by Sophia Reed
"It's going to take a while to get past this," I said, both hands on her shoulders, trying to make her take a step back.
Instead she froze, just looking at me.
"There's no coming back from this," she said.
I left her in the room because she promised me she was safe. I left her there and I didn't search for sharps in the room because that's overly dramatic and ignores the fact that a determined suicide will find a way.
I didn't think she was a suicide though if she wasn't careful, no matter what she thought, it was possible she'd end up that way.
Slamming the door to her room behind me, turning blindly in my rage. She thought I was angry with her. Nothing could be further from true. I was angry all over again at Vincent. At Kie. At myself.
I knew Vincent was dead. Ultimate price paid, except that I'd actually be pleased if he was alive although only if he were in my control.
Annie knew he was dead. But she had no proof of Kie's death. How did I help her with that? My men had disappeared her. It would be foolhardy to go dig up the place they'd left her body.
I left her in her room.
And then I ran. Still dressed for it. Inside, in the compound. Running to the room at the center of it all, the cell where Ariel was.
For once she wasn't up and waiting for me, or kneeling with her head down. She was at the desk in her room, writing something in a slim volume with a fountain pen. When I burst in, she rose unsteadily and too fast, her face a study in surprise. One hand flashed out and knocked over the bottle of ink, sending it cascading to the floor.
She looked honestly distressed, catching most of the ink with a towel before it splashed. "Sir, I had no idea – "
I grabbed the back of her neck and propelled her across the room the way a cat scruffs a kitten. At the bed, I shoved her hard, sending her sprawling.
"On your belly!"
Too far gone to realize, until I saw the tape hours later, that she'd taken a moment to comply. It was the smallest possible lag but she didn't instantly do what I said.
Any other time I'd have been thrilled to see Ariel fight back to any degree at all.
Instead, I was in a blind rage, only aware of my own need. I ripped open the locked cabinet and selected the canes I wanted, the crops, the whips, the paddles, dragging everything out and onto the bed.
From the corner of my eye I saw something moving. Even in my rage I realized Ariel was shaking.
Good. Good. I wanted to hurt something. I wanted to bring her to her knees when she didn't mean to kneel. I wanted to leave her more bloody than I'd just left Annie in her own bathroom by her own hand. I wanted to paint this cell with Ariel's life has nothing for me blood.
I wanted to make her scream. And scream.
By the time I picked up the first cane she had come up to all fours, her back bowed and her ass held high, her head down, her eyes closed. The only tension was revealed in the way her hands gripped the bedspread.
I grabbed a Lexan cane, drove it through the air with a sound like fury.
Smashed it into the bed to the left of her quivering white ass.
Even just hitting the bed it exploded with a sound that shook the room. Ariel made a sound of pure fear and started to crawl up farther onto the bed.
I raised the cane again.
And threw it across the room as hard as I could. It hit the opposite wall by the door and fell, and lay there looking innocuous.
The room filled with an unusual silence. There was no sound of blows, no sound of something implacable hitting something soft and giving. There were no grunts, either from me as I struck repeatedly or from Ariel as she absorbed the blows as if that were the only thing she was there for. The only thing she was anywhere for.
I realized I was sitting on the edge of the bed, my face sunk into my hands, my breathing shallow.
I felt the bed move behind me as Ariel crawled over to me. In the years she'd been prisoner here, I'd never seen her do anything voluntarily like that. There were no mirrors in her room. Too dangerous and she didn't want to see herself anyway. So I had no idea how close she'd come until her legs came around from behind me, sliding over my thighs and wrapping like a hug. Her arms slid under mine and locked over my chest. Her cheek came down on the back of my neck. The warmth of her breath stirred my hair.
"Cole," she whispered, and it was a shock, hearing my name from her. "You're a good man. Who hurt you?"
A range of answers presented themselves. Punishing her for speaking out of turn. For using my name. For daring to ask anything at all about me. For presuming that she knew anything about me.
There were no repercussions. There was no pain.
When I began to sob, she wrapped her arms around me and dragged me onto the bed, pulled the covers over us both and held me.
Until the tears stopped.
28
Annie
Wherever Cole had disappeared to the night before, he never returned. Once the burn of alcohol had worn off, there was only the resulting sting and slight throb that a cut has afterwards. It doesn't hurt while it's happening, but sometimes it hurts after. Something about the injury and insult to the body. Too much pressure. Too much abuse.
I bandaged my ankle as I had intended, then stood and stared in the mirror. My hair was growing back from what Cole had done to it, too short yet to have any of my usual curl to it. Just dark fuzz starting up.
That was hard to forgive. He was trying to drive every bit of Vincent from me, but that had taken something of me with it. When undercover, I'd never had to wear my hair short. I liked my long curls. I was less enamored of men I'd met in the last year insisting on wrapping their fists in it and using that to drag my head back – or down, depending on what they wanted. But otherwise, I liked my hair. I thought Cole had too, so maybe he was punishing himself as well as punishing me.
