by Josie Litton
“You find it so unlikely?”
She shrugged slender shoulders perfectly contained within the jacket of her designer suit. “To be frank, I wouldn’t have thought you capable of any such concern. From what I understand, women have been entirely interchangeable--and disposal--to you.”
She wasn’t wrong; that was how I’d been before Grace. Still, I was curious as to how she knew. Even more, I wanted to draw her out and get her talking.
“How did you come to that conclusion?” I asked. “We scarcely know each other.”
“Give me some credit, Adam,” she chided. “Before I agreed to marry Sebastian, I considered a union with you instead. You are, after all, head of the Falzon family.”
And she was an ambitious woman who would never be satisfied with anything less than complete control--of her life and of any man she allowed into it. I suppressed a surge of gratitude for whatever she had discovered about me that convinced her to direct her attentions elsewhere.
Her gaze narrowed. I could almost see the calculations running through her mind. If she concluded that Sebastian had any real chance of replacing me, getting any useful information for her would become far more difficult and time consuming. Time that I didn’t have.
“I wouldn’t have expected him to present any real challenge to you.” She smiled faintly. “Yet here we are.”
I moved quickly to quash any misconceptions she might have. “Let me be clear: Sebastian will not become head of the Falzon family and he will not be marrying you. I spared him once. I will not do so again.”
“Even if that means you sacrifice the life of this woman you care about?”
She was shrewd, I had to give her that. But then I expected nothing less. Like me, Eloise was the product of generations of people who knew how to exploit any advantage and never hesitated to do so.
“Let me worry about her,” I said. “You should be concerned for yourself.”
Tilting her head slightly to one side, she studied me. “Why?”
“Because I’m not going to be satisfied simply with killing Sebastian. Anyone who has aided him in any way will also be held to account.”
Her gaze turned even frostier. “Before you go too far down that path, I suggest you remember that I am not without my own resources.”
I shrugged. “With all due respect to your family, Eloise, the crimes that the Utzingers have committed on their way up the social ladder could be best characterized as bloodless, at least for the most part. Whereas my family…” I broke off, content to leave the rest to her imagination.
A dark flush stained her cheeks. “I know what you Falzons are,” she hissed. “While I erred in thinking that Sebastian was more civilized, I would never make the same mistake about you.”
“Then you have every reason to tell me what I want to know.”
Her hands were tightly gripped in her lap; the knuckles were turning white. “What is that, exactly?”
“Where is he?”
She answered instantly, without hesitation. “I don’t know. We haven’t spoken in several weeks.”
I thought of how Grace hadn’t hesitated to put herself in deadly danger in order to save me. Eloise, on the other hand, had separated herself as quickly as possible from the man whose failed bid for power had made him an instant liability. The two women couldn’t have been more different.
“That’s hardly the behavior of a devoted fiancée,” I mocked, goading her.
“It’s the truth! I’ve been having second thoughts about the marriage. Challenging you to that bizarre duel would have been acceptable if Sebastian had won. But instead, he lost. I saw no way he could recover his standing within the family.”
“Then you had nothing to do with this latest challenge from him?”
“Absolutely not,” she insisted. “Moreover, I believe you when you say that you will kill him. Sebastian is a fool not to recognize a man who is his superior, if only in sheer strength of will and ruthlessness.”
I weighed what she was saying and decided to believe her, up to a point. If she had known what Sebastian was doing, a woman of Eloise’s self-centeredness would have made certain that she was somewhere well protected until his conflict with me was over, one way or another. She certainly would not have been out on the street, within easy reach of my men. Still, I wasn’t about to let her go.
“You may not know his immediate whereabouts.” I managed to speak with a semblance of calm but vital minutes were ticking by. I still had no idea where Grace was or what could be happening to her. The thin hold on my self-restraint was slipping fast.
“But you will have made it your business to learn everything you could about the man you were agreeing to marry,” I went on. “So think, Eloise, think long and hard. Where would Sebastian feel safest? Where is he likely to have hidden himself?”
A sullen silence drew out between us but it didn’t last long. I saw the shift behind her eyes, the moment she went from defiance to acceptance. Not sharing Sebastian’s guilt wasn’t the same as being seen as innocent. She would have to help me, if only to help herself.
“I’ll try,” she conceded.
I nodded and stood. “A man will be posted outside. When you have something useful for me, tell him.”
I moved to the door and opened it. Behind me, Eloise said, “I don’t know what you want me to think of.”
Over my shoulder, I said, “Anything, anywhere. A place he mentioned in passing. A stray comment. Someone he spoke to, something he showed interest in. There’s paper on the desk; make a list.”
I turned away from her and everything she represented only to wish for a cowardly moment that I could remain in that room, suspended in a moment in time where hope at least still existed.
Rolf was coming toward me. From the look on his face, I knew that what he had to say might be more than I would be able to bear.
Chapter Five
Adam
At first, I had no idea what I was looking at. There was a room, windowless and lined in stone. At a guess, I thought it was underground. The light was dim. I could just make out a metal frame with something circular rising out of it. It put me oddly in mind of a miniature Ferris wheel, although there was nothing remotely festive about the setting.
