Echo of Redemption (2 page)

I was so naïve that day, so fucking stupid. I wonder now if I was testing him…or myself. The question never was could he really Master me? Could he help me find my darkness? The real question was did I want him to? Did I really want to face that part of myself and could I live with myself once I did?

In response to my disrespect, he’d hit me. Square in the middle of my chest. Even after the pain ripped through my sternum, making me feel like several vertebrae had collapsed and I couldn’t breathe, I still couldn’t believe he’d hit me. My knees had buckled, not from the pain but from the full mental impact of what I’d done. I hadn’t just sought out Satan, I’d challenged him to a match of wills. It was
our
beginning.

Just remembering I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I still challenge him. Take me to the edge.
Take me. Take me. Take me.
Life. Death. Walk the fine line between with me. Lord Fyre understands the depth of my need. Pain. In all its glorious manifestations: mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual. Opening my eyes, I see Thomas still looking at me with concern, a fear I don’t understand evident in his eyes.

Will having a baby change the way Lord Fyre treats me?

No, I don’t think it will and that gives me hope.

I hug his face in my hands and pray he sees in my eyes that I trust him still. Mouthing, ‘I love you,’ I kiss him. I angle my head toward Garrett. “Can we have a minute?”

“That sounds like a very good idea.”

Giving him a hopeful but not entirely optimistic look, I leave him to join Garrett at the window. “Master?”

He looks at me and lets out a long sigh. He’s exhausted. We all are. It’s been a long few weeks and an entirely too emotional day to boot. I can’t remember the last time any of us had any real sleep. He asks softly, “Yes?”

I have no idea. When I was on the couch, sitting with Thomas, I knew I had to be the one to make things right, but how am I to do that? I walk into him, wrapping him in my arms, even if he is unwilling to be held. Thankfully he doesn’t resist. He hugs me back.

I don’t say things I don’t mean. There are words frozen on my tongue, sentiments that might make everything better immediately.
I’m sorry
.
Except I’m not, not for any of it.
I want this baby.
Except I’m still not one hundred percent positive I do. I finally settle on the one thing I can say with my whole heart and all of my soul, whispering, “I love you,” against his neck. When he pulls me tighter against him, I am encouraged to add, “I can’t imagine life without you in it. Please tell me how to make things right.”

“I wish I knew,
Kitten
.”

Kitten. We’re okay then, right? Because if we weren’t okay he would call me Celia. “God, I’m exhausted.”

He kisses the top of my forehead. “Me too. Do you want to go to bed?”

I look up into his face, wanting to ask but not asking,
the three
of
us
?
Because it should be the three of us, shouldn’t it? Even after everything…Eva…the unexpected pregnancy…my deception…it is still the three of us.

It’s in his eyes he doesn’t feel the same way. He wants to be alone with me. I’ve ended up saying the wrong thing after all. There’s no out except to decline going to bed, and that will make everything so much worse.

Buzz. Buzz.

I am saved by the door. God, what time is it? Late? Early? We rarely have unexpected visitors, meaning it can only be one person. She loves Garrett, she loves drama, and last night’s fight at the club had to have piqued her curiosity. I’m only surprised she waited as long as she did. Knowing Enrique the houseboy will answer the door, I look in anticipation, expecting Jackie to sail in.

Garrett’s arms tighten around me, making me look into his face. Words don’t have to be said to know what he is thinking.
This isn’t over.
There’s so much to talk about.
I can’t imagine life without you in it either.
I wish he’d say it out loud because right now I really need to hear the words.

Enrique peeks around the edge of the door. “Sorry to disturb. A man at de door said dat I mus’ give ju dis message immediately.”

“Who is it?” Garrett demands irritably.

“Not you.” Enrique looks at Thomas. “He did not give his name. He said to tell ju de words Alexiares and Aniketos.”

Thomas jumps up and races into the foyer. Loud voices follow—his and a man I don’t recognize. They speak in a foreign language. Thomas’s native Greek, I believe. I look at Garrett. Shrugging, he takes my hand and leads me to the leather couch as the voices get louder. He leaves me to join Thomas in the foyer. Out of sight. God, what is happening? My heart is pounding. Something is wrong. Horribly wrong.

