Alia says, “For I would give you a choice. The choice that you have never given me. I would have you choose. The life of the woman you love . . . against the lives of your twelve loyal men.”
A hush passes through the guards and the prisoners in the other cage. Susan bows her head, even though her brain is throbbing against the casing of its skull. She knew this elaborate setup would come to this.
“I have little doubt you love this woman, Channing. My experiment has proven that. Why else would you have risked your life and come all this way to save her if she means nothing to you? So now you shall choose. The lives of one . . . against the lives of many.”
The gravity of the situation settles upon everyone present. Even the guards seem terse, uneasy.
“Choose wisely, and I will spare the one you choose. The other will be sent plunging into the abyss, dashed against the jagged rocks far, far below.”
8
Susan has to grip the bars very hard to keep from fainting. Yes, she knew this would happen, but knowing was one thing. Hearing her death sentence meted out to her was another matter entirely.
There’s a finality that hangs in the air, together with the miasma of hopelessness. Her stomach turns, and she feels like throwing up into the very abyss that she may be plunged into. For there is no way a sane, rational man like Channing would choose her one life against the lives of a dozen men. It is not a fair choice. There is no comparison against the greater good.
She sinks to her knees, trembling. Her pulse is a thunderous hammer against her throat, and the roaring of blood in her ears crowds out most of the sounds that are echoing in the tower. Not good. She needs to hear what is going on. She needs to listen to his choice.
Don’t look at him. Don’t meet his eyes. Don’t make it more difficult for him than it already is.
Her heartbeat steadies. A dead calm descends upon her like an icy veil.
Goodbye, Channing. I love you and I know it’s because you didn’t have a choice. I understand.
I forgive you.
Channing is speaking. She almost doesn’t catch his words.
His voice breaks as he tumbles over his words, “I have done many things I am not proud of. I took the gold buried in the vaults of the proud citadel that once stood here. But I did it for a reason. When your father found out about our trysts – yours and mine and yours with Hugh – he flew into a rage. We had dishonored him as guests. He threw us into the dungeons. He tortured us and our men. And that was when he gave me a choice.”
He pauses. Susan looks up. Her vision is blurry with tears. Channing’s face is so pale as to reflect the light of the torches.
“I was the ranking officer. He asked me . . . your father asked me . . . to choose.” He turns to look at his brother. His eyes brim with unspoken sorrow. “Only one of you may live. Either his daughter . . . or my brother. You were dead already to your father because you had dishonored him. So I had to choose. Your life or Hugh’s. If I did not choose, all our lives, including those of my men, would be forfeit.”
Hugh blanches. “No,” he hisses.
Alia is as still as a statue. It’s as though she has gone into a trancelike state.
Channing takes in a torturous breath. “And so I made my choice. You must understand, Alia, that Hugh is my brother. Although I loved you and treasured what we had together . . . he is still my brother. My twin.”
His chest heaves with effort.
“And so I chose Hugh. Your father let me and my men go, but he reneged on the deal. Hugh was alive, but he was still being kept prisoner. Your father informed me coldly that he had you murdered. Something in me snapped, and the next thing I knew, we were storming the citadel and killing all the soldiers. There was an all-out war and a fire. Not just a fire, but an inferno.”
He turns to Hugh, whose entire body has gone rigid.
“I tried to find you. I combed the dungeons, but the fire was too intense. I passed out from the smoke. It was Peterson who carried me out. When I came to, the citadel had burned into a charred husk. Only its blackened walls were left standing.
“I went back amongst the ruins, mad with grief. I tried to find you . . . or at least, your body. I owed you that much. But the bodies were plentiful and their remains were indistinguishable from one another. And so I mourned you for dead. It was the only thing I could do. But the vaults, deep, deep under, were intact. As retribution, I ordered them to be looted. We took the gold bullion we found there for ourselves. So we were thieves. But we thought it was small measure for what your father put us through.”
Channing pauses once again for breath.
“It’s the truth, brother. Look into my eyes and see for yourself.”
The air around them is charged with particles of electrified shock. Susan’s chest swells with the enormity of it all. Yes, she can understand why everyone is so fucked up now, believing in fallacies they have imagined for themselves . . . all because they were divided from the truth.
Hugh grips the balcony. His rigid shoulders have collapsed, and he now dissolves into a series of shakes. He does not say anything.
Channing says, “For the love of God, Alia, please let them go. This is all borne of a misunderstanding between us. It doesn’t have to come to this. I’ll do anything you want. Please just let them go.”
Alia trembles. She does not look at him. “Everything you said just affirms what I’d always known. You didn’t choose me.”
“It was not like that,” Channing replies brokenly. “I didn’t have a choice. I mean . . . ”
“I know exactly what you mean. And you did have a choice. You just didn’t choose me.” She raises both her hands and calls out in a clear voice. “Release the cages. Both of them.”
9
Everything happens in a split second. And yet she is able to break each occurrence down by moments, as though time itself has been stretched and compartmentalized.
