Claimed (16 page)

All I could do was stall. “Why did you never tell me?” I asked Lucien. “You knew all along who Alexander was. Why did you keep it a secret?” I’d asked him the same question when I’d gone to see him eighteen months ago. He’d said nothing then. I fully expected him to say nothing now.

“I followed you,” he said, as if the words were being torn from him and leaving bleeding gashes in its wake. “The night you killed Ivan. I was worried for you. You’d run away and I didn’t know if you were okay.” I could see his gun waver slightly. My entire attention was focused on it. “Then,” he said, his voice growing angry, “you went into a bar. I watched you talk to him, flirt with him. You batted your eyelashes and you looked at him in a way that you’d never done with me.”

I flinched inwardly at the tone of barely controlled rage, but outwardly, I stayed calm. I could feel the weight of the necklace Alexander had given me against my chest and it steadied me. The diamond felt like a talisman, a physical reminder of his love.

He was the first and only man I had ever loved. If we died today, I would take that with me. Horrible things had happened in my life, but so had amazing and wonderful things. I’d found love without expecting to. I’d found that I was able to trust after all. I’d found hope and happiness and laughter and silly jokes about sheep-shearing in Australia and pimps in Algeria. I’d found a future in the warm eyes of the man who cradled the child protectively against his chest.

“He had nothing to do with Claire,” I tried to appeal to Lucien’s sanity. “He’s as much a victim of Dylan’s crimes as we are. His mother was kidnapped and raped by Dylan, damn it, Lucien. Did you know that?”

Lucien kept silent. The gun didn’t waver. It stayed locked on Alexander’s head. “Drop your weapon, Ellie,” he advised me calmly. “I can tell you are trying to calculate the odds that I’ll miss. And I’m not going to miss. You got to kill Dylan. It’s only fair that I get his son.”

He’d lost all sense of reason. His words confirmed what I’d known all along. This version of Lucien was not the man who had trained me. He had fallen, hard and deep, to a place that he couldn’t be rescued from.

One man had saved me in Nigeria, but the other had set me free. I would kill to protect Alexander.

Except that my fingers couldn’t seem to curl around the trigger, because I couldn’t forget.
The memories never went away.
Lucien offering me a cup of tea after I’d killed my first man. Lucien holding my hair back as I’d thrown up, sick to my stomach at how easily the man had crumpled, barely able to comprehend how very
final
the act of killing was.

I saw Alexander’s eyes rest on me. In his clear gaze, there was no reproach. No anger. There was just love.

***

Alexander:

She couldn’t bring herself to shoot him. How well I knew that feeling.

I could only hope for one thing. The child had just been a tool, a bargaining chip for Bectell. Once he killed me, there’d be no reason to kill Sasha’s little boy. All I could do was pray that if I died here, Andrei would be safe.

Then something happened that no one had been prepared for.

A woman had screamed. In our laser-sharp focus on retrieving Andrei, we’d pushed that to the back of our heads. We had forgotten we weren’t alone.

Bectell’s eyes were locked on Ellie’s. He wasn’t looking at me, and so he missed the slight shift of my gaze as I saw someone move behind him.

I watched a woman that I didn’t recognize, a woman with dark hair and bruises all over her face raise her hands and line up a gun to the back of Bectell’s head. I watched as the barrel shook wildly in her trembling grip. I saw, almost in slow motion, the movement of her fingers curling on the trigger and I would swear till my dying day that I saw the bullet speeding towards Bectell.

He crumpled. The blood ran out of the wound and pooled on the ground and I shielded Andrei’s gaze from the sight.

Ellie’s shocked eyes lifted to the woman who had appeared out of nowhere. This wasn’t Katrina. This was someone else, a wild card, an unpredictable entrant in a world where I thought I knew all the players.

“My only regret,” this woman said softly in French, gazing down on the body in a way I remembered Ellie look at Dylan’s body in Hanoi, “is that he couldn’t see that it was me that killed him.”

