Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Nikolett hated herself for flinching when Gus raised his hand, his dark eyes glittering with anger. It was an old, ingrained response to cringe away from a slap.
She waited, but the blow didn’t come.
Slowly, she lifted her chin, finding and holding tight to her anger and defiance.
“I didn’t rape you,” he said, switching to English. “I just needed to show him that I could, and would, take what was his.”
“I’m a person, not a fucking possession.”
Gus winced, looking so much like this sweet man she thought he’d been that, for a moment, she was dizzy.
“Right, given your past I’m sorry I phrased it like that.”
This man was giving her emotional whiplash.
She was chained to the wall—and he’d shortened the chains, forcing her arms out and away from her body, the cut on her shoulder pinched with pain, thanks to the position.
The fact she was bound was alternately terrifying and inconsequential depending on his mood.
“Why?” she whispered, trying to keep him here, keep the man she knew as Gus with her rather than provoking the man who’d only moments ago threatened her. “Why are you—”
“Nikolett!” Eric’s voice echoed down to them.
“No,” she screamed. “Don’t come down—”
Gus—no, this was the Spaniard—slapped a hand over her mouth and smiled.
“You know, I hadn’t planned this. Didn’t dare hope that I’d get a chance to confront him. Not really. Too risky. But you’ve made it all so easy.” Gus kissed her forehead.
Nikolett snarled, but his hand was covering both her nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe.
“Hello, Eric.” Gus shifted to the side, just enough that Nikolett could see him standing just outside the open door of the cell.
And so Eric could see her.
Nikolett met Eric’s gaze over the top of Gus’ hand, still clamped hard over her lower face. Her hands, useless and restrained to the wall by chain, clenched into fists at the sight of the panic and rage that flashed through Eric’s gaze.
Eric took a slow measured breath. “Take your hands off her.”
Gus twisted a little more, keeping his hand on her mouth and looking back at Eric. “I’m barely touching her. If you want to see my hands really on her, I could repeat what was in the video. Live.”
She expected Eric to break into one of his famous rages, but he took another slow breath, then shrugged. “Actually, we didn’t watch the video. Just listened. Mostly to the part where she called you by my name.”
Gus’ hand tightened on her face until she grunted in pain.
Abruptly, he released her, and Nikolett sucked in several deep breaths.
“Eric, the bomb…”
“Don’t worry, no one was inside.”
Nikolett sagged in relief, as beside her, Gus stiffened.
Eric was watching him. “Disappointed, brother?”
Now, Gus staggered back as if the word were a blow.
Slowly, Eric stalked into the cell. Nikolett wanted to scream at him to run. Leave.
Eric was almost within touching distance of her when Gus raised a hand toward her. Nikolett instinctively flinched, but Gus wasn’t about to hit her.
He was showing them something. A small black box with a large red button.
“There’s a bomb in this building too,” Nikolett breathed.
“Yes, there is.” Gus smiled at her, and once more, she saw a flash of the man she thought he’d been. “A much bigger bomb.
“You have a choice, brother.” Gus flung the word back at Eric. “Leave her behind and you’ll have time to save the others. Get them out.”
“Go, Eric,” she urged. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
Being blown up or crushed to death when a building collapsed on her wasn’t most people’s definition for fine, but it was all about perspective.
Eric crossed his arms. “I won’t leave her.”
“Then they’ll all die with you.”
Eric shrugged. “Everyone dies someday.”
“Eric, please, go.”
“I’m not leaving you, Nikolett. Together until the end.”
Her heart squeezed itself into a tight, painful ball. “Together until the end.”
“Touching,” Gus snarled, though there was more emotion in his voice than there had been. “But you’ll still be dead.”
Nikolett looked at Eric, resigned to her fate. Their fate.
Eric caught her gaze, and his eyes widened just a little, a slight change of expression she might not have noticed if she weren’t obsessed with him.
Eric had a plan. Or someone else had a plan, and this was Eric’s part of it.
“At least tell us why,” Nikolett said, and when Eric’s shoulders slumped just a little in relief, she knew she’d guessed right. Whatever the plan was, they needed to stall. “Is it just because he’s your brother?”
Gus looked between them. “How did you figure it out?”
“Nikolett guessed.” Eric tipped his head toward her.
“You reminded me of him,” she said warily, unsure if that would be enough to set him off and cause him to detonate the bomb.
But that can’t be a detonator, because if it is, he’ll die here with us.
