by Rucker, Shay
Sabrina listened as Maxim and Basir spoke of nothing of interest. She wished she were surrounded by Zeus’s silence. He wouldn’t feel compelled to waste energy on false politeness or veiled threats the way these men did.
It was almost nine thirty in the evening, a little over an hour since they’d spirited her away from Kragen’s cliff house. She didn’t know why, but she knew their departure had been a reaction to some unforeseen event. As they approached Basir’s home, she’d seen that the land was expansive and the home itself was huge. Those factors could work in her favor or against her. On one hand there was a lot of space to run and hide. On the other, she didn’t know the layout. During the drive she’d heard Kragen and Reed discuss the cameras in the rooms they took the women to. Kragen had ordered Reed to sweep and electronically clean the room they would use, possibly override Basir’s surveillance system.
Kragen stood and extended his hand toward her. “Our room awaits,” he informed her.
Charming. He could be absolutely charming. Which was probably the reason so many women had died by his hand. Sabrina stood and allowed Kragen to lead her through the house behind Basir and his servant. Reed followed in their wake.
They stopped at a set of polished cherrywood doors that opened to an elevator.
“Enjoy your stay,” Basir said, motioning them inside and walking away.
The room they were escorted to wasn’t ornate or gaudy as she had suspected it would be. Yes, there was gold—gold patterns in the drapery and on the bedding, gold lamps and mirror frames, golden threads in the rich cream throw rug. It was the cream that balanced the room, giving it sleek sophistication.
How is it people who deal in so much ugliness live in such splendor, she wondered.
“How do you like it?” Kragen asked.
“It’s beautiful,” she answered truthfully, then quickly followed it with a manipulation. “You honestly do know my likes and dislikes. I see how we could have fallen in love with each other.”
“I’m sure you’ll remember it all. You’ll love me again soon.”
She smiled. “Maybe even more than I did before. Do you know why I love gold so much?”
Kragen asked Reed to leave the room. Reed nodded once, barely looking up as he ran his hand over the surface of the tablet. She wondered what held his interest so intensely.
Sabrina smiled at Kragen with appreciation when Reed left the room. Her smile faltered when Kragen reached for her hand and brought her fingers to his lips. “Your mother had a gold chain with a pendant. Your grandmother gave it to her when she was pregnant with you. Your mother told you the pendant was the only thing of value she’d ever been given before she was blessed with you. You said the pendant and its history were the greatest gifts your mother had ever given you.”
His words, his knowledge lay into Sabrina like a whip that’s pain didn’t stop with the severing of flesh. It lashed through the vulnerability in her very soul. If she hadn’t been sure before, she was sure now. This was the man who had destroyed her sister’s will to live.
When they were younger, Sam had made up all kinds of fantasies about the gold pendant, but the truth was it had been a gift passed from mother to oldest daughter for four generations. Not even when her mother’s addiction was at its worst had she tried to sell it. It represented the strength in their lineage. Even when the individual beneficiary was at her weakest, she always possessed an inherited strength.
As a child, Sabrina had hated that pendant. She knew her mother had loved Sam’s father, yet she couldn’t stand Sabrina’s sperm donor. It hadn’t seemed fair that Sam should get the pendant and the father their mother couldn’t get over losing. It hadn’t been fair Sam could go to that father before their mother had died, while Sabrina was moved from foster home to foster home, living in houses with men who wanted her to call them daddy yet looked her up and down as if she were a grown woman.
“I’m sorry, Sabrina,” Kragen said, wrapping her in his arms. She stiffened. “I’m sorry to bring up bittersweet memories.”
It took Sabrina a moment to realize tears wet her face. The memories she had about the history of the pendant weren’t bittersweet; they were just bitter. She stepped out of Kragen’s arms and wiped her face.
“I shouldn’t be such a baby. I just… It surprised me that you knew. I wouldn’t have shared that story with someone I didn’t care about.” And it was true. Sam wouldn’t have shared that part of her life with someone she didn’t care about or trust. The bastard had lulled her sister into a false sense of safety; then he’d hurt her.
