Claimed (9 page)

“How long?” Alexander asked.

“A few days,” George responded. “Maybe a week. It’s Christmas break. Even hackers celebrate the holidays. Things are slower and people will take longer to respond to my queries.”

Alexander nodded, exchanging a tense glance with Jean-Luc. When George had left, he turned to me. “Ellie, can I talk to you in private? Jean-Luc, Pavel, would you excuse the two of us for a moment, please?”

The two of them left the room. “What’s the matter?” I asked as soon as we were alone. For some reason, when Alexander had said he wanted to talk to me, I had a flashback of being in the principal’s office.

“You look worried.” His hand caressed my cheek. “I thought I should tell you this when we were alone, so you could process the news without an audience.”

“Tell me what?” I asked. I linked my hand in his, needing to feel his warmth. I didn’t have a good feeling about what he was going to say.

“Paris isn’t safe,” he said. “My movements here are too public and until George succeeds in locating Bectell, we are at risk here.” He grimaced. “We need to go somewhere fortified.”

I shut my eyes. I had an inkling of what he was going to say next.

“I don’t own fortified estates, Ellie. I’ve always operated behind the scenes. I couldn’t have Dylan find out what I was working on until I was ready to finally put him away for good, and I couldn’t afford to expose the people I cared about to undue danger. But now, we have to evacuate in a hurry and there’s only one place to go, only one of Dylan’s properties I haven’t yet sold.” He looked deeply regretful. “We must go to Nigeria.”

“To Abeokuta.” My voice was flat. We were about to fly to the estate where I’d spent the worst two years of my life. The source of every bad memory, every nightmare and every single fear I’d ever had. The place where I’d been a captive, afraid and alone. I was going back to the place where I’d been repeatedly raped, beaten, punched, hurt.

“Yes.” His grip on my hand tightened. “I’m so,
so
sorry.”

“Ah well,” I kept my voice light. “It’ll help with the nightmares, I guess. Will you excuse me?” I rose and detached my fingers from his. “I just need to be alone for a bit.”

***

He found me in the library. “This time, I looked in the playroom first,” he said, his voice rueful. “Can I come in?”

“It’s your house,” I pointed out.

He came and sat next to me on the couch. “If we could have gone anywhere else, we would have.”

“I know.” My voice was strained. “It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s just the situation.” I sighed. “Hanoi was a blur, but do you remember how at the end, I just stared at Dylan’s body?” As soon as I spoke those words out aloud, I realized Dylan was his father and I’d asked him to bring to the forefront a memory that had to be difficult for him. “Sorry,” I muttered.

He shook his head. “I’m here for you,” he said. He pulled me towards him so my back was to his chest. His arms were laced around my waist, making me feel safe and protected. “You can tell me anything, Ellie. Yes, I do remember that.”

“I do it because I can’t forget,” I explained. “The memories don’t recede. They never do. So, I have to find a good memory to layer over the bad one. When I wake up screaming from the memories of Dylan hurting me, I can focus on the image of his dead body to soothe myself.”

He made a small sound of distress in his throat, then kissed my neck gently.

“Except,” I continued, “I don’t think there’s any way I’ll be able to suppress Abeokuta. I was locked in a tiny room for almost six months. There were no windows. If I wanted to relieve myself, there was a pail in the corner. Once a day, I was permitted to shower and to clean out my own pail. But apart from that, the only time I was ever allowed out was when Dylan wanted to use me.”

The memories were coming fast and furious now, and I was starting to shake. “After six months, Dylan decided I’d been trained sufficiently, so I was allowed a room with a window. I’d only seen brief periods of sun for so long, my eyes hurt to stare outside.”

“Ellie,” he started, sounding hopeless.

“I’m sorry I’m telling you this. I know I’m just dumping my problems on you.”

“Hardly that, don’t you think? He was my father.” His voice was strained.

“You didn’t do this to me. He did.” I exhaled. “I’m afraid of that place, Alexander. I used to have panic attacks all the time. Even after I learned to defend myself.”

“Then we won’t go.”

