Claimed (3 page)

Ellie:

The moon was so close in the night sky that for one fanciful moment, I thought I could reach out and touch it.

It had been eighteen months since Paris. Eighteen months since Alexander had pushed me away. Eighteen months since I got on a flight and decided to figure out who I really was and what I wanted out of life. Largely, apart from a constant low-level heartache, they had been good months, filled with good things.

The campus quad was perfectly silent tonight as I crossed it on my walk back to my condo. The fall semester had just finished up and most students had packed up and headed home for the holidays. The air was crisp, but winters in San Francisco were mercifully mild, a sharp contrast to the snow-filled winters of my childhood.

“What are you going to do for Christmas?” my friend Penny had asked me earlier in the day. “Do you want to come over for dinner with my family? They’ll drive you crazy.” She grinned. “Mostly in a good way.”

Tom had laughed. In a sea of eighteen-year old undergraduates, the four of us - Tom, Penny, Amy and I - were the token mature students. Amy had worked for the Peace Corps for five years before deciding to complete her undergraduate degree. Penny had served in the Army in Iraq before receiving a medical discharge when a bomb had blown up inches from her, permanently damaging her vision in one eye. Tom was, as he cheerfully described it, an unmotivated slacker.

Then there was me. I told the others that I’d travelled around the world after high school using the life insurance money I received when my mother had died. It was simpler than the truth.

“I asked her already,” he had said. “She declined. And Penny, my love,” he’d grinned, “if she’s already turned me down, there’s no way she’s accepting your invite.”

Amy had rolled her eyes. My personal take was that she had the hots for Tom, though she’d never admit it. “What are you planning on doing over the break, Ellie?” she’d asked, turning towards me. “You haven’t said.”

I hadn’t spoken of my plans to them. I’d said nothing to anyone, too accustomed to keeping secrets to deviate much from that pattern, but late last night, my fingers had hovered over the ‘
buy’
button for a ticket to Paris and I’d clicked it.

It was time to return to France
.

“I’m going to go away to Paris,” I’d responded after a pause. Even now, I had to remind myself to trust people. Volunteering information about myself was always difficult.

They’d oohed and aahed. Of the four, Penny was the one I was closest to and she’d looked at me curiously. “Why Paris?” she’d asked.

I’d told no one about Alexander. “It’s Paris. Isn’t it the most romantic city in the world?” I’d asked. “Maybe I’ll meet a guy.”

I’d already met a guy, one that I could not forget. It was time to ask if Alexander was single and unattached and if he still wanted me the way I wanted him.
If fortune was with me, it was time to find Alexander and claim him.

***

It had been a year and a half since Hanoi. In that time, I’d done everything Dr. Wilson had demanded of me. I’d grown into myself. I’d developed habits of my own, preferences and likes and dislikes. I had favourite TV shows and favorite bands, books I was passionate about, movies I enjoyed.

I liked playing scrabble in the self-consciously hipster cafes that dotted my adopted city. I discovered I could keep houseplants alive. Pet-sitting for friends, I realized I liked both cats and dogs and there was something comforting about having a pet to come home to. I’d gone to an animal shelter and I’d walked away with a black cat that I promptly named Midnight. It wasn’t the most original name in the world, but I allowed myself my clichés.

For the first time in my life, I was developing the little quirks that made up a personality.

I liked to cook. I wandered in the ethnic grocery stores that abounded in San Francisco and I bought ingredients with names I couldn’t pronounce, then I came back home and tried to figure out what I’d bought. Sometimes, the food I made with these ingredients was delicious. Often, they were laughingly inedible.

I developed routines. I woke up in the morning to go for a run. Every Saturday, I walked down to my neighborhood farmer’s market, stopping along the way at a local coffee shop for a pastry. When I did this, I tried not to remember Paris. I tried to forget Alexander and the
pain au chocolat
he’d bought me for breakfast.

I used some of the million dollars he’d deposited into my bank account to buy myself a small condo. I was on the ground floor and I had a tiny patio that I filled with pots of lavender. It was stupid and punishing to keep reminding myself of the one week in Provence when everything else had receded and there’d just been the two of us. But keeping the plants alive had started to feel symbolic, though I didn’t tell Dana Wilson that.

Dating was more complicated. Despite Dr. Wilson’s best efforts, I wasn’t interested. Not from fear, not like before. I’d already met the man I would measure every other man in my life by and everyone was always found lacking. Yet I forced myself to say ‘yes’ as often as I said ‘no.’ The men I went out with were nice, even kind. They also weren’t Alexander.

I reclaimed my natural hair colour. I regained the curves I’d lost for my last mission. I figured out who Ellie was.

And despite my best efforts, I couldn’t fall out of love with Alexander.

***

My mind spun as I walked back to my condo.
Would I do it?
Would I actually get on that flight and go back? It felt like the right time. I wanted to, but I was afraid as well. If he had moved on, it would hurt so much.

In one of our sessions, Dr. Wilson had brought up the fact that Alexander was Dylan’s son. “Doesn’t that matter?” she had asked. “No,” I’d replied at once. “It doesn’t.” I had seen her frown at me, concerned at the glibness of my answer. But my answer hadn’t been glib. Her question to me had been the first question I’d asked myself after Hanoi. How could I not have seen that they were related? And didn’t it matter?

The reality of it was that they looked nothing alike. Alexander had dark hair and sparkling blue eyes. Dylan’s hair had been an ash-blond tempered with grey and his eyes had been a cold grey. Dylan had been squatter, bulkier. Alexander was tall and lean and he moved with a cat-like grace.

It was more than the contrast in their appearance that had reassured me. It was in who they were. Every single time, Alexander had waited for my enthusiastic consent. In the bar in Saint Denis, he’d asked me home with him, but there had been no attempt to pressure me into making that decision. In Bangkok, even after he’d purchased me in an auction for a million dollars, he still waited for me to indicate that I wanted him.

