Once their hands were entwined, nothing was able to separate them, and Nikolas pulled Ben the remaining way out of his imprisonment. Ben was then able to drag himself and levered over Stefan’s body, pushing it out of the way as he came into Nikolas’s arms. Their hearts were beating so fast and so loudly they drowned out any other sounds and Nikolas thought they might stay there forever, just clasped together with blood pounding through their veins, vital and alive. A cold, wet, stinking creature wormed itself between them though and made them laugh through croaky throats, Nikolas’s from the strain of screaming Ben’s name, which Ben assured him he had been doing, although Nikolas hadn’t realised it, and Ben’s from swallowing the peat as he’d been sucked under.
Nikolas freed his ankle from the tree with a groan of pain. He suspected it was dislocated.
Ben rolled over, and then wheezed, raising his head, “Where’s Steven?”
He was gone.
Ben had pushed the body backward, using it as firm ground as he’d climbed to Nikolas, and the bog had apparently accepted this lesser tribute. There was nothing remaining on the surface to indicate the irrevocable end of the Mikkelsen family line.
For the first time, staring at the smooth surface of the peat, Nikolas heard the sounds of the moors returning—the cry of a skylark, the caw of the rooks from their grounds, the chomping of his horse as it munched the short grass. The sun was warm on his mud-caked skin. He eased his torn back onto the soft grass. Ben came to him, one body now as they preferred—and needed.
Nikolas knew Ben was torn up with guilt, silenced by this more than shock. He was tempted to say, “I told you so.” It seemed appropriate.
But Nikolas loved Ben enough to sacrifice his only son for him. He wasn’t about to upset him any more now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The return to the house was difficult. Radulf had to be carried most of the way, as his struggles to free himself from the bog had exhausted him long before Ben had seized him. Not on par due to his recent poisoning, he could only stagger until his legs gave out. Neither could he be got onto the horse.
Nikolas couldn’t mount and ride either. He could barely walk. He’d wrenched more than his shoulder. Although he was stoic and silent on the matter, he was in agony.
They made it back without speaking hardly a word.
Nikolas had no time or space to talk anyway. His thoughts were tumbling, for once beyond his ability to order them and force them to his will.
There was work to be done. He didn’t have time to think.
He could not let the remembrance of what he’d done distract him.
He had to keep up the front he’d maintained since that first glimpse of his dead brother at the door of their London house. From that first moment, realising the blond figure wasn’t Nika, but his son, Nikolas had known how things would end. And for the first time since allowing someone into his heart, he’d realised how truly alone he was.
He’d tried to push Ben away. He’d tried to sever the bond between them, snap it painfully in two with Jackson Keane, but still Ben had returned to him, loyal, loving, and steadfast.
The irony didn’t escape Nikolas that in the end it wouldn’t be the hatred of enemies that would destroy him, but the love of the only person in the world he’d allowed in. Benjamin Rider.
He’d fought everything in his life that had tried to kill him, but he hadn’t been able to fight Ben’s love.
He saw now how things would be for them in the future.
They would continue as they were. Perfect lives oiled by his wealth and Ben’s beauty. Everything would appear aligned, the world just so, and he would make sure that Ben thought this was how things were. He would make it his mission to ensure Ben Rider-Mikkelsen never suspected just how far apart they were—how little he really knew about the thing he was sleeping with.
Nikolas’s masks would remain in place.
Ben had accepted the fiction he’d maintained with Stefan, and he would believe it now—that their lives were good, that they understood each other. The very quality he valued most—Ben’s unswerving faith in his essential goodness and lovability—was the instrument that would separate them forever. But even living a lie with Ben was better than being without him entirely.
Nikolas watched Ben now as he washed the dog in their own shower, naked, soaping the exhausted animal with two-hundred-pounds-a-bottle coconut and vanilla shampoo, Ben’s own fatigue forgotten, his back shredded with great red welts where Radulf in his panic had attempted to climb him to escape.