“Tell me,” I asked. “Do we really have other good choices?”

“Only one and it’s one I don’t like,” he admitted. His voice was reluctant. “We could split up.”

I remembered what he’d said to me last night.
He didn’t think he could survive if I left.
And I felt the same way. Leaving Alexander now, to fend for himself in the face of this danger from Lucien, that betrayal would break me far,
far
more than revisiting Dylan’s old estate would.

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” I told him. “I’ll be fine. I have you to lean on, right?”

“You always have me to lean on, bright star.” His words were a promise and I took comfort in them. I was going to need all his help to lay these final memories to rest.

Alexander:

We sat in silence for a few minutes, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Then I squeezed her hand. “I have some other news that might cheer you up.”

“What’s that?” She tried to smile at me. She was making an effort to pull herself out of the bleak mood she’d fallen into, though I hoped she didn’t feel like she needed to be falsely cheerful on my account. I wanted to experience all of her. I needed Ellie to reveal herself to me, the good bits and the bad bits. I had so much to learn about her. I couldn’t wait for this whole bullshit to be over, so we could start living our lives together.

“No one knows about my house in Saint Denis,” I replied. “Except for you and Jean-Luc. There’s absolutely no paperwork that connects me to it. Which means that that’s where we are spending the rest of the day.”

“We don’t fly out right away?”

“No, Jean-Luc’s going over with Katrina and Pavel first to secure the area,” I said. Fucking Bectell and his stupid need to try to kill me. Perhaps I should have been more afraid, but I wasn’t, not for myself. Cold fear gripped my heart when I remembered Ellie crawling through the glass to get behind the counter.

The whole situation was some kind of massive karmic joke. I’d finally made peace with Dylan’s sins; I was finally ready to live my own life with this woman who stood in front of me. Instead, we were flying out to Nigeria so we could huddle in a fortified compound until Bectell was found.
Damn him.
“Then, the rest of us follow.” I grimaced. “The jet’s too identifiable, so we fly with fake passports and we fly commercial. That’ll take a few hours to arrange. We leave tomorrow morning.”

She laughed at that. “Alexander,” she chided, “you should have seen your face when you said that. I fly commercial all the time, Mr. ‘I Throw Money At Problems’, and I’ve survived just fine. You’ll manage mingling with the mere mortals. Who’s the rest of us? Who else is going to Nigeria?”

“You. Me. Sasha, you remember her? And Andrei, her son.”

She bit her lip. “Are you interested in Sasha?”

“I’m interested in you,” I responded. “As should be obvious by now.”

She cleared her throat pointedly and I shook my head ruefully. She could always tell the half-truths. “If I was being perfectly honest, some small part of me once thought that if things could never work out with you and me, that maybe Sasha would be some kind of fallback option at some distant time in the future.” I shook my head. “That makes me sound like a dreadful person, doesn’t it? As if Sasha’s just waiting for me to notice her. If it makes it any better, I’m fairly sure Sasha isn’t the slightest bit interested. I got her boyfriend killed.”

“She certainly doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge.” She scrunched up her face at that. “Wow, I sound really jealous. I just meant that she didn’t seem hostile when I met her.”

“No, she’s not,” I replied. “She should have blamed me but didn’t. But I’m still the sort of guy she wouldn’t get involved with, because her ex and I are too much alike. She wants something different for her life. Someone more stable, less broken.”

I wanted to clarify something to Ellie though and I desperately hoped she wouldn’t have a problem with it, because some things in my life were not negotiable and this was one of them. “I do feel somewhat paternal towards Andrei,” I said. “I want to be the father figure that he doesn’t have, that I never had. And I don’t want to leave them unprotected.”

“Of course,” she said. She turned around and hugged me. “I guess this just feels so easy. I come back to Paris and you want to be with me. Maybe I’m finding it difficult to believe. I’m waiting for it to sink in.”

I coughed. “You find this easy? We met almost six years ago. It’s taken us all that time to get to this point. It’s been a long, twisted road. If this is your definition of
easy
, I shudder at what you must think is difficult.”

