Broken Dolls

by Kitty Thomas

  He adjusted the scope on the rifle. He’d considered cutting the power and going in and doing a clean sweep, but Matsumoto’s men would have night-vision goggles or a backup generator. Cutting the power was what you did on a B&E in middle class neighborhoods where people were too comfortable to understand the street but too poor to be able to afford much in the way of tactical equipment.

  Brian shot out the two video cameras on the front of the house—and the one on the side—from his perch. Then he waited.

  Predictably, two men spilled out the front door to investigate the sound of shattered glass. They must not get visitors like this often. Had it been Brian, he would have gone to the control room and checked the surveillance screens to make sure the video feed was operational before walking right out the front door like a bright and shining target.

  He eliminated the two guards and waited. When they didn’t return to their posts, more would arrive. He grabbed his bag and changed his position. The next three that came out were smarter than the first two. They were armed and crept around the side of the house, thinking whoever was out there was still at the front.

  Nice try but not good enough. Brian killed the first two as they crept around the side of the building. The third spun around and shot into the night. Brian flattened himself against the ground as the bullet whizzed by. He returned fire.

  And then there were none.

  Except that wasn’t quite right. There were always more. Especially with a guy as paranoid as Matsumoto. Brian almost had to respect that level of paranoia.

  He made his way closer to the back of the house, then pulled a grenade from his bag. It had a fifteen meter blast radius. He moved far enough away to ensure he wouldn’t get the house. Minutes after the explosion went off, all the rest of Matsumoto’s little army men came pouring out the back door. Right in the direction of the explosion.

  Idiots. For a man with so much money, Matsumoto could afford to hire a better security detail. He lobbed the second grenade at the same place as the first, and body parts went everywhere.

  By now Matsumoto knew someone was coming. Brian could have crept around the house like a ninja, taking them one by one, but the risk was higher that way, and if he didn’t keep himself alive, he’d be of no use to Mina.

  He slipped the smaller guns and knives and extra magazines into various holsters, leaving nothing behind that could be turned on him, later. Except the rifle, which he hid along with the bag.

  He walked in through the front door. If anyone beyond Matsumoto remained in the house, they knew he was coming, though they’d probably still default to the expectation he’d try a side entrance because it was more covert. Brian had given up covert with the grenades, but he’d saved himself a lot of work. He screwed a suppressor on his .22 and stepped inside.

  He was down to servants huddled in corners. This was the group that begged—the group who thought he might spare them. But that wasn’t how this went. Witnesses were a no go, and it was impossible to tell which intrepid cook or maid might sneak up on him later to try to be a hero.

  He took them out one by one. Unarmed fish in barrels. At the back of the house were a set of stairs that went down into what he could only assume were Matsumoto’s dungeons. Even below ground they would have heard the explosion above. It wasn’t as if grenades were subtle.

  But he’d cleared the main floor, and it was the only place remaining. Brian had left empty magazines all over Matsumoto’s home. He holstered the gun and pulled out a larger caliber.

  He crept down the stairs. It was silent, but he wasn’t fooled. He checked each room in turn until he got to the one at the end. He kicked the door in and leaped out of the way in case a bullet was coming. Even with body armor, he wasn’t taking chances. Instead, a throwing star came at him at just the right angle to get his shoulder. Motherfucker!

  He stormed in, infuriated and caught a bullet in his vest. A few inches another way, and he might be in trouble. He returned fire, and took the bodyguard out with two in the neck. Elsa screamed and threw herself on top of the man. Brian remembered her from her time in the house.

  Matsumoto stood behind Mina with a knife to her throat. She was tied naked to a Saint Andrew’s Cross and bleeding. She appeared unconscious already. Maybe dead. He tried to shut out that last possibility.

  As if reading his mind, Matsumoto said, “I just whipped her unconscious. She’s not dead.”

  He moved closer and looked her over. There was too much blood. He grasped her hand. Her ring was gone, probably taken off her. She always wore it.

  Brian felt himself go cold. The rage and indignation he’d felt when the throwing star had nicked him was forgotten. Now he was really angry. The kind of angry that got quiet and still and felt like a subzero freezer. The kind of angry that doubled back until there was no discernible emotion to be detected anywhere.

  He shrugged. “What do I care if she’s alive or not. I came here to kill you for stealing our property and obviously breaking the contract you would have signed had you bought her properly. Kill her, don’t kill her. Either way, you’re a dead man.”

  Matsumoto must have bought the bluff because he darted to steal the fallen bodyguard’s gun, but he couldn’t get to it in time before Brian shot him in the leg and took him down. He didn’t want him dead yet.

  He grabbed the man and flung him over a spanking horse and shackled him to it. Brian rushed to Mina and felt for a pulse. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found it steady and stronger than expected.

  “Elsa,” he said.

  She looked up, her face tear streaked and angry. “What?”

  He took in the marks Matsumoto had left on her. “Why didn’t you tell us he was abusing you during our check ins?”

  “He was patient. He didn’t start until the check-in visits stopped. By then I was too afraid of him.”

  Elsa spoke in a reasonable manner, but there was murderous intent in her eyes for killing the man that was obviously her lover.