Looking white as a sheet, Enrique sits down on the section of sofa vacated by Thomas but doesn’t say a word. He is so loyal like that, to Garrett. Unless Master wants me to know what is happening on the other side of the wall, I will not know.

What I do know is that our ménage’s drama has been displaced by something even more intense.

“It came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort.”

Charles Dickens,
Little Dorrit

Nikos

Shanghai
,
China

January 19

Smoke softens the edges of all the hard surfaces. The air reeks. Name your poison. It is here. Heroine? Opium? Ice? Hashish? I host big parties, I pay big bribes. You are nobody in China unless you are paying off somebody. I can say I’m the king here, because I pay everyone to forget they ever saw me.

Tonight, every night, there is a party in full swing.

Mr. Children
fills the air, a lyrical love song. No, love-gone song.

The song makes my head ache as I try to not focus on the words, my brain translating even though I don’t want it to.

“Too many things demanded. Only if it’s possible, I want to be by your side. In between these times my breath is ceasing.”

I do not long for a lost lover. I’ve never been in love. My melancholy is because I saw my twin brother yesterday for the first time in a decade. He looked the way I used to: tall, strong, proud. I cannot be proud of who I have become even though I have become the man I am at the orders of the country I serve. I say serve because none of the united European allies operating the WODC were the place of my birth. I am Greek. I have to remind myself of that. There is a pride to being Greek, and even when there isn’t a single other thing on this world left for me to feel pride in, I will have my nationality. I am Greek. I am Demetres Aristotle Velouchiotis’s brother.

Two things to be proud of.

I only hope Ari can still say he is proud to be the twin of Socrates Nikos Velouchiotis though neither of us has heard our birth names in a very long time.

It seems our lives have been predestined to carry us both on the paths we walk, all of our family…grandfather, father, uncle…having walked the same road. Ari and I were given knives and guns when boys the same age were still playing with toy trucks and trains. We were taught to climb and rappel in the mountains while our friends were still figuring out how to make a kite lift on the breeze. By the time we were teenagers, we were both masterful at all the skills required for our predetermined vocations: soldier, spy, assassin. Like a superhero, we would fight the evil-doers.

I watch the flow of traffic below. The wall-size window of my penthouse, high in the sky, shows me all of Shanghai. Bright red and white lights flicker, ebbing and flowing. I am reminded of glowing embers, a campfire, or the pit of hell. I am reminded, benignly that when my time is past there will be no heaven for me.

I was a good man
.
I can almost remember that time.

I turn my back to the window and survey my realm. I can see from one end of the loft to the other without obstruction, though the portion I stand in is raised by several feet. My “office.” Open and accessible. The “pit” is a sea of couches, chairs and low tables, an area designed for the gathering of my loyal subjects, trusted men, beautiful women. Giggling girls flutter around the room, wearing brightly colored silk dresses. They will all be nude…soon.

“Alone late at night the loneliness explodes. The bittersweet candy was still in the pocket of my chest…please, eat it.”

“Someone change the fucking song!”

The music stops, replaced with something more techno, less maudlin.

I control with fear. Bow down before me and if I like you, I may let you live. Pity if I don’t like you, or if you cross me…death will be the blessing you beg for.

This is my empire, my kingdom, the one I built while no one was looking. While all had their eyes on my predecessor, King Cobra, I forged a new realm. I was his right hand man. For almost a decade I knew his every thought, his every deed, his malevolence, and his compassion.

I find it superbly funny that while I was an undercover agent planted by the WODC, he was posing as an agent as well. All along, while they looked for him, he was right under their noses. No one knew. Well, he obviously did. I discovered
his
truth and by some stroke of luck or genius he didn’t discover
mine
. Somehow, I managed to keep him from killing me long enough to convince him what a great team we could make. However, to do so I had to be even more manipulative, more evil, than he’d ever considered being.

