Chapter 18
Aiden
We are on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean, and I have never felt less at ease as I do right now.
I should have never let her leave New Zealand without me.
I should have put her in restraints the moment I found her, gagged her, and brought her back home against her will.
My foolish gambit of letting her come to some kind of emotional place of acceptance has failed.
Now she is in the hands of someone even I fear. That is saying a very great deal.
She will not see his cruelty coming. He will keep her in a state of blissful ignorance until it is too late, and then what he does to her will be so terrible we will never be able to get it out of our minds.
Leo and the doctor are in two seats at the back of the cabin. I know Leo should not be out of the hospital, but his presence was requested.
Luke is seeking reassurance via the medium of questioning me.
“We’re just going to go and deliver ourselves to Mr. Red, are we? Hope he doesn’t paint the walls of his home with our blood in retaliation for what we did to BP?”
“We don’t know that he wants to hurt us.”
“He started with a kidnapping. That’s not a great sign,” he points out. “And someone attempted to hold us hostage.”
“Luke, do you think I have any intention of letting anybody take what is mine, I mean, ours, and threaten us with it after we lost Teddy?”
I ask the question in a tone that is relatively balanced, but I think he hears the cold rage under it fairly well because he shakes his head emphatically.
“No,” he says. “I don’t think you will.”
“We are going to go and see this man, and we are going to ask nicely for Ella to be returned, and if she is not, then the streets of London will run red. Is that clear enough for you?”
Luke smiles and nods. “It is,” he says.
Our plane lands on a private runway at Heathrow. A wheelchair transports Leo down the stairs. He hates it, but the doctor doesn’t want him walking unless he absolutely has to.
The three of us make our way to a modified car. It has enough space in the back for Leo’s wheelchair. He’s practically seething with rage as he’s pushed about. He wants to get up and raise hell, but he can’t.
I have to focus on what is about to happen. We have all been summoned, but only one of us is really required here. Luke and Leo know Mr. Red by reputation. I have had more personal dealings with him. I know him in ways I hope they never will.
London is a pretty and impressive city to drive through. So much history, so many people. There are throngs of humanity here all hoping to drink in the ambiance and experience the city in all its richness.
I don’t like it. I don’t like the damp that hangs about the old stone, or the menace I sense in the air.
This is a city in which power has been brokered for generations.
The Romans were here for over three hundred and fifty years.
It was their capital. I don’t like to give into the metaphysical too deeply, but this is a place in a way many places are not.
The car pulls to a halt outside an address in the heart of the city. Some people would be calmed by that. They’d assume that nothing terrible would happen on such a refined street where everybody is dressed sharply and emanating a safe, staid energy. But that, I fear, is how they get you.
“I’m going in alone,” I say. “The two of you are going to circle the block until you’re called in. I don’t want to call you in. I want to come out with Ella, and we all go home.”
“I thought he wanted to see all of us,” Luke says.
“That is what he said, and if we have to do that, that is what we will do. For now, I want to be sure that we are exposing as few people to danger at one time as possible.”
I get out, and the car pulls off. I feel a significant amount of relief being on my own. Ella is nearby. Perhaps directly behind that front door. I step forward, and I knock.
The door swings open almost instantly. Ella is not there, but Eric is standing in the frame wearing the beigest of slacks and the broadest of smiles.
“Aiden, you came.”
Eric greets me like an old friend, or an old enemy, to be more accurate. This is not our first meeting. Our first meeting took place over ten years ago, on a battlefield where we stood opposed.
I would have been happy never to see Eric the Red again, but he does not forget. He bides his time and he waits to strike, and that is why now, at my moment of greatest weakness, he has blackmailed me here.
“Of course,” I say, letting him take my coat. A cold bolt runs down my spine as his fingers briefly brush over my shoulders. I do not like him touching me. He is the sort of man who absorbs life into himself. Even a limited exposure can be very draining.
“Can I see Ella?”
“I think we should speak first,” he says. “There is a lot you and I need to get into. I assume that is why you left your brothers behind, even though I requested their presence as well.”
