Masterful Truth

by Mari Carr

  Damn it, she was powerful and well-connected too, but she’d gone into that entire meeting completely blind. It pissed her off. “How big is the Masters’ Admiralty? Who is the fleet admiral?”

  “I don’t really know,” Weston said. “I only dealt with Tristan. I know he had access to lots of resources.”

  Juliette sighed. “They’re bigger, more organized, older, and generally more powerful than we are. Add to that they seem to know more than we want them to.”

  “I’m glad,” Rose said.

  They all looked at her.

  “Things had gotten a little boring. Now they’re exciting again—dead ex-lover slash tormenter back from the dead, facing possible annihilation from a frenemy, and we still haven’t figured out the truth about my parents.”

  “You really suspect your parents are purists?” Juliette asked Rose. Their trip to London had lasted less than twenty-four hours, but rather than solving anything, they’d bought themselves a lot more trouble.

  Rose shrugged. “I don’t know the Hancocks very well. I was raised by my grandmother until she died, and then I was in boarding school. Even when my mother was alive, I spent most school holidays with the Andersons because she traveled so much. Once she died, I was always either at school or with the Andersons. I called my father for help, shortly after…” Rose hesitated.

  Juliette raised her hand. “It’s okay, Rose. I know what you mean. What did he say when you called?”

  “He told me to listen to the Andersons. To do everything they asked of me.”

  Juliette swallowed down the bile Rose’s answer caused to rise in her throat. How had she never seen all the horrors Rose had been subjected to? For so many years, she’d looked at the older girl and seen strength, confidence, poise. All those ideas were altered in her mind now as Juliette considered what she really must have been seeing—fear, self-preservation, and a sheer force of will to hide the atrocities she was suffering.

  “I don’t know what I think about them. It was clear they never cared about me, only the power they thought I could offer them in the Trinity Masters’ hierarchy. Hence, that damn betrothal.”

  Juliette grimaced. She’d shared a similar disdain for the machinations of their parents, forming a “power alliance” of families when she, Rose and Devon were all still children.

  However, wanting an advantageous match for their daughter didn’t equate to “purists” either.

  A couple of months earlier, they had rounded up all suspected purists, subjecting them to—Juliette sighed as she tried not to think about what techniques Devon might have employed—questioning. All she knew was that it was likely long and painful.

  And, in the end, they’d concluded that the purists’ sect had died with the Andersons. Victoria was the last of the Prosser line, except for some cousins by marriage who hadn’t known anything and if she didn’t count Weston and Caden. The Wythe line ended with Mrs. Wythe, and it was apparent her great-niece and nephew, Elliott and Marianne James, were clueless to their great-aunt’s crimes. Grant was the last of the Breton line, and Sebastian had cleared him long ago.

  As for the Hancocks…Juliette had dismissed them as political power players, uninterested in anything but their own careers, and candidates for worst parents. Tasha had said the questioning hadn’t gone well, and had never gotten past the point of them being outraged at being subjected to it in the first place. She’d asked Juliette if she could try some “alternative techniques,” but Jayce Hancock was a senator, and they couldn’t keep or question him for more than half a day. Tasha had done her best and concluded they had no idea who or what the purists were, and when questioned more deeply, they appeared to have no idea that the Andersons had been anything but doting foster parents to Rose.

  Tasha’s questioning had tipped them off that Rose’s childhood hadn’t been great. Since discovering that, the Hancocks had reached out to Rose, tried to make amends, but so far their daughter had refused to speak to them or accept their apologies.

  Rose’s doubts triggered Juliette’s.

  Rose was smart. Her suspicions had Juliette’s Spidey senses on red alert.

  Juliette had felt initial relief after hearing the Andersons were dead, but now…she wished they were still here. Without them, she was holding on to a list of innocents.

  And Caden.

  What the hell was she supposed to do with him?

