Dilara’s sobs tore at him, because Gage also felt like crying with relief. But no one yet knew the full story of what had happened to Alexa. Sarina had stayed behind, working with the Paris gendarmes and detectives as they tried to find her kidnappers. Alexa had given Tal all the information she could, but it was spotty at best.
Gage held himself away from the close family as Alexa finally eased out of her mother’s arms. She hugged her father, then turned and walked over to Tal, hugging her. Gage didn’t mind if he was last, because the importance of family was the best foundation a person could have. He knew that better than anyone.
Alexa lifted her tear-stained face from Tal’s shoulder and moved toward Gage, seeing that he was wearing his sniper game face. But even with the drug creating chaos in her system, she could feel his love surrounding her as she walked toward him. He opened his arms, giving her a faint, welcoming smile.
“Oh, Gage,” Alexa whispered, her voice breaking as he swept her into his strong, loving embrace. Her heart was pounding with relief and excitement. God, she felt so much love for this man! She buried her face against his leather jacket, breaking into a fresh torrent of tears.
“You’re safe now, baby,” he said gruffly against her ear, kissing her temple, her damp cheek, and finally, her moist lips. She whispered his name as she clung to him, his mouth sweeping gently across hers. Gage was warm, solid, and steady, unlike her. Eagerly, she kissed him, needing him more than anyone else.
“I love you,” he rasped against her lips, looking deep into her eyes. “We’ll get through this together …”
*
Alexa was never so glad to be home. She loved their 1850s farmhouse and the antiques they’d bought for it. It made her feel warm and safe. Gage came over, wrapping her in a colorful afghan that her mother had knitted for her as a child. Its shades of green, yellow, and brown matched the color of Alexa’s beautiful eyes. She gave him a look of thanks, lying on the couch, her head on a pillow, eyes half closed, clearly exhausted.
“I’m glad we’re home,” she whispered as he sat beside her, tucking the afghan around her lower body.
“You’re completely stressed out,” Gage said tenderly, noting the dark smudges beneath her eyes. “What can I do for you, baby?”
She reached out, gripping his hand. “Just this … you … our home, Gage,” she choked, tears streaming from her eyes. “I-I thought I’d never see you again …” She was in so much pain, so incredibly humiliated by what had happened. She should have listened to Gage. He didn’t want her to go to Paris. Nor did her family. Worse, she and Gage had a terrible fight the night before she left, and she hadn’t even kissed him goodbye.
“Listen,” he said gently, holding her damp fingers. “You are the victim in all of this, Alexa. Stop looking so ashamed of what happened. You didn’t know this guy from Adam. He completely fooled you. He fooled everyone. You just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“N-no, that’s not true, Gage,” she cried softly. “When I was in his suite, and after I’d unknowingly drank the drugged orange juice he offered me, he changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“After I helped him to his room, I was sitting at the table, and he offered me orange juice. I thanked him and had a bit. Then, about ten minutes later, the room was blurry, and I felt dizzy. He saw it immediately, and the smile he gave me changed from an old man’s smile to one from a much younger man.”
“Did he tell you his real name?” Gage probed.
“Yes, he told me.” She wiped her hand nervously across her brow. “I recognized the name, Valdrin Rasari, and began to panic. I could see now that he was in disguise.” She shivered. “It was awful, Gage … awful. I felt the worst sense of doom, like I was going to die.”
Gage continued, asking his questions in a soft, gentle voice. “Did he touch you, Alexa?” It hurt to even ask the question, but he knew had to know.
Alexa didn’t reply, instead shooting him a shamed look. “Everyone in the sex trafficking world knows who he is. And I fell for the oldest trick in the world!”
He sat watching her, assessing every halting word she spoke. “What happened then?”
“H-he told me what he was going to do with me, now that I was drugged. He told me in another ten minutes I would go unconscious. He had his men in the room next door, waiting to take me down an elevator to a nearby car. He said they would fly me to Malgar, to what he called his ‘compound.’”
She touched his hand. “I can only remember some sketchy things, Gage, but my memory is coming back to me. I told the gendarmes what I remembered at the time, after they rescued me. Now I’m starting to remember more.”
“You’re still under the drug’s influence, baby. It only makes sense you’d start remembering more as it leaves your system.” He dried her tears with his thumbs, a gesture she’d grown to love. They already had so many tears between them …
How badly he wanted to scoop her up, put her on his lap, and hold her. Now she was gripping the edges of her afghan, much like a child might grip a beloved security blanket.
“He told me he was going to keep me alive so I could be his personal sub.”
“‘Sub’ as in BDSM talk?”
Giving a jerky nod, she said, “Yes. He said BDSM. He said he couldn’t live without a daily session with one of his well-trained sex slaves, and I would become one of them.” She shivered, pulling the afghan up over her breasts. “I was sitting there, unable to move to escape, listening to him tell me that he was disappointed it was me he’d found, because he really wanted Tal or Matt. But he thought Zakir Sharan would be very pleased that he at least had captured one of the Culver children.”
