by Loki Renard
“I’ve taken it as seriously as I’m going to,” Mason replied, his voice gritty and rough. “And this better be the last time you pull anything like this.”
“Next time we meet, it won’t be for a friendly chat,” Henry said, making a threat for a threat. “Next time you’ll find yourself making some aquatic acquaintances while wearing concrete shoes. Get it?”
It seemed to Elliot that the air in the clearing dropped several degrees when Mason replied, “Boys, drop the dots.”
For a second, his words didn’t make any kind of sense, then a series of red dots appeared on every single one of the men’s foreheads, except for Henry, the ringleader. There were three on his, making the shape of a little triangle on his cranium.
“You don’t threaten me,” Mason said in a low growl. “I know where you are every minute of every day. I know where you live. I know where you sleep. I know when you take a shit. I know your favorite brothels. I know where you go to gamble. I know where the bodies are buried. I. Know. Everything. There’s not an instant of any day when I couldn’t have you removed from this planet. If you’re ever so stupid as to try anything like this again, I promise you, you’ll spend every second of the remainder of your very short life regretting it.”
A chill went through Elliot’s belly as Henry fell back, looking shaken. Most of his henchmen were scanning the trees for signs of the snipers who must have been all around them. There wasn’t a sign. She had no idea how it was being done, and evidently neither did Henry and his henchmen.
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Malone,” he said, backing away slowly, his hands raised. “I guess we’ll consider payment made in full.”
“Good,” Mason said, the word falling from his lips heavy and cold.
He stood there, watching as the criminals took to their vehicles and made their way out of the clearing as quickly as possible. They’d been gone a full minute or so before he got back into the car and shut his door.
“Are you alright back there?”
“Yes,” she squeaked quietly.
He put the car into gear and she felt it begin to move, rumbling through the leaf litter.
“You can come back into the front,” he said, stopping the car just before they were about to go back onto the roadway.
She almost wanted to stay beneath the cover. Seeing him like that, hearing the darkness of his voice, it had transformed her image of him in a way that left her quite quivery inside. He had been surrounded by wolves and had not so much as flinched—because he was more dangerous than any of them.
“Elliot?”
She started to move, worried about what would happen if she didn’t. Crawling back between the seats, she managed to settle herself in the passenger side, avoiding looking at him directly.
“Are you alright, Elliot? Did they scare you?”
She risked a quick glance at him. “A little,” she mumbled.
He reached over, brushed her hair back from her forehead, and tucked it behind her ear. “Don’t be afraid,” he said softly. “I didn’t expect them to come for me right now, but no matter what anyone does, I’ll always keep you safe.”
“Okay,” she said with a little nod, looking down at her hands.
He put the car into park and spoke softly. “Look at me.”
She risked another glance, but she couldn’t hold his gaze until he put his fingers on her chin and held her steady to look at her. It was even more confusing now, looking at him, trying to reconcile what she had seen with the man in front of her.
“I’m going to keep you safe from them,” he repeated.
“It’s… not… them…” she said hesitantly.
“What is it, then?” He released her chin, but a second later tipped it back up with his fingers as her head dropped back down again.
“It’s you,” she said in a soft breathy voice. “You were kind of… scary.”
Comprehension came into his gaze, quite late in the piece. It was as if he hadn’t even begun to consider that she might have found him frightening.
“Men like that need monsters,” he said. “So I’m their monster.”
“So you’re worse than them.”
“Worse? No,” he said firmly, before reconsidering. “Well. It depends what you mean by worse. I know who they are because they’re the people my company keeps my clients safe from. Them, and others like them. They know who I am, because once someone falls under our purview, that’s the end of it. The chase is off.”
“But not for Aiden.”
“Aiden’s irritated them much more than the average target,” Mason said. “They went a very long way out of their way and exposed themselves to try to intimidate me. That’s a move that smacks of either pure desperation, or deep anger.”
“So now there’s really angry swarms of men who are still looking for him? And even coming for you?”
“Aiden knows how to make a mess,” Mason said grimly. “But I promise you, you’re very safe. I was never in any danger. There are never any fewer than twelve men on my position at any given time. Or yours, since you’ve been with me.”
“Twelve men?” She looked around, trying to catch sight of some following vehicle, or figures in the trees. There was nothing. “I don’t see anyone at all.”
“You’re not supposed to,” he said. “They’re good at what they do. I recruit the very best ex-military operatives and I pay them very, very well. My personal team are elite in every sense of the word. They know how to stay back, they know how to take cover, and they know how to follow from the front sometimes. You won’t see them, Elliot, but they’re there.”
“Show me.”
Mason looked at her for a second as if he was going to refuse the request, then he relented and opened the glove box. There was a pair of binoculars in it, which he took out and handed to her.
“Those are heat sensitive,” he said. “See what you can find.” He lowered the window enough for Elliot to peer out with the binoculars. The world around her became a bluey-green plateau, marked here and there with yellow and red and orange. It took a few seconds, but suddenly she picked out a figure standing next to a tree. She lowered the binoculars and looked in the direction, her eyes just barely making out the outline of the man.
