Keep Me

by Anna Zaires

  But enjoy them I do. Being with Julian is thrilling—both frightening and exhilarating, like riding a wild tiger. I never know which side of him I will see at any given moment: the charming lover or the cruel master. And as messed-up as it is, I want both—I am addicted to both. The light and the dark, the violence and the tenderness—it all goes together, forming a volatile, dizzying cocktail that plays havoc with my equilibrium and makes me fall even deeper under Julian’s spell.

  Of course, the fact that I see him now every day doesn’t help. On the island, Julian’s frequent absences gave me time to recover from the potent effect he has on my mind and body, enabling me to maintain some emotional balance. Here, however, there is no respite from the magnetic pull he exerts on me, no way to shield myself from his intoxicating allure. With each day that passes, I lose a little more of my soul to him, my need for him growing, rather than decreasing with time.

  The only thing that keeps me from freaking out is the knowledge that Julian is drawn to me just as strongly. I don’t know if it’s my resemblance to Maria or just our inexplicable chemistry, but I know the addiction works both ways.

  Julian’s hunger for me knows no bounds. He takes me a couple of times every night—and often during the day as well—yet I get the sense he still wants more. It’s there in the intensity of his gaze, in the way he always touches me, holds me. He can’t keep his hands off me—and that makes me feel better about my own helpless attraction to him.

  He also seems to enjoy spending time with me outside of the bedroom. True to his promise, Julian has begun training me, teaching me how to fight and use different weapons. After the initial rocky start, he turned out to be an excellent instructor—knowledgeable, patient, and surprisingly dedicated. We train together nearly every day, and I’ve already learned more in these couple of weeks than in the prior three months in my self-defense courses. Of course, it would be a misnomer to call what he teaches me self-defense; Julian’s lessons have more in common with some kind of assassin bootcamp.

  “You aim to kill every time,” he instructs during one afternoon session where he makes me throw knives at a small target on the wall. “You don’t have the size or the strength, so for you, it’s all about speed, reflexes, and ruthlessness. You need to catch your opponents off-guard and eliminate them before they realize how skilled you are. Every strike has to be deadly; every move has to count.”

  “What if I don’t want to kill them?” I ask, looking up at him. “What if I just want to wound them, so I can run away?”

  “A wounded man can still hurt you. It doesn’t take much strength to squeeze a trigger or stab you with a knife. Unless you have a good reason for wanting your enemy alive, you aim to kill, Nora. Do you understand me?”

  I nod and throw a small, sharp knife at the wall. It thuds dully against the target, then falls down, having barely scratched the wood. Not my best attempt, but better than my prior five.

  I don’t know if I can do what Julian says, but I do know that I never want to feel defenseless again. If it means learning the skills of an assassin, I’m happy to do it. It doesn’t mean I will ever use them, but just knowing that I can protect myself makes me feel stronger and more confident, helping me cope with the residual nightmares from my time with the terrorists.

  To my relief, those have gotten better as well. It’s like my subconscious knows that Julian is here—that I’m safe with him. Of course, it also helps that when I do wake up screaming, he’s there to hold me and chase the nightmare away.

  The first time it happens is the third night after my arrival at the estate. I dream of Beth’s death again, of the ocean of blood that I’m drowning in, but this time, strong arms catch me, save me from the vicious rip current. This time, when I open my eyes, I’m not alone in the darkness. Julian has turned on the bedside lamp and is shaking me awake, a concerned expression on his beautiful face.

  “I’m here now,” he soothes, pulling me into his lap when I can’t stop trembling, tears of remembered horror running down my face. “All is well, I promise . . .” He strokes my hair until my sobbing breaths begin to even out, and then he asks softly, “What’s the matter, baby? Did you have a bad dream? You were screaming my name . . .”