Ellie:

Dawn’s early tendrils were snaking over the horizon. Lost in my own bitter self-recrimination, I’d barely paid attention to the activity around me, but the last hour had been a whirl. Once we’d confirmed that Lucien was dead, Alexander had called and Anton and his guards were with us in mere minutes. We’d been swiftly ushered back to the relative safety of the compound.

I hadn’t been able to shoot Lucien.

Sasha had burst into loud, noisy sobs when she was reunited with Andrei. Now, the child was tucked into bed, peacefully asleep, soothed by promises of a puppy in the morning. I knew with complete certainty that Sasha wouldn’t leave his side for the next few hours - I recognized the barely concealed trauma in her eyes. Andrei was not in danger, not anymore, but the terror and the panic would have an impact. From experience, I knew how long it took for fear to completely recede.

If this was a book, that moment I held a gun to Lucien’s head would have been the moment in which I would have triumphed. I would have killed the last enemy before Alexander and I rode off into the sunset to live
happily ever after
. Yet in the moment of reckoning, I’d been unable to act.

I could barely look at Alexander; I couldn’t meet his gaze. I had failed him. Had Andrei been shot, it would have been my fault.

Though we were back in the safety of the compound, we weren’t entirely at ease. Katrina was still nowhere to be seen. The instant he’d received word that we were safe and Lucien was dead, Jean-Luc had left to try and track her down. “He’s just trying to avoid exchanging Christmas presents,” Alexander had quipped. I’d laughed at that, reluctantly, but forced to giggle at the incongruity of his words.

Just for an instant, I forgot
- I had been unable to fire.

Then there was the mystery girl who had fired her gun and killed Lucien, succeeding where I failed. She’d flinched as Anton’s men had crowded around us and Anton’s gaze had turned troubled at that. He’d said something in Russian to one of his guards, a young, petite woman whose tiny frame was contrasted by the hard steel in her eyes. The guard had nodded, her expression softening, before she’d taken Lucien’s killer under her wing.

Now, in the living room, she started telling her story.
Her name was Soraya.
Many long years ago, Sylvia Anliker had taken her from her home.

I couldn’t stomach it. I started listening to her opening words and I couldn’t take it anymore. All I could do was flee the room and retreat upstairs to the safety of our bedroom. Too many repeated patterns were playing out here and my ability to cope was stretched to breaking point. I burrowed under the sheets and I hugged a pillow in my arms, inhaling the faint smell of Alexander on the crisp cotton.

I couldn’t even breathe as I processed what Lucien had done to this girl. How he’d accepted a slave from Lena Anliker as a part-payment for killing Alexander. How he’d raped her and held her captive and hurt her. The same way his sister had been enslaved; the same way I’d been tortured.

Lucien had crossed an inviolate line,
yet
I hadn’t been able to shoot him.

“Bright star,” I heard Alexander’s voice, firm and low and intent. Of course he’d followed me to the bedroom.

“How could I have been so wrong about someone, Alexander?” I asked him, unable to keep the anguish from my voice. “He trained me. He mentored me and helped me and saved my life, yet what he did to that poor woman downstairs…” My voice trailed off as my mind rebelled against going back to that dark place. “How was he better than any of the people he killed?” I gulped. “And I couldn’t shoot him.”

He tugged me to my feet and pushed me against the wall, holding my hands above my head. “I have no answers for you about Bectell,” he said. “But let me ask you a question. Do you blame me for being unable to kill Dylan?”

“No,” I said, shocked. “Of course not.”

“In that case, Ellie,” his lips met my mouth tenderly for a brief kiss filled with warmth and kindness and empathy. “Will you trust me that I know why you couldn’t fire? More than anyone in the world, I can understand.”

I wound my fingers in his. “You don’t hate me? I risked Andrei’s life.”

His gaze was serious. “I could never hate you, Ellie.” Incongruously, he yawned and I giggled. It was such a prosaic thing to do in the middle of all the chaos. “We’ve been up all night. Let’s get some rest?”

