DELIVER(42)

She dropped a hand to her side, snapped her fingers, and pointed at the floor beside her feet, an unmistakable order to kneel. “Then don’t f*ck this up.”

Whatever was about to happen, it was evident that her bearing, as well as his, needed to broadcast that she had the upper hand. He knelt at her side, holding her gaze as he lowered. Sure, she appeared dispassionate at a glance, but the hand at her side trembled.

As she entered the code in the keypad—too quickly for him to catch the pattern—he gripped the fingers digging into her thigh. The door clicked open, and she pulled her hand away but not before giving him a tentative squeeze in return.

He kept his eyes on the floor, taking in the scuffed black boots that entered first, followed by Van’s sneakers. The door shut, imprisoning the room with silence.

He’d expected trousers, paired with an expensive suit, a wardrobe that signified wealth and power. Instead, black cotton work pants gathered over the dusty boots. The mystery surrounding Mr. E compounded, surging dread through his veins.

“Raise your head, boy.” Her voice was so detached, even its iciness was absent.

His breath caught as he lifted his eyes and met the drab material of a cotton jumpsuit. The kind one would zip over regular clothes to change a tire or carry out an activity that might be messy. He stopped breathing altogether when his gaze reached the man’s head.

It was wrapped in a potato sack hood, cinched at the neck, with two crudely cut eyeholes and vertical stitching where the mouth should be. Rough-hewed seams rounded the skull, pulling the material taut to maintain the curvature. Then it spoke.

“Stand, slave.” The mouth, stitched as it was, didn’t move. The voice was soft and masculine and cruelly calm.

Van leaned against the door in a display of arrogant composure. Liv stared at her feet, frozen and pale, as if the masked man had chased her into some unseen recess of her mind.

Don’t f*ck this up.

Josh climbed to his feet and let his bound wrists loll over his groin. At his full height, he stood four or more inches taller than Mr. E.

“You’ll address me as Sir.” Mr. E glanced at Liv and back to Josh. “Did you give her the black eye?”

His shoulders tensed. “No—”

“That was me, sir.” Van’s smirk oiled the tension in the air.

“Ah.” A chuckle rustled through the canvas mask. Mr. E reached a gloved hand to Van’s jaw and patted it. “I suppose you can’t f*ck up her face worse than it already is.”

“Nope.” Van popped the P with a smarmy exhale and slid a toothpick between his curved lips.

A storm of rage boiled Josh’s blood, twisting and shaking his insides. She should’ve been defending herself. And what compelled Van to be at such ease with a man who hid behind a potato sack? The man who, Josh suspected, had given them their matching scars.

The whites of Mr. E’s eyes shifted inside the depths of the eyeholes and settled on Liv. Under the decomposing scrutiny, her shoulders curled forward, her gaze fixed downward.

It was in that moment that his assumptions about her place in the hierarchy were confirmed. Just because she wasn’t a slave didn’t mean she wasn’t viewed as property and used as such. They seemed to think of her as scarred and ruined, and she certainly wasn’t sexually innocent. Her usefulness to them was limited to her proficiency in training slaves. A replaceable skill. Was Van’s apparent ownership of her the only thing that held her there?

There was so much obscurity surrounding the operation, and seeing her like this shook the hell out of Josh’s hope. He bit down on his cheek, checking the turbulence of his emotions, and put on his own phlegmatic expression.

“Have you f*cked him yet?” The potato sack cocked toward Van, and Josh balled his fists.

The silver cut of Van’s eyes sliced through Josh, but it was Liv who answered. “He’s not ready.”

Mr. E’s stillness was deafening, cranking the room’s temperature to scorching. Then those elusive eyeholes shifted to him. “Let’s see how well he kisses.” He curled a gloved finger. “Van.”

Josh fought the heart-pounding urge to swing his bound arms into that stupid mask and stared directly into the soulless eyes. “I will not kiss that man.”

Liv’s finger twitched against her thigh, but she was otherwise unresponsive.

“I see.” Mr. E clasped his hands behind him and spent an eternal moment moving through the room, testing the strength of a dangling chain, nudging the mattress with his boot, and building a terrible anticipation. He returned to Van’s side. “She still sleeps in here.”

A muscle jumped in Van’s jaw. “Yes, sir.”

“You haven’t won her over yet.”

“She’s mine.”

“I’m not arguing that.”

Josh felt like he’d fallen into a state of surrealism, where crap that should never ever make sense was sickeningly transparent. They talked about her like she wasn’t standing right there while ignoring the fact that Josh refused to kiss Van. It was a game, a tactic to mess with his head, and maybe hers, too.

Mr. E snapped his gloved fingers under Liv’s bowed head. “Get his clothes.”

Her stillness unfurled into a steady, flowing stride to the trunk by her mattress. She placed her phone on the bed and returned with the jeans, t-shirt, and boots he’d arrived in. They were just things, inconsequential possessions, yet the sight of them made his heart race.