Gage nodded. “Because Sharan swore blood revenge and placed a fatwa against Tal and Matt after they killed his two sons.”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “And he said that his good friend, Zakir, would probably send me to Pakistan. Rasari laughed, like it was a private joke. I was so dizzy by that time I couldn’t speak or think straight. I felt terror, but I couldn’t scream for help or move. It was a horrible feeling, Gage.”
“But was Rasari telling you he was taking you to his country as his prisoner?” Gage tried to keep his voice low and calm, though he felt anything but. He had to push down his desire to hunt this man down and kill him.
What Rasari had been about to do to Alexa made his stomach knot. If Alexa hadn’t been saved, she would have again been tortured by this sociopathic monster. The man didn’t feel emotions, remorse, or empathy with other human beings. Receiving pleasure, in his case, was always accompanied by another person’s pain and humiliation. He lived for those moments and had built his life around achieving them whenever the urge overtook him.
“What else do you remember him saying to you?” he asked, squeezing her fingers for reassurance. He needed more details before making any moves.
“He said he was going to take me to his compound in Malgar and instruct me in BDSM. I would be taught how to be subservient to him. He said—and this is horrible, Gage—that he would have one of the other slaves take videos of each lesson he’d teach me. I would be kept naked, and each time the session ended, he’d send it to my parents, post it on YouTube, and on other video channels on the Internet.” She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head. “I-I just can’t imagine what that would do to them … honest to God, I can’t. It would be the worst form of torture to my family … the worst …”
Grimly, Gage absorbed what she was saying, revealing only his calm, steady exterior, his game face. He smoothed her hair, trying to comfort her. “I can’t either, baby. I really can’t.”
She grimaced, looking down at her tightly clasped hands. “It gets worse, Gage. I remember now that he promised that once he taught me how to be a good sub, he would get me pregnant. Then he’d take monthly videos of me as the baby grew inside me. When the baby was born, he’d videotape the birth and send that to my family, too. He said the child would be raised by him. At thr
ee months, he would take the baby from me and send me to Zakir Sharan. He said it was more than likely that Zakir would behead me shortly after my arrival. He’d take videos of my throat being cut and put the video out on the Internet.”
Gage swallowed heavily several times, forcing down his desire to retch. Right now, Alexa needed him to be strong. She was already an emotional wreck from the near kidnapping. “Did you tell the French detectives this?”
Shaking her head miserably, she stole a look over at him. “No … as I said, more and more of the conversation is coming back in bits and pieces as the drug wears off.” Alexa looked distressed as she plunged on. “Gage, I have to tell my father and Tal that the whole family is under this blood revenge by Sharan and Rasari. These evil men are the best of friends. Sharan is a sex trafficker, but Rasari is far worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“H-he proudly told me that at his compound in Malgar he has three-story, dormitory-like buildings on his estate. Inside them are five hundred ‘broodmares,’ sex slaves who were either born on the estate and raised there, or kidnapped as children off city streets from around the world. He boasted of having the finest geneticists in the world working there for him. These broodmares were genetically altered and bred by what he called ‘super stallions,’ male slaves who also had spliced genes to produce superior sex slaves. They bred these women once a year, each to genetically match a specific stallion who would impregnate her. If they were running low on blond children—in high demand on the slave market—his scientists would pair the right broodmare with the right super stallion. The resulting baby would have blond hair.”
“My God,” Gage breathed, staring at her unbelievingly.
“There’s more, and it’s so unbelievable and sick that I remember wanting to vomit as he told me. He was actually proud of what he was doing—bragging that the resulting babies born from the broodmare spent the first three months on their mother’s breast. Then they were taken from them and given to a set of parents who had ordered that particular baby. He said he made millions of dollars that way. That his whole compound was about creating designer babies. Rasari said he could never keep up with the global demand, but it had made him a billionaire over the last decade.”
Gage stared at her. “Does anyone else know what this monster is doing?”
“I don’t know. I need to talk with Sarina about it. She would know, possibly. Rasari is so private that the world knows little of who or what he is.”
“If there is anyone who should be taken out permanently,” Gage said, “it’s this sick, predatory bastard.” He struggled to keep his emotions in check. Gage loved children. As worldly as he was, he couldn’t even begin to contemplate what was being done to them at such a young age. And women being raped yearly; impregnated to create a designer baby. It was insane!
“I sat there feeling like a puppet with sawdust in my arms and legs, thinking the same thing. The drug he gave me intensified my feelings times ten, so I was filled with terror and revulsion.”
“Can’t anyone take this monster down?” Gage asked, amazed that it hadn’t already been done.
Shaking her head, Alexa said, “No. Sarina said Malgar’s government protects him, and it doesn’t have international agreements with certain first world countries that would apprehend him. The only countries Malgar has agreements with are in Asia and Africa, third world countries, he said, where he gets the bulk of his child slaves. Rasari was very proud of the fact that he had global immunity and would never be identified or caught. No one dares bother the compound; he is free to do whatever he wants there. That government turns a blind eye.”
Gage shook his head, giving her a grim look. “Sarina is coming back in a few days. Maybe if you sit down with her, you’ll remember more. On the plus side, will all this information help the international community act against him?”
