Chapter 18 #2
He smiles at me broadly. “I thought I would never be able to get you to the table, because I thought you were untouchable. You never had a real relationship. There was never anybody you seemed to care for. And then she came along and now I can puppet you all over the world at a whim.”
“Hm,” I say, not giving him the satisfaction of much of a response. “I think you will soon find that I am not a very good puppet. I have a tendency to cut the strings.”
“Not this time. Not with her condition.”
“What do you mean, her condition?”
“Oh. You didn’t know? How exciting! I get to break the news,” he smirks. “She’s pregnant. We had a doctor scan her, just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
“I always have female captives scanned in case there is some extra leverage on board. In her case, there was. You’re going to be a father. Or an uncle. Hard to say which, really, the way she’s been going through your family.”
He means to be insulting, but I could not care less. Ella is pregnant. I should have had her scanned too.
“How far along?”
He reaches into a small table beside his chair and plucks out an ultrasound image, handing it over to me.
“Old enough to look like a baby,” he says.
I cannot help but smile at the image. I knew that at some point she might fall pregnant, but there is still something miraculous about seeing the actual proof of it having happened.
There is new life inside Ella. A part of me wants to believe that it is Teddy coming back to us through her, that the family hasn’t lost anyone, not really.
“Thank you,” I say.
He laughs. “You shouldn’t be thanking me, old man. Not yet, anyway. We haven’t decided what her fate is going to be. Are you going to join me? Or is Miss Baby-on-Board going to have an unfortunate accident?”
Threatening the life of the woman I love is one level of stupid. Threatening the life of the child she is carrying is about the most stupid thing I could possibly conceive of.
“Does she know?”
“Did we tell her she is having a baby? No. We told her that it was part of the routine medical.”
“And she believed you?”
“I’m going to be very honest with you,” he says. “She was sedated. I put a little something in the cheese toastie before I had her examined. It’s easier to deal with people who aren’t conscious. In so many ways.”
I make a mental note not to break the pregnancy news to Ella until this is all settled.
When I know we are all safe, and she will be able to enjoy it, that is when we will tell her.
Right now, the news will overwhelm her, between her guilt-ridden world escape attempts and the constant threat of new evils… it’s not the time.
“You’ve gotten slow over the years,” I say.
“Is that right, old man?”
“It is. The version of you I used to know would never have spent this long monologuing and threatening, giving me time to ensure the love of my life is extracted from your grip before anything can hurt her.”
Eric smirks. “There is no way to take someone out of this house without me knowing. Every window is alarmed. There are pressure plates under the floors. There are cameras everywhere.”
“And yet, she’s already gone,” I say, spreading my hands out palm up, much like a magician unveiling a particularly smart trick.
He looks perturbed, and in that moment, we both know I have won. Whether Ella is still in his home or not (she is not), he has been visibly rattled. Eric hates nothing more than being outplayed.
“While you sat here with me, I had a team of ex-Marine commandos break in through the roof and take her out in a helicopter.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“We’ll have the tiles replaced,” I say. “They had to break a few to rappel into the attic where you were keeping her.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because this building doesn’t have a basement, and she would have thrown herself out a window if she had access to one, so the natural conclusion was attic.
No windows, relatively secure, you can’t hear her complaining.
The downside of that is you can’t hear her being rescued either.
We used one of those special helicopters.
The ones that move silently. What are they called again? ”
I pretend not to remember, so he says it for me.
“Comanche,” he says. “Or a modified Black Hawk. Or I suppose, one of the very new Defiant range.”
“One of them,” I smile.
“If this is true…”
“Why don’t we go up and look?”
Eric leads me up to the attic. These old English places have a very specific layout and being historic, those layouts are on file. There are also very strict rules against modifying them.
He opens the door to the attic, and sure enough, piss weak English sun is doing its best to stream through the hole in the ceiling. Ella is not there. The room, sparsely but somewhat nicely furnished, is empty, save for plaster on the floor and a few broken tiles that I already warned him about.
Eric stands and stares for a moment, then lets out a laugh that sits somewhere between impressed and deranged. “My gods, man,” he says, clapping his thigh. “I wouldn’t have imagined it, but you did it.”
