Beloved Sacrifice: Trinity Masters, book 9

by Mari Carr

  You, my-ay brown-eyed girl.

  She licked her lips, looking around the room before settling her gaze on him. “You’re alive.”

  It wasn’t a question but he nodded.

  “I…we…thought you were dead. That they’d killed you.”

  “They tried.” Weston tucked his hair behind what remained of his right ear. That and his ocular prosthesis were the most obvious damage from the attempted murder.

  “How did you get away?”

  “They left me for dead.” Weston clasped his hands and looked down at them. “I survived.”

  “And you didn’t tell me. Or Caden.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why?” Her brows were drawn with anger, but the word had come out as a plea. She shook her head and said it again. “Why?”

  “First, because I was in a coma. I was extremely lucky that the people I’d reached out to for help found me. They got me medical care, but I was in a coma for a while. After that I was recovering from my injuries.”

  “Twelve years, Weston. You’ve been gone twelve years.”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “You never came back for…” Rose trailed off, and what little color there was in her cheeks drained away. “Oh God. Tabby.”

  He raised his hands, palms out. “I took care of her.”

  “What did you do?” Rose asked in horror.

  She thought he’d hurt his little sister? Damn it. He would never hurt Tabby. Irritation made his words harsh.

  “I killed myself for years trying to make enough money, and trade enough favors, to arrange for Tabitha to go into a private facility in Sweden when the time was right. There’s a doctor there who knows Friedreich’s ataxia.” The rare degenerative disease that kept his sister Tabitha in a hospital also made her the perfect hostage. Tabby’s safety was what his parents had used to keep all of them—him, Rose, and Caden—in line.

  “You got her out?” Rose stared at him, as if she were trying to read his thoughts.

  “Yes. When I heard Caden was dead, I knew I had to act. I got her out first. Then I came to Boston for you.”

  “She’s safe?” The line of Rose’s shoulders softened. “I didn’t even…I didn’t think about her. I forgot about her.” Her lips twisted in a grimace. “I forgot about her.” The last sentence was low and quiet.

  “She’s safe. She’s in the hospital in Sweden.”

  “How?” Rose shook her head. “Caden and I tried to get her out.”

  “Like I said, years of work and millions of dollars in forged documents and bribes. I had fake transfer papers, a scenario I’d been building for years. Caden’s…what happened meant I had to accelerate the plan, but it still worked.

  “A private medical transport took her from Sea-Tac to Toronto. From there, she changed to a different medical charter and was flown to Sweden. The doctors there have her records; they know how to care for her. They’ll help her.”

  Rose bent her head. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  “She’s my sister.”

  Rose frowned, as if something had just occurred to her, then said, “Did she know you weren’t dead?”

  Weston froze. He hadn’t thought she’d ask that. His silence was answer enough.

  Rose squeezed her eyes closed. “You told her, but not me, not Caden.”

  “A few years ago, I went to see her. I needed to talk to her and find out what she wanted. It’s her life. I had to make sure she would be okay, be happy, if she had to change facilities.”

  Rose turned half away, looking out the window. Weston sat forward, bracing his hands on the arms of the chair.

  “She told me you and Caden had a plan. That you were trying to learn our parents’ secret, so you could use it to blackmail them and escape.”

  Rose nodded once. “That was…Caden was sure he was close this last time.”

  Hearing his brother’s name on her lips made Weston’s chest ache.

  “That was my plan, too.” Weston kept his voice low and quiet.

  Rose crossed the room, perching on the edge of the couch. “You found something?”

  “I did.”

  He expected her to ask more questions—what had he learned? What were they going to do about his parents? What were they going to do about the Trinity Masters?

  He had answers for those questions. He didn’t have all the pieces he needed, but he was close. Closer than Caden had ever been.

  Weston had yet to even begin to truly mourn his brother. He’d spent more than a decade planning and plotting, reassuring himself in the loneliest hours that he, Caden, Rose, and Tabby would have a lifetime together, that what was most important was finding a way to keep them all safe.

  But his brother was dead. He would never get a chance to see him, talk to him. To free him from the prison their parents had built.

  There was another, lesser reason he’d stayed away, one that did him no credit. A reason that he admitted only in his loneliest, lowest moments—he hadn’t wanted to see them together. In the dark of his own mind, he could admit that it had been easier to stay away, because his heart would break to see the girl, now woman, he’d always loved in the arms of another man.

  And now his brother was dead, and Weston was left with his grieving widow.

  Rose stood and walked into the study. She came back holding a tall, skinny picture frame. The strip of photo booth photos was one of only two pictures he had on display. For years, he’d made sure to hide all his mementos, but as the years had passed he’d needed a reminder of what he was fighting for—his family.

  He’d had the photo strip with him at college. Years after his presumed death, he’d been able to use a proxy to request his boxes of personal possessions, which the university had put in storage. This strip of photos and a picture of Tabby were the only things he kept. The picture of Tabby was taped to the bedroom mirror.

  Rose stared at the pictures, then turned the frame to him.

