Chloe (Made Men #3)

by Sarah Brianne

  He desperately wanted a glimpse of her face, but she never turned around.

  Lucca found himself turning off the car and getting out, wondering how this was more important than anything else he could do with his time. His instincts were what kept him going, following her into the store.

  Lucca prided himself on being able to go unnoticed. His appearance of dark jeans, black shirts, and black sweatshirts allowed him to do that, plus his scruffy face and hair. He could go places no one in the family could go. Made men demanded attention with their suits and immaculate grooming, whereas he didn’t need that kind of attention. I have other ways to get the attention I demand.

  Entering the store undetected was easy with all the expensive shit it held. He navigated the store, finding the girl in all black who seemed to be looking for a particular piece. A slight glimpse of the left side of her face revealed her soft porcelain skin. He stalked closer.

  Have I seen her before?

  Another small glimpse revealed her young age.

  Stopping, he was about to turn around. She’s too young.

  The girl turned then went back to a table she had missed.

  His heart stopped a beat when he saw the whole left side of her face and a striking gray eye. The other half of her face was covered by a veil of hair. He wished he could reach out to feel the pure black strands of silk and move it to reveal the rest of her face.

  Leave now. Nothing good would come of this. He should have left the moment he had noticed she was just a teenage girl.

  He was unable to place it yet, but something about her called to him. It kept him from looking away from the girl and leaving.

  The whole thing felt so wrong yet so right. He was being pulled in different directions. His mind told him to leave, but his body kept him patiently waiting.

  Watching her hand go up to her face, he felt his breath catch in his throat when she swept her hair behind her ear. Fuck.

  His heart skipped another beat at the sight of her face in its entirety. His eyes traveled down the right side of her gorgeous face that held a scar from above her eyebrow down to the hollow of her cheek. Another one graced the right side above and below her luscious lips. The instinct to let his fingertips glide down each mark was so strong he thought he might break his cover.

  Her gray eyes held the story behind the scar, a story of sadness, grief, and torture. It was like staring at a perfect porcelain doll that had been dropped one too many times. Others would see a flaw in the cracked doll, making her no longer perfect, but he saw only beauty. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

  He could watch her study the delicate piece with gentle hands for hours.

  The gold, ornate piece she was infatuated with was unfamiliar to him until she opened the egg-shaped object, and music began to play. Her eyes danced as she watched a ballerina twirl to the music. He wondered what it would feel like if she looked at him that way.

  “It’s a beautiful piece, isn’t it?” the older woman who looked to be the storeowner asked as she came up to her.

  The girl quickly became startled, shutting the music box. He wanted her to go back to the way she had been a moment before.

  When her tongue peeked out to lick her lips, he eagerly waited to hear the voice that belonged to her.

  “Y-yes.” She went back to looking at the box, avoiding the gaze of the woman. “H-how much is it?”

  “Three thousand dollars.”

  She removed her fingers from the piece. “Oh.”

  The woman kindly smiled. “I know Christmas just passed, but you could always ask for it for your birthday, maybe. I could hold it.”

  She shook her head. “Thank you, but it’s too much.”

  The lady smiled. “Well, you could always come back if you talk your parents into it.”

  “Thank you.” The girl took one last glance at the music box before she left the store.

  Watching her leave was harder than he had thought it would be. He wouldn’t be able to come out of the store until she pulled out. Therefore, he had to watch her go to the car through the display window, and that wasn’t close enough for him.

  A vibration in his pocket had him pulling out his cell phone. He didn’t say a word when he accepted the call.

  His friend Sal came over the phone. “The BMW is registered to Maxwell Masters.”

  That wasn’t what he had expected, though it explained why he felt like he had seen her before.

  “Girl,” Lucca spoke into the phone carefully, watching her approach the driver’s side.

  “He’s married to Elaine Maste—”

  “Younger,” he cut him off.

  Sal paused. “Scar?”

  Lucca’s eyes traced her markings. “Yes.”

  “That’s Maxwell’s daughter, Chloe Masters.”

  He ended the call with the push of a button.

  Time stood still for him as he soaked in anything and everything he could about her before she disappeared into the car.

  There was always a moment one faced in life when a choice had to be made, and this was his.

  Her tortured soul called to his dark one, whispering for him to save her. His heart was now slow, steady, finding its purpose—Chloe Masters …

  Taking one last look at the scar on her face, he couldn’t wait for the day he could run his fingers across it. Beautiful.

  Forty

  The Being Behind the Door

  The cold, metal table underneath her was a stark contrast to her burning face from what seemed like pointless crying.

  “Please! Stop!” No amount of her kicking and fighting was a match for what felt like millions of hands holding her down.

  The laughter from the evil man who held a knife rang through her ears, mocking.

  “Stay still, little girl”—he drew the knife closer to her face—“or it’ll just hurt worse.”

  Looking at his abnormally large, black eyes, she was sure she was looking into the eyes of the devil …

  The silver blade inched closer and closer to her right eye until it was mere centimeters from her pupil.

  “Don’t blink.”