“I am never going to work for you,” I tell him. “And if you ever, and I do mean ever allow anybody to put their hands on my wife again, I can promise you it will be the last thing you do.”
“You expect me to protect her?”
“Yes,” I say. “I expect you to make it very clear to everybody under your umbrella that the Levin family was never one to be trifled with.”
I am not going to kill him. If I was to do that, the network he has spent years putting together would fracture in an instant, and instead of being a largely controllable entity, we would face a world full of splintered psychopaths each vying for control.
Eric smiles at me. “You like me, don’t you.” He says it flatly, like it is a simple matter of fact. “I’ve always liked you too, Aiden. If you’re going to marry that woman, I can promise you an interesting life.”
“I’m leaving,” I tell him. “And I don’t want to see you any time soon. Thanks to you, I had to get my badly injured brother out of the hospital and fly him over here. He’s going to have damp in his wound, and it will be your fault.”
“Sounding faintly petulant,” Eric says. “But understandable. You’ve won this round.”
“This is the last round. I don’t want any more rounds. If there’s another round, the next round will be rounds in you. Get it?”
Eric smirks.
“Don’t worry about paying for the roof,” he says. “It’s been a pleasure seeing you again.”
I cannot say the same. So I don’t.
I leave Mr. Red’s house, and get into the waiting car.
We are swept up individually to the airport, where we board the private jet.
Everyone has gotten on ahead of me and the pilot has the engines idling.
When I get on board, Ella is sitting at the front in the jump seat.
She looks pale and slightly anxious. Luke is stationed behind her.
The doctor is across the aisle, tending to Leo.
As soon as I get on, the door is shut and the pilot begins taxiing. The sooner we get off this foreign soil, the better.
Ella gets up and practically runs to me, bubbling over with apologies.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how I got all mixed up with that guy. I swear I had barely gotten here.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell her. “This one was my fault, all to do with me. I am sorry you were involved.”
“It wasn’t my fault?” she gasps. “It wasn’t a me thing?”
“It was a me thing,” I explain again, because it seems to be taking some time to sink in. “I’m sorry you got messed up in all of this. We have enemies, and those enemies are sometimes dangerous. The game is over. You can’t run anymore. The world just isn’t safe.”
“It really isn’t,” she agrees. “It’s like there’s a never-ending series of evil factions waiting to sweep me away and sell me for parts.”
“So we’re going to take you home now, and when issues arise, we’re just going to have to talk about them.”
“Like normal people,” Luke says. “Like a normal family that all shares one bride.”
Ella is smiling now. She looks better. I take her by the hand and draw her down into one of the seats. The plane is about to take off and the last thing we need is more injuries.
Once the formality of taking off has been undergone, Ella kneels up on the seat and looks back down the plane at Leo. I’m surprised they didn’t talk before, but I suppose the tension of everyone rushing back to the plane didn’t allow for much in the way of good conversation.
“What happened to you?”
“Luke shot me,” he says.
“Oh,” she replies. “Fair enough. Understandable.”
“You don’t even want to know why?” Leo says.
“I assume you were being an insufferable asshole as usual?”
“I am not going to be roasted as well as…”
“Skewered?” Ella pipes up.
“You’re going the right way for a spanking,” I warn her. “Leo has been very unwell.”
She looks at me with a faint frown.
“Seriously,” Luke says. “He got fucked up. He should be in hospital, but the psycho who took you demanded we all be here, so he came to save you. Even though it could have killed him.”
“Oh,” she says, looking at Leo’s feet. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says. “Aiden, tan her ass for me, would you?”
“With pleasure,” I say, tugging her over my lap.
“What? Why?”
“Because you need it, and after that little snide outburst, you definitely deserve it.”
Spanking Ella feels like coming home. The curve of her ass fits perfectly in my hand, and the sounds she makes as I smack her are both feminine and chastised.
Mr. Red didn’t touch her yet, I don’t think.
He thought I was going to take the risk of playing his game.
He was wrong. She’s too precious to play with, I realize now. We should never have allowed her to go.
“Ow! Okay! I’m sorry you got shot, Leo!”
I let her up, because I don’t really want to hurt her, and she doesn’t deserve punishment.
“You were brave,” I tell her.
“I was?” She looks confused.