by P Nelson
“I understand.” Dillon managed to say even though he wanted to shake Joe until he brought Thea back up on the screen.
“Good. There’s a car waiting downstairs for you. It will take you directly to the hospital. You’ll have a narrow window of opportunity to find out what’s happened to her before her next of kin arrives. Use it wisely.” Joe turned back to the screen.
Flynn was holding a weeping Calla. His expression fierce as he looked at Dillon. “I can’t come with you.” He shook his head at the forces keeping him away from his friend. “I can’t be connected with her rescue. It will bring too many questions to my doorstep.”
“I’ll go with him.” Calla raised her head from Flynn’s chest, resolve on her face. “We’re her friends, and I don’t care what people think.”
“You don’t know who might be watching,” Flynn addressed Calla in a hard voice. Dillon ignored the arguing couple.
“Thank you for all your help, Joe.” He waited until the other man acknowledged him.
“I told you we’d get her back. Now it’s your job to get her through this mess.” Joe nodded his head. “Good luck.”
Dillon strode over to the elevator and pressed the button to leave. Calla and Flynn’s angry argument grew louder as they followed. He entered the car and turned around, watching Flynn and Calla.
“She’s going to need me.” Calla’s tone was tight as she pushed her arms into her coat jacket, purse in one hand.
“I can’t protect you out there.” Flynn’s statement held a note of pleading Dillon had never heard before.
“You’re not my Dom,” Calla reminded him, and Flynn took a step back from the elevator as if she’d hit him.
“Keep your phone on, and I’ll update you with her progress, if you haven’t bribed the doctors already.” Calla finished as the doors closed on Flynn’s angry visage.
Chapter Nine
Someone was speaking Greek. Yup. The sound of her childhood floated through the pain in her body, the pounding in her skull to remind her of night-time stories of Greek warriors and pitiless gods. Thea wanted to tell whoever was speaking to shut up. Her head hurt. Her body ached all over, and she couldn’t even get the strength to shift over. There was a terrible stitch in her side and she wanted to lie on her back.
“I think she’s waking up.” Someone spoke in English.
“Get the nurse.” The woman from before ordered in Greek. There was movement around Thea, but she was having a hard time opening her eyes. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. But not being able to see was causing her to panic. A beeping noise she heard in the distance was now insistent. Someone placed a hand on her forehead. The person wanted to comfort her. Flashes of memory replayed in her head, and a scream built in her throat as she tried to move away from the contact.
“Thea, it’s me. Your mama. I’m right here.” Thea registered it was her mother’s voice but couldn’t prevent the scream from continuing. There was no end and no beginning of the horror.
“We’re going to have to sedate her.” A crisp statement from a female who was a stranger to Thea. “I’ll get the on-call doctor.”
“Is that necessary?” Her mama asked in a heavy accent. “She’s scared. My Thea would not like to be drugged.”
“She has suffered a huge amount of trauma, Mrs Demopoulos, please understand we’re trying to give your daughter the best care possible,” the nurse replied. Her tone stern and comforting. Thea thought quickly. She needed someone stronger than her mother to fight for her. Not her father. He never understood her. Dillon. Her heart wrenched. She needed him. But after what had happened, would he still fight for her? Doing her best to form his name in her mind, she forced air out of a throat that was raw. Skin too tight, pinching her. Thea called for the one man she would trust with every part of her soul.
“Thea. What are you trying to say?” Someone came close. It was her mother. She always smelled of vanilla and lemons.
“She’s asking for her boyfriend again.” The nurse now sounded exasperated. “The doctor told you to give her what she needed. She clearly needs to see Mr Ross. You’re doing a wonderful job here, but she’ll continue to be in this agitated state until she gets what she wants.” Her voice rose in the end. “He has been sitting out there day and night since your daughter was brought in. I urge you to give Detective Demopoulos the support she requests.”
“I’m not letting that porn star into this room! He is not her boyfriend. My little girl would not be involved with a man like him!” Mama shouted.
