by KD Robichaux
“She was the one I thought I was meant to be with,” he reiterates, digging the knife in my heart a little deeper, “until I met you, Astrid.”
I close my eyes, not believing him. There’s no way that’s true.
“I need to tell you something. Something no one else in this entire world knows—not even my team,” he says, and my eyes shoot to his. He wants to confide in me? He wants to tell me something that he’s never divulged to people he calls his family, people he’s known for a decade or more?
I’m suddenly nervous. What secret could he possibly have that he’s never told a single soul?
“But you have to promise me, goddess, you have to promise never to tell anyone, no matter what, and I pray to God you’ll still see me as your hero when I’m through.” His voice is serious but ends on a note of hope. It’s worrisome, wondering what he needs to tell me, but at the same time I know there’s nothing in the world that could possibly make me look at him any differently.
I nod shallowly. “Okay,” I whisper, as if someone might hear our conversation, this big secret he’s held onto for who knows how long.
He closes his eyes and begins to talk, and I stay there, holding his fist between my hands, watching the emotions play over his face.
He tells me about the girl he fell in love with in the second grade. Shelly. Who brought light into the shy and serious, young Neil’s life like he’d never known before. They were inseparable. Together from elementary school all the way up through high school. And then something terrible happened. Shelly was assaulted at a party while Neil was at home sick.
I listen to his story, tears filling my eyes as I listen to his voice grow hoarse with emotion as he tells me about finding her hiding in the closet when his mom and he got to the house the party was being held at. They’d scooped her up and taken her to the hospital, filed a police report turning in the seventeen-year-old boy who had raped her.
He told me about the trial. How the boy had come from money and the best defense lawyer around.
How the judge had barely given him a slap on the wrist for what he’d done to his sweet Shelly, because he didn’t want to ruin the life he still had ahead of him.
They used the excuse to let him off easy because he was only seventeen, not legally an adult yet.
But Neil doubted, the way everything played out, that if he had been eighteen it would’ve been any different.
Shelly sank into a deep depression that became worse as the weeks went on, having to go to school and endure being in the presence of her rapist every day. And he couldn’t have just bowed out gracefully. Apologized to her for what he’d done. Or just left her the fuck alone about it, period. No, he couldn’t even pretend it didn’t happen for her sake. He gloated. He taunted her with the fact that he’d gotten away with what he did to her, going so far as to threaten to do it again, since she’d been such a good lay. He liked that she’d fought him instead of giving it up easy like all the rest of the girls did.
Of course, he never said any of this in front of Neil.
And Shelly never told Neil about it either.
Neil had no idea any of that was happening. He thought she was slowly trying to get better and heal, since she was going to a therapist specializing in sexual assault victims.
No, young, innocent Neil, the one who had already saved up half the money for the engagement ring he’d give his sweetheart when they’d graduate, who already had his acceptance letter to go to the same college as his girl so they’d never have to be apart, he found out all about the things Shelly kept secret… in her suicide note.
The tears are pouring down my cheeks as he tells me what happened to the girl he thought was the love of his life before. I kneel, sobbing at his feet, my forehead pressed to his fist between my hands as my pretty new shirt soaks up the ink from the pen he snapped in half as he listened to me rant about not feeling like I’m good enough, how I’d never be worthy of a man like him, as his worry about my self-deprecation and low self-esteem and my baggage grew, most likely thinking it would lead me to do something like his Shelly did.
“And that was the catalyst. That was the spark that set my life in motion. I’d planned to become a doctor, but after what happened with Shelly, I knew I needed to do something to help girls… women like her. So I became a psychologist and spent my life learning every technique to help heal those victims. Along the way, one of those techniques involved the BDSM lifestyle, using Dominance and submission to gain back their power.” He sighs, and I look up to meet his eyes. “But that’s not all, goddess. That’s not everything I need to tell you.”
I nod, urging him to go on, growing addicted to the feeling of learning things about Neil that no one else knows. I believe him now. I believe he feels I’m the love of his life; I’m not just a replacement. Because if he didn’t, why would he be telling me his deepest, darkest secrets?
“There was a patient. Up until her, I’d gotten lucky. All of them were success stories, healing and moving on with their lives. But then it happened again. She ended up committing suicide before I had a chance to help her. And there was no justice for her. Shelly killed herself; her attacker wasn’t the one who slit her wrists. This patient’s attacker wasn’t the one who filled her belly full of pills. But before all that, both of the rapists got away with it. Neither even did jail time. There was always an excuse. Age for the first, and then the second for inadequate evidence. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something. These motherfuckers couldn’t keep getting away with what they were doing to these women. And so I formulated a plan.”
A sense of urgency fills me. Excitement at his words. I’m hooked, wondering what’s to come from his lips as he tells me this story that seems like one of those things that happens to someone else, but never to you. He’s telling me the story of how he became not only a psychologist, but also the creator of his amazing security team who saved my sister.
