by Lea Griffith
She shifted, going on the balls of her feet, face hardening, spine straightening. “Oh, I know I’ll not only leave here, I’ll do it much sooner than either of you think.”
Rand moved then. Anticipating she’d step right because of her obviously hurt left side, he went to his left and was stunned when she took a shot with her left hand to the side of his neck. He went to a knee, and he heard Ken engage her.
The sound of a fist meeting flesh was distant as Rand sought to gain his feet, struggling to overcome the pain in his neck and loss of air. She’d knocked him down with one punch, and it’d been a punch with an arm that was nearly immobile! Ken fell then, knocked out cold, and the syringe he’d been holding fell to the ground.
Rand moved and grabbed the needle before she could. He flipped onto his back as she came over him, and within the space of a second he’d uncapped the needle and jabbed it into her calf. He pressed the syringe, heard her whisper “Shit,” then winced as she fell right on top of him.
She was out. Ken coughed, staggered to his feet, and limped over to help Rand.
“Son of a bitch, she’s lethal.” He coughed again and pressed a hand to his temple.
Rand nodded and shifted the woman off him. She fell limply to her side, head thudding against the hard tile. He wanted to be okay with that, but something in her gaze as she’d come over him just a second ago had been remorseful. The same emotion he’d tamped down just moments ago.
And Rand knew better. Joseph didn’t allow remorse. No, she was a stone-cold killer. He had to believe that or all of this would be for naught.
He would not soften.
He damn well would not.
Chapter Six
She woke silently. The cloying effects of nausea and pain combined and threatened to pull her back under. Her brain was mush, but she’d been here before. Gooseflesh broke out over her naked body and she tried to move, but found herself bound at the wrist by what seemed to be leather cuffs. Her legs were the same way.
She was staked out. The bile that had just taunted her rose again. She couldn’t control it and within moments she’d wretched, turning her head sideways so she didn’t suffocate. Her head was heavy, her vision blurred, but her throat burned as the acid churned and crawled its way up her esophagus.
She was a child again, cold and shivering though there was no blue, blue sky. It was wooden rafters and darkness that held her now.
“I will not break,” Remi whispered. Tears tracked down her cheeks and into her hair. She could cry a river, but it would never free her. Never.
She drew away from the memories, took stock of her surroundings, and tried to piece together what was going on. Her left arm was numb, and she tried to lift it, but she was tethered by a long rope to a spike set deep into the tile beneath her. Both arms and both feet were staked the same way.
She let her gaze unfocus and centered herself, readied for the inevitable. She counted seconds and minutes, which turned into three hours. Pain radiated down her left side, but the skin pulled at her shoulder, so she assumed she’d been seen to. She moved periodically, feeling the dull ache in the abused muscle. Yeah, they’d cleaned up her wounds, but she was still naked, and the scent of her own flesh made her cringe. Sweat and blood were not the best smells in the world.
Her skin felt stretched across her bones and she was so damn cold she knew she was feverish. The floor above her creaked and vibrations translated into the sound of footsteps headed her way. The door squeaked and she opened her eyes though she trained her gaze on the ceiling.
Rand Beckett walked toward her, settled down on his haunches, hands relaxed as his gaze looked her up and down.
“You’re awake,” he said needlessly.
She didn’t answer. It hadn’t been a question.
He chuckled, and the sound made her stomach jerk. “Who shot you?”
“You were there, surely you remember,” she managed to get out from her dry throat.
Silence reigned. She’d surprised him.
“No way you knew I stayed,” he bit out.
Yep. He was surprised. She would’ve shrugged had she not been tethered. She had her pride. She kept quiet.
“Why did you come then? Why not just finish what you started?” Curiosity and something else threaded through his tone.
She waited long moments trying to determine if his question necessitated a response. She looked at him, gave him the full force of her gaze, and when their eyes met something rearranged in her chest. She panicked for a split second, the feeling so foreign, so very alien, that she had zero capacity to deal with it.
