“You’re a fucking creep, Alzon.”
“No, I’m a connoisseur of beauty,” he protested with a gleeful tone. Fuck me, he truly believed all the bullshit he was spouting. “And, my red friend, let me tell you this...Elle is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. You can’t imagine my disappointment when I realized she had been matched up with someone like you.”
“Where is—”
“She’s in a luxurious room upstairs,” he finally replied, an evil glint in his eyes. “You didn’t think I’d throw her in a dirty cell like this, did you? Oh, no, someone like Elle requires careful handling, and I made sure that she was as comfortable as she could be. You don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to her.”
I didn’t like his tone.
Not one bit.
“You lay a finger on her and I—”
“You’ll what?” he spat, his relaxed expression suddenly turning into an angry scowl. Darkness took over his face, and his skin seemed to become a deeper blue. “You’ll do absolutely nothing, you fool. Elle needs someone that truly knows how to appreciate her exquisiteness, and you’re no such man. I, on the other hand...well, Colonel, let’s just say Elle will be well taken care of. While the fish nibble on your carcass, Elle is going to be very comfortable in this mansion.”
“You demented fuck,” I growled. “Do you actually think she’ll want that?”
“What she wants is immaterial,” he replied, so fast that I immediately knew he had been planning this for a long time. I wondered if he had already been thinking of kidnapping Elle even before I stumbled upon his little smuggling operation. “She’ll come to learn that it’s best to obey me. And if she doesn’t...well, I’m a persuasive man, Kazan. A very persuasive man.”
Before I could say anything to that, Alzon turned on his heels and walked back out, leaving me alone with my own thoughts….and, right then, all those thoughts involved some kind of scenario in which I choked the life out of him. No fucking way was I going to let that asshole lay a finger on Elle.
No fucking way.
Elle
“Goddamnit,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
I tried the door leading onto the balcony of the room I was in, but it was locked, just like every door around me. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I scraped one hand over my face, sighing heavily as I realized I had no idea what I should do. The only good thing about this entire situation was the fact that Alzon’s goons had gone back to the cabin and grabbed some clothes for me.
Still, it didn’t change the fact that I remained helpless.
Put me in a courtroom and I’d mop up the floor with the opposing counsel. Now, kidnapping bullshit like this? I didn’t have the slightest clue on how to handle it. To make matters worse, I was separated from Kazan, the one person that would have been able to calm me down and figure out what my next steps should be.
Suddenly, my attention was drawn to the bedroom’s door as the handle turned. A moment later, Alzon strode inside, his previous dark attire replaced by a white linen shirt and crisp deep blue pants. That conniving smile of his remained on his face, and I wondered if the man was even capable of a frown. Then and there, I decided that sooner or later I’d wipe the smugness off his face.
“I hope your accommodations are suitable, Elle,” he said, closing the door behind him. He spoke as if I wasn’t his prisoner but his guest. That was unsettling, and it only made me even more nervous. “All I want is for you to be comfortable.”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” I said. “You send your goons to kidnap me, throw me into the back of a truck, and now you’re telling me that you want me to be comfortable? Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“I must apologize for my men, obviously,” he continued, his smile never wavering. “My operations often involve these unsavory types, and they aren’t used to dealing with people such as you, Elle.” There was a knock at the door, and he wheeled around to open it. A second later, one of his goons entered the room, pushing a food cart. He didn’t linger, disappearing once Alzon nodded.
“I want to know where Kazan is,” I said, ignoring Alzon as he grabbed a bottle of cold wine from the cart. He popped the cork, his smile widening, and poured some of the wine into two flute glasses. “Stop messing with that. I don’t want a goddamn drink. Are you even listening to me?”
“I can assure you, the Colonel is comfortable,” he finally replied, holding one of the glasses in front of me.
Reluctantly, I accepted it, eager to keep him talking. What I really wanted to do, though, was slap the damn glass out of his hand and stab him in the eye with a piece of it. Not something I could risk with his goons around.
“I’ve already told my servants to offer him a meal, so he won’t go hungry. Now, though, let’s leave these insignificant things aside, shall we? There are so many other interesting things for us to discuss.”
“Such as?” Putting the glass back down on the cart, I crossed my arms and stared at Alzon. I wanted him to know I wasn’t impressed with his bullshit. His lips twitched slightly, and for a moment I thought that his smile was going to crumble. It didn’t. “Well?”
He took a sip of his wine and cleared his throat.
“You’re a beautiful woman, Elle, and you’re smart, too,” he started. “I’m immensely wealthy, and I’ll become even more so in the future. I can afford to give you the kind of life you would have never been able to experience on Earth. Or with Kazan, for that matter. With me, the sky's the limit.”
“What are you trying to say?” I asked, not liking the course this conversation was taking. Was this asshole saying what I thought he was? He had to be out of his freaking mind.
“Just think of it.” Setting his glass down, he pushed the food cart to the side and walked toward me. I stood my ground. “I can take you anywhere in the galaxy. You’ll be able to live a life of luxury, servants to attend your every need. I would make sure you were well taken care of, and I—”
I couldn’t listen to another word.
