by Olivia Gates
He complied, because his legs no longer felt able to support him. He descended heavily onto the armchair across from Numair, a fine tremor traversing his grip as he poured himself a shot. “It’s that bad?”
“Worse.”
The fist squeezing Raiden’s heart tightened as Numair reached for a tablet on the coffee table between them, accessed an app, then pushed the tablet toward Raiden. Raiden stopped its slide, and his heart turned over in his chest at what he saw on the screen.
A photo of an exquisite girl with shimmering dark caramel hair, an impassive face and extinguished eyes. A younger version of the Hannah he’d known, with a different hair color. And without the warm, lighthearted, normal expressions. This was her without the act. The real her. A girl without hope.
His upper lip and forehead beading with sweat, he glanced up at Numair, his insides churning.
Numair answered his unspoken question. “That’s Katya Petrovna, whom you knew as Hannah McPherson and now know as Scarlett Delacroix.”
Katya. Her real name at last. It suited her. As anything did. She made anything hers. Names, hair color, faces. Him.
Numair went on. “She was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the former U.S.S.R., and raised on the Black Sea coast of the Russian Riviera. She was a descendant of a Georgian noble house. Then, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, she was seven when she was separated from her mother in a riot. She ended up in a white slavery ring.”
The thudding of his heart escalated until it shook his whole body. There could be a hundred possibilities after this point, all ugly and horrific. But he had the terrible feeling he knew exactly where this was going.
Then Numair validated his suspicions. “By the age of ten, she ended up in The Organization’s grasp.”
Even though he’d already suspected that, all his nerves loosened with the blow of confirmation.
The crystal glass in his hand crashed on the marble floor in a thousand diamond-like splinters.
Scarlett. Or Hannah. Or Katya. Her. She’d been The Organization’s slave, too. Just like him. Like all of them.
Without batting an eye at the smashed glass, Numair tossed back another shot as if he needed it. Then he continued. “She was one of hundreds of girls who’d been imprisoned in an all-female installation equivalent to our Black Castle. And like us, the girls were categorized according to their abilities and talents, but also according to their looks. All girls were trained as we were, but the beautiful ones had extra training in seduction and manipulation. They were used as sexual bait for the world’s movers and shakers, or anyone The Organization wanted breached, entrapped or untraceably terminated. According to my source, she was the best. But her trail ended five years ago, when she clearly faked her death.”
Raiden struggled not to howl in agony. The details Numair had just related so clinically painted a gruesome picture of the life of the girl in the photo. A girl who knew she was lost and no one would ever come to her rescue. Who knew she’d be a hostage forever, living a life of danger and degradation, an instrument in the service of whoever paid her masters for her skills, to be used and abused as they willed. A woman who knew that escape was impossible, and the only way out was death.
He’d started this quest for the truth, hoping to find out she’d been forced to betray him. Now he wished she hadn’t been. Being right meant she’d suffered unimaginably, must be scarred for life. Now he would have given anything for her to be just a woman who’d entered the wrong path, then decided to change, to make good.
But she wasn’t. She’d been enslaved. And he couldn’t bear thinking she’d suffered what he had. And far, far worse.
“I now believe you were right,” Numair said. “She won’t expose you or any of us. Not when it means ultimately exposing herself, too. We’re all in the same boat, so to speak.”
He wanted to roar to Numair that he was still wrong, that this wasn’t why his and their secrets were safe with Scarlett. But his vocal cords felt fused over molten agony.
“Bottom line is, you can go ahead and indulge your desire for her. As long as you don’t jeopardize your relevant plans.” Numair stopped, as if debating whether to tell him more or not. Then he exhaled. “There something else you need to know.”
In minutes, Numair stopped talking, and suddenly Raiden could no longer bear hearing another word.
He heaved up to his feet before the roaring inside him escaped his lips.
At the suite’s door, Numair’s warning hit him between the shoulder blades.
“Don’t tell her anything.”
* * *
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Scarlett had known something was wrong the moment she’d entered the penthouse to find Raiden facing the door as if he’d been waiting for her for hours. His hands and face were clenched as he asked that question.
In a heartbeat, she knew what this blazing darkness cloaking him was all about.
He knew the truth. Her truth.
She didn’t have to ask how, didn’t need to. He just did.
She felt exposed, her every sordid secret on display before the one person with whom she’d wanted to retain a measure of mystery and allure. She knew there was no point in prevaricating.
So she shrugged. “What was the point?”
“What...?” He seemed so stunned by her answer he found nothing to say. Then he blurted out, “You don’t consider being the victim of the same organization that’d kidnapped and enslaved me relevant?”
“Not really.” She sat down before she collapsed. “Not now that we both got out.”
Urgent strides brought him standing above her, and then he descended on the couch beside her, taking both her hands in his. “I need you to tell me everything. I know only who you were, how you ended up in The Organization’s hands, how they trained and used you, like they did me. Now I need to know the specifics of your mission targeting me.”