I could say he was an evil mother-fucker. A sadist in every sense of the word. Maniacal. Sociopathic. Terrorist. But I refuse to consider what I have become in order to complete the assignment. The first order of business, earning his trust and discovering every aspect of his organization, took years.

I’m not the same man I was when I took this job.

He is dead now, though not by my hand. That was the plan all along. At some point I would become his replacement, the Special Operations unit of the WODC’s idea of how to control the outcome, the alpha dog able to keep all the other dogs in line. Left to a turf war of global proportions, bedlam would ensue. I minimize the chaos.

“Sir?”

I look down into the face of one of the women here for the party.
Young
.
All of the women here are young, some too young, and she definitely falls in the category of the latter. She is a child, dressed up and made up, too much makeup for my taste, taught to walk and talk and breathe sensuality. I can’t say she is particularly pretty; not considering the room is filled with perfection. My biggest problem isn’t with her age, or that she isn’t as beautiful as the others, but that I don’t recognize her. That makes me nervous. Hundreds of women have rotated through my life and this one I have never seen before. “Who are you?”

She moves closer, touching the sleeve of my Tessori Uomo jacket. “I please you tonight?”

Her hand roves higher and I notice she is trembling slightly as she glides her fingertips from my elbow to my shoulder. She smiles, trying for seductive and failing. Fear fills her eyes.

I react, leaving a bullet-size hole in the center of her forehead, not even remembering pulling the small caliber handgun from my side holster. Shrill screams erupt around the room. Women hide behind furniture, knowing better than to run because if they flee, they too die. Anyone who has been with me more than a few hours knows this.

My men are at my elbow, surrounding me with a shield of bodies before I can take my next breath. Two men start to pick up the dead woman when I demand, “Gloves.”

They pull latex gloves from their pockets.

“I want to know who she is, who she knows. Have her skin processed.”

“Poison?” One of my men asks.

I don’t bother giving him an answer. This is my life. Every day—sometimes many times a day—death comes looking for me. You would think I would lose track of the sheer number of enemies I have, but to become lax is to die. I know them by name, by face, by country of origin, by dialect, and by the timbre of their voices.

I fish three pills from my pocket, the flavor of the day.

I am called a fool by my enemies, an addict, but the truth is, I have the edge. I am alert when I need to be alert, I sleep when I feel safe enough to relax, and when the day or week demands that I do not sleep…I don’t.

The threat has been eliminated today. Tonight, I sleep.

“You.” I point at one of the exquisite whores. She stands immediately and walks to me. Her eyes are downcast. She is petite, thin, her waist-length raven-black hair hanging past her hips almost to her knees. The silk dress she is wearing leaves little to the imagination, clinging to her nakedness like a wet t-shirt.

Taking her hand, I lead her to my bedroom.

“What is your name?”

“Wen-Qi.”

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I reach for a bottle of apricot oil on the nightstand. I hand it to her. “I tell you what, Wen-Qi. I’m tired. I want to sleep. Take care of me tonight.”

She nods and kneels in front of me. She sits the bottle on the floor beside her before unbuttoning my shirt. Pushing the fabric off my shoulders, her fingertips linger over a section of my
horimono
.

“You like my tat, do you?”

She licks her lips. “It is terrifying.”

I have to laugh.
Terrifying
.
I suppose the dragons and demons covering my body might be just that. She helps me out of my shoes and the rest of my clothes before standing to remove her own. It isn’t really necessary for her to be naked. Though she is perfection, I couldn’t care less.

“Jerk me off, Wen-Qi. With your hands and the oil, not your mouth.”

Hurrying to do my bidding, she picks up the bottle of oil and pours a good amount in her cupped hand. She starts to touch me, but I stop her. “No. Drizzle the oil over my cock and balls. I like the way it feels for the oil to drip over my flesh before you touch me.”

She picks the bottle up and drizzles. I close my eyes, the cool liquid lapping over my prick like a bodiless tongue. She waits a sufficient amount of time before closing her warm fingers around my stiff penis. She squeezes me hard enough to remind me that I have metal bars piercing my frenulum. Four. They form a ladder of sorts up my shaft.