Kragen pulled Sabrina back into his arms. She didn’t resist his embrace, but she did resist the desire to rip his throat out.
He pressed a kiss to the side of her head. “There are so many stories I can tell you of our time together. I had you for almost a month, and in the short time, you owned every part of me. I had no choice but to find you again. It was the only way we could be whole again.”
“After I returned home, I learned I was pregnant,” she said. “There was an accident, and I lost a part of my memory and the baby.”
She’d been out of town and had been devastated when she’d returned to New Orleans to learn Sam’s baby girl had been stillborn. She’d wanted to be an aunt even if Sam had been too depressed to want to be a mother. Sabrina had believed in her heart that once Sam gave birth, there would be nothing more she’d want than to be a mother to her child.
“I could barely function after, could barely survive the loss,” she told Kragen, verbalizing her perception of her sister’s experience. “It felt like all my life, all I ever really knew was loss.”
Her words were an amalgamation of her truth and Sam’s truth. Her sister had been pregnant. Her sister had had an “accident,” which in reality was her first suicide attempt. The second, years later, also classified as an accident, had been successful. Kragen had taken Sam from Sabrina when her sister had been the only thing she’d had left of her family. She knew loss.
When she pulled away from Kragen and looked up, she felt a feral sense of satisfaction at the pain etched over his face. In his own twisted way he’d cared for Sam. It only seemed fair he should suffer over their encounter. Her sister surely had.
“Our baby would have been a beautiful little boy,” she lied, knowing how much men wanted sons. “A merging of the best parts of each of us.”
Her hands went to her abdomen. What if she herself was pregnant with Zeus’s child? The times they’d had unprotected sex far outnumbered the times they’d used protection.
“I’ll make it up to you. We’ll make another baby.”
Shit. So not the response she wanted to hear.
Kragen grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her against him. His mouth descended as his free hand pressed her hips toward his groin. The already rigid length of flesh pressing into her abdomen made her want to throw up. She closed her eyes and groaned as he pressed kisses along her cheek, jaw, and down the side of her throat. As his mouth took hers, she tried to pretend he was Zeus, but his scent was wrong, his taste was sour, his body was too small.
She jerked out of his embrace.
“I can’t, Max. It’s too soon. I need time. I need to get to know you again. Your mind, your heart. I can’t make love to you for the first time in a stranger’s house,” she added desperately. “When we come together, I’d like it to be in the safety of our home. In our bed. No matter how beautiful this one is,” she ended jokingly.
She climbed onto the bed. It was too soft. She preferred sleeping splayed over the warmth of Zeus’s hard body.
“Come on,” she said, propping the pillows up so they could stretch out side by side. “Come and lie beside me. Tell me stories of us, so when we’re on the plane tomorrow, I’ll know I’m truly headed home.”
Kragen undressed, stripping down to a pair of white silk boxers, his erection tenting the material. His body was fit, but he didn’t carry the height, the density of muscle, or the tree-trunk thighs Zeus had.
&
nbsp; She prayed for the hundredth time that he was okay.
* * * *
“Basir Ahadi’s estate,” Price said, pulling the Suburban to a stop.
“Fucking Basir’s estate,” Big Country mumbled in disbelief.
“Didn’t I say that New Prophet-Messiah bullshit sounded like some serious Jim Jones crazy for the twenty-first century?” Lynx asked as he leaned forward in his seat.
Zeus looked at the expanse of manicured lawns and hedges illuminated by track lighting. A multileveled mansion was the crown jewel of all the splendor.
“You sure she’s in there?” Coen asked Zeus.
Zeus stared at Coen. If he wasn’t conserving energy, he would have been inclined to stab the other man in the throat. He was feeling just that provoked.
“Body language translation: hell yes, dipshit,” Lynx said.
Zeus pointed to the house, refusing to acknowledge what the trembling in his hand meant.
“Lots of bodies in there, people. Well over thirty,” Big Country said, looking down at the infrared image of the house’s structure on his laptop screen. “Smallest number on the third floor, largest on the first and second floors. There’s a basement level, but I’m only showing one reading there. We got patrols around the perimeter of the house and lands. Waiting on Terry to upload the floor plan.”
