Freed (15 page)

Alexander:

Two years ago, I’d stood in my Paris house and comforted Sasha. I’d never been able to forget the words she’d said to me that day. “Every single time, he knew he could die,” she had said about her lover, Andrei. “But he didn’t care. Training was all that mattered. It gave him purpose. He didn’t know how to cope otherwise.”

And I remembered the words Ellie had said right after the symphony. “I don’t know who I am, Alexander,” she had said, her voice bleak.

Every single thing in her life in the last six years had been about killing my father and getting her revenge.

And everything in my life since I was eighteen had been about atonement. My mother had died in childbirth – I blamed myself. My father had kidnapped and raped and tortured fifteen women – I felt the need to make amends.

I hid it better than her, but I didn’t know who I was either. Not really. We had both put our lives on
‘pause’
. Now, the clock was ticking again.

My mind knew the answer that my heart did not want to acknowledge. We were both broken and we both needed to be whole to love.

Today would be a day filled with endings.

***

Ellie:

It was daytime in Paris when we returned to his house.

My mind was clawing with disquiet; my heart ached in anticipation of oncoming pain. The chasm between us hadn’t been closed in the hours I’d passed on the plane, clinging on to him tightly, never wanting to let go.

He hadn’t made love to me. He hadn’t reached for my body and he hadn’t kissed me. With each step I took towards him, he took one back.

He’d promised me a conversation in Paris and here we were. Seated in his living room, on two couches across from each other. Both holding matching cups of coffee as if the mugs were armour.

“You must have questions for me.” His voice was strained.

So many questions.
I still hadn’t processed that he was Dylan’s son. “When did you know who I was?” That seemed the most important thing to me at the moment.

“I knew you were Rachel as soon as I saw you at Madame Lorraine’s,” he said quietly. “Did you think I could forget you,
bright star
?”  

I swallowed. “So my cover story was always pointless?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. Lori had an instinct that something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure. She asked me to keep an eye on you.” He smiled a small smile. “The instant I recognized you, I would have bid on you anyway. I wanted to learn more about you.”

“When did you find out I was Ellie? When did you know about my history with Dylan?”

He looked at me steadily. “The day I asked you to go to Hanoi,” he answered. “I’d been looking for someone in Dylan’s security detail that would talk. In Paris, two years ago, I’d just recruited Ivan Klimov when he was killed.” His gaze met mine.

“I killed him,” I revealed reluctantly. Keeping secrets was so ingrained in me that it took conscious effort to voice the words.

He nodded. “We suspected as much, once we found out who you were. After Klimov, I didn’t have much success, until Daniel Schneider. He sent us photos, videos.”

I flinched. “You saw the videos?” Dylan had bragged about the videos. Sometimes, he’d play them for me so I could watch myself being beaten and relive the moment all over again.
He’s dead, Ellie,
I reminded myself.
He can’t hurt you anymore.
 

“I don’t have the strength,
bright star
,” he replied. “Jean-Luc did. Now that Dylan is dead, they will be destroyed.”

I wasn’t concerned about the tapes, not at the moment. “You still asked me to go to Hanoi.”

He sighed. “He was my father, Ellie. I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. I was weak.”  

“He was your father,” I repeated. “You aren’t angry with me?”

“No.” He exhaled. “I don’t know how I feel, but I’m not angry. Relieved maybe. A little lost. For so long, my goal was to find the girls Dylan had taken and help them.” His lips twisted. “You were the greatest mystery. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, and without knowing, I couldn’t take down Dylan.”

It was my turn to uncover a few secrets. “You killed Sylvia.”

“Yes.” His voice was unconcerned.

“And Durov in Paris, two years ago?”

He nodded. “I had him killed, yes. And others. Is that a problem?”

“You killed slavers,” I responded. “I have the blood of five men on my hands.” I was, by no means, innocent.  

“And destroyed them financially as well,” he added. “It was my act of atonement for what Dylan was.”

“You aren’t him.” Alexander had thought I would kill him. He was so wrong.

“I’m his son.” Alexander’s voice was flat. “Isn’t that close enough?”

I exhaled in frustration and got up to sit next to him on the couch. “I was never afraid of you,” I whispered to him.

He put an arm around me. We sat in silence for a few minutes, then I spoke. “What now?”

He gently disengaged himself. “This is where we part ways, Ellie.” I gazed at him in shock as he continued. “The McAllisters have been part of your life for too long. It’s time for you to find out who you are without our influence.”

Every bit of dismay must have shown on my face, because he made a distressed noise. “We are more than our pasts, Ellie. We are also our hopes for our future. Too much of you has been wrapped up in your past, in exacting your revenge. If you stay here, you never get to find out what your hopes are for your future.”

“Alexander,” I whispered. My heart was breaking.

He looked at me steadily.  His expression was open. “I love you, Ellie. But…”

Don’t speak. Not another word. Please don’t cut me loose.

My pleading must have been visible in my expression, because his shoulders straightened and his eyes turned resolute.

“I love you Ellie, but, I’m going to walk out of here and I’m going to let you go. Go find yourself. You owe it to yourself to start over. You were the girl who survived hell. You walked all the way from the dark side, like the survivor that you are, towards the light. Go find out what lies next.”

He ran his hands through his hair. “Remember that night in the symphony? Go find out who your favourite band is, bright star. Your favourite book. Your favourite TV show.”