  Chapter Three

  Gingerly, Caden rubbed the spot where the bullet had pierced his chest. The wound had healed completely months ago, and the pain was all but gone. However, lately, he’d caught himself touching the place in unguarded moments when he was lost in dark thoughts.

  He had too many of them. And thanks to Devon, too much time to remember.

  For most of his life, his parents had convinced him and Rose that her betrothed, Devon Asher, expected her to be his submissive. As such, his fathers had subjected her to brutal training, working months—no, years—to break her beautiful spirit.

  When Caden realized what was going on, he’d done the only thing he had known to do. Collar her.

  Because, like Rose, he’d been subjected to the training as well. Only his had been much different. While Rose spent so much of her teenage years on her knees, he’d spent those same years wielding a whip.

  Rose.

  He’d loved her. And he’d failed her. Completely.

  As punishment for Caden’s crimes against the secret society, Devon had claimed a life for a life. The man had saved him the night he’d been shot, whisked him away to a top-secret facility where some of the best doctors in the world had worked overtime to ensure that he lived.

  When he awoke from a medically induced coma a week after the shooting, Devon had been waiting next to the bed. He’d told him in no uncertain terms that if it had been up to him, Devon would have happily watched him bleed to death on the floor of that apartment. However, the Grand Master had insisted he be saved.

  Devon had then given him two choices: assume all guilt for the crimes he and Rose had committed and Rose’s life would be spared—apparently she’d gone off the deep end following his “death” and tried to kill a trinity—or stand beside Rose and they would both be punished for their crimes against the secret society. There was no “innocent until proven guilty” in the Trinity Masters. No trial.

  He knew he had hurt Rose. God, how he’d hurt her. He hadn’t wanted to. He loved her, but in hindsight, he could see that he wasn’t capable of real love. So, in the end, the choice was easy.

  “Just kill me,” he had said, his voice sounding like he’d eaten sandpaper for dinner. “Get it over with. Pull out that IV, unhook these monitors and put the pillow over my face. I don’t have the strength to fight back. And I don’t care anymore.”

  Devon had merely shaken his head. “No. It’s not going to be that easy.”

  If Caden hadn’t been so weak and drugged up, he would have realized that the other man hadn’t actually been threatening him with a death sentence for his crimes. Devon wouldn’t save his life only to take it away again, but then he saw something in the other man’s eyes, something that told him if the choice were truly his—and not the Grand Master’s—Devon would do just that.

  Devon had been betrothed to Rose when they were children, a pact that had been dissolved when the new Grand Master came to power. Juliette, their arranged third, had rejected the union, keeping Devon while letting Rose go.

  Caden realized as he looked into Devon’s steely eyes that Juliette’s husband may have accepted her decision, but that hadn’t changed his feelings for Rose. He cared about her.

  That idea had shaken Caden to the core.

  He’d spent his entire life believing Devon was this cold, hard, demanding Dom, a man who would use Rose as cruelly as his fathers used their sub, Pet. In that moment, he knew Devon would have loved Rose, would have taken care of her in a way Caden never could.

  If there had ever been a part of him that could love, his parents had killed it. />
  So he had assumed all guilt and begged that Rose’s life be spared. He’d agreed to remain a dead man, stashed away until the Grand Master decided his fate. He assumed Juliette would use him as a henchman, someone who worked behind the scenes to do the Trinity Masters’ dirty work. He seemed destined to live his life in the shadows, bloodying his hands so his self-righteous parents and pretty boy Devon and the Grand Master didn’t have to.

  That life fit him—gave him an outlet for the evil he knew lived inside him.

  Caden sighed, looking out the window without really seeing anything. He’d been holed up in this quiet sanctuary for three months and yet he’d found no peace. He was overwhelmed with exhaustion pretty much every damn day, feeling the same bone-deep weariness he had suffered from for most of his life. He struggled to remember a time he felt free or happy or hell, even safe.

  He could only think of one time.

