Chapter 11
Aiden
Killing BP is easy. Barely an inconvenience.
I do not know why the fool would have taken such a direct shot at our family.
I understand even less why he thought Luke was a target for being turned.
I suppose anyone looking on from the outside might have identified Teddy as being feckless, and Luke as being rebellious, but to think those qualities made it possible for them to turn against their own blood indicates a complete misunderstanding of what our family is.
BP’s murder takes less than ten minutes to arrange.
I call in a few of the men we’ve worked with before in our security division and brief them on the necessity to deal with BP.
Having someone killed is surprisingly easy these days.
There’s so much of it going around, billionaires being murdered by orcas half the time, that nobody will miss BP.
We’ll tell them his car was overrun by orangutans or similar.
The young lady is a different matter.
She could be killed, of course, but that is not the preferred result for any of us, I think. She has been trained before, and in all likelihood, can be retrained.
Unfortunately, the small amount of time I took to arrange the assassination of our greatest enemy has also allowed Leo to try to take matters into his hands.
I find him in the room where I keep my cage.
I’ve had quite a lot of fun with it over the years.
Keeping someone captive behind bars is quite different from holding them loose in a room.
Some people quite enjoy it after a while.
They feel secure in the smaller space, and free of the burden of decision making.
Some people crave helplessness. Others lose their minds the moment they are put in there and do not regain them until they are free. I enjoy both outcomes.
Ella seems calm. But that is typical for someone who has had to deal with terrible things happening over and over for the bulk of their lives. I wonder if I might not be able to cage train her so she remains both captive and contained for the rest of her days, emerging only when she is to be used.
She must be punished for her role in Teddy’s death. We cannot simply let that go. The resentment would fester and her guilt would multiply, and in the end…
“I’m sorry!” she whimpers. Very convincing performance, really. Unfortunately for her, everything she says and does now must be considered from the angle of performance.
I step into the room, where my brothers are already in session. Ella remains in the cage, looking grateful for the bars between her and Leo. Luke is at the back of the room, lounging against the wall watchfully.
I need to speak with him, uncover more information about this kidnapping.
But first I will ensure that nothing too untoward happens between Leo and Ella.
Leo’s pride was already stung from being bested, and now he discovers he has another reason to take some kind of vengeance on her? There is great danger afoot.
“So you were responsible for Teddy’s death,” Leo is saying.
“I wasn’t responsible,” she’s saying back. Her voice has an emotional tremor, but that could simply be from fear. Hard to tell guilt from fear sometimes. Takes a while to discern between them. But we have time. A lot of time. We have forever.
“You drugged me and ensured I was taken,” Luke says from his post. “And you would have done the same to Leo.”
“Oh. I suppose I was responsible for that part. But I didn’t have a choice, not really.
It was my job,” she admits with a charming little shrug and tilt of her head that suggests even if she were responsible, it still couldn’t be properly considered to be anything resembling her fault. She’s just a girl.
The way she shifts from tearful guilty woman missing her dead lover to practically smirking gleefully at how smart she has been in deceiving us all is quite concerning.
She looks around at us. “You can’t hurt me,” she says. “If you do, bad things will happen. Haven’t you all lost enough? Do you really want to be at war with BP?”
“We’re not going to be at war with him. He’s going to die,” Leo says. “I’d be surprised if he was still alive.”
“Are you going to kill him?” She looks around at the three of us. The question is simple and almost sweet. As if she wants nothing more than for us to murder him.
“Orangutans are,” I say. Silly joke. Out of place. Nobody will appreciate it besides me.
She thinks about that for a moment, screwing up her face.
“They’re very peaceful primates. Nobody is going to believe that. You should say it was chimpanzees. Escaped from one of his laboratories.”
“That is a better story.” I make a mental note to correct it.
Then I step forward, past Leo’s simmering form, and I open the door.
“Step out of the cage,” I tell her. “And kneel down in front of me.”
She comes out cautiously and reluctantly, looking around at the three of us as if she is a little rabbit surrounded by tigers.
She knows she can be made to obey. I have handled her before. But obedience might not be enough. Obedience is superficial. From this woman, I am going to need complete and utter submission.
Ella really is quite a problem. She knows more than she should, she is ruthless, she is pretty, and she takes punishment and alchemizes it to pleasure.
I like that about her. I like that I can hurt her the way she deserves to be hurt and she comes for me.
But I cannot pleasure her out of this. This is going to take real pain.
“Kneel,” I remind her, not appreciating the fact that I have to tell her twice. She should be doing as she is told as fast as possible.
“How did you find us on the day of Teddy’s funeral? Did they give you our location, or did you find us yourself?”
She squirms on her knees. “I found you,” she says, sounding a little proud of herself.