  A tear welled up in her eye, making it even harder as she struggled to keep her eye open. Her body began to tremble. She was going to blink.

  “Don’t blink, little girl,” he warned her again.

  The tear fell, and her eye started to close …

  “Chloe!” Amo’s voice boomed.

  A flicker of light entered her mind.

  “This way, Chloe!” Amo pleaded.

  Another flicker of light had her eyes shooting open. Sitting up so abruptly made her feel lightheaded. The bed, along with the big room, was one she didn’t recognize, which made her heart pound like a drum in her ears.

  No! He’s got me, and no one knows I’m even here.

  Shakily, Chloe stood from the bed, going over to the nightstand. Her hand reached out …

  The devil will kill me this time. He promised me he would.

  Once she opened the expensive, gold music box, the familiar lullaby began to play. It was then she realized that it couldn’t be hers. Chloe stepped to the huge window with a hitch in her breath. She slowly reached out to pull back the curtain.

  No one will save me this time.

  Pulling back the curtain, she held her breath as she was greeted with a beautiful garden along with the white gazebo she had found herself under before with …

  The door creaked open, and Chloe turned to meet the being behind the door.

  The dark voice made her gasp for air.

  “Hey, darlin’.”

  Forty-One

  The Moment

  You thought she had a choice? No. The Boogieman had decided her fate the moment he had looked upon her scarred face.

  The Moment

  There’s always a moment one faces in life,

  A moment one could never forget.

  And in this moment, you would swear time stood still.

  After that mom
ent, the tears begin to burn your cheeks.

  Your soul feels as if it were touched by darkness.

  And even if you never believed in God, your knees begin to bleed from praying so much.

  I faced that moment,

  A moment I will never forget.

  And in that moment, time did stand still.

  But my cheeks healed with time.

  My soul fought the darkness with light.

  And my knees, now calloused and scarred, are stronger than ever for the next moment when time stutters.

  Sarah Brianne

  Please, if you or someone you know ever needs help, follow this link to get more information and help.

  YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

  http://www.victimsofcrime.org/help-for-crime-victims/national-hotlines-and-helpful-links

  Behind The Marquess’s Mask

  The Lords of Whitehall

  Kristen McLean

  Available Now!

  Prologue

  France 1818

  Grey had been the Marquess of Ainsley for nigh on a decade, his numerous estates being some of the most profitable in England. Numerous estates with enormous, warm, coma-inducing beds, each one piled high with mountains of pillows.

  Why the devil was he now lying on the coldest, most uncomfortable cot in all of Christendom?

  “He is awake.”

  Someone spoke in French. If anyone were speaking French in his boudoir, it ought to be with a husky, feminine drawl, not the rough growl he had just heard. Now that he thought of it, along with the pillows, there was a shocking lack of silk and feathers.

  This was all wrong, very wrong.

  He opened his eyes, and the large, cold stones forming the ceiling slowly came into focus. That along with the cool feel of iron at his wrists and ankles and the two men glaring menacingly in his direction made it profoundly clear the nightmare he had been plagued with was quite real.

  He was still in France, only now he was in prison. He had been caught.

  “We want their names.”

  “I have no names,” Grey lied. “I am utterly nameless.” It wasn’t meant to be a slurred mumble, but his mouth felt stuffed full of cotton, and his lips wouldn’t move. They were swollen, stiff, as was the rest of him.

  “Your friend is dead,” one of them said. “Do you wish to join him?”

  That meant Johnny had kept silent to the end. He had been a good lad—just a lad—and had died a nobody with no funeral or grave for loved ones to visit. Disappearing without notice, he would have no honor, no glory, no great eulogy commending his bravery in the face of torture and death—all things Grey had told him would happen the day he had signed on.

  “Go to hell,” Grey growled.

  One of the men, an overly large behemoth with an atrocious moustache, laughed as he brandished a long knife with a thick blade. He moved to stand next to Grey, who was strapped on his back to a wooden table. Arguably, it was not the best position to be in whilst issuing threats.

  What shall be first? Grey wondered. His ears? His fingers, maybe? Not his tongue; they needed that.

  “The man you sliced from ear to ear,” the behemoth said, “was my brother.”

  Ears, then.

  The man in question had been stealing the names of England’s best agents to sell to her enemies. Had he succeeded, the death toll would have been devastating, though more in quality than in quantity. Grey had caught him in a bordello and taken him out the same way the bastard was known to have done to some of Grey’s comrades, drawing notice like a loggerheaded rookie.

  Then Grey had been caught, which he had expected. What he had not expected was to find Johnny five feet behind him instead of across the street where he should have been. That was when Grey had learned it was much harder to escape with a green lad hanging on to his coattails.

  Grey lifted his head with an icy smile. “He cried, begged for his life.”

  A meaty fist pounded into Grey’s face, forcing his head back into the table. His head spun, but he swallowed back the nausea, refusing to give the cur the satisfaction of seeing the impact of the blow or giving the misapprehension that he’d had enough. Grey had not been punished nearly enough.