  In the first photo, he and Rose, sixteen and twenty respectively, had their faces in profile to the camera, their lips pressed together in a chaste kiss. His hand rested tentatively on her shoulder.

  In the second photo, they’d sprung apart, Rose wide-eyed, Weston scowling.

  He remembered the moment. They’d snuck into the photo booth to kiss, and then heard Caden calling their names.

  In the third picture Caden was there, his big head and cheesy smile taking up most of the frame.

  In the final image, they were all smiling. Rose was squished in the middle, grinning. Caden’s eyes were crinkled at the corners, matching his big grin. Weston was smiling, his face pressed against Rose’s.

  Of the kids in the picture, only Weston knew the truth about their parents. Caden and Rose hadn’t yet been indoctrinated into their parents’ twisted reality. At nineteen, he’d been arrogant and self-centered enough to assume he was the only one who would be subjected to his parents’ machinations. The boy in the photo didn’t realize that in only a few months, they’d start on Rose, and shortly after that, on Caden.

  “You knew.” She set the picture down on the small table, the frame clacking softly against the wood. “You knew what they were like. You let us think you were dead. Instead of just being scared they would hurt Tabby, we had to worry that if one of us stepped out of line, they would murder the other. The same way they killed you.” She took a deep breath.

  “I was stupid and arrogant when I was young. I thought I’d found a way to gain the upper hand. Instead, when I confronted them, my own father shot me and burned the building down around me.” His fingers trembled at the memory.

  “Pet’s apartment,” she said softly.

  “Yes.” That’s where he’d gone to confront Elroy and Barton. He’d wanted to protect Caden, who’d been home at the time.

  Instead, Barton had pulled a gun, shot Weston, Pet, and the male submissive Elroy had brought in that night. Then they’d set the building on fire and walked out.

  Rose tur
ned to look out the window, folding her arms across her stomach, almost hugging herself. “They found two bodies—a man and a woman.”

  “They had another sub, a man, with them that night. I was able to crawl out.”

  Pain, pain everywhere. He’d curled on his side, taking hard, gasping breaths. He stared at the wide, sightless eyes of Lynn—his parents’ beloved submissive. At least he’d thought she was beloved, but they’d shot her, and the other man with her, as if they were nothing.

  His own father had shot him. Everyone knew that Barton was his biological father—they looked too much alike for it to be Elroy. Barton had held the gun. Pulled the trigger.

  Fire burned and roared. The ceiling was no longer visible—a thick layer of smoke rolled above him. He could still breathe, but barely. He knew he was dying, but the fire terrified him. He didn’t want to feel his flesh burning.

  So he started to crawl toward the balcony doors. They were slightly open, probably to let in the cool night air. Lynn would have done that—opened the doors, prepped the bar with clean crystal glasses and a decanted bottle of red wine, along with an ice bucket and a bottle of Crown Royal. Then she’d strip naked and wait by the door, kneeling with her legs spread, ready to obey.

  But now she lay naked, blood running out of the hole in her chest.

  He half crawled to the balcony doors, keeping his right hand pressed over the hole in his chest and dragging in great labored breaths, coughing up blood every few feet. Shoving open the door, he was inches from making it onto the balcony when the ceiling collapsed. He curled up on his left side. Burning drywall fell on his head and neck, while a flaming ceiling beam fell and shattered his right leg.

  Cold. In those first few seconds, his burning flesh had actually felt painfully cold, and he’d been reminded that in Dante’s Inferno, hell was burning cold, not hot. Then he smelled it—hair burning as his head caught fire, and then searing flesh, which smelled like cooking fat.

  He felt a pop, and then liquid was running over his nose.

  He couldn’t scream, couldn’t move. Pain.

  Pain that shot adrenaline through him, his mind trying to give his body the strength to get away. He made one useless attempt to push himself out onto the balcony, but he barely moved.

  Yet, that saved his life. He didn’t know it at the time, but he’d been followed, and his followers, watching from the street, saw the movement amid the fire. They’d climbed the outside of the building and gotten him out before the firetrucks made it. They’d loaded him—half, if not mostly dead—into their car, and taken him to a secure facility.

  With third- and fourth-degree burns on most of the right side of his body, a missing eye and shattered knee, plus a collapsed lung from the bullet wound, as soon as he was out of surgery he’d been placed in a medically induced coma and transported to a hospital in Canada, where he’d been beyond the reach of the Trinity Masters and the purists.

  “It wasn’t your body?”

  “No.”

  Rose’s head snapped around, eyes widening. “But then they know. They know you’re alive.”

  Weston shook his head. “No, it took me a while to piece it together, but my parents made sure that only two bodies were found.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It does if you factor in that it would be easier for my parents if I went missing than if I was dead. They bribed everyone who was there that night, got them to report that there were only two bodies.”

  “But there were only two bodies.”

  “You know how they operate. Everyone involved got an envelope with cash and a letter. The letter told them that the only bodies that should be reported were the woman and the older male.”

  “How would they know which one was the older male?”

  “Easy enough to tell from the bones and teeth.”

  Rose shook her head again. “But there were only two bodies. Wouldn’t someone have said something?”

