Claimed

CLAIMED

Book Four

of the

Assassin’s Revenge Series

by

Tara Crescent

Text copyright © 2015 Tara Crescent

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

It’s the end of the series, and I’ve many people to thank.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my editor Jim, for his near-infinite patience as I missed deadline after deadline.

Anne A. Lois and Richard North gave their time generously to beta-read this story. They read early drafts so that you, the reader of the final product, didn’t have to.

Authors have real lives and real houses to clean. My boyfriend took over pretty much every household chore as I immersed myself in Assassin’s Revenge. He’s one of the good guys.

My ARC reviewers said nice things and made me blush. Mark My Words PR made me appear more organized than I actually am. James at GoOnWrite.com worked his magic and gave Ellie and Alexander the most amazing set of covers.

Thank you, thank you and thank you again!

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Never on a Sunday:
Stephanie Rice has her sex life all figured out. She fucks six different men on six days of the week. Monday is the Chef. Tuesday, the Technician. Wednesday is the Playboy. Thursday, Mr. Buttman has his way with her. Friday, she has an appointment with the Doctor, and on Saturday, the Dominant works her over.

On Sunday, she normally does laundry. However, on this particular Sunday, her worlds collide. All six men find out about each other, and they are determined to give Stephanie an evening she will never forget.

Lucien:

About a year after Hanoi...

It should have been me. I should have pulled the trigger. I should have been the one to watch his head explode.

Lucien brooded silently. For almost a year, he’d been facing a sense of nagging incompletion, the feeling that something wasn’t entirely right in the world. It was supposed to have been enough that Dylan McAllister was dead, but he had miscalculated. Dylan’s death had not provided the closure he so desperately craved. Dylan’s death had not brought him peace.

He should have been the one who killed Dylan.

Ellie had the nerve to come to him after. “You lied to me,” she had accused, anger causing her voice to tremble. Her green eyes had sparkled like emeralds flashing in the sun as she fixed him with a glare. “You knew who Alexander was all along, but you didn’t tell me. I don’t know what you were thinking, Lucien. I trusted you, but no more. We are done. Everything ends now. I’m not going to be your pet assassin any longer.”

How dare she.
Lucien fumed, as he had every single time he remembered the expression of contempt in her eyes. He had taken her from Nigeria; he had rescued her from the brothel she would have almost certainly died in. He had given her the tools and the training she needed so that she could get the revenge she so desperately craved.

In return, she had stolen his kill. This was the way she had thanked him. She had caused this nagging sense of incompletion. Dylan McAllister’s death should have been the end of a long journey that Lucien had undertaken for more than ten years. But though the destination had been reached, the journey wasn’t done.
It didn’t feel complete.

And then, to add insult to injury, to rub salt into a wound that already stung daily at his heart, Ellie had fallen in love with Alexander Hamilton. She hadn’t said it in so many words, but her face had broadcasted that fact. For so many years, Lucien had hoped that one day, she’d look at him with that same expression, but she’d never once done so. He had been invisible to her.

Alexander had come along and Ellie,
his Ellie
, had fallen in love with him, even though she’d found out who he really was.

She wasn’t supposed to find out. Lucien had weighed the possibilities in his head, right from the start and had decided to keep this piece of information from her. He could have told her that Alexander was Dylan’s son. But he knew Ellie. Her heart was generous and kind, and she would have realized that Alexander was without blame for his father’s sins.

Instead, he’d hinted that Alexander was an active participant in the global sex trade. He’d suggested that Alexander had kidnapped innocents from all over the world to serve as sex slaves in the brothels he owned. He’d even put forward the idea that Alexander had killed the submissives he’d acquired at Madame Lorraine’s sham auction.

He’d thought that the seeds of doubt he’d sown in Ellie’s mind would have been enough. She’d been kidnapped and held as a slave for two years. He didn’t think that she would ever trust Alexander.

But she had. More than that, she’d uncovered the truth on her own and she’d fallen in love with Alexander. A bad miscalculation.

He didn’t care.
He was done thinking about Ellie Samuelson. He had a bigger agenda now.

For many months, he’d been trying to figure out what came next. He’d moped and pined and self-medicated with copious amounts of alcohol, but the portion of him that was still a soldier had kept watch on them. Ellie in San Francisco, Alexander in Paris. He had resources and he was too well-trained to ever turn his back on his enemies.

