Found (5 page)

Alexander / Marc:

Once I dropped her off, I turned my phone on. As I’d expected, there were dozens of missed calls from Jean-Luc.

I called him and he picked up on the first ring. “Where have you been?” he snapped.

I didn’t want to explain my night with Rachel. It was too important. Too precious. It felt like a moment of stolen time. I didn’t have the right to seek something real, but for just one night I could forgive myself for forgetting that. I could forgive myself for pretending.

I could even forgive myself – sort of – for ignoring the mission. Until Jean-Luc spoke his next words.

“Durov’s dead, as are his guards,” he said. “But we lost a man.”

I swore. This group of people was my
team
. Each and every one of them hand-picked by either Jean-Luc or myself.  As much as I allowed myself to care about anyone, I cared about the five men and women who were part of this mission. “Who?” I spoke through clenched teeth.

“Andrei.”

Andrei. Just nineteen with dirty blond hair that constantly fell forward into his eyes. I’d joke with him about how I was going to get a pair of scissors one day and cut the damn stuff and he’d blush and laugh. “My girlfriend likes it this way,” he’d confess. He’d pretend to huff. “Women.”

He tried to sound so world-weary, but he was just a kid. Despite everything that had been done to him or maybe it was because of everything that had been done to him, Andrei had had a wide-eyed appreciation for life.

Indentured slavery was supposedly illegal, but Durov had never cared. Andrei had been taken from Tbilisi in Georgia when he was just thirteen, brought north to Moscow and then smuggled into a brothel in the Middle East. Tall, athletic and blond, he had been popular. He’d been
property
till a raid had freed him.

I’d told him to walk away and live out the rest of his life, but he couldn’t do that. He had wanted revenge. I’d warned him that Durov was too well-protected to harm and he’d told me he didn’t care. “Don’t you understand, Mr. Hamilton?” he had asked me, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “My life has no purpose if not revenge.”

I could understand that. My life was similar after all, though I did what I did in atonement, not revenge. So I’d turned him over to Jean-Luc who had trained the kid till he was an operative that I would gladly walk into battle with.

Now, he was dead.

“Have you talked to Sasha?” I asked him. Sasha was Andrei’s girlfriend.

“Yes.” His tone was troubled. “She told me she’s pregnant. She hadn’t told Andrei yet. He’d been too excited about this mission and she hadn’t wanted to distract him with her news.”

Fuck. I buried my head in my hands. Another child who would grow up without knowing his father. Another innocent victim. Another generation of pain. “What am I doing, Jean-Luc?” I asked him. My voice shook. I was close to tears.

“Alexander.” Jean-Luc’s voice was steady. “This isn’t an easy road, but we do what we must.”

He’d meant those words as comfort but there was none he could offer me today.

I suddenly remembered a detail from last night, before my memories had been consumed with Rachel. “Can you investigate Hassan? The bartender? He speaks English.” We’d done a lot of planning at that bar, secure in the knowledge that we couldn’t be overheard above the din and the football on TV and the loud grumbling of the patrons about everything under the sun. But if Hassan could understand us, I needed to ensure he’d never overheard anything of value. It was important that we checked his background.

Jean-Luc’s voice tensed. “I did not know that,” he rumbled. “I will look into it.”

I sighed. “I should talk to Sasha. Do you know where she is?”

“I’ll have her brought to your house,” he replied. “She wanted to see you.”

***

I’d met Sasha before. She was a tiny little thing. Large brown eyes, long brown hair, a ready laugh. We’d always smile when the two of them were standing next to each other. Andrei had been over six feet tall, and Sasha couldn’t have been an inch taller than five feet.

She wasn’t laughing now. Her eyes were rimmed with red but when she spoke, her voice was steady. “I always wondered if it would end this way,” she said. She looked and sounded much older than her twenty years.

“I’m so sorry,” I said quietly.
What could I say that could make her feel better about the fact that the man she loved was dead?

“Every single time, he knew he could die,” she continued, not seeming to hear me. “And you know what, Mr. Hamilton?” she looked at me. “He didn’t care. He was like a flame. He burned so bright. Training, looking for Durov, this was all that mattered. It gave him purpose. I didn’t think he would know how to cope otherwise.”

I opened my mouth to say something but I didn’t really have anything to say. I just held her hand in mine and let her talk. If forming the words provided her the catharsis she needed, I would stay and listen because
I owed her and I owed her unborn child
. I’d picked Andrei for this mission. It was my fault he’d died.

