Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
NATASHA
“N o fair.” I sighed and handed Daniel the dagger from my bra. “I haven’t killed anyone all day.”
I wondered if I ought to be handing over my weapons while positioned on an outside deck overlooking the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Elba, but Ella, Cristian, and Daniel were determined to disarm me—not that I blamed them.
“The one from your hip too,” he replied evenly. “Also, the one under your sleeve, and?—”
“Fine.” I pouted but couldn’t help smiling inwardly at Lachlan’s shocked face as I passed Daniel more knives. “Meanie. And your guard is a tattletale.”
The guard in question smirked at me and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Indeed.” He waited with his hand out until I grimaced and gave him the one from the small of my back, but not the last one he hadn’t found. “You’ll get them back when you learn to control yourself, little one.”
Ella snickered, then laughed outright when I blew her a raspberry.
“To be fair,” she said, “I’m kind of attached to my staff, and blood is so hard to get out of the upholstery.”
“I find it rather amusing,” Cristian replied. “Is there any question about why we want Natasha on our payroll?”
To Daniel, he added, “Oh, and please check her purse. I’d hate to have another…accident.”
“And that leads us to the next order of business.” Daniel pocketed my Beretta, along with my last two throwing stars, including the short push dagger concealed in the silk lining, damn him. “Our pretty little sociopath could use some additional training.”
“I am not a sociopath,” I replied. “I absolutely do know right from wrong, and I also care about the rights and feelings of others.”
“As long as they’re pets and not human,” Lachlan countered.
“Or the victims of real animals,” Ella said. “Like Ronan Doherty.”
“Yes, exactly.” I smirked at Daniel and sat, folding my legs under me. “Not a sociopath.”
“Whatever.” Ella sat next to me, pinning me with a hard, emotionless stare. “I don’t give two shits about your clinical diagnosis. That’s between you and your therapist, but I’m not sending you in there until you learn some impulse control.”
“Hey!”
I did have control. I could hide, be quiet, clean up my mess without anyone catching me, and knew my targets better than their families did. But she had a point. Before I reached Elba and met people who welcomed my specific talents, I’d have never dreamed I could show them off.
And I absolutely was showing off. Mostly because I could, but also because I wanted Lachlan to see what he’d created.
Naturally, it had nothing to do with the orgasm the guard interrupted. Because of course it didn’t.
Liar.
“You were saying?” Daniel asked when I stopped protesting.
Flushing, I lowered my head and sighed. “You’re right. I was making a spectacle of myself, and I’m sorry.”
“This is a safe space, Spider.” Ella took my hand and squeezed gently. “But you’ll be going up against one of the most prolific, violent slavers in the world. I can’t in good conscience send you in there without some assurance that you can stay focused.”
“I can,” I promised, hoping it was true. “I’ll be good.”
Why the fuck did that come out of my mouth? I’d never gained anything from trying to be good. I usually ended up bleeding for the attempt.
Or trapped in a marriage with someone who hurt me to get back at a man we both hated.
“Being good is overrated.” Ella stood and filled a plate from yet another cart loaded with food, then returned to sit next to me.
Seriously. I was beginning to understand why people called her The Goat. The woman hadn’t stopped eating since I arrived.
“Be smart, and most importantly, stay alive,” she added, her mouth full of pizza. She chased it with a sip from a frosty mug of ginger beer, then went after a third roast beef slider. “I don’t even want you to be good. I want you to be careful.”
“And to that end,” Daniel said. “We’re putting you back into slave training.”
“No,” I said, surprisingly echoing Lachlan’s denial.
“Hear us out.” Cristian sat across from me and rested his elbows on his knees. “You’ve already had training, and?—”
“I know that.” I glanced at Lachlan, noting the tic in his jaw. “What’s your point?”
“Being a slave isn’t in your head anymore, and honestly, I don’t believe it was there in the first place.
You put on an act to achieve a desired outcome.
” Cristian reached toward me and laid a callused fingertip on my breastbone.
“Little one, in here, where it counts, you bow to no one. We need to change that because even the tiniest mistake could mean your life, not to mention that of the people you seek to protect.”
Well, shit. Was I that transparent? I didn’t want to admit it, but Cristian was right, damn him. Even when I was pissing on the ground at the end of Lachlan’s leash, I’d never thought of myself as a slave, and I never stopped looking for an out.
“And this time, it can’t be an act,” Daniel said softly. “It has to be real.”