“I found one,” she said, turning to Mason with glee. “I found one!”
“Just one?”
She put the glasses back to her eyes and searched for more. “I think there’s a car or something out there,” she said. “I think I can see an engine of some kind, it’s sort of blocky.”
“Mhm,” Mason’s voice came from behind her, sounding approving and a little amused at the same time. “Anything else?”
She searched and she searched, seeing a few more reddish orange figures. She was about to announce that she’d found more when they moved with an ungulate gait and she realized she was looking at some wild deer.
“There’s animals out here,” she said. “But I don’t see twelve men. I don’t even see the first man anymore.”
“They’ll have taken cover behind the ridge,” Mason said. “See how the ground rises? The binoculars can’t see through solid earth.”
She lowered the binoculars and handed them back to him. “I guess I just have to take your word for it,” she said with a little smile.
“You were harder to convince than those criminals,” Mason smirked. “Then again, they’ve been around long enough to know me a little better.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He paused for a second, putting the binoculars away. “It means that once or twice, a display like the one you saw earlier hasn’t been enough.”
“You… someone’s gotten… hurt before?” She phrased the question just shy of asking him if he’d outright had anybody killed.
“Once or twice,” he admitted. “It’s not an ideal solution, but some people just don’t learn the easy way. They have to make everything hard on themselves. Word spreads though. People learn who they can push and who they
can’t. Respect goes a long way in this business. When I promise a client of mine that they’re going to be safe, I mean at all costs.”
A chill went down her spine, and in that moment she was very glad that she was not a criminal, and that she wasn’t going up against Mason, or any of his special forces.
“I wish you hadn’t seen that,” he said. “And frankly, you should never have been caught up in it. I am sorry, Ellie. I know it frightened you. There are some things you didn’t need to know and definitely didn’t need to see. That’s why I didn’t want to take you out to see Aiden in the first place. He’s a vortex of bullshit, and everyone who gets close to him at the moment gets hurt.”
He put the car back in gear and turned back in the direction they’d come from. Elliot looked out the rearview mirror as they drove down the highway, and after a few seconds, when they were almost too far away to really see anymore, she saw three vehicles come pulling out of the side of the road: two heavy SUVs, one red, one black, and the third a sleeker car she didn’t recognize. It was moving faster than the others and soon overtook them, taking up a position a few cars in front. The others remained behind, one in each of the rear lanes. They were being escorted, she realized, but not in a completely obvious way.
It occurred to her that the guards likely served a dual purpose. They kept people with bad intentions out, but they could just as easily keep her in. Were they protectors or wardens, or were they both? The same question applied to Mason. He was keeping her as if she were a lesser version of the criminals he dealt with daily, caging her, punishing her…
They were heading back to the house, she realized suddenly, her heart sinking.
“Where are we going?” She asked the question, hoping that she was wrong. Mason quickly confirmed her suspicions.
“We’re not going to see Aiden yet,” he said. “We’ve obviously picked up a tail. I’m taking you back home and we’ll wait for analysis. Henry nearly got the drop on us. If my compound is being watched, I want to know by who, and I want to know how. You’re not leaving again until I’ve made sure we can be secure.”
Her disappointment was intense. A dull, sulking sense came over her. This wasn’t fair. She was doing all this for Aiden, and she kept being denied the chance to actually see him and make sure he was alright. Just as she was about to be taken to him, Mason found a reason not to go. He had a dozen operatives keeping him safe and yet he couldn’t make this happen for her. Bullshit. Total bullshit.
An idea flashed into her head. “What if, what if you just got a lot of cars, like six or seven of the same kind and drove them all out together? Then they could all go in different directions and the bad people wouldn’t know who to follow.”
“Cute idea,” he smiled over at her. “And a good one, but that’s a Hail Mary move. I’d only do something like that if it was absolutely necessary to leave. And it’s not. Aiden will wait another day or two.”
“He will,” she said. “But maybe I won’t.”
A sharp look made her squirm in her seat.
“And what is that supposed to mean?” His voice was dangerously soft, but totally composed.
“I agreed to this deal because you said Aiden would be safe, and then you said I could see him, but now you’re going back on your word.”
“I’m not going back on my word at all. I’m putting matters on hold until I can be sure you’re going to be safe. That’s all that matters to me. Your safety.”
“Sure, and according to you, the only place I’m safe is when I’m butt naked and locked up and crawling around eating food off the floor,” she said with bitter snark. “That’s real convenient, Mason. Every time I ask for proof that Aiden’s okay, there’s some reason I can’t have it. Well, maybe there’s a reason for all those reasons. Maybe the reason is you don’t want me to have it. Maybe you never lifted a finger for Aiden at all, maybe you set this whole thing up from the beginning!”
“That’s quite a conspiracy theory,” he smirked.
She was not amused. “You’re punishing me, you’re tormenting me, and you’re treating me like an animal and I don’t get to know a thing.”
