The Sinner's Bargain (Contracts & Deceptions #2)

by Claire Contreras

  “Where am I?” she asked, taking a frightened step backward, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  “At your grandfather’s house.”

  “In Iran?” she asked with a gasp.

  “No, just outside of Paris.”

  Amara swallowed. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I don’t remember… how did I get here?”

  “You don’t remember how you got here?” Samuel asked, his frown deepening as his voice rose.

  Amara shook her head solemnly, the realization that she’d been transferred as she was sleeping hitting her like a ton of bricks. Samuel stared at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  “You’ve been gone for almost two days, Amara.”

  “Two days? How is that … ” Her words died in her throat as she looked down again. She was wearing what she’d fallen asleep with. “I just got here yesterday,” she said, although it was more of a question than a statement. “I went out with Courtney. We went home, had dinner… I fell asleep in my bed.” She was shaking her head as she took another step back, narrowing her eyes.

  “You got to Paris three days ago.” He glanced at the gold watch on his wrist. “Devon says the last time he saw you was over twenty-four hours ago.”

  Impossible…. She was supposed to go to Iran…

  “Where’s Philip?”

  “He also went missing. I need you to think, Amara. I need you to really think.”

  “Think about what? Where’s Courtney?” She placed both hands on either side of her face, starting to feel like she was losing her mind.

  “She’s also missing,” Samuel said, letting out a long exhale as he rubbed his forehead. He had large circles under his eyes, making him look older than he was. “I’m going to go try to make sense of this. I’ll be back soon.”

  “You’re going to leave me here?” she asked looking around the room bewilderedly. There were thick purple drapes over the windows, and not much else. Amara didn’t want to stay there; the place gave her an uncomfortable vibe.

  “I have to. You’ll be safe here, I won’t be far.”

  A cry-like sound bubbled out of her. “What are they going to do with me?”

  He paused. “I supposed he wants to ask you a couple of questions,” Samuel said as he sat in the chair in front of the vanity. He looked at himself in the mirror for a moment, brushing off his crisp white shirt, before his eyes cut to hers.

  “About what? I don’t even know him! Where’s Philip? I need to talk to Philip!”

  “I do not know where he is. If I did, I wouldn’t be here!” he said with a low, annoyed growl.

  She buried her face in her hands. “Ohmygod. I can’t believe this. Colin is going to…” Her head snapped up suddenly. “Where’s my phone? I need to call Colin.”

  “Colin is in his hotel waiting for my call.”

  “So call! I need to speak to him.”

  Samuel looked over his shoulder in the direction of the door and shook his head. “What did Philip tell you about the meeting with the sultan? I need you to tell me everything, so that we can ease this as much as possible.”

  “He didn’t tell me anything!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive! Now can you please call Colin so I can speak to him?”

  “I will let him know you’re okay. You have to trust me.”

  A sob bubbled inside of her. “What could they possibly want from me?”

  “There’s no way of knowing…. I suppose he’ll ask you questions… or he could want to punish you,” he answered with a shrug.

  “Punish me? For what?” she asked, her voice escalating into a high shrill.

  “I don’t know. His idea of punishing your mother with this account backfired on him because people are trying to find you to get to it. You’re the reason that your mother turned her back on him and got away with it, and he doesn’t like that she married your father; take your pick.”

  “My mom’s dead. What more could he possibly want? She suffered enough. I’ve suffered enough!”

  “Maybe he’s afraid you’ll figure out where the safe is.”

  “I don’t care about the goddamn safe! I would have never even known about it had it not been for Philip!”

  Samuel growled and threw his hands up in exasperation as he began to pace the room. “We need to find out who brought you. What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “He knows about Colin.”

  The air left her body just as the backs of her knees hit the bed. Amara sat, mouth agape, as she stared up at Samuel. “How?” she tried to ask, producing a loud gasp instead. Bringing her shaky hands to cover her thumping heart, she looked at him, horrified, as tears sprung out of her eyes. “How?” she managed to ask in a crying whisper.

  “He has your phone.”

  Burying her face in her hands, Amara tried to breathe—in…out…in…out…in…out… She didn’t hear Samuel approach her, but snapped her head up when the bed dipped beside her. Amara tried to scoot away from him when she felt his hand on her, but he gripped her shoulder. “I’m going to try to get information on Philip. I’ll be back.”

  “Do you think Colin is okay?” she asked with a whimper.

  “Yes. My men won’t let him leave his hotel.”

  “He can’t get involved in this, Sam. Ohmygod,” she clutched her heart. “Please keep him safe.”

  “I’ll do my best. I need to see if Philip and Courtney are in here somewhere. People don’t just disappear into thin air.”

  “How are they letting you walk in and out of here?” Amara asked, shrugging his arm off.

  “Because they trust me. Did you forget who hired me to put your signature on that account?”

  “No, that’s what worries me. How did you find me?” She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes as she waited for him to respond.

  “Colin hired me to stay on you, so that’s what I’m doing. If I hadn’t picked him up at the airport I wouldn’t have lost track of where you were…” He let out a harsh breath and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. We can still fix this. I just hope he stays put and doesn’t start trying to track your phone.”