The guards standing by both levers on either side of the gallery set to release them. Petrified, Susan clings to the bars as she gazes at Channing.
“I love you!” she calls out, her voice resonating eerily within the walls.
“No!” His voice is anguished.
Is it her panic-blurred vision? Or has the light dimmed somewhat in the tower? She thinks (but can’t be sure) that she sees silhouettes in the slit windows near the ceiling. But the mind can play tricks upon you when you are about to die.
The rat-tat-tat of gunfire slings through the air space. The sounds are unmistakable now. The silhouettes are in motion, rappelling down the windows as they continue to shoot into the morass of confused guards. A bullet takes the guard who is poised to work the lever that would send her cage spiraling into the abyss. He falls onto the floor, immobile.
A similar bullet takes out the guard attending to other cage. All of a sudden, the gallery swarms with men clad in black. She can’t be sure if these are more of Channing’s mercenaries, but they seem to be on their side. The broken tooth with its mysterious wire mesh dances in her fevered brain.
A brutal fight, riddled with gunfire and the screams of men, begins.
Susan has only eyes for Channing.
A red veil descends upon her vision as she sees – with utmost clarity and in slow-motion – Alia whip out a revolver from her black robes and aim it at Channing. But before the grinning barrel of the gun can spark with white-hot flame, a figure hurtles between Alia and her intended victim.
It is Hugh.
The gun goes off.
Something dies in Susan’s chest.
A movement catches the periphery of her vision. A black-clad figure wrestles with a guard near her lever. The scuffle causes the pair to stumble, dislodging the lever. The ponderous grind of machinery unravels and the ropes that hold her cage whip loose.
Susan plunges into the dark pit, her scream frozen in her throat.
10
They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. But Susan experiences none of these
things. Her entire life is compressed into strobe images of light funneling into darkness, and further darkness. No distant memories stream in ragged procession. No smiling images of her mother, father, or even Channing are present in the flotsam.
Instead, her mind is a complete blank.
It’s horrifying – this all-encompassing void. It’s as though her thought processes have all stopped. It’s as if she is already dead, and her soul has lost its ability to exist. She is snuffed out like a flame on a candlewick. Her life force ended . . . just like she has never existed.
There is no pain.
A sudden shock wave passes through her body. The entire contraption judders around her. She is flung up into space, and she lands on her side painfully. Her shoulder screams something fierce.
Wait. If there is pain, does that mean she is not dead? But there is only darkness around her. She cranes her neck upwards. The circle of light is a long, long way up.
She stays this way for a few minutes. Up there, she can hear the faint sounds of gunfire echoing down the rocky walls of the tunnel.
Then her cage starts to move upward in fits and starts.
All her hope of being able to survive this had plunged with her descent, but it is now surfacing again, like a sliver of light after a storm. Up and up she travels, subject to someone else’s will, her life hanging by a literal thread. Her pulse is beating rapidly again. Ta-thud, ta-thud – in tandem with the labored pull of her cage.
Meanwhile , the circle of welcoming light draws nearer and nearer, as though she is approaching an epiphany.
She finally surfaces from the pit. Channing and a black-clad mercenary are manning the rotating lever that controls her cage. Their arms and shoulders heave and strain with effort. She has never been so glad to see anyone in her life. Channing in particular looks extremely pale. All around them are the strewn bodies of the fallen. The gallery is devoid of life and the iron doors of the tower entrance are flung wide open.
Together, Channing and his man vault the cage over the balcony. Channing unlocks the door and she falls into his arms.
He winces as she hugs him with all the strength left in her trembling body.
“Why? What’s the matter?” she whispers in concern.
Has he been shot?
“All that matters is that you are safe,” Channing murmurs, breathing in the scent of her hair. Then he dislodges her arms as he turns to the mercenary. “Take her to safety. I’ll join you.”
“No!” She can’t bear to be parted from him again.
“There is something I have to do. I’ll be with you soon.” .
“We must go now,” says the mercenary as he forcibly shepherds her away. He has an American accent.
“No, wait.” She turns back to look at Channing. He has made his way over to one of the fallen bodies and he now kneels by it. He clasps its hand.
From the body’s clothes, she recognizes Hugh.
Her stomach bolts to her throat.
“Is he dead?” she asks the mercenary.
“Not yet, but he will be soon. Give Mr. Crawford some time alone with his brother.”
A pang wrenches her chest. “Of course.”
They run to the entrance of the tower. Before going down, she flings a look at the gallery again. She does not see the burqa-clad body of Alia.
“Where is she?” she asks.
He understands who she means.
“When she realized she has shot Mr. Crawford’s brother, she flung herself over the edge.”
Susan digests this in horror. She doesn’t recall a body rushing in the darkness past her when she was in the pit, but then again, she was too terrified to absorb anything but her own futile panic.
The mercenary says tersely, “When you fell, Mr. Crawford ran to stop the lever. But his hands were tied behind his back. He had no choice but to wedge his body in between the lever and the floor to prevent you from plunging further. He probably broke a few of his ribs and injured his back.”
