Freed (11 page)

Alexander:

Two days later, Jean-Luc knocked on my door with the package from Daniel Schneider in his hands.
And everything changed.

“You haven’t opened it?” I asked him as I poured both of us some coffee.

He shook his head. “I thought you might want to do that,” he replied.

“I have no secrets from you, Jean-Luc,” I said automatically.

Jean-Luc raised his eyebrow. “Really? You’ve been quite strategic in failing to mention Jenny Fullerton. Do you think I’m going to forget that she’s a threat?”

I shook my head with a grin. “We are going to agree to disagree on Jenny,” I replied. “I don’t think she’s a risk.”

“That’s your dick talking,” Jean-Luc said bluntly. “Okay, let’s see what we have here.”

I leaned forward as Jean-Luc tipped the contents of the small cardboard box onto my desk. I looked at the USB key in disgust. “These must be the videos,” I said.

Jean-Luc was sorting through the other stuff. Then he stiffened. “Alexander,” he said very quietly. “Look at this.”

He handed me a photo of a young woman. Red hair, green eyes. She appeared to be looking straight at the camera, her eyes wide with terror.

I’d never been able to find Ellie Samuelson. She’d vanished without a trace.

She’d spent a night with me two years ago. She shared my bed for the last few weeks. She was upstairs, in my house, at this very moment.

Rachel. Jenny. Ellie.
The same woman.

Jean-Luc had gone very still. He watched me put the pieces of the puzzle together. My mind shied away from the biggest thing. I couldn’t think about Dylan and the fact that he’d taken my Jenny when she was only eighteen and raped her for two years.

I couldn’t dwell on that without shattering. I thought instead of Paris, two years ago. “She was in Saint Denis.”

“On the night Ivan Klimov was murdered in a brothel.” Jean-Luc raised her eyebrow. “You think it was her?”

“It had to be, don’t you think? Klimov. Petrovich. Hoffman. Sam Green. They’ve all been found dead in questionable circumstances in the last five years.” I looked at Jean-Luc thoughtfully. “They would all have been guards at Dylan’s estate during her time.”

“And Grace Olusola was the housekeeper and Daniel Schneider was a guard. Why aren’t they dead?”

“What choice did Grace Olusola have?” I asked. “She had two children to feed. And the others got killed only after they left Dylan’s service.” My heart pounded in my chest as the picture gradually became clear. “I’m not the target,” I said slowly. “Of course not. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? She’s after Dylan. She was at the auction so I could get her into his compound in Hanoi.”

“What will you do?” Jean-Luc was well aware that I’d been unable to kill Dylan. My plans involved him spending the rest of his life rotting in a prison. But Jenny was looking for a different solution.

Not Jenny. Ellie. The woman in my house was Ellie Samuelson.

“We go to Hanoi.” I said grimly. My fingers played with the USB key. “I cannot watch this, Jean-Luc. I didn’t think I could watch Dylan hurt anyone, but I especially cannot watch this. Dylan McAllister kidnapped her. Raped her. Tortured her.
She is owed her revenge.
If she wants to go to Hanoi, I will get her in.”

“Alexander.” Jean-Luc’s voice was intent. “Are you going to tell her?”

How could I?
“Not yet.” My voice was very low. “I have five days. I’m going to be selfish.”

He didn’t reply. What could he say? Jean-Luc had been my friend for a long time. He understood. Instead, his soldier’s training took over. “Dylan’s guards are mercenaries,” he said. “If he’s dead, they might not stay around to retaliate, but this could turn into a gunfight. I will fly to Hanoi with you.”

I nodded. Jean-Luc would bring guns. I always travelled with a weapon as well. It was expected and I’d always been waved through by Dylan’s guards. Why would I have been questioned?
I was trusted.
 

Jean-Luc left. I stayed where I was. When he’d been there, I could bury my emotions and lose myself in the planning. But with him gone, I had to confront the way I felt.

Jenny was Ellie Samuelson.

So many emotions but foremost among them was pride. Dylan’s victims had all ended up broken. The wounds didn’t heal quickly.

But my bright star was a fighter. Whatever the years had brought since Dylan had captured her, she had overcome everything. She should have flinched away from pain and sex and men, but instead, she’d asked for a session in the playroom only two days ago.

For the moment, she looked at me with those luminous, trusting green eyes. Her lips curved into a smile when I reached for her. She leaned up and kissed me goodnight before curling next to my side to sleep.

When the truth came out, all of that would change.

She would have a gun in her hand. I would make sure that the chamber had more than one bullet. When the time came, when she lined up to fire, she would have a choice. Dylan would die.

And she might elect to shoot me as well.

I closed my eyes for a second. If it came down to it, I was ready. Ever since my suicide attempt had failed when I was seventeen, I had been living on borrowed time. Perhaps the clock had run out.

