by Sophia Reed
But I didn't. Because he could and I couldn't. He could do that and I couldn't tell him not to. The only thing I could do in that case was leave.
Only he said, "I would never take her on for a sub. She's a snake. She's mean and she's a liar and she's deadly. But I can find a home for her."
I wanted to say she wasn't a feral dog either.
Except she kind of was. Except that I had already exhausted the limits of my desire to fight for Kie. Truth was, I didn't want her to have anything she wanted. Reassured she wouldn't get Cole, I wanted to stop her from having any Master. Why should she? After everything she'd done.
But Cole was offering a solution. Another Master, more brutal than he was, who wanted a more debased and debase-able sub, someone who would disappear from the real world. It was a solution and it was a good, logical one. It could work.
As long as she didn't stay here. That's all I really wanted from Cole. To do something with Kie that got her out of the way well away from – not us, there was no us – away from Southern Nevada and out of the country and somewhere or with someone where she couldn't come back.
It looked like Cole had the same idea.
Good.
7
Cole
Of course, there were the men who had come with Kie who had to be considered. Sooner or later Annie would remember them.
For now, my own guards had the situation locked down. Annie considered the suite of rooms where she was held to be a cell and certainly she wasn't at liberty to come and go as she pleased. But there were much more real cells on the property and the men with Kie were going to be my guests until I figured out what to do with them.
The billionaire I had in mind for Kie was Vincent-like. He'd control her every move. He'd punish her slightest transgression. He'd been looking for someone who would come willingly to his style of extreme sadism and thrive by being beaten down.
Kie fit the bill.
She could agree.
Or she could go into the maze and stay there.
It was obvious from the (unguarded and unwise) things Annie had said that she feared I'd go too easy on Kie.
She thought wrong.
If she thought I was going to go easy on her, or allow her the freedoms she was taking, for much longer? She was wrong there, too.
Underneath all of it, a core of rage kept growing. Too many things happening reminded me of Emily. My sister had died a prostitute, making money to support her habit. Thinking about Ariel always brought that back to me. I'd be glad if she were able to leave the maze and lead some kind of life. And I didn't want Kie down there, among other reasons because if I could get Ariel out, I wanted to not have anybody down there. I was aware my lifestyle was unique and extreme. The money allowed it. Being secretive by nature and comfortable living away from society and community fostered it. But those things also made it possible to take in the people who needed it, who needed a haven and refuge. I may have brought them here but that didn't mean I wanted to be responsible for them forever.
It would be nice to go from having responsibility for people to having free will among those people who had signed a contract with me and become my submissives.
If for no other reason than Ariel was always tempting. Someone who didn't care how badly she was hurt or whether she lived through it. A suicidal pain slut who was willing to do anything. Dangerous.
Especially as my rage kept growing.
There was no way it was Annie's fault that she was taken but I was having a hard time not blaming her. The fact that she was clearly afraid of Kie now. That wasn't the Annie I expected. Too many things had happened that made Annie seem weak to me and weakness in her was something I couldn't stand.
The rage growing in me wouldn't be satisfied by Marilyn or by making Annie scream or even by using Kie so violently before sending her away that even her masochism couldn't deal.
The rage inside me was a frightening, growing thing.
Eventually, it would have to be satisfied.
8
Annie
By evening almost everything had settled down. Which meant by then it just felt weird to be back in my cell. I couldn't settle to study. I didn't want to work out. The whole time I'd been Vincent's prisoner and then, once freed, trapped by Mark and my father's plan, I'd wanted to be back here.
Now I was back here, I wasn't sure it was where I belonged. Despite myself I couldn't help wondering how displaced Kie must feel. She had no place to be anymore.
Despite myself, I also couldn't help feeling happy about that.
About an hour after Cole left, I was sitting and staring moodily at the wall. I hadn't studied, worked out, eaten. I hadn't changed from the jeans and t-shirt Zach had bought for me to escape the mental hospital in.
When the phone started ringing in Cole's office, at first I ignored it. His office wasn't usually left open unless I was allowed the phone or the computer to do TaeKwon-Do videos. Nothing had been said about any of that, with me just back.
When the phone started its cycle the third time, I gave an irritated sigh as if it had interrupted something more important than staring at nothing, rose and stomped across the room to answer.
My father's voice made me instantly recoil from the handset. He was loud, in a rage, and he sounded so damn close. Not that it's possible to tell how far away someone is by the sound on the phone but –
But he was one of the last people I wanted to talk to. There were a variety of people I didn't want to talk to. Anyone from the mental hospital. My captain or my lieutenant. Mark. Most especially Mark. My father.
My fucking father. He'd always trusted me to know right from wrong and good from bad and to know what the hell I was doing and what was best for me. So it was only the addition of what, sex? Kinky sex? That made him crazed enough to join forces with Mark to "bring me home where I belonged."
