Echo of Redemption (7 page)

“I trust you.”

“Yet you went to Thomas, hoping he would support your decision to abort the baby? And I’m here to tell you, I’m shocked. Because the woman I knew the day before yesterday—or at least the woman I thought I knew—abhorred abortion. Or were you lying to me before?”

She gasps, my meaning clear, but I don’t leave it at that.

Standing, I expose the bud of her sex and hold the vibrator to it. “Tell me again how Lionell McCain and your father forced you into a car and drove you to an abortion clinic. Tell me again how you fought them and how you struggled for years to find absolution from murdering your child.”

Her body jerks under the pressure of the vibrator. She screams, “Stop it!”

“You had me convinced.” I repeat what she told me in the past, mimicking with cruel exaggerated sentiment, “I imagined that I’d felt her move the days before. I wanted her. I did. But I had no one, except Daddy, and I thought that giving up my daughter was the only way to keep my father.”

“Shut up!” She screams, her body bucking defiantly.

I should stop. I don’t. Interrogation is the one thing Lord Ice excels at and I wouldn’t want her to not have the experience before she decides if she wants me or Thomas, if it comes down to a choice. I fill my voice with the emotion she expressed almost two years ago. “Oh God, I couldn’t lose him too, not so soon after Mom. I wouldn’t have had anyone.”

“No. No. No!” Her orgasm crashes over her.

I lie down on the floor so that we are eye to eye. “Did you lie? Were you just playing a part?”

“No,” she sobs.

“You wonder why I left? Why I couldn’t stand the sight of you after learning you were a reporter.”

“None of it was lies. I promise. None of it was.” She fights her bonds, but there will be no freedom for Kitten, not anytime soon.

“I know, Kitten. That’s why I’m here. If I thought for a minute you were false I wouldn’t be.”

She cries harder.

“Tell me, at what point did you decide abortion is an acceptable form of birth control?”

“Master, please!”

“Answer the question.”

“I didn’t want the ménage to change!”

“The ménage changed dynamics the moment you conspired with Thomas against me.”

Her eyes widen. “No! That’s not—”

I wipe the tears from her face. “It’s how I see it.”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.”

I kiss her even though we aren’t through. She thinks we’re through, but I’m just getting warmed up.

“What frightens you, Kitten?”

* * * *

When I do untie her, she collapses into my arms, completely sobbed out. She falls asleep as I carry her to our bedroom and tuck her into bed.

She is bruised, bitten…emotionally devastated…marked by me both mentally and physically. And pregnant. Only time will tell how this plays out. In the meantime, I have to make an appointment with a community-friendly obstetrician.

I crawl in bed beside her, completely jazzed on adrenaline though I should be exhausted. I feel good, better than I should following the events of the day. I hold Kitten, knowing that after the intense scene she just experienced she will need me when she wakes and even though her slumber is easy, I don’t sleep.

Hours later, she awakens in my arms and her eyes immediately fill with tears. “Do you hate me?”

I kiss her. “I love you. I was trying to help you figure out how
you
feel.”

“You would support me in the decision to have an abortion?”

It is almost impossible to say the words but I force myself to. “If that is what you want.”

“I don’t, I’m just…”

I wish I could read her mind. She is wearing the same expression she wore to her father’s funeral, lost, broken, dread-filled. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’ll be a terrible mother. I’m selfish, self-centered. I like having the party revolve around me.”

I laugh though I don’t mean to, explaining, “You just described Jackie.”

“No, Jackie is maternal, compassionate, selfless.”

“We are talking about the same Jackie, right?” I ask sarcastically and receive a well-deserved look of contempt.

“You know we are.”

“Two completely different sides of the same woman?”

She smirks, my meaning clear. I hug her closer.

“What if God takes my baby anyway to punish me for the past?”

“God doesn’t work that way.”

“You’re joking. You were exposed to the book of Genesis in the Catholic church you were raised in, right? Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for daring to look upon deviants
like us
as they fled Sodom. What will He do to me if I try to raise a child under this roof?”

I kiss her. “God isn’t going to smite you or your baby.”