Ellie and Alexander were his enemies now. They just hadn’t realized it yet.

But identifying your enemies wasn’t the same as knowing what to do with them. Dylan’s death hadn’t brought the closure he craved. Even though he loved her with painful, unfulfilled need, would Ellie’s death bring that? He hesitated, unsure.

It was far easier to determine Alexander’s fate. He was Dylan’s son. That hated McAllister blood ran in both their veins. This was not a family that deserved to survive, not after the way Claire had died. She’d been discarded as a spent toy after Dylan had broken her. She’d been sold to a brothel, and she’d killed herself rather than endure her fate any longer. Her death had left a gaping hole in Lucien’s heart.

A hole that should have been filled when Dylan was killed, but it hadn’t been.

Claire was dead and Alexander was alive. This was an intolerable situation and it could not be allowed to continue. If Ellie was still with him, she might have argued that Alexander was an innocent in this but she would have been wrong. Every moment Alexander Hamilton lived was a slap in the face of everything Claire had endured.

If it wasn’t for Jean-Luc de Murville…
Lucien cursed at the protection that Alexander received at his hands. It made him so difficult to kill,
so impossible to reach…

***

Then he’d received the note that had once again changed everything.

At first, he’d been astonished. The woman who claimed to have authored it could not possibly still be alive. Lena Anliker had died in a fiery car crash eight years ago, had she not? The note had to be a hoax. Yet in his heart, tendrils of hope grew anew. Lena might have something to offer, something to alter the balance of power in place.

As Lucien waited for Lena Anliker’s visit, his eyes once again scanned the note, though he could recite its contents from memory. “We have common cause,” her missive said. “We should meet.”

It was a mystery that she wasn’t dead. Unlike Sylvia, who had made many visible enemies, it seemed that Lena preferred to stay hidden and to operate only in the darkness. This was a good thing. She would serve as an element of surprise in this dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.

The knock on the door interrupted his musings.
This must be her.
It was odd, the sense of anticipation he felt. He hadn’t felt this way for a long time. Not since before Ellie Samuelson had put a bullet in Dylan McAllister’s brain.

***

She was the spitting image of her sister. She had the same straight blonde hair that Sylvia had had, pulled back in a severe bun. The same angular features, with a cold gleam in her grey eyes. From the tiny bits of gossip that leaked out, she had the same utter lack of empathy that marked her as a complete sociopath.

Lucien repressed a shudder with difficulty.
War makes unlikely allies,
he reminded himself. If there was a twinge of his conscience, a thought about how low he had fallen, he pushed it back. He had been robbed of his revenge. He needed recompense.

Lena Anliker wrinkled her nose in distaste as she entered, and Lucien realized it had been a few days since he’d showered. In the last year, grooming had become a petty concern, unimportant in the larger scheme of things. He had been consumed by his feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction.

“Lena,” he greeted her.

She nodded curtly. “I thought we should meet,” she said, coming straight to the point. Perhaps the odour in the room discouraged small talk.

“I can’t imagine why,” Lucien lied.
Of course he knew why she was here.

“Is that so?” Her voice was heavy with irony. “Dylan McAllister is dead.”

“Indeed.”

“Did you get your revenge, Lucien?”

So it was public knowledge, his misery, his emptiness?
Rage rose in him, swift and sure. Someone was going to pay for this. Someone was going to die.

“I have a thought. Dylan’s dead, but his son’s alive.”

Lucien didn’t respond to the offered bait, waiting instead for her to continue. His thoughts swirled in his head and he sought to stay a step ahead in this conversation. It wasn’t really surprising that Lena knew who Alexander Hamilton really was. It was only Alexander who had wanted to keep his parentage a secret. Dylan had never hidden that he had a son.

“The line must be obliterated, don’t you think, before any further damage is caused?”

It appeared from her comment that Lena Anliker suspected that Alexander Hamilton was responsible for the death of her sister.
Interesting.
While the police reports had dismissed Sylvia’s death as a suicide, Lucien had known as soon as he’d heard about the incident that the report was not to be taken at face value. It seemed that Lena shared that opinion.