Up until they decided to do their Bad Boys routine, I hadn't even thought my father liked Mark. Mark is big and muscular. He played football in high school and for a while in college until he went pre-med and all his attention was focused on his studies. Though I didn't know him then, I thought all that was pretty obvious. He was studious, he wore glasses to read, but he was no pussy. He was strong, tall, broad, good-looking.
My father couldn't possibly have thought as we lived together that we were waiting for marriage. I know fathers like to be deluded but his little girl was an undercover narc. When I was trying to hide my addiction from him he figured it out right away. He wasn't even shocked.
Yeah, it's the sex thing.
But I thought if I was into that it was none of his business. It was between me and Mark, if there was a me and Mark.
Past that? He had me committed.
"What do you want?" I let my voice stay completely flat.
"You're back there? You honest to fuck went back there?"
I didn't bother to answer. I'd just answered the phone from Cole's house. Of course I was here. I said, "I can't believe you did that. It's only because I've always loved you that I'm not hanging up."
That, and if he was coming, I wanted to judge how close he was. I was starting to think Cole needed to move us to a location even more remote, like an oil derrick in the middle of the ocean.
"If you stay there, little girl, I'm washing my hands of you."
I closed my eyes. Everything that had happened – Jesse's death, the fet, my father finding out, the "cure," Cole, Vincent, my father showing up? All of it. Still, that hurt - The idea that he would ever give up on me.
"I didn't walk away when charges were brought against you by IAD."
There was an apocalyptic pause before he bellowed. "Those charges were dropped."
I snorted, only because we were on the phone and it was safe to do so. "And we both know they were dropped because of your health and because you're well respected and because you're an old boy in an old boy's network and you have friends on the force. Because we both know some of those charges were legit."
/> I'd never said that aloud. I'd been in my father's camp. I still would be, officially, if there was an officially for me after this.
Silence, then. "You can't stay there, Annie. Mark and I went to a lot of work to get you out. We – "
"You put me in a mental hospital!" I shouted it. "You fucking put me in a mental hospital even though I was somewhere I was getting help and I didn't ask you to come save me."
There was a pause during which we both drew in our breath, and then I said, "You know what, dad? Just don't call me for a while."
I hung up and stood with my hand pressing the phone into the cradle, resisting the urge to grind the thing into dust. Breathing very slowly through my nose, I finally turned around.
Cole stood in the doorway.
"Kneel, and tell me what that was about."
His voice was cold but something about it wasn't in control. There was a tremor underneath that didn't fit the often cold, always in control man. I chose not to kneel not because I wasn't ready to be back and submitting but because I didn't trust him. There was something that wasn't right. Not as controlled as it had been.
Or to put it another way, there was a vibe I didn't like and over the years dealing with dealers and living with gangs I'd learned to listen.
"I didn't place the call. One came in repeatedly. When the phone kept ringing, I thought it was probably all right because it meant you had the phones on in here. I also thought it might be an emergency."
Because I wasn't looking down anymore than I was kneeling, I saw his expression as he considered this. To my relief, he gave it serious consideration and seemed to agree.
"Was it... An emergency?"
"No, sir. It was my father in a rage."
There was a brief struggle on Cole's face and then he burst out laughing, surprising me into doing the same. "I'll just bet he was. He must have been a hell of a cop, Annie Knox, but he's a bastard of a man."
Once I would have dropped anyone who dared to say such a thing about my father. Now I just agreed. There was a core of sadness there.
"He is. When we were growing up – me and my sisters - you know I have three sisters?"
He nodded and leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb.
"When we were growing up he was strict as shit. About dates, about makeup, about who we could ride with. Most of the time I was on his side because, well, why not? My sisters didn't like me anyway and he was right about a bunch of stuff. There were some date rapes at my high school and I didn't mind if he wanted to check out the guy I was going to spend an evening with and put a little fear into him."
"You sound like you were sensible."
I couldn't tell if that meant; So what happened to change sensible into you?
I shrugged. "I was boring. I was straight-laced. I was liberal in my politics and Democrat to the center of my soul but I was conservative as fuck where my parents’ beliefs were concerned."
Something in my voice made him smile. "Until?"
I smiled back. "Until Danny. Danny was – oh, wow - Danny was so hot. The mouth, the eyes, the muscles, the way he'd pretend to listen, all concerned, to what the girl had to say."
Cole choked on that one. "Pretended."
"Oh, hell yeah," I said, smiling and shaking my head. "But we wore each other out before he got sick of pretending and I got tired of pretending I believed him. And that turned the corner for me. I'd sneak out to see him. I'd violate curfew, my father's and the city's. I tried smoking with Danny and was green for about a week, but I tried weed and it was as great as Danny. I'm glad for him, too. Because that was the Annie who could take her career where it needed to go. My father's Annie would have dreamed of making a difference while she was riding a desk."
There was a short silence between us before Cole said, "Is he coming?"
"No. He's through with me until I'm through with you."
Something passed over his face then, the same thing I'd seen flit past when I said I had considered school and DEA and the other things we'd discussed, only he hadn't been in the picture I painted. Before I could ask anything, he said, "He's not coming?"