When it became obvious he wasn't coming back, I tried the phones in the room, but they just went out to security.
"Is there a problem, ma'am?"
Matt Somebody. He was polite and distant as a lamppost. There was no emotion in him. He made me look deep.
"I'm trying to get a call through," I said. Once a tiny equilibrium had been established by the cutting my heart started to pound as I realized how long it had been since I checked in with Mark or my father. They'd both become used to my being able to contact them, something that never happened undercover, and as I'd thought in Paris, maybe they'd assume I was undercover, that I'd cleaned up enough to be usefully slightly dirty or I'd cleaned all the way up. If I’d died there, they'd never know, and for a while, that had looked possible.
I hadn't died there, so it was time to be in touch.
That hurt to think of them thinking, really. That I would get well and share none of that with them, only go back to work to apply my recovery to that.
Like me, but unkind.
"Sorry, ma'am. I don't have any orders allowing me to get you a phone."
"You never do anything without orders?" I asked, not sure where I was even trying to go with that.
"No, ma'am," he said. "Would you like me to put a request in for you?"
"Just stop calling me ma'am and we'll be even," I said.
"Ma'am?" he asked with no trace of irony.
I hung up on him.
I rebandaged my foot because it had bled again.
I did a light workout.
I took a shower.
I waited for Cole.
When he arrived, I didn't know how to ask if he was all right. It wasn't my place. I did it anyway.
"Thank you," he said formally. "It's been difficult without you and even more difficult to know what you went through. I'm just off kilter."
That he answered that way was proof of that.
"Sir, I need to call home," I said and instantly wished I hadn't. Even I wasn't sure where home was anymore, and Cole winced.
"I should have thought of that before now. Of course you can. I'll unlock the phones in my off
ice. You can use those."
Having made my request and having it granted, I now wished I could do anything else in the world.
"Annie?" My father sounded freaked out. Instant guilt bloomed in me even though what I thought I could have done from within Vincent's lair in Paris I don't know.
"It's me, Dad. Sorry I've been out of touch." I expected him to call my mother to the phone but he didn't.
"Where are you?"
That was a very definite command, the old Officer Knox, commanding and demanding and not taking no for an answer. It wasn't something I thought of very often because I'd grown up idolizing my father and wanting to be just like him. But he had a heavy hand and he ruled his home and castle no differently in a way than Cole did.
Not that I'd ever put them in the same room. Not even for a minute.
"I'm in – "
"If you say rehab, I'll wash your mouth out when we find you. Young lady, there is no kind of rehab that works like this."
I didn't bother asking what "like this" meant. It undoubtedly meant being totally out of contact with family. Not being in a place that could be named or where I could reliably be found. It meant – that I really was in treatment but there was nothing at all normal about it and nothing I could share with my father.
Or my fiancé.
"Dad? Are you – "
Furious? Oh, yes, he was. "I'm in contact with Mark is what I am," he said, as if whatever I was going to ask, he was going to answer with what was important to him. "We're working together to find you since you can't be bothered to call like you were doing and reassure us you're still alive. And – "
"What's the difference?" I snapped, startling both of us, I think. "I'm out of contact when I'm undercover. What's so different about this? Nobody should be trying to kill me when I'm in rehab."
Honestly? That sounded like a great idea.
My father ignored it. "Mark and I are looking for you. We're going to go on looking for you unless you'd like to tell us where you are."
So did not want to do that. "I know I'm out of contact. I'm sorry. I really am receiving help for the addiction but it's a little unorthodox. Daddy, I'm all right and I'll be back as soon as I can. I left too soon the first time and I relapsed. I want this one to work. I'm doing some college work and thinking of applying with the feds.'
I waited to see if he'd object. Of course he didn't. He just went on with what he had to say.
"We've talked to your commanding officer."
We? He and Mark went and talked to the loot? Oh, that sucked.
"He said you were on indefinite leave, and he wouldn't tell me what for, though my guess is the addiction."
I blew out a sigh as silently as I could. My commanding officer had given out as little information as he could – he wasn't supposed to give out any – enough to keep my father from freaking out too much for just a little while longer.
My relief was short lived. Because he kept talking. "When we find you, we're going to take you to get help." My father didn't do condescending, but his words were anyway. As if I couldn't make my own decisions about my own care. As if only when I was undercover could I be allowed to disappear on my own and keep my whereabouts secret.
As far as I knew, I was an individual separate from my father and definitely from my fiancé.
I bristled hard at what he was saying. "What do you mean, take me somewhere to get help? I am getting help and I'm sorry if you don't believe that. You worked vice – you must have seen someone who did things unconventionally and still got them done."
He snorted. That was a new one, coming from him. "Annie, if I thought you were getting help, I'd leave you where you are. But you are not in rehab or in a hospital."
Alarm bells started to sound in my mind. "Dad, what have you done/"
"Put a trace on the phone," he answered promptly.
Too promptly. That meant he was almost here. He'd been keeping me talking. I was using one of Cole's landlines. Probably they'd already narrowed in on southern Nevada, only for the last few weeks, I hadn't been here. There'd been no phone calls at all.