She sighs and cuddles closer. I close my eyes, hoping she won’t notice how truly upset I really am. I do not want her to even consider abortion. I thought we had this worked out…I know she told Thomas we would have this baby.

There’s no slowing my racing heart, but she doesn’t seem to notice. I excuse myself to retrieve my cellphone and make a few phone calls. Within a few minutes I have an appointment scheduled—the soonest available being almost two weeks away—I don’t know how I’ll ever survive the wait.

“Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.”

Sophocles,
Oedipus Rex

Nikos

The room is pitch black and I am hanging by chained manacles. My wounds flare, pain striking red hot through my body. Sweat-soaked, chattering, I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Whether it is yesterday or whether today has become tomorrow. All I know is that Shanghai is far behind me, and I long for the lush green mountains of Pelion overlooking the perfect azure of the Aegean. I haven’t been
home
in so, so long.

If I close my eyes I can smell the salt mingled with fir in the air, the musky sweetness of the olive trees surrounding the stone house I was raised in. If I listen closely, I can hear Grandfather’s voice:
Take good care of your brother, Nikos, and Ari will take care of you. Protect him. All of your days. Don’t forget.

I took his place, protecting him, because Ari would have never survived King Cobra. That isn’t to say that Ari isn’t a dangerous motherfucker, it just means that he isn’t a sociopath. He still cares. He loves. He has hopes and dreams and ideals I can’t even fathom.

I not only survived King Cobra, I succeeded him.

What in the hell happened?

My tower was impenetrable. Whoever came after me didn’t kill me.

At first, I thought whoever shot me, whoever shot my men, was a puissant amateur, but no, my men were left alive for a reason.
I
was left alive for a reason. Why?

I close my eyes but it is not Greece I am transported to.

“Daniel? What the fuck happened to you, man?” Sean Paul, my beautiful, dark, sometimes-lover caught me as I fell. I’d lived in Paris then, and in all of Paris, he was the only soul I trusted.
Cobra happened
.
That isn’t what I say. “Hold me for a while?”

He stripped us both and laid me down on his bed, but he didn’t fuck me. He held me while I cried. Sobbed. Retched. I could still see their faces, a dozen women, barely old enough to even be called women. Girls. Their eyes so trusting. I’d killed them. All of them.
Oh. God.
I’d crossed a line. I could never go back to normal. And I’d done it for the sake of Ari. I thought about what would happen if Ari saw me in the condition I was in. If he ever learned what I’d had to do in order to convince King Cobra of my loyalty. I heard my grandfather’s voice that day as I lay in Sean Paul’s arms sobbing.
“Take good care of your brother, Aristotle, and Nikos will take care of you. All of your days. Don’t forget.”

I couldn’t let him.

We are twins, identical even to the pain we feel when the other is hurting. He would feel my pain, he would know that something was horribly wrong, and he would come for me. I’d prevented him from taking the assignment because I knew King Cobra would destroy him. I couldn’t fail him now.

Sitting up in Sean Paul’s bed, I made several rapid decisions. First, I’d have to deaden the pain. Emotional. Physical. With a storeroom of every narcotic known to man at my disposal, I decided that shouldn’t be too hard. Second, no one would ever mistake me for Ari or Ari for me again.

Turning to Sean Paul, I said, “I need you to help me do something.”

A hundred hours of tattooing later, I looked nothing like my brother.

Now, I pray to God that Ari remembers the words of our grandfather. “Take care of me for a while.”

“You’re safe, Nikos. Just rest.”

I open my eyes to see Aristotle. He looks haggard. Pale. “You look like shit.”

“You have no room to talk, brother.”

I chuckle but pain slices through my middle. I suddenly realize I’m lying in a hospital bed. “The chains?”

Aristotle gives me a questioning look.

“You’ve got to get me out of here. I’m being held prisoner—” I realize I sound like a lunatic. I look at my hands and wrists. There is no evidence that I was manacled. I’m in a hospital bed, surrounded by blinking monitors. I must have been dreaming. “I hurt, give me something for the pain.”

“Not a chance. Rest.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Seven days.”

“Jesus.” I try to sit up but straps hold me to the bed. I struggle uselessly.

