Surrender

by Kitty Thomas

  "But..." one of them said.

  "Dmitri was insistent," the first guard said.

  The others shrugged and they wandered off back across the grounds to their posts.

  Julie struggled to cover herself, not that such a thing was possible since everything she was wearing was short and see-through.

  Gabe fiddled with something on his phone, lost in thought while the valet, having witnessed the commotion and determining that Mr. Griffin was ready to leave, went and got a dark blue Bentley from the lot. If not for the lighting in the parking lot, the car would have appeared black. The valet pulled the car around and tossed the keys to Gabe.

  When they were alone and he was finished with whatever had been of such importance on his phone, Gabe turned all his focus on her. His stare was inscrutable. He silently watched her for a couple of minutes. Finally, he said, "I told you I could help you. Get in the car, Julie."

  "B-but you drive a Honda Civic." That was the part to focus on. She still couldn't believe she was alive.

  "I drive a Honda Civic when I want to blend with the normals. Get in the car."

  She'd torqued her knee when she'd fallen, so running wasn't an option now. At least Gabe didn't have a gun trained on her. Still, he was one of them. Wasn't he?

  "Julie, so help me, if I have to tell you a third time..." His eyes blazed with fury.

  She scrambled and half-crawled to get into the passenger side of the car. Gabe got in on his side, started the engine, and they peeled out of the parking lot.

  "Why did Dmitri let you take me?"

  "I convinced him that since he planned to get rid of you anyway, it only made sense to sell you to a willing buyer and at least make some money out of it. I bought you. You are now mine."

  She couldn't help it when the tears started to fall again. "A-are you going to pimp me out?"

  "No. Never." He practically growled at her when he said it.

  "Are you going to take me back to my apartment?" Like she still had an apartment. Either way, that outcome was unlikely. But she had to ask.

  "No. You can never be out of my sight again."

  "W-what are you going to do with me?"

  They reached the end of the driveway at the main road.

  "Julie, please be quiet. I need to think."

  She closed her mouth and looked out the window. She jumped a moment later when Gabe's hands slammed against the steering wheel and he shouted, "Goddammit!"

  He looked over at her and no doubt noticed she was shaking because yelling meant violence came next. He put a hand gently on her knee. It took a large amount of self-talk to keep from pulling away. Why make him more angry?

  "I'm sorry I'm scaring you. I'm not upset with you. I'm upset with the motherfucking bastards who did this to you, and now I don't know what I'm going to tell Anton. We are supposed to be doing business with these guys. If I could go back in time I would have fucking kidnapped you on our first date and taken you away with me. Anything to spare you this. It's my fault this happened."

  She stared at him a moment, trying to process all that. How could it be his fault? And... kidnap? Who the hell was this guy? She really wanted to trust him—trust in anything—but he had to stop using words like kidnap so casually. It wasn't a word she could understand in a casual way. And unless he'd directly had her taken by Dmitri's guys, it wasn't as if there was any real way this could be his fault. She didn't understand how his brain had made that leap.

  "C-can I talk now?" she asked.

  Gabe pulled out onto the main road and sighed. "Go ahead."

  "How is it your fault? Did you set me up?"

  "Of course not! If I'd had any idea where you were I would have come after you then."

  "But don't you do what they do?"

  "Not exactly. Though I'm not sure you would appreciate the distinctions at this point. Are you hungry?"

  Julie looked out the window and wiped another tear off her cheek. "Yes."

  "They didn't feed you?"

  She turned back to him when she'd managed to compose herself. "They don't feed us until after we service the clients. If they are pleased, they feed us. If they aren't..."

  Gabe gripped the steering wheel so hard she was sure his knuckles had started to turn white, despite that golden tan of his.

  "You're thinner than you were the last time I saw you."

  "Like Dmitri said, I'm not his best."

  And Gabe was going to be very upset when he found out how poor of a whore she really was. She didn't know how much he'd paid to get her out of there, but any amount high enough to have tempted Dmitri was way too much. Still she wondered. Ten thousand? Twenty? Certainly not more than twenty-five. And yet she knew Gabe would never get his money's worth and was afraid of what would happen when he finally realized it. Experience had taught her, nothing good.

  A streetlight shone into the car, and he used the opportunity to glance at an expensive gold watch on his wrist. "It's closing in on eight, so the kitchen will be closed by the time we get there. I can get in, of course, but I'm not much of a cook."

  None of this made any sense to Julie so she remained quiet.

  "The mall closes at ten on the weekends right?"

  "I-I think so."

  "Okay, we'll make a pit stop."

  "You're wrong. This is my fault," she said. "I should have gone to seminary like my parents wanted and married a nice preacher. None of this would have happened."

  Gabe's hand closed over hers as he drove with the other. He didn't take his eyes from the road. "Would you have been happy with a nice preacher?"

  "Happier than this. I would have had to bury myself underneath his calling and never speak another honest word in my life, but I would have been safe at least and provided for."

  "You're safe, now. I promise you are safe. And you will be provided for."

