Freed (Assassin's Revenge Book 3)

by Crescent, Tara

  “That’s much better.” She rose to her feet in a sleek motion and walked towards me. I fought to keep my fear hidden from her. I would not panic in front of this woman. Though she didn’t remember me, she’d seen me beg once in Dylan’s stronghold. She would not see me beg again. “You have a dying sister, don’t you? It’s best to stay cooperative, unless you want Alexander to end your contract without paying you.”

  She circled me slowly. I fought to keep my eyes on the floor. “I like playing with my toys,” she purred. “Though,” she giggled and the sound was especially vile coming from her mouth, “sometimes I break them.” She shrugged. “Collateral damage, is it not?” She leaned so close to me that I could smell her sickly sweet breath. “Madame Lorraine,” she spat those words out, “won’t let me participate in her auctions. Sanctimonious bitch. She doesn’t know I have Alexander wrapped around my little finger.” She laughed mockingly. “He wouldn’t deny me anything.”

  In my head, I was frantically evaluating my options and realizing I didn’t have any good ones. I could take Sylvia in a fight. If need be, I could kill her with my bare hands, but then, Ellie Samuelson would be exposed.

  Jenny Fullerton, sweet little Jenny from Cleveland, who had never left the United States and who was terrified of her former master? That girl would not be able to kill Sylvia.

  If I fought back, my cover would be shattered and I wouldn’t be able to get to Hanoi. To Dylan.

  But if I endured, Sylvia would beat me and try to break me. I knew she liked blood and pain and tears. She exulted in them. She would feed off my fear and my terror.

  Fight or endure – those were my choices. Except, there were no choices.

  The words I had said this morning to Lucien came back to me. Dylan is the only thing that matters. I had to endure. I had to believe that Alexander would return any moment. I had to trust that he would keep his promise to me. It was the only way.

  I stayed silent, my eyes lowered to the floor. Though I never forgot anything, this feeling of fear that clenched at my gut had receded in the last few weeks with Alexander. Kneeling in front of him, I’d never felt this shiver of panic run through my body. The only tremors had been ones of anticipation and lust.

  Not so now. Now, I was just afraid. There was no pleasure to be had.

  “Follow me,” she said coldly. I started to rise and her stiletto ground into my back. “On your knees, slut. Slaves crawl.”

  I obeyed her, struggling to control the fear and the anger. Dylan had called me a slut and a slave. For two years, he had raped and tortured me. It was only my need to see him dead that prevented me from fighting back.

  Sylvia Anliker is lucky, I chanted in my head. I held on to the thought that if I wanted to, I could kill her with my hands. This time, I could fight back and win. I only endured because of the greater good, because of Dylan.

  Yet as I felt her cold eyes boring into my back as I crawled up the stairs, it was hard to remember that thought. As she nudged me with her shoe into the playroom, it was hard to stifle the instinctive panic. When she reached for the cane, staying passive and obedient was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my entire life.

  “Get naked,” she ordered. I complied without demur. Please, Alexander, I begged silently. Please come back. I need you.

  Fear was clawing at my insides as she pulled out a spanking bench from the large closet where Alexander stored his equipment. Her hands caressed the canes and sent fresh terror through me. I had to protest now. If she tied me down, then my choice was stripped away. Restrained, there would be no choice other than to endure. This woman relished torture. She would enjoy keeping me in agony.

  “Sir doesn’t cane me,” I said quietly.

  She slapped my face hard. The sound of it ricocheted around the room and I fell back, losing my balance. “You worthless whore, did I give you permission to speak?” Her voice was menacing. “Open your mouth.”

  She opened a drawer that Alexander had never touched and drew out a penis gag. I shivered as the toy came into view. The gag had a cord dangling from it and at the end, there was a rubber pump with which she could inflate the gag larger and larger, effectively choking me. I wouldn’t be able to scream for help.

  My choices were narrowing. Time was running out. Soon, I would be tied down, unable to move, unable to cry out. Where was Alexander?

  My cheek was still throbbing from the impact of her blow as she buckled the gag around my face and pumped the ball a few times. The penis inflated and the taste of rubber filled my mouth. I fought not to retch. “If you throw up,” she warned. “That’ll be the only thing you’ll eat for the next forty-eight hours.”