Ellie / Jenny:

All day, Alexander had been acting strange.

In the morning, he’d cancelled our plans quite abruptly. We were supposed to go to Reims and see the cathedral and taste champagne. But after his friend Jean-Luc had left, he’d come upstairs and he’d told me he wasn’t going to be able to make it. “Please do go by yourself,” he urged me, refusing to meet my eyes. “I have to work, unfortunately.”

“Okay,” I replied. A slice of disappointment cut through me, but I dismissed it. Even if I could forgot who he worked for, there was still the fact that he wasn’t looking for commitment. He only wanted a submissive for three months. I’d been spoiled by his company, but this wasn’t something that could last.

I wandered disconsolately through Reims, acutely missing his presence at my side. Perhaps he was tiring of me. We
had
spent most of the last two weeks together and maybe it was too much for him.

Or perhaps his refusal to accompany me today had to do with the impending return of his girlfriend Sylvia. Ever since Provence, he’d been acting more like my boyfriend than my Dominant. Perhaps he was regretting it, pulling back to send me a message about where the boundaries were.

I’d been fully prepared for him not to be around when I returned to his house in the evening, but he was in the kitchen, slicing up some peppers into thin rings. “Stir-fry for dinner?” he asked.

“Sounds good,” I replied, dropping my purse on the kitchen island. “Can I do anything to help?”

He shook his head. “No, Elodie did most of the prep before she had to leave. Her nephew is sick.”

I took a seat and watched him work. “Is everything okay, Alexander?” I asked hesitantly. On the few days he couldn’t make it with me to see the sights, he was usually quite interested when I returned. Today, there were no questions. Just this intent slicing of peppers.

“Sure.” His reply was clipped. “Jenny, I have a business trip to take next week to Vietnam. You had expressed an interest in seeing more of the world. Would you like to accompany me?

This was it.
The culmination of six years of training, of many months of planning this particular operation. I had put myself through Madame Lorraine’s auction for this, steeling myself when I found out Alexander and Marc had been the same person. Everything had led up to this moment.

Yet viscerally, the only emotion I felt was loss. In a week, it would all be over between Alexander and me.

My training took over. Six years, and some responses came by instinct. “I would love that,” I managed.

He nodded. His eyes stayed on the cutting board as he worked. The knife sliced in swift, sure strokes. “I’ll need your passport for a Vietnamese visa.”

“Is everything okay, Alexander?” I asked again. “Did I do something wrong? You seem out-of-sorts.”

He met my gaze. “No,
cherie
,” he said quietly. “Of course you didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve just got a lot on my mind, that’s all.”

***

Alexander:

What could I tell her? I was having difficulty breathing around her, my guilt was so deep I wanted to feel her nearness next to me, but I couldn’t allow myself that pleasure.
I was not entitled.
Her life had been ruined because of Dylan McAllister and try though I did, I couldn’t shake off my sense of all-consuming responsibility.

She came up to me the way she had the other night and wrapped her arms around my back. I felt her cheek rest against me and I inhaled sharply. I couldn’t do this.
I had morals.
Knowing who she was and knowing what Dylan had done to her, I couldn’t allow anything to happen between us.
Not now. Not ever.

“Let’s just eat.” My voice came out harsher than I’d intended and I felt her body stiffen before she disengaged. “Sorry, Jenny. I’ve had quite a stressful work day. Perhaps we can just watch a movie tonight?”

“Sure.” Her voice was toneless. “If you’d prefer, I can go away and read something?”

Bright star, you have no idea how much I want you. How much I wish things were different.

I shrugged, a gesture of indifference that sent a sharp ache in my heart. “Whatever you’d like,” I said.

She averted her eyes, but I could see the look of hurt before she turned away. She had every right to feel the way she did. Yet soon, when the truth came out, she would look at me with loathing. I sighed. As always, Dylan ruined every life he touched.

Ellie / Jenny:

All that night, lying alone in a bed I hadn’t slept in for more than a week, I tossed and turned.

I would have liked to pretend it was Dylan I was thinking about. I should have been going over the mission plan, examining it from every angle and getting my head in the right space for Hanoi.

But I wasn’t. My body missed Alexander’s. I missed the strength of his arms, wrapped around me. I missed the way his chest rose and fell as he slumbered, the comforting steadiness of his heartbeat. I missed watching the vulnerability on his face when he was fast asleep.

After dinner, we’d watched a movie before he’d risen to his feet. “I think I might be coming down with a cold,” he’d lied. “We should sleep in separate beds tonight.”

I’d agreed then, but now I rose to my feet. I didn’t know what was going through Alexander’s head, but I only had a week left with him. I needed him. If it meant risking rejection again, it was a chance I was prepared to take.

I padded on light feet towards his bedroom and pushed his door open. The room was dark and I stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light in the passageway. I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t even know if he was awake.