Zeus laid his head back and closed his eyes. The clicks of Big Country typing rapidly was the only sound to fill the silence.
“Got it. Merging the specs with the live imaging.” After a few more clicks on the keyboard, Big Country grunted. “Looks like we got a party going on. My guess, Sabrina ain’t the one in the basement. Kragen wouldn’t leave her alone.”
“Maybe he’s got her chained or caged or something,” Lynx said.
“No. He’ll keep her close,” Zeus said, opening his eyes as he reached for the door.
“Hold up,” Big Country cautioned. “Look at this.” He extended the laptop forward so Price and Coen in the front seats could see as Lynx and Bride leaned in from the back.
“This is the patrol’s pattern. Based on their route and the amount of time it’ll take to get to the house, that point right there,” he said, pointing at the screen, “is the best point of entry. Won’t have more than three men close if we time it right.”
“That’s the fucking front door, man,” Lynx said.
“Hey, I didn’t hire the idiots doing security. That spot right there is the point of least resistance.”
“Stealth mode or Set It Off mode?” Lynx asked as he opened his door. Battle adrenaline energized the already excitable man’s voice.
“Why would we go on a rescue mission in Set It Off mode, Lynx?” Coen asked.
“To honor one of my favorite movies ever?”
“Only one person in their crew survived.”
“As long as the one person who survives in real life is me, I don’t give a shit.” Lynx smiled as he stepped out of the truck.
Zeus opened his door.
“He stays here,” Coen said to Price. “He’s beat up to hell and back, and he’ll only slow us down.”
Zeus reached for his blade, and they all readied to take him down. He couldn’t afford the delay a fight with the other Brood members would cause. He settled back in his seat, laid his blade across his lap, and closed his eyes. “Bring her back safe or there will be hell on earth.”
“Like his forest,” Lynx whispered.
“To hell with the forest, son. You see what I saw up at Kragen’s place?” Big Country asked.
“Trying to forget. Desperately trying to forget.”
Zeus heard the trunk open, heard the team suit up. He knew there was enough firepower between these five people to level Basir’s home.
“Zeus, bring Bertha around if we call for pickup,” Price ordered.
He didn’t open his eyes, nodded.
“And, Zeus, one dent, one scratch on my ride…me and you gonna go round and round.”
“Not healthy to have that kind of attachment to an object,” Zeus said, paraphrasing words Sabrina had once said to him about his blades.
Price muttered more threats before slamming the trunk. Not long after he and the rest of the Brood had melted into the darkness, Zeus sat silently inside the truck’s interior. After a few minutes he opened his eyes and unzipped the bag he’d brought with him. He grabbed his ax and secured a few more blades to his body before exiting Price’s Big Bertha. It had taken about an hour to reach Basir’s residential compound from Kragen’s craggy cliff house, yet the night air was warmer, the sky clearer. Stalking toward Basir’s home, Zeus accepted the possibility that if the spirit of his blades demanded it, with the exception of Sabrina, very few people inside the house would make it out alive. And, if they tried to interfere, Mama’s Brood included.
Chapter Nineteen
Sabrina fought, pushing against Kragen’s shoulders and chest, turning her head to the side in an attempt to avoid his mouth locking on to hers. He licked the area between her shoulder and neck before grabbing her wrists and securing them over her head as he forced his hips between her thighs. He ground his erection against her, and she cried out when he savagely bit down on the flesh he’d just licked.
She had been delusional to believe he had truly cared for her sister, that she could use his supposed love to bide her some time and avoid this moment.
Kragen lifted his head away from her shoulder and gazed down at her. His mouth peeled back in a savage smile. His free hand pushed beneath the waistband of her yoga pants and stroked her over her panties. She cried out in rage, bucking and twisting so violently she was able to free one hand and rake her short nails over the side of his face, drawing blood. Kragen hissed, but her actions only seemed to fuel his pleasure, because he grinned down and stroked her faster.
