Wrath's Storm: A Masters' Admiralty Novel

by Mari Carr

  “Fleet Admiral,” Nikolett snapped, planting herself in front of him, her eyes wide. “I understand that this is personal for you, but we need her alive to question her. We, I, need to know more about what Petro did. Who else he hurt, who else may still be out there waiting to hurt us.” She put her hands out, settling them on Eric’s chest. He paused, looking down at her, and for a moment, the rage that had transformed his face faded.

  “Eric,” Nikolett murmured. “Please listen. Don’t do this.”

  Eric reached out, hesitating for a moment, and then letting his hands settle on her upper arms. For a second he almost seemed to be caressing her, and Nikolett said something, whispering so low that no one could hear. Eric stared down at her, thumbs rubbing her shoulders…

  And then Eric’s grip tightened, he lifted Nikolett off her feet and set her to the side, then stalked out the door.

  Nikolett spun the minute he put her down and managed to get her hands on Eric, grabbing his forearm. Eric shook her off without breaking stride.

  “Grab him,” Nikolett ordered, for the first time a hint of fear in her words. “Later, he’ll thank us for making sure he doesn’t kill her.”

  The knights and security officers obeyed their admiral, streaking out after Eric. Jakob had started moving the instant he saw Eric’s hands tighten on Nikolett’s arms. As a result, he was only half a step behind the knights near the door, and two steps behind Eric. As they sprinted down the hall, Jakob nearly pulled even with Eric.

  The safe room was off a short connecting hall, and since Eric didn’t know that, he shot past it, catching sight of Vadisk standing guard outside the door too late to change course. Jakob slapped a hand against the corner so he could take it at speed, whipping around, shoes slipping on the unfinished concrete subfloor.

  Vadisk was already at attention, clearly having heard the sounds of running feet.

  Jakob didn’t bother to say anything, figuring Vadisk was smart enough to figure it out. Instead, Jakob shot past him slapping his hands on the door. Because it was meant to be a safe room, there was no lock on the outside, and since they didn’t want Ava locking them out, the internal lock had been disabled. That hadn’t been an issue because Nikolett had pairs of people stationed outside all night as guards.

  But now it meant there was no way to keep Eric out of the room, and Annalise was inside. Annalise, who was still brave, even if she didn’t think about herself that way. If Annalise saw an enraged Eric burst into the room, she might put herself between Eric and Ava.

  Jakob was going to get into the room before the fleet admiral. And he was going to protect Annalise. Ava…well, there were plenty of other people who could stop the fleet admiral from murdering her. This wasn’t Jakob’s territory. He had no obligation to make sure the prisoner was treated fairly.

  Or kept alive.

  Vadisk stepped forward to meet Eric, his shoulder turned and lowered like a rugby player.

  Meanwhile, Jakob burst through the saferoom door.

  Annalise, who’d pulled her chair around so she was close enough to Ava to have her hand on the other woman’s shoulder, jumped to her feet. As Jakob had feared, she stepped between the door and the insane serial killer. Jakob had too much momentum to stop, so he reached out, grabbed Annalise’s arm, and yanked her to the side. He heard her gasp, knew he’d grabbed the arm with the bruised shoulder. The chair clattered as she caught her hip on it, knocking it to the floor.

  He turned so when they hit the long wall with the built-in counter, he took the brunt of the blow. He was going to have a long line bruise on his butt. Maybe Walt would kiss it better. Annalise thumped into his chest a second later. Jakob wrapped his arms around her and then spun, his back to the door, his body between hers and danger.

  There was the sound of fists thudding from outside the door.

  “What’s happening?” Ava sounded scared, and chain clanked as she moved around.

  Right. Better not turn his back to the insane serial killer. He had no desire to have her wearing his face after she peeled the skin off his skull. Jakob turned, sandwiching Annalise between his back and the counter.

  “Jakob, what’s going on?” Annalise asked in breathless German.

  “Der Flottenadmiral ist hier.”

  Annalise sucked in a breath, realizing in an instant how the situation had changed.