My hand flew to his face and slapped him so damn hard that my arm seemed to vibrate. He hadn’t been expecting it. His eyes widened, and his annoying smile finally vanished from his face. Slowly, he brushed his fingertips over his cheek, almost as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“If you think I’m going to bend over just because you have money, you must be a special kind of idiot,” I growled. “Now let me out of this damn room. I don’t wanna have anything to do with you. Just take me to Kazan and we’ll be on our way.”
“You stupid fucking bitch,” he growled, and closed the distance between us faster than I could react. His hand shot up to my neck, and all the air was pushed out of my lungs as he slammed me back against the wall. Wrapping his fingers around my throat, he lifted me up a few inches off the floor, my feet dangling awkwardly as I tried to breathe in. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?” I managed to croak.
“Once I’m done, I’ll be the most powerful man on this planet, you understand?” He was growling like a wild animal now, the anger on his face something I wasn’t prepared for. What had happened to the smooth talker from before? “You better learn how to play nice, or—”
“Or what?”
“Or I’m gonna have to teach you,” he spat back, then turned on his heels and threw me on top of the bed. I bounced on the mattress and used my elbows to prop myself up. Alzon rushed after me, his eyes narrowed with anger, and I immediately let my right foot fly in a straight line toward his crotch.
It landed.
“Fuck,” Alzon whined, doubling over as he placed both hands over his crotch. He sunk down to the floor, curling up into a ball of pain, and I immediately slid off the bed and ran toward the door. I tried turning the handle over, but it was useless. The door was locked.
“You’re gonna pay for that,” I heard Alzon say, and he was already standing when I turned around. Still hunched with pain, he s
tarted toward me, kicking the food cart out of the way and overturning it. I raised my fists, ready to knock that golden tooth right out of his mouth. “Is this really how you wanna play it?”
“Yeah, it really is,” I replied, already cocking one arm back.
“No, it isn’t,” he snapped. “Either you fall in line right this moment, or Kazan will suffer the consequences.”
That did it.
His words hit me with the strength of a freight train, and I lowered my arms. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands, my whole body trembling with rage, but there was nothing I could do.
If I hurt Alzon, he would hurt Kazan.
So what? Do you care about him? My inner voice asked, and the reply for that question popped in my mind almost immediately, of course I cared about him. In fact, what I felt toward Kazan went beyond caring.
“Now that’s more like it,” Alzon continued, that creepy smile dawning on his face again. Clearing his throat, he patted down the front of his linen shirt, and straightened his back. Carefully, almost as if he was petting a wild tiger, he reached for me with one hand, brushing his knuckles over my face. “Such a pretty little thing.” He brought his thumb down to my lips, and I had to use all my willpower not to bite it off. “C’mon, don’t pretend that you’re embarrassed. I’ve seen how crazy you get with the Colonel.”
“You...what?”
“It’s my resort,” he whispered. “I see everything that happens in it. Absolutely everything.” I felt sick to my stomach. The demented bastard had cameras all over our cabin, and he had been spying on us since day one. “Now, how about you show me some of that craziness? I’ve never been with a human female before.”
As he spoke, his hand fell from my face to my shoulder, and he started pushing down the straps of my dress. I felt my jaw trembling with rage, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to control it. Right now, I felt more than capable of putting a knife through this asshole’s eye socket. And yet...if I struck him, I’d be putting Kazan’s life on the line.
“Play nice,” he whispered softly, almost as if he could hear my thoughts, “and your Colonel friend gets to live another day. You don’t play by my rules, and I’ll make sure that—”
He was cut short by the sound of someone knocking at the door.
“Sir, we have an urgent call for you.”
“Not now,” Alzon cried out, his impatience almost palpable.
“It’s very, uhm, time sensitive,” his goon insisted.
Closing his eyes, Alzon sighed.
He took his hand off me then, and I felt a wave of relief wash over my body. Saved by the bell. I remained where I was as Alzon walked past me, and followed him with my gaze as he opened the door. Before he left, though, he shot me one last glance.
“Don’t worry, Elle,” he said. “We’ll continue this later tonight.”
“In your dreams,” I whispered once he had left, then immediately turned and went back to the balcony door. Kneeling beside it, I grabbed a pin from my hair and started fiddling with the lock. Even though I didn’t have any experience with it, I somehow managed to open the door.
Sure, it took me an hour, but I had done it.
“Alright,” I muttered, stepping onto the balcony and placing my hands on the railing. Looking to the side, I honed in on the sturdy vines creeping up the side of the mansion, and gave myself an encouraging nod. “You can do this, Elle. You have to.”
Kazan
“Come back to piss me off?” I growled, jumping to my feet. I heard the creak of a door opening, and footsteps coming from the corridor. I tensed up as I readied myself for another confrontation with Alzon. “Why don’t you let me out of this damn cell, and we’ll be able to have a real confrontation? Unless you’re too much of a coward and—Elle?”