Maybe dying was his plan, but Gus didn’t seem like the suicidal type. That switch probably armed the bomb, starting a countdown. Which also meant Gus had an escape plan.
Given that there was no way he simply walked in the front door…he had a secret way in.
And out.
And it was probably somewhere in this dungeon. He’d arm the bomb and get out before the castle collapsed.
Eric suddenly laughed. “No wonder you freaked out when I mentioned being poly and us having sex. Murder is clearly fine, but incest…”
“Don’t judge me, brother. I know exactly how much blood is on your hands.” Gus looked at Nikolett. “Do you know what he did, what he was? For years.”
“You cannot possibly be trying to take the moral high ground,” she said.
“Well, he did stop us from fully inviting him to be part of our trinity and thereby risking incest. He has a little bit of the moral high ground,” Eric said with mock patience.
“I know it was a lie,” Gus said coolly.
Nikolett looked at Eric. Eric looked at her.
They both looked at Gus.
“Ummm,” Nikolett said.
Gus blinked. “You were…serious?”
Nikolett leaned back against the wall. “I really think that I’m actually quite stupid.”
Eric snorted. “You’re not. Well. I mean maybe we both are, because the guy you described seemed like a good third for us.”
Gus’ astonished expression reminded her so much of Eric that it hurt to look at.
“You wanted…me.”
“She did.” Eric tipped his head to Nikolett. “You are, apparently, the only man besides me she could imagine fucking.” Eric shrugged. “Sophia’s right, Nikki, you have a type.”
“Please don’t remind me. I’m embarrassed enough that I wanted to marry the man who tried to kill me multiple times and sexually assaulted me.”
“I never tried to kill you.”
“You shot me.”
“In the shoulder,” Gus said dismissively. “And I wasn’t sure you understood the accidents weren’t accidents, so I needed one overt threat.”
“You dropped a bear trap in my garden. It broke my leg like a matchstick.”
That got a reaction. Eric and Gus wore identical green expressions for a moment.
“I didn’t…I didn’t know you. And I didn’t realize you were so…breakable.”
Eric snorted in derision. “As if you could break her.”
Gus ignored him, looking at Nikolett. “You were just the woman he was obsessed with and I wanted him to hurt.”
“That would have worked better if she’d told me what was happening. I didn’t know.”
“Well I didn’t realize you were being a dramatic asshole and running away from her,” Gus shot back.
Nikolett couldn’t stifle the slightly hysterical laugh. “You should have dropped a bear trap in his garden.” Nikolett tipped her chin at Eric. “Well, on his cliff. Break his leg.”
“I… This…” Gus shook his head, seeming to pull himself back. “You’re lying.”
“Not about wanting you as our third,” Eric said. “I was ready to walk away from all of this, give up everything, so I could be with her and not share her.
“She convinced me it would work with the right person, and then convinced me the guy who once tried to give her a cookie was that person.”
Gus laughed, but it was an exhausted, startled sound. “You… You were…”
Abruptly, he put his back against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor beside Nikolett’s legs. Then he reached up and with a quick flick, undid the cuff on the wrist closest to him.
Eric moved fast, undoing the second cuff and then pushing her toward the door. Nikolett was more than ready to get out of the castle, and make sure everyone else was out too, until she realized Eric wasn’t coming with her. He’d pushed her to the stairs but turned back to the dungeon cell.
Nikolett whirled. “I’m not leaving you, Eric.”
“Please, Nikki, go.”
“No. I’m not leaving you.”
“She’s not allowed to leave,” Gus said, but he sounded tired. Almost like he didn’t care if she did leave.
But maybe it was the kind of tired that would lead to him saying “fuck it” and blowing all of them up.
Eric must have had the same thought because he stepped in close to cup her cheeks. Then his hands slid from her face, down her arms. They stared at one another silently.
“Fuck,” Eric muttered. “Fine.”
He tangled his fingers with hers then slowly led her back over to the wall. Eric put her on the far side, so he was between her and Gus, then they all sat.
“Nils Ericsson was an asshole,” Eric said after a long silent moment.
Gus barked out a laugh. “I’ve never heard anyone say his name aloud before. His real name. That wasn’t the name he gave my mother.”
“Your mother is Spanish?”
“Was,” Gus corrected. “She died when I was twelve. Old enough to know how horrible it was to lose her, not old enough to take care of myself.”
“And Nils was nowhere to be found when she died.”
Nikolett stayed silent, letting the brothers talk. This moment would have been peaceful, maybe even healing, if there wasn’t a single word thrumming through her brain in time with each beat of her heart.
