts out too.

Jace slapped the candy from his face slightly saying,

“Too much sugar”

“You are no fun”, I teased, he put his phone away, pulling something from his jacket.

“We are here for you, not me. Put this on, we can’t risk anyone recognizing you”

The baseball cap landed on my head and before I could fit it properly on my head, Jace was already way ahead of me.

He sunk my skull in the baseball cap, pushing my hair away from my face and his finger pads, cold and soothing touched my cheeks.

An electrifying current jostled through my spine, I sucked in a breath, my heart coming to a painful staccato tremor.

“Better?” I asked trying to sound brave even though his Stetson cologne had swept all my senses away.

“We could get you a mask”, he offered, I nodded my head sideways.

“No masks that will make me draw attention to myself. I don’t want that”

He loomed closer, we were standing inches away from each other when his breath hit my lips and they trembled.

“With that face? You are already drawing attention to yourself princess without even trying”

Was that his version of saying…I was pretty?

A blush creeped into my face and I hid it by pointing at the haunted house.

“We could start there”

“Okay but I want you holding my hand all times, I can’t risk losing you in there”

I nodded eating the rest of my cotton candy before I took his hand and we entered the haunted house.

Creepy voices met us, followed by girls giggling a far off but the darkness made it hard to even see them. Jace held onto my hand as we walked inside further, green neon lights flickered across the maze.

Fear crept into my body but at the same time excitement engulfed me. I liked this, not knowing what would happen next, it excited me.

“Stay close”, Jace’s voice rumbled, I giggled clutching his muscly forearm.

The lights went off all of a sudden, the sound of a wolf howling came in sharp, Jace’s hand creeped down my waist, my throat parched.

The lights came on back again, Jace’s hand held mine and his other hand—his other hand wasn’t on my waist then who—

I turned my head slightly paled by the human look alike skeleton with green slime touching my waist.

I screamed my lungs out.

Jace turned around charging at the prop skeleton and hitting the shit out of it.

“What the hell man?” the human skeleton spoke, Jace straddled him taking his mask off.

A blonde kid gazed at us, blood oozing from his nose.

“It’s just a joke”, he whined. Jace held another punch up.

“No, Trigger. Don’t”

His chest heaved, his eyes held fire and rage but he let the kid go with a warning.

“You piece of shits touch her again and I’ll burn this freak show to the ground”

“Okay, okay man. Fuck, it’s a haunted house. We are supposed to do this kind of thing”

Before I could tell Trigger, we had to get going, a couple of hands grabbed my shoulders and I screamed getting hauled into the shadows.

Someone else screamed beside me but I was too stunned to pay attention as I fell to the floor wading through plastic skulls, hands, tendons, fake blood.

My kidnappers, another bunch of kids paid to scare us half to death pulled my legs and I screamed, half laughed clinging to the anything on the ground.

Laughter and thrill covered my body as I willingly got dragged past the terrifying Grim Reaper by the corner, past the fake mannequin stabbed in the eye and past the nun that had white and dark eyes—but that did scare me.

Scared me to the point of I could feel my boobs sweat and my hair stick to my back the way it did on a hot summer day.

My captors let go of my legs and disappeared.

I took a minute to breathe then knelt on the floor dusting the dry straws from my top, tidying my skirt before I stood up.

I glanced at the room multiple eyes staring back at me. Looking at multiple versions of myself. A room full of mirrors and no doors.

Jace was probably pulling his hair out wondering where I was and I laughed at the thought of him all worked up, punching mannequins while looking for me.

My fingers touched the first mirror as I peaked at me, my soul, my reflection, a carbon copy of my mother and I couldn’t help as tears sprung to my eyes.

I missed her on most days.

I moved on to the next mirror stopping when the sound of metal scratching metal echoed in the air.

I turned around so fast looking for any sign of life inside here. I wasn’t alone.

“He-hello?”

Something moved fast in front of me like a gush of wind, like my eyes were playing tricks on me and a golf ball got stuck in my throat wondering just who—who was here.

“I-I know it’s you guys trying to scare me. Listen it’s not funny anymore”

I prayed that it was one of the kids who worked here.

Maybe it was and the urge to pee in my undies was all in my head.

Something fell behind me and another and another and I recognized that as glass shattering on the marble floor.

“T-This it’s not funny anymore”

I spoke…to the presence in the room.

Scurrying back, I hit the mirror behind me with a quiet thud.

Someone in a kabuki mask stood ten feet away from me and I could see his reflection in all the mirrors.

Assessing, preying, scaring me half to death.

“I know it’s one of you. Trying to scare me, I’m pretty scared, you win, stop all this”

He didn’t take off the mask. Instead, he took a step forward, my heart beat frantically.

The lights went off, I struggled to breathe knowing some guy in a mask I couldn’t decipher was in the room with me. He could have been a worker or someone worse and I knew it…

The lights came on, I came face to face with the kabuki mask, trapped in front of him.

His hand landed on my neck pulling me closer to him, I opened my mouth to scream but his hand covered it.

I tried kneeing him in the balls but his hand caught my leg in record speed pulling me further to his body, to the bulge in his pants, to his erection.

Oh God.

Stetson cologne hit my nostrils.

Trigger? Jace?

He pulled his hand away from my mouth, grabbing my waist molding my body into his and I—wetness dripped my core knowing it was him.

Knowing the bulge in his pants was because of me.

I rubbed myself against him, my left leg clinging to the back of his legs and I craved, I writhed humping to the feel of him. Wanting something that was clandestine, that shouldn’t be happening.

My voice came out rugged, he groaned in his mask and I held onto his neck riding him in those black cargo pants.

Needing him.

My hands grazed his shirt falling to the band of his trousers before his big hands caught my wrists pulling them away from him.

He took a step back, disappointment washed over me.

He removed his mask and the look in his eyes crushed me.

Anger. Disappointment.

“I told you to stay close”, he seethed.

“They pulled me here; I couldn’t stop them”

“Two rides and we are leaving”

Two rides? I wanted to do more than that.

“No. I want to try the games too”

“We don’t have time for that”, his voice came hard, I hated this version of him.

“Why? Because I disappeared? Fine cuff me to your hand because I’m not leaving till, we try everything”

“I have to take you home; I have to be someplace else as we are speaking”

“Where…are you going?”

“It doesn’t matter”

“It does matter if you are breaking your promise to me”

“I didn’t make any promises”, he shot, I was so upset to listen to him a minute longer.

“Take me with you. Wherever you going, this important place you are going to, take me with you”