Nikolas sighed and took over scrubbing the dog so Ben could wash his wounds. They still hadn’t spoken more than a few essential words—can you carry him? Can you walk? What should we do about—? But neither had wanted that last question finished or answered. A swift glance back toward the moors and the thought of what the bog now contained was enough to silence them again.
Even over tea—with Radulf dry and sleeping the sleep of the dead in his basket, and Ben dressed in a warm sweater and smelling of shampoo and ointment—Nikolas couldn’t order his thoughts enough to move past the tumble of misery at the realisation that they could never move beyond this point.
They were separated by a profound schism that could never be closed. Ben chose to see the world as he wanted to. Nikolas saw a different one, and he was alone in the darkness and the horror, just as he’d always been.
No one had ever helped him swim in the sewer of his life; they’d only ever latched onto him, using his strength. They’d never really understood that he belonged in the gutter and that they were clinging to a dark thing that thrived in that foul environment.
He drank his tea from the delicate bone chine he had filched from his ex-wife’s collection and lifted his face to a beam of sunlight that streaked in through the perfection of this house of light he’d built for Ben.
“I have to go to London.”
He sensed rather than saw Ben look up from his own tea.
When Ben didn’t reply, Nikolas opened his eyes. He realised a full lie wouldn’t be believed so he gave Ben one of his seamlessly perfect half-truths, allowing a hint of uncertainty, which he knew Ben fell for every time. “I am uncharacteristically confused at what we should do about…his death. Reporting it.” He even used we. Include Ben whilst lying to him and shutting him out. It had been successful for so many years now it had become habit. “I need to consult Jackson—if I’m allowed to speak to him alone, that is.” That was perfect. A subtle self-deprecating hint of humour, and Ben would be chastened, thinking about his entirely unfounded suspicions.
It had worked with Ben for years, and it didn’t let him down now. Ben gave him a wan, supportive, loving smile and nodded. “I think I’ll start recalling everyone—if you’ll tell me where they are.”
Yes, you do that.
That’ll keep you busy.
Maybe I’ll buy you another pretty present and all will be well.
§ § §
Nikolas arrived in London late, the traffic around the M4-M25 junction at a standstill due to an accident. At least, that’s what Nikolas assumed had happened. He had taken half a bottle of something from the back of a drawer to enable him to lift his arms to the steering wheel, so he’d been seeing flashing lights of many colours for hours.
The builders had left for the day. The hole in the wall was now a connecting door. He went straight up to Peyton’s room.
Peyton stared at him. “Well?”
Nikolas nodded.
“Jesus, man.” The big man played idly with his joystick, thinking. “Which one?”
“Stefan.”
“Shit.”
Nikolas perched on the arm of the chair across from Peyton’s command module.
Fate had brought them together. They were a mismatched pair. Nikolas knew Ben had never understood it. Ben didn’t get a lot of things.
From the moment Nikolas had met Peyton Garic, he’d acknowledged he’d found someone who was more paranoid about life than he was. He’
d recognised in Peyton’s girth the opposite coping mechanism he used to control his life.
He’d told Peyton everything, and the giant man had accepted the information with the alacrity of someone who genuinely believed he was on the CIA’s most wanted list. He’d monitored Stefan’s calls, tracked his activities, his credit card spending, read his emails, followed him on CCTV, pondering his motivation and trying to outguess him. Trying to get Nikolas the proof he needed.
“Does the old fucker know yet?”
Peyton shook his head. “No calls. No activity. He’s still at the house.”
Nikolas nodded, thinking back to the events on Dartmoor that day. Skimming over them in a periphery way, scanning them in his mind like he’d watch a movie—not him, just actors on a screen. “I think he miscalculated badly. It went down on the moors. He saw the bog, couldn’t resist the opportunity and threw the dog in. But there was no cell coverage. He couldn’t call and report back. He probably didn’t expect that. In England. Being so small.” And, of course, Nikolas reflected, Stefan hadn’t anticipated dying either. He must have thought his plan fool proof—that he would be able to stand there and enjoy seeing his father watch Ben and Radulf die, unable to save either one.