I panicked. "Dad, please. I am fine. I need to stay where I am!" I couldn't bear the idea of having doctors prying at my memory and trying to help me heal right now. If anything, I'd have gone back to fet if it was an option in order to forget everything I felt and experienced and knew and flashed back to.
"You're not. You're lying or you're under duress and anyway, it doesn't matter."
I went completely cold, holding the phone in both hands as if I could use it to fend off the news.
"Dad?" I could hear the panic in my own voice clearly now. "Where are you?"
"On your doorstep," he said, just before the pounding started on the door.
29
Cole
There was no doubt who the men were on the doorstep. They came with private security, the same as Vincent had, and were met by my private security. Because this time there was just enough warning.
I was headed back to Annie's quarters with breakfast, thinking it would be a good day to take a break from the usual routine. No run, no cleansing, no spanking. No fish.
She'd like that.
I was outside her room but still inside the compound, the tray in one hand as I maneuvered with the lock, when I heard her on the phone. She was shouting. By the time I got through the door and into her suite, I could understand her.
"Tell him not to open the door!" she shouted into the phone. "Whoever is on guard duty, stop the men who just got here!"
"Annie!" I dropped the tray onto the bed as I passed it. "What's happening?" In the back of my mind, insane scenarios played out where even Vincent wasn't dead, let alone Kie, that Annie not only wasn't just paranoid, but dead right.
I knew better. I saw what she did to him in the second before I pulled the trigger. Even if I hadn't hit him in the center of the forehead, she'd already driven his nose into his brain. He'd have been on a respirator for the rest of whatever life he had.
Even as I rounded the corner into the office, I knew. Pounding had started up outside her room, on the actual door that led into the suite from the outside. Whoever they were, they were armed. I could see them on the monitors over the desk. They carried guns, and though they weren't drawing down on my men, they had made it this far already.
Annie's father and fiancé. Had to be. Annie had been talking to her father undoubtedly, just minutes ago. Because she always called him before she called her fiancé and she talked longer with her father than with her fiancé. I don't think she realized that.
"Annie!"
She turned her whole body toward me, bringing the phone with her. Relief showed on her face. She reached her free hand to me and it didn't occur to me to do anything but take it.
"Yes," she said into the phone, and hung up. "It's my dad and Mark."
There was shouting from outside the suite.
"I know." I felt anything but calm but I didn't let it show. I'd talked to more than one set of desperate men holding guns. Not just Vincent and the men he'd come with but men in the rainforest in Brazil. Men who had nothing to lose and a whole lot of nowhere to lose one white man in, billionaire or not.
Actually, being a billionaire was worth fairly little in Brazil.
Annie's eyes were flicking everywhere, taking in the entire room she'd spent months exploring every aspect of. If there was an alternate way out, she'd have already found it. That didn't stop her from looking.
"Annie." I put just enough of the Dom in my voice. I needed her to listen. "These are your people."
I could see her wanting to argue. Undoubtedly she wanted to ask why I wasn't upset. "You can go with them. They won't hurt you."
Now there was outright panic on her face. I wasn't far behind her. These stolen minutes might be our last.
"I don't mean forever. I mean to keep everyone safe. For now." She was starting to fight, panic clearly showing because the door wasn't going to hold much longer. "Go with them. Se
e what they want. Then come back to me."
I definitely put the Master in that one.
Her eyes wide, she shook her head. "I just got back! I don't want to go!"
There wasn't any more time. Very fast, probably incoherently, I said, "They won't hurt you. Come back when you can." Then I spun her and struck her half a dozen times on the ass, a sendoff, and turned her back to me and kissed her once, very hard, on the lips.
Annie said, very clearly, "Cole, I –" Her eyes were wide and staring at me as the men with guns came through the door, shouting some kind of movie script instructions – Get away from the girl! Or Get on the floor! Things I had no intention of doing.
Instead, I gave her a smile and said, "That's one, Miss Knox."
She was laughing when her father and her fiancé threw themselves between us, protecting her from the monster in running shoes and shorts, who was still laughing. I kept laughing even when the retired cop brought up on charges of maybe being a little too violent in the past, threw me into a wall and proceeded to search me in a very thorough manner considering I wore only shorts and running shoes.
I stopped laughing when they attempted to cuff me, pulled away roughly and called out to Annie.
She answered promptly, struggling against the man I assumed was her fiancé, a golden-haired teddy bear in the making. He'd go to fat later in his life.
"Stop it," she snapped at him, and then, "Mark, let go. You're not rescuing me, you're making an ass of yourself."
The expression on his face said he was rescuing her whether she liked it or not, but he wasn't the one trained in various martial arts and when she turned his wrist nearly inside out, he stood down and held one hand out palm down, discouraging the men from doing anything with their weapons.
"Can everyone just take a breath?" Annie asked. She sounded reasonable.
She was a consenting adult. All she had to do was say she was here voluntarily and they'd have to go away. Unless they wanted to be the kidnappers.