Lucien also knew that Lena Anliker had almost run out of resources. All of the Anliker assets had disappeared. Bank accounts had been emptied. Properties were seized by the governments around the world and rumours of an Interpol investigation echoed. If Alexander had been responsible, he’d acted through intermediaries, and he’d been ruthlessly thorough. Sylvia’s sordid empire had collapsed.

But those were distractions. What mattered was that Lena had reached the same conclusion as Lucien. Her words hardened his resolve. Though Dylan McAllister was dead, his son was still alive, very much so. Lucien itched to avenge his sister by putting a bullet between Alexander’s eyes.

Alexander Dylan Hamilton McAllister. No name change could hide who he really was.

Once upon a long time ago, Lucien might have felt guilty about what he planned. Alexander was not Dylan. He had committed no crimes.

But the brooding of the last year had worked its magic and Lucien wasn’t thinking with his head anymore.

“What do you have to offer me? He’s taken everything from you,” he sneered.

Lena flinched but hid it well. “Not everything,” she said. Her voice was haughty. “I have an asset in place in his inner circle.”

Was it possible?
Jean-Luc de Murville wouldn’t have allowed it. The man was paranoid and suspicious and nothing escaped him. “Who?”

Her body stiffened. “Do you take me for a fool, Bectell?” Her voice was icy. “My source will remain hidden, but I can pass information onto you. Information that I expect you to use to kill Hamilton.”

“Alexander Hamilton is well-protected and will not be an easy man to kill,” Lucien mused aloud. He knew he’d say yes. He had to agree, in order to heal the gash in his heart, yet he pretended to hesitate to prolong the suspense.

She was not fooled by his posturing. “Do you need the pot sweetened?” Her face wore an ugly sneer. “Very well. I will offer a gift.” She stood up from the chair she’d taken a seat in and went to the door, opening it and gesturing. A terrified-looking woman crawled in on her hands and knees.

Lucien stared. The woman was painfully thin, her ribs sticking out in her chest. Her back was covered with fresh red welts, a sign of recent punishment. But despite the neglect, she was beautiful. Her skin was the colour of warm caramel, her eyes the colour of amber. Her hair was dark and long and Lucien itched to wrap the silky tresses around his hands and tug.

“A good-faith gesture,” Lena purred. “Kill Alexander and my fortunes will be restored. There will be future rewards as well.”

Lucien wasn’t really listening. It had been a long time since he’d had someone warm his bed and this helpless, scared woman was causing his cock to stir in unanticipated lust. He nodded absently at Lena’s words, just waiting for her to leave so he could be alone with this unexpected gift.

He noticed Lena’s satisfied smile, but it didn’t really register. When the door had shut behind her, Lucien looked at the gift. The woman didn’t speak. She just knelt with her head lowered.

Once upon a time, Lucien’s sister had been taken by Dylan McAllister, who raped her and beat her and tortured her before selling her to a brothel in the Middle East. Lucien had sworn vengeance. The presence of this woman, so obviously Lena’s property, should have revolted him.

But a year of hatred, of bitterness and bile and corrosive anger had taken its toll. If Lucien had ever had a conscience, it remained silent now.

War makes unlikely allies. They took his revenge from him. He was owed.

“What’s your name?” he asked absently, trying to fight the demons in his head and failing. His Ellie had walked away from him. Alexander had taken her away from him.
Surely, he was allowed a replacement.

“Soraya,” she whispered, never lifting her eyes off the floor.

She was skeletally thin. Lucien knew how the Anlikers trained their slaves. They were rarely well-fed. Beatings were routine. This woman would be eager to please. She would do anything for a hot meal and a warm bed.

This wasn’t a brothel, he reasoned to himself. He wouldn’t beat her the way Lena did. He would be kinder.

He was, he tried to convince himself, the best thing to happen to her for a very long time.

“Come here,” he heard himself say to the terrified girl. “Let’s see if you are worth keeping.”

***

Ellie:

When the flight landed in San Francisco, I walked out with a backpack filled with my rather meagre possessions. I’d left behind the clothes Alexander had bought for me, the jewelry he’d given me. I didn’t want any of it. I walked towards the exit, wondering where to spend the night, when a sign with my name on it caught my attention.
Ellie Samuelson.
It was surreal seeing it written down. I hadn’t been Ellie for so long; I wasn’t sure how to even start being her again.