  “I can’t let you go. You’re a loose end. You’re too damaged to resell, and you’d be a liability at the house.”

  “Mina will never forgive you if you kill me,” she said.

  “She’s unconscious. She’ll never know what happened here.” He killed Elsa quickly and cleanly, and then untied Mina. She slumped against him, the blood still dripping down her back onto a white tapestry.

  “So you’re killing everyone but me? To send a message?” Matsumoto asked.

  “Oh, no, I’m killing you. You’ll die in the fire.”

  He took Mina outside and retrieved the gasoline he’d discovered in a nearby outbuilding during his initial sweeps. He went through every room, dousing the house—especially Matsumoto. When he and Mina were a safe distance away, he lit it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mina cringed when she felt the hand on her face. She wanted nothing more than to slip back into the grace of unconsciousness to step outside of this place and away from her new horrible master. She wanted this deceptively kind touch to be Brian’s. She wished it so fervently that she could almost smell him and believe.

  “Mina.”

  The sound of loud engines woke her more fully. When she opened her eyes, she found she was lying down with her head on Brian’s lap. His shirt was off, and there was a bandage on his shoulder. As she grew more lucid she could feel the bandages on her own back. And the pain. She felt the cool metal of the collar around her throat. She couldn’t see it, but reaching to touch it, she knew it was Brian’s. Matsumoto hadn’t put a collar on her.

  This wasn’t happening. It was a dream. A lovely dream. If she let herself believe this was real and then woke up…

  “Drink.” The cool water sliding down her throat finally convinced her she was really with him.

  “We’re going back to the house.” His tone brooked no argument, but she wouldn’t have argued. She would have begged to go back with him. She couldn’t believe he’d come for her. She’d been sure she would die in there. Ma
ybe she was dead.

  “I shouldn’t have released you. But I shouldn’t have tortured that girl in front of you, either.” Mina lay silently listening to him speak as he stroked her hair. “I don’t know how normal emotions work. I don’t know why you’re an exception that lets me feel something almost like a real feeling. I don’t know if I love you or if I’m capable of it, but you are mine. You will always be mine. In the future I will consider all the ways I could damage you, not just the ways prohibited in a contract. And I will protect you from those things. That’s the best I can offer, but I need your obedience, and I need you to understand that I’m too broken to ever fix. I am what I am, but you are under my protection. That has to be enough. Is that enough for you?”

  It wasn’t enough. It should be, but it wasn’t. But it didn’t matter because whether it was packaged in the way she thought it should be, Lindsay had delivered to her exactly what he’d promised and what she’d asked for: a master who would be gentle with her and respect her boundaries.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. It was a lie, but it didn’t matter. Everything he’d asked was rhetorical. He wouldn’t let her go again. Not ever. She could feel the weight of self-blame on him for releasing her and his determination to keep her this time. It was explicitly stated in the grip he kept on her waist as if she might levitate up and away from him.

  “We don’t know how he found you.”

  Mina tensed.

  “But you do.” It was scary how little it was possible to hide from him, no matter how badly she wanted to. “Tell me.” It wasn’t a request.

  “The girl you punished in my place before you let me go…”

  “Cate?”

  Was that her name? She hadn’t known.

  “She knew he bid on me but that you’d taken the bid from him because of something Lindsay said. She broke into Lindsay’s office and found the man’s number.”

  The look that spread across Brian’s face was so dark and hard, she almost regretted telling him the truth. She didn’t ask what he’d done at the Japanese man’s house, if he’d killed everyone, if he’d left any survivors. She doubted it, but she didn’t want to know, and she was afraid if she asked he might tell her.

  “Rest. We’ve got a long flight,” he said.

  That was no problem. She was certain she could sleep for the rest of her life if she made the smallest effort. The last thing she realized as sleep claimed her was that she could feel the weight of her grandmother’s ring on her finger.

  Many hours later she woke in Brian’s bed. There was a tray of food on the nightstand. “You need to eat something. You need fluids, especially. I brought you soup, but you can have anything else in the kitchen after that.”

  “Thank you for coming for me. And for finding my ring.”

  He rested a hand against her cheek and nodded.

  “I’m going to deal with Cate now. Don’t interfere. Just be grateful if I decide to leave her breathing when I’m done.”

  Mina felt a coldness seep into her bones and spread to her extremities. She felt something flip over inside of her, a dark thing that she’d pushed aside each time before when she’d been hurt or misused.

  It itched.

  Her gaze rose to Brian. “I don’t care what you do to her.”

  He smiled and pressed a kiss to Mina’s forehead. “That’s my girl. I knew you were in there somewhere.”

  He lingered and held her gaze, a long moment of understanding passing between them. They were too broken—both of them—clinging to each other at sea on a raft that would never reach land.

  Brian squeezed her hand and left. Minutes later Cate’s screams filled the hallway. Mina looked to the door then back at her food and finished her dinner.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the following people for their help with Broken Dolls:

  Robin Ludwig @ gobookcoverdesign.com for the amazing cover art as always! You are my lobster!

  Michelle for editing help. Thank you for making time for me!

  Thanks to M for proofreading, digital formatting, and for being generally awesome. Love you!

  Frankie the cat for her disapproving looks when I tried to play with Legos when I was supposed to be working.