Susan turns. “No . . . I must go to him.”
The mercenary catches her wrist. “He’ll be all right. He was a soldier. Please, just give him time alone with his brother.”
It takes all of Susan’s effort to wrench herself from the doorway and follow the mercenary down the spiral staircase. Her eyes blur with tears as her feet carefully descend. Her brain is boiling with everything that has happened.
This is going to scar him badly, she knows.
EPILOGUE
Slowly, they pick up the pieces of their lives.
They leave the citadel, taking nothing but the body of Hugh, which Channing buries in the desert under a mound surrounded by every single flower he can find in the vicinity. Susan notes that none of them is a desert rose.
“How did your guys know how to find us?” she asks.
“I had a tracker device implanted in my molar before I left for the Caribbean to find you. If anything should have happened to me and my men, this was my backup. I knew they would search and strip me if I got caught, and so I made sure that it was hidden in a place I could easily access.”
“Why didn’t they find us sooner?”
“The tracker had to be activated. Only I could activate it.” He hesitates. “I was waiting – ”
She is silent.
“I was waiting . . . to see if I could salvage my brother. I had wondered about his state of mind. I needed to know if I could save him.” His eyes flit away. “But I couldn’t. I’m sorry that I risked both our lives, but it was something I needed to do.”
She understands. There is so much residual pain from the entire tragedy that its echoes will reverberate long into the future, possibly manifesting as nightmares and a lot of psych counseling hours.
They hold each other, clinging on desperately as if they are afraid to let go.
They return to America to much fanfare and press. Channing holds a press conference to calm down his investors. The true story comes out in bits and pieces, although he wisely leaves the part out about the gold bullion. He would have been investigated and court-martialled.
Channing is far from perfect, Susan knows, but she loves him madly anyhow.
They throw themselves into rehabilitating the company. Stock prices had dropped drastically, but with Channing once again at the helm, they are able to fend off hostile takeovers. The stock price finally stabilizes, but it will take a while before they can rebuild what has been lost.
To Susan’s chagrin, Leonard Drake has been poached by a rival company.
Channing makes her his Vice-President. For the first time, Susan realizes the magnitude of responsibility she has been entrusted with. It isn’t a mere title. It isn’t some trophy that you gain against a hated corporate rival. It isn’t a glamorous job. You have to make things happen because so many people are relying on you.
She understands now how naïve she has been.
Three weeks after their return, Channing asks her to move in with him. He has a penthouse in the city. His mansion is still in charred ruins, but the insurance has been worked out and he is looking to rebuild.
Not on the same site.
“Too many memories,” he explains.
Again, she understands. They’ve shared so much together that they don’t need words to transmit their feelings anymore. He has but to begin to say something . . . and she can finish his sentence.
She moves in with him.
Their renewed lovemaking is tentative, almost apprehensive. Channing’s cracked ribs have mended but they are still bruised. His mental block is not yet fully lifted. She is able to suck him into semi-erection, but he fails to maintain it.
“Maybe we need more time,” she says.
He swallows, embarrassed. “Maybe I need a shrink.”
She cups his face in her palms tenderly. “Maybe I know a way to get you up again.” She proffers her wrists. “Go on. Tie me up.”
She knows that his arousal is seeded in bondage because of his damaged psychological makeup, an
d it will be bondage that will come to his salvation.
He pauses. His blue eyes are smoky with an emotion she cannot define. Although she knows him better now than any other man she has ever known, he is still a cipher in most part to her. So much of his mind is still an uncharted territory, and this is what makes him so mysterious . . . and boundlessly exciting.
He reaches within the bedside drawer. He retrieves two white silk scarves.
He pushes her down onto the bed gently. He ties her wrists to the bedposts, taking utmost care not to make the bonds too tight.
Then he spreads her legs and straddles her body. She watches him – with all her hopes bottled up in her throat – as he massages his own cock into erection. He never stops looking at her face, her bonded wrists, her splayed arms. He remains silent while he works his hand up and down his shaft.
His cock is now stiff. How stiff, she can’t tell, but at least it now stands at three-quarter mast.
He poises himself to enter her. His beautiful face is pensive and there are wells of complex feeling in his eyes.
Then he pauses. His crown is at her ready hole. She is already creaming for him to penetrate her. She can already anticipate his firm rod of warm flesh spreading her walls.
He says abruptly, “I don’t need to have you bound or shackled to be in control of myself. I think we are both past this.”
He reaches out to untie both her wrists. When she is free, he kisses both her palms tenderly.
“I love you,” he says with feeling.
A melted sort of tingle courses through her body, sending waves of heat into every part of her.
“I love you,” she says, holding his gaze.
He enters her with passion, and they make slow, languorous love – filled with every spoken and unspoken emotion they have ever shared.
*
Three months later, in the wee hours of the morning, he says to her while they are in bed, “Will you marry me?”
His Indecent Revelations (Bound and Shackled to the Billionaire BDSM Erotic Romance) Page 4