Endgame (42 page)

“It will return, sweetheart. When you need it most. Trust me.” She glanced at him and he met her gaze. “You only thought you were cold and emotionless. That wasn’t who you were.”

Fuck him, changing the rules at the last minute. “Then who was I all these years?”

“You were a scared woman, hiding behind a kick-ass resume.”

She lifted her chin, pissed. Did he not know her? “I was never afraid.”

“You were afraid. Trust me.”

She thought of the past five years and how she hadn’t felt a damned thing until Aaron, because she’d been too scared to live again. Maybe he did know her. Too well.

“I can’t be afraid,” she whispered. “I can’t die afraid.”

Chase sighed and gripped her hand tighter. “To quote Jake, you will be fucking amazing. Try to trust me. I’m just as nervous as you are.”

“You don’t show it.” Chase looked calm and cool, calculating as he drove.

“Yeah, thank you, Uncle Eddie, for making me an emotionless bastard.” The mask he wore usually slipped a bit, and in the dim light, she saw his eyes glitter, his jaw working. “I’m nervous, Char. I’m scared, and I don’t like any of this. But when we enter that house, adrenaline will hit and it will pass. You know it. I know it. It will become business, and we won’t feel a damned thing until the end.”

She hoped he was right.

The driveway was long, the house set back off the main road. Which was smart. One didn’t want the cops breaking up their party. They pulled over and Chase looked at her, in the darkness. “Ready?”

No, she wasn’t. Her heart pounded as she glanced at the house on the hill, shrouded in trees. John was there, waiting. He’d kill her and Jake if she wasn’t her professional self. A Dragon Queen. She closed her eyes and remembered Aaron’s words in England.

He loved her and he’d be proud.

She could do anything if Aaron loved her.

She squeezed Chase’s hand and gave him a grim smile. “Yes, I’m ready. Let’s go get Jake.”

A shadow moved, and someone opened the rear car door and slipped in. “Glad to see I’m not late,” the shadow said. “I’ve always wanted to go to a dungeon party with my Danger Girl.”

“Aaron?” Charlotte whispered, horrified. But a tiny part of her heart blossomed with love and joy that he was here for her. Here, in the back of her car, dressed in black. She beat those emotions away, though. Not good, those feelings. “Why the hell are you here?”

“I like parties, Ma’am.” He glanced at a glaring Chase. “I’m not letting motherfucker number three hold a leash to your collar. Not when you don’t trust him. You’re mine.”

Those words blew heat and warmth across her cold, hard heart. “Aaron, this is no time to get possessive.”

Aaron set his jaw in true Anderson fashion. “The invitation says Abigail and her two men. That’s motherfucker three and me. I’m going.”

She sighed. Getting rid of Ebola would be easier than getting rid of Aaron at this point. But she couldn’t have him here, not when she needed a clear head to work. “Chase?”

Chase took the directive. “Aaron, you and I need to have a private chat outside the car.”

“Don’t have any spy juice to take her out, boss?”

“Get out of the fucking car.”

The two men got out. Chase slammed Aaron against the rear of the vehicle and the car shook. Charlotte winced, but pride warmed her as Aaron stood his ground, getting in Chase’s face, whispering back just as urgently.

Chase pinched his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Not a good sign, not for Aaron. Then Chase dropped his hand and gestured to the car. They got in.

“So, let’s fill Aaron in on the details.”

Charlotte gaped. Chase should have been wrapping Aaron in cable ties and tape and shoving him in the trunk by now. “You’re letting him come? Christ on a motorbike, no. I can’t work with him here.” She crossed her arms over her chest, ready to spit fire into the backseat. “And how did you even get here?”

“Spy camp,” Aaron said. “I called my mom, she had Chase’s address. I
borrowed
the car from the elderly neighbor and tailed you here. Simple.”

Chase shot him a scathing scowl, then shared it with Charlotte.

“You said to teach him. It’s your fault,” she accused. “I told you this would end up biting us in the ass.”

“So what’s the plan, people? Fill me in.” Aaron said, far too smug for Charlotte’s tastes.

“Charlotte?” Chase asked softly.