Bomb, bomb, bomb.
“No. I told the authorities the name my father gave my mother, but no one by that name ever existed according to them. I was good, very good, with computers. When I was fifteen, I found him.”
“How?”
“DNA. I put my DNA in and found a few cousin matches, then hacked the database so I could get their contact information. They were his cousins, whom I don’t think he knew, but I was able to trace it back to him.”
“I bet he hated that.”
“He did. And I should have known better than to email him. I knew he didn’t care about me. My mother liked to pretend he did, but I heard him. Saw the way he looked at me. Heard him laugh when he learned she’d given me the name he suggested.”
“Did he pretend to be Scottish when he was with your mother?” Nikolett asked, invested in the story. “Is that why he named you Angus?”
“No. He didn’t. He never pretended to anything but what he was.
My mother was not…I think my mother had cognitive issues.
She didn’t always understand things. I don’t think she ever understood that he’d suggested a name tied to a people and a country that had nothing to do with either of us, just because he could.
Just because, for him, it was a funny joke. ”
As troubling as it was to imagine Nils Ericsson taking advantage of a mentally handicapped woman and then ignoring their child, it hardly explained Gus’ bitterness toward Eric.
“When I contacted him,” Gus said after a short silence, “he offered me a job.”
“Fuck,” Eric breathed.
“He had a client who needed assets moved. He gave me to the client, told them I’d move their assets. My favorite part was that they said they’d give me new passports. New names. I got to stop being Angus McAngus.”
“Because you were that good with computers?” Eric asked.
Nikolett shook her head. She thought she knew where this was going because she’d worked with kids who’d been in similar situations. Tried to write and pass laws to help them. “You weren’t moving digital assets, were you? They made you into a mule.”
Gus leaned forward, looking around Eric’s big body to study her. “Yes.”
“Cash? Antiques?”
“Diamonds.”
“They had a fifteen-year-old smuggling diamonds? Fuck,” Eric said. “What if you dropped the bag?”
Nikolett and Gus shared another look.
“He wasn’t carrying them in a bag,” Nikolett said quietly. “He was bodypacking.”
Eric frowned for a moment, thinking, but a horrible understanding transformed his face as he looked at his brother.
“If I was lucky, they let me swallow them. Unlucky, I got sodomized with them. Really unlucky…” Gus shrugged.
“They’d cut me open, sew the diamonds inside, then give me paperwork saying I’d just had my appendix removed or gallbladder or bowel surgery and put me on a plane with a nurse or doctor escort. ”
Gus tugged up his shirt and pushed down the waist of his pants, revealing a mess of long, straight surgical scars along his lower abdomen.
“Fuck,” Eric breathed.
“How long?” Nikolett asked.
“Until I was twenty. That’s when either Nils dropped them as clients, or they dropped him as their lawyer.
I didn’t realize something had changed until they tried to pack me with drugs instead of diamonds.
I refused. Got beaten until I almost died.
I made it out and contacted Nils. I begged him for help.
I was alone, in a foreign country, no passport, no money, and in pain.
I begged him to help me. He was my father, he needed to help me.
“He told me he had only one son. A son who was already a ‘knight of Kalmar,’ though I didn’t know what that meant. He made it clear that he had one perfect son, and I meant nothing to him.”
“If I’d known, I would have come and gotten you,” Eric said quietly.
“Maybe I’m a fool,” Gus said, “because I believe you. And maybe if I’d known your name, known about you before that night he threw you in my face and made sure I knew you were the reason he didn’t need me, and therefore was happy to let me die in a filthy alley, I would have called you.”
“Instead, hating them—Nils and Eric—became a reason to live,” Nikolett guessed.
“And the Masters’ Admiralty. It took me a long time to figure out what ‘knight of Kalmar’ meant, but I found the information eventually.
“Hate will keep someone alive longer than love, I think,” Gus said, and he sounded unimaginably weary. “The fact that you liked me—or at least some version of me—enough to think I was worthy…”
This man had terrorized her. Tried to kill Vadisk. Almost killed Colum. Had, most likely, caused the plane crash that killed Tobias and the pilot.
And yet Nikolett found herself stretching an arm across Eric to take Gus’ hand.
“You were worthy.” Nikolett looked at Eric. “Maybe you still—”
Gus was no longer holding the control. It sat quiet and forgotten on the cold stone by his knee.
Until it beeped. A small screen she hadn’t noticed lit up showing a five-minute timer.
As Nikolett watched in horror, it flipped from 5:00, to 4:59.