“It should,” Alexa said wearily. “I remember sitting there thinking that my life would be an ongoing nightmare, one I wouldn’t survive. You should have seen the look in Rasari’s eyes. They were dead, Gage. They only lit up when he described what he was going to do to me.” She wrapped her arms round herself in a childlike, protective gesture.
“Come here,” Gage offered, coaxing Alexa against him. He held her tight, her head tucked in beneath his strong chin, feeling her melt against him. At least she still trusted him, no matter what had happened.
He still didn’t know if Rasari had touched her in any way, but he realized Alexa was stressed enough without pursuing the matter. In time, he knew she’d share everything. The only problem was, could he handle it?
*
One week later, the entire Culver family and their spouses met in a mission planning room at Artemis Security. Gage had supported Alexa’s desire to write down all her memories from her capture. Sarina Elstad, who sat at her left elbow, had helped Alexa gather the information, and then compared Alexa’s notes with those of her sister, Kiara. Although Kiara rarely spoke, when she did, Sarina recorded everything she said.
When Alexa and Sarina shared their information with the family, the listeners were at first keenly interested. Their expressions changed to deep concern, ending with stark fear by the time the women had finished their reports. Fortunately, the family had decided to videotape the session. They would send copies to the Turkish and Greek sides of their family, because Zakir Sharan had included on his revenge list, every member of the family, not just the Culvers. That meant all the children of Alexa’s aunts and uncles, as well as their cousin Angelo and his wife Maria’s children in Greece, were on the hit list.
Dilara dabbed her eyes with her linen handkerchief. She sat beside Robert at the other end of the large tiger maple table. “What are we going to do?” she asked, clearly disturbed. Usually cool and calm, she was now grappling with the fact that they had not yet come up with a plan to deal with this situation.
Robert, sensing her fragility, said, “Look. Tal killed Raastagar less than a year ago, and Matt took out Sidiq, Sharan’s other son after that. Agnon Rasari was killed at the same time as Sidiq because he was being taught the sex trade business. To date, no one in any of our far-flung family has been targeted.” He looked over at his youngest daughter. “And the only reason Alexa was taken was that she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I agree with Sarina on this one. Rasari has a history of wearing disguises so he can get around Europe. He may have heard of that human rights conference and went to Paris for the pure hell of it. He’s a sociopath, and he feels invulnerable. He may have seen Alexa’s name tag, but there aren’t that many photos of the three Culver children floating around. I think her name tag alerted him.”
Tal scowled and sat up in the chair, resting her elbows on the table, sending her father a concerned look. “Even if Alexa was in the wrong place, Rasari caught one of us—and it was easy! That’s what’s important here. He’s got a taste of success, and my bet is he’s going to come after more.”
Matt, who sat opposite Tal, said, “I agree. I’m sure he’s told Sharan all about it, and if nothing else, it will reignite his desire to try and kidnap as many of us as he can. And he has the money and resources to do it. He’s worth forty billion dollars. He can hire anyone he wants.”
Tal nodded. “There are several procedures that we need to implement immediately. First, are any of us committed to going to a conference of any kind? If so, we don’t use our real names any longer; we go under an assumed name, if we go at all. Many of these human rights conferences are videotaped, or have streaming video that can be watched here at Artemis. We can have the tapes sent here to view them, keeping us protected. Second, every family member needs to be brought up to speed. I don’t put it past either of these monsters to go after the parents of these children, so the villas they live in must get security upgrades ASAP.”
Matt nodded slowly. “Right. The children of the Kemel and Mykonos families are all adults now, and they all have careers. They live all over the world, and each one is going t
o need a security detail of some kind. They’re all at risk.”
“My God, this is overwhelming!” Dilara said, her voice strained.
“Yes,” Tal muttered. “It is. But it’s not impossible. We can do this, Mom.”
“The world is a very small place today,” Robert told his wife, sliding his arm around her shoulders. “Anyone with money can have a global reach, whether we like it or not.”
Dilara looked around slowly at all her children. “I want you all safe. That’s the most important thing in the world to me.”
Gage heard her voice tremble—she was a mother first, an executive second. Although her children were all grown, she needed to protect them. Alexa had already had two incidents of being overpowered: once in Afghanistan before she was rescued by Gage, and now in Paris. This was as real as it got.
Gage was sure that once the Turkish and Greek sides of their family received this videotaped session, they too, would be alarmed. It would take some serious planning to keep everyone up to speed, along with individualized plans to keep each of them safe. Although it seemed like an overwhelming task, there was no alternative if they were to be kept safe. And even that was no guarantee …
Tal tapped her fingers on the highly polished table. “We will approach this just like any other mission.” She glanced to her right, looking at her fiancé, Wyatt Lockwood. “I’m putting a special team together, and we’ll work out the bones of it. Then we’ll put the muscle and finally, the skin on it. This is going to take a couple of weeks at least.”
Robert gave his daughter an appreciative look as he leaned forward. “Until we can get a plan into place, we’re all black ops. We know how to watch for potential threats, and we’ll get through this and be the stronger for it.”
After the family meeting, Gage felt Alexa withdrawing again. It wasn’t the same as it had been before the meeting; instead, she’d gone under the PTSD wave.
Dream of Me: Delos Series 4B1 Page 6