by E. S. Carter
It didn’t make telling Luke the news any easier, though. And like the coward I’m starting to realise I am, I’d told him in front of both Grim and Cole.
It hadn’t gone well.
I have a feeling he wanted to punish me for the decision, and I couldn’t tell if that meant he wanted to fuck me or fight me. Possibly both.
* * *
“The thing between you and him is new,” Lily asks softly, breaking the silence between us. The hustle and bustle of the house during the last hour has left behind a stillness that is more disconcerting than the noise and chaos.
I turn from my position at the front window, where I’ve been standing since they left less than twenty minutes ago, and face the woman who is sat on the tatty old sofa of the farmhouse’s front room with her legs tucked under her. She seems smaller than she ever has, but there’s a gleam in her eyes that seems almost preternatural. Maybe it was always there, but the months of abuse had dulled it and it was only now beginning to shine.
She’s freshly showered and wearing clothes from one of Cole’s smallest men, and they still swamp her, but she seems happy to be clean and fully dressed for what must be the first time in months. Although she still looks frail, it’s incredible what some food and a hot shower will do to someone’s wellbeing, and I finally see the girl she once was beneath the shell of a person we found yesterday.
“I’m not sure I’d call it a thing,” I begin with a shrug.
“Oh no,” she agrees. “It’s much more than a thing, but I can’t find the right word for it. I was hoping you’d know more than me.” She smiles, her tone teasing, and I find I want to talk to her. I want to share this burden with someone else and hope they offer some insight that will stop me from tearing myself apart because of this man.
“I have a young daughter,” I tell her. The admission coming out without thought.
“And you worry about Luke around her?”
Do I?
“No,” I confess, feeling the truth of that one word. “I’m not worried about that. I can’t see Luke ever allowing this thing as you call it to become suburban enough to want to meet my child.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
I smile at the girl who has overcome more than any one person should. We share a commonality, her and I, both born of perverts and monsters.
“Everything is finite,” I answer after a moment’s pause. “Nothing lasts forever. I’ve learned in life to take what I can get. This thing with Luke has a limited lifespan. There’s no need for me to plan for more.”
“I think Luke plans,” she says with a frown. “Be careful. I’ve seen men like him. They will never give up something they feel belongs to them.”
Her observation is too close to the bone. I also know men like Luke. You don’t just cut ties with them. Not unless they are the ones holding the scissors.
“Are you excited to meet your sister?” I ask in a not so subtle attempt at changing the subject.
She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, and for the first time, I see doubt in her eyes. Doubt and something I’m having difficulty placing. It looks a lot like disgust, but I must be reading her wrong.
“I’m not sure meeting Faye is a good idea. We were never meant to meet. We are from different lives.”
What a strange response.
When Cole had sat with her and grilled her about her captivity and her life before the Dominion, I watched not only to ensure her safety but also to see her response.
She’d cried when he told her she had a sister. They were tears of shock and joy, not a trace of anxiety to be seen, so I’m confused by her words.
“Some lives are meant to cross. Finding a sister in all this horror seems a blessing to me. Or are you worried she won’t accept you?”
Again, that look I can’t pinpoint flashes across her eyes before she schools her features and replies with a stilted, “It will be good to meet her, and I hope she feels the same way. I always wanted a sibling when I was a child.” Then she abruptly stands and adds, “I’m actually feeling exhausted. I think I need to go and lie down.”
I nod at her and offer a soft smile as she turns without barely looking at me and leaves the room.
I hear her soft footfalls on the stairs and wonder what the hell just made her so skittish. She went from wanting to chat to having restless limbs, and her gaze flitted around the room landing anywhere but on me.
It was more than the mention of Faye, but I couldn’t put my finger on what had sent her running.
Shaking off my concern for Lily, I do a quick perimeter check before deciding now would be a good time to touch base with Alice. I never call or video chat with her when those I work with are around. This life is separate to the one I share with her. I want my daughter as far away from it as possible.
Figuring I’ll multitask, I set up some salad vegetables on the counter, prop up my tablet so Alice can see my face and hit dial while chopping up some lettuce and tomatoes.
Alice lives almost full time with her Godmother and her husband. I don’t like the situation, but it’s safest this way. Mari has no link to my life whatsoever. Her only connection to me is via my dead wife—they were childhood best friends, and when we had our children, she was Godmother to them both.
She knows who I am and what I do and she is as committed as I am to keeping Alice far away from it.
The electronic beeping of the call connecting echoes around the kitchen as I start to slice into a tomato. The juice spills all over my fingers and onto the chipped Formica countertop, and it makes me smile at old memories. Fiona, my wife, always said I made a ridiculous amount of mess in the kitchen during my poor attempts at wooing her with my cooking. She called me Chef Wannabe because I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing, but I always failed spectacularly.
It’s rare that I allow myself to think of her, but waiting to talk to Alice has those I’ve lost at the forefront of my mind.
There’s a brief silence as the call connects before Mari’s voice comes over the tinny speakers.
“How domesticated of you. Wait? Have you gone back to the seventies?”