Charlotte sighed, surrendering. She stared up at the house and then closed her eyes. She would have to stoop very, very low to John’s whims if she wanted her boys and her man to live. “I’m going to go in and surrender. If you want Jake then I need to do this my way. Just let it play out. I can take John once I get him alone. He won’t want a ton of bodyguards watching what he’ll want to do to me.”

“I don’t want him touching you,” Aaron ground out.

Charlotte channeled every drop of Ma’am she had left in her. “He is going to touch me, and you’re going to let it happen. Do you understand? I will degrade myself however he wishes to get an opportunity to kill him. You will pretend this is some really bad movie you signed up to do and you will behave. Get it?”

He sighed and looked at her longingly. “Okay.”

“That sounded placating, Aaron. You’ll listen or else.” She got out of the car, wrapping her coat around her tighter as Aaron and Chase followed.

As she trudged up the hill, all the cliché things she expected to happen, happened. Her heart raced, palms grew sweaty, her breathing accelerated with every step she took. She closed her eyes and stopped, needing a moment to focus, to become Aaron’s Danger Girl again.

Chase and Aaron crowded in, both men tall behind her, shielding her with their sheer mass. One man would be dark and dangerous, lethal. The other…like it or not, Aaron was fast becoming exactly what she never wanted him to be. Strong, bold, willing to bend the rules for her.

It was also exactly what she needed.

She inhaled and their scents blended—spicy with a hint of winter, citrus and clean. Both comforting and supportive, and for once, she didn’t feel desire in the sexual sense. This desire was to complete her duty, to see her task to the end. To finally end the game.

Danger Girl had come home.

“Ready?” Aaron whispered.

“Yes.” She reached for his hand and then found Chase’s with her other, glad not to have to face John alone. Not in the beginning, anyway. She hoped they were long gone by the time she killed him, and he killed her. “Let’s go see a very bad man about returning Jake.”

****

The party was in full swing by the time they reached the front door with only a minute to spare on their time allowance. Charlotte gave her name to the guards, and they searched all of them. Thankfully, her boots went unchecked, the gun and knives safe.

They were swept into a large, formal foyer, her coat taken by a blond, bulky guard. They let the boys keep their leather jackets, which didn’t surprise her. John didn’t intend for her to leave.

“We have a gun to your girl’s back, so be good,” the tall, blond guard informed her boys. She walked between them, eyes downcast like a good submissive. She took their hands again, more for Aaron’s comfort than hers.

“There are places set up for scenes to take place,” she murmured. The room to the left, a small sitting, had a naked man handcuffed over a spanking bench, his ass already a lovely shade of pink. Several guests politely looked on as his mistress offered another slap. The crop hissed though the air and made a delightful sound as it smacked down pink skin. Aaron jumped at the noise, his hand tight in hers.

She glanced away, eyes still down, gesturing to the room on the right with a food table near some glass windows and some chairs along the back wall. “That’s a neutral zone, where guests can mingle and talk.”

“No talking,” the guard snapped.

She kept her eyes down for the rest of the hallway where the last door was closed.

“Open and go in,” the guard ordered softly. “Your boyfriends will both have guns to their heads once inside. You’ll do exactly as the boss says. Do you understand?”

She nodded and steeled herself, heart pounding.

She went in first, Aaron right behind, Chase a step away. The room was another sitting room, the walls lined with shelves of books, a dark leather sofa against one wall, two leather chairs facing it.

The door on the far wall was closed, and she sensed John waited behind it. She licked her dry lips, refusing to give in to the shudder that threatened to claim her. A moment later, the door opened and John walked out. Charlotte crowded closer to her two men, summoning the coldness radiating from their outerwear to freeze her pounding heart.

“Welcome, Abigail. I’m so happy to see you.”

“John,” she whispered. How many nights had she dreamt about his voice? Higher pitched than Aaron’s, his accent more Northern England than London. A voice that now made her skin crawl with growing dread.

He’d had surgery, too. His nose, cheekbones, and chin different. But his eyes were the same shape, and the slope of his jaw was the same. His body was still lean and wiry, his hair lacking gray. The only thing that truly wasn’t the same was how she felt when she looked at him. That love, that need was gone. Only hatred filled that spot.

He smiled warmly, taking in her outfit. It was definitely something he would have made her wear in the past. “Sweet girl. You look well. Your boys have taken good care of you so you’d be ready for our last night of pleasure.”

