23. Anastasia
Anastasia
I ’m curled up with a blanket on the wide beige seat of my father’s private jet having the most intense stare-off with Rhett across from me.
“Tired, little bird?” he taunts with knowing.
My eyes narrow. I’m exhausted from the running, the emotions, then the wild sex in the woods that I can’t stop replaying, and it’s getting damn frustrating. I changed into leggings and a sweater the moment we were in the air, making do with what I could to clean myself off in the small toilet.
“No,” I lie. “I want you to start talking.”
Rhett eyes the front of the cabin where the crew are out of earshot, then behind me to be sure there isn’t anyone lingering.
“Victor Ross was a vile man. He paid to rape unwilling victims in the type of network your friend was saved from,” he begins.
Suddenly I’m wide-awake, shifting to sit straighter.
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s my job to know. Long before you.
I’m not a good man, Ana, and I hope you never try to see me as one.
To take down these types of people I need to fight fire with fire.
I’ve killed a lot of people in my work trying to stop them trafficking women, children.
Selling drugs that are ruining lives and taking children from their parents.
There is no limit to what these kinds of people will deal in.
The worst that you can think of, I assure you, is not the worst that is happening in our sick, cruel world. ”
I don’t know what to say, how to process this.
“You’re not secret service,” I whisper.
“No.”
“Then how did you get hired?”
How the fuck could someone bypass some of the highest security systems to give him what he needed for the riskiest facade?
“I have a connection in the FBI. He was able to pull some strings and forge the credentials I needed with the help of those in my network. It’s no small or easy feat. No one would be able to if it wasn’t for my guy on the inside, close to the secret service already.”
“Why ...?” I breathe, overwhelmed with the information. “Why this position? Why me?”
So many questions rush to be answered, and it’s going to be a long and heavy night getting to them all.
“I need you to know and believe you’re safe. With me, on my life.”
I believe him. Those icy blue eyes hold me with such promise that I nod. Rhett takes a long breath and I brace for what’s to come.
“One of my team found out there was a hit on you on the dark web. For your kidnap. We think it’s to lure your father out for assassination.
I wish I could say at the time I cared, but I didn’t.
I knew I needed to get this position because the hit against your family was traced to someone in mine.
My uncle, who I’ve been hunting for three years.
He’s at the top of it all. The ringleader of the most vile and evil roots of poison through many states.
I took this role with the intention of tracing him if I could figure out who was in on the hit, and being here, close to you and within your father’s home, it was a ticket I couldn’t pass up. ”
“I’m a ticket,” I snap suddenly. My nose stings as I find out all this time he was using me. My family. “You don’t care what happens to me or my father so long as you find your uncle.”
“At first . . . yes.”
He may as well have aimed a gun at my heart and pulled the trigger. “And you thought to gain a good quick fuck while you were at it?” I hiss.
“No. In truth I wanted you to be the stuck-up, difficult princess I anticipated. An insufferable, selfish heiress who would make not caring pretty damn easy. You’re anything but easy, Anastasia Kinsley.
You’re a flame that can burn against ice, because I’m a cold bastard.
I haven’t truly felt anything real since I lost everything, and now . ..”
My pulse skips. His jaw locks as if he’s fighting against spilling his next words, but I need them to soothe the insecurity taking over me that I mean nothing to him.
“Now . . .?” I repeat.
“I’m terrified,” he confesses. “I’ve been wounded to near death, seen unimaginable horrors, and been numb to it all.
When I found you in that maze I realized how fucked I was.
Because for so long I’ve only known vengeance to catch my uncle, and for the first time I felt something stronger.
Still rage and revenge, but I feel it all for you with the thought of someone harming you. ”
He sits there like steel, yielding none of the emotions I try to decipher.
“How did you get that scar?” I ask, wanting to trace the jagged line down the side of his face.
“The night Sarah died. We were ambushed. My uncle had finally found me after I managed to escape him at sixteen. I’d lived nine peaceful years thinking he’d given up.
I wasn’t really worth it to him, but it was the fact I’d escaped him at all that meant he would never let me go.
He sent them and they killed Sarah right in front of me, shot her, because he knew living with that was a far worse punishment than death. ”
“Are you closer to finding him now?”
“I think so.”
“I want in.”