  They drove in silence for a while. Julie didn't ask him anything else because she was still trying to puzzle out exactly what he did, why his kitchen was "closed", and what it meant when he said she was his now. She thought she knew in a vague sort of way what it meant. And over the past months she'd been trained to see everything through the lens of her body being prostituted to wealthy men. So it wasn't as if she were some naïve flower. Even so, there was a lot implied in that phrase that she didn't understand and wasn't sure she wanted to. She was really afraid it had to do with his unconventional desires despite any earlier bravado about being able to handle it if he would only set her free afterward.

  About fifteen minutes later, they were at the mall. Gabe parked at the very back of the lot.

  "I-I can't go in here."

  "Not yet you can't. I'm going to get you some clothes. You're about a six, right?"

  "More like a four now."

  She flinched when he reached out and cupped her breast. Despite the intrusion, it didn't seem like it was meant to violate. Though he could have asked her.

  "36B" Gabe said. He seemed to abruptly realize what he'd done, a comical sort of horror lighting his face. "I'm very sorry. It's a long story why that seemed normal and appropriate to me. Shoe size?"

  He wasn't going to grab and paw at her foot for that?

  "Six."

  He filed all those numbers away. He took off his jacket and covered her with it. "I'm locking you in the car. I'll be back as soon as I can. If you open the door, the alarm will go off, and I don't imagine you want to call attention to yourself dressed like that. Don't run from me again, Julie. I will protect you. Whatever you think of me, give me a chance to explain things."

  She nodded. He was right, running would call the wrong kind of attention. Whoever noticed her next was likely to be worse than Gabe. At least he was a somewhat known quantity. Even if she didn't know everything about him, or all about his darker side, she had seen the parts of him he'd let her see. Given the choice between him and some random unknown predator, she'd take him. And if she ran and came upon a cop? He'd probably arrest her for prostitution rather than help her righ
t now.

  Gabe was gone maybe forty-five minutes. When he returned he had bags from a few different nice stores, including a lingerie shop. She was half afraid of what she'd find in the bags, but it was all normal stuff. A pair of jeans, a normal, lightweight long-sleeved shirt, sandals, and some underwear and a bra. Nothing slutty or attention-grabbing.

  "I would have gotten you shorts and a T-shirt but I can't take you in there looking all scratched up. I'll stand outside while you change, then we'll go inside to the food court and get something to eat."

  "Okay."

  He turned his back on the car to give her privacy. He looked like a bodyguard with his arms crossed over his chest, staring out into the distance. When she was dressed, Gabe came around to her side to help her out.

  "Ow, ow, ow."

  "What is it?"

  Was that real concern in his eyes? She barely remembered what concern looked like on a male face.

  "When I fell, I hurt my knee."

  "Sit back down."

  She sat in the passenger side, and he knelt beside her, his strong hands pressing in at different places around and behind her knee. A breath hitched in her throat at the gentle, sure way he touched her. Then there was a sharp pressure, a tiny pain, and then it was gone.

  "Try to stand now."

  She stood. "Wow, what the hell did you do?"

  "You didn't injure it, something shifted out of alignment and you had a compressed nerve. I guided things back where they needed to be. My friend's a massage therapist. He talks a lot of shop."

  Gabe helped her out of the car and they walked the long distance to the doors of the mall.

  "When we go inside are you going to scream or run or make a scene?" he asked, his voice low.

  Julie looked up at him. "Is there a reason I should?"

  "None that I can think of."

  "B-but you told me that time that you were a bad guy."

  "Well, I'm not a good guy. But I would never harm you. I need you to trust that. I was warning you away from me because you deserved something better. But now things have sharply shifted."

  A tear slid down her cheek. "Now I don't deserve something better."

  Gabe gripped her arm and turned her to him. "No! That's not what I meant. Not what I meant at all."

  She searched his face; there was no disgust or judgment there. There was anger, but she already knew that wasn't directed at her.

  He pressed his thumbs against her cheeks and brushed the tears away. "Your mascara is running. You can't go in like that. They'll think I'm beating you."

  She flinched, still worried that option was on the menu. "I-I'll fix it." Julie walked a few feet to a nearby car and bent so she could see the side mirror and fixed her makeup. Then they continued on.

  The food court was just inside the main doors. It was only about an hour until closing and much of the crowd had thinned. Still, Julie felt beset on all sides by possible danger. Gabe moved in closer to her, his large body shielding her, at least from behind. She turned to find him scanning the area as if checking to make sure things were safe. They drew a few stares from straggling diners. They must make some pair: her dressed so casually and him in a fancy dark suit. They probably thought he was her bodyguard.

  "What do you want to eat?"

  She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, suddenly self-conscious. "Anything's fine. Whatever you want to get me."

  His hands closed around her shoulders and he leaned in close to her ear and whispered. "I paid half a million dollars for you tonight. Believe me when I tell you there is no quantity or type of food you could order that would in any way ruffle me."

  Julie felt herself stiffen at that. It was twenty times higher than her highest estimate. How could he have all that money to throw away on her? What could he make her do that could possibly pay off that much debt? But he was right—she could order everything off every menu and it wasn't going to make her situation with him any worse.

  She turned to face him. "C-can we go upstairs? To the buffet restaurant?"

