by Box Set
“Not her face,” Viršininkas ordered, his words spoken rapidly, the excitement as he watched clear in his tone.
The hate in Matis’ eyes was an emotion so thick it almost had its own stench. Or perhaps it was just the tangy iron scent of blood. Blood he had drawn from my body more times than I could count. The blade pressed harder against my skin, and just when I thought he’d disobey Viršininkas and cut my face, it disappeared. One of my legs was wrenched high, and Matis positioned his rigid erection at my core. Closing my eyes, I tried to disappear from this place, taking my mind far away where it could no longer be damaged.
“Tut, tut, Beauty, you know better than that,” Viršininkas’ voice hissed in my ear as he physically forced my eyelids open. “Watch Matis work. He is a genius when it comes to blood fucking.”
Then it began, the fucking, the bleeding, the animalistic, carnal hate that coated my body like sludge. Disgust had never burned so hot inside me, loathing as hot as lava. And for hours, as I hung like a slab of meat from the hook in that dungeon, my mind painfully present, I silently promised if I ever got free I’d rain down retribution on these men like nothing the universe had ever seen.
HART
The security surrounding Algis’ property was almost non-existent, his attempt to secure it was almost laughable. The two men patrolling the grounds were hired locals, one of whom had been taking a piss when I slit his throat, the other smoking a cigarette and playing on his cell phone. As expected, the manor was wired with security cameras, but nothing more than a few clipped cables inside the breaker box had disabled the entire system. Now surrounded by the luxurious furnishings, I couldn’t stop my lip from lifting in a sneer. It was too perfect, too orderly, too bland. The air reeked of clove cigarettes and air freshener that was probably meant to mask the underlying odor of acrid, burning tobacco. I much preferred my private beachfront villa on the east coast of Mexico, with warm tones, brick and clay finishes, and cluttered mess. Although London was my birthplace, Tulum was my home, and standing in the middle of Algis’ minimalistic living room, I missed home.
With quiet, purposeful steps, I navigated the lower floor, making my way to the wide staircase that led to the upper floor. I’d spent long hours scrutinizing the layout of Algis’ property, both inside and out. I knew every wall, room, and doorway. At the top of the stairs, I turned right and followed the wide hallway until I reached the last door. It was closed, but I knew it wasn’t locked. Algis was too arrogant to think of doing such a thing, his head clouded with self-importance and entitlement. He thought himself untouchable. He was fucking wrong.
I pushed the door open and paused, watching for movement in the dimly lit room. Finding no shadows lurking, I decided it was safe to enter, stepping forward and making my way to the bed and the snoring lump of mass under the thick covers. Snapping open a pocket on my cargos, I pulled out the syringe I’d already prepared and carefully removed the cap over the needle. With quick and efficient movements, I stabbed the needle directly into Algis’ jugular. He squirmed, grunted, offered a feeble slap at my wrist, then settled back into the uninterrupted sleep I had sent him with the drug now pumping through his veins. It was so easy it was laughable. I’d gift wrap him in chains and present him to my boss, who would show Algis just how unimportant he was in the whole scheme of things.
A sniffle from the furthest side of the bed caught my attention, and I pocketed the syringe and drew my gun, making my way around the bed with quick strides. What greeted me from the floor beside the bed made my stomach curdle. She didn’t move, barely made a sound except for her quick, short breaths. Leaning forward, I caught a glimpse of gleaming metal and realized right away that she wasn’t a threat, nor was she going anywhere anytime soon. Carefully stepping over her prone form, I flicked on the bedside lamp. My shocked eyes met hers. While my research on Algis had uncovered her existence, it was still a surprise to see her in the flesh again. It had been not more than three days ago when Charlie Decena and I stormed a mansion at Kensington Palace Gardens where I first caught sight of this girl. Just a brief glimpse of big, blue eyes emphasized by smoky eyeshadow, perfect heart-shaped lips painted blood red, and long, blonde hair that fell to her waist. That room had been filled with many beautiful women, but the fleeting glance I’d had of this particular one stayed with me. Even as beaten and bloody as she was now, she was still exquisite. Her makeup was smeared like a sad clown, the dark mascara leaving tear tracks down her pale cheeks. So tragically beautiful.