  The coppery taste of blood gathered in his mouth. How accommodating. He amassed a glob of blood on his tongue and sent it flying at the commodious mammoth. Then he grinned, no doubt looking utterly ridiculous with crimson covering his teeth and dribbling down his chin.

  The man growled, his hand flexing around the knife. “I can make you cry. I can make you beg for your life.”

  Grey’s grin turned into a grimace as the knife dug into his shoulder. He was accustomed to pain. He could handle it.

  He shut his eyes as the blade slowly began tearing a jagged trail across his chest like a sash, agonizingly deep. Every inch was unbearable. His hands fisted and his teeth ached from the pressure of his jaw, but hell if he would scream so easily. Not out loud, at any rate.

  Progress on the new canal halted midway through.

  “Rather unsporting to stop now,” Grey forced out. “Carry on.” Get the bloody thing over with! was what he meant to say.

  He heard voices, people arguing, and then liquid was splashed over the wound, rendering the pain a hair past excruciating. A moment later, the knife was back to finish its work.

  The rut the colossus was gouging reached his cracked ribs, and soon, Grey was growling through gritted teeth. His were not the torturous screams Johnny’s had been. Those would come later—he had no doubt—but not yet.

  He was distantly aware of a door swinging open and the knife being lifted, but by then he was fading in and out of consciousness. Reality rippled into obscurity. Only the pain kept him rooted in the present, reminding him where he was and what was happening to him.

  There was so much blood. He felt it streaming off his torso like a damned waterfall onto the table, but he couldn’t open his eyes to survey the damage. He hadn’t the strength. He had been held in a cell without food and with very little water for days. How could they possibly expect him to rattle off the twenty-two names if he hadn’t the strength to speak?

  Of course, he would cut out his own tongue before he gave them a single syllable.

  “Greydon!”

  The Earl of Grenville’s voice echoed in his head, but Grenville was still in Calais, heading up the other team there. Grey must be dying or already dead.

  “Too fast,” he mumbled. “Should hurt more. Don’t deserve—”

  “Greydon, goddammit, pull yourself together. It’s merely a flesh wound!”

  It was just like Grenville to understate the circumstances. Control panic, he always said, control the situation.

  Grey laughed feebly, but it cost him. The pain was monstrous. His fractured bones vied for precedence over the nasty geyser of blood across his chest. Then he was sinking again into the black depths of unconsciousness where the pain ebbed, where the duty and disappointments of this life slipped away to nothingness. There were no more shadows to chase, innocents to protect, or king and country to defend. He had been waiting some time for this kind of black abyss to swallow him up.

  Now he let it, gladly.

  One

  London 1819

  Arctic winds cut through London, exacerbating an already harsh winter and causing the snows of February to linger into March. The cobblestones were transformed into a generous layer of muddy slush as horses and carriages passed through the streets with their usual ferocity. The gray sky, thick fog, and slush, which splattered over anything and everything daring to venture out of doors, quickly turned the beautiful capital into a dirty heap of depression.

  Kathryn understood exactly why so many decided to quit such a condensed package of cold, miserable filth for the solitude of the country or warmth of Italy.

  They were sane.

  The unlucky few who were forced to stay or too dense to leave would not part with the warmth of their own parlors without promise of diversion in a well-lit, fashionable, and
quite clean venue. Kathryn might have been born with enough brains to avoid London’s winters, but she had never had the best of luck, which was why she, along with a couple hundred of her peers, had crammed into Covent Garden to attend an opera they had all been to before.

  Kathryn sat patiently in her seat well into the second aria as the latecomers straggled in to take their seats. However, now that everyone was nicely settled and properly pretending to enjoy the production below, Kathryn was slipping out. Thankfully, Lord Huntly and her mother, Lady Grenville, were seated in front of her, so they shouldn’t see her leave. As for the gentleman sitting next to her, well, he ought to wake up in about half an hour.

  Kathryn had business to tend to that she had been painstakingly piecing together for weeks, important business for the Home Office. The Home Office might not exactly be aware she was taking care of it for them, but it was something they would be grateful to have done once it was off their plate. Surely.

  She was bored with the little tasks the Home Office had been handing her, so she had taken the file from the Director of Covert Affairs’ desk when she had brought him the fruitcakes. Father’s old military crony, he might be; organized, he was not. He hadn’t even noticed it missing. Now she finally had an adventure amidst the humdrum of the London season.

  And here she thought this would be just another year of enduring pitying glances and barely veiled insults toward being six and twenty and unwed. As if that were all a female could want in life. A man who could tempt Kathryn to a life of boring matronly duties did not exist, not after the horrors her aunt had faced under a husband’s booted heel.

  As she had expected, the crème-paneled hall was empty. She picked up her skirts so she would not trip over them as she hurried through the halls and down the stairs toward the foyer. Thoughts swirled in her head of shadowed figures in capes and hoods, exchanging envelopes in dark alleys and whispering. Surely, it was not truly that exciting, but her heart began racing all the same, and she had to suppress a girlish giggle when her eyes fixed on the large doors opening out into the street.