Selling Scarlett

chapter Eighteen

~HUNTER~

I find a receipt from a bar in San Luis in Priscilla's handbag while she's cleaning herself up in the guest bathroom off the living area. It's from a place called MIGHTY'S. Interesting.

I fold it and slide it into a desk drawer. I'm surprised to find my fingertips shaking just a little. With what? Anger? Excitement that the trail of clues seems to be leading somewhere, even if I still don’t know where?

I realize belatedly, as I sink down on a leather chair to catch my breath, that I'm shaking because my back is ripped to shreds. The next heartbeat, I'm raging, because she did come to my place to keep me away from the party tonight, and my stupid ass let her. I let her whip me because when she placed it in my hand I heard Rita's voice inside my mind, and I would rather be whipped to shit than have to go through that.

But when the fog clears, I feel so stupid that I let her whip me. I also feel sticky blood on the back of my briefs.

I stand up. “F*ck.” I even got a little on the chair.

I'm shaking in earnest now, because if there's anything I hate it's f*cking blood. I turn a circle, squeezing my eyes shut as I realize I can't leave Priscilla alone in my house.

I grit my teeth against the throbbing pain and push a chair in front of the bathroom door. Then I rush back to my bedroom, where I keep a first aid kit. I grab a fresh pair of boxer briefs, a black towel, and an Ace bandage, figuring gauze won't be enough to keep the blood off my tux.

My stomach churns as I stride back into the living area. Priscilla is pounding on the bathroom door. “Hunter, you bastard! I have a party to host at my mansion!”

I shove the chair aside and she strides out, looking like an evil creature in her fluffy coat. “Hunter,” she says with mock concern as her eyes flick over my face and shoulders. “You're bloody and you're pale as a ghost. You need to go lie down. You look like hell.”

When I lock my jaw and hold out the bandage, her blue eyes widen. “Surely you don't expect me to...”

“Yes, I do, Priscilla.” I hand her the bandage and the little metal clasps and turn around, trying to ignore her as she gasps and starts piling on the faux sympathy. “Oh you poor doll. This has to be excruciating.”

“Yeah yeah,” I mutter. “Just start wrapping.”

“But Hunter, what you need to do is shower. If I wrap it like it is, you'll get an infection.” I can hear the subtle improvement in her tone, a little happiness as she thinks her plan falls into place. “Hunter, I know we agreed to go as a pair, but why don't you stay in tonight? Just relax. You've earned it, surely?”

“Wrap my back, Priscilla.” I level a look over my shoulder that I hope kicks her ass into gear, and a second later she starts wrapping.

She works quickly and she's not gentle. The bandage is tight as she steps in circles around me, wrapping me from abs to collar. I clench my jaw and shut my eyes and inhale through my nose. F*cking Priscilla.

I can gauge the width and depth of the wounds by the way they feel under the bandage. The superficial cuts near my shoulders and my hips just sting, but the deeper slashes throb with every heartbeat.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” she says in her sing-song voice.

I wouldn't tell her this shit hurt if my life depended on it. Priscilla is a masochist, but she has a sadistic side, I learned tonight. She brought the whip to keep me out of the party, but she definitely enjoyed using it.

“All done,” she says after what feels like a thousand years. Pain is a hot vice around my throat, clouding my mind, making my body cold and light enough that I feel like I could float away. I ignore this and dress myself, trying as hard as I can not to wince or even move stiffly.

“You have a high pain tolerance,” she remarks as I slip into my coat. My stomach is churning because it hurts so much to lift my arms, but I give her a smug smile and move briskly as I grab my keys and slide my phone into my pocket.

Priscilla wants to take her limo, and I make the calculated decision to indulge her. I'd like to get as far off her radar as I can tonight, and acting easy-going will help with that goal. I tell her as we slide into the limo that I don't plan to be at the party long. I can see her perk up as she pours two glasses of chardonnay.