As my eyes perused her body, I noted the chains around her wrists and ankles that kept her tethered to the floor. Around her neck was a thick, silver collar, and it too was attached to a short chain beneath her neck. Her movement restricted to a few scant inches here and there.
“Chain ’im up and get me the spreader bar. We don’t want ’im closin’ up on us.”
The memory pushed bile up my throat, and choking it back down was like swallowing concrete. With a shake of my head, I dislodged the images in my mind and forced my concentration back on the woman before me. While there was definitely fear in her trembling limbs and panicked breaths of air, it was almost smothered by something else, something so familiar it was like looking in a mirror. Rage. So much rage she was drowning in it.
“I find it difficult to believe a wisp of a girl like you would need to be chained and subdued,” I whispered, resting to my haunches at her side. “Let’s get your free, hmm? Do you know where the key is kept?”
Eyes, big and round, reminding me of a doll, watched me warily. Just when I thought she wouldn’t answer, her full, cracked lips parted.
“Viršininkas keeps them on a chain around his neck.”
Her voice was rough, perhaps not used in some time, or more likely, her throat raw from screaming. I rose and moved back to Algis who did, in fact, have a thin gold chain around his neck, three keys hanging from it. With a slight tug, the clasp easily broke. Once back beside the broken angel, I knelt and began the task of releasing the padlocks that tethered her. Ankles, both rubbed raw from their bindings, first. Next, her wrists, fine, like a bird’s delicate bones, and lastly, the choker around her neck that fell with a clunk to the floor once released. Even now, free, she didn’t move as she watched me, assessing, trying to figure out if I was friend or foe. My world was filled with death and blood, I’d seen and done things that would send me to the fiery gates of hell, and I didn’t hold a flicker of remorse. Was I a threat? Always. But I had morals, however fucked up they might be. Perverts and pedophiles were the first on my shit list, rapists and traffickers next. So, I guess you could say I was a friend. However, as I gazed upon her body, my cock thickened, and lust filled my veins. Perhaps friend was too empty a word for the way she made me feel. I didn’t do unwilling women, but this girl’s combination of broken beauty, vulnerability, and barely smothered anger intrigued me on a level no other woman had ever done.
My fingers itched to touch her and see if her skin, so pale it was almost translucent, was as soft as it appeared. Crystal blue eyes with a sharp, angry glower watched me from a face so lovely it could possibly be described as angelic, even with the yellowing bruise on her cheek. Her hair was long and a blonde so fair it was almost white. Her features were reminiscent of Scandinavia or Denmark. She was from neither, though, the unmistakable inflection in the few words she’d spoken were clearly American. Obviously, she’d been abducted, and she was young, maybe still a teenager, though late teens. How long had she been in Algis’ possession? She didn’t even attempt to hide her nakedness as my gaze followed her collarbone, dropping to small breasts with pale pink tipped nipples. Ignoring the angry bruises and deep gashes, I shifted my inspection to her concave stomach. She needed food, she was too thin. Her hip bones jutted out, presenting me with a line straight to her perfect bare pussy. Her inner thighs were marred with bruises in varying shades of purples, blues, and yellows. Recollections of a time I’d long since buried threatened to unearth themselves again. The phantom feeling of hands rak
ing over my body and fingers digging into my flesh sparked a light to the simmering temper I’d spent many years learning to control. With my jaw clenched tight, I concentrated on keeping myself in check and the monster leashed. That feeling of being weak, vulnerable, and abused could only been dulled with blood and death. Glancing down at the woman, I remembered how it felt to be so helpless, and I recalled the bloodshed I had needed to settle my own tormented mind.
“Don’t pity me.”