“I understand you’re trying to protect your daughter, but I don’t think you need to protect her from Mr Ross,” the nurse continued.
“You’ve read what they’re saying about him in the news. He beat his ex-girlfriend; for all we know, he’s responsible for this.” Mama sounded horrified. Thea tried to sympathise with her mother’s acute distress but was angry over the accusations she was making against Dillon. He had never physically or emotionally abused his ex-sub Tiffany. It looked as if no matter what he did to prove his innocence, her lies would follow Dillon for the rest of his life.
“Those allegations were proven false, Mrs Demopoulos. Your daughter has said nothing but Mr Ross’s name in the last four days. She wants him, and the best thing you can do to help her recovery is give her what she needs emotionally. Her physical injuries are going to hold her back for months; you can at least help with her emotional needs.”
“Nurse Patricia, that’s enough.” Another familiar voice broke through the growing argument in the room. Thea breathed a sigh of relief as she recognised Master Keith. “I was called down to administer more sedative.”
“Yes, Dr Selkirk, but I don’t believe the patient needs more sedative. She needs to hear her boyfriend’s voice,” the nurse stubbornly repeated.
“Your point has been taken into consideration, Patricia.” Dr Selkirk, also known as Master Keith at The Cage, spoke in a tone Thea recognised made subs’ spines tingle with the urge to obey. Apparently, it worked on pushy nurses, too.
“Yes, Dr Selkirk.” There was more movement. Thea tried to open her eyes again. She wanted to see what was happening around her not just hear. She was a part of this discussion, damn it. The monitors around her started to life again, pinging noises followed by shuffling clothes, brisk hands checking over her bruised and battered body. She didn’t want to think about those aches and pains right now. She just wanted to open her eyes.
“Come on, Thea, you have this.” Dr Selkirk’s statement sounded in front of her face. His warm breath smelled of coffee and mints. She had never heard him speak in a comforting tone before. He was known as the most strict and hard-core Dom at The Cage. He required a twenty-four/seven sub with a detailed contract in place to play.
Gurgling sounded in the room, and it startled Thea. She stopped trying to open her eyes and listened for the noise to repeat. It didn’t. In its place was nervous breathing behind Dr Selkirk.
“Try again, Thea.” Dr Selkirk’s tone held an edge of dominance. Even though Thea appreciated why he was trying to top her, it still rankled. After being under the mercy of Esposito, she couldn’t stand to feel helpless again. The need for some empowerment burned in her gut. She could open one of her eyes enough to let light hit her retina. Her vision was blurry, but Thea didn’t care. The bright room was a far cry from Esposito’s basement where he’d made a mockery of her choice of lifestyle. Where Bondie had…No. There would be time enough to dwell on everything she witnessed later. Years and years of time to replay her hours with Esposito.
“Hello, princess.” Dr Selkirk’s words were quiet enough Thea was sure her mama would not have heard them. “You’re going to make it, Thea.” It wasn’t a promise; he was making a statement of fact. Master Keith required her to get out of her bed no matter what she had suffered and live her life again. Fire burned behind her eyes. Tears seeped out from her partially closed eyelid forcing her vision into a watery relief.
“Thea,” her mother squeaked out from beh
ind Dr Selkirk, and he shifted away from the bed. The indistinct shape of mama appeared before her. She was sniffling and crying. Thea wanted to comfort her, but when her mother reached out to touch her brow. Her first instinct was to get away from the touch that reminded her of the basement. She tried to jerk her head away but couldn’t. A low howl filled the room sounding like a panicking animal. Thea realised too late the noise was coming from her, but she couldn’t stop it. The hand on her forehead wasn’t the same cold and clammy one that filled the darkness behind Thea’s eyes, but she couldn’t stand it.
“Stop touching your daughter, Mrs Demopoulos.” Dr Selkirk’s stern command stopped both the keening cry and the unwanted touch.
“I’m sorry. Am I hurting her?” The anxiousness in the question made her heart break. What was wrong with her? She was normally able to control her reactions so much better.