“No.” Lachlan pulled me to my feet and positioned me behind him. “I won’t allow anyone to enslave her again. Find another way.”
It was cliché, but my life passed before my eyes. Not because I was dying, but because I was too shocked to breathe.
Had my ex-husband been replaced by a clone, or what?
Instead of jumping on the chance to make me kneel for him, he was…
Nope. Wrong reality. Reverse and rewind.
As I was trying to put my brain back where it belonged, Cristian got a laptop from a shelf behind the open bar to the left of the infinity pool. After opening it, he turned it to face Lachlan. “Before you refuse, you need to watch something.”
“Cristian, no.”
“I wish I knew a better way to make them understand, Cicci. I’m sorry.” Ignoring Ella’s protests, he tapped a button on the laptop.
I scooted around Lachlan to watch as a video played, revealing my father and Ronan in the office I’d had gutted and turned into a library before selling my father’s house.
“The business with Darragh O’Donnell is completed,” Ronan said before sipping something from a highball glass. “There was an inconsequential addition to the plan, who was also dealt with.”
“And?”
“Murder suicide is always so painful.” Ronan stood and laid a dramatic hand on his chest. “He shot his lover, then himself. Honestly, it was easier than finding Cherise when she tried to run.”
I stilled as my mother’s name echoed from the tinny speakers. Both men laughed.
“I should have killed the bitch when I beat her for disobedience.” My father snorted and lifted his glass in a toast. “Is she still alive?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. I still can’t believe you didn’t sell Natasha at the same time. Infant girls command a good price.” Ronan replied.
For the first time, I willingly reached for Lachlan’s hand. He enclosed my nerveless fingers in his warm grip, then wrapped his free arm around my chest as if he was trying to keep me from flying apart.
My father shrugged, dragging my attention back to the video. “I figured I’d get more from the stupid bitch if she wasn’t hauling around a baby. The flab and stretch marks knocked at least thirty percent off her sale price as it was.”
“True.” Ronan touched his glass to my father’s. “Anyway, I haven’t seen Cherise up on the auction block, so I’m assuming she’s dead or with her original buyer. Haven’t seen him in ages either.”
“What about Lachlan?”
“What about him?” Ronan asked, his ginger hair falling into his eyes as he gave my father a roguish wink. “He’s too busy with his own life to bother digging, especially with having to take over the family business after the tragic loss of his brother.”
“And I assume you want Natasha.”
“Didn’t I just give her a pretty dolly for her tenth birthday?” Ronan asked, his lips curling with derisive amusement. “I prefer my slaves a bit older, but she’d be worth a fortune to the right buyer if you want to get rid of her.”
“Soon. She isn’t quite obedient enough yet.”
“We’ll revisit the idea in a few years.” Ronan replied. “After she grows some tits.”
Lachlan seemed frozen, and I didn’t blame him. Slowly, trying to hold the contents of my stomach in place, I closed the laptop, wishing I could erase Ronan’s filthy words from my head.
Lachlan’s brother.
My mother. I didn’t know whether to hope she was dead, or pray she was alive. Hope was too dangerous, and something I couldn’t afford to let myself feel.
A lifetime of bruises and broken promises to match my broken bones.
Fucking all of it was because of two men who thought having a dick meant they could take away a woman’s freedom. My father was already dead, but I would see Ronan gasping out his last breaths, knowing I was his executioner.
He would beg for mercy before I let him die choking on his own blood.
* * *
LACHLAN
I squeezed my hands into fists and tried to focus. How had I missed so much? Why had I never even suspected Steve was a cat’s paw for someone else.
Someone I once counted as a friend.
And fuck. The hell I’d put my wife through…
“I’m sorry, Lachlan,” Ella whispered as she pressed a mostly full glass of brown liquor into my hand. “I didn’t want to show you that video.”
I drank it down, but the burn of bourbon didn’t erase the ice lodged in my chest. “How long?”
“How long have we known?” She sighed and seemed to shrink, falling in on herself until her shoulders bowed as Cristian pulled her against his chest. “Just over a year. Gabby found the footage in Steve’s old security files. I really, really didn’t want you or Natasha to see it.”
“I need a priest,” Natasha said as she took off her suit jacket. “Or anyone you can find who will perform a wedding today. Not picky on the faith or lack thereof as long as Lachlan and I are legally married.”
“That will take some time, and we’ll probably have to?—”