Her voice was low, barely a whisper, but the tone was held together with steel and barbs. She’d surprised me and there were few who could do that. Rather than ask who I was or what was happening or if I was going to hurt her, she slapped away any empathy I might share with her. Looking harder upon her delicate features, I saw the twisted darkness. It was there, deep in her tortured gaze. I saw it because I knew it well. This girl wasn’t broken, but she’d been torn down and was ready to be built anew.
“I wouldn’t dare,” I murmured, trying to hide my smile.
That wild madness was suddenly focused elsewhere, her doe-like eyes tearing away from mine. She was now staring at the bed where Algis continued to sleep, deep, heavy snorting noises escaping his lips. The girl’s fists clenched as she lifted to a sitting position. It must have hurt, but she hid the pain well as she continued to glare at the man sleeping peacefully.
“Who are you?” she eventually asked.
Who I was didn’t matter. To some I was a ghost, a man only seen if he wanted to be seen, a name only given if I wanted to give it. I didn’t really know who this girl was, or how much of myself I wanted to give her, so I figured it best to give her nothing.
“He won’t wake any time soon.” Reaching into my pocket with slow movements, I produced the used syringe. The girl’s gaze finally left Algis and returned to me. The crazed torture in her eyes disappeared, a blank canvas of nonchalance replacing it. “I drugged him. You see, Algis pissed off the wrong person. I’m here to bring him in.”
“Who’s Algis?”
This time I didn’t try to hide my smile, nodding toward the bed.
“Meet Algimas Bakaitis, also known as Algis. He is a member of Lithuania’s millionaire’s club. He owns one of the world’s largest transport companies.” She looked to the bed, then to me, then back to the bed again, her long, dark lashes blinking slowly as she allowed my words to sink in.
“Did you know that by knowing a demon’s name, you have power over it?” The curious question caught me off guard, and by the confused frown on her face, I assumed it did her, too.
“I don’t know how I know that, I just do.”
“Interesting,” I confessed. “So, you now have power over Algis, hmmm?”
The corner of her mouth twitched, almost as if she was going to smile.
“He’s not a demon,” she murmured. “He’s just a rapist piece of shit and I never much cared to know his name.”
A bark of laughter left my lips, and the girl’s gaze dropped to my mouth before she was back to staring at the skinny bastard in the king-size bed. Pulling my cell phone from my pocket, I checked the time. However fascinating I found the girl, I only had fifty-four hours to get Algis back to my boss, Charlie Decena. Time was of the essence. Charlie was a man who didn’t like to be kept waiting.
“Do you have a knife?” The girl’s voice abruptly brought an ending to all thoughts of Charlie and Algis.
“What would a little thing like you do with a knife, hmm?” I wondered out loud, watching and waiting for her response.
“I’m not a thing,” she spat out. “And if I had a knife I’d probably cut off his penis and shove it down his throat.”
She was so matter of fact that my lips parted, and my mind went blank, but the girl paid me little attention, her seething anger entirely on Algis. Broken wasn’t even an adjective in her vocabulary. I’d been on the front line of too many rescues to count, slave girls, boys, women and men little more than a husk upon their release. Their minds so crippled and their spirits so crushed, few would recover from their ordeal. This slip of a girl was so far from broken, it made me pause. Perhaps I should give her my damn knife and let her carve up the useless twat. If Decena weren’t involved, I probably would.
I sank back on my haunches with a sigh. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
“I made a promise that if I ever got free I’d kill him.” Tilting her head to one side, much like a puppy might do, she added, “Slowly. Am I free?”
I considered her for a moment, taking in her defiant beauty. She looked like a wild animal, her tangled white hair hanging over her shoulders, deep bruises marring her fair complexion, blood still trickling from some of her wounds. A mesmerizing angel, full of tempestuous rage. Was she free? I guess she was, though I couldn’t deny there was a part of me that wanted to keep her. Could I refuse her vengeance? I’d been unable to deny my own, and it was the first step to rebuilding my damaged mind. She needed it, the reversal of power, the retribution.