I arch my brow, roll my window down, and dump the glass out, and Priscilla laughs like it's the funniest thing she's ever seen. I smirk and lean forward a little in my chair. There's something irritating about being around a woman who knows she got the drop on me. Makes me feel weak. I'm pissed off by the time we roll up to the gaudy monstrosity that is the Heat Enterprises mansion: two stories of sleek gray stone with massive gold lions guarding the blood red doors, but before we get there, there's a moat and drawbridge. The water in the moat glows sparkly red. Priscilla grins when she sees the place.

We spend thirty minutes, if not longer, greeting a long line of Priscilla's 'business acquaintances', everyone from city officials to local mafia. I get caught with her when a gossip columnist pulls out her camera. I don't duck out of the picture, but I don't smile either.

The house is tricked out with cameras in every wall; speakers in every ceiling; and a red, orange, and yellow (“heat”) color scheme in every room, and every table is stocked with pamphlets explaining domestic violence, the charitable cause to benefit from tomorrow night's fights.

Priscilla flits off with one of her camera people to pose for a photo with the assistant mayor—only in Las Vegas would the assistant mayor attend a porn star’s benefit—just about the time I start feeling sick.

It’s my back. My skin is burning. I’m on my way to the bathroom when I get intercepted by Marchant’s cousin, Samuel. I talk to him for twenty minutes about some development ordinance he wants the city to pass. He wants me to help, and I have no f*cking idea what he’s talking about, my back hurts so bad.

I mutter an “excuse me” and shake my head. “Migraine,” I croak, and he says, “Ow. I'm sorry, man. Those things hurt.”

“They do.”

“Take care.”

Fat chance.

I spend the next five minutes in a frou frou yellow bathroom, where I text Dave and let him know I haven't seen Smith or Lockwood yet.

'I'm here, outside,' he replies. 'Lwd just arrived.'

Hell, yes. I'm stepping back into the formal dining room when I feel something trickle down my back. My stomach heaves—blood—and I whirl around to step back into the john just in time to see some lady close the door. F*ck. I step toward the food-piled table, telling myself to quit being such a p-ssy, but the punch is blood red and there's steak laid out on a platter right in front of me, swimming in...

F*cking f*ck!

I set off down the hall, swallowing repeatedly, ignoring one of Priscilla's cohorts, a pretty porn star named Cinnamon Vern. The nearest door is only steps away, and I'm reaching for the crystal knob when I hear Priscilla's voice.

I lean closer to the door, but her voice gets softer.

What the—?

I notice another door a few feet down, and walk swiftly too it. I hear a male voice, too, rising and falling in turn. I'm only standing there for a moment when I recognize it from a tape I heard in Marchant's office: It's Lockwood. He says something low that I can't hear, and Priscilla laughs.

“I ripped up his back. He’s trying to play it off, but he can barely walk.”

Lockwood chuckles, and she goes on. “Go for his left shoulder blade. I think there's some ceramic impacted. It was swollen and I noticed in the car he's not moving that arm much.”

I clutch my stomach; it feels hollow.

“I don't want to do that,” Lockwood says. I frown, confused. “I don't give a shit about the fight, and it's a bad idea to match me up with him anyway. I don't want anything to do with that sonbitch. I'm keeping my nose clean.”

“Honey, there’s not a thing about you clean,” Priscilla drawls.

He says something angrily, but for some reason it’s muffled.

“Don’t be silly,” Priscilla says, and Lockwood groans, “Just finish the damn job.”

Priscilla murmurs something I can't hear, followed by: "He doesn’t like to hurt a lady." She snorts, like the notion is ridiculous.

“Which is why you’re supposed to make him like it,” Lockwood snaps. “And get it on tape.”

She laughs under her breath. "I never have time for that."

"Yeah, because you're thinking with your p-ssy."

"He's a good f*ck.”

"Congratulations, now do you want to do time in prison, or do you want to frame this son of a bitch and go to Mexico with me?"

"Is she still alive?" Priscilla asks softly.

"Yes," he says, after a moment's pause. "Now get down on your knees and—"

I slip into the next room and get sick.