She wanted to tell him, this man she’d been sent to kill but hadn’t. She swallowed hard. “If my luck holds, it will not be finished until they are all dead.” Her voice trailed off, a mere croaking gasp at the end of her sentence.
Surprise flickered in his gaze, pupils going wide for a split instance as his nostrils flared. He looked away, his gaze moving down to her chest before flying back up to meet hers. Red tinged his cheeks, and his indigo colored orbs flinched. Was the sight of her so distasteful then?
She pulled back her thoughts. It couldn’t matter. What he thought of her absolutely could not matter.
A hard mask settled over his handsome features. He sneered. “And who is ‘they’?’
“The same ones who had Lily and Anna killed.”
He got in her face, breath hot, but a benediction on her freezing flesh. His fury flew and she let it fan the flames of her own desire to kill them. What he’d suffered was the same as many, yet different, because it was his. When his pain had become untenable for her, she didn’t know.
When had his grief burrowed into her soul to fester with all the other myriad wounds of her life?
He grabbed her head, and his finger tightened on her scalp, pulling hair. Her eyes watered—a physical reaction only because that tiny hurt was nothing; too insignificant in comparison to the others.
“You don’t speak their names,” he whispered as he lifted her head to him, tilted her neck at an odd angle, placed his thumbs over her trachea. The threat was implicit. “You don’t ever speak their names again. How fucking dare you?”
“They deserve that much. They are a mark on my soul,” she responded and his eyes widened.
His pain had a smell, a flavor and it cut into her, taking her breath and leaving devastation in its wake.
“You?” Guttural, full of everything that was loss, his voice broke.
Remi steeled herself against the question. She closed her eyes, unable to bear the naked agony in his.
He took her silence as she wanted him to. “You fucking bitch!” he spit out, and she felt the prick of a needle in her thigh.
He dropped her head as if she disgusted him. She probably did, and that, too, was as it should be. Her skull thunked against the hard floor and stars flashed. He stood over her, the danger emanating from him in great waves of aggression. Would he kill her?
She deserved it.
“Bayu-bey, Vse lydui dolzhny spat´ po nocham,” she sang softly to herself. All people should sleep at night.
The darkness was there and welcoming as it swirled around her, lovingly brushing over her mind. Then, blessedly, it rushed forward and carried her to its bosom.
“It was her?” Ken asked from the doorway.
Rand vibrated with suppressed rage. He stood over the woman who had just admitted to killing his wife and daughter. He ran a hand through his hair, feeling defeated and worn. He ached with grief, but what he’d seen in her eyes, the eyes of a killer, had eclipsed anything he’d ever experienced.
She knew pain firsthand. But nothing could prepare her for what he was going to rain down on her.
“Rand?” The question in Ken’s voice couldn’t be answered.
Because the truth was, everything in Rand rejected that this tiny slip of a woman, whose eyes made him lose his breath, had killed his hopes and dreams . . . his family.
“She’ll be out for a while. It look
s like she’s running a fever. Do we get her well or let her die?”
Rand looked up at the rafters, but the answers eluded him. Wispy and effervescent, they stayed out of his reach. He’d once been so good at recognizing the truth, but now it toyed with him. His gut told him one thing, and his mind, hell her words, told him something different.
“Have Dmitry hook her up to an IV. If anything kills her, it will be me,” he ground out, and turned away from the woman now knocked out on the ground before him.
His heart clenched as he remembered her eyes when she’d whispered that Lily and Anna were a mark on her soul. Conviction had rung in her tone, yet her eyes had hinted at something intangible.
“Rand?” Ken called his name again and Rand stopped, hung his head.
“Yeah?”
“We made a promise.”
“And I intend to keep it, Ken. You don’t have to remind me. She was my wife.”
“She was my sister and Anna my niece. You lose sight of the goal and we are lost. They win,” Ken pointed out calmly.
But underneath that calm, Rand knew, was a suggestion of death. Visceral and true, Ken Nodachi was a death bringer. Politically correct and fair to a fault, the man would nevertheless kill without reservation.
But so would Rand.