  That moment in the hospital when he’d taken Devon’s devil bargain, and known that Rose would be safe. That the Grand Master wouldn’t punish her for all they’d done.

  The feeling was brief, not lasting more than a moment, but for one damn minute, he’d felt as if he had finally done something good, something of value.

  Protecting Rose and Tabby had been his sole purpose for so many years, and while it hadn’t happened the way he’d anticipated, at least he could relax now, knowing they were safe.

  Tabby had been moved to a state-of-the-art medical facility in Switzerland, and Rose was bound in marriage to his brother, Weston. Caden could recall the glee in Devon’s eyes when he’d told him his brother was not only alive, but married to Rose.

  Devon hated him, so telling Caden that he’d truly lost the woman he loved once and for all had pleased him. Not that Devon’s feelings toward him bothered Caden. The feeling was mutual.

  And Caden had gotten his revenge—against Devon and his parents. He’d left the first safe house where Devon had stashed him to gather everything he needed to take matters into his own hands.

  One of the things he’d managed to secure was Weston’s phone number. Not that he’d intended to call his big brother, but simply because he liked knowing he could.

  Glancing out into the dark woods, Caden smiled to himself as he recalled slipping free of Devon Asher’s leash. The CIA man had underestimated him, thought him too weak to be a problem. After all, he’d been left with just one guard, convalescing at some safe house in the sleepy suburbs of Sacramento, hidden away from the world.

  Devon thought he’d been defeated—lying in a bed, nursing a bullet wound and worrying about how he’d be punished for his crimes. He’d thought just one permanent guard would be enough, but the man had to sleep sometime. Caden had shown Devon that a bullet wound wouldn’t slow him down, and that he wasn’t afraid of whatever punishment Devon might cook up and have Juliette pronounce.

  It hadn’t been that hard to sneak off and do something he’d been dreaming about for over half his life.

  Devon wouldn’t underestimate him again.

  Caden glanced toward the front of this new cabin in the middle of God knew where and saw the silhouettes of three guards sitting on the porch. The cigarettes they were smoking glowed bright orange in the dim lighting as dusk set in.

  The twenty-four-seven surveillance was a small price to pay. After all, he didn’t have anywhere else to be now.

  Juliette and Devon had planned to take care of his parents. Three more evil people had never walked the planet, and they were his.

  His to kill.

  No one else’s.

  He’d taken great care to set everything up. After all, he’d spent plenty of time on their family’s yacht. He knew the marina layout, as well as the yacht’s, intimately. It was stupidly simple for him to sneak aboard, plant the bomb, and then get back out without being seen. The trick was to hide in plain sight, dressing as a dock worker, ratty jeans, black concert T-shirt, and a ball cap pulled low over his face. His parents never looked at the help. Never. Blue-collar employees were beneath their notice.

  If his plan failed…well…death wasn’t such a bad outcome. Caden had spent the last few years in hell. He currently had no more fucks to give.

  The entire plan had been going perfectly. The bomb in place, the clock ticking. All he’d had to do was hunker down and enjoy his bird’s-eye view of their executions from the second-floor storage room next to the dockmaster’s office.

  He watched through binoculars, saw his parents eating alfresco, picnicking on caviar and sipping champagne from crystal flutes. Elroy, the bastard, was standing by the railing, looking out over the water like a man who owned the world.

  Of course, in Elroy’s mind, he did.

  Caden’s only regret was that his parents wouldn’t know it was him. That he was the one who’d delivered the final blow. He was sorry Elroy would never have time to understand that all the money in the world wouldn’t change the fact that in the end, every human being was the same. Bones and dust—forgotten two seconds after they died.

  That’s how it had been for him, and he wasn’t even really dead.

  Just forgotten.

  Then he’d seen her.

  Rose.

  Caden hoped to God he never again felt the same bone-chilling, heart-racing fear he’d experienced when Rose had walked onto his parents’ yacht.

