The Ultimatum

Marlo

The heavy thud of the floorboards vibrated through the strong oak floorboards and up my spine and my lungs froze.

Someone was in the house

I expected Jarrah to reach for a weapon, to shove me back into the tunnel we had just emerged from and told me to run for my life, but instead, he was relaxed, broad shoulders loose, heavy hands resting on the edge of the desk at my sides, holding me in the heated corner.

“Cal has the foyer,”

he announced, a lazy heat in his golden eyes.

“five men. Hired guns from the port. They won’t make it up the stairs.”

Muffled voices rang in the distance, accompanied by the splintering of wood. Men fighting, cursing, bleeding out for a taste of the captain of the Monash hockey team, and yet, instead of running, the man staring into my eyes smiled.

“They’re here to kill me,”

I whispered, a hand balling tight around silver chain

that hung from my neck.

“Siobhan sent them.”

“She did,”

the easy admission escaped his painted lips before a slow tilt of his head, scanning my face, taking in the terror that raced down my veins. “This is where the game ends, Marlo. Ten years of watching you from the shadows is over. We don’t have much time.”

He stepped away, and I shivered in my overly large grey hoodie. Jarrah went to the loose floorboard and eased the thick, velvet box free before going back to the desk, setting the bundle down beside me.

“You have two choices,”

he mused, a slow, silk covered sneer curling his lips. There was no playfulness in his gaze, nothing but the hardened steel of a man who ran a syndicate and an ice rink with the same brutal efficiency. “Choice one. You walk out the back service door of this estate. I have a car outside with the engine running. It will take you to the airport. You board a flight, escape Melbourne as far as your pathetic scholarship will take you and live the rest of your days hiding from the ghosts of Siobhan.”

The tightness in my chest eased slightly. I inhaled sharply,

“And choice two?”

Jarrah opened the velvet box. He didn’t take any parchment paper free, he gathered the thick bundle of aged paper, ten years of his unyielding, black obsession wrapped in rough stitched black string. He hooked his thumb in the deep pocket of his dark winter coat, which hung off the back of his leather wingback chair, and stuffed the letters inside, away from prying eyes.

“Choice two,”

he stepped up close, resting in my space once more.

“You stay. You step out of the shadows and I, I will put my name on you. I will make every son of the godforsaken city of Melbourne know that if they touch you, they answer to me. You take your inheritance from the sea, you tear it free from the hands of Siobhan and you watch her bleed for what she did to your blood.”

The sound of wood splitting downstairs thundered above us, a heavy breath torn from a mans lungs echoing in the distance.

I flinched, pressing further back into the desk. Ten years ago tonight, my first day at university, I had taken every opportunity to shrink down, disappear behind the wide backs of tall, burly men, to keep my head down, clean the floors and wait tables. The rich and powerful of the University, I served them, took their scorn and their greed and I never looked behind me. Not even when the monster king of the Melbourne underworld came knocking. Now, the monster was offering me a tiara of glass.

I looked up into the eyes of the man who held my fate and I expected to see a man who had played me. But the desire that burnt in his golden gaze, the way he held my fragile body, close, wasn’t playfulness.

He didn’t want to use me. He didn’t need me. He had everything, but he wanted me.

Something hot and angry simmered in my chest against the cold terror and I knew, I was no longer the mouse who hid.

“If I stay,”

I breathed, the tension leaving my shoulders as the shaking in my limbs slowly faded away.

“I don’t crawl in this room, or live in the tunnels, while you do my fighting for me, if I choose to step into your world, Jarrah, then I ain’t your prisoner.”

His smile stretched slow and hungry across his sharp cheekbones, all smug male pride, dangerously close to blinding in the depths of his eyes.

“I would never lock you up in a cage, little mouse,”

he murmured, lowering until his breath ghosted over my lips. “I want them to see you coming.”

His fingers dug in the pocket of his dark jeans before he emerged with his knuckles, still bruised over the black polished mahogany.

Slowly, he pushed a thick antique brass key across the desk until it settled in the palm of my shaking hands.

“The Master key to the house,”

he whispered, a rough, low sound in his throat. “it opens every door, every passage, every secret in this place and you, little mouse, will take it and bind it with every drop of your blood and promise to make me yours.”

The study grew deadly silent in the wake of his words. Downstairs, there was the hush of combat ceasing, men catching their breath before the first wave of their retaliation would begin. I stared at the thick, dull brass key in my palm and wondered if it weighed as much as this decision. To live a lonely, sad, miserable life tucked away in the estate, or throw away my meager existence in an outright brawl with the monster of Melbourne syndicate.

I swallowed, the metallic taste of the brass key filling my mouth before I squeezed the warm metal and allowed the warmth to seep into my cold, trembling fingers.

”Good girl,”

Jarrah purred, his hand at the back of my neck drawing me to him and against the rising pressure of his lips against mine, the great double doors of the study exploded inward, slamming against the paneling in a violent gust of displaced air.

I twisted away from the embrace, facing the mass standing in the doorway

My blood ran cold in my veins until I registered the frantic, sickened look in his wide blue eyes.

Cal O’Shea stood in the doorway, his chest heaving, knuckles stained with fresh blood.

“Cal,”

Jarrah’s growl echoed in the stillness. “Report.”

The ex-soldier took a careful breath before he lifted a trembling hand and tossed a small packet of plastic to the table next to the velvet box.

Siobhans delicate reading glasses, covered in blood,

smeared across the clear plastic.

“The men in the foyer were only part of the distraction,”

he hacked a laugh, smearing a line of blood across his nose and swiped at it. “Siobhans not at the apartment, she never was, but its in the basement of this estate and if you could believe it she just cut the power.”

Every light in the house went out, plunging the estate into shadow.