As he walked from the panic room, he had to wonder, would he be able to kill a woman who’d reached inside of him and brought back to life a heart that hadn’t beat in seven years?
It was a viable question, but Rand staggered under the truth of his mind’s response. Yes. Yes, he could kill her. But he wouldn’t be able to walk away from it. No, he’d be on his knees as he crawled away from that devastation, and the man Lily had loved, who’d loved her in return, would be dead. Dead and gone.
Chapter Seven
Shadows moved behind her eyelids, and awareness sliced through her brain. Remi recognized she was still being held in the room with the stone floor. She was still naked, still tethered, but she was covered now and there was warmth.
Her back remained cold, but her shoulder only ached as opposed to feeling like a hot poker had been pressed into it. She wanted to cough, ease the constriction in her throat, but didn’t dare.
There was someone in the room with her, and as long as they thought her asleep, she had the upper hand. She’d made a mistake coming here, but had honestly felt to do so was the best option.
She told herself it had nothing to do with bluish-purple eyes and a desperate need inside her to ease the pain housed within them. Her heart though, the organ she’d never acknowledged, mocked her with a slow thump.
“You’re awake,” a man murmured. He had a faint Russian accent. Dmitry Asinimov, she was sure of it.
This man, she owed a debt of blood. It had been Remi who’d taken his brother one sunny day in France five years ago. She remembered the sun glinting off Alexander Asinimov’s hair, the curls on his head so fair and perfect.
Until her bullet had entered his brain and blown out the back of his skull. Then those flaxen locks had gone red and not so perfect. Not that the man hadn’t deserved to be dealt death. He’d done things to a small child in Bangkok Remi hadn’t known were possible.
“You shudder. Remembering my brother perhaps?” His tone was deceptive.
Out of all the men at Rand Beckett’s Trident Corporation, this was the one she knew the least about. His brother had been picked to die for a minor infraction against one of Joseph’s overseas interests. Remi had completed the job because of little Una.
She opened her eyes, acclimating to the low light with an ease that had his eyebrows rising. “I don’t have regrets, Dmitry.”
More surprise flashed across his face, and for a moment, she wondered if he’d strike her but instead, he smiled. He inclined his head toward her. “Regrets are for pussies.”
Shock ghosted through her. He simply nodded again and turned away.
There were several minutes of silence before he spoke again. “You’ve been here five days, and your fever broke about twenty-four hours ago. The bullet was removed once we realized it was still lodged inside you. You’ll have difficulty with that shoulder for a while, but should recover fully.”
He’d gone quiet and she looked over at him. “Can you remove the catheter?”
“No. I’ll get a nurse to do that,” he responded, and left the room.
A woman returned with him, short and stout; she had an air of no-nonsense but she refused to look directly at Remi. She spoke something in quick Spanish, and immediately, Remi was transported back to Arequipa.
The woman reached under the covering, and within moments, had the catheter out. As her legs were still tethered, she was unable to move. She hissed in a breath and turned a beseeching gaze on the nurse.
“It will do you no good. She is loyal to Rand and won’t betray him,” Dmitry said in a voice colored with humor.
She huffed. “I need to move, my muscles must be stretched.”
“Then you’ll have to beg,” Rand said from the doorway. The nurse quickly lowered the covering, tucking it against Remi as much as she was able before she hurried out of the room. “Tell me, are you willing to beg?”
“I don’t beg,” she said in a hard voice. Soreness be damned, her body was responding to the taunt in his words, blood flowing furiously preparing unused muscles for fight. How dare he?
“You will,” he assured her in a deadened tone. To Dmitry he said, “Release her legs.”
Dmitry gave her a warning look as he unstrapped first her right leg, and then her left. He glanced at Rand, back to Remi, and then left.
“I want your name.” Succinct. He’d changed tactics then.
“No.” A simple response designed to maximize frustration. She’d come here knowing what to expect, but for some reason, this hurt. She tried to lift a hand to ease the sting in her chest and remembered it was tethered.