She grinned. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. It just seems a lucky coincidence that I want you and you want me back.”

“I wanted you from the day I met you,” I replied.

“That was just lust,” she retorted.

“I disagree,” I said. “Was it lust that made me unable to forget you? I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Was that your body?” I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Ellie. You were always fascinating. You were always real. You were a mixture of bravery and fear that I understood because in many ways, I recognized it in myself. Maybe I believe in destiny, bright star, because you were a part of me from the day I met you.”  

She cleared her throat and blinked back the tears from her eyes. “Damn you, Alexander,” she grimaced. “You made me cry and I
never
cry.”

Because crying displayed weakness and a trapped animal couldn’t show that it was vulnerable. So much of Ellie’s personality had been shaped by her captivity at my father’s hands.

Time couldn’t be turned back. Had Dylan not kidnapped her, our paths would have never intersected. C
onflicted
didn’t even begin to describe how I felt about that.

“Since I did sound like a crazy jealous person,” she said, changing the subject, “I guess I should tell you that I went on a few dates in San Francisco. And kissed a few guys.”

I bit back the urge to ask her if she’d slept with any of them. It was none of my business. I had told her to walk away. And despite the instinctive jealousy, I was truly glad she’d gone out with other men. “Good,” I said. “If you are here, I want it to be by choice. I want to know you experienced other options and picked me anyway.”

She leaned forward and kissed me, the brief peck on the lips deepening into something more passionate. Her eyes were glazed with lust when she pulled away. “I do pick you,” she said. She winked at me. “But only because you are a really good kisser.”

“Let’s go to Saint Denis and find out what else I’m good at.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her and she laughed.

“Lead on,” she quipped, giggling. “Show me what you’ve got.
Sir.”

“Oh, I’m very definitely going to do that,” I promised her. “Are you ready?”

She looked at me and I could see the desire smouldering in her eyes. “For you, Alexander,” she breathed. “I’m always ready.”

***

Ellie:

We both snuck out through the servants’ entrance in the back of the house. Alexander’s bodyguards formed a shield around us and Alexander’s face clouded at that. I could tell he hated being protected this way.

He’d looked troubled when he’d said that a member of his team had been injured in Hanoi. His words a few minutes ago echoed in my head.
‘I got Sasha’s boyfriend killed.’
Alexander had always been empathetic. That had been the reason Dylan’s crimes had affected him as much as they had. He hadn’t quite come out and said it, but he’d put his entire happiness on hold so he could fix what his father had done.

***

“You decorated for Christmas?” My voice rose high with surprise. We’d just entered the doorway of the house in Saint Denis and I’d stopped just inside the tiny hallway. The house was festooned with garlands and lights, and it smelled like someone had managed to bring a pine forest indoors.

He grinned. “Well, since I’m the idle rich,” he teased, “I had people decorate it.”

“Today? How?” We’d hardly had time to pack a suitcase each and we’d had to leave. When had he even had time?

“No,” he blushed slightly. “I hired them when Jean-Luc called me to let me know the plane was in the air and you were heading to Paris.”

I frowned at him. “Why?”

He put an arm around my waist. “I wanted to come back here with you, Ellie.” His lips grazed my hair. “It all started here, didn’t it? Call me a nostalgic fool.”

I gripped his hand tightly. It took me some time to be able to form words again, to blink back the tears. Damn it, I so rarely cried, but Alexander had me constantly ready to bawl my eyes out.  

“Come on,” he said, pulling me into the kitchen that I remembered so well from the only time I’d been in the place. “There’s food in the refrigerator this time around.” He looked sheepish. “I was going to cook a meal for you.”

I laughed. “Alexander,” I asked him, remembering the sandwich that he’d assembled at lunch, “can you cook?”

“It’s been a few years since I’ve made anything as elaborate as the meal I have planned,” he admitted. “But yes, Ellie, your fear is misplaced. I’m pretty handy in the kitchen.”

“What elaborate meal?”