I need him to speak faster. I need him to get it out now. Rip off the Band-Aid and let me see the scar beneath it, a wound that was there but healed. Something that nearly killed him, but he survived with a little permanent spot of proof that it actually happened; it wasn’t just a bad dream. Then, I’ll allow myself to hope. Then, I’ll be able to believe I can fully heal too. Because Neil did.
“With all the skills I learned as a psychologist, I used my profiling abilities to find someone with talents I didn’t have. Computer knowledge—in my mind, I was thinking maybe a hacker. Instead, I found a child prodigy turned technological genius. I found him on my own, approached him and confided in him what I wanted to do. It was a leap of faith on my part, and thank God it worked out,” he breathes.
“Seth,” I murmur, more to myself than him but needing to say something to keep him going.
“Seth, aka Seven at Club Alias. But I’ll get to that bit later. Seth was Plan A. More often than not, whether the victim was a success story or not, the attacker got off with minimal punishment. They were never held accountable for the crimes they committed. Seth helped dig into backgrounds, get past firewalls… really anything we needed in order to make these men pay in our own special way. We drained all their accounts and gave the money to the victims by anonymous donors. Public humiliation by an unknown source, like exposing personal information they certainly did not want let loose. That sort of thing.
“The plan was going great. It was making me feel a hell of a lot better, this twisted game of Robin Hood—instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, we were stealing everything from the rapists and giving it all to their victims. It was doing wonders to lessen the guilt I never let go when it came to Shelly, and then with every patient I was never able to help. I could sleep better at night knowing I was doing something.”
I want to say something, anything about how he shouldn’t have felt any kind of guilt over Shelly and the other girls, but I realized I didn’t have room to talk about feeling undeserved blame.
“This went on a while. And righ
t when I was feeling like I was really doing what I was meant to with my life… it happened again. Not my patient, but her best friend, who was assaulted with her by the same person, ended her life when she wasn’t able to get help. Heroin overdose. And like clockwork, the motherfucker got away with it, the brother of the police chief. This time, something in me snapped. These girls lives were ending. Taking these sadistic fucks’ money wasn’t enough.
“So then came Plan B. We needed someone else on this team I formed with Seth. Because while I was the one who would pick our marks, and while Seth was the one who could get us in anywhere to take care of the job, we needed a very special person to actually follow through with it and would hold to the code I could live with—a life for a life. We needed someone with either a military or law enforcement background, someone who didn’t have a problem using his skillset on a civilian. We needed a vigilante,” he says, but I feel like I’m missing something.
I thought he was telling me the story of how he formed Imperium Security, his security team who went in and rescued my sister. This entire time he’s been speaking, I thought he was going to tell me he formed his team in order to keep women safer, to maybe guard victims from their attackers so they wouldn’t have to worry about it happening again, like his Shelly’s rapist had threatened. But this sounds like something else entirely.
“I used my profiling abilities to find and select a very special couple of men, each with a set of their own skills that would help form this perfect team with Seth and me. Each of us was a separate gear in this living machine, our teeth fitting together and moving in a way that nothing could possibly stop us. Next came Brian, also known as Knight,” he says low, and I picture the towering giant of a man who would be intimidating as fuck if I hadn’t witnessed he was wrapped around his tiny, sweet wife’s little finger. But I have no doubt he could kill someone stealthily and make it look like an accident.
“And after him came Corbin, aka Sarge at the club.” He pulls in a deep breath through his nose and lets it out slow, his eyes coming to mine now after having gone distant as he looked into the past. I brace myself, knowing this is it. This is when he confirms what I’ve already put together in my mind. “And together we formed Imperium Security, a cover for our mercenary team.”
Mercenary team.
They’re mercenaries.
The man I love… is a mercenary.
Hell, the man my sister married, my brother-in-law, another man I love in my own special, familial way, and the father of my future niece, is a mercenary.
The two other men I’ve been around enough to call actual friends… are mercenaries. They each have wives, and Corbin has kids, and all of them know that these men we cherish and love with our very souls… kill people—albeit very bad people—for a living. Wait… do they?
“Do… do Twyla, Vi, and Clarice know? Or is this part something you expect me to be able to keep from them?” My eyes have gone wide.
Neil reaches down and strokes my cheek, his face going soft. “They know, goddess.”
A sense of relief fills me at that, and I begin to add it all up in my head. I skim through a hundred conversations I’ve witnessed between these men that seemed to be in some sort of code, and it all clicks into place. I’d been at the hospital when the team brought my sister after they rescued her. I’d heard countless stories of security details they’d been paid to do, so Imperium Security wasn’t an all-out lie. It was just… more than what everyone was led to believe it was.
And as my mind whirls with all this knowledge I now understand to be true, one thing stands out to me, a conversation I heard at the hospital while I held Twyla’s hand and the four men talked outside her room.
“Just this once. Just this once, man, and we’ll never have to worry about him getting out of it like they always do,” Seth raged.
Neil’s voice had come next. “There are eye-witnesses. Way too much evidence this time. Combined with the restraining order and police report containing Astrid’s photos from when he beat her, he won’t get away with it. He won’t. Remember, life for a life. Your girl is still alive, right there in that room.”
