Chasing His Runaway Counterfeit

Armed with a face that looked uncannily like the untouchable ghost from his past, I crawled into the bed of New York’s most ruthless kingpin, Dominic Mercer. No matter how thoroughly I pleased him between the sheets, I knew what I was: a counterfeit. A stand-in whose actual personality didn't match the original in the slightest. Once I used his influence to butcher the men who destroyed my family, I wired fifty million dollars out of his offshore accounts and vanished into thin air. When we met again, I was burning through black cards in a neon-drenched VIP lounge in South Beach, draped over hired company. Before I could even stagger out of that gilded pit, a burlap sack came over my head. The man holding me by the roots of my hair had a voice like ice scraped over raw bone. "Counted the pretty boys in your booth, Jesse. However many you bought tonight, that’s how many rounds you’re taking from me." 1 Life has a sick sense of humor. The highest highs are always followed by a nose-dive straight into concrete. One second I was laughing into the collarbone of a sweet-smelling college kid, pouring top-shelf tequila down his throat; the next, I stepped into the club’s private corridor toward the restroom and caught a blunt strike across the back of my neck. I didn’t even have the breath to ask if this was an armed robbery or an old rival settling a score. When my eyelids fluttered open, the dim amber lighting and the smell of rich leather and aged tobacco told me everything. Not a robbery. A debt collection. Of the emotional variety. Dominic was lounging on a low-slung Italian sofa, legs crossed, an arm resting casually along the leather back. The tailored perfection of his charcoal suit looked almost sinister in the shadows. Gone was the heated, possessive warmth he usually wore in private; his gaze was flat, obsidian, raking over me like a coroner sizing up fresh meat on a metal slab. He lifted two fingers, crooked them slightly. "Over here." His tone left zero room for negotiation. I scrambled across the polished hardwood on my knees, wiping the sweat from my temples and plastering on the most placating, doe-eyed grin I could muster. "Hey, baby. I messed up." Dominic lowered his chin, his eyes tracing every inch of my disheveled frame with surgical precision. A faint, razor-thin smirk curved the edge of his lips. "Messed up? You seemed pretty sure of yourself five minutes ago. Telling the whole lounge you like them soft and delicate. Said you were planning to run through half a dozen of them before sunrise, didn't you?" I swallowed hard, the dryness in my throat scraping like sand. "Come on. That was just bar talk." "Bar talk?" He leaned forward, tapping my cheek with two knuckles—light, rhythmic, utterly patronizing. "I didn't find it particularly funny. Especially when you had both hands wrapped around his waist. Tell me, Jesse. How’d he feel?" I forced a tight, nervous chuckle. "Terrible. Honestly, nothing like you. Soft. Spongy. Total waste of cash." Dominic let out a dry, breathy chuckle that didn't touch his eyes. Slowly, his gloved thumb caught my jaw, forcing my head up. He pressed hard against my bottom lip, dragging it downward until my teeth bit into the delicate tissue. The sting brought tears to the corners of my eyes. Swallowing my pride, I flicked out the tip of my tongue and tasted the leather of his glove, then the warm sliver of skin at his wrist. Dominic’s fingers hitched. The pressure stopped. He withdrew his hand, his expression smoothing into a mask of mild, dangerous curiosity. "Cute," he murmured. "Except you looked like you were in heaven ten minutes ago. Should I drag him in here so you two can compare notes in front of me? Or should I just take you apart right here and see how many lies spill out of that mouth?" My stomach plummeted. Shoving down the nausea, I surged up from the floor, climbed straight onto the sofa, and straddled his lap. He raised an eyebrow but didn't push me off. His right hand came around, settling against the small of my back with the unyielding weight of an iron shackle. He stared up at me through hooded eyes, unreadable and ancient. Sitting on him was like perching on the ribcage of a resting panther. I leaned in, trembling slightly, and pressed a desperate, honey-slick kiss against his mouth. "Dominic, please. I know I screwed up. Just let it slide this once." Not a flicker of warmth crossed his features. He pulled an antique gold lighter and a cigarette from his breast pocket, flicked the flame, and took a long, slow drag. The smoke drifted between our faces, gray and suffocating. "Let it slide? Fine. And the fifty million you siphoned out of my Zurich account—what about that? You don't get two pardons in a single