Chapter 24
She’s sleeping in the middle of the bed, silver dress and porcelain white skin glowing against the dark sheets. I’ve been watching her on the surveillance camera for hours. Every room in this compound has one of those, since the rooms were used to let customers sample the goods before purchasing. And for a little blackmail on the side, seeing how rich and powerful most of the buyers of the women that used to be sold here were. We made a pretty penny off those videos that we found when we took over this place.
But that’s neither here nor there now…
We’re ready to roll, leave this place behind forever. Start Phase Two of Mission Eden. The one that really counts.
I should be directing my men, packing Eden away and sending Ruin and his whore on their merry way to tell the Devils what I’ve done. I was so pissed when Scorpio showed up back here with both Eden and Ariel in tow last night.
But I made it work.
I’ll leave Ariel and Ruin alive for now, just like the Devils left me alive all those years ago so I could tell everyone how my parents died. Not that it did me much good.
No one really cared all that much.
Or maybe they just didn’t believe me.
Either way. The Devils were free to keep on killing and I have been free to remember and relive that day ever since. Funny thing is, I haven’t been reliving it nearly as much since I met Eden. But that’s just because revenge is finally mine.
I hope Scorpio didn’t give her too much chloroform to subdue her. She should be waking up by now.
“We rolling or what?” Scorpio asks, popping his head into the surveillance room where I’m camped out. “That Ruin guy is bouncing off walls in there and everyone else is getting pretty antsy too.”
I already know all that. The surveillance TV screens that take up most of the wall in front of me are showing me Ariel and Ruin too. And everyone else.
I rise and turn off the screen showing Eden’s room.
“Time to have a little chat with Ruin,” I say. “And then we roll.”
Scorpio actually rolls his eyes. “You’re just slowing us down with all these theatrics. We gotta head out. Put distance between us and the Devils. They know we have Eden by now.”
I give him the coldest look I can muster, one icy enough to make even him shut up. “We have enough time for this.”
“You know best, Tyler, as always.” He throws his hands up in surrender and gets out of my way, shaking his head. Used to be he wanted this revenge as much as I do. Now I can’t tell if he even wants it at all anymore. But that’s something I’m not gonna worry about right now.
All that aside, he does make a good point. Maybe I am just slowing this down because I’m enjoying crafting and layering my message to the Devils. Everything that Ruin will hear today, he’ll have to repeat to Ice and the Devils several times, and I want to make sure he has a lot to tell. Complete with a few nice, visceral memories to regale them with.
But even so, I make short work of talking to Ruin in his cell and then in my office, where I reunite him with his truck-stop whore girlfriend. He was running his mouth the whole time, all arrogant and full of himself like all the Devils tend to be. But I’m sure that’ll stop once I give him my full message.
I have him and Ariel handcuffed together, which should be enough to prevent Ruin from doing something stupid. Like trying to kill me when he sees Eden at the end of my chain.
“I’ll go wake Sleeping Beauty now,” I say to Scorpio once the others lead Ruin and Ariel out of the compound. “I hope I can though. You went seriously overboard on chloroforming her.”
Scorpio shrugs. “She was screeching and screaming so loud once she realized what was happening. I was afraid the Devils would hear her all the way in their fancy hilltop mansion.”
“Is everything else ready? The van out front? Everyone already on their way?” I ask. “Are the three traitor Devils dead?”
Scorpio is just nodding along, his eyes glazed.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, damn it,” he snaps. “It’s all done. Get her and let’s go.”
I just shake my head and walk past him. The room I’m keeping Eden in is in the basement and she’s the only captive on that floor. Razor and Manic are guarding the only door that leads to that hallway. Them and the cameras I’ve been watching. Most of the time, I trust my men will do as I say. But this is Ice’s daughter and a few of them hate the guy even more than I do.
“You can go help Scorpio now,” I tell the two guards. “I got this from here.”
The look Razor gives me is puzzled more than anything else, but neither of them say anything before climbing the stairs.
The hallway leading to Eden’s room is dark and I suddenly feel the weight of all the earth flanking this basement and that of the three floors of concrete above my head pressing against me.
I wish the floor would at least creak as I walk to her door. Anything but this silence where my breathing is the loudest sound I hear. That and the rattling of the heavy chain in the cargo pocket of my pants. The chain that will soon be around Eden’s neck.
I unlock the door and find her just as sound asleep as she looked on the camera. The room smells like gin and mixed with that sweet, faint cherry smell that’s all her. Her silver dress seems to glow under the faint blue overhead light. She looks amazing in it. Dangerous, like a warrior queen.
Too bad the white virgin dress I got for her to wear out of here is more her speed. Sacrificial lamb and all that.
I need to stop thinking and start doing. It’s what my guys—especially Scorpio—have been telling me to do all day.
So I keep my mind blank and stride to the bed. She stirs as I sit down beside her and opens her eyes as I gently shake her awake, calling her name.
As soon as her eyes focus on me, she jerks up, running a warm hand across my cheek. To say her touch doesn’t do things to me—good things that I want to last—would be a lie. But I never want good things to last. Because they never do anyway.
“Tyler, is it really you?” she whispers. “I was abducted… where am I?”
She looks around the room, her hand still cupping my cheek.
“You’re with me,” I say and take hold of her hand. “That’s all that matters.”
The gratitude in her eyes is strong enough to melt something in my chest. Too bad there’s only rock underneath.
