The Mistress (9 page)

“No, you aren’t sorry. If he could have loved me back, we still would have been married. And where would you be if he hadn’t been your priest?”

“Dead.” Nora said the word quickly and simply and without hesitation. She said it because it was true. Had Søren never come into her life, she would have followed in her father’s footsteps. She would have followed them right into the grave.

“Dead. So love saved your life. It ended mine.”

If only, Nora thought, but decided to keep that remark to herself. Her cheek might not survive another slapping.

“I wanted to show you proof. You say my husband is not weak. I disagree. This is my Bible. My husband had his own Bible, too. He always kept it with him, and read from it all the time.”

Nora suppressed a mad, tired laugh.
All zee time
. Wherever Marie-Laure had been living, she hadn’t completely lost the French accent there.

“He is kind of gay for the Bible,” Nora agreed. “So what?”

“So, I watched him one night opening his Bible. He turned to a page and smiled. I’d never seen him smile like that. I know he didn’t see me watching him. I know he wouldn’t have smiled like that for me to see.”

“Smiling at the Bible? Must have been reading Song of Solomon.”

“Not quite.”

Marie-Laure opened her Bible and took out a scrap of paper, yellowed slightly with age.

“He’d stepped out for a moment. Father Henry came for him. Alone with his Bible, I told myself I simply wanted to see if he’d written our names and the date of our marriage in it. He hadn’t, of course. My heart broke but still I turned the pages. Perhaps I’d find some comfort in this book he read so much. I found no comfort, but I did find this.”

She handed the note to Nora. The bodyguard made no move as Nora reached out and took it from her. Carefully she unfolded it and read the words.

You Blond Monster, I’d give my right arm for another night like last night. Knowing you, you’d take it.

At the bottom of the note were two more words.

Je t’aime.

French for
I love you.

Kingsley had left Søren a love note in his Bible, and Søren had kept it.

“There were dozens of them,” Marie-Laure continued, the mad smile now gone from her face. “Dozens of notes from my brother to my husband. Most were like that—a mix of hate and love. Some were only love. Some only hate. One note...” Marie-Laure paused to laugh. “One note simply said, ‘Bad news—I’m pregnant. It’s yours.’ My brother and his sense of humor.” She shook her head like an older sister would at the stupid joke of her younger brother.

Nora wanted to laugh, too, at young Kingsley’s thirty-year-old dirty joke, but at the sweetness of it, the silliness, the absolute intimacy implied by the stupid crack that Kingsley felt the need to write down and tuck into Søren’s Bible for him to find and laugh over later. No one finding those notes could have missed the meaning of them. Kingsley and Søren—it wasn’t sex or lust that brought them together again and again. They’d been in love. Nora knew it. She’d known it for years. But Marie-Laure hadn’t known it until that moment.

“I kept this one note as evidence if I needed it,” Marie-Laure said, her voice now cold and emotionless again. “I left the rest where I found them. My husband...I’d never met anyone so intelligent. And yet, love made him so weak and so foolish that he left two dozen pieces of evidence of his affair with my brother inside his Bible. Oh, yes, my husband was weak. Love made him weak. And I realized then love had made me weak, too. I didn’t want to be weak anymore.”

“I know they would have told you in time about them. Kingsley doesn’t like talking about that part of himself. But he would have. Eventually I know he would have.”

“Doesn’t matter. They lied by omission. They used me.”

“Used you? Søren told you that he wasn’t in love with you. You knew that before you married him. He thought you wanted the money, thought you needed it.”

“I wanted him, loved him. And he didn’t love me. My own brother didn’t even love me. Kingsley loved my husband more than his own flesh and blood. My husband loved my brother more than his own wife. I didn’t know what to do. The notes I’d read...the words were burned into my mind. I prayed all the time. Days and days of walking alone in the woods trying to clear my head, trying to find an answer. Instead, I found the hermitage...their hermitage. And I got the miracle I’d prayed for.”

“What miracle?”

“A girl, a runaway, hiding out in the hermitage. Long dark hair, almost my height. It was meant to be. Destiny. She was perfect.”

“Perfect for what?”

“I’d given all the options so much thought. I could tell Christian what was happening. He loved me, worshipped me, thought my husband insane for never touching me. If I’d asked him he would kill my husband for me...kill my brother. But then I thought of those notes and how much they must love each other. And I did love Kingsley even though he’d stolen my husband’s affections from me. So I knew what I would do. I would kill myself.”

“But you didn’t. You killed that poor girl.”

“She had nothing. Nothing at all. She thought she’d find a new life in America. I merely saved her the heartache of disappointment.”

“By murdering her? Yeah, you’re all heart.”

“She was a gift. She made it so easy to disappear. No one even looked for me. I found the road, hitchhiked into Canada, found someone to take care of me...so easy to die.”

“You didn’t die. You murdered someone.”

Marie-Laure only shrugged as she sat her white Bible back on the bedside table.

“Someone had to die for their sins, their lies. But I’m starting to think...”