  Amara was sure she could handle whatever was thrown her way as long as Colin stayed safe. She wished he would have stayed in New York—far away from whatever danger this brought.

  “Please don’t let him come here. I’ll do anything. Anything, I swear. Just please don’t get Colin involved,” Amara pleaded.

  “He won’t come here, but I’ve never met somebody quite as determined as him so I can’t make promises,” Samuel said as he stood. He left the room without another glance in her direction. Amara stayed seated until she got restless, jumping up to pace the room. How could they all have gone missing? Burying her face in her hands, she took a shaky breath as she tried to recall what had happened.

  Amara had been lying down in Courtney’s bed after she left to speak to Philip. She closed her eyes for a moment and drifted into a slumber, but woke with a start when her phone beeped. Amara’s hand peeked out of the covers in a blind search for her phone until she found it and saw an email from Colin.

  From: Colin O. Wolfe

  To: Amara Maloof

  Subject: Creeper Status

  I know you’re going to roll your eyes, but I don’t care. Follow the directions on this email so that I can track your phone. Think of it as a “just in case you lose your phone” thing. Please. I just need to know you’re okay. I’ll see you soon.

 

  I love you.

  And miss you.

  -Colin

  Ps. Thanks for doing my laundry

  To: Colin O. Wolfe

  From: Amara Maloof

  Subject: Re: Creeper Status

  You wait until I’m in Paris to let your weird stalker tendencies come into the light, huh? I’ll do it, just so you don’t worry, even though you’re already coming over here to physically stalk me!
<
br />   I love you too.

  And miss you.

  -Amara

  Ps. You’re welcome, you big baby.

  She fell asleep again, and woke when she heard a door slam. Still groggy, but unable to go back to sleep, Amara stood and walked out into the hallway, tiptoeing as she passed the empty kitchen and dining room. She figured she would eavesdrop on Philip and Courtney, just to put an end to her curiosity—were they or weren’t they fucking? She wanted to know. As she inched in on the large door, pressing her ear to it until she finally heard low voices. Closing her eyes, Amara placed her hands flat on the surface and concentrated on what they were saying, but could only make out a few words: bitch, untrustworthy, two-timing...clearly not sex going on in there.

  Her eyes were wide as she backed away from the door and slowly walked back to her room. Amara’s head was swaying, as were her feet, she realized when she bumped into the wall. Her thoughts were murky by the time her body hit the bed again. She couldn’t remember what she was doing. The next thing she remembered was Courtney in her room again, saying something to her that she couldn’t understand. Two men walked into her room—dressed similarly—but only one wore a turban on his head. Then Amara was airborne, her head bobbing until it landed against a man’s chest. The smell of sweat and food punched her in the nose so suddenly that her eyes blinked opened long enough to catch a glimpse of Courtney walking beside them. When their eyes met, Courtney leaned in and pressed a tiny cup that looked like a shot glass to Amara’s mouth, the bitter liquid making her cough most of it out. Just as she thought she’d found her voice again, everything went pitch black.

  Amara squeezed her eyes shut again. The memories seemed to be replaying in flashes, every time she blinked, she remembered a new one.

  They rode on gravel for the most part, the car hitting rocky bumps and swerving to and fro. Amara’s head would hit the window of the SUV every so often, but she didn’t make a sound. She was too worried about where they were going to care about anything else. Her eyes weren’t covered, but she couldn’t make out much in the dark. She was seated and strapped in by a seatbelt, her shoulder against a burly man who sat beside her, but she couldn’t focus enough to make out his face. It was too dark; everything was just too dark.

  Amara didn’t remember arriving at their destination. She only remembered the crunch of the gravel beneath their feet and the feeling of hanging like a helpless ragdoll, her body swinging side to side as the man who carried her stomped his way toward the house.

  Anticipation coursed through Amara as she walked toward the door where she was being held, and peeked her head out, nearly yelping at the man standing right outside.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked, turning toward her. Amara shook her head, rocking back into the room. The dark man, dressed in all black, stopped in front of her and grabbed the top of her arm roughly, squeezing until Amara felt tears in her eyes. He started walking down the long dark corridor, dragging her along with him. Amara protested and tried to rip her arm away from him as they walked. The rough, bumpy floor made her cringe with every step she took.

  “The sultan will see you now,” the man said, jerking her against a large, round wooden door that looked like the entrance of a dungeon. Amara steadied herself against the door for a moment, gathering a deep breath as it opened in front of them. The room was unlike anything she’d ever seen in person. It really looked like the dungeon of a castle. The walls were rocky, like the ones in the room she’d been in, but the floors were marble, creating a mismatched look of old and new. Again as she stepped in, Amara shivered from the cold floors, but was glad to be walking on smooth surface. Four torches on the walls provided the source of the dim, orange lighting, as far as she could tell.