He smiled. “I’m being nostalgic again,” he confessed. “My aunt used to make roast lamb for Christmas dinner, with green beans and mushrooms on the side. Of course, as a kid, I just wanted to skip past the meal and devour the
bûche de Noël
, but as an adult, I tell myself I can wait for dessert.”

“For my mom and me, it used to be ham,” I told him. “They’d hand out fifty hams for Christmas and if you wanted one, you’d need to be one of the first fifty in line.” I made a face. “You are so much more of a dreamer than I am. So much readier to believe in things like fate and destiny. If you grow up poor, you can’t afford that. You elbow people out of the way or you don’t eat. So you hold your ground when someone tries to cut in front of you, no matter what their sob story is.”

He handed me a glass of wine, giving me a penetrating look as he did so. “I don’t think you are quite as tough as you imagine. Besides, your upbringing helped you survive Dylan. Had you been less used to fighting for yourself, you might not have made it.” He looked troubled. “The others are not…” he hesitated, looking for the right word, “…high functioning.”  

“What do you mean, I’m not quite as tough as I imagine?” I didn’t want to talk about Dylan. I was done with that. I preferred to talk about us. Alexander and me.

Those dimples flashed. “Were you going to cry when you saw the Christmas lights?” There was a trace of smugness in his voice.

Damn him. He wasn’t supposed to be this observant. “I refuse to answer that question,” I said haughtily, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face when he burst out laughing.

We chatted about our lives as we cooked. He hid it well, but I could tell that something was on his mind. Abeokuta, probably. Since I didn’t want to talk about tomorrow, I asked him questions instead. “When did you buy the house?”

“When I was twenty-four,” he replied readily. “I hadn’t gone back to Provence since I was eighteen, but I desperately missed the idea of a home. I’d made a little money by then, and I scraped together almost all of it to make a down payment on this place.”

“By playing the stock market?”

“I was a mercenary for three years in the Middle East and in North Africa,” he responded. “I had some money saved up from that as well.”

“Is that where you met Jean-Luc?” I probed. “He said you saved him from a bullet.”

He laughed. “Did he tell you exactly how I saved him?”

“No.”

He grinned. “I’m going to preface this story by pointing out I was nineteen,” he said. “Jean-Luc should have been the older, more responsible one, but if either of us had any common sense, it was absent that night. We first got rather tipsy, then we decided we were going to find female company for the evening.” He shook his head at the memory. “We found these two young women and brought them back to our tiny apartment. Of course, these two women were hookers and were trying to cut out their pimp from the deal. He’d followed with a gun, threatening the girls, us, anyone and everyone if he didn’t get his share.”

“What happened after?”

“Remember how I said we’d been drinking? We thought we could take him, and disarm him before the situation escalated even further. We gave each other that look, you know? I’d planned to approach from the right and Jean-Luc was supposed to approach from the left.” He rolled his eyes. “Sufficient to say our ability to read signals was compromised. We end up almost tripping over each other, and the guy fired the gun more out of fright than anything else. The bullet ended up grazing my side.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s the story of how you took a bullet for Jean-Luc?”

He just smiled in reply.

“Is this story true?” I accused. I didn’t think it was. The first night we’d met, he’d told me he spent a summer shearing sheep in Australia. This seemed another story like that one.

“It made you laugh, bright star,” he responded.

It had indeed done that. A dark cloud had descended on me ever since I’d found out that we were headed to Abeokuta. Alexander’s completely ridiculous story had lifted my spirits. I topped up both our glasses and watched as he slid the leg of lamb into the oven.

“It’ll be almost an hour, but there’s cheese to eat while we wait,” he said. “And foie-gras.” He made a face. “I used to hate that stuff as a kid.”

“Why did you buy it then?”

He rolled his eyes. “Because sometimes nostalgia is stupid,” he responded. “Do you like foie-gras?”

Billionaires could sometimes be just a tiny bit tone-deaf. “I’ve never had it,” I replied. “You couldn’t exactly buy foie-gras with food stamps.”

He looked appropriately embarrassed before smiling sheepishly. “Good, you can try some now. Then we’ll set it aside and eat cheese and drink wine instead.”