“I went through the local funeral homes and cemeteries. These things have to be scheduled. You can’t just have a funeral.
A hole has to be dug. A priest has to be booked.
I just called around until I found a cemetery with a priest attached without any funeral openly scheduled. It wasn’t actually hard. At all.”
We look at each other. When she says it like that, it’s not nearly as complicated as we thought.
“A lot of people probably knew about the funeral, and where it was,” she says. “You’re not as careful as you think you are. And obviously, not as untouchable.”
Leo lets out a low growl.
She’s taunting us. She has nothing to defend herself with, no means of stopping herself from getting hurt.
She is surrounded by men who have a blood feud against her.
I’m impressed by her bravery, though I don’t know if it is truly bravery.
I think there might be something slightly off with this little creature.
Something that tugs at the strings of recognition inside me.
The call of the void is strong in her. That’s what happens when you live life long enough knowing that it could end at any moment.
When I was a young man and my parents were killed, I felt that for a very long time. I tried my best to hold the family together, and I succeeded, but at the cost of being able to take my own life seriously.
Ella has the same problem. She has been so close to death she no longer has the luxury of pretending it will not come for her at any moment. That makes her appear cavalier, when in reality I am sure she is anything but.
“I want an explanation of how you came to deal with BP,” I say. “I want to know everything. Think of this as a confession. You will stay on hands and knees until I know what I want to know.”
Her expression contorts adorably.
She doesn’t like the concept of being degraded, or even brought down to a level beneath us.
I wish I knew where she got the confidence and calm she has.
She should be far more scared than she is acting right now.
It is so hard to get a read on her. One moment she whimpers and cries; the next she looks me dead in the eye and tells me to go fuck myself without saying the words.
“I’m not telling you anything,” she says. “You don’t have any right to know.”
Luke, Leo, and I all exchange glances.
We need to talk. Again. And properly.
But first…
I reach down, grip her by the back of the hair, and crawl-walk her back into her cage. She can stay there while we make decisions. I think I hear a small whimper as we leave the room together. It brings a smile to my face, though it is probably another piece of manipulation on her part.
“I need to know what the two of you want,” I tell them. “We will have our revenge. But I want to know what it needs to look like with regards to Miss Chick.”
“We kill BP and every single one of his associates,” Leo says. “And we keep that girl for ourselves.”
Luke nods. “I don’t know how guilty she is, but I know she isn’t innocent.”
I smile inwardly. I thought one or both of them might demand death for the girl, but chivalry prevails even in the midst of our grief.
We will have the blood we need in killing BP.
But the girl? She is a mystery and a gift.
She is someone Teddy loved, but someone he did not master properly. We will not make the same mistake.
“I think we should all stay here until this is over,” Leo says. “The three of us can make use of her, train her, take her when we like.”
“Protection? Or birth control? Or…” Luke trails off.
“I never used protection with her, and I’m not going to start. She’s going to take my cum in her bare pussy. It’s time the next generation of Levins started to be born.”
Ella
I know they’re trying to decide what to do with me. I can hear their deep voices out in the hall. I don’t know exactly what they are saying, but I know my fate is being decided.
If they kill BP, I don’t really care what happens to me. That avenges Teddy, and what is left of me at this point besides a woman who allowed herself to be used by evil? I didn’t have a choice, really. BP would have killed me the moment he thought I was disloyal.
My life was taken from me a long time ago. I was made to be a vessel for other people, an instrument for their wishes. I haven’t made an entire decision for myself as an adult ever.
The door to the cage room opens, and Aiden walks in. Leo behind him. Luke behind Leo. Do they know they naturally walk around in birth order like giant masculine nesting dolls? Probably not the time to point it out.
“You’re going to be my pet,” Aiden says. “You’re going to live like an animal in our care. You’re going to have to learn to obey, and to accept that there’s a place for you in my life, but it is this place. The place of a little lackey animal who can’t be held responsible for her actions.”
That is terrible news. What little autonomy I once had is to be lost entirely, so it seems. I suppose I get to live, and that is generally regarded as a good thing, but I have to keep reminding myself that I could die here, that these men know I was involved in their brother’s death.
They’re not going to forgive me. They’re going to punish me, because that’s what I deserve.
“I don’t want to fuck her,” Leo grinds out. “I don’t want her in my sight.”
That hurts far more than it should. I know I am a bad person who has done bad things, but these are worse men who have done far worse things. I know I was associated with killing their brother, but I never wanted Teddy dead.
“Do you understand what kind of life you’re being offered? Our little pet, our broodmare, our fuck toy. You will spend the rest of your life serving the three of us. You will bear our babies and you will raise them. But until you are pregnant, you will live like the vicious little animal you are.”