The warmth of his touch. The strength of his body against mine. His fingers touching me, his kisses burning my skin. Suddenly, the idea of curling up next to him and falling asleep in the safety of his arms sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world.

***

Light was streaming into the room when we both woke up. For a few moments, I let my eyes feast on Alexander’s naked chest. My fingers traced each chiselled muscle and I resisted the urge to move my hands lower. It had been a rough few days and he probably needed the sleep more than he needed me to jump him. Though I very much wanted to.

His eyes opened and he smiled at me. “Hey,” he said softly. “Merry Christmas.”

I laughed out aloud. “I’d forgotten what day it was,” I confessed.

He sat up in bed. “I don’t blame you,” he said wryly. “It’s been a crazy week, hasn’t it?” He put an arm around me and pulled me near. “Do you want to fly out of here today and hit the ‘restart’ button on our lives?”

“Yes,” I said fervently. Suddenly, thoughts of term papers and my friends and little Midnight demandingly yowling for her food were very comforting. But this time, there wouldn’t be a gaping hole in my life, because Alexander was going to be with me.

I assumed he was still moving to San Francisco.
He was, wasn’t he?

“So it’s Christmas Day,” Alexander said in a non-sequitur. “And I have a present for you.”

He sounded uncharacteristically nervous and my eyes narrowed. “If it’s more jewelry…” I started to threaten. He really had to stop showering me with precious gifts. It was getting ridiculous.

“It is.” There was no charming flash of his dimples as he spoke, and he didn’t smile as he pulled a small box out of his trousers pocket. A ring-sized box. My eyes flew to his face as he sank to his knees on the bedroom floor. “Ellie,” he popped it open, “technically, we haven’t known each other for very long.” His blue eyes locked on mine. “Yet I can’t think of something that feels more right. Will you marry me?”

I just started at him, my mind completely blank. I’d been unsure he wanted to still move to San Francisco and he’d been about to propose?
I’d definitely misread the situation.

He tensed at my silence. He didn’t rise from the floor. “I know my father ruined your life,” he said quietly. “I’d hoped we could someday move past that.”

I opened my mouth, but words wouldn’t come out.

“
Merde
,” he swore. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I think I’ve fucked up. Can we hit the rewind button on this conversation?”

Finally, words emerged, along with the overwhelming joy that was spreading through my body. He wanted to marry me. He didn’t just want me around for a very long time. He wanted me around
for ever
.

“You can if you’d like,” I told him, “but I was going to say yes.”

I watched the smile break out on his face and I held out my left hand so he could slip the ring over my finger. “Another crown jewel?” I asked resignedly as I saw the massive yellow diamond flash on my hand. “Is there any way I can stop you from spoiling me?”

He shrugged casually, still on his knees in front of me. I reached forward and twined my hands through his hair, pulling him close to me so I could kiss him. “Shouldn’t I be kneeling at your feet?” I teased when we moved apart. “Since I’m your submissive?”

“You aren’t my submissive,” he replied automatically. “You are my partner and we sometimes have kinky sex.” He raised an eyebrow. “Of course, if you were my submissive, I’d punish you soundly.”

“For what?”

He grinned at that. A familiar and sexy grin, one that stirred desire in my entire body, despite everything that had happened today. “Do I need a reason?”

My lips twitched. “No Sir,” I said meekly. I could feel my own smile beginning to form and I bit my cheeks to keep serious, before giving up. I was too happy. I winked at him. “About my punishment,” I started. “Can we head to Bangkok? I have an apology to make to Madame Lorraine and I seem to recall you wanted a show.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

I nodded. I could imagine the scene that would unfold. My eyes would stay glued on Alexander, watching him get visibly turned on as Lori’s trainers worked me over.

There was no fear. Just the anticipation of pure pleasure, the knowledge that I could let go of all control in perfect safety because he would always be there to take care of me. To catch me. To walk at my side. “Yes Sir,” I said happily. “I’m pretty damn sure. Can we have some of that kinky sex you promised me now?”