  Forty-eight hours? What did she mean? Was Alexander away?

  “Get on the bench,” she ordered me.

  I inhaled deeply. This was it. Decision point.

  But the answer was always the same. For six years, getting to Dylan had been my only dream. She could beat me black and blue, but that yearning wasn’t going to change. Hanoi mattered. Killing Dylan McAllister mattered. What if she caned me? I had endured before. I had the scars to prove it.

  I shuffled onto the bench, kneeling on the low, padded rest and bending my body over the raised middle section. I felt her hands at my ankles, binding my legs in place. My hands were restrained in front of me with cold metal handcuffs that would chafe my wrists if I pulled.

  I shut my eyes and fought not to panic. Breathe in, Jenny, he’d said to me in Provence, with a note of worry in his voice. Breathe out. I closed my eyes and I willed my memories to transport me back under that tree, where he had fed me grapes and had made me ride him with the sunlight on my back. I had buckled in pleasure against him.

  I clung tight to that feeling as I heard the cane swish in the air and it descended on my bare, exposed, unprotected ass in a line of burning fire.

  ***

  Alexander:

  It was a quarter to six and I was in the house in Saint Denis. I had been sitting in the backyard for over an hour, drinking a chilled glass of wine. Perhaps it was foolish of me, but in a week, Jenny wouldn’t want to ever look at me again. This was the place where we’d spent our first night together and I came here to mourn.

  Her name is Ellie, I reminded myself, as if it were something that could be forgotten. As if what Dylan had done to her could have been erased.

  My phone rang. I muttered a curse and looked at the screen. It was Jean-Luc, but I wasn’t in a mood to be interrupted. I hit ‘mute’ and looked at the flowers in the garden morosely.

  It wasn’t often I railed against my lot in life. When I was eighteen, I’d impulsively set myself on the path I had. In my twenties, as I began to realize that life was about more than the casual fuck, I started to resent that I could never have something deeper. Then we found Pamela, and faced with the magnitude of what Dylan had done to that poor woman, all of my own concerns had faded to the background.

  But in the last few weeks, the portion of my heart that I tried to wall off had cracked a little. It was my own fault. I could have kept her at arm’s length. I didn’t have to show her Paris; I didn’t have to take her to Provence and share the farmhouse with her. I could have been cold and unkind.

  But I couldn’t find it in me to do that. I might have lied to her, but I could never conceal my emotions. Not that first day two years ago and not in that time since.

  The phone rang again. Jean-Luc. I ground my teeth in frustration, but picked up the call. “If I wanted to talk to you,” I growled, thoroughly and unfairly bad-tempered, “I would have answered the first time.”

  “Get back to your home now,” he ordered. His voice was strained. “Sylvia Anliker walked in a few moments ago and Ellie’s just entered the front door.”

  Fuck. This was bad. This was very bad. Sylvia had an unreasoning grudge against Lori and I knew she was itching to take it out on Jenny. She would believe that though I would be angry at her, I would forgive her, because I’d given her every reason to believe that I was
so much in love with her that she could get away with anything.

  My feet were already moving towards my car as Jean-Luc continued. “It’s worse. Your girl has cane marks, yes? On the back of her thighs?”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw the video where Dylan caused it. Sylvia was there. She watched it happen. She was bleeding and they didn’t do anything to tend to her. Instead, they...”

  “Stop.” I couldn’t hear any more. My sweet Jenny. Ellie. I’d seen her panic in Provence when she thought I meant to share her with Sylvia. I now understood why, but I couldn’t listen to Jean-Luc’s words. I couldn’t. It was too visceral. The wounds cut too close.

  “Alexander, we are listening for her to cry out, but we can’t go in without risk.”

  I was speeding towards my house in the centre of the city. I wove in and out of traffic, cursing the evening hour, the number of cars, the red lights, everything. My plans hung in balance. We were less than two days away from moving in on Sylvia, but it had to be done in such a way that the trail didn’t lead back to me. If Dylan found out that I was responsible, he would spook badly and as Jean-Luc had pointed out, he did still have resources. He could disappear before I could act. Worse, he could harm Bethany. People did dangerous things when they thought they had nothing to lose.

