Microsoft Word - Assassin Master final for conversion

by Assassin Master [Whispers] (mobi)

  His blue eyes angered into a murderous expression, causing her to snatch her hand back and cower from him. “Were you raped, Carrie? Did they hurt you?”

  “No, I was not raped. I will not say no to you,

  ever. I am allowed to beg gentleness. They said I could beg a man’s mercy. Please be gentle, please show mercy. I am yours to command,” she sobbed, remembering Seth's and Maggie’s words. “If you command, I will listen. I swear. You do not need to strike me. Command me, please.”

  The man lowered his head into his hands. Carrie was surprised when he lifted his face to look at her. He looked beyond devastated, he looked wounded.

  Carrie relaxed submissively in his embrace when he pulled her to his chest, holding her, his hand cradling her head. She rubbed at his back, unsure of his intent. Tyr and especially Ace always made their demands very clear. Maggie had told her to learn to anticipate their desires, yet she was uncertain with this man.

  “What is your name?” she asked and with certain

  dread.

  “Dirk,” the man said, while holding her and stroking her hair.

  “I will obey you, Dirk. I will do as you say,” she

  said with mixed relief and confusion.

  “I’m so sorry it took me so long to find out where you were being held, baby. I swear I tried to find you as fast as possible. The minute I found out you were missing, I came,” the man said, holding her closely.

  Confusion settled over her. “How did you know I

  was gone? I don’t know you. No one knows me well enough from before to try and track me down. No one had cared for me except Will, and he wouldn’t have the means to find me.”

  “I care for you. I care a great deal for you. Please

  don’t fear me. I would never cause you harm. I

  promise, baby, I promise.”

  Carrie leaned back and looked into the man’s sorrow-filled expression. With amazement she realized he spoke the truth. “Who are you?”

  The man took her head into both of his hands. He

  looked almost hungrily into her eyes. “I’m your

  father, Carrie.”

  She looked at him, stunned. “That’s impossible! You are way too young.”

  “Your mother had you when I was barely eighteen. She was a few years older than me, the age you are now,” Dirk admitted, smiling sadly.

  “My mother said she didn’t know my father,”

  Carrie said, filled with questions and confusion.

  “Your mother ran from me when she found out she was pregnant,” he said bitterly.

  “Why?” she asked with apprehension.

  “She was afraid of my family. She feared me,” he said.

  “Why did she fear you and your family?”

  “I’m an assassin, my entire family is connected,” Dirk said. It was apparent he waited for her reaction with apprehension.

  “Tyr is an assassin! Did he send you?” Carrie asked with excitement.

  Dirk’s eyes widened with surprise. It was obvious

  to her he had been certain she was going to cower from him once more. “Who is Tyr?”

  “Tyr took me to Seth. He bought me from Roll,” Carrie said, a bit distressed. Tyr had not sent him. For one hopeful moment she had thought Tyr’s original promise had been fulfilled and her heart had soared, then crashed.

  “Tyr is the one who did this to you?” Dirk asked

  with narrowed eyes.

  “Roll kidnapped me. He caught me on a dirt road I always jogged on, and he took me so far away. I was so scared. He drugged me, and he hit me when I wouldn’t eat. Will he try and take me away again?” Carrie asked. She remembered Tyr’s warning Roll would demand her absolute silence. She also remembered Tyr’s warning: Roll was an expert at making people disappear. Of that she had no doubt; she had experienced it firsthand.

  “Roll’s profession will be on hold for quite some time, if not indefinitely,” Dirk said grimly, angrily.

  “Is he dead?” she whispered.

  “Not exactly,” Dirk said. “Roll is a professional. It took a great deal of, coaxing, on my part, for him to disclose your location.”

  “Why did you never come to see me?” Carrie asked. She couldn’t help but believe Dirk’s story when his blue eyes, identical to hers, gazed back at her.

  “I went to see you when you were very small. You wouldn’t remember. Your mother begged me to stay away and let you lead a normal life. I complied, though unwillingly,” Dirk explained.

  “Normal!” Carrie spit out bitterly. “My stepfather beat me and my mother until the day she died. He left me on the Agency’s doorstep with nothing more than a black eye, and I went from foster home to foster home until Will and Sue took me in.”

  “I am so sorry. I never knew about your

  stepfather. I swear I had no idea he was beating you

  and your mother or I would have killed him. When I heard of your mother’s death I went to find you, but you had been moved so often I was always a step behind. By then you were with Will and Sue.

  “I tracked you to a park and approached Will with

  my intent. He looked devastated. He said they had planned on adopting you. His wife would die of a broken heart if you were gone. I watched you playing tag with the woman around a huge maple tree where you were picnicking. You both seemed so happy.