The messenger who had delivered the package containing the video was still being questioned by my men but I doubted they’d learn anything useful from him. There was a reason for using such an old-fashioned method. Any streamed content collected traces of every server it passed through. While there were ways--many well-known, others not--to mask such evidence, there were also increasingly sophisticated means to reveal it. Some of the world’s most resourceful hackers were on my payroll. They had yet to encounter a challenge they couldn’t handle.
But their expertise was useless in the non-binary human world where options remained vastly greater than anything a computer could conjure. The hapless messenger had been hired through a series of cut-outs, intermediaries who had already gone to ground. It would take days, if not longer, to find them and even then, there was no guarantee that any would know where the package had originated.
Abruptly, the room I was looking at on the video flooded with stark white light, so intense as to make it impossible to see anything. It faded gradually, revealing--
I dragged in air, fighting for control. My hands dug into the arms of my chair; distantly, I heard the wood creak as I came close to tearing it apart. My gaze was riveted to the scene in front of me. No matter how much I wanted to, I could not look away.
Grace was strapped to the metal wheel, her body arched over the curve of it. She was naked, held in place by wide black leather straps above and below her breasts, and around her hips and ankles. Her hair was sodden and matted to her head.
She looked terrified.
For very good reason. Two men stood beside the wheel, turning it slowly. With each downward swoop, she was submerged into the vat of water and held there, face down. One minute…One-and-a-half… Two minut
es…
Bubbles escaped through her nose as she fought the primal need to inhale. It was a losing battle. Inevitably, the buildup of carbon dioxide in her lungs with cause her diaphragm muscle to spasm. The spasms would increase in pain and intensity until she reached a breaking point where she could no longer resist the automatic reflex to breathe. Then she would drown.
Before that could happen--just before--the wheel swung upward. Grace dragged in air, her chest straining against the tightness of the straps. Her eyes were wide and filled with fear, her skin starkly white and chilled. Hypothermia had to be weakening her even further.
She had barely a chance to inhale before the wheel swung again, carrying her back down into the water.
I sat there and watched the torture continue. Watched her fight and suffer. Watched her strength fading along with her hope.
When at last the wheel stopped, she was slumped unconscious against the straps.
Sebastian stepped in front of the camera. His index finger traced the ridge of his scar in a motion that I suspected he wasn’t even aware of. I thought again of killing him--back on Malta, now, in the very immediate future. Before I was done, there would be nothing to put on display in a coffin, surrounded by flowers, to be wept over. The lid would have to be hammered shut to spare the viewers the horror inside. This I promised myself in the moments before he spoke.
“Poor, Grace,” the future corpse said. “As you can see, she’s having a bad time of it and all for your sake, cousin. I do hope that her faith in you isn’t misplaced. Either way, we’ll know soon. Bring the codes to the address included in the package. Come alone. As soon as they are verified, I’ll release her. Otherwise…”
The camera panned back, revealing more devices scattered around the room. At a glance, I saw a whipping post, several welding torches, and a noose hanging from the ceiling, positioned to assure slow strangulation rather than the greater mercy of a quick drop into a broken neck.
“Two hours, cousin. Don’t keep me waiting. If you do…” He shrugged. “I’ll send you whatever’s left of her.”
“You know he’s lying,” Rolf said the moment the video ended. He was sitting beside me, watching as I watched. He hadn’t moved, not a muscle, yet the look in his eyes said everything. Sebastian had gotten to him as effectively as he had to me.
Even so, Rolf added, “The moment he has the codes, you’ve signed your death warrant and Grace’s as well.”
Slowly, I nodded. A part of me wanted to believe that I could atone for everything I had done by dying for her. She would go on, have a life, be loved, grow old in peace and comfort. Except she wouldn’t. All the beauty and light, the goodness and courage that was Grace would be gone from the world. Because of me.
The monster flexed its claws again. In the dark reaches of its mind, the only glimmers of light had come from an inbred sense of duty and honor. It accepted both, relied on them. But now everything was different. What to make of this uncontrollable yearning, a bubbling in the veins, an irresistible euphoria that shattered the darkness and made all things seem possible? It was, in its own way, more frightening than anything that had gone before.
Still, it could not come close to equaling the ultimate terror: If I lost her…
Even the minds of monsters react instinctively to the most potent stimulus. Confronted by an abyss of grief and pain, it turned away, choosing instead to stalk out across its familiar territory where nothing existed except the hunt and the kill.
“What do we know about the address?” I asked, dragging my eyes from an inner landscape that I knew better than to contemplate for too long.
“It’s a small law practice,” Rolf said. “Recently retained by what the attorneys there think is an Italian export firm but is really just another in a long series of cut-outs. They don’t have any idea of what they’ve stepped into but they do have sufficient expertise to determine if the codes are genuine.”