“Cool. You going in?”
Nikolas nodded again.
“Hummer, man?”
Nikolas opened his eyes. He’d not realised he’d dosed off.
“You look like shit. Take five before you leave. He’s not going anywhere. I’ll watch him for you. You’re safe with The Mountain. Always will be. You know that.”
Nikolas was too tired to nod again. He levered himself with difficulty from the chair and went to find some vodka. It seemed fitting to be fuelled on vodka to kill Anatoly Aronofsky. Twelve years old, he’d been fuelled on vodka to fuck him, after all.
§ § §
Nikolas went in at three in the morning. He’d slept for a few hours, drank for a few more, had a final consult with Peyton, which had yielded unexpected benefits from the back of his drawer, and now felt spacey. That was good. He wanted the slight distance that the exhaustion, alcohol, and Peyton’s favourite remedies for pain gave him.
Anatoly’s house was a large, detached redbrick Victorian in a secluded, leafy garden. Peyton had tapped into the security system to monitor the old Russian’s activities, and now he’d disabled the alarms remotely. No private security firm barrelling up at an inopportune moment.
The place was dark.
Nikolas wasn’t anticipating much resistance. He’d sized Anatoly up the moment he’d met him at the lecture. He did it with everyone. Can I kill this person? He’d never met anyone yet where the answer to that had been no.
Can I kill him? How much force will be necessary? That was always the next question. How, when, where. It had become automatic—everyone in his life sorted and numbered on a list for ease of killing.
Except Ben Rider, of course. Ben had slipped onto a different account. One Nikolas held in his heart. He smiled sardonically—could one name be termed a list?
But Anatoly was low on the killing list—easy. He was old, despite the expensive cosmetic work he’d clearly had done. When it had come down to it, it hadn’t taken much to kill Gregory either. But then he’d been almost dead anyway and had wanted it, had welcomed it.
Nikolas was fairly sure Anatoly wouldn’t welcome death.
The ground floor was secure, but he could see a window open on the first. He grunted in annoyance. He’d done some serious damage to his back pulling Ben out of the bog, so although he’d topped up his numbness with a few handfuls of Peyton’s magic pills—something else they had in common—and washed them down with vodka, he still wasn’t too sure he could climb to that window.
He had no choice.
He levered himself up onto the window ledge of the kitchen, seized the drainpipe and began to scale the wall.
By the time he slid into the bathroom, he was in so much pain that he had to bend over, hands on his knees, as spasms shot across his back. He took some more pills out of his pocket, crunching them dry as he listened to the silence in the house.
He could barely straighten.
It would help. He wanted answers, and he was more than willing to share his agony with this old man.
Nikolas wanted to know if there had been a moment when he might have salvaged something from this mess. Had Stefan known from the beginning that he was Aleksey, his father, or had he at first genuinely believed he was just his Uncle Nikolas? It occurred to Nikolas in his drug-fuelled, desperate thoughts, that maybe it had all been nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. If he had embraced Stefan on the doorstep, called him son, brought him in under his sheltering wing, what subsequent lies by the grandfather could have torn them apart? Perhaps he could have sufficiently won Stefan’s affection, his loyalty, so when the old man arrived, recognising him and spreading his vicious truths, Stefan would have resisted. Had Anatoly goaded the boy with the knowledge of his father’s indifference? Perhaps he’d told Stefan that Aleksey Primakov had known he’d lived, but that he hadn’t cared one way or the other, lavishing whatever went for love in his twisted psyche on some pretty toy boy. Not his son. That he still didn’t care…look how he received you even after all these years…
And wasn’t that, when all was said and done, the actual truth of it? He hadn’t asked where the baby had been buried. He hadn’t wanted to visit or acknowledge any connection to it. He hadn’t even come home when Kristina had told him she was pregnant—or when the boy had supposedly died. He’d been busy. Indifference hardly covered it.