“For now. But what if he gets off and comes back to finish the job? I can’t let that happen, Doc. I cannot allow that to happen.” Seth’s voice was full of conviction.
“If he isn’t sentenced, punished enough for our liking, then I promise, I swear to you, brother, we will break our one rule to make sure nothing happens to her nor her sister. They will never be at risk, on my life.”
That wasn’t just a man threatening to kill someone for hurting his woman. That wasn’t just heated, exaggerated words of violent passion. No. These men weren’t just shit-talking; they actually planned to murder Brandon if he hadn’t gotten the sentence he had. And if he somehow managed to get out of his thirty-five-year sentence early, Twyla and I would still never have to worry about him. And for that, I’m… grateful.
I am grateful to these men who would commit an act I’d never have the courage to do myself. This team who serves justice when the system fails.
And as I lift my head to look into his stormy blue eyes, so clearly bracing for my response to this revelation, actually fearful that I would not accept this part of him…
I forget about the ink and my shirt and launch myself upward into his lap, his huge arms automatically coming around me in a tight hug around my waist that feels desperate for acceptance. I sit up tall and wrap my arms around his neck, pull his head down to my naked chest, holding him there with a hand to the back of his head, cradling him tighter when I feel his body shudder.
I think I feel wetness on my chest—but surely not. There’s no way my giant, strong, alpha Viking of a man could possibly even produce tears, let alone shed them.
But then I remember his story, the sweet, shy, introverted boy who was finally pulled out of his shell by his childhood love. The gentle, scholarly, bookish teen who wanted to be a doctor. The man who’s spent his lifetime wanting to help heal people, to give them a new life they could enjoy and be happy. A selfless man who has worried about making this world a safer place for everyone else instead of focusing on his own life.
He’s been alone without this kind of closeness for twenty-four years. And while I know he’s been with women at the club and I’m sure others well before he got into the lifestyle, he hadn’t felt this intimacy, this love, this need and acceptance in all this time. Not until now. Not until me.
He’s a true gentle giant of a man, and while he may look like a hardened warrior on the outside, and he’s most definitely the toughest and most intimidating man who could bring his enemies to their knees, he’s also still that same sweet little boy on the inside deep down. And that’s the tiny part of him that’s at the forefront in this moment, as he holds me like I’m his lifeline and weeps against my chest.
I tighten my arms around his head, wanting to pull him into my very heart to give him the catharsis he needs right now, and just in case this physical embrace isn’t enough, I place my cheek against the top of his head and tell him all the feelings I have about him and his confession.
“You really are a hero, Neil,” I whisper. “I thought you were before, with just the amazing work you do as a therapist, and furthermore with a security team who protects those who need all of you guys. But now? Oh my God, Viking, I’ve never felt safer, more protected. I never knew I could feel so secure and free to just live and not ever worry anything will happen to me. And now I know. Now I know nothing will ever get me or my sister or even our friends, because we have these amazing men who will literally kill anyone who tries to hurt us. How many wives and girlfriends in the world have that sense of security? How many know for a fact that their man would stop at nothing to make sure they haven’t anything in the world to fear? I’m so lucky. I’m so fucking lucky to be yours. I love you so much. I love you so, so much. And I’ll never tell. I’ll never tell anyone. It’s our secret. Ours, the guys, my sister, Vi, and Clarice—it’s all our secret. Yo
u can trust me, just as I trust you with my life.”
And then I’m flying through the air. My back hits the leather of the couch’s seat cushions before I can even inhale to squeal in surprise, and Neil is on top of me. His knees are on the rug and his lips are everywhere. My lips, my throat, my breasts, my stomach, back up to my neck. And I clutch at his hair, pulling him closer, encouraging this man to lose control when normally he has such a tight chokehold on it.
He sits back, untangling my shirt from around his fist, and I manage to catch his hand before he braces himself with it on his expensive couch. He watches me run my fingertips over his knuckles, and when I feel the ink has had time to completely dry on his skin while he was telling me his deepest, darkest secrets, I look him in the eye. His breaths saw in and out of his lungs, and as I raise him toward me, I place his giant, rough, ink-stained hand around the base of my throat, his thumb on one pulse point while his four fingers envelop the entire other side.
I swallow as his grip tightens, and I watch as his eyes grow feral. And then he’s kissing me, his lips crashing, his tongue plundering, that hand on my throat never moving even as his other one shoves down my leggings. I hear the jangle of his belt and the sound of a zipper, and then his hips are between my thighs. I gasp as that free hand strokes me, his fingers dipping into my wetness, because even when he completely loses his mind with need, he’d never risk hurting me, checking to make sure I’m ready for his intrusion.
I am. I’m so ready. More ready than I’ve ever been in my life.
And then he fills me with one powerful thrust that takes my breath away along with any thoughts other than this moment in time.
He’s not gentle. There is no sweet murmuring of promises, no platitudes and praises, no soft caresses. There is only Neil, his hand around my throat holding me steady, and his cock pounding into me at a ferocious speed and depth.