“Surprised to see me?” Smiling, she stood outside my cell, one eyebrow arched as she looked at me. I had been expecting Alzon, or maybe one of his goons, but I sure as hell hadn’t been expecting her. She was supposed to be trapped in a room, not wandering around freely.
“Did Alzon let you out?” I asked her, and she immediately scoffed.
“As if.” Holding a heavy metal key in her hand, she slid it into the lock and turned it. There was a loud popping sound as the latch jumped out of place, and the gate swung back with a slight squeal. “He had me in a room on the second floor. I broke out, climbed down the balcony, then came looking for you. It wasn’t easy. This place is huge.”
“How did you find me here?”
“I overheard a conversation as I snuck back into the mansion,” she replied. “Still, it took me the better part of an hour to get in here. This place is crawling with Alzon’s goons. I had to hide inside a storage room and wait for them to rotate shifts before I came down here and snagged a key.”
“Smart.” Nodding approvingly, I stepped out from the cell and made my way to her. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you,” I whispered, then laid my hands on her waist and leaned in to kiss her.
“Did you really think I was going to abandon you?” she whispered against my lips, tucking a stray lock of hair over one ear. Smiling in a coy way, she looked over my shoulder toward the corridor. “We should get out of here. The guards outside have stepped away, but I figure they won’t be gone for long.”
“You’re right,” I said, and followed her down the corridor.
I had been expecting a lot of things to happen, but I never imagined that Elle would be the one breaking me out of this place. I was supposed to be the soldier, the one responsible for rescuing her, not the other way around. I knew that she was smart, but this was on a whole different level. She had put her life on the line to save me.
As we made our way up to the first floor, navigating through a maze of corridors, we kept an eye out for the guards that were supposed to be guarding me. We heard their raucous laughter as they moved in our direction and, reacting quickly, I grabbed Elle by the arm and opened the door that was closest to us. We slid into the room right when the guards turned the corner, their deep voices coming at us through the closed door.
“That was close,” she muttered, and looked around the room. “Look, more crates.” She hit the light switch beside the door, and yellow light flooded what looked like a massive storage room, endless rows of stacked-up crates lining the walls. Curious, I lifted the wooden lid on one of them and found it packed with assault rifles.
“Why does he want all these weapons?” I asked, more to myself than to her. Grabbing one of the rifles, I did a quick inspection and realized that the serial numbers had been filed off. “He’s not planning anything good with them, that’s for sure. Look here, the registration marks have been erased. He doesn’t want anyone to trace these rifles’ origins.”
“Maybe he’s an arms dealer, and the resort is only a front for his real business,” Elle offered, but something told me that wasn’t the case. The sheer number of weapons he was moving pointed at something else. “What are you doing?”
“I want to know what kind of information he has on his private servers,” I replied, moving toward the far end of the room. There was a computer terminal embedded in the wall there, and I quickly busied myself with removing the panel that kept the circuitry out of sight. I switched a few cables, short circuiting the system, and bypassed whatever security Alzon had in place.
The small screen lit up right away, and I jabbed at it with one finger, navigating through the many servers and folder systems. There were a lot of documents in there, financial reports and cargo manifests, but nothing I could quite decipher. I was about to turn the damn thing off when Elle laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Hang on,” she said. “Is there any way those documents can be translated?”
“Let me see.” I hit up the settings menu, finding an option that allowed me to translate everything on a specific server into a language Elle could read. The moment the Jorkan runes on the screen turned into Earth characters, Elle pushed me out of the way and took charge, her eyes
narrowing as she flipped through the many documents practically at the speed of light.
“Well, this is interesting,” she whispered. “Ever heard of Pokal? That’s where the guns are coming from. See here? They wrote on the manifests that they were carrying grain, but the carrying codes match those crates.”
“Pokal?” Frowning, I tightened my lips. “That’s a small commercial colony on the border with Rippers’ space. A lot of contrabandists use that colony as a refueling stop whenever they’re hauling something from inside Ripper territory, and I’m pretty sure that there are no grain suppliers there.”
“Then these weapons came from the Rippers,” she continued, still flicking through some more documents. “It doesn’t end there. A few documents point at distribution routes, meaning that these weapons are meant to be sold locally. No, wait. They’re not even meant to be sold. There’s some financial wizardry going on here, but these weapons are going to be given away.”
“Given away? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I think it does,” she continued without missing a beat. No wonder she was a top notch lawyer back on Earth. It would’ve taken me untold hours to decode all these documents. “There are a few documents here detailing future government legislation, and a lot of it seems unfavorable to Alzon. I think the idiot is trying to overthrow this colony’s government on behalf of the Rippers.”
“Fuck me.” I shook my head, stunned. “That makes sense. The Rippers would like nothing more than to install a puppet government on a colony like this, and Alzon must have been willing to bend the knee to the fuckers. He probably wants to set himself up as the head of government here.”
Kazan Page 12