night, sweetheart. Pick which one you want me to forgive, and take the punishment for the other." It was never about the money. Fifty million to Dominic Mercer was pocket change he forgot in old overcoats. He just wanted blood. I was trapped. Truly, irrevocably trapped. If I had known five years ago that my life would boil down to this kind of psychological cage match, I would have starved in a gutter before stepping foot anywhere near his empire. When I was eighteen, my father’s oldest business partner engineered an embezzlement scheme that swallowed our family logistics firm whole. To keep their own hands clean, they backed my parents into a corner until the only door left open was the roof of an eight-story parking garage. Orphaned, hunted, and out of moves, I threw myself directly into the path of Dominic Mercer—the underworld sovereign who held half the city’s judges and dockyards in his fist. The first time he looked at me, the lazy smile on his face vanished completely. His eyes had cut into me like broken glass, lingering on the bridge of my nose, the sweep of my brow. He had stared for an eternity before letting out a harsh, bitter scoff. "Fine," he had said. "I’ll crush them for you. In exchange, you stay in my bed." No expiration date. No contract. Just an unspoken rule: I belonged to him until he grew bored. Back then, I was naive. I wasn't so breathtaking that a man of his stature would obsess over me forever; I figured two months, three at most, and he’d toss me aside with a generous check. I never expected to stay for five and a half years. Five years is an eternity. It’s long enough for the boundaries between survival, gratitude, and real, sickening desire to blur into something toxic. Then came the gala last month. An offhand remark dropped by a drunk shipping heir: “God, looking at you is like seeing Damian Brooks back from the dead. Mercer still hasn't gotten over the boy who broke his heart, has he?” My brain had short-circuited. Every kiss, every possessive grip, every dark look Dominic had ever given me rearranged itself under a hideous new light. I wasn't Jesse. I was a phantom’s body double. Panicked, terrified of losing what little sanity I had left, I bolted. And now, less than twenty-four hours later, here I was: thrown over the back of a couch, my jeans discarded on the rug, the rough upholstery scraping my chest while Dominic pressed his boiling weight into my spine. Neither moving closer nor pulling away offered any relief. His mouth burned against my neck, dragging down toward my shoulder, his touch setting fire to the humiliation pooling in my blood. When he bit down near my collarbone, his breathing turned ragged, laced with a terrifying edge. "Jesse," he muttered against my sweat-slick skin, his voice muffled, low and savage. "If I carved my name straight into your ribs, would you finally stop running? Or should I just break your head open until you forget every word except my name, sitting there waiting for me to spoon-feed you?" A shudder ran through my entire skeleton. Terrified, I twisted around, catching his face between both hands and feeding him my mouth, drowning his terrifying words under desperate, frantic kisses. 2 The next morning, my legs felt like wet cardboard. I crept down the spiral staircase of the Manhattan penthouse, every joint protesting. Dominic was seated at the far end of the marble island, reviewing quarterly hedge fund earnings on an iPad, a cup of black coffee steaming beside him. Martha, the head housekeeper who had mothered me through the last four years, smiled warmly and placed a bowl of poached eggs and warm grain porridge in front of me. I dropped my head, burning with shame. Yesterday, before I made my grand escape, I had actually cried while hugging Martha goodbye. I’d told her to take her blood pressure medication, whispered tearful platitudes about how she was the only decent soul in this den of wolves. Now, sitting here with my tail between my legs, I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Dominic didn't look up from his screen, but his voice cut through the silence like an icicle. "Left a heartfelt farewell for Martha, but couldn't spare three words for me. And whenever I ask why you ran, you play dumb. You’re getting remarkably bold lately, Jesse." I forced a stiff smile and picked up a spoon. "What are you talking about? I told you, it was a joke. I just wanted to see if you’d notice." Dominic’s knuckles rapped twice on the marble counter. "Keep telling yourself that," he said, turning his cold gaze onto me. "If you step out of line again, you’re done. I have to be in Chicago for the next three days. You’d better use that time to scrub whatever restless garbage you’ve got brewing in your head. If I find out you’ve been