Chapter 28 The Taste of You
Master left that very night with Callum’s body back to Monaco.
He was beyond pissed at me that I had waited all day to tell him.
“They killed each other,” I explained to him.
“She’d stabbed him, and he shot her for it.
” Dr. Laurent confirmed my story. I didn’t get to tell him that another slave had been executed by a serial killer in our facilities because, honestly, I forgot that whole part of my morning.
Magdalena took over every single cell of my body the minute I realized she was coming, especially the ones in my brain.
There was a side of me that was jumping off the walls in excitement, wanting to see her.
I was finally in a position where I could do anything I wanted with her body.
Anything. But then there was another side of me who was beyond enraged at her even though I knew it was unreasonable to blame her.
She didn’t even know what was going on, what she’d allowed to find her.
Still, no matter how many days I waited, my anger wouldn’t calm.
Several times I visited her in the medical unit while she was in a coma, but quickly left.
As time passed, I finally came to accept most of my rage was at myself for being so obsessed with her.
Then the day came. I was in my office when my phone rang. “Sir, Dr. Avery has informed me that your slave has completely recuperated and is ready to start training.”
“I’ll be down there in a minute. Thank you, Manolo.
” The minute I hung up the phone, I stopped being able to think.
She was awake, under my care and training, now what?
I finally had her all to myself to do with as I pleased for at least a year.
I dropped everything and held my head while resting my elbows on the desk, raking my hair back while closing my eyes and remembering her that night in her dorm room, so defiant, violent, but carefree.
How would she be after a coma in my training center?
I stood and left my office, walking through the halls to the stairs, resisting the anxiousness I had to see her awake as soon as possible.
The medical unit was only three floors below.
I took long strides, determined to get there the very next second.
When I walked in, she was still asleep. The heart rate monitor had a consistent speed.
I took her chart off the railing of the bed and read it while pacing.
I already knew everything they’d put her through.
Out of passive-aggressive spite and to force memory erasure, Dr. Laurent had ordered her drowned for too many minutes, pushing her into a coma.
I wanted to yell at him and wring his neck for it, but I also didn’t blame him.
Once she’d woken, they’d tattooed her and sealed her fate by injecting the tracer.
Not every slave had their nails yanked off, but I had to let them do it to please the guards into silence.
There was only so much leverage I could afford to lose for her.
Because of her, I was in the phase of rebuilding relationships in my position.
Then I saw the name on her chart, Dr. Lansbury.
Fuck. He’d actually snuck into her care?
I had hoped he wouldn’t be involved at all, but I had been too distracted with the mess she’d made and my anger to keep on top of it.
I walked out to the nurse’s desk with her chart. “How many days has the slave spent awake and ready for training?”
There were three male nurses at the station, and one had just exited another room across the room. They all stopped everything they were doing and looked at me with wide eyes. “Do I need to repeat my question?”
“It has been a week, Sir.” I turned around to find Henry behind me. He didn’t have a pleased expression. I scanned the area and all their faces. “And now is when I’m being notified?”
“Dr. Lansbury was in charge, Sir. Uhhh… He just left this early morning. Dr. Avery took over today.”
Once again that sick motherfucker had scurried away. I ground my teeth but resisted showing my anger and just nodded.
“I understand. When your shift ends, I’d appreciate it if you meet me in my office today.”
“My shift ends at three a.m, Sir.”
“Well then call me at three a.m.” I was giving him the stare that seemed to freak everyone out. I watched the anxiety rising in his eyes when I answered him, but in the end he nodded.
“Of course, Sir.”
I returned to her room and reread her chart for the fifth time, confirming they’d done as I’d asked and given her birth control.
Some trainers liked torturing the slaves by breeding them.
Hell, a lot of buyers loved buying slaves that were already on their third trimester, but that was not my jam at all.
I wanted to enjoy her body, sure, punish her for bewitching me the way she had, of course, but I wasn’t going to put my own baby in her so that someone could torture both of them without my supervision.