  A flutter of emotions spread across his face in quick succession: distress, anger, pity as if just remembering they'd been starving her. She was embarrassed asking for a buffet—some never ending supply of food as if she were afraid she might never see food again after this. She knew the full horrible truth was laid bare in her expression and the few words of her request.

  "Of course we can. You can have whatever you want."

  They walked quietly together to the escalator. He stayed right behind her, his body shielding her, his arm coming around to settle on her waist right where her jeans buttoned as they rode the escalator up to the second floor. From any other man, a hand so casually resting against her pelvic bone would have sent her into a spinning internal hysteria, but somehow, when Gabe did it, she felt inexplicably protected.

  She couldn't see his face, but from the expressions of the people going down on the other side, he must look fierce.

  She wasn't sure what awfulness was coming when he got her to wherever he was taking her, but for this one moment, she felt safe. And maybe it was that sense of safety that kept her from shouting for help at the first sign of a mall cop. Somehow she knew Gabe could easily take a mall cop, and while the real cops might get called, she wasn't confident anyone could catch him before he could mete out some sort of punishment for the crime of not trusting a criminal. Because she was sure, at the very least, Gabe was that.

  At the restaurant, Julie piled her plates high with foods she hadn't seen in months. Gabe helped her carry them back to their booth.

  "I have no idea where you plan to put all this," he said. He sat across from her and watched as she dug in.

  She was too hungry to be self-conscious. But she stopped eating when the waitress arrived with her soda.

  The woman gave Gabe a cool assessing glare, as if she thought he planned to try to cheat the rules of the buffet and eat off Julie's plate.

  "You aren't eating?" she asked.

  "No. I've eaten already."

  The waitress's shrewd eyes took in the two of them like she knew something wasn't right.

  For a moment Julie feared something dramatically bad was about to happen, but Gabe had clearly already run through several potential back stories.

  "Do you know your senator, Senator Todd?" he asked, calmly.

  "No, I don't keep up with politics."

  Gabe gestured to Julie. "This is Senator Todd's daughter, Susan. I'm charged with watching and protecting her. She's been on the campaign trail with her father and has been so busy all day she hasn't eaten since breakfast. The poor thing is starving. And between you and me, I don't think she eats enough anyway. Always on a diet, this one."

  "Oh." The waitress shifted her focus to Julie. "I'm terribly sorry, miss. Good luck to your father. I'll be sure to go out and vote for him."

  "Thank you," Julie said.

  The waitress turned to leave, but Gabe gripped her wrist, stopping the woman's retreat. "It is a matter of state security that Susan not have too much attention drawn to her. I trust that you will do your civic duty and not breathe a word about this to your fellow workers."

  As if Gabe's very presence, hard stare, and fancy suit weren't drawing attention.

  "Oh, no sir, of course not. Poor dear. I wouldn't dream of destroying her privacy. I'm sorry to have disturbed you both. Enjoy your meal, Miss."

  Gabe watched her for a while when she went back, but it was clear she brushed off the nosy questions of any co-workers who might have noticed them. Julie went back to eating.

  Besides that interruption, nobody bothered them again. The waitress came back one other time to take away some plates and to put another soda on the table.

  Finally, she'd eaten all she could manage, but there was still almost a full plate of food. "I'm sorry, I can't eat any more."

  "It's a buffet, Julie. It makes no difference if you ate one plate or a hundred. Let's go."

  He escorted her out and back down the esca
lator, through the bottom level of the mall and the food court and out to the swiftly emptying parking lot. He helped her into the car and they got back on the road.

  "Do you think that waitress will say anything?"

  "Doesn't matter now," Gabe said. "There were no cameras anywhere, I checked. People have really bad memories for details. There is no way they could ever find us."

  And Julie was back to fear.

  "T-thank you for the food," she said.

  "You will never be hungry again. I don't use food restriction as a punishment. It's cruel. I may be demanding, but I'm not cruel."

  Did that mean he was going to punish her if she displeased him?

  Chapter Four

  Gabe thought she'd been in the bathroom far too long. He knocked again. "Julie? Come out and talk to me. I'm not going to hurt you, whatever you've heard about me." But there was no answer. He pressed his ear to the door but didn't hear anything. "If you're in there, you better move away from the door right now."

  Gabe kicked the door in, but the room was empty. The window stood open, a gentle spring breeze blowing in. He leaned out the window, but he couldn't see where she'd gone.

  Fuck. She was going to get herself killed. She'd never get off the property with all of Dmitri's men patrolling. Even if she did, they'd hunt her down. They were professionals. They hadn't avoided prison this long by being drooling morons.

  Gabe pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed as he strode down the hall and down the stairs.

  "This is Dmitri," the slimy little worm said on the other end. Refined my ass.

  "I want to buy her," Gabe said without preamble.

  Dmitri chuckled. "Who? Julie? She's free for the night. It's on the house."

  "No, I mean I want to buy her and take her out of here. I want to own her."

  "I find that very hard to believe. Julie is not our best."

  "So you've said. And like I said, she needs a proper firm hand. She needs to be punished in ways you don't have the imagination for. Anyway, I want her. You were retiring her anyway, why not make a little money in the parting? You know she'll never escape me."