“Forty-eight hours,” I found myself saying, my thoughts carrying the words straight from my mouth before I’d truly thought them through. Her nose crinkled, and that little line between her brows appeared again. “You’ve got two days, then I must deliver him to my boss. I’ll give you two days with Algis during which time you may do as you wish with him.” Her eyes widened with shock, and I raised a finger. “But you can’t kill him.”
BEAUTY
“What?” Disbelief left me frozen in place.
The stranger still sat on his haunches before me, unmoving, his face stony, his emotions carefully hidden away so I couldn’t get a read on him. Friend or enemy? I had no idea. His fingers laced together between us, his gaze holding mine. His accent suggested English, the way he used his words almost haughty and antiquated. Dressed in dark clothes with the letter ‘Z’ emblazoned on the chest and heavy duty boots, much like the men that stormed the ballroom a few nights ago, it contradicted his manner which suggested he’d be better suited to a tailored suit.
“I see it in you,” he whispered. What could he see? Staring back into his profoundly vivid eyes, I watched him as he watched me, wondering what he saw. “I see the anger, I see the fire.” Unlacing his fingers, he reached out, and I barely withheld my flinch as the tip of his finger traced a line beside my eye. “In there. You’re not broken, not exactly. He hurt you, and now you want to hurt him, too. Am I wrong?”
Hurt Viršininkas? I’d dreamed of it, the fine details of exactly how I might exact my revenge on him was sometimes the only thing that kept my sanity from taking wings and flying away. Or perhaps my sanity had long since fled, because given the opportunity to harm the man who had wronged me in so many ways sent my mind into a dream-like haze. His screams bouncing off the walls, his tears cascading down his cheeks, his blood soaking the floor beneath his feet. My heart pounded hard, my fingertips rubbing together as if I could already feel his death on my hands. It didn’t scare me, it didn’t even disgust me, instead, it roused me, filling my weak limbs with an electrified excitement. Was that what he saw? My deepest darkest secrets? I found myself wanting to search out the closest mirror and look for myself.
When I said nothing, the man smiled. “I’ll give you forty-eight hours for your retribution, then I need to get Algis to the man who is owed his last breath. I’d offer it to you, but my boss . . . he deserves this.”
“What happens to me, then?” I murmured with a gruff voice. “Will I go home?” The thought was a little overwhelming. Home? Where was my home? I couldn’t even see one in my warped mind.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
It was an ominous answer for a simple question. Yet, as my gaze searched beyond the stranger, to the bed where Viršininkas slept, I knew I would take his offer. Forty-eight hours. Could I find retribution in just two short days after everything this man had done to me? Something told me I may not find my vengeance if given a lifetime, but I knew I would try. My hate for him burned hot. I wanted to hur
t him. I wanted to see him bleed. I wanted to see him humiliated. I wanted to see him take his last breath. My attention was pulled from the turbulent thoughts by a finger under my chin.
“He must leave here alive,” the stranger murmured.
Alive.
But hurting.
Just like he hurt me.
***
“What should I call you?”
The stranger, who I had come to grudgingly admit, was beautiful in a masculine kind of way, stood at the kitchen sink. He was washing his hands, having carefully attended to my wounds. Antibiotic cream, Band-Aids, and bandages sat strewn across the granite countertop, the bloodied dressings thrown in the trash. Without argument, I had taken a painkiller, and slowly the aches that wracked my body faded to nothing but a low background noise. After showering, I pulled on a button-down business shirt that hung to mid-thigh. It belonged to Viršininkas. No, not Viršininkas. Algis. Knowing his name seemed to humanize him, perhaps even taking away some of his power over my mind. As much as I didn’t want to wear anything of Algis’, I found a measure of comfort in being clothed in something so simple and soft. No bustiers or leather in sight.
Wiping his hands and turning to face me, the stranger seemed to consider answering me. His head angled slightly to one side, and finally one corner of his mouth lifted resembling something of a smirk.