“He was always grateful to you. If it wasn’t for you, he would have spent his entire life in that whorehouse in the Middle East.”

“I killed him, Sasha.” There was no emotion in my voice. “I don’t think gratitude is what’s called for in this case.”

She looked at me sadly. “You don’t understand, do you? He would have killed himself anyway. It might have been a slower death. But alcohol would have claimed him. Or drugs. The demons in him couldn’t be quiet. Death was inevitable.” She drew a deep breath. “At least, he died doing something he wanted. He always said that after what had been done to him, there was no coming back. Recovery just wasn’t possible. All he could pick was the manner of his death. All he could do was try to make it count.”

Breathing was difficult. I had no idea. His cheerfulness was infectious and I didn’t know that every day he faced demons that were determined to slay him.

“He used to tell me he loved me,” she said sadly. “He’d always add
maybe
to the end of that sentence. It used to drive me mad.
I love you maybe, Sasha,
he’d say. One day, I was really irritated and I called him out on it. And he said to me,
you need to be whole to love, Sasha and I’m not ever going to be whole again.
”

We sat in silence for several minutes. What was there to say? There were so many people counting on me and I’d just lost one of them while I was making love to a woman I met at a bar in Saint Denis.

“You don’t need to worry about money,” I muttered to her as she took her leave. Though I could never replace a lost parent, one advantage of being insanely rich was that I could provide for the financial well-being of her child.

I sat in my study for an hour after she left, staring at the wall ahead of me. The words that Andrei had spoken to Sasha echoed around in my head.
You need to be whole to love…

For just one evening I had wanted to forget. I had wanted to be ordinary. Just a guy in a bar, meeting a beautiful woman and taking her home with him. When I’d run to a neighborhood bakery to buy freshly baked croissants before she woke up, I was play-acting at a life I wasn’t entitled to.

I wasn’t whole. I hadn’t been whole, not since my seventeenth birthday. I was too broken to love and Rachel deserved better. So much better.

***

Three days later, once the clean-up from the Durov operation was finally complete, I dialled the number she’d given me. My heart hammered in my chest as the phone rang once, then switched to an automated recording. “This number is not in service,” the computerized voice said in French.

I had the number traced to a prepaid phone. I searched the list of tenants in the building I’d dropped her off at, but there was no Rachel there and no one had rented an apartment out recently to an American woman. She’d disappeared into thin air. There was no sign she’d ever existed.  

I believed in fate.
In destiny.
I had people that I would have normally entrusted the search for Rachel to, but they were already overloaded with the work they did for me. If I wanted them to look for her, I’d have to pull them off something else. Something more important than the desires of my heart.

“In another life, Rachel,” I said aloud to the empty room. “I would have loved to get to know you.”

Then, though it stung like salt on an open wound, I let it go. My plans were more important. Not only to me, but to the countless people who depended on me. I had no room for love in my life.

Ellie / Rachel:

When I walked into the apartment, Lucien lifted his head and looked at me. “You didn’t pick up your phone,” he said. It wasn’t an accusation. Just a fact.

“I needed to be alone.”

“Are we good?” His tone was level.

I was fully aware that my reaction last night to Lucien’s advance hadn’t been rational. Perhaps his attempt to kiss me had just been a gesture of comfort and nothing more. Lucien had been my mentor for four years. I’d never once felt unsafe with him. There was a world of difference between Dylan and him.

But there had also been a world of difference between Lucien and Marc. One man, I’d run away from in fear. The other, I’d made love to all night.

In the end, did any of it matter? I’d daydreamed as I’d walked to the apartment about the possibility of a life with Marc. In that small house in the suburbs of France, I could see myself spend many evenings. Cooking meals with Marc. Drinking wine. Laughing. Talking. Kissing. Making incredibly passionate love.

It felt so real, that future. And precisely because of how real it felt, my resolve hardened.

I could have had a life with Marc if it was on offer. But it would have meant that Dylan McAllister would be left alive. Left free to kidnap a new girl every two years. Free to beat, torture and rape them the way he’d raped me.

And that could never come to pass.

I’d broken the phone into bits and scattered its remains as I had walked, tears streaming down my cheeks. I’d been saying farewell to a future I hadn’t even realized I’d wanted. But my revenge came first.