  “Will claimed they loved you, in fact he was

  adamant and looked so distressed at the thought of losing you I believed him. I told Will I would leave you for now, but never again would I be talked into staying away from you. I did not agree to the adoption. As promised they sent me pictures and updates, school reports, even a few of your baby teeth and hair clippings. By the way, congratulations on your last thesis, it was outstanding.”

  “Thank you,” Carrie mumbled absently, still

  thinking. “I never knew you existed. How could they keep this from me? How could you?”

  “My profession is unsafe. You were not old enough at the time to understand and too old for me to suddenly show up and demand your obedience when you had never met me or trusted me. You would need to listen to me immediately if I commanded you to hide or stay silent. Normally I would have taught you your compliance was necessary from birth by starting

  it as a game.”

  “But to never know I was not all alone. Never once a simple phone call to just say hi, even if you didn’t explain who you were. Not even a postcard,” she muttered, eyes downcast.

  “I was always on the sidelines. Where do you think your ‘scholarship’ came from?”

  “Will said I won it,” she said, her head snapping

  up.

  “Please, baby, with your grades?” Dirk said,

  smiling.

  She turned crimson. She realized it was not until university she was able to improve her grades. “You paid for everything, including my car, furniture, spending allowance? All of it?”

  “I bribed the school into taking you on. Such a prestigious university would never have normally allowed a child with low marks to enter into it. But I knew you had potential. I was right. I also sent you gifts. A golden locket, clothes, stuffed animals.”

  “Pandy!” Carrie exclaimed, surprised as realization settled in. She had kept an oversized panda bear that had been given to her on her tenth birthday from a friend of the family, so Will claimed. She wondered what had happened to it; she wondered what had become of all of her possessions.

  “Yes, the panda was from me,” Dirk said happily. “It’s all gone,” she said sadly.

  “No, baby, not gone. I have it, I retrieved it for

  you.”

  Carrie sat stunned as Dirk produced a small figurine of mother and child; she felt a lump in her throat as she traced the small crack lines which had been painstakingly glued together when she had been a small rebellious child of nine. She felt her eyes fill with tears but she refused to allow them to spill over. “It was sitting by your bedside; I thought maybe it
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  was special in some way, something you needed to

  see when you woke in the mornings and went to bed at night.” Dirk’s look was searching.

  Carrie’s eyes brightened at his thoughtfulness, then suddenly clouded. She was feeling strangely deceived; it wasn’t fair he knew about her when she had been kept in the dark. “Would you have ever told me?”

  “I don’t know. I had planned on finding you a job,

  something which would have kept you close to me. Once you graduated I would have fulfilled your dream and taken you to a foreign country to help those less fortunate. You would always have gotten any grants you needed from a secret investor.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, baby, me.”

  “Where do we go from here?” she asked. “Will you suddenly drop out of my life now that you have saved me?”

  “I can’t and I don’t want to. You will need to stay

  close to me from now on. I have infuriated a very

  powerful man. Seth will want what he feels is his back and want it back desperately,” Dirk warned her. “Lines may be drawn between my own and his kind. He had no idea you are my child. I stole you from him.”

  “Although technically Roll stole you first. I have settled my beef with him. Seth will demand restitution, although he is lucky I allowed him to live. He is very important to connections we seek or he would have met his maker on the mountain. The only real reason I spared his life was because of the fact he didn’t know you are my daughter.”

  “But I was Tyr’s,” Carrie explained once more.

  “I look forward to meeting this Tyr,” Dirk replied scowling angrily, his expression murderous.

  “No, please don’t hurt him,” Carrie begged. “I...I

  am in love with him.”

  “You do not love him, Carrie. You were owned by him. He made you dependent. What you’re feeling is normal, but it will pass. He fed you and clothed you and made you rely on him, to need him to feel safe. Don’t worry, you are under my protection now.”

  “And mine!” came a wry voice.

  Carrie looked to the door and saw the younger blond man watching the two of them. He came forward and Carrie could see his eyes sparkling with overwhelming curiosity. A family resemblance was apparent immediately.

  “Carrie, this is Damien. He is my younger brother

  and your uncle,” Dirk explained.

  “She looks like you. Her hair color and eyes,” Damien said, studying Carrie’s features critically. “She’s a wee bit smaller though, big brother.”

  Dirk rolled his eyes. Both men towered over

  Carrie’s petite form. “She has her mother’s build.” “That’s apparent. You’re no china doll,” Damien

  said, chuckling.

  “This is all so strange,” Carrie mused.

  Dirk gripped her hands in his own. “I’m here now, baby. I will keep you safe from harm, I swear. I will kill Seth if he comes for you. But you are old enough to now understand. I don’t want you feeling you have switched one prison for another. But you must obey me and Damien. What we command will keep you safe from harm. We will not be unreasonable.” This last was said on narrowed eyes to his younger brother.

  Now it was Damien’s turn to roll his eyes. “Give me a break. You told me three weeks ago I was an uncle. When you said your baby was stolen I thought you meant an actual baby...not a babe.”