  Jakob pinned Ava with his stare, hoping his expression conveyed his utter ambivalence as to whether she lived or died, and his willingness to do whatever it took to protect Annalise.

  “Annalise?” Ava’s eyes were wide, her lower lip trembling.

  For a moment, Jakob’s resolve wavered. She looked so frightened and helpless. The cuff dangling from one wrist, securing her to the chair, seemed suddenly obscene.

  “The woman you killed in Dublin, her friend is here,” Annalise said.

  Ava’s shoulders pulled back. “I gave her a gift because if I—”

  The door slammed open, hitting the wall so hard, concrete cracked. Eric’s face was a mask of rage. He’d lost the camo jacket, and now his already ripped T-shirt was stippled with blood. More blood trailed from the corner of his mouth. Out in the hall, Vadisk and several others were struggling to rise from the floor.

  Eric’s lips pulled back from his teeth, a savage, feral expression.

  Ava stepped back, eyes wide. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no words came out.

  Annalise stepped out from behind Jakob. He grabbed her arm, halting her when it seemed she would put herself between the fleet admiral and Ava. Maybe she didn’t know the stories about Eric Ericsson. About how, after the death of his wives, the loss of his trinity, he’d become a mercenary. How he’d taken on jobs where death was all but certain, only to come out alive because he, like the Vikings he was nicknamed for, suffered from berserker rages. The kind of rages that allowed him to quite literally rip a man’s head off with his bare hands.

  “Fleet Admiral.” Annalise’s voice cracked with authority. It was a tone Jakob had never heard her use before.

  It caught Eric’s attention, and though he didn’t look away from Ava, he cocked his head.

  “This woman is responsible not just for Josephine’s death, but the deaths of others. Potentially many others. We need her alive so she can tell us about them. Help us find and locate their bodies, their loved ones.”

  Eric shuddered, an actual physical shudder working its way down his body from his shoulders to his feet. He rolled his head on his shoulders and finally released a slow breath. He was calming himself down, hopefully either coming out of, or preventing himself from fully entering, a berserker rage.

  They were so close to getting out of this without any dead bodies.

  But then Ava decided to seal her own fate.

  She turned with a predatory grace, sneering at Annalise. “Is that what you thought you were doing? That you were going to manipulate me and make me do things? Tell you things?” Ava shook her head, almost sadly. “You would never understand, and quite frankly, you don’t deserve to know who those I deemed worthy were.”

  There was a beat of silence, and then Eric took two long strides, grabbed Ava by the neck, and shoved her body back against the wall.

  “You deserve to suffer.” He yanked her forward, lifted her by the neck with one hand, and slammed her back against the wall once more, this time with her toes a few centimeters off the ground.

  People rushed into the room, but Eric snarled, “Out.”

  Reluctantly, a battered Vadisk and Maxim obeyed and backed out. Jakob started edging Annalise toward the door.

  “No,” Annalise whispered furiously. “We have to stop him because I can get her to talk. Eventually she will, it will just take time…”

  There was no time. Jakob very much doubted the British woman would leave this room alive.

  Ava’s nails scratched Eric’s hand and wrist as she gasped and struggled to breathe. But she was still breathing. Jakob could hear the air wheezing in and out of
her lungs. Eric wasn’t killing her…not yet.

  “Josephine died in pain and alone because of you.” Eric’s accent had thickened, his tone guttural and dark. “She died thinking I would come for her, find her.”

  Eric’s fingers tightened, and Ava’s struggles became frantic, her heels scraping the wall as she tried and failed to find any purchase that would allow her to leverage out of his hold.

  “I promised them I would protect them. Josephine is dead and Colum is drinking himself to death. He’s locked himself away, given up his job, disappeared from the world.”

  Eric’s rage and grief were almost palpable. Even Jakob could tell that it was deep, pain-filled grief that threaded through the fleet admiral’s voice. He’d mistakenly believed perhaps Josephine had been a lover, but hearing him talk about her and a man he didn’t know, it sounded more like a father speaking about his children. But the fleet admiral had no children.