sniffing around outside, whatever part of you touches another person gets taken off with a blade." The hairs on my arms stood on end. I nodded vigorously. "I’ll be here. Right here, waiting for you." I wasn't suicidal. I knew when the lion was showing teeth. Or at least, that was the plan. Until Toby arrived. Toby had been my closest friend through our undergrad years at Columbia before he moved abroad. He texted me that afternoon saying he was back in the city and demanded drinks at a quiet rooftop in Brooklyn. We started drinking at three in the afternoon. By eight, my vision was spinning. When consciousness finally dragged me back to the surface, the hum of a jet engine vibrated through my skull. I wasn't in a cab. I wasn't in my bed. I was strapped into an Italian leather recliner inside a private Gulfstream G650, staring out at a sea of clouds. My jaw practically hit the floorboard. "Toby... what the hell did you do?!" Toby sat across the aisle, sipping champagne with a smug, heroic grin on his face. "Relax! Yesterday you were drunkenly rambling about how suffocated you felt and how you wished you could just disappear to Europe. So, boom. I made it happen." My stomach bottomed out into an abyss. "You did what?" Toby waved an airy hand. "Oh, and your boyfriend called last night around two in the morning, demanding to know where you were. You were completely out cold, so I told him you were sleeping and not to be an annoying control freak, then hung up on him." My voice reached an octave I didn't know existed. "You hung up on him?" "Well, yeah. But the dude had zero manners—he kept blowing up the line every thirty seconds, so I just switched your phone off." "You turned it off?!" I launched myself across the cabin, snatched my phone off the console, and jammed the power button. The screen flickered to life. Eighty-five missed calls. Forty-seven unread texts from Dominic, each one shorter, colder, and more implicitly violent than the last. Jesse. Pick up. Five minutes. I hope whoever took you has an iron coffin. I stared at the glowing glass, my soul effectively exiting my body. Toby rolled his eyes. "Why are you looking like you're facing a firing squad? It’s just a boyfriend. If he’s this psycho, screw him. Once we land in Tuscany, I’ll find you three gorgeous Italian models to wash him out of your system." Toby didn't know the truth. When Dominic and I got together, Toby was already in London. He didn't know about my family's ruin, didn't know Dominic was a syndicate boss, and he certainly didn't know I was a kept thing. I had too much pride to admit I was someone’s bird in a gilded cage. To the outside world, I had always referred to Dominic as my high-strung corporate boyfriend. 3 There was no time to explain. My thumb shook violently as I hit redial. The line connected on the first ring. Dead silence. The pressure coming through the receiver was so thick I could practically feel Dominic’s breath freezing the glass against my ear. I cleared my throat, forcing the sweetest, most innocent tone I possessed. "Baby? Are you there?" Nothing. Just the faint, rhythmic sound of paper rustling on his end. My pulse thudded against my ribs. "Dom... what are you doing?" The rustling stopped. Dominic’s voice drifted through, quiet, smooth, and utterly terrifying. "Looking at plots. Trying to decide if your new boy toy deserves a burial or a cremation. Or maybe I’ll just drop him in the Atlantic for the bottom-feeders. What do you think, Jesse?" A sharp spike of pain shot behind my eyes. I knew that tone. God help me, I knew it intimately. Five years ago, at a private gathering for the family heads in upstate New York, Dominic’s uncle Arthur had cornered me near the billiard room. Later that evening, Arthur had openly laughed across the dinner table, telling Dominic: “Once you get tired of that pretty little thing, pass him over to my house. Let your uncle take him for a spin.” Back then, I had already resigned myself to the reality of being collateral. In my mind, Dominic was just a weapon I was renting to take down my parents' murderers; I expected to be discarded, traded, or thrown to his lieutenants the moment I outlived my usefulness. When Arthur made that offer, Dominic had sat in the shadows of the dining room, slowly stubbing out his cigar. He hadn't lashed out. He had simply smiled, a chilling, languid expression, his eyes sliding between me and his uncle. "If you like him that much, Uncle Arthur, maybe I’ll send him over tomorrow." Beneath the table, Dominic’s warm, scarred fingers had pried open my white-knuckled fist, his fingers threading brutally between mine, pinning my hand flat against his thigh. He blew a ring of smoke directly into my face, his dark eyes daring me to speak. I had looked