  “The playroom is sound-proof,” I gritted out. “If Sylvia’s taken her in there, you won’t hear her scream.” Fuck. Fuck. “I’m driving as fast as I can,” I said, resigning myself to the crumbling of my plans. But I could not allow any more harm to come to Ellie. I had promised her I would keep her safe from Sylvia in Provence and I had broken my word. “But if I’m not there in fifteen minutes, go in.”

  ***

  Fourteen minutes later, my car skidded to the sidewalk. Jean-Luc was pacing outside, his entire face set in lines of worry that eased into relief when he saw me. “Remember, don’t show your hand,” he cautioned me. “Get Sylvia out. Don’t make her suspicious. We’ll get her later.”

  “If she’s hurt Ellie,” I said, “she does not live to see tomorrow. I don’t care what the consequences are.”

  If Jean-Luc had a protest to make at that, he took one look at my face and wisely refrained from voicing it.

  I took a deep breath and opened the front door. There was no sign of them on the main level. I headed upstairs, towards my playroom. Sylvia was perfectly capable of causing pain anywhere, but that room was the best equipped for Sylvia’s perverse pleasures. I took the stairs, two at a time and almost burst into the playroom, and the sight that confronted me almost caused me to snap.

  Ellie was there, tied to a spanking bench. Her face was wet with tears. Her mouth stuffed with a too-large gag that should have never been used on her. Her ass was an angry red with bruises of deeper purple. Welt marks decorated her thighs and her shoulders. She was a bloody, bruised mess.

  And Sylvia Anliker had done this to her.

  “Sylvia,” I kept my voice light with effort. “You got started without me.”

  She jumped guiltily, flushing as she met my gaze. “Don’t be mad, baby,” she purred. “I just wanted to play.”

  I shook my head. “You know you aren’t allowed to play with Lori’s submissives, don’t you?” Again, it took real effort to keep the rage out of my voice. I wanted to grab Sylvia by the shoulders and slam her against the wall, again and again, until her body broke. I’d never felt such a desire to utterly destroy another human being as I did in that moment.

  Jean-Luc was right. Angry was not a useful emotion for me to feel right now. I needed to be as cold as ice for what needed to be done next.

  “Now,” I chided. “I’ve got to stay and clean this up,” I gestured to my sweet Jenny, “when what I really wanted to do was take you out to dinner.”

  “Oh come on,” she rolled her eyes. “You are too soft on your toys, Alexander. Just untie the cunt and let’s go out?” She pouted. “There’s no fight in her. Boring.”

  Ellie wanted Dylan. She wanted revenge. Of course she wouldn’t have fought back. She couldn’t risk exposing her cover story.

  My heart ached in my chest for the unnecessariness of it all. Why didn’t you just be honest with me, bright star? I wanted to cry out. We were on the same side. We could have made it work together.

  But she wasn’t the only one who had hugged her secrets close to her chest. I still hadn’t told her mine. I was too much of a coward.

  “Tell you what,” I told Sylvia. “Why don’t you go get changed into something… sexier… and I’ll meet you at your apartment in a few minutes? I’ll bring the champagne.” I smiled at her, the fond smile of someone so much in love that he could neglect to notice the weeping girl next to him. “You’ve been away for too long. I’ve missed you.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “I like the sound of that,” she cooed. “Okay.” She winked at me. “I’ll be in my bathtub,” she said. “Perhaps you can soap my back.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes,” I responded. Fifteen minutes and Jean-Luc would have her.

  I ushered her out of the front door, needing to make sure she had left my house. Never again would she set foot inside my home. When the door shut, I sent Jean-Luc a text. “Make it happen.”

  Then, my heart in my mouth, I went to tend to Ellie.

  ***

  I deflated the gag and removed it, then freed her of her restraints. I gathered her in my arms and took her to my bedroom, laying her stomach down on the bed. She lay there, quiet and passive, staring straight ahead, not saying a single word.