He advanced to within a few feet and stared down at her, face implacable, resolve in every line of his muscular frame. He crossed his arms over his chest, and the flex and play of his muscles under the cable-knitting of his sweater fascinated her.
“I want your name.”
“And I want to sit up.”
“No one is preventing you from sitting up,” he retorted in a nasty tone.
She pulled on her right arm, found that it moved much farther than she’d thought it would. It was a struggle but after a full minute of cautious movement, she was sitting upright, legs dangling off a high stone slab. The room swam and she swayed, put down her left arm, and nearly passed out when fire raced down from her shoulder. He never moved to help her, just stood there, waiting, watching.
“Your name.” Like a dog with a bone. The inflection in his voice never changed, and neither did the expression on his face.
A curious sensation spiraled up from her gut, spread through her body, and wiggled down her spine. She itched with it, and with no small amount of disbelief, recognized it for it was: anger, white hot and acrid. She was eaten up with it, wanted to smash and rend and annihilate the source.
She took deep, gulping breaths and tried to calm the raging storm inside her body. This was a defeatist emotion. She couldn’t operate with the insane miasma of feelings coursing through her blood.
He stood there through the long minutes of her struggle to overcome the weakness that invaded her mind. She looked up finally and another, unknown but easily recognizable emotion ripped through her. Resentment.
He raised an eyebrow, dark eyes fathomless. “Your name.”
Never that. But she’d give him something else and hope he remembered it forever.
She lifted her chin high, narrowed her gaze on him, and spat out, “My name I will not give anyone. But you, Mr. Beckett, you can call me Bullet.”
Disbelief kicked him in the gut. This was Bullet? Joseph had sent his best and now she was in Rand’s possession? Something dark wove its way through her eyes and made him wonder at the secrets the woman before him held. Then somethi
ng wicked ran through his blood, evil and mean, with a heavy desire to kill.
He’d not known what to expect, but it hadn’t been this. Sure, she was Collective, but to have Joseph’s top assassin in his grasp? He struggled with the thought of it, ran it over and over until the silence stretched taut and pregnant with things he’d never hoped for.
“Nothing to say, Mr. Beckett?” Her tone was scathing, though her face remained impassive.
The last one Joseph had sent to eliminate Rand had been captured with relative ease. He’d been broken and caved easily, giving up things Rand had only guessed at. That man, so weak in the face of his death, had told Rand the one called Bullet had received the order to kill Rand’s family.
Rand clenched his hands into fists, stepped forward, unclenched them by dint of will, and wrapped them ever-so-gently around her throat. No emotion showed on her face; not fear, not anger . . . nothing. It would have been unnatural had it not been so completely appropriate.
He lowered his head until his lips were right at her ear. “It was you,” he whispered, stroking the pulse at the base of her throat with his thumb. She’d told him days ago, but something in him had rebelled at her words.
She veiled her eyes.
“You look at me, goddamn it.” He pulled her hair, forcing her head back while at the same time putting pressure on her throat.
Still there was no fear. Not for the first time, Rand wondered what the woman had gone through to be conditioned to such stillness, such lack of emotion. Did she not fear death?
“Go ahead, do it,” she taunted him.
He closed his eyes, struggled for sanity. Seven years he’d waited for this opportunity. Seven fucking years. “It would be too easy, wouldn’t it, Bullet?” he mocked, then stepped away from her as if she’d burned him.
She shrugged. He closed his eyes. How could a woman who looked so damn vulnerable be so deadly? So callous and cold as to take the life of a child?
He opened his eyes and stared at her, trying to assess her clinically. But all he could see were the freckles across the bridge of her nose, the delicate arch of her brows, the crystal blue eyes that tried to hide her emotions but couldn’t quite do it. He let his gaze travel down over her cheeks, both suffused pink from some unidentified emotion, one smooth surface cut from a sliver of wood. Further down, her fragile neck flowed into a chest that was much more womanly that he would have ever anticipated on such a small frame. She wasn’t over five feet two inches, maybe a hundred and five pounds soaking wet, but her body was lush. Breasts that plumped nicely and hips that rounded perfectly.