I can’t help but laugh. Mari has a dry and often caustic sense of humour. Talking to her and seeing her face after the last few days makes me feel like I’m currently on the moon while she’s still on earth.
“Something like that,” I reply with a snort. “How’re things?”
I pick up another tomato from the pile and turn to look at her face on the screen.
“Oh, please,” she says while rolling her eyes. “You’re not interested in my day-to-day, you’ve called to speak to Alice. She’s out the back garden with David. I’ll go call her.”
She disappears from view, and I wipe at my hands wanting to be ready when the person I adore beyond all others pops up on the screen. With her long dark hair, wide green eyes, and freckles across a button nose, she’s the image of her mother, and it’s a bittersweet connection to the woman in whose image she was made, but she’ll never get to know.
Mari does a good job of keeping Fiona’s memory alive and Alice often asks questions about her mother and brother, the only truth we withhold from her is what happened to them. Alice will never know that her evil and corrupt grandparents are responsible for the murder of her mother and baby brother. No good can come of that knowledge, just look at me. I continue to lose, even when I’ve already lost almost my whole world.
I should be the one to care for my daughter. Instead, I continue with my quest to avenge those that were taken from me, and, in turn, have lost the right to have my little girl in my life full-time. It’s the price I pay for vengeance. One of the many.
The sound of little feet running across a tiled floor come from the tablet, and I pull out a chair to sit at the table, wincing slightly at the discomfort in my rear. Every time I move, the ache there reminds me of him. Even when he’s not here he makes his presence known.
“Daddy, Daddy,” the sweet voice yells even though she’s
nowhere near the screen yet and a broad smile stretches my face wide. I lean forward and—
Boom.
The house shakes, the tomatoes roll off the counter to splat on the floor, the tablet on the table tips back until the screen faces the ceiling and dishes rattle in the sink.
What the hell.
“Daddy, Daddy! Where are you, I can’t see you?”
A window smashes somewhere at the front of the house and smoke begins to spread from the front room into the hall.
I lean forward and cut the connection on the video call without saying a word to my daughter or seeing her beautiful face. Hopefully, Mari will cover for me and tell her my Wi-Fi is down because there’s no way I want her to know that we’re under attack.
The smoke from the canister thrown through the window thickens and burns my eyes, and I grab the two guns and a knife that were left for me in case of emergency and drop to the floor, my eyes watering in the acrid air. I scan my surroundings as best I can and crouch my way to the kitchen doorway.
The smoke is thicker here, and the closer I get to the front room, the louder the crack and hiss from the fire outside sounds. They must’ve blown up the barn. Shit. We are like sitting ducks.
Thump. The sound comes from upstairs.
“Lily,” I yell, choking on the second syllable of her name as the acerbic fog fills my lungs. “Lily, stay where you are. I’m coming up to you.”
She doesn’t yell back, but I hear more thumping followed by a muffled yell.
“Lily,” I roar before charging down the hallway, gun raised. I stumble as I struggle to take the stairs too quickly. The almost zero visibility on the ground floor indicating that more than one smoke bomb was used.
Glass smashes somewhere above me, propelling me to move faster, and without thought for what I may encounter, I push through the dense fog and make it to the landing. The smoke isn’t quite as thick up here, but my lungs are paying for the amount I’ve already inhaled.
Keeping low, I make it to the doorway of the first room and find it empty. The place that Lily was sleeping in is next. The door is wide open, and no sound comes from within.
“Lily,” I splutter. “Lily, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
I take the other gun out of my waistband and with a weapon in each hand I spin and aim into Lily’s room.
The bedding is rumpled, the iron-framed bed askew, but the room is empty. The net curtains blow in the breeze, the scent of burning wood getting stronger the closer I get to them. Pushing the torn and yellowing fabric aside, I find an entire pane broken, but no shards can be found on the floor at my feet which means it was smashed from the inside.
Sure enough, the grass below is covered in broken glass that sparkles like diamonds under the early morning sun.
This room faces the side of the house that backs onto open fields, but I can still see the far corner of the old barn, or, what is left of the old barn. Flames lick the sky as the collapsed building burns like a bonfire.
Tires screech from somewhere at the front of the property, and I quickly estimate the drop to the ground below me. I can make it if I use the ledge as a halfway point, but I’ll be unable to keep a weapon in my hands while I do. This will leave me vulnerable and exposed. A quick scan of the area doesn’t indicate anyone lying in wait, so with my decision made, I tuck both guns away in the back of my waist, and climb over the sill until I can lower myself to the ledge. Seconds later I’m on the ground, my palm landing awkwardly on one particularly sharp piece of glass that punctures the heel of my hand. Pulling it out, I swallow down the pain and discard the offensive item before once more gripping a weapon in each hand.
Laughter, free and loud, carries on the air. It’s not the uncouth roar of men on the kill, it’s almost musical and most definitely feminine.
With my weapons ready—blood making the handle of one slick in my palm—I sprint to the edge of the house and carefully peer around it.
A car drives away, engine roaring, kicking up dust on the dirt track with another close behind.