Her voice trailed off and she tapped her chin.

Fear shivered over Nora’s skin.

“Think what?” she whispered.

“That one death was not enough.”

12

THE PAWN

L
aila watched as her uncle and Kingsley spoke to each other in hushed French. She ached to know what the note said that she’d delivered. As the carrier, she felt she deserved to be told what it said. The anguish on her uncle’s face, his naked fear, however, kept her from demanding more answers. He’d tell her in time if she needed to know. No matter how scared she was, she trusted him.

“Hey,” came Wes’s soft voice at her shoulder. “Let’s go get your face cleaned up. Okay?”

She let him take her by the hand as she stood up on shaking legs. He led her to a bathroom at the end of the hall. While Wes dug through drawers she sat on the countertop by the sink.

“Wow.”

“Wow what?” she asked, keeping her back to the mirror behind her. She didn’t even want to see how bad she looked.

“There is, like, an entire hospital full of first-aid supplies in this bathroom. I’m not even going to think about why.”

Laila smiled. “I can probably guess.”

Wes washed his hands in the sink for a solid two minutes. He scrubbed his nails, used tons of soap and scalding water and dried them on a new clean towel.

“You wash your hands like a surgeon,” she said.

He smiled ear to ear, a smile so bright it was like a sunbeam breaking through the clouds. But the cloud came back in an instant and both sun and smile were gone again.

“I work in a hospital. Part-time orderly stuff. I want to be a doctor someday, though.” Wes tossed the towel aside.

“I work in an animal clinic. I’d be too scared to work with people. They talk back.”

“That’s my problem with working with animals. They can’t tell me where it hurts.” He stood directly in front of her so that her knees almost touched his hips. “Can you tell me where it hurts?”

“I think I’m okay. I’m sore all over.”

“You must have put up a fight. I’m going to touch your face now.”

He took her gently by the chin and turned her face toward the light.

“I tried. He was too strong.”

“Don’t feel bad. They got me, too.” He pointed to the bandage on his temple. “Whoever it was did a good job knocking me out without actually hurting me. I think these people are professionals. That scares me more than anything.”

“Did they take you, too?”

He shook his head and she sensed his regret.

“I wish they had. We were at my house in Kentucky. I got hit or something and when I came to a few seconds later, she was gone.”

“She was with you?”

He nodded as he raised a wet cotton ball and started to stroke her cheek with it. From the corner of her eye she saw the cotton ball turning pink with blood.

“Yeah. We’re...friends. She was visiting me. We went horseback riding and came back to the stables. We talked about something and then...it all went black. When I came to, she was gone.”

“That’s awful. Are you okay?”

“As okay as anyone would be, I guess.”

“You don’t look okay.” He didn’t. He might be the most gorgeous guy she’d ever seen in her life, but he also happened to be the most gorgeous guy she’d ever seen in her life who looked like he would pass out any minute. “You look bad.”

“Your English is really good. Too good.”

She laughed as he tossed the cotton ball and picked up a clean one.

“I’m sorry. Everyone in Denmark learns English. My uncle’s been making me speak it to him all my life so I would get better at it. I didn’t mean you look ugly. You look sick.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said, rubbing her cheek with antibiotic ointment. “I haven’t eaten or slept since this all happened. At least they left me alive. And you. You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m okay. Are you?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I won’t be okay until Nora’s safe.”

“Me, too. I can’t... If something happens to her...” Tears started to run down her face again. Wes handed her a tissue and kept working on her cheek.

“Nora’s the toughest woman alive. I keep telling myself that,” Wes said as he applied a pad of gauze to her cheek.

“She is. I believe in her. I know he’ll do whatever he can to get her back.”

“So will I.”

He taped the gauze to her cheek and smoothed it down.

“I’ll check it in a few hours.”

“Thank you.” She raised her hand and touched her face. She felt better already.

“Are you hurt anywhere else? I can get Grace. She’s really nice. If you think, you know, you’re hurt somewhere else...” His words were plain and simple but she could see the concern in his eyes, the searching look.

“I wasn’t raped.”

He stared at her as if trying to discern whether or not she was lying to him. No wonder he’d been so careful with her, not even touching her without warning her of his every move first.

“I work the E.R. a lot. I’ve seen women come in for sprained wrists and broken noses and stitches—they say the same thing. If you were, we need to get you checked out. You don’t want to wait. If it happened, it’s not your fault at all. But you have to tell somebody.”

“I was conscious the whole time.”

“Are you sure? It only takes a minute sometimes.”

“I’m sure.” She looked him in the eyes so he would believe her.

“Okay, I believe you.”

“I promise, if that happened I would tell you.”

“Good.”

Wes put his arm around her and helped her down off the countertop. She took advantage of their proximity to smell his hair. He smelled like summer, like warm, clean towels drying in the sun. She wanted to stretch out in the warmth of him like a cat lying in the sun.