  He’d considered leaving his hiding place, running out to save her, but he really was too weak to run very fast or far. Then he recalled his brother. Her new husband.

  Rose and Weston were better off without him. He had known about Rose’s love for his older brother when they were still teenagers. Caden didn’t harbor a single doubt that if their lives had been different, their parents hadn’t been monsters, Rose hadn’t been betrothed to Juliette and Devon, Rose and Weston would have gotten together. If they’d been able to choose, they would have chosen one another.

  That was when he’d realized something else. If Rose was on the yacht, Weston was close by. He’d turned the binoculars away from Rose and studied the surrounding boats. It hadn’t take him more than a minute or two to find what he was looking for, but given the ticking time bomb on the yacht, it had felt like an eternity.

  He’d pulled out the cell phone he had bought when he’d purchased everything he needed to build the bomb and dialed the number he had never expected to use.

  He’d been relieved when Weston answered right away.

  “Get her off the boat. Now! Do it now or she dies too.”

  Weston hadn’t needed to hear anything more than that. He was running toward the yacht before Caden had finished issuing the warning.

  He had gotten to her. He and another man, their third, Caden assumed, had gotten her to safety just moments before the yacht exploded, sending the Andersons and Elroy to their watery grave.

  Even now, all Caden could think was they hadn’t suffered enough.

  Chapter Four

  Franco was waiting for them when they landed in Boston and disembarked from the private plane. Rose and Weston walked right by him without saying a word, entering the limousine he’d come to pick them up in.

  Juliette and Devon stopped next to Franco, the three of them watching the couple disappear into the back of the car.

  “Looks like that conversation went well,” Franco said with forced cheer. He studied their faces, worry evident in the way his brows were drawn together.

  “It wasn’t pleasant, but…oh dammit, we’re getting there. Too soon to say I told you so,” Juliette warned. “I’m not in the mood anyway.”

  Franco gave her a look that said he would refrain for now, but he wasn’t going to be able to hold that gloat in forever. He’d warned her and Devon countless times that Weston and Rose would not forgive them when they discovered they had purposely kept Caden’s true fate a secret. Allowing them both to believe a man they loved was dead was cruel.

  Of course, it wasn’t like Juliette hadn’t known that all along.

  If Devon had gotten his way,
this wouldn’t have been an issue. He felt Caden couldn’t be saved, and he hadn’t understood her desire to save the man’s life. He had argued that Caden was too deeply involved in his parents’ crimes and was an active part of the purists’ machinations.

  Juliette wasn’t sure she disagreed with that and would, in fact, have lumped Rose in with Caden—considered her a lost soul, too deeply entrenched in the evil to turn back. But then she heard about Rose’s upbringing in the Andersons’ home. Devon had argued that Rose had been an innocent victim, essentially held captive by her cruel foster parents and Caden. He’d insisted that she not be punished, and because there was precious little Juliette would deny the love of her life, she’d agreed.

  The problem was, Devon’s argument could be made for Caden as well. He’d grown up in the same house with the same abusive parents after all. So she’d insisted Devon do everything in his power to save the man’s life.

  And in doing so, they now had to deal with the problem of Caden Anderson. The easiest answer initially had been to allow everyone to believe he was dead. It would buy them the time they needed to investigate Caden and his parents. Devon assured her that he could hide the man in the shadows forever if necessary and dispose of him just as easily.

  But Devon had been wrong. The still seriously injured Caden was more devious than they’d realized. He’d escaped the safe house and gone rogue, blowing up his parents’ yacht and almost killing Rose in the process. And then, he’d done something surprising. He had returned to the safe house. They hadn’t had to chase or hunt for him. He’d simply blown up the boat and come back, prepared to accept whatever punishment they chose to dole out. She hadn’t known what to make of that.

  “It’s going to be a long ride back into the city,” Devon said as they walked toward the car.

  “Maybe not,” Franco murmured.

  Juliette gave him a sideways glance. “You know something.”