I wanted to protest, but I realized something important in that moment and it kept me silent. Alexander didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to send me away, any more than I wanted to leave. No, he was doing this because he believed that to set me free was the right thing to do.

All his life, he had made atonement for Dylan’s wrongs. And now, he was setting me free where Dylan would have kept me captive. Dylan wouldn’t have cared how many lives were ruined in the sidelines. Dylan only cared about what he wanted. Alexander was so,
so
different.

I swallowed. How could I take this away from him? I could beg and cry and perhaps he’d let me stay. But he would lose something important if he relented.

His lips touched my forehead in a soft, infinitely tender kiss. “Goodbye, bright star.”

Then he got up and walked away into the streets of Paris.

Ellie:

I thought the two years I’d spent as Dylan McAllister’s sex slave had changed the course of my life forever. I thought I’d never be able to recover from the impact of that horrible event, but the one month I spent with Alexander Hamilton left far deeper scars. Because love hurt worse than pain and a broken heart healed slower than gashes on my skin.

He hadn’t stayed in his Paris house. He’d told me he had to let me go and he’d walked out into the night, leaving me all alone.

I hadn’t lingered. I’d made myself go online. I knew what city I was flying from, but my destination? I’d stared a long time at that webpage before I’d picked San Francisco. I didn’t want to go back to Cleveland. My mother was dead and Cleveland held nothing for me anymore.

I’d bought my ticket and made one last trip as Jenny Fullerton. On the plane, though my eyes were bleak, I didn’t cry.

***

Once the initial turmoil of emotions had passed, I started to think and one thing became crystal clear. Lucien had lied to me all along.

A few weeks after I’d been rescued in Lagos, I’d gone online eagerly, anxious to catch up with the world. But I’d stumbled upon a picture of Dylan on the front page of some website and I’d had my worst panic attack. After that, I used the Internet only when I couldn’t avoid it and I’d relied on Lucien to do all the research for our missions.

Lucien had taken advantage of that. He compiled the extremely sparse dossier for Alexander. He
had
to have known who he was and why he’d always been allowed access to Dylan. Even if Alexander had wanted to keep it quiet, it was too large a secret to remain completely hidden.

There had been a confrontation with Lucien. There had to be. I was furious. I was well aware that so much heartache could have been avoided with honesty. At worst, Alexander would have stood aside when he’d discovered my true mission. Lucien had set up the dynamic so that I’d look at Alexander as an adversary. He’d lied and said that Alexander’s submissives had disappeared. He’d planted the doubt in my mind that Alexander had been the one responsible for kidnapping me.

I didn’t understand why. Lucien had common cause with Alexander. I couldn’t understand why on earth he’d gone through this elaborate charade. Unless…

A chill went through me as the last tumblers clicked into place. The look of desire in Lucien’s eyes that one night in Paris. I’d kneed him in the groin and I’d run away, taking refuge in Alexander’s arms. Had Lucien known then? I didn’t know for sure, but I had my suspicions.

I had thought that that one night when Lucien had expressed lust for me had been an aberration, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was the only time when Lucien had shown me the truth. Maybe everything he’d done after that point was to keep Alexander and me apart.

I didn’t want to think about this. I had trusted Lucien. I had put my life in danger for him repeatedly. This betrayal wasn’t something we could come back from.

I confronted him and he didn’t try to deny anything. So I told him we were done. I never wanted to see him again or hear from him. I’d done what he wanted; I had killed Dylan for him.

Yet I could not pretend that my thirst for revenge had been something that Lucien had created. No. killing Dylan had been the truest desire of my heart.

But now, I didn’t know what to do with myself. For the first time, I had no target to research, no one to kill. No mission. There was a large, gaping hole in my life.

***

When I was a child, my dreams were curtailed by the circumstances of my life. I’d been a poor kid from Cleveland. The most I could ever hope for was a scholarship to go to college. Nothing more.

When Dylan took me, my dreams had turned to revenge.

But it turned out that Alexander had been right. I didn’t know who I was. I had been the poor girl. I’d been the sex slave and I’d been the assassin. But in my heart, I was none of these people. Instead, I was a blank canvas.

It killed me to admit it, but he had been right to let me go.

When the initial grief had faded and I’d admitted that truth to myself, I didn’t despair. I didn’t give into sadness. I refused to be despondent. I had my life back. I owed it to myself to find out who I could be.

I was filled with a sense of possibility and a sense of hope and as I searched to find out who I was and what I wanted to become, I made myself a promise.

One day, when I have myself all sorted out, I will find you again, Alexander and this time around, you won’t walk away. You won’t want to.

Claimed (
Assassin’s Revenge Book 4
)
is coming May 18!
Pre-order it today
to get it delivered to your Kindle as soon as it is available!

The series concludes! What lies in store for Ellie and Alexander?

I’m ready to fly back to Paris and claim Alexander.

But when an unexpected enemy threatens him, I have to finally choose my loyalties. I need to pick between the man who saved me and the man who set me free.

Click
here to pre-order Claimed (Assassin’s Revenge Book 4)
today!

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Tara Crescent is a writer of erotic fiction. She believes in sassy submissives, firm Dominants, completely consensual relationships and happily-ever-afters! Her favorite kind of romance stories are ones that are somewhat believable.

In her spare time, Tara reads, gardens, cooks, and procrastinates about cleaning. From time to time, Tara blogs about what she's working on (and anything else that she finds interesting) at
http://www.taracrescent.com
. She lives in Toronto.

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