Marked

four-1

four

Ester clucked and guffawed, riling her own emotions. “He has some nerve,” she said, getting up from the floor to sit down on the couch, then she got up again and went into the kitchen to start her liquor hunt.

If Archer had any sense, he wouldn’t have restocked the cabinets. Ester had been here a week, he had to have gone through the reserves, there couldn’t be much alcohol left in the apartment. That wouldn’t have stopped Ester from going out and buying her own though, which Nya figured she must have done when she pulled a bottle of red from the top shelf.

“He’s a f*****g bastard. He follows me around all over the country, all the f*****g time,” Ester said, talking fast as she twisted a corkscrew into the top of the bottle. “He pops up and tells me what to do. Well, I’m gonna put a stop to it.”

If Ester was really afraid, she wouldn’t have given him attitude. All Nya saw when she watched the couple was foreplay. “You don’t want to hurt him.”

Nya rose to go to the breakfast bar. The wine glugged from the bottle into Ester’s glass. “Hurt him? Derren doesn’t have feelings. He doesn’t have any emotions. Nothing hurts him.”

“I didn’t mean emotionally. I don’t know what he does,” Nya said. “But if he’s anything like Archer, we don’t want to draw attention to their lives.”

Ester hadn’t even pretended to pour a drink for Nya, she was already three quarters of the way down her glass. “Yeah, that’s what’s stopped me for the last twenty years. He can’t get away with it anymore.”

“Every guy who hurt you, you come to Archer, you tell him, and Archer hurts them back. If Derren’s hurting you, Archer will fix it, he’ll fix him.”

Ester exhaled a pissed-off grunt. “They’re peas in a pod, all three of them. Him, Archer, Kristof, they’re all buddy-buddy, they’re all the same. No one else gets a look in.” Could that be what had upset Ester when she was with Derren the first time? “He thinks he can come in, throw his weight around, tell me what to do, you don’t know what it’s like.”

Nya parodied Ester’s exclaimed exhale. “I’m in love with your son. I don’t go twenty-four hours without getting an order from him or finding out he’s done something to control my life.”

“Then you should dump him now, run fast and far,” Ester said, lifting her glass out to the heavens. “Save yourself while you still can.”

“What Archer does, it’s love, Ester, it’s not evil. I know the difference. I had a boyfriend before who controlled my life. He would examine my body after we were out for a night and if I was out alone? Forget it, he’d spend the whole night quizzing me. He’d want to know every step I took, how many times I went to the bathroom, if I washed my hands, or brushed my hair. He’d want to know how many people were in the room, how many men I’d made eye contact with. If I’d left my glass alone for a second, he used to d**g test me, Ester. He would actually d**g test me. He bought these kits online then he would make me pee in a cup. He’d watch me do it.”

Ester’s bravado faltered and her glass descended as she became somber. “Oh, sweetie.”

“And if I gave him one answer that was inconsistent, he would hit me. He hated me as much as he loved me. And you know, after he slapped me, and punched me, and kicked me, do you know what he would say? He would say I made him do it. He would say that if I had just been honest with him, if I hadn’t lied, then he wouldn’t have to hurt me. He’d tell me he did it because he loved me. Because he was taking care of me. Sometimes, after the beatings, I couldn’t leave the house for days. Makeup covers marks, but sometimes my eyes would swell up or my lip would split, and that’s not as easy to hide. I lost count of the number of concussions I had.”

“Oh my God, Nya, that’s awful,” Ester said, putting the wine glass down to rush over to the opposite side of the breakfast bar. She leaned over, snatching Nya’s hands and pulling them to her face to kiss them. “How did you get out of that relationship?”

“I was in a car accident,” she said, smiling at the ridiculous memory. “It wasn’t even serious. I was in a cab and someone hit him from the side and I was knocked out. It wasn’t a huge deal. But they took me to the hospital to check me out. They found ribs that hadn’t healed right, bruises that didn’t come from the crash. He never used a weapon, so I got away without too many scars. But he would write on my body sometimes, with pen on my back, my chest, and my belly. I wouldn’t read the things he wrote. He did it so he could be sure I wouldn’t take my clothes off. He got such a thrill seeing those words on me in the morning and still there that night. The doctors saw it.”

Ester had forgotten about her wine and was stroking Nya’s hands. Talking about Damien was cathartic. Once it had traumatized Nya to even think about him, now her experience could help someone else and she wanted to share it.

“Bastard,” Ester murmured.

“The doctors couldn’t do anything on their own. The cops came to question me and of course, I denied it all. And when they asked who they should call, I didn’t tell them to call Damien—that was his name—I told them to call my friend, Tag. When he came, after all the questions I’d been asked that day by doctors, nurses, and cops, I couldn’t hold it together. I told him everything. Tag took me from the hospital and I never saw Damien again.”

Nya didn’t realize she was crying until Ester rubbed the tears from her cheeks. “He left you alone?”

She shrugged. “Tag dealt with it. I don’t know what he did, I never asked. I don’t think I want to know.”

“He must have killed him,” Ester said like it was the only reasonable possibility.

Nya managed a feeble smile. “I doubt it. Tag’s not really into that.” Not that his men hadn’t killed, she knew from the Hexam mess that it had happened. But she didn’t think Tag had ever killed anyone himself. “He had enough sway, I guess you could say, that he must have scared Damien off. I stayed with Tag for months and wouldn’t leave the house. Maybe Damien tried to see me, I don’t know. Tag protected me from all that.”