I looked at Lucien, who was watching me intently. Lucien, who had taken a girl who couldn’t even defend herself and had made a killer out of her. Who had rescued me on the outskirts of Lagos in faraway Nigeria and who had his own painful reasons for wanting Dylan McAllister dead.

My night with Marc had been magical. Special. Almost a miracle. But it had to be forgotten. Too much was at stake.

“We are good.” My voice was firm.

He nodded once. Our relationship was once again back on a familiar footing. We were two professionals with common cause. A thirst for revenge drove both of us. “I have news,” he continued. “Something happened last night. Stanislav Durov has been assassinated along with all the guards in his estate.”

I stiffened in shock. “Everyone?” I would have sworn that Durov’s Parisian compound was impenetrable.

“Every last one of them.”

“Who’s responsible, do you know?”

Lucien shook his head. “No one knows,” he replied. There was ice in his eyes. “It seems like a good thing for us Ellie, but I’ve learned one thing. There are no allies in this world. There is no free lunch. Ever.”

I heard the truth in what he said. I felt it in the tension in my shoulders. “They’ll be investigating Ivan Klimov’s death then,” I concluded. “They’ll think the attacks are linked.” One guard who was murdered in a whorehouse in Paris might have been shunted to the background. But a series of high-profile murders and the police would be digging hard to try to solve them.

“Yes. Though they’ll be looking for a whore with black hair and blue eyes, we must still leave the EU at once. I have bought train tickets for us to get to Barcelona. Then, Algeciras and a ferry to Tangier.”

It wouldn’t take long for me to pack. My worldly possessions fit in one small suitcase. Morocco was, for the moment, our destination.

My heart already ached for Marc. But I was an expert at ignoring the desires of my heart.

Alexander / Marc:

Two Years Later…

Twice a year, my friend Lorraine ran a consensual slave auction in Bangkok that I’d taken to attending in the last few years. As my life had grown more and more complicated, the simplicity of Lori’s arrangement appealed to me. The women who attended knew how to play and just like me, were interested in something that had a fixed start and end date. We all knew exactly what the score was. Three months. Sexual submission. Nothing real; nothing permanent.

Today though, I was just here for appearances and to appease the blonde woman at my side. She linked her arm in mine and looked up with a winsome expression on her face. It wasn’t a look that belonged there. “Alexander,” she pouted, “are you going to buy me a toy to play with?”

I repressed a shudder of revulsion. “This isn’t quite the right place for the toys you prefer, love,” I replied. She’d been my girlfriend for the last four months, a necessary part of my plan, but each time I looked at her, a portion of me died inside. Sylvia Anliker was vile. Being with her, I felt tainted in turn.

“The girls here are feistier,” she murmured. “I like it...”

No, she didn’t. She liked defiance only so she could beat it out of them. My plans or not, there was absolutely no way I was going to expose one of these women to Sylvia.
Two more weeks,
I reminded myself.
Sylvia wasn’t going to be a problem after that.

***

“Lori,” I greeted the woman who ran the auction with genuine affection. For the moment, Sylvia had drifted off somewhere and I was glad she wasn’t around. Lori detested Sylvia and rightly so. “It’s been too long.”

“A year,” she agreed. “Far too long. How have you been, Alex?”

I shrugged. The less anyone knew about what I did, the better it was for their safety. While Lori was a friend, she still had very little idea of my goals and plans. She only knew me as the bored billionaire who liked to show up to this particular auction and bid. If she had analyzed me, she had probably reached the conclusion that I was a playboy who liked variety in his women, no doubt stemming from some deep-rooted fear of commitment.

As a cover, it worked brilliantly.

The women who found their way to Madame Lorraine were eager to please. I trusted Lori to ensure that they were all here of their own free will. Here, I could allow myself to indulge in every dark desire I felt. Within limits of course. The submissives had rights; safe words, soft and hard limits. If they didn’t have these safeguards in place, I would never have played with them. That would have been too dangerous.

“I have a woman here this evening who’s quite your type,” Lori told me, always the salesperson. “Frail, brunette, waif-like. The moment I saw her, I thought of you.”

Frail, brunette, waif-like.
I’d bid on two brunette submissives in the past. Evidently, because both Emma and Whitney had dark hair, this had become my type. I wanted to retort that two was a coincidence, not a preference. But I lived in a world where one did not volunteer information, even among relatively trusted friends.