She’d always wished she could erase those specifics from her memory and psyche as she’d erased her former identity. Or thought she had. She hadn’t. Raiden had found everything out.
But to avoid telling him the full truth would only prolong the torture. She should get it over with. What they had would soon be over. His wedding was in sixteen days.
She left her hands in his, not because his touch and urgency didn’t burn her, but because she couldn’t pull away.
Barely holding herself together, she started to explain.
“Medvedev worked on occasion on our side of the operation. He was my handler’s lover. She was the one who recommended me to him when he described the skillset he required to set you up. I realized later this was his personal vengeance on you, and if he was right, he wanted it to be his triumph, and his secret shame if he was wrong. He told my handler no specifics. Though he must have told her something lucrative enough to get her to make The Organization believe I was on a mission for them. She gave me all the time I needed to take care of you. Medvedev told her not to worry about watching me, since he’d do it, and he would deliver me back to her at the completion of my task.”
She paused to adjust her breathing, which had started to hitch under his laserlike eyes.
“It was a very difficult task, he told me, since your records were somehow expunged from The Organization’s system. There were no photos, no fingerprints, no voice recognition, no retinal scans and no DNA to match. Even your implanted tracking devices were deactivated. I assume that was your doing.” Raiden nodded, then gestured his impatience. She continued, almost choking on every word. “His only evidence was that you resembled his escapee, and he had a feeling about you. But he couldn’t build a case on mere resemblance and his feelings. He needed evidence. Evidence I had to provide.”
Pretending to adjust her position, she pulled away from him. He only compensated, touching her along her whole left side, zappin
g every inch of her flesh with agitation. She had to spit out a conclusion and hope it would satisfy him.
“When I asked what would happen if I couldn’t get close enough to you or if it took too long to do so, he said not to worry. He’d do everything to give me all the resources and time I needed to get him his proof. Then, I guess to make me committed to his cause, he said if I got him the proof he needed, he would ensure my freedom from The Organization.”
Everything she’d said so far had been specifics of the facts he had already known or deduced. Nothing seemed to surprise him.
She went on, “He said he’d extort you for a huge sum, pretending it was his price for not exposing you. He said he’d give me a portion of the money to build a new life for myself, and to fake my death so The Organization wouldn’t look for me. Just promising me that behind my handler’s back, he told me he would betray anyone to get what he wanted, starting with me. But I had no option but to do as he wanted, and to keep his secret. It was clearly implied my life depended on both actions.” She paused, taking a shallow, shaky breath. “The rest you know. I came after you with my fabricated identity, and we became lovers until I slipped and you found me out. We made the deal and I managed to escape Medvedev after misleading him. I used the money to create a new identity and fake the death of the old one.”
She fell silent, but Raiden’s eyes continued to set her every nerve aflame. He was waiting for her to confess more.
She couldn’t. The rest was just too horrible.
When he made sure she wasn’t adding more, Raiden faced her fully. “Knowing Medvedev and his obsession with me, and what I cost him when I escaped him, being thwarted once wouldn’t have stopped him. He would have never stopped. That was the biggest question I had when you told me he was the one who recruited you—how he let you go, how he didn’t come after me again. But now I know how.”
Her heart stopped as she prayed he only thought he did.
Then he went on and her prayers were aborted.
“He died five years ago, stabbed in the eye in a hotel room.” His eyes turned to infernos as he pulled her closer. “It was you who killed him, wasn’t it?”
Seven
Raiden’s words weren’t a question. Just a statement demanding only the corroboration of details. They ricocheted in Scarlett’s head until she felt it would burst.
It was you who killed him, wasn’t it?
Needing to silence the reverberations, she tore herself out of his hold, feeling as if her flesh had peeled in his hands.
But he wouldn’t let her get far. He caught her back into a fierce embrace. “Just tell me, Scarlett.”
The terrible memories welled like poison-tinged ink in her system. “Please, Raiden. Don’t make me.”
His embrace tightened, the hand pressing her head into his expansive chest, convulsing as if he wanted to push her into his rib cage, hide her inside him. “Let it all out, Scarlett. Let me relieve you of it. Let me take it all on for you.”
She writhed in his hold, as if she was drowning and trying to kick to the surface. But he held her tighter, letting her know he wasn’t letting it go this time. For he must know she hadn’t told him everything. Not only about Medvedev but about her, them, everything. And he wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than the whole truth now.
Unable to make such confessions while in his arms, she choked, “I’ll tell you everything...just...just let me breathe.”
Cursing himself ferociously, Raiden let her go at once, thinking he’d been suffocating her. She didn’t have enough breath to tell him he wasn’t the one starving her of oxygen. It was the thought of letting go.
It was harder than she’d expected to let go of the masks she’d hidden behind since she was seven years old. Tearing off her facade was almost as scary as the thought of tearing a layer of skin off her face.
She sat there beside him, feeling his empathic gaze sear her, gathering every spark of will and courage to do what she must do. Show him the real her for the first time.