“Mrs Demopoulos, your daughter is a miracle. She is the only known survivor of a serial killer.” Thea heard her mother gasp, searched around with her limited vision for her face, but could only see Dr Selkirk and her mama’s bodies facing one another. “Her physical injuries are extensive, and some of them she’ll carry for the rest of her life.” Thea wondered whether Dr Selkirk was speaking to her. “It’s common for trauma victims to be slow to respond positively to touch. You must give her time.” A long silence filled the room and again Thea’s frustration rose at her inability to speak and communicate with those around her.
“You think I should let Mr Ross in to see her?” Thea’s mother asked. Retired police detective Demopoulos’s wife might have been a head shorter than her husband, but it was foolish to mistake her generally meek nature with stupidity.
“I think it’s time you accept your daughter for who she is.” Dr Selkirk’s words echoed through the room. “I’ll leave you both for now, but I suggest you think about my advice carefully. Patients who have been through intense trauma like this often look back and view it as a line in the sand. A time of before and after. Why not give your daughter a positive glimpse into her new reality?”
Thea listened to Dr Selkirk’s footsteps as he left the room even as she contemplated his words. She had never hidden anything from her family until she had her first taste of the kink world. Believing they would never accept her, she concealed a huge part of her identity. Was it time for Mistress Thea to meet her parents?
Chapter Ten
Dillon stood his ground on one side of the ICU of Vancouver General Hospital as one of Thea’s four brothers came in carrying a tray of cups from one of the local coffee shops. He had been waiting for four nights and four days. There were no windows to tell him what was happening in the outside world, but he didn’t care. His whole world was lying in a bed in this hospital and unless someone forcibly removed him, Dillon wasn’t going anywhere. Dirty looks and loudly spoken insults were not going to force him to leave.
“If looks could kill, we’d probably all be dead,” Calla remarked from her plastic seat beside him. After spending the first night here, she had come every evening after work with food. At around midnight, she would receive a call on her cell phone and after a short, angry, but ultimately quiet argument with the person on the other side, she’d hang up, say her goodbyes, promising to return the next late afternoon with dinner.
Dillon had a good idea who was on the other end of the phone but said nothing. His usual inquisitive nature exhausted by the events of the last week. Every day, another friend of Thea’s from the kink community would show up in the waiting room bringing him coffee and food. The silent support was what he needed the most. There was never a time he was alone to face the anger, resentment, and confusion of Thea’s family.
“This is what the cold war must have been like,” Dillon commented. The attempt at humour made Calla smile before she focused on her knitting. It was odd watching her engage in a domestic activity. Calla was the ultimate modern woman, her clothes always ironed, her hair never out of place, and her heels always high. Watching her knit out row after row of bulky wool was unnerving.
“I didn’t know you knitted,” Dillon commented.
“One of my moms taught me how when I was little. I don’t normally get the needles out, but…” She left the rest of the sentence unsaid, and he understood. Anything to keep her occupied through the relentless waiting.
The door to the corridor where Thea’s private room was opened. The diminutive women who Dillon now recognised as Thea’s mother came out. She shot him a frown before turning her attention to the much taller men who surrounded her. They spoke in Greek. They used Greek to exclude him from hearing about Thea’s progress. Little did they know he had friends in the hospital who were a part of his and Thea’s community. Fellow kinksters who loved her and wanted to make sure people in their world learned she was OK. It still annoyed the hell out of him, and he was going to enrol in Greek lessons as soon as he rescued Thea.
The sound of arguing focused his attention back on the knot of Thea’s family members. Thea’s father was shouting and pointing over at Dillon. Confused, he looked around stupidly conscious that only Calla sat next to him. Thea’s mother held her ground even though Dillon could see she was fighting her instincts to obey her husband. One of the brothers spoke up, and it started another round of arguing. The conflict ended when Thea’s mother slashed a hand angrily through the air and shouted. All the men stopped talking and watched as she crossed the waiting room floor for the first time.