“Come on, get up now,” I say and rise, holding her hand and pulling her along.
“Are we going home?”
“Sure, yeah,” I say. “But first, you should take a shower and change.”
I pick up the white dress off the nightstand. “Wear this.”
She looks down at her silver dress. “You don’t like this one? I wore it for our date… “
Her eyes suddenly harden, becoming two very hot beams of green laser light. “The date you stood me up for.”
Despite remembering this, she’s not in her right mind yet. She’s still drunk or messed up from the chloroform or a mixture of the two.
“I’m here now,” I say and start leading the way to the bathroom. “And I love the dress. But right now, I’d love to watch you take it off.”
She blushes as sweetly as ever, but that hard look is still in her eyes. I hope I’m not wrong about her being too out of it to figure out what’s going on. I don’t want her to fight me on this.
She lets go of my hand and grabs the white dress from me. “You missed your chance for that. Now you’ll have to earn it back.”
And with that she walks into the bathroom and slams the door in my face.
Before I even fully understand what’s happening I hear the shower hissing on the other side of the door. And in this strange mood I’m in, I just stay there, where she left me, until the shower stops.
She flings the door open, her hair neatly combed and dripping, the dress clinging to her wet skin. Her nipples are hard and standing at attention, the red showing faintly through the fabric of her dress. Ripe like two summer cherries that I want to taste more than anything else. But I’m good at waiting for what I desire. I had to do that all my life. A look that’s more than half fear making her eyes very wide.
“What’s happening here, Tyler?” she asks, steam from her shower enveloping and making her appear like a creature from a dream. “Is this your doing?”
That sounds like something that they’d say in that long black and white movie we went to see the other day. I guess the cat’s out of the bag now.
I grin and pull the chain from my pocket. It too gleams in the bluish overhead light, just like her dress did.
I hold it up between us.
“I want you to wear this now.”
Fear intensifies in her eyes. But something harder and more unyielding than any chain shines beneath it. Her eyes are red, but that’s from all the drinking she did last night, not tears. She doesn’t scream or try to run. She just stands up taller.
“You abducted me?” she asks, but it’s also a statement. I nod anyway.
“You were just leading me on all this time,” she says and there’s no question in her voice just something that sounds a lot like pain. “It was all just a lie.”
I want to nod again, but somehow can’t.
“Why?” she asks.
“Because of what your daddy did to me,” I say and bring the chain to her neck.
She raises her hand and I’m afraid I’ll have to fight her to put the chain around her neck. But she doesn’t slap the chain away. She slaps me. Hard enough to make my eye water slightly.
“You fucking asshole! You’ll pay for this.”
I should slap her back, but it’s the last thing I want to do. So I just shake my head and begin wrapping the chain around her neck and her wrists. The way she doesn’t fight me makes me think maybe this is exactly what she wanted from me in the first place, but the hard look in her eyes as I look at her again tells me I couldn’t be more wrong. I secure the chain with a padlock and use one end as a leash. The set up is making me hard. The steel in her eyes is too. Maybe she’ll be harder to break than I thought. Good. I love a challenge.
“No, sweetheart, you’ll be doing the paying.”
She gasps, her eyelids fluttering in what’s probably fear, and doesn’t speak again.
I led her out of the room and up the stairs. The compound is eerily quiet now that all the guys are gone. I smell fresh blood in the family room. It’s coming from the three traitor Devils that will now never sing their secrets again. I’d have kept them alive, but I always did hate rats.
Eden is walking docilely behind me, the sound of my breathing and the chain rattling once again the only sound I hear.
Until we reach the courtyard and Ruin leaps at me, murder in his eyes. But he stops dead as he sees Eden on a chain behind me.
“What the fuck is this?” he asks.
“This is my message to the Devils,” I say. “You tell Ice that I have his daughter. And that I’m taking her somewhere he’ll never find her.”
I command my men to ride before Ruin has time to fully process the message. But something in his gaze tells me he’s not surrendering yet.
The noise of all the bikes starting around us sounds like an avalanche crashing. I continue leading Eden to the van waiting for us.
“And what?” Ruin yells after me. “What’s your demand?”
I stop and grin at him over my shoulder. “You just tell Ice I have her and he’s never getting her back. That’s my message.”
I turn back, but not before I catch Ruin leaping towards me. He’s too quick, there’s nothing I can do, and I deserve the handcuff chain he now has wrapped around my neck. I should’ve anticipated this. It’s how it is with killers, which he certainly is. They’ll never stop until you kill them. And I’d do that in a heartbeat if I didn’t need him to bring that message to Ice.
I’m just about to tell my three guys who are all pointing their guns at him to let him live, when Eden’s firm voice rings out.
“It’s fine, Ruin,” she says. “Release him. I’ll go with him. No one has to die for me. This was my mistake.”
Ruin obeys, because he probably heard the same thing in her voice that I did. A command. Who knew my little lamb had such sharp teeth? Ruin releases me and I get her in the back of the van with Scorpio’s help, which I don’t need. And then we’re rolling.
“Your mistake, huh?” I ask her. “And I guess you think you’ll correct it by yourself.”
If her eyes were a knife, I’d be bleeding to death from the look she gives me. “I will.”
Regal like a queen. No sacrificial lamb anywhere in sight. I almost wish she had a chance against me.
But she doesn’t.