They could be persuaded to lie but I suspected that Sebastian would have put safeguards in place to prevent that. He could have a man of his own inside the firm, watching for any hint of trickery. Whether he had thought of that or not, I couldn’t take the risk.
Two hours. No time at all. Or an eternity.
“Tell the men to be ready.” I stood, took the video, and headed back to my study.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eloise sat back in her chair and folded her hands. Calmly, she said, “That’s certainly a side of Sebastian that I haven’t seen before.”
Her eyes held a hint of muted surprise. The faint curl of her lip suggested mild distaste. Apart from that, she appeared unaffected by what she had just witnessed.
“Do you have any idea where it was filmed?” I asked.
It was a longshot at best but I calculated that Eloise would have investigated Sebastian at least as thoroughly as she had me before ever agreeing to marry him. She was far too intelligent not to learn everything possible about the man with whom she would be sharing bed, if only to get an heir or two. Yet, he had managed to conceal the darkest, foulest aspect of his nature from her.
Which was not to say that Eloise herself didn’t have her own secrets.
I had seen something in her face as she watched the video. An instant of recognition. A moment of unease.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps I was just desperate enough to seek answers where there were none.
Her gaze flicked to me. The monster looked back at her impassively. What little color had been in her face blanched away.
With a last glance at the now blank screen, she said, “I may.”
Chapter Six
Space heaters glowed in the windowless stone room, dispelling the chill that would otherwise have lurked there. I sat on a couch, staring at the door opposite me. It was closed but that didn’t matter. I knew all too well what was on the other side. The tank, the wheel, all the other terrifying instruments of suffering that I had glimpsed.
I was dressed again, better even than I had been when I had given myself up to save Adam. The white wool dress I wore was simple and elegant, gathered at the waist and reaching to mid-calf. There was even a soft cashmere shawl around my shoulders.
Beneath the clothes, I was clean, having been allowed to bath and shampoo my hair. I fought any urge to be glad of that. The small comfort was a trap, just as the food and water brought to me were. I’d taken enough psychology courses to understand what Sebastian was doing. Give the prisoner hope. Make her believe that the worst was over. Then plunge her back into pain and despair, further weakening whatever strength she had left. It would make for a good show.
Had Maria told Sebastian about the video cameras outside the cell? Was that where he’d gotten the idea of using me to draw Adam to him? I couldn’t blame her if she had but it didn’t matter.
This, all of it--the room, me, the things on the other side of the door--was a trap. It had one purpose only, to lure Adam in, get the codes, and kill him. He would come; I didn’t doubt that for a moment. And when he did--
A quiver of anger moved through me. I grabbed hold of it and held on, sensing through all the shock and fear that it was the most useful response to what was happening.
If I nurtured the anger, let it grow, I prayed that it would become big and strong enough to block out the fear that threatened to paralyze me. That I dared to do so was a little frightening by itself. It was so contrary to the way life had conditioned me to respond until very recently.
I plucked a crumb of bread from the untouched sandwich on the plate in front of me and thought about Sebastian. He had no interest in me; only Adam mattered to him. That being the case, there was at least a chance that he underestimated what I was capable of.
And what was that exactly?
To just sit there, pitifully glad to be clean, dry, and clothed--for the moment--while fearing what was to come?
Not if I was going to retain even a shred of self-respect.
I stood up, walked over to the door, and opened it.
The room beyond was empty. The halogen lights were off but I could see thanks to a scattering of wall lamps that cast a pale yellow glow. The water in the vat was still, the wheel unmoving.
I stopped at the door on the far side, put my ear to it, and listened. The murmur of voices reached me.
“Any word?”
Sebastian. Unfortunately, I was sufficiently well acquainted with his voice to know it anywhere.
“No, sir, not yet.” Another man, young, deferential.
“He’s not going to give us the codes, at least not without further persuasion.” That voice was older and it, too, was familiar. I had last heard it rising from the base of the tower on Malta, shortly before the duel.
His own father has denounced him. Wasn’t that what Adam said? Yet he had also left open the possibility that the man who had led the Falzon family after his parents’ death might not be entirely reconciled to giving up that position. Might even have killed to acquire it in the first place. I’m withholding judgment until I can determine the full extent of his guilt.
So far as I was concerned, the matter was settled. Sebastian’s father was conspiring with him to kill Adam. A man who could do that would not have hesitated to assassinate anyone who stood between him and the power he craved at all costs.
“Perhaps he is still too weak to give the necessary orders,” Sebastian said.
His father scoffed. “Don’t be a fool. He would never let even a serious wound deter him from doing as he wishes. He’s too strong for that, too driven.”
“You speak of him as though he isn’t really human.” Resentment boiled over in those words, the hurt of a man who had never been quite good enough.
“You are too young to understand what he did when he was still a boy. What he became.”
“You forget, I faced him on the field of honor.”
The older man made a sound of derision. “And you failed. Did you ever wonder why he spared you?”
“Why shouldn’t he have? The method of deciding leadership through single combat was never intended to kill members of the Falzon family. Only to establish primacy.”