  I nod, clinging to him with all my strength. I can feel the warmth of his skin, hear the steady beating of his heart, and the nightmare slowly begins to recede, my mind coming back to the present. “It was Beth,” I whisper when I can speak without my voice breaking. “He was torturing her . . . killing her.”

  Julian’s arms tighten around me. He doesn’t say anything, but I can feel his rage, his burning fury. Beth had been more than a housekeeper to him, though the precise nature of their relationship had always been something of a mystery to me.

  Desperate to distract myself from the bloody images still filling my mind, I decide to satisfy the curiosity that had gnawed at me all through my time on the island. “How did you and Beth meet?” I ask, pulling back to look at Julian’s face. “How did she come to be on the island with me?”

  He looks at me, his eyes dark with memories. Before, whenever I would ask these types of questions, he would brush me off or change the topic, but things are different between us now. Julian seems more willing to talk to me, to let me more fully into his life.

  “I was in Tijuana seven years ago for a meeting with one of the cartels,” he begins speaking after a moment. “After my business was concluded, I went looking for entertainment in Zona Norte, the red-light district of the city. I was passing by one of the alleys when I saw it . . . a screaming, crying woman huddled over a small figure on the ground.”

  “Beth,” I whisper, remembering what she told me about her daughter.

  “Yes, Beth,” he confirms. “It wasn’t any of my business, but I’d had a couple of drinks and I was curious. So I came closer . . . and that’s when I saw that the small figure on the ground was a child. A beautiful baby girl with red curly hair, a tiny replica of the woman crying over her.” A savage, furious glint enters his eyes. “The child was lying in a pool of blood, with a gunshot wound in her small chest. She had apparently been killed to punish her mother, who didn’t want to let her pimp offer the child to some clients with more unique tastes.”

  Nausea, sharp and strong, rises in my throat. Despite everything I’ve been through, it still horrifies me to know that there are such monsters out there. Monsters far worse than the man I’ve fallen in love with.

  No wonder Beth saw the world in shades of black; her life had been overtaken by darkness.

  “When I heard the full story, I took Beth and her daughter with me,” Julian continues in a low, hard voice. “It still wasn’t any of my business, but I couldn’t let this type of thing slide—at least not after seeing that child’s body. We buried the daughter in a cemetery just outside Tijuana. Then I took a couple of my men, and Beth and I came back to look for the pimp.” A small, vicious smile appears on his lips as he says softly, “Beth killed him personally. Him and his two thugs—the ones who helped murder her daughter.”

  I inhale slowly, not wanting to start crying again. “And she came to work for you after that? After you helped her like that?”

  Julian nods. “Yes. It wasn’t safe for her to stay in Tijuana, so I offered her a job as my personal cook and maid. She accepted, of course—it was far better than being a streetwalker in Mexico—and she traveled with me everywhere after that. It wasn’t until I decided to acquire you that I offered her the opportunity to stay permanently on the island and, well, you know the rest of the story.”

  “Yes, I do,” I murmur, pushing against his chest to extricate myself from his embrace—an embrace that suddenly feels suffocating rather than comforting. The ‘acquire you’ part of the story is an unpleasant reminder of how I came to be here . . . of the fact that the man by my side ruthlessly planned and carried out my abduction. On the spectrum of evil, Julian may not be all the way on the black side, but he’s not very far from it.

  Still, as da
ys go on, my nightmares slowly ease. As perverse as it is, now that I’m back with my kidnapper, I’m starting to heal from the ordeal of being stolen from him. Even my art has become more peaceful. I still feel compelled to paint the flames of the explosion, but I have begun to get interested in landscapes again, capturing on canvas the wild beauty of the rainforest that encroaches on the borders of the property.

  As before, Julian encourages my hobby. In addition to setting up the studio for me, he retained an art instructor—a thin, elderly man from the south of France who speaks English with a thick accent. Monsieur Bernard had taught in all the best art schools in Europe before retiring in his late seventies. I have no idea how Julian persuaded him to come to the estate, but I’m thankful for his presence. The techniques he teaches me are far more advanced than what I had learned through my instructional videos before, and I’m already starting to see a new level of sophistication in my art—as does Monsieur Bernard.