“Mr Ross.” Thea’s mother still had a faint accent even though Dillon learned recently she had lived in Canada since she was a young child. He stood up to greet her, Calla following him.
“My daughter. Thea is waking up from the induced coma. Her injuries are extensive.” Mrs Demopoulos paused. Dillon was aware of all Thea’s injuries. The team Linkin led to rescue her from the basement of horrors in Abbottsford had a trauma member. His report had been clinical and succinct. Dillon had read it several times to digest every single word. “She’s asking for you.” The words penetrated the fog of words running in Dillon’s head from the sterile report.
“Let me go to her,” Dillon urged. He hadn’t bathed or shaved in days and understood he looked like hell, but this announcement was why he’d waited around: to get access to Thea.
“Yes.” Mrs Demopoulos studied the intent expression on his face and nodded her head once.
“Take a deep breath.” Calla rested her hand on his arm, and he searched her tight face. “She’s going to look worse than before. You’re going to need to put your own feelings aside and be there for her.” Annoyance flared at the insinuation he couldn’t care for Thea. True, he couldn’t commando into a building and rescue her with the finesse of Linkin, but Dillon could care for her. He remembered how Calla had found him, curled up on the floor of Flynn’s high-rise apartment and understood her words.
“I will give her your love.” He pressed a chaste kiss on Calla’s forehead and looked at Mrs Demopoulos. Her brothers and her father’s casual attitudes didn’t fool him for an instant. They didn’t want him anywhere near Thea. Oddly, Dillon felt the same way about them.
“Follow me.” Mrs Demopoulos strode right through the ring of her family, and Dillon stayed on her heels. He kept his head high and looked every one of her brothers and Thea’s father in the eye as he passed. Dillon had never been ashamed of what he did for a living, at times the porn gig had grated and maybe he was thinking of retiring from acting. But he loved the industry that had brought him fame and fortune.
Dillon and his unlikely companion pushed through the double doors that had prevented him from getting to Thea. He had stood by as countless nurses and even Master Selkirk, Thea’s head physician went in and out with frustration. Now that he was walking down the hall towards Thea, Dillon’s heart started a rapid tattoo, and he had to swallow a few times. He didn’t want to mess this up. His first meeting with Thea was important. There was so much he had to say to her. Even though he had pictured this moment a hundred times in his head,
he was dumbstruck as Mrs Demopoulos opened the door to Thea’s room.
Thea lay on her side, feet towards the door. There were a myriad of monitors clicking away softly in the background, but it was Thea’s prone form lying on the bed that had all his attention. She looked vulnerable. In his head, Dillon had never viewed Thea as defenceless or tiny in any way. But her curled-up form in the hospital draped in blankets Mrs Demopoulos had brought from home, made Thea appear fragile. She would hate being like this.
“Go ahead,” Mrs Demopoulos encouraged. Dillon remained standing in the doorway. He nodded his head a few times and stepped inside Thea’s sanctuary. She had come to within a breath just being another victim of the Reverend. Thea had survived, and now it was up to Dillon to make sure she left this awful episode behind her.
Dillon walked over to the bed and almost gasped. Thea’s face was so battered, he wasn’t even sure how she could breath. He pulled a chair closer to the edge of the bed, removed a book with a Greek title and sat down.
“Only one of her eyes can open. Just a little.” Mrs Demopoulos supplied from where she was still standing near the door.
“OK,” Dillon whispered back as he studied the skin visible on Thea’s neck. It looked like the asshole had whipped her over and over. He remembered reading the paragraph about the skin stripped from her back, right before the medical experts revealed the Reverend hadn’t raped her. Just like the other victims, the Reverend had beaten them, humiliated them, but he had not raped them. Dillon appeared to have some effect on Thea. The monitors beeped energetically and a second later, one of her impossibly bruised eyelids, black from so much abuse came open. The green of Thea’s iris was just visible. Relief flooded him, and a smile spread across his face as tears made his nose tingle. He did his best to hold them back.