“They took care of me because they love me.”

“And I didn’t?” John’s eyes narrowed. “How soon we forget.”

It was so hard to stay in her role when inside she seethed, her hands itching to feel his throat. “You never loved me. You used me. You used how gullible I was to your advantage.”

John backhanded her, his knuckles catching her cheek. Her head snapped to the side, and Chase’s hand tightened on her elbow, keeping her upright. Aaron stiffened on her other side, his hand under her other elbow tight.

John grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him, the fury and madness in his hazel eyes almost too much to bear. He smiled grimly. “Your mouth is still smart, I see. I’m sure I’ll break that tonight.”

“We want proof that Aaron is alive,” Chase demanded.

John released her chin and gave her a sharp slap to her cheek, never breaking eye contact. “He is, don’t worry.”

“We want proof,” Chase insisted.

“I don’t think you have room to bargain.” John gave a nasty laugh and finally tore his gaze from hers and pinned Chase with it. “You see, you all need to pay. You two for luring my Abigail to your side, away from me. The actor for fucking my daughter and Abbey. And Abigail needs to pay for betraying me and sending me underground when I had so much to live for. I had an empire. She turned it to dust.”

Both boys squeezed her hands at the same time, and she leaned against their hard bodies, Aaron’s belt digging into her bare side, Chase’s buttons firm on her other hip.

John’s smiled, covering his anger like icing smoothed over a cake. “So here’s how it will go down. You two will have the pleasure of listening to the scene I have planned for Abbey. She’ll get to live it, the actor will watch, and when it’s done, I will return them both.”

“Alive?” Aaron asked, so stupidly hopeful. Charlotte dug her fingernails into his hand in punishment.

John’s hazel eyes glittered with amusement. “The actor, maybe. When he’s done watching what I do to her, he’ll never fuck a woman again. You two will remember my words when you collect her dead body and you’ll dream about how horrible her death was, because it will be bloody and full of decadent pain. You’ll think twice about dragging a young woman into your plot.”

“You hate me that much?” Charlotte asked, her throat tight.

“No, I love you that much. I have never loved anyone like I loved you, Abigail. To know you betrayed me and then cheated on me with these men…” He shuddered. “You deserve to be punished.”

Charlotte didn’t get it. The man was fucking crazy. “You shared me at parties when I was unconscious. What did you care who I fucked?”

“I shared you at the parties. That was my choice.” John shot her an incredulous look. “You fucked another man without my permission. Two men, without Sir’s permission. You were mine to share.”

“So you punished me.” She shook her head. He’d never believe she’d never slept with Chase or Jake.

He shrugged. “I also gave you wonderful things. Just like your baby. It wasn’t mine, but I gave you the opportunity to bear a child, because I loved you.”

“The baby wasn’t yours.” She should have been shocked, horrified, but she felt nothing but relief. The baby had been hers, and only hers, and what little life it had lived, it had done so with one parent who loved it desperately.

“No. I had a vasectomy after Celia was born. So I had to share you, to give you a baby. But when it came time for you to die, it was easy. Your life, the life of your child, was my gift to take from you, just as it was my gift to give you.”

Charlotte nodded and vowed, not for the first time, that death would be her final gift to John. His death.

Aaron listened, horrified, and a part of him wished he hadn’t come. Hadn’t forced himself here, to listen to this, because he wasn’t strong like Charlotte. She stood there and took it all in, almost accepting of the hell John dished out, her face like beautiful porcelain. Aaron wavered from wanting to barf and wanting to strangle John with his bare hands.

“Come, Abbey,” John beckoned in a gentle voice. “Because I love you, I’ll give you a choice. Your life for theirs. Come, submit, and I promise you all your men will live. Would you like that?”

“If I go with you, you won’t hurt them.” Her voice was clear, calm. Rational, despite the hell she had to be feeling.

“It will be my last gift to you. Your life for theirs. Kneel and they live. Stand and you take your chances.”

She pulled her hand from Aaron’s, and he wanted to scream for her to stop. She walked forward, head down, and sank to her knees at John’s feet in a graceful flow of muscles. Then she surprised Aaron by stretching out, chest on the floor, arms outstretched, ass in the air. The Danger Girl inside Charlotte had to be humiliated. Degraded. Exactly what John wanted.