  “Jenny,” I started before I fell silent. How could I apologize for this? What right did I have to ask for forgiveness? I had promised to protect her and I had failed.

  I used a damp cloth to soothe her poor, bruised bottom. The skin had split open in a few places and I dabbed some antiseptic on the cuts. She hissed in agony and I held her hand. “I’ll be done in a little bit, cherie,” I whispered. I found a couple of pills for the pain and offered them to her. “Painkillers,” I said.

  She nodded. “I trust you,” she said quietly as she swallowed the drugs.

  There was a lump in my throat and I was unable to respond to her words. Words that I did not deserve.

  “Where is Sylvia?” she continued.

  “Gone,” I replied. “She will never bother you again.” I wanted to promise her this, but the words wouldn’t come out past the lump in my throat.

  “Don’t you have to go now?” Her voice was the smallest whisper and my heart hurt to hear the broken note in her voice. “To see her?”

  “She doesn’t matter. She never has. Right now, the only thing that matters is you and I’m not going anywhere.”

  She stayed silent for a very long time. “I didn’t want to cry,” she said finally. “I wanted to be brave.”

  “You were brave,” I said quietly. My fingers laced in hers. “You are so brave. I am so proud of you.” She thought I was muttering words of reassurance. I wasn’t. I was in awe at how courageous she was. I knew what Dylan did to women, how effectively he broke them. I knew how hard it was to walk back towards recovery and she had done all of that and more.

  “Alexander,” she muttered. “Will you lie down next to me and hold me?”

  My bright star. She broke my heart with her softly-voiced request. I couldn’t reply; I didn’t trust my voice to hold steady. Instead, I lowered myself next to her, our sides touching, my arm around her waist, holding her close and claiming her as mine. Even though I had no right to do so and even though I knew it was all going to fall apart in a few days.

  I stayed still and waited for her to fall asleep. Only when I knew she was deep in slumber did I push myself off my bed.

  I needed to deal with Sylvia.

  Chapter 20

  Alexander:

  Jean-Luc was waiting for me as I made my way outside. He shot me an urgent look. He could see the barely concealed anger in my stance. I rarely lost my cool. I always stuck to the plan, but right now, I was fighting the urge to snap
Sylvia Anliker’s neck with my bare hands.

  “Remember,” he said harshly. “This cannot be traced back to you. If Dylan finds out, he will disappear.”

  My nails gouged into my palms, I was clenching my fists that hard. I nodded curtly. “She should consider herself lucky,” I said tonelessly. That was a lie. The way Sylvia was going to die was not going to be pretty at all.

  ***

  She jumped to her feet as the door opened. She had some minor bruising on her face and her hair was a tangled mess. She had fought the men who had brought her here.

  She was in a warehouse in one of the more unsavoury parts of Paris. She didn’t know that – the men had tossed a black hood over her face as they’d taken her. The room she found herself in when the hood had come off was sparse. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling. There was a wooden table in the centre and a straight-backed chair. In the corner, a bucket served as a place to pee.

  She’d been in that room for three hours. Three hours while I’d held Jenny in my arms and attempted to comfort her. Three hours while I tended to the welts and wounds the cane had left on my bright star.

  Not Jenny. Her name was Ellie Samuelson and she’d been caned once before by Dylan while Sylvia had watched. The two of them had filmed that scene.

  Sylvia was always going to die. Yet, had she not touched Jenny, it would have been so much easier for her. Now? There was no mercy left in me.

  “Alexander,” she exclaimed. For an instant, I saw relief on her face, a hope that I’d come to rescue her.

  No one was going to rescue Sylvia. She was going to die in this room.

  Then awareness descended over her face. “You. How?”

  I looked at her with undisguised loathing. “Did you not think that your sins would catch up with you, Sylvia?” I asked her. “Did you think you could just get away with it all?”

  She opened her mouth to answer. “Is it about the girl?” she asked. “I barely laid three stripes across her ass. Have you suddenly become reluctant to share?” Her lips curled into a sneer. “Why, Alexander, are you in love? You do like your strays, don’t you? She spins a sob story about her sister and you fall for her? Saving people is like fucking catnip to you, isn’t it?”