“You are restrained to keep you from hurting yourself. Once we are certain you are lucid, the restraints will be removed. We’re weaning you off the anesthesia, but you need to sleep.”

I relax, knowing that fighting the straps won’t prove I’m coherent.

When I awake again it is hours later. Maybe days later for all I know. I’m confused but lucid, lucid because I recognize the fact that I’m in agony.

Restraints no longer hold me down, but I lie flat on my back. If I try to sit upright tight jabs of pain stab through my middle and ricochet off my spine. There is little I can do but focus on remembering to breathe as it all comes back to me—waking in Shanghai as bullets pierced my body and making it to the United States. I’m still alive, that surprises me. The brightly lit room makes me feel like I’m in a hospital but there is just enough not right that I realize immediately I am not.

I remember my brother grabbing me as I fell.

He would not turn me over to any other than one who would keep me safe.

After a moment of deep focused breathing, I manage to sit up, forcing my way through the agony, recognizing the pain now as tight stitches, holding closed my wounds. I’m weak, but my body is healing.
God, how long have I been out?
I pull at a piece of gauze to see the damage, hoping to know by looking if it has been hours or days.

“Ten days.”

I jerk, having not realized a man was in the room with us. I don’t recognize him but then I wouldn’t, would I? One of my brother’s confidants I can only hope.

“I kept you sedated because I didn’t think you would survive both your wounds and detox, but you are alive and on the mend. My name is George Kirkpatrick, though your brother usually just calls me Doctor Psycho.”

“Where is—” Damn, I don’t know what name he is using with this man. Should I assume Thomas? That is the name I used to find him, but… “—my brother?”

“Sleeping. Finally. He has gone too many days without rest. It seemed as good a time as any to bring you around. See how you’re doing in the department upstairs.”

“The department?” I am confused until he taps his own head. “I see. You want to know if I’m insane.”

“There is no doubt in my mind you have an antisocial personality disorder. You would not have been able to do your job if you didn’t.”

He knows what I’ve done? He knows that I am an agent?
“Who are you? What hospital am I being held in?”

“I am your brother’s friend, and you aren’t in a hospital. You’re in my home.”

My brother has some peculiar friends.

“Your brother has asked me to determine if you will be able to function in normal society within the constraints of urban civilization.”

“Meaning can I control myself when someone cuts me off in traffic, or will I kill them?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.” He chuckles and my blood goes cold. Few men have the power to intimidate me. This man, my brother’s friend, terrifies me. “Now, let’s get you out of this bed, get you up and moving.”

I push up, intending to launch myself out of the bed and almost pass out from the wave of dizziness.

He catches my elbow and steadies me. “Easy.”

God, I’m weak as a foal.

He helps me swing my legs over the bed and stand. Pain shoots through my middle to race up my spine and down my legs, and I release a line of expletives a mile long.

“That make you feel better?”

“No!”

“All right then. Let’s try walking.”

“God damn.” I take a step forward. “Holy mother of God.” I take another step.

The doctor laughs. “Nothing like pain to set a man to praying.”

I don’t see the humor and endeavor to grit my teeth through the rest of it. As he leads me out of the small room equipped with enough medical equipment to make me believe I was in a state-of-the-art hospital, I see it isn’t his only
specialty
room. We stroll past a door with a small window, a quick peek inside revealing a rubber room. We keep walking and we are transported back in time as we enter a stone walled dungeon from the Medieval Ages. There is a wooden rack, an iron maiden, a spiked metal and wood chair. There is a glass case I linger over, in part because I’m exhausted by the twenty-five paces it took to get me here and in part because I’m fascinated.

On display is a metal device only describable as a head crusher. I saw one once displayed in a Paris Museum, but have never known anyone to have one in a private collection. The doctor interrupts my thoughts. “Fascinating gadget, that one. With the chin placed over the bottom bar and the head under the upper cap, the torturer could slowly turn the screw pressing the bar toward the cap, resulting in the head being slowly compressed. First the teeth are shattered into the jaw. Of course there would be the obvious agonizing pain, and dependent on the executioner, he could reverse and forward the process as many times as he liked to prologue the agony before his victim died.”