But his whole existence since he’d been ten had been one of inuring himself to loss. What did Kristina think he did for a living? It was hard to take a phone call from your pregnant wife with a woman bleeding out on the floor in front of you. Impossible to be told about your son’s death, and care whilst standing in a room full of other people’s dead children.
Inured to loss.
But for a few weeks, buoyed on Ben’s misplaced optimism that his life could be good, he’d almost come to believe that Stefan did want to get to know him, that he was innocent, genuine.
So, Nikolas wanted to know the truth. No, he needed to know it. He didn’t want it at all. Truth, in his opinion, was highly overrated.
When he could stand straight without blacking out, he went to the door and eased it open. The bathroom was on a wide landing running around the first floor from the stairs to the bedrooms.
One door was ajar and a low light spilled out.
Peyton had told him the old man and Stefan had lived in the house on their own. It didn’t do to be overly confident of any intelligence though. Experience had taught him that even the best information could be faulty. He carefully checked all the other rooms, opening doors, swiftly glancing inside.
At Stefan’s, clearly, he paused for the briefest moment, regarding the leather jacket thrown on the bed. He’d bought this beautiful garment for his son only two weeks earlier. He wondered why Stefan hadn’t been wearing it when he…Just as well, really.
In years to come, perhaps centuries, would the last Mikkelsen be found in the bog, dug up and examined by clever men who would say they’d discovered evidence of ritual sacrifice on Dartmoor in the early twenty-first century?
Perhaps they’d be right.
He turned away and steeled himself to enter the room with the light.
For one moment, he allowed himself a vision of how things might have been. He did this frequently at times like this—a quick snapshot of a tall blond teenager going off to university with his brother, a young man becoming an architect, houses all made of glass being built around the world—and then he saw himself as he was. A thing of darkness living in the shadows who would enter this bedroom and torture and kill an old man.
It took a special kind of monster to mutilate the old. Much more challenging than building beautiful houses.
He gripped his gun a little tighter and slid into the soft illumination.
When he did, he felt the pills and alcohol roil in his belly, but he swallowed them down.
Anatoly was in a chair. Tied to it. He’d been beaten. He was dead, a clean bullet hole in his forehead and not so neat splatter of blood and brain matter on the bed behind him.
But it wasn’t Anatoly that made Nikolas sway with incredulity, hesitate, and freeze for the first time in his life.
It was Ben.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Before Nikolas could speak—if he could have summoned one coherent word to say—Ben propelled him back against the wall and relieved him of his gun. Ben was dressed, as he was, all in black. His eyes were the only colour Nikolas could see, wide, green—and cold. They weren’t their habitual warm green of cut grass on a summer’s day. The hard depth of a southern ocean stared back at him.
Ben laid both weapons onto the chest of drawers carefully, then before Nikolas could summon his senses, Ben slapped him.
Reeling from the blow, he was then pulled into a furious, almost demented embrace, and Ben croaked, “No more killing, Nik. Not for you.”
Nikolas was held off for a moment; he thought he was about to be hit again, but he was dragged into an even fiercer hug. He wanted to mention his back, but thought it might not be a good moment.
Ben suddenly ground their mouths together, preventing speech anyway.
When he’d kissed him until there was no breath left between them, Ben panted savagely in his ear, “You are not alone, Nikolas. Never. I’m right here with you, if this is how it has to be. I will kill the whole fucking world for you, if that is what you need.” Ben shook him. “Do you understand me?”
Nikolas nodded. It was beyond him to do more.
Only when he appeared satisfied with Nikolas’s gesture of compliance did Ben release him, but then he seized his arm and dragged him toward the door, taking both guns himself and stowing them in the back of his waistband.
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