Derision (The Broken Bonds 7)

says, tossing my torn clothing into my purse.

“What?”

His eyes meet mine. “They’re pawns. See, Larkin and Gannet believe they’re grandmasters of this domain.” He spreads his arms wide. “But it’s been my board they’ve been playing on all along.”

I shake my head, moving farther down the wall. “You’re demented.”

He cocks his head in a clipped shrug. “All great men are. It’s the price one pays for genius.” He stalks toward me then, bracing his arms on either side of my head and locking me in place. “I think you’ll realize that once you acknowledge you’re just a pawn, too.”

I swallow hard, calming my breathing. His smile is too revealing, he wants me to ask. So I don’t.

“Lee Brooks,” he says, eyeing me closely. “Oh, wait. That’s right. What did Chase tell Sol? That you only knew him as John. A man that somehow charmed his way into your panties at your parents’ funeral.” Mason grins. “What a whore you are, Alexis.”

For the first time, my defense drops. Fear pervades my senses, ripping through me with a fury that decimates my nerves. Mason holds me upright as my legs give out. “How do you—? He raped me. He raped me…” The words tumble out, a painful release that I despise Mason for witnessing.

He presses against me, and my stomach roils at the feel of his erection digging into my belly. “I know, baby. He sure did, and he’s about to again.”

I shake my head, attempting to get as far away from him as possible, but his body seals against mine.

“Chase used company resources to dig into your past,” he whispers in my ear. “Seems that Lee was a client of ours once. In fact, Chase defended him, how do you like that? And I thought to myself, how ironic.”

Ironic. That Chase once defended my rapist, that he knew who he was—no, that’s not ironic. That’s just another cruelty linking us together in this fucked up world. I’ve been afraid to face the man who raped me, to face my past—but I’m not angry with Chase for any of it. “I don’t care,” I say. “You’re trying to hurt me, but you can’t. Stop your lame monologue and get this over with. I’m sick of looking at you.” I spit in his face.

I’m provoking him. It’s what I have to do. My only assurance that I’m protecting Chase—that we’ll be gone by the time he comes looking for me.

Mason only smiles, then licks a trail across my lips. I sputter back my revulsion. He pushes his erection harder against me, and I wish I could tear it from his body.

“You want to know the real irony that’s about to take place?” he asks. “Chase learns that by sicking an investigator on Lee, he revealed your whereabouts to him. As paranoid as Lee is, he had no choice but to take out the woman threatening to put him away.”

My eyes widen.

“Now you’re seeing the whole picture. Of course Chase wants to punish the man who hurt you. The man who comes back to hurt you all over again. And he will. He’s just going to punish the wrong man this time.” As he pulls back, his gray eyes assessing my reaction, he says, “Checkmate.”

I’m thrust through the office door on wobbly legs. Mason walks behind me, directing me down the hallway. My whole body feels ready to shut down. The adrenaline that kept me sharp, primed to fight, has depleted my muscles, leaving me drained and hollow.

There’s a calming relief washing over me, though—as twisted as it is. It won’t be the truth, but if Chase believes Mason’s lie, if he accepts a man from my past has done this to me, then he’ll know I didn’t willingly leave him.

Only Mason hasn’t thought this all the way through. He hasn’t been methodical. He didn’t have time to plot this out, think around all the angles and evidence. He stumbled upon a jagged piece from my past, one he thinks he can forcefully wedge into his warped puzzle.

But it’s half-hatched and sloppy. Leaving behind a trail that Chase will follow.

“Framing Lee is going to be more difficult than you think,” I say, nearly buckling from the throb in my shoulder as he jerks the belt to halt me at the elevator.

“When you know the law, you know how to get around it,” he says simply. He turns me around and drives my back against the wall, knocking the breath from my lungs.

He smiles at my pain as he closes in. “I’m not a bad man,” he says, drawing the gun from behind his back. “I just have particular tastes and needs.” He runs the barrel between my thighs, the cold metal biting into my skin. “I’m going to do things to you Chase only fantasizes about. Things you never knew you craved.”

I’m shaking. I can’t help it. But I don’t lower my gaze. I hold steady, looking right into his eyes. “Even if I never figured out the truth, you were always going to do this. You want what belongs to Chase.”

The backs of his fingers graze my cheek. “I can’t help myself – you’re forbidden fruit.” The gun makes contact with me through my underwear, and my breath is lost. His smile stretches. “Taking Chase’s plaything for myself is just too irresistible.”

I close my eyes as he reaches around me…and then the ding of the elevator doors opening sets my breath free.

“Let’s go.”

Inside the elevator, Mason keeps me in front of him, the gun seated at my lower back. I can’t help but think that at one time, when Chase first approached me, I was just a game to him. A piece to be moved around. A possession to be owned. His property.

Mason said it himself: I’m a pawn. Pawns are meant to be sacrificed. I want to believe that’s changed—that somehow, we’ve become real—that Chase no longer sees me as a pawn. I have to trust in that—in us—or else my sacrifice is empty.