  The man loosened his grip on her arm when they reached what looked like a stage in the middle of the room. The platform held a large, purple throne-like chair the middle of the space. An older man occupied the chair, his arms crossed over his crisp dark suit. Beside the chair, massive pillows were arranged on the floor and on them, two thin women lounged, dressed in colorful sari—one purple and gold, the other pink and ivory. Amara’s eyes flitted over them for a moment, then focused on the man in the chair. He wore a typical hijab on his head, much like the one she’d seen her father wearing in old photos, before he left his country and stubbornly abandoned everything he’d believed in.

  “Bring her a chair,” the man said, in the same foreign, singsong voice as her father. The man who had taken her into the room scurried off and brought back a chair and placed it behind her.

  “Will that be all Vladimir?” the man asked.

  Amara drew in a breath, her stomach flip-flopping as she realized the man was her grandfather— “the sultan.” He gave the guard a sharp, dismissive nod.

  “Amara, please, take a seat,” the sultan said as Amara stared at him with trepidation. “This will be a long chat; you will want to sit.”

  Swallowing her hesitation, Amara took a seat and gripped the armrests of the chair.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” he asked. She shook her head in response. “I need some questions answered, and then you will be free to go…”

  “Okay,” she said with a nod.

  “Who do you work for?”

  The question sent a jolt of uneasiness down her spine. “I work as a secretary in Wolfe Investments.”

  “You have also been working for Vivienne in Méchant, correct?”

  “Yes,” she replied, swallowing again.

  “There have been men looking for you. Yes?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “You have never personally seen these men?”

  “No.”

  “Somebody is trying to sabotage me—trying to take away something of mine—and I need to know what it is they’re after.”

  “I don’t know. I was brought here by your people, but I don’t know—” She was shaking her head when he interrupted with a loud shout.

  “Your father is employing them!”

  Her jaw unhinged for a long moment before she recovered and was able to answer. “I… my father doesn’t even have money to employ himself.”

  The sultan laughed at that. “Not for the life you were used to, but he has enough to employ people, and he knows what’s in my safe. He knows if he gets it, he won’t need to worry about anything else.”

  “I… I don’t know. I don’t think…” She was still shaking her head. As smart as her father was, Amara didn’t think he was resourceful enough to pull it off. She was sure her mother had said Amir didn’t know about the account. The sultan was looking at her expectantly. “I really don’t think he knows about the account.”

  “No?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Nahir!” The man who’d taken her to the room rushed back in. “Bring me my files.” The two of them continued to examine the other as if trying to find similarities. Amara wished she would have found none, but he had the same color eyes with the same almond shape as she.

  “You look just like your mother,” he said with a small smile. “The most beautiful daughter I had. Too bad she had to go and marry that trash. I should have married her off to Philip. He always had a weakness for her. Would have been better than that…. trash.” He muttered the word under his breath a couple of times before Nahir handed him the files. Amara watched as her grandfather took out papers, glossies, from what she could see, and leafed through them. He asked Nahir to hand them to her, which he did.

  Amara glanced down at them in confusion as she looked from one to the other. They were series of black and white photos, most taken from a distance so that it was difficult to make out who was in them. When she reached the ninth one, she nearly dropped the entire pile. Amara saw an image of herself walking down the street in Paris. It wasn’t anything unusual, except that in the following five pictures, the same man followed her, never more than just a couple of steps away. As she continued to flip through the photos, the scenery changed from Paris to New York, but the subject o
f the pictures was the same. Some of them were recent, showing Amara and Colin walking hand in hand, smiles on their faces, as the man followed behind them. How could somebody be following her for that long and she never noticed? Amara glanced up at the sultan who was waiting for her to respond.

  “Did you look at all of them?” he asked.

  “No, but I see your point. Somebody was following me. Did you send somebody to follow me and take the photos?”

  “Those are Philip’s photos.” He paused to glance down at his lap, where another file sat. “We took them from him when we brought you in.” He kept pausing, waiting for her to speak, but she didn’t. She’d learned the value of simply listening, and that’s what she needed to do now. “He must have called in a favor to get access to the street camera footage. It makes me wonder why he hasn’t come to me with this information. I pay him enough for it.”

  “We were supposed to come to you yesterday,” Amara said, giving him a hard look.

  “I got impatient.”

  “What do you want from me? I can’t give you any more information than what you already have.”

  The sultan chuckled and signaled the two women who’d been sitting on the pillows to leave the room. “Keep looking.” She sighed and did as she was told. Near the end of the pile, there was a close-up of the man who had been following her in New York. The sultan knew the moment she recognized him because she finally did drop the pile in her hands, all of the pages drifting forward and spreading like wings over the floor. Amara began to shake as she covered her mouth, tears springing in her eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” she said in a whisper as she looked at her father’s face in the photograph. He was in disguise, but, forced to really look at the image, there was no question of his identity.

  “He betrayed you just like he betrayed your mother,” the sultan said. Amara was afraid to ask what he meant, and his next words were like a punch in the gut to her. “Nahir! Bring her!”

  And in Courtney strode.

  “Maybe now we’ll get real answers,” the sultan said as Courtney was delivered to the middle of the room between Amara and the stage where her grandfather sat. Samuel walked in within seconds, and if she hadn’t already been scared, the look on his face would have made her shudder.