When he’d talked about his childhood, he’d peeled back his protective armour and had revealed his true nature. When he’d walked away from me, yet had set into motion all the various little kindnesses that would ease my return back to my home country, he’d demonstrated that I could trust him.

Blood wasn’t always thicker than water. Sometimes, we weren’t defined by our families. We were defined by who we chose to become.

Yet while the fact that he was related to Dylan didn’t matter, what
did
matter was the way he’d sent me away. Even now, even after almost eighteen months of therapy, anger still prickled at me about that last day in Paris. Had he sent me away because he couldn’t forgive me for killing his father, I would have understood. Had he sent me away because he was bored by me, it would have been devastating, but I would have dealt with it.

No, he’d sent me away because it was better for me.
And that still infuriated me.

I was an adult. A somewhat damaged adult, but an adult nonetheless. If Alexander wanted to highlight his difference from Dylan, removing my ability to make decisions about my own future was not
exactly
the best way to go about it. He had had no right to make that choice for me.

Even as I fumed about this, both in private and in many vocal sessions with Dr. Wilson, I was aware that these two wrongs could not be evaluated on the same scale. What Dylan had done to me was far,
far
worse.

I’d vacillated for months about returning to Paris. I craved Alexander and our time in his playroom, but I could not be Alexander’s submissive again until I was confident that the playroom would be the only room in the house where choices would be taken away from me. I’d been a slave in a cell in Nigeria. Paris was prettier, but if I returned, I wanted it to be clear that I wasn’t about to return to a more gilded cage, one where my decisions would still be made for me.

The long and short of it was that there was going to be some yelling. At least, I hoped there would be yelling. If he was with someone else, I wouldn’t need to give vent to my anger. I’d flushed it out of my system during the year and a half of therapy. The only reason to bring it up was to point out to Alexander that I was not okay with him making choices
for my own good
.

I was paying no conscious attention to my surroundings, but my subconscious was always alert. So when the man materialized next to me, I wasn’t entirely surprised. There was still a moment of pure fear, before the adrenaline came rushing in. My memories of being abducted in Beechwood Mall were never going to recede. Though I was now better able to defend myself, my first instinctive response would always be terror.

“
Bonsoir
, Ellie.” The man’s voice stopped me in my tracks, cutting off my planned attack at the pass. I recognized this voice. I pivoted my head to confirm my suspicions and I was indeed correct. This was Jean-Luc, the man who headed up Alexander’s security. He’d been there in Hanoi. He’d got Alexander and myself out of Vietnam after I killed Dylan.  

“Jean-Luc.” My voice was tight with tension. “To what do I owe the honour?”

He ignored my question and moved closer to me until his shoulders touched mine. When he spoke, his voice was low. “You aren’t being watched right now,” he said. “But we must still move quickly.”

“Except by your guards, you mean?” I wondered if Jean-Luc thought I was stupid. I’d spotted the guards the first day they’d followed me. A week of discrete probing, and I’d learned that their paychecks came from Alexander.

A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “You know about them?”

“I’m not a fool and Alexander doesn’t strike me as someone who turns his back on people.”

“He isn’t,” Jean-Luc agreed. He kept his head down and the hood on his sweatshirt was drawn up. “But the guards aren’t his doing, they are mine.”

I ignored the sharp stab of pain that resulted from Jean-Luc’s words. Maybe Alexander didn’t care after all. “What are you doing here?”

“He needs you now, Ellie.” I could barely hear him, his voice was so low in an effort to keep from being overheard. “Lucien attacked us in Hanoi three weeks ago.”

“Lucien?” It took all the training I’d received to remember to keep my voice soft, my shock was so great. “My Lucien? Is Alexander okay?”

“Yes,” he responded, raising an eyebrow at the phrase I’d used.
My Lucien.

“We aren’t allies,” I hastily clarified. “Not anymore.” Adrenaline started pumping through my blood, an instinctive response to danger. “What do you know about Lucien?”

“Nothing. That’s why we need you. We are hoping you can fill in the blanks.”

I chewed on my lower lip, pondering Jean-Luc’s revelation. It was sadly not too much of a surprise. I’d been angry at the start with Lucien at the truths he had concealed from me, but after a few months, I’d reached out to him again. I had to remember that Lucien had saved me in Nigeria. But he hadn’t been interested in keeping in touch. He had become increasingly isolated. The last time I called him, he’d barely said two words to me.

Lucien had rescued me from the men Dylan had sold me to. He’d trained me. He’d helped me get my revenge. But… he’d also lied to me. For a few seconds, I was genuinely torn, Alexander’s need for information tugging at my loyalties. But only for a few seconds.

Both Lucien and Alexander had lied to me, but only one of them had deceived me and used me.

If I was being forced to choose between the man who had saved me in Lagos and the man who had freed me from my demons, I knew what side I was going to pick.
At the end of the day, there was never any real doubt of it.

“I need to pack.” I lengthened my footsteps. “My cat needs to go to the vet to be boarded.”

“No.” Jean-Luc shook his head. “We need to move quickly. I don’t know if your condo is being watched. We have no time to waste.”

“Okay.” I could feel my heart beat faster in my chest. “I have my laptop with me. Everything else can be bought.” My fingers itched for a weapon – anything to feel in control of an uncontrollable situation. I reached in my bag for my phone but Jean-Luc’s hand on my wrist stopped me. He silently handed me a phone.

He thought my phone might have a trace on it? Lucien wouldn’t do that, would he? But I couldn’t answer that for sure. The trust I’d once had for Lucien had been badly frayed after Dylan’s death.

From memory, I dialled Tom’s number with shaking fingers. “Hello?”