Memories of Rachel’s wild red curls spread out on a white pillowcase rose in my mind. The woman who had walked into and out of my life one night, two years ago.
She’d
been my type. She’d been a little tentative until she’d relaxed and then she’d just been magnificent. Everything about her – her throaty laugh, the amused glitter in her emerald green eyes, the gentle curves of her body, everything about her had been unforgettable.

She hadn’t wanted to be found; she’d disappeared without a trace and I had my own plans and I could not afford to be distracted from them. So I hadn’t searched. I had tried to forget.

I pulled my mind back from my memories and pushed them back in the compartments they were normally locked in. “I look forward to it,” I said, my tone insincerely warm.

“There’s more,” she warned. “I don’t normally accept her type in my auction. Her sister is dying and she needs the money to try and save her life.”

I raised my eyebrow in surprise. “Since when do you take on these women? She’s not going to give honest consent if the life of her sister hangs in the balance.”

The rebuke must have been evident in my voice because Lori shot me an irritated look. “You must think I don’t know my business, Alexander,” she said curtly. “I do. Her story checks out, but somehow, I don’t believe it.”

I waited for her to continue.

“I need a safe place for her while I dig deeper.”

Lori had enemies. She had no idea how much money went into keeping her safe, but she’d been my friend through some difficult times and that wasn’t a debt that could be measured in dollars and cents. “Am I the safe place then?”

She gave me a direct look. “If you assure me that Sylvia won’t be able to get her hands on Jenny, yes.” I started to say something and she held up her hands. “I find it hard to believe that Alexander Hamilton, the man I’ve known for eight long years, would find Sylvia Anliker attractive. I don’t know what you are planning; I don’t want to know. Just keep her safe.”

I smiled. “I can do that,” I told her. It didn’t completely surprise me that Lori would diagnose my relationship with Sylvia so accurately. She had many sources of information, she was well-connected and she was extremely intelligent. She looked like someone’s grandmother, but it would never do to take her for granted. Many people had underestimated Madame Lorraine, all at their own peril.

***

I settled myself on a chair off to the side. There was a fair bit of theatre in this auction. The makeshift stage lights switched on, cloaking the bidders in darkness as each girl walked on stage. I saw a flash of red hair and as always, my pulse began to race, until I looked at the girl’s face. She wasn’t Rachel. They never were.

Then I saw a thin dark-haired woman walk to the stage. The crowd stirred with interest. This was the woman Lori had told me about. Everyone had been talking about her, intrigued by her extremely short list of hard and soft limits. True painsluts were hard to come by, but this woman, Jenny Fullerton, appeared to be one. According to her fact sheet, she was game for anything. I could almost smell the audience’s collective arousal in the air.

She kept her eyes on the floor as she moved into position and then, she raised her head. The lights were blinding; I knew she couldn’t see anything.

My head snapped up in shock.
It was her.
Rachel, who had vanished without a trace two years ago. Her hair was different and she was noticeably thinner, but as I stared into those green eyes, filled with a familiar mix of defiant fear and unshakable confidence, there was no doubt in my mind.  

I was elated to see her.  But a prickling of unease swept over me.

One by one, the damning facts pounded at my brain.

Lori’s auctions were notoriously secretive. Rachel would have to be well-connected into the shadowy underground world of human trafficking to even know about them. And she had a cover story that had passed the scrutiny of Lori’s investigators.

Whoever she was, she wasn’t an innocent.

She’d been a redhead in Paris. Now, she was a thin, waifish brunette who looked similar to the last two women I’d bid on in Lori’s auction.  
Was I the target? And two years ago, had I been a target then too, and to what end?
I would have sworn that that night was serendipity and that our connection was magical. Now, I had to re-evaluate everything. She was a player in this dangerous game and I needed to know whose side she was on.

A million dollars to find out and cheap at the price. I placed my bid.

She was going to be mine for the next three months. I was going to get to the bottom of this. And if she was on the wrong side, I was going to make her pay.

***

Bought (
Assassin’s Revenge Book 2
)
is coming April 29!
Pre-order it today
to get it delivered to your Kindle as soon as it is available!

His name is Alexander Hamilton. He is supposedly the billionaire financier of Dylan McAllister, the man I’ve sworn to kill.

But when Alexander is revealed to be Marc, my one-night stand from two years ago, worlds collide in ways that I have not anticipated.

The chemistry between us is stronger than ever. Yet I cannot allow myself to forget -
if Alexander ever finds out who I really am, he will kill me.

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here to pre-order Bought (Assassin’s Revenge Book 2)
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