  He snorted. “Who would they say it to? The notes and cash didn’t come with a return address. The people who rescued me were the ones who figured out most of this, as I was…not in good shape.”

  “So your parents send out these letters and cash bribes, then all the reports say there were only two bodies, and they just assume their bribery worked?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure they don’t know?”

  “It’s been twelve years.”

  “It has, hasn’t it?” She bit off the last two words.

  “You had Caden to protect you, and I knew you two were protecting Tabby, so—”

  “Protect me?” Rose threw her head back and let out a brittle laugh.

  “Fine,” Weston snapped. Her beloved had just died, hearing him minimize what she and Caden had together would hurt. “Love you and protect you. The point is, they thought I was dead, they wouldn’t be looking for me, and I would be free to research and gather information. I couldn’t risk having them find out I was still alive.”

  “Love.” Rose stared at him, then her eyes widened and she laughed again. “Yes, Caden protected and loved me.” Another cracking, brittle-sounding laugh.

  “Rose, I—”

  “No.” She spat out the word, all trace of laughter gone. “You have…you have no idea what…” Her throat worked for a moment. “You have no idea what we suffered. You have no idea the hell I’ve been living in.”

  “Suffered? Caden protected you.” He was sure of that. He knew she and Caden were…had been a couple, though it had been in secret, since Rose had been, until only recently, engaged to Devon Asher and Juliette Adams. Still, Weston had discovered they were both members of BDSM clubs all over the country. That had shocked the hell out of him.

  “Caden…” She stopped for a moment, and in an almost unconscious gesture, touched her fingertips to her throat. “Caden is gone. And we’ve had this conversation before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you and I, we’ve done this before. That night. You were sure you knew what was going on.” She flicked a glance at him. “Sure you knew what my training had been like. But you had no idea.”

  Wes recalled following her to his room after the spanking and finding Rose kneeling on the floor, ready to do his bidding. It wasn’t until she’d told him about the training that he understood the full horror of what his parents were doing to her.

  Seventeen-year-old Rose turned her head and kissed his palm, her eyes closed. She spoke in a whisper, each word aching with heartbreak. “I wanted you to be my first.”

  And he knew. He knew what she was trying to tell him.

  “No.” Weston shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t.”

  “I’m not a virgin, Wes. Not…not any part of me.”

  Weston shook his head harder. “He wouldn’t…”

  “He’s teaching me to submit no matter what. To whatever he wants to do to me.” Tears slid from her eyes and onto his hand.

  His father had raped and sodomized her.

  “I’m going to kill him.” Wes surged to his feet, his vision a red haze of anger.

  It was during that heartbreaking conversation that he’d cleaned up her cuts, promised they’d run away and get married, live in a house in the country.

  The dreams of children.

  Then alarm bells went off in his head. “Rose, what do you mean you suffered?” A grisly though occurred to him. “Elroy doesn’t still…”

  “Rape me?” She didn’t look at him. “No, after you died, Caden collared me, to protect me from them. That stopped the rape and made me the whipping boy.”

  Weston’s stomach knotted. “What do you mean?”

  Rose faced him. “Why should I tell you anything? You left.”

  “I was shot.”

  “You stayed away twelve years. If you…if you really cared, you would have come back.”

  “I spent years preparing an escape, a real escape, for all of us.”

  “A bit too late for Caden, isn’t it
?” Her tone was bitter, merciless.

  Weston’s shoulders tensed. He’d thought that after she’d cried, they would be able to talk, really talk, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. He reminded himself that she was grieving.

  “Twelve years.” Rose sighed. “And it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It does matter.”

  “No, it doesn’t. You got Tabby out. Caden’s dead. It’s over.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? I’m broken inside.”

  Broken by Caden’s death?

  “Time,” he said simply. “I can give you time. I was too late to save Caden, but I’m not going to stop. My parents need to pay for what they’ve done, and once I take them and the other purists down, you’ll have the time you need to grieve for Caden and put the pieces back together.”

  “Pieces,” she sounded out the word. Weston could see on her face that the word brought back a memory.

  “Elroy just told me we’re all pieces in some chess game.” Weston and Rose huddled on the floor together, whispering like children. “They’re players, we’re just pieces.”

  Her gaze searched his face. “What piece am I?”

  He wouldn’t lie to her. “A pawn.”

  She nodded, as if that made sense, and dropped her hands and her gaze. He picked up her hands, pressed them back to his cheeks. “You’re all that matters, Brown Eyes. They’re nothing to me. We’re not their chess pieces. Not anymore.”

  “Caden thought he was one of the players, but we were always just pieces.” She turned to him with hard, glittering eyes. “Am I your pawn now, Weston?”

  Chapter Five

  “You’re not my pawn, Rose,” Weston said.

  Every time he said her name, feelings spiked through her. She wasn’t sure what the feelings were, but they burned both hot and cold.

  His one remaining eye tracked her as she turned away from the window. It hurt to look at him, for so many reasons. Some quiet part of her was horrified by the story of suffering that was written in his skin.