  No one spoke. No one moved to stop him, not daring to get too close lest they be consumed by the inferno that raged so hot inside the fleet admiral, it could turn them all to ash.

  Ava’s choked, desperate sounds were terrible to hear.

  “The only reason I don’t take you, and do to you everything you did to her, and more, is because Josephine wouldn’t want it this way,” he snarled.

  “No, she would not.” Nyx stepped into the room. If in this moment Eric was fire, Nyx was ice, cold and merciless as she stared at Ava. “But I’ll salt the earth of her shallow grave so nothing grows where her unshriven body lays.”

  Holy. Fuck.

  Jakob felt his eyes get big before he got himself under control. So Nyx was…nuts. He needed to remember to tell his vice admiral to avoid pissing off Hungary’s vice admiral at all costs. Then he considered Nikolett and figured they should just avoid the entire territory if possible.

  Eric eased his hold, lowered her so her toes touched the floor. Ava took two shallow, rasping breaths before he once more cut off her air supply.

  Jakob nudged Annalise toward the door, but before they could exit, someone else pushed Vadisk—who had been using his big body as a door—out of the way.

  Nikolett walked into the safe room, heels clicking, raised the gun she held, and pointed it at Eric.

  Holy. Fuck.

  Everything was about to get royally fucked up and Jakob had zero idea what the hell he was supposed to do in a situation like this. Protect the fleet admiral? Fuck that, the guy might be bulletproof or something. Maybe his rage could become a physical armor.

  Out loud, Jakob said what he always said, cursing. “Mist.”

  Annalise, tucked against his side, nodded in agreement.

  “Release her, Eric.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Nikolett.”

  “I am not threatening. I’m warning. If you’re going to kill her, you do it quick and clean.”

  “Like she did?” Eric turned his head just enough to stare down the barrel of Nikolett’s gun.

  “That is why she is a monster. You, we, are not.”

  Eric bared his teeth in what might have been a smile. “I am a monster. I am the drage.”

  “No. You are not.” Nikolett shifted the gun, aiming it at Ava’s head.

  With a snarl, Eric released Ava. She dropped to the ground, barely conscious.

  Eric shot Nikolett an unreadable look, then reached down, cupped Ava’s jaw with one hand, the back of her head with the other, and twisted. There was an audible pop as her neck broke, and then Eric released her, Ava’s body slumping to the floor.

  Breaking a neck like that was far harder than it seemed. It was why Jakob had been trained to first press down, force the spine to compress. Just twisting…that took brute strength.

  In the silence that followed, Eric bowed his head, his hand, the hand that had been strangling Ava, curling and uncurling. Nyx glanced at the body, then turned and walked out, Vadisk stepping out of her way at the last minute. Jakob hustled Annalise forward, finally getting her out of the room.

  He glanced back over his shoulder just before he made his escape, so he was the only one who saw Eric look up and reach out to Nikolett, his hand blood-spattered and shaking.

  She was looking down, putting the safety back on the gun, and didn’t see the fleet admiral’s moment of need.

  Eric hesitated, fingers curling into a fist before he dropped his hand and turned away from Nikolett.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Annalise blew on her tea to cool it off, but it was still too hot to drink. Then she looked to her side for somewhere to set down the cup. “You need end tables in here,” she said to Jakob. It seemed like an inane comment to make, far too normal after all the three of them had been through, but it also felt good to have a conversation that didn’t include the words stalker, crazy, or serial killer.

  “What style do you want?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes and grinned. Jakob had admitted their first night back in Frankfurt that he’d remodeled this house for her. “Don’t you want to pick out anything to your taste?”

  Jakob shook his head. “No. This house is for you, Annalise. Always.”

  She tried to hold on to her smile, not wanting Jakob to see how much his words meant to her, even as they pierced her heart.

  They’d returned to Frankfurt the day after Eric showed up in Budapest and killed Ava. She, Jakob, and Walt hadn’t even really discussed where they’d go. It had been assumed they’d return here, to this perfect, amazing house. And for three days, they’d shut themselves in, pretending that the world outside them didn’t exist, that they hadn’t witnessed so many countless horrors it would probably take them a fair amount of therapy to overcome it all.