“I always loved how you resisted. Always, the harder you fought, the harder I took you, the harder we came.” He groaned against her ear. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, Sabrina.” He attempted to work her pants down her hips from the inside.
“Get off!” She bucked and tried to roll to the side.
“Soon. I promise.”
Sabrina fought yet got nowhere. Panic and fear mounted as she lost the battle against both Kragen and her emotions. Kragen slid one finger inside of her, and she screamed with disgust and helplessness.
“Stop!” she cried out, but her words were ignored.
Stop, Sabrina. Just stop, she said to herself. She had to control her reactions, because all efforts to affect Kragen led nowhere.
Kragen struggled, one-handed, pushing the barrier of her clothing down her thighs while his mouth rutted, almost in a frenzy, against her bra-covered breast. Her eyes focused on the ceiling, traveling the length of the burnished-gold crown molding. She imagined Zeus, pale golden-bronze skin, unsmiling, mercurial eyes locked on her as a blade danced in his finger.
Stretching her free hand overhead, she freed the only part of him she carried outside of her heart. She pressed the top of the ornate chopstick and saw a cylindrical sliver of metal push out the narrowest end. She would have laughed at her man’s ingenuity, but Kragen had gotten her pants and panties to her knees and was attempting to work his underwear down around his ass. Fueled by vengeance, she tried to ram the weapon into his carotid artery, but it landed in the trapezius muscle close to his throat. He howled and rolled out of her reach, falling ass first on the other side of the bed.
The door slammed open, and Reed loomed, his tablet in one hand and a gun pointed in her direction in the other. His gaze flickered to Kragen on the floor, bleeding from the wound she’d inflicted. She slipped the chopstick back into her hair and righted her clothing. She slowly moved off the bed and stood near the window, believing Reed wouldn’t shoot unless Kragen ordered him to.
“Sabrina. Sabrina Samora. Age thirty-seven years. Daughter of Teresa Samora and Henry Danielson. Younger half sister to Samantha Redding. You were orphaned to foster care at age eleven.” Reed walked to Kragen. “Are y
ou all right, sir?”
Kragen grimaced. “If it was up to my beloved, I think I’d be dead. She stabbed me with something.”
Reed sat the tablet on the bed and checked out his boss, gun still pointed at Sabrina.
“Puncture wound. Bleeding, but not too bad. Should I have Basir bring in medical supplies?”
Kragen lifted his gaze from the screen and frowned at her. “No,” he said, looking at the tablet again before he tapped the screen. “Seems I’m always getting stabbed when I’m around you, Sabrina.”
“You can thank Zeus for that.”
“Well, no I can’t. Being he’s dead.”
He handed the tablet back to Reed. With assistance, he stood tall when all Sabrina wanted to do was sink to the floor and curl up. She placed her hand against the wall to steady herself. She was an idiot to believe Zeus could survive when she knew he could barely walk, let alone defend himself. She had sent him out there to die and…
Oh, God. Zeus is dead, she thought, sobbing.
“You promised you would let him go,” she said. She’d never see Zeus alive again. She could no longer pretend all her prayers had made a difference.
“I held my promise. But you, Ms. Samora. I thought you could fulfill my dream of regaining the love of my life. Regaining my soul. But I find you can’t possibly fulfill that dream because you’re not the woman responsible for creating it.”
“You don’t talk to me about love, you sick son of a bitch. You killed my sister just as surely as you killed all those other women. You’re not capable of love, and no sane person is capable of or willing to love you. You are just some sick demented thing that rapes and kills women who looked like Sam for your pleasure.”
Kragen looked at Reed. “So she knows about the other women. How is that, I wonder.”
“Give me a little time. I’ll take her to one of Basir’s specialty rooms and happily find out for you, sir.”
“That won’t be necessary just yet, Reed. First I want to know how you uncovered the truth.”
“She didn’t fit,” Reed said, looking at her as if she was the disgusting one. “From all your stories of her, I couldn’t see this woman as the woman you talked about. Time doesn’t change someone so fundamentally, sir. I knew you wouldn’t believe just my intuition without evidence to back it up. So I dug deeper.”