And that was the best-case scenario in such cases.
As I again paced, waiting for her to wake, I wondered how much she’d remember about the last time I saw her.
When I finally turned to her, I found eyes widened by terror.
Part of me was disappointed that the drugs I’d given her had worked so efficiently.
She didn’t remember the night in her dorm room.
Instead of radiating anger she radiated pure terror.
Her mouth was stuffed so she would not speak, her wrists apprehended so she could not fight or move.
It was all a punishment. Almost no other slave had ever been welcomed to our facilities like this.
My gaze dropped to her chest as it collapsed faster and faster, and then the heart-rate machine went off.
The beeping stabbed at my ears. God, how could people stand that abhorrent sound?
I rushed to it and pushed the button to silence it, then returned my attention to her, nearing her.
Apparently my presence terrified her to the point of hysterics.
She started shaking her head and trying to pull as far from me as possible.
My gaze dropped to the gag ball muffling her screams.
“Stop it.” My tone didn’t carry a drop of empathy. I was her trainer, nothing else. That meant I could no longer speak to her like a human being because she wasn’t one. She was just a slave. Subhuman. I was grateful when she stopped screaming and waited for her to calm herself.
“I said stop it. I’m not going to hurt you.” I sighed in frustration at her trying to run away from me as far as she could, despite her body being trapped in that bed.
“Mmmmm Mmmm Mmmm,” she kept screaming. The monitor went off again, agitating me even more.
At first, I stepped up to her bed with rage bubbling up to the tips of my fingers.
I wanted to hurt her, but then a tear slid from her eyes and trailed down her cheek.
My memory kept switching between her face then and her face that night in the park.
A heat rose in my body. I studied her every feature and was so hungry for her.
It had been impossible to draw my empathy until she radiated so much panic, and cried enough tears to take me right back to the night in the park.
She might not have been looking up at me while sucking my dick in the hospital room, but it was the same pleading, helpless, and desperate expression.
She looked nothing like the girl I’d found in the dorm room, the cold psycho bitch I’d been craving for a year.
I sighed when the understanding finally settled itself in my mind.
This time, she’d lost all control and would never regain it ever again in this lifetime.
It was a death, so I couldn’t blame her for needing to grieve the life she’d lost. All her dreams… they were all gone.
In the hospital room and in her cell, I tried to calm her, to make her feel safe, to fool her into thinking I could somehow protect or save her.
As soon as she showed me she was no longer on the brink of having a psychotic break, that she could handle her new situation, I revealed the truth to her.
This time, I had no choice but to be her worst nightmare.
All afternoon and night after I left her cell, I went through the files of the slaves who had been killed, looking up the dates and through the videos of their cells.
The feed never showed anything. The last recorded code on the keypads were their trainers’ codes, nothing unusual.
No one could convince me that anyone but one or even a few of them were the killers.
We always required everyone’s DNA, but I decided it was time to get fresh samples with supervision. Or maybe I could collect it myself.
Me: Is there a way you can make it so that no other code will be accepted by my slave’s keypad than mine?
Ben: I’ll look into it.
Me: I don’t know what else to do other than either put a guard by her door or stay in her room all day and night for the next year.
Ben: I’ll have an answer for you by tomorrow. Someone is obviously overriding all security codes to do this.
Me: Maybe it’s coming from above. Can you check your men’s emails?
Ben: On it.
I knew Ben was not compromised because everything that went to all his accounts and all his computers also went to mine. It had been something I’d set up long before he’d joined the team. So, when I finished texting him, I called the medical unit.
“Yes sir?” Manolo asked.
“Connect me to Dr. Avery.”
He had me on hold forever of course, fucking bastard.
“Good afternoon, Sir. Anything I can help you with today?”
“Have you received the DNA results on the murdered slave I requested?”
“No. Unfortunately we are backed up here with a science project Master Francoise ordered.” The way he said, “science project” told me he thought it ridiculous. Francoise was known for believing a lot of pseudoscience stuff. I sighed.