It’s the second car that draws my interest because Lily is inside it.
She’s not tied up and gagged or restrained in any way. She doesn’t have a knife to her throat or a gun to her head. No, she’s sat in the front seat, elation, joy and excitement painting her cheeks a rosy red, her face beaming, a broad and carefree smile stretching her lips as she throws her head back and laughs once more. She laughs, and the man driving the vehicle releases one hand from the wheel and grips her by the neck to drag her to him for a plundering kiss. It’s aggressive but not unwanted. She falls into the embrace like a flower turning to the sun.
It’s when they break apart and he guns the car down the pitted driveway, that I see the person driving is Sasha Federov.
Lily has been taken by the one who kept her as a slave for months. No, taken is wrong. She’s gone willingly, and the realisation makes my mind spin.
Have we been played by the broken, weak girl who needed our help to escape this monster?
Fuck. I hope for her sake I’m wrong because Luke will skin her alive.
Shit. Luke. They’ve gone to end Federov today, only he’s, once again, a step ahead.
Cole, Grim and Luke have driven straight into another trap, and I have no way of alerting them.
Unless…
I run back into the house, the smoke still thick and choking, but I need my tablet.
It’s exactly where I left it on the kitchen table, so I grab it and a bottle of water that’s rolled onto the floor and burst through the back door into the fresh air.
There’s only one person who could get hold of them.
Lily’s sister.
Cole’s wife.
Faye Hunter nee Craven.
Eighteen
Lily
* * *
He came for me.
He promised me he would.
“Lily. This is wrong. He is wrong. He will be the end of you. Don’t wear the red dress. Don’t wear the red dress.”
“Shut up, mother,” I hiss, smacking at the side of my head to tell her incessant voice to quieten the fuck down. “I’m sick of your shit. Sash gutted you from neck to belly, and yet you still won’t let me live my life. Always on at me. Always trying to get me to take those fucking meds that made me feel like a zombie.”
I stride to the bathroom, determined to drown her out with a hot shower, mumbling, “He should’ve cut out your fucking tongue.”
I strip naked, my hands finding the delicate bones of my ribs that protrude through my skin. Sasha had left me too long this time. I knew why, I knew he needed me as bait for the Hunter brothers, but still, he could’ve told those bastards to feed me more than once a week.
The fucking was fine. I could cope with that. I even enjoyed the beatings. Occasionally, I got to fight back. Those were the best times. I loved getting to make others bleed.
Killing Ivan was my favourite. I’d known James and Luke were there long before Ivan strolled into that room with his tiny dick out. Sasha had them in a rat trap, leading them this way and that until they were exactly where he wanted them to be. He toyed with them and enticed them into his maze.
Neither one had any idea.
Idiots.
Luke Hunter is drunk on his power. He thinks as the head of the Red Order he’s untouchable. The only reason I didn’t kill him with that gun was because Sasha had forbidden it. But, I will get to see the man who murdered my father die.
Luke is about to appear in one of Sasha’s films. His co-stars will be his brothers—Cole Hunter and the one they called Grim. All of them had a hand in my father’s demise. All of them will pay dearly for it.
I will be the director. Sasha’s promised me the job, he said I was born for it.
The bastard that smells of death will never know his own is upon him until it’s too late.
Which just leaves Faye—my long-lost sister.
I wanted her to witness everyone close to her dy
ing. I wanted to watch her face as the light faded in her husband’s eyes.
But Sasha is right. Getting her here is too dangerous.
That’s why we’ll be visiting her with her own copy. We’ll watch it with her, of course. I’ll even give her the director’s exclusive narration. A one of a kind experience.
Then she too will die.
Drowning, I think.
I’m sure Sasha will let me choose her demise.
He’ll give me anything I want. He loves me.
Together we will end the Red Order, and The Dominion will rule.
I will reign at his side as his queen.
And the world will be our playground.
I’ve convinced him to spare James for now. I’m still deciding the Ocean’s fate. I could make him one of our stars like the others, but a part of me doesn’t think he is one.
We’ll see. There will always be more movies to make.
I sigh, and feel the vibration of all this power skittering over my skin and making me horny.
As I step into the hot stream of water, the temperature on max so I can feel the burn on my skin, I slip my hands to my sore cunt and tease the throbbing bundle of nerves there.
It’s been so long since Sasha fucked me. I hope he finds me touching myself. It always sends him into a frenzy.
Now I’m out from under the Hunter’s scrutiny, I’m free to be me.
“You’ll never be free, Lily. You can be better than this. The ocean will help you. Be better, Lily.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I scream before slamming my head into the tiled wall of the shower cubicle over and over again until I see blood. “Why won’t you just die,” I beg.
My mother sobs. She wails in my head like a banshee, and I cover my ears and slide down to the shower floor.
I’m glad the drugs Sasha gave me to play the game are wearing off. I can be me now. The only problem is, the more of me that’s uncovered, the more of her that clings to my mind demanding to be heard.
Those drugs may cover my true nature, but they also smother her out a little. She always wanted me to be like her, whereas my father loved me just the way I am.