  Every time Annalise closed her eyes, the same two images replayed themselves. Eric snapping Ava’s neck. Jakob snapping Axel’s. What she couldn’t admit, not to Jakob or Walt or even herself, was that she’d felt relief—and in Axel’s case, actual happiness—that they’d been killed.

  So yeah…she needed therapy.

  Upon returning to Frankfurt, it was as if they’d all agreed—though they hadn’t discussed it—to shut the past week away, pretending it hadn’t happened. Instead, they did what normal couples—or throuples, in their case—did at the beginning of a relationship. They got to know each other.

  The three of them spent their days drifting from the bedroom to the kitchen, where Jakob prepared mouthwatering German dishes, from recipes he’d inherited from his Oma. Jakob told them about his lonely childhood and his cold, strict father, about the reasons he was hesitant to speak. His Oma had died when Jakob was only eight and Annalise wondered how his personality might have been different if she had lived longer. According to Jakob, his Oma had never told him to be quiet, not once, and that when she was around, she protected him from his father’s ire.

  One afternoon, Walt had video chatted with his sister, Sylvia, and his brothers over Zoom. He’d pulled her and Jakob into the screen to introduce them. She had been blown away to see Walt’s face on two other men. Of course, it hadn’t taken more than a few minutes of listening to the triplets talk before it became quite simple to tell them apart. Oscar’s love of the word fuck and Langston’s larger-than-life personality were entertaining, but she had to admit she preferred Walt’s gentle manner and quiet wit.

  Every evening, like this one, the three of them gathered in the living room, sitting before the fire, either reading quietly or talking.

  She’d talked in more detail about her hope to rejoin the Kripo, admitting that while she’d enjoyed teaching, it had never been her passion.

  “It’s not my house,” she forced herself to say. They were living in a fool’s paradise and while she’d been the one to originally suggest they focus solely on the present, it was getting harder and harder to ignore that their time together was growing short.

  Walt was set to return to Libya in four more days. Just four more.

  “Annalise,” Jakob started.

  “We can’t keep ignoring
what’s coming, Jakob,” she said more forcefully than she’d intended.

  Walt, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet tonight, nodded. “You’re right. We can’t. But we also can’t change it. One more night, Annalise. Let’s pretend for just one more night and then tomorrow morning, we’ll sit down and…”

  And what?

  Walt was right. Nothing they said would change the outcome. The most they could do was share their feelings—their broken hearts—and then, this entire affair would end exactly as they expected. Walt would return to North Africa and eventually join the Trinity Masters. Jakob would remain in Frankfurt at his post as a Ritter, and she would apply for a position with the Kripo, or possibly another law enforcement agency. If she got the job, it could mean that she would have to relocate to another city, perhaps Berlin.

  “And we’ll figure out a way to say goodbye,” she finished for Walt, when it was apparent he wasn’t going to say it.

  Jakob ran his hand over his scalp, frustration rife in his tone. “I hate this. Hate every fucking thing about it.”

  “Hate fuck, you say? Never tried it, but it sounds hot.” Walt, as always, found a way to make them laugh.

  “Maybe we should leave the hate fucking to Nikolett and Eric,” Annalise said, grinning. It had been a running joke they’d started that Nikolett and Eric were either going to end up killing or fucking one another.

  “Sounds like a plan, since I have something else in mind anyway,” Walt said, rising and holding out a hand to Annalise. “As your physician, and after this afternoon’s quick medical exams, I deem you both well enough for us to branch out into some seriously kinky sex acts.”

  “Kinky?” Jakob said, standing up quickly. “It’s about damn time.”

  Annalise headed toward the stairs that would lead to Jakob’s bedroom, but he grasped her wrist to stop her.

  She turned to look at him as he shook his head. “We’re starting here,” he said. “Want to break in that soft rug in front of the fireplace.”

  “That sounds more romantic than kinky,” Walt pointed out.