“The family can’t be too careful about being wiped out,” I say bluntly. He laughs. It wasn’t a joke on my part, and he knows it, but it amuses him anyway.
“Come. Let’s have some afternoon tea,” he says.
He leads me through to a sitting room that looks like it belongs in a museum, and makes a great show of pouring tea, providing little sandwiches on fine china plates, and doing absolutely everything and anything besides getting to the point because this is how he maintains control.
“I really would like to see Ella,” I say.
“Oh, I imagine you would,” he says. “She was the bait that got you here finally after you refused how many invitations would you say I have extended over the years?”
“Many,” I say. “I haven’t had the time…”
“Well over a hundred,” he says. “At a certain point, it’s just rude, really.”
“At a certain point, one might stop asking,” I reply. I am not here to be bullied, and he is not really here to fuck with my head either. He wants something, and the pettiness is not the end goal.
“True,” he says. “Let’s talk about Ella, then, shall we? I picked up your girl much the same way I’d pick up any stray. She was hungry, and I fed her, gave her a little kind attention, and she let me do whatever I liked with her.”
He is trying to bait me. It will not work.
I know he took her at gun point, and that she settled in anyway because that is just how Ella works.
She’s accustomed to being in custody. She’s lived her life under the ownership of one evil man or another.
At this stage, she’s like a foster dog being moved from home to home.
She’d hate the comparison, both for how it made her feel and how accurate it is.
“Ella is immensely adaptable,” I say.
“I should say so,” he agrees. “She beds you, and earlier, your younger brother, who is killed by the man she works for…”
“Works is a strong word for someone who has been held captive most of their life,” I say. I pick through the offerings, and settle on a crumbly biscuit. Cucumber sandwiches might be the most pointless exercise in the history of pointless exercises.
“You need a lesson in etiquette,” Mr. Red notes, with a little smirk. “Why do you think I took her?”
“Same reason you launched a ham-fisted attempt to take one or both of my brothers. You want something from me.”
“I do,” Mr. Red smiles. “You’ve always been exceptional, Aiden.
And you’ve never been entirely appreciated.
I don’t think most people are even capable of seeing you for all that you are.
Oh, they know you’re intelligent. And they know you are unique.
They can see that there’s something that sets you apart.
But they don’t really know what it is. They can’t describe it accurately. ”
“Ella can.”
Mr. Red leans back. “Can she? She seems cute, and sweet, but I doubt she has the necessary darkness to understand what fabric you are cut from, Aiden.”
“I don’t need her to understand me.”
He smiles. “And that’s why she isn’t the right person for you. To be loved is to be known, Aiden.”
“Fuck’s sake,” I curse under my breath, pinching the bridge of my nose. “This is why you took her? Because you’re jealous?”
“You make it sound like a crush, or some kind of pedestrian attraction. I’ve wanted you for a long time, Aiden. But I don’t need you in my bed. I want you beside me in my empire. It’s an entirely different kind of partnership.”
“I run my own organization.”
“You head a family, which is almost constantly under attack, and which you have proved you cannot keep safe.”
He’s jabbing at me, using Teddy’s death as a rapier. I can’t deny that he hits with it. Mr. Red does understand me in ways other people do not, and that means he knows how to phrase things in just the sort of way that will drive me insane.
“And, so?”
“So it is time you admitted that you need my protection. Bring your family, all of them, under the Red umbrella. If you continue to stand alone, you are going to be fighting off assassins for as long as you live—which, incidentally, will not be all that long.”
He’s such a smarmy asshole. He is really enjoying his smart little quips and such.
“The villain monologue suits you,” I say. “But the Levin family is not for sale, or aggregation. We stay independent, and anybody who has any sense will stay well clear.”
“Brave words, but poor Theodore already paid the price for that attitude, and now Leo is also close to succumbing to his injuries. It just makes sense, Aiden. It won’t be all that bad, I promise. I won’t make you kiss the ring. An occasional bow will suffice.”
I want to tell him to fuck off so badly, but I refuse to escalate the situation. I know it’s in my best interest, and Ella’s, to just let him keep up all this bluster. It is buying us valuable time, and it is making him feel like he is being effective.