away, too numb to protest. That night, he didn't sleep. He had pinned me to the mattress from midnight until seven in the morning, relentless and silent. No matter how much I sobbed, apologized, or begged, he hadn't stopped. Only when my voice gave out completely did he pull away, smoothing my sweat-soaked bangs, his voice hoarse and raw in the dark: “Why didn't you say no? I gave you the chance. Why didn't you ask me to protect you? Did you actually want to go with him?” I had only offered a silent, bitter laugh. What right did a pet have to refuse? The next afternoon, Uncle Arthur was found dead in an abandoned industrial park near Newark. The body had been torn apart by strays, but the coroner noted that his tongue had been surgically removed before his heart stopped. When the report arrived at the penthouse, Dominic hadn't even blinked. "Bury him," he’d murmured. Then he looked across the breakfast table at me, using the exact same breezy cadence he was using right now. "Why do you think he ended up like that, Jesse? Who do you think killed him?" My butter knife had clattered against the porcelain plate. "Wasn't it an accident?" I whispered. Dominic had smiled, swapped his own knife for mine, and leaned close. "He said things he shouldn't have. He wanted things he couldn't touch. So he died. Don't worry, baby. Keep your head down, stay in my house, and nothing will ever touch you." That was when I learned that Dominic’s protection was just another word for an inescapable cage. Over the years, his suffocating indulgence had worn down my defenses until I forgot how dangerous he was. Until the rumor about the ghost from his past resurfaced. For the last month, Dominic hadn't touched me. A man who used to call three times a day during business trips suddenly went silent for weeks. He looked right through me. The panic had mutated into something hideous inside me: If I kill the person he's mourning, will he only see me? That thought had terrified me. I was losing my mind, turning into a monster. So I ran. And now, my friend was casually strolling toward the exact same meat grinder. 4 "Dominic, listen to me," I scrambled to say into the phone. "It’s not what you think—" Toby, sitting across from me, frowned deeply. "Wait, why are you talking to him like you're on trial? Is he threatening you?" Dominic’s voice dropped another ten degrees through the speaker. "Jesse. Have I been treating you poorly?" Cold sweat rolled down my spine. "No. You’ve been wonderful." "Stop lying to him!" Toby barked, lunging across the aisle. Before I could pull back, he snatched the phone from my hand. "I knew it! You’ve been walking on eggshells for years. Don't worry, Jess, I’ve got you." He tapped the red button, wound his arm back, and hurled my phone straight into the galley’s boiling water dispenser. Splash. A short hiss, a flicker of bubbles, and the screen went black. Along with any hope of my survival. I grabbed Toby by the collar of his silk shirt, shaking him until his teeth clattered. "Do you have any idea what you just did?! Who gave you the audacity to hang up on Dominic Mercer?! I have a body to bargain with—what do you have?! Your dad has to kiss his ring at the Union League, and you just signed your own death certificate!" Toby scoffed, completely unfazed. "Please. My family’s connections in Europe are bulletproof. Mercer wouldn't dare pull anything on Italian soil. Besides, you think I came back to the States just to say hi? I heard you got dragged back after trying to run two days ago. I came to extract you." I bit my lip, my voice dropping to a raw whisper. "Toby... I love him. I don't actually want to leave." Toby’s eyebrows shot up. "Does he love you?" Silence hit the cabin like a lead weight. Before the rumors, I was certain he did. But now... Toby reached out, his grip suddenly tightening around my chin, his hazel eyes darkening with a bizarre, feverish intensity. "He doesn't love you, Jesse. Why are you clinging to scraps? Isn't it better to just be free?" A strange prickle of alarm went off in my chest. Toby had never looked at me like that. He was the goofy, golden-retriever slacker from sophomore year. Then I remembered last night at the Brooklyn bar—just before I blacked out, he had looked at me with this exact same somber expression and whispered: “I’m sorry, Jess.” My eyes widened. "Toby... what are you doing?" Toby sighed, a slow, theatrical sound. "You always were too sharp for your own good." He pulled a small aerosol canister from his pocket, aimed it at my face, and pressed the nozzle twice. A sweet, chemical mist hit my lungs. Darkness rushed in from the edges of my vision. As my knees buckled, Toby caught me against his chest, his voice echoing in the haze: "When you wake up, it’ll all be over."