  Carrie blushed at the compliment, though she had

  been told often enough by Ace she was beautiful. She felt sudden concern.

  “Dirk, not only Seth will come. I think a man named Ace will try to track me down,” she said. She did not love Ace, but he had been kind to her, he had never harmed her. She didn’t want to see him dead. She did not want Seth to die either. Maggie loved him

  and Carrie was fond of Maggie. Yet looking at Dirk, she realized he would kill them if they came for her.

  “I won’t let him hurt you,” Dirk said.

  “But he never harmed me, he...” she began, but stopped with embarrassment.

  “It’s all right, Carrie. You can tell me anything,” Dirk said.

  “He was always very gentle with me. Neither he nor Seth ever...they never, Dirk,” Carrie said, imploring him to believe her.

  Dirk sighed, nodding his understanding. “I believe

  you, although it comes as a surprise. The way you offered yourself to me when you were so frightened, I automatically assumed you had been handled brutally.”

  Carrie turned bright red, filled with humiliation and embarrassment; she ducked her head, wishing the floor would swallow her whole. “It’s what I was trained to do, one of many things I was taught,” she mumbled. Dirk cupped her chin and gazed into her eyes.

  “Did anyone harm you?” he asked.

  Carrie understood what he was asking and squirmed under his intense gaze. “He never hurt me. At least he didn’t try to on purpose. I had never been with a man. I had wanted to wait for my husband. I had wanted something special to give to my husband.” Carrie began sobbing. She had wanted Tyr. She knew what Dirk was saying about loving him could

  be true, but Carrie felt certain she did love Tyr. Her heart cried for him. She wished he were here, she wanted him close in her confusion and uncertainty.

  Dirk clasped her to him tightly. “It was Tyr, wasn’t it?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she whimpered. She held onto him tighter, hoping he would understand and not be disappointed in her. How could she explain she wanted Tyr willingly? Tyr had given her a choice and she had accepted him, had dreamed of him. When closing her eyes she could see his beautiful face before her. Her heart beckoned to him. She wished it was he who was holding her.

  “It’s all right, baby, I’m here now. I will take care of you from now on,” Dirk soothed.

  * * * *

  Damien noted the look on his brother’s face as he cradled the girl closely to himself. His brother’s eyes possessed a deep, calculating, intense stare. He knew only too well what he was thinking. His brother was well beyond enraged; his insides were seething with boiling anger.

  His only child had been raped by a man who had purchased her and taken her; it had been her first time ever being with a man. Damien knew this man Tyr would have to die. Dirk would track him down relentlessly and kill him, and looking at the sweet, young, vulnerable thing before him, Damien was of a mind to help!

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What the hell do you mean she was taken?” Tyr screamed at the top of his lungs, outraged and on the verge of hysteria. His erratic heartbeat pounded against his chest; he was gripped with terror as realization washed over him.

  He had recently returned, having found Carrie a safe place and a new identity. He had set up a bank account for her, depositing in it a large sum of money he planned on adding to periodically. The place he had found her was large, beautiful, and bright in a far-away foreign country, and he was hoping she would allow him to visit regularly.

  Seth was pacing before him like a caged tiger, an

  enraged tiger. He stopped to glare at Tyr. “She was jogging in the hills with me. Two large, blond men grabbed her and took her away in a chopper! How the hell do you think I feel! I have never had one stolen from me.”

  “Seth, if this is your way of keeping her, we

  should talk,” Tyr began, but Seth howled in outrage, grabbing Tyr by his shirt collar.

  “Do not even go there, my friend,” he snarled

  into Tyr’s face.

  Tyr was not alarmed, but realized with dismay Carrie really had been taken. Seth sported a huge black eye; there was a nasty black and blue lump on his temple, and he seemed to be favoring an arm. Whoever had gone after him had done so with a vengeance.

  “Maybe Roll changed his mind about buyers,” Tyr

  said, grasping for a solution.

  Seth released him and once more began his erratic pacing. “No. I have already checked that avenue. Roll is in ICU, hanging onto life by a fraying threa
d. He is unable to disclose his attacker as yet to my informant on the police force. He has not regained consciousness. Oh, he will probably live, but he was worked over meticulously by a very skilled professional. Someone in your field of work.” Seth glared at Tyr. “Someone you know perhaps?”

  Now it was Tyr’s turn to snarl. “She was safe here. She was supposed to be, at least!”

  Seth cringed. “Damn you! I have enough accusing

  eyes centered on me already. Maggie and the other women and children cry nonstop. Poor little Hannah wants her beloved friend, who had gotten her the puppy she had so desperately wanted. Maggie is terrified for the girl. She has voiced all sorts of horrible concerns and scenarios, all of which we both know could be true, and I am just as concerned. Ace has flown off looking for her. The look he leveled on me when I returned without her... Heaven help the