  “You have talent, Señora,” he says with his heavy French accent, examining my latest attempt at painting a sunset in the jungle. The trees look dark against the glowing orange and pink of the setting sun, with the edges of the painting blurred out and out of focus. “This has a—how do you say it? An almost sinister feel to it?” He glances at me, his faded gaze suddenly sharp with curiosity. “Yes,” he continues softly after studying me for a few moments. “You have talent and something more—something inside you that comes out through your art. A darkness I rarely see in one so young.”

  I don’t know how to respond to that, so I simply smile at him. I am not sure whether Monsieur Bernard knows about my husband’s profession, but I’m almost certain the elderly instructor has no idea how my relationship with Julian began.

  As far as the world is concerned now, I’m the pampered young wife of a handsome, rich man, and that’s all there is to it.

  * * *

  “I’ve enrolled you for the winter quarter at Stanford,” Julian says casually over dinner one night. “They have a new online program. It’s still in the experimental stages, but the early feedback is quite good. It’s all the same professors; it’s just that the lectures are recorded, instead of being live.”

  My jaw drops. I’m enrolled at Stanford? I had no idea college of any kind—much less a top ten university—was even on the table. “What?” I say incredulously, putting down my fork. Ana had prepared a delicious meal for us, but I no longer have any interest in the food on my plate, all my attention focused on Julian.

  He smiles at me calmly. “I promised your parents you would get a good education, and I’m delivering on that promise. You don’t like Stanford?”

  Stunned, I stare at him. I don’t have an opinion about Stanford because I had never even entertained the possibility of going there. My grades in school had been good, but my SAT scores weren’t sky-high, and my parents couldn’t have afforded such an expensive school anyway. Community college followed by a transfer to one of the state colleges was going to be my path to getting a degree, so I never looked at Stanford or any school of its caliber. “How did you get me in?” I finally manage to ask. “Isn’t their admission rate in the single digits? Or is the online program less competitive?”

  “No, it’s even more competitive, I believe,” Julian says, filling his plate with a second serving of chicken. “I think they’re only taking a hundred students for the program this year, and there were about ten thousand applicants.”

  “Then how did you—” I begin saying, then shut up as I realize that getting me into an elite school is child’s play to someone with Julian’s wealth and connections. “So I start in January?” I ask instead, excitement trickling through my veins as the shock begins to wear off. Stanford. Oh my God, I will be going to Stanford. I should probably feel guilty that I didn’t get in on my own merit—or at least be outraged at Julian’s high-handedness—but all I can think about is my parents’ reaction when I tell them the news. I will be going to freaking Stanford!

  Julian nods, reaching for more rice. “Yes, that’s when the winter quarter begins. They should email you an orientation packet in the next couple of days, so you’ll be able to order your textbooks once you find out the class requirements. I’ll make sure they’re delivered to you here in time.”

  “Wow, okay.” I know it’s not an appropriate response for something of this magnitude, but I can’t think of anything more clever to say. In less than two weeks, I will be a student at one of the most prestigious universities in the world—the last thing I expected when Julian came for me again. Granted, it will be an online program, but it’s still far better than anything I could’ve dreamed of.

  A number of questions occur to me. “What about my major? What will I be studying?” I ask, wondering if Julian made that decision for me too. The fact that he took the matter of my college education into his own hands doesn’t surprise me; after all, this is the man who abducted me and forced me to marry him. He’s not exactly big on giving me choices.

  Julian gives me an indulgent smile. “Whatever you want, my pet. I believe there is a common set of subjects you’ll need to take, so you won’t need to decide your major for a year or two. Do you have some ideas of what you want to study?”

  “No, not really.” I had been planning to take classes in different areas to figure out what I wanted to do, and I’m glad that Julian left me this option. In high school I had done equally well in most subjects, which made it hard to narrow down my career options.