Inhaling one last bracing breath, she looked him in the eyes and let her barriers crumble.
Raiden’s eyes shot wider, his nostrils flared, his chest deflating as if she’d punched him in the gut. That meant she’d managed to show him inside her. And it flabbergasted him.
She let go of her last reluctance. “About Medvedev...”
A finger on her lips stopped her halting words, his face gripped with emotions she’d never seen. They were so complex, she couldn’t fathom them. “Start at the beginning, Scarlett. Tell me everything from before you approached me.”
Nothing but every last detail would satisfy him, would it? As it shouldn’t. She owed him at least that.
Nodding, she let out a ragged exhalation. “Before I did, I investigated you, as I always did, to tailor my approach to every...case. But you were an enigma, with no information indicating your character. So I watched you, and from my observations, I knew you wouldn’t respond favorably to a direct approach, wouldn’t respond to overt seduction, like almost all men in my experience.”
His teeth gritted, his frown deepening. No doubt he hated hearing how he’d been a mission, how there’d been so many before him.
But she already knew he’d feel that way, and she was only telling him the details of what he already knew. So she continued.
“I set up that car accident, created that steeped-in-normalcy persona, because I’d judged only a woman like the fictional Hannah McPherson would have the best chance to make you feel safe enough to let her come close. And I was right.”
His hand grabbed the back of her head, his eyes so fierce, as if trying to compel her to believe him. “You were wrong. It was you, the woman beneath the act that I responded to. I proved that when I responded to you again, when you projected a totally different persona.” His hand gentled at her nape, making her melt in his grip. “But you said you never acted with me. Was that because once you met me, you judged I would respond best to the real you?”
And she made the first irrevocable confession. “Until I met you, I didn’t know there was a real me.”
His eyes flared like supernovas, and his grip twisted in her hair with the same ferocity, making her gasp with pleasure and ratcheting heartache.
Suddenly, confessions felt like poison she had to spit out. “From the moment I met you, all my scenarios evaporated, and I was unable to be anything with you but the person you knew, the person I didn’t realize existed. It was with you that I became aware of my true personality.” At his groan, she turned her face into his shoulder, escaping the intensity in his eyes. “I realized almost at once that I was actually feeling something for you. And among all the dangers I ever faced, those unknown feelings were the most dangerous thing that ever happened to me. It was as though you were my first intimacy. And you were. Any other man I’ve been with was a mission, an evil I’ve been forced to endure with a seductive smile while my soul retched or, at best, was numb.”
“Scarlett...”
She burrowed into his chest, unable to let him interrupt. The floodgates had opened and everything came gushing out. “It was with you that my senses were awakened for the first time and I realized what intimacy was, what transfiguring passion felt like. You were my first pleasure...then you become my first and, I’m certain, my last love.”
* * *
Never. Never in his wildest dreams had Raiden expected this. His best hope had been that she’d tell him the truth, and that it would include an admission to validate his feelings. That he hadn’t been just a mission to her, that she’d felt something real for him. Then, and now. Never had he dared wish she’d say anything near the things she’d just said.
But she’d said them. She felt them. Had always felt them.
And it felt as if the last barrier he’d erected inside him to protect himself from t
he heartache she’d caused came crashing down. Admissions rushed in, swamping him in the truth of his emotions for her.
Just as she’d come to life with him, so had he with her. Just as he was her first and last intimacy, her one and only love, so was she his.
Emotions rose like a tidal wave inside him.
With trembling hands he tried to lift her head from where she’d buried it into his chest, needing communion with her in those transfiguring moments. “Scarlett, darling, please, let me...”
Resisting him, she kept her head plastered over his thundering heart, words rushing out of her again, drowning whatever he would have said. “But it wasn’t only when I realized I’d fallen in love with you that it became imperative I ended the danger to you. From the first moment I met you, I knew you weren’t one of the sleazebags or criminals I was always sent after, and who deserved everything I did to them and more. You were everything I didn’t think existed—a noble man who used your powers for the greater good, and who never advertised your benevolence. It was by following in your steps that I ended up in my line of work now.”
She raised her head then, and he felt as if he got a direct blow to the heart. Her eyes. God, her eyes.
The emotions in them were staggering. As if everything she’d ever suppressed, ever hidden from him, from the whole world, was flooding out. He felt submerged.
She threaded shaking hands in his hair, such tenderness in her touch and gaze. “Then I found out that you were like me, but that you had escaped when I knew I never would. If I loved you with all my newly forged heart before that, I loved you even more then, with the broken parts of me before the whole ones I discovered inside me because of you. All I cared about from then on was protecting you at all costs.”
Her hands smoothed over his head, chest and shoulders, becoming feverish, as if she wanted to make sure he was here, safe, whole, and that she had protected him.
“To protect you, I had to throw Medvedev off your scent. So I stalled him until I figured out how to prove you weren’t his escaped agent, and to be with you for as long as I could.”