"No. He won't interfere again."
Cole nodded, clearly not finished. "What about Mark?"
I bit my lip. "I agree with my father in that regard. I have to make a decision. I'd hoped it could wait until..." I stopped. Because I had no idea until what.
Cole waited. He waited and listened more honestly than Danny.
"I hoped there'd be a nice, definitive moment when everything made sense. When I was pretty sure the fet was behind me. When I knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to live and work and whether or not I wanted to be with Mark."
He just raised those peaked and devilish eyebrows.
"I don't know yet. But I can't keep stringing him along. And if every time I go hom – back to the apartment - it feels wrong and weird and I feel out of place, then I think that's my answer."
Cole nodded, not offering any thoughts. "When will you want to go and talk to him?"
Abruptly I wanted to shout at him, demand he show some emotion. Didn't he care? Where was the fiery, emotional, or cold and controlling Master?
"I don't know. I don't know anything."
And then Cole did move. The triangular smile flashed, so he looked like Loki again, prowling through an Avengers movie. He crossed the distance between the doorway and where I stood beside the phone.
"Where do you want to be?" he asked.
He was standing too close. I could feel his heat. I could feel him.
"I don't know." The stubborn side of me.
"You have to know. You have to decide."
"I don't know."
Pause. A stillness that was a palpable threat. "Do you want to be here?"
"I don't know."
He moved fast and caught my chin in his hand, squeezing it even as he raised my head. "Do you want to be here?"
"Yes!"
His eyes narrowed. The smile remained, completely chilling now. "Then you have to kneel on your own. You have to ask to return and commit to submission. If you want to stay here, you're going to be mine. Otherwise..."
"Otherwise?" I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling adrift.
Abruptly he let go of me. "Otherwise, you can stay until you are ready for school and then I'll loan you whatever you need to get settled wherever you're going."
He didn't look at me again as he stalked to the door. But he stopped in the doorway and said, "But if you're going to stay, you need to come to me in the next hour, and submit."
9
Cole
It had to be up to her.
In the meantime, I spent the hour creatively.
"Jason."
He was in my office seconds later. "Boss."
"Where are Kie's men?"
Jason gave me a long look. He'd grown considerably since he'd smirked rather than helped Annie when Kie hurt her. He'd been taken out by sympathetic and understanding EMTs – anyone and anything can be bribed – patched up and sent back. Somewhere along the line he'd come to understand his place in the scheme of things and in turn, become my first in command.
The guards shifted all the time. They were loyal to the money more than to me and that was fine. They were soldiers in my opinion, mercenaries on the front line keeping me and the compound and any subs I had safe.
They'd been overtaken twice and maybe I should have fired them for that, or something even more drastic considering that firing men who knew about the - proclivities of the CEO of St. Martin Pharma - could be considered stupid.
Thing was, they weren't stupid. They already knew the odds and they weren't going to talk. I trusted that. Enough that one of them had left to get married. Strangely, while looking for a good job that would pay for him and his new wife, he found the perfect job in rural Alaska.
Now I had Kie's guards. I thought there were eight total, who'd been inside and out when everything went down. They'd held rifles on me. They'd controlled Annie and he
ld guns on her.
But if, like my men, they were loyal to their bank accounts rather than anything else, then maybe I could use them.
"They're in the maze, sir." Jason stood at a kind of parade rest. I didn't tell him not to.
"And Ms. Geddes?" I watched him.
He still had the tiniest problem with keeping his own feelings inside. There was the slightest hint of a lifted lip in scorn before he checked himself.
I said nothing. I felt that way about Kie myself.
"She's in a white room."
Those were rooms in the maze with no skylights, no alcove for a toilet, nothing but a bed bolted to the floor and a prison toilet and sink coming out of the wall. I wasn't sure what I was building them for when I started except that in a sense, I was in the drug trade.
And in a different sense, I was interrupting the drug trade. I was making cures. Sometimes I was traveling south of the U.S. border in order to get more of what I needed to make the cures. Why wouldn't – certain parties – be upset about that?
But I'd gotten more use out of the underground cells, with and without skylights, from subs who needed specialized discipline. From Ariel who needed safety more than anything else (that's what I was coming to realize, anyway) and from people like Kie who were too dangerous not to put on ice while I determined what else to do with them.
"You have men posted down there?"
He didn't quite look at me like I was crazy or laugh. He just said, "Yes, sir. Every exit and a couple in the maze."
For the next couple minutes we talked about how much it would cost to buy out the less loyal and what to do with the more loyal, and we talked about Kie and he asked a couple respectful questions about Annie, mostly ascertaining if she was back and what that would mean for protocol.
By the time we finished, the hour was three-quarters over. Another ten minutes and I'd probably let myself admit how keyed up I was over Annie's choice.
I let Jason go and locked the door behind him. I pulled double shades over the window, then crossed to a safe, spun the dial and took out a key from inside. That key was used to open another safe, the one that was built into the wall behind the one with the combination.