  “Well, you still have time to figure it out,” Julian says, sounding for all the world like a guidance counselor. “There is no rush.”

  “Right, uh-huh.” A part of me can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Less than two hours ago, Julian cornered me by the pool and fucked my brains out on one of the lounge chairs. Less than five hours ago, he taught me how to disable a man by stabbing him in the eye with my fingers. Two nights ago, he tied me to our bed and whipped me with a flogger. And now we’re discussing my potential major in college? Trying to wrap my mind around such a strange turn of events, I ask Julian on autopilot, “So what did you study in college?”

  As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that I have no idea if Julian even went to college—that I still know very little about the man I sleep with every night. Frowning, I do some quick mental math. According to Rosa, Julian’s parents were killed twelve years ago, at which point he took over his father’s business. Given that about twenty months had passed since Beth told me that Julian was twenty-nine, he had to be somewhere around thirty-one today—which meant he took over his father’s business at nineteen.

  For the first time, it dawns on me that Julian had been right around my age when he took his father’s place as the head of an illegal drug operation and transformed it into a cutting-edge—though equally illegal—weapons empire.

  To my surprise, Julian says, “I studied electrical engineering.”

  “What?” I can’t hide my shock. “But I thought you took over your father’s business really young—”

  “I did.” Julian gives me an amused look. “I dropped out of Caltech after a year and a half. But while I was there, I studied electrical engineering through an accelerated program.”

  Caltech? I stare at Julian with newfound respect. I’ve always known that he’s smart, but engineering at Caltech is a whole different level of brilliance. “Is that why you chose to go into arms dealing? Because you had a background in engineering?”

  “Yes, partly. And partly because I saw more opportunities there than in the drug trade.”

  “More opportunities?” Picking up my fork, I twirl it between my fingers as I study Julian, trying to understand what would make one abandon one criminal enterprise for another. Surely someone with his level of intelligence and drive could’ve chosen to do something better—something less dangerous and immoral. “Why didn’t you just get your degree from Caltech and do something legitimate with it?” I ask after a few moments. “I’m sure you could’ve gotten
any job you wanted—or maybe started your own business if you didn’t like the corporate world.”

  He looks at me, his expression unreadable. “I thought about it,” he says, shocking me yet again. “When I left Colombia after Maria’s death, I wanted to be done with that world. For the rest of my teenage years, I tried my hardest to forget the lessons my father taught me, to keep the violence within me under control. That’s why I enrolled in Caltech—because I thought I could take a different path . . . become someone other than who I was meant to be.”

  I stare at him, my pulse quickening. This is the first time I’ve heard Julian admit to ever wanting something different than the life he’s currently leading. “So why didn’t you? Surely there was nothing tying you to that world once your father was dead . . .”

  “You’re right.” Julian gives me a thin smile. “I could’ve ignored my father’s death and let the other cartel take over his organization. It would’ve been easy. They had no idea where I was or what name I was using at that point, so I could’ve started fresh, finishing college and getting a job with one of the Silicon Valley start-ups. And I probably would’ve done that—if they hadn’t also killed my mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes.” His beautiful features twist with hatred. “They gunned her down right here on the estate, along with dozens of others. I couldn’t ignore that.”

  No, of course he couldn’t. Not somebody like Julian, who had already killed for revenge. Remembering the story he told me about the men who murdered Maria, I feel a chill rippling over my skin. “So you came back and killed them?”

  “Yes. I gathered all of my father’s remaining men and hired some new ones. We attacked in the middle of the night, striking at the cartel leaders right in their homes. They weren’t expecting such fast retaliation, and we caught them off-guard.” His lips curl into a dark smile. “By the time the morning came, there were no survivors—and I knew I had been foolish to think that I could ignore what I am . . . to imagine that I could be something other than the killer I was born to be.”