He breaks his firm expression to show shock, which quickly turns to a frown of protest. “I don’t know what you mean by in, ” he hedges, “but you even knowing this is dangerous. I’m not putting you in harm’s way.”
“There’s a hit out on me—it’s too late for that,” I counter.
“It means nothing when you’re not going to leave my side.
You noticed my attention on the cameras.
It’s because I have a guy who can tap into any feed I ask, and he’s been tracking us.
I have two other guys who have been trailing us at all times.
You haven’t noticed them. No one is getting within a few feet of you before I shoot them down. ”
My lips part at hearing of the extra guys who’ve been stalking us this whole time.
“They weren’t much help in the maze. Someone could have killed me there. They almost did.”
His grip flexes on the arm of his seat. “I got a call from one of them that you’d entered by yourself, and he did go after you, but he lost you pretty fast.”
“You didn’t ... kill him for that, did you?”
“Fuck, of course not. It was his last day on that particular assignment though. He’s still a great asset. I don’t kill those who displease me.”
That’s a relief at least.
I observe his wrists. “Your cufflinks.” Two small black serpents. “You never change them.”
“Everyone in my organization wears a serpent in one form or another so we know we’re on the same side in raids. The network is vast with those who are willing to get their hands dirty for it and those who are hacking behind the scenes. Some have it as a tattoo, some have jewelry.”
He reaches into his coat pocket, pulling out a business card and handing it to me. The logo is an open-mouthed serpent crossing over itself to create the infinity symbol. Its body is dark in the center to create an “X,” and there are three other letters to the right.
“Xoid?”
“It’s the name of my organization.”
“‘Welcome the lost, pity the found.’” I read the phrase striked out underneath.
When I flash my eyes up to him his mouth quirks as if he’s reflecting on a memory.
“An inside joke, really. Xoid is made up of a lot of people from very shitty backgrounds, those without a place. They tend to wander into our path and we offer them a place and a purpose.”
“The lost,” I say.
He nods. “But if Xoid finds you, it’s most likely your worst nightmare come for you.”
The found.
I shiver at the notion. The ominous power behind what Rhett has founded. I flip over the card to find only a code and two initials: R.K.
“When do I get my serpent?”
“Ana,” he warns. “That’s not happening.”
“I’m in this whether you like it or not,” I argue.
“You’re a victim of it, and you will not become a martyr.”
“I’ll always be the victim if you shield me from everything. My friend was held captive for five years by something your uncle is at the top of. My father is threatened and they want to use me for it. This is my fight now too, and I don’t need a damned serpent to tell me what I can or can’t do.”
He falls silent, but he never takes his eyes off me. Then he says, “You think a little bird can survive in a pit of serpents?”
A thrill awakens in me. It’s dark and it screams all kinds of alarms, but I’m so alive with it.
“Yes.”
“I can protect your body, but I can’t protect you from what you might see.”
“I can handle it.”
Boldly I get up, crossing the short space and bracing my hands on the arms of his chair. “I can handle you, Rhett Kaiser. Or is that name a lie too?” I cant my head and watch desire spark in his cool irises.
“Not a lie. It’s a name I chose. My birth name is Everett Lanshall.”
“Your choice is sexier.”
I lean in and kiss him.
He pulls me down gently, until I’m sitting sideways across his lap. When we break apart he tucks my wine-red hair behind my ear, saying nothing with his mouth, but his eyes say enough, searching over me.
“I’m not as fragile as you think I am,” I say at his concern.
“All things are fragile to the right impact.”
“Even you?”
“Even me.”
I sigh, resting my head on his shoulder and breathing in his musky scent of teakwood and a hint of mint.
“Just as well I have my big, bad bodyguard to protect me.”
Rhett unfolds the blanket he hasn’t touched, fitting it over me against him. The flight is less than an hour and a half, but my eyes slip shut with the amazing comfort of this position.
“Always.”
My heart skips a beat. Will he stay even after the assignment is over? Uncertainty coils in my stomach. He’s made no such promise and could decide there’s no time for someone like me in his line of work. That I’m more of a liability than I’m worth.
I press into him a little tighter with the thought. I can handle myself, and I will show him. If that makes me a monster too, then maybe all this time I was just waiting to come out from under the bed.