“Well if he wasn’t dead then, he is now,” Ester said, still holding Nya’s hands when she took her elbows from the breakfast bar and stood up. “ ‘Cause I guarantee when you told Archer that story, he tracked him down and finished the job.”

Nya shook her head, took a deep breath, and let go of Ester to wipe the tears from her face. “I never told Archer,” she said, leaving the intense moment to go back for her coffee.

“Why would you not tell Archer?”

“He knows about Damien. I mean he knows he exists and that he raised his hands to me. He’s done some digging, although I don’t know how much specific stuff he knows. Archer does have a habit of coaxing details out of me, he’s kind of trained me to tell him things without prompting. But I’m a smart enough cookie to know that telling him something like that would just rile him. At least it would while we were together, I don’t know what it would do now. We don’t talk about personal stuff like that anymore.”

They talked about Tag. They talked about whatever was going on in that moment. Nya missed their talks in the wee hours when they’d pass the time learning about each other, or at least, he learned about her and made her feel valued. They hadn’t done that in a long time and as she stared into the reflection on the surface of her coffee, she grieved for all the conversations they’d never have.

“Talking about him upset you,” Ester said.

Nya was surprised to see her coming into the living room without her wine. “Damien doesn’t upset me anymore,” she said, the tears were more about the memories than the man.

Ester sat on the edge of the couch to wrap her hands around the warm mug that was on the corner of the coffee table. “Then why do you look so sad?”

“Because I just realized that I lost him,” Nya said and this time when she tried to smile, it wouldn’t come.

That was why she was angry, why she’d exploded at Archer last night, why she’d gone over to Tag’s to scream at him and been unable to leave because she didn’t want to be alone. It was why she had been determined to spend the evening with Ester and why she’d insisted that they relocate their dinner after the restaurant mix up instead of just canceling it.

“How can you miss a bastard like Damien?”

Nya shook her head, trying to dam her fresh tears. “Archer,” she said. “I just realized I lost Archer.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Ester exclaimed, rushing over, she discarded the coffee and pulled Nya into a hug. “You haven’t lost him, he loves you. You’ll be together again.”

Nya couldn’t see how that was possible anymore. She pushed out of Ester’s arms realizing that she’d just reached her tipping point. “I guess forty days is my limit. Forty days ago, he told me we were through and even in my darkest times I’ve thought…” She shrugged and licked her lips, annoyed that all the grief she’d held inside was going to seep out in his apartment in front of his mother. “It seems dumb, what I’ve done, chasing after him. God, I have to get out of here.”

Nya began to head for the door. “Nya, wait,” Ester said, but it wasn’t the words that stopped her, it was the knock. “Oh, that bastard.” Ester balled her fists as she stomped towards the door. “He’s just come back to insult me some more.”

She pulled open the door ready to scream a***e at Derren, except he wasn’t the man on the other side. It took Nya a second to recognize who it was, and before she could call to Ester to slam the door, the visitor’s eyes moved to her and his shock was as apparent as hers.

“You f*****g w***e,” he said.

“Jonno,” she gasped.

Ester was pushed aside and he barreled to her. Nya tried to run, but Jonno got a hold of her and pulled her to him. “Your f*****g boyfriend owes me money!”

“Archer’s not here!” Ester screamed. “Get out of here! Get out, you bastard! Let go of her!”

It probably wasn’t a great idea to tell Jonno that Archer wasn’t here because it meant that they had no protector. “Where is he?” Jonno asked, shaking Nya so hard that her head began to hurt. “Where is he?” He slanted back far enough that he could backhand her while still holding onto her arm.

Ester screamed. Nya shoved. “f*****g let me go!” Nya shouted and stamped on his foot.

Although he winced, he didn’t release her. “Your boy Taggert still owes me, big time. What the f**k is going on with Hex? Where’s Arch?”

Oh God, now Nya was in a real dilemma. Taggert was in his apartment. Hexam was on Archer’s leash. And Archer was in Nevada, according to Derren. Nya had all these facts. But instead of offering them up, she drew her head back and spat in his face.

“Go to hell,” she said. “We’ve had this f*****g conversation, you prick! And I’ll tell you now what I said then, you can go f**k yourself.”

He slapped her again and shoved her so hard that she stumbled back and hit her head on the wall-mounted TV. Jonno pulled her forward, slapped her, and then threw her to the floor.

“You f*****g b***h, you f****d everything up!”

He pulled his belt from its loops. r**e might be her greatest fear, but she didn’t think that was what was on his mind when he raised the belt above his head. But before he could bring it down, there was a crash. He stilled and then collapsed, smacking his head on the coffee table as he went down.

Scrambling away from him, Nya ended up in a crouch at his feet and Ester was standing next to her with a pot from the kitchen in her hand.

“Who the f**k is this guy?” Ester asked, tossing the pan to the floor. “Did I kill him?”

Nya didn’t want to go over to check but she had to. There was blood seeping from the back of Jonno’s head that would leave a stain on the rug under the coffee table. Staying as far away as she could, she edged forward and stretched herself over Jonno to feel for a pulse. A strong beat thrummed beneath her fingers, and although she hated this guy, she was relieved Ester wasn’t a murderer.