“That’s right,” he said flatly. “You don’t. You don’t get anything I don’t choose to give you, because I know what’s best for you. You’re like a little kid who wants to go play in the park across the street, so you just run out into traffic. Well, that’s not going to happen. I’m going to keep you safe, Elliot, whether you like it or not.”
She settled into scowling silence as they drove back to Mason’s compound. He parked in the internal garage and told her to stay. He walked around the vehicle to let her out, but she snapped her seat belt off and got out of the car without waiting.
“Deliberate disobedience isn’t going to get you want you want,” Mason said, his arms folded over his chest.
“Obedience doesn’t seem to work either.”
“It might not get what you want right away, but it means you won’t be punished,” he frowned. “You’re acting like a spoiled little girl.”
She tossed her head and looked at him with vehement rebellion. “I’m not doing another thing you tell me to do until you take me to Aiden.”
He walked past her, into the house without saying a word. She followed him, incredibly irritated.
“Did you hear me?” She stamped after him. “I’m not doing anything.”
He turned around quickly, more quickly than she’d realized he could, and grabbed her by the front of her dress. She let out a squeal of fear as he dragged her up off her feet, his teeth flashing in front of her nose.
“You’ll do everything I say,” he growled in a dangerous baritone. He put a hand under her ass and hiked her up over his shoulder in one easy motion, carrying her with one strong arm around her legs as he strode up the stairs. Caught between fear and outraged anger, Elliot wanted to fight him, but the prospect of falling down the stairs wasn’t a pleasant one, so she waited until he was on the landing and heading toward his cage chamber of a bedroom before she started to struggle.
His hand landed hard on her ass, pain bursting across her bottom. She screamed and tried to buck off his shoulder, not caring if she fell, but he held onto her easily and spanked her with hard slaps all the way into the bedroom, where he dropped her on the bed and went to the closet, where he picked out a belt.
“If you so much as touch me with that, Mason, I swear…”
“Quiet. Now. Or you’ll be gagged for the rest of it. Do you want to be able to scream?”
His threat was chilling, but her agitation kept her from fully understanding just how much trouble she was in.
She bucked off the bed and he grabbed her, ripping her dress from her. It was utterly shredded in his hands, falling off her in hunks of silk and cloth. She growled and wriggled as it came free, leaving her red bottomed and vulnerable. He brought the belt into play, but not as she had expected. The leather didn’t land across her bottom. Instead he looped it around her neck and it pulled tight when he looped the belt back around into the buckle, creating a simple form of check collar. He used the infernal device to guide her toward him on her hands and knees. She saw the gleam of triumph in his green gaze, but made sure that it was short-lived. She was not in the mood to obey. She was disappointed, and scared for Aiden, and she was plain angry at Mason who seemed to genuinely think that she had no right whatsoever to know what was going on in her own life. She lashed out with her teeth, sinking them into the pad of his hand with a sharp, serious bite that made him instantly hiss and pull away.
She saw the outline of her teeth in a half-ring of his hand. She’d clamped down so hard that there were a few traces of blood visible.
“You broke the skin,” he noted plainly. “Bad girl.”
His calm tone belied his anger. She could see it burning inside him. Mason didn’t like pain being inflicted on him. He liked to be the one giving the punishment. She braced herself, half-scared that he was about to beat her to within an inch of her life, but h
e controlled his anger. He pulled the belt from around her neck and put it to the side.
Had she won? Was that all it took? Standing up to him with her teeth?
“Hey!” she complained as he scruffed her by the back of the neck, dragged her across the room and tossed her into the cage, slamming the door shut behind her.
“Asshole!” she screamed after him as he left the room. He shut the bedroom door behind himself and she was left alone. In a fit of rage, she picked everything in the cage up and threw it at the bars: the bowls, the blankets, even the mattress. It wouldn’t fit at first, but she tore into it with her fingers, pulling out the stuffing and pushing it through the apertures until finally everything that had been inside her cage was outside and she was left sitting naked on plain carpet. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but she at least felt she’d made a point.
He left her alone for what felt like a long time, though she didn’t really know how long it was. Adrenaline made short amounts of time seem long. As it started to fade, she looked at the remains of what had been her bedding and the rest of the cage’s accoutrements and felt a little glimmer of remorse. Maybe she had overreacted, just a little. Biting him probably wasn’t a good idea, but dammit, he kept handling her like an animal, he couldn’t exactly complain when she acted like one.
She heard his footsteps outside the room before he returned and she took refuge in the back corner of the cage as the door opened. He stepped into the room and stooped down to pick up the belt he’d dropped earlier, the one that had encircled her neck a little too tightly for comfort.
He stopped when he saw the chaos outside her cage, and looked at her, both brows raised.
“I guess you got over your fear of me,” he said in smooth, unimpressed tones. “You were in enough trouble to begin with. I can’t imagine what made you do this. Do you want to be thrashed? Is that it? Have I not punished you enough?”
“I don’t give a fuck what you do to me, Mason,” she said defiantly. “You’re a liar anyway.”
“I’m a liar?”
“You said you’d help Aiden…”