“I’ve never done this before,” I whispered. “Alexander, I need you tonight.” I gulped. It was a huge,
transgressive
thing that I did, saying these words to him, giving him so much power over me. “Please don’t send me away.”

I heard his body move and the small light by his bedside was switched on. I watched the shadows play across his face. I saw the bleakness in his eyes before he clenched them shut. When he opened them, he held out his hand to me. “I could never send you away,
cherie,
” he said quietly. “And I’m a fool for that.”

I took a step towards him, then another. When I reached the shelter of his arms, I felt like I was coming home.
This was a problem.

“Make love to me, Alexander,” I begged.

I hadn’t called him Sir. His mood was strangely disturbed and I wanted reassurance from him. I needed tenderness.

“Ah,
cherie
.” There was a fractured note in his voice, a tone I’d never heard before. His hand ran along my thighs, bunching up the fabric of my nightgown, pulling it off my body with urgent heat. In seconds, I was naked.

Then his mouth was on my breasts. His knee wedged between my thighs which fell open to him. His fingers found my clitoris with sure certainty. The silence was broken by my whispered pleas and his harsh breathing. Our sex was hot and frantic.

Afterwards, being held in his arms was painfully sweet. I spooned against him, holding his hands in mine. I heard his pulse beat in his wrist and each steady thud felt like the ticking of a clock, counting down the minutes to Hanoi.

***

The next morning, Alexander wasn’t in bed when I woke up.

In the daytime, my sins of the previous night were magnified and there was nowhere to hide from the self-recrimination.
What had I been thinking?
The best case scenario was that Alexander was a tool for me to get to Dylan and nothing more than that. The worst case scenario was something far more sinister – that Alexander had somehow been tied to my own kidnapping, that he had killed his submissives at the end of the three-month term, or worse, sold them to a brothel in some far forgotten corner of the world.

Yet I had sought him out. I had thrown myself at him. I’d taken comfort in the strength of his body.

You are a fool,
I told myself harshly.
You are acting like a besotted teenager. Take off the rose-tinted glasses.

Similar self-recriminations plagued me the entire way to the café where I once again took the phone the girl behind the counter handed me and made my way to the bathroom. When I was safely ensconced in a stall, I dialled Lucien. “It’s happening,” I said. My voice shook. “He asked me to go to Hanoi.”

“He did?” There was a note of surprise in Lucien’s voice, then the realization of what was happening sunk in for him as well. “Fuck. Ellie.”

“I know. It’s so surreal. Can this finally be it?”

Lucien choked back a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “What did he say exactly? When do you leave?”

“Next week. He just asked if I wanted to go. I’ve been telling him I want to travel and see the world.”

“Ellie,” Lucien’s voice sounded so strange. “Is there any way I can be there? In the room? Could I be a long-lost brother or something?”

What was wrong with Lucien? Of course he couldn’t be there. Alexander wasn’t a fool – a long-lost brother showing up at Dylan’s compound in Hanoi would raise all kinds of suspicions. More than that, our mission would be over before it even started.

But I thought I understood and my heart broke for Lucien. This had been his revenge as well. Dylan had kidnapped his sister Claire. She’d killed herself in a whorehouse in the Middle East, seeing no way out of her life except that final, irrevocable step, and for the rest of his life, Lucien had to live with the knowledge that he had failed her. Killing Dylan had been his only goal for such a long time.

And now, I was going to Hanoi, not him.

It was brutally unfair. The only reason I was able to infiltrate Dylan’s compound was because I was a beautiful woman who had been bid on by a rich man at an auction. Just because of that, my heart’s desire got fulfilled and Lucien’s did not.

Of course, the only reason I’d been taken in the parking lot in Beechwood Mall was because I’d been beautiful. The sword had cut both ways. I hadn’t asked to be placed on this road – Dylan had made that choice for me.

I clutched the phone in my hand, searching for the right words, though I wasn’t sure there were any in this situation. “I don’t think so,” I said finally, as gently as I could manage. “That’ll just put them on their guard, won’t it?”

Silence greeted me. I waited for a long time and eventually, Lucien seemed to gather himself together. “I’ll fly out to Hanoi,” he said. “But I can’t make it into the compound. You’ll need to fight your way out.”

I didn’t say anything to contradict him. Both of us knew that the chances of me walking out of this situation alive were slim. Even if Lucien could be in Hanoi, what could he do without an army?

He was just one person; we’d always acted alone. While Lucien had associates that did research for him, people he could count on for things like weaponry and fake passports, we’d never worked with another mercenary and we’d never joined cause with anyone else. “People are trouble,” Lucien always said. “It’s best to work on your own.”

Of course, he’d also started training me, making a lie of that particular philosophy.

“I’m not concerned about that,” I said, infusing a note of confidence into my voice. “Dylan is the only thing that matters.”