He bent over the sink and started washing the blood off his hands. Laila wondered if she should give him some privacy in the bathroom, but before she could go, he paused in his hand-washing and put his hands on the counter and closed his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” She watched his face, the pained set to his mouth.

“I should eat something.” She saw sweat break out on his face. His hands shook. Not eating for a day should only make him hungry. This was something more.

“You’re...” She tried to remember the English word for it.
“Diabetisk?”
she said, recognizing the symptoms of a blood sugar crash.

“Yeah. How did you—”

“Even dogs have it. Sit down.” She put an arm around his waist and helped lower him to the floor. Better get him on the floor now before he ended up there by fainting. “My turn to be the doctor.”

13

THE QUEEN

N
ora had been allowed to take a shower. She’d been so shocked that Marie-Laure told her she could have one that Nora’d actually said, “Thank you.” Thank you, she’d said to the woman who’d kidnapped her? Thank you? Fucking Stockholm syndrome. Nora turned on the water. No more thank-yous unless it was “Thank you for dying, bitch, and this time stay dead.” One of the guards led her to a luxurious bathroom off the bedroom where they’d been talking and told her to clean up. She’d climbed into the shower fully clothed. No way would she strip in front of Marie-Laure’s boys, who she had mentally dubbed Fat Man and Little Boy. Fat Man was Andrei, easily two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. All muscle, no brain. Little Boy Damon with his coldly intelligent eyes and expensive shoes had to be the brains of the operation. Everything about him screamed “mercenary.” Neither one of them seemed to have any amorous interest in her. Marie-Laure wasn’t the type to allow the men in her life, hired thugs or not, to show interest in any woman beside herself, but that was no reason to tempt fate. Plus Marie-Laure hadn’t been kidding. She did smell like piss and horse shit.

The hot water scalded and Nora let the heat seep into her skin. She took cold comfort from it. Too many thoughts of Wesley intruded. A few nights ago they’d been in his shower together, fully clothed and talking. What she wouldn’t give to be back there now.... That night she’d been miserable, devastated that she’d beaten a newborn foal on the off-chance it would stir his mother from the exhaustion and stupor that threatened to kill her. Now that sort of misery seemed like paradise compared to this one. Trapped in a house with a madwoman and her two gun-toting bodyguards. And for what? Revenge against Søren? Against Kingsley? Against her? What was Marie-Laure’s endgame in all this? That woman would never make it out of this alive. If Nora died, there’d be no reason to stop Kingsley from blowing them all away. If it meant Søren’s happiness, there was nothing Kingsley wouldn’t do.

Nora wrapped a bath towel around her as Damon led her back into the bedroom and pulled out ropes and handcuffs. Marie-Laure looked trussed up like a princess in her chic nightgown all cozy in the bed.

“I don’t play with strangers on the first date,” Nora said, eyeing the rope warily.

“We’ve met before. We’ll call it our second date.” Damon gripped her by the arm and pushed her. “On the bed. Back to the bedpost,” he ordered, and Nora reluctantly obeyed. She would have tried to fight or run for it but Andrei, the Fat Man, stood at the door holding a gun in his hand as casually as a pinwheel.

“It’s fine. It’s late. Let’s settle in for the night, shall we?” Marie-Laure spoke as if they were two girls at a slumber party and not one sociopathic murderer and one terrified and soaking-wet prisoner. Meanwhile, Damon clapped the cuffs on her wrists and started to thread the rope around her ankles.

“You’re tying me to the bed?” Nora asked.

“You’re my guest. If you wander in the night around the house, you might get hurt. We don’t want that, do we?”

Nora heard the threat tucked inside the faux concern. If she wandered in the night, someone would blow her brains out.

“Fine. Whatever. Not the first night I spent tied to a bed.” She sensed Damon behind her expertly threading the rope through the cuffs and the sturdy frame of the bed. The cool air in the room sent goose bumps all over her wet body. Cold, wet and terrified and sitting up with her back against the bedpost, she doubted she’d get any sleep at all. Good. She should stay awake, alert, and thinking. There had to be a way out of this. They’d let their guard down at some point. She could make a run for it.

“Nice,” Nora said to Damon. “You do good rope work. You a Dom?”

“Headhunter,” he said simply and without translating. Nora hadn’t been around the mob since her father died but she hadn’t forgotten the lingo. Headhunter—hired killer.

“Headhunter? You and Kingsley could talk shop.” Nora looked at Marie-Laure again. “You know your brother is an ex-assassin, right? You sure you want to tangle with him?”

“I helped change his diapers. Forgive me if I can’t see him as much of a threat.”

“Helped change his diapers? Wow...you are old, aren’t you?”

“Damon,” Marie-Laure said.

Damon stepped forward, grabbed a handful of Nora’s wet hair and pulled. He rested a sharp cold blade against her neck.

“You are here to amuse me,” Marie-Laure said from the head of the bed. “Not insult me. I suggest you start being a bit more entertaining if you want to live a few hours more.”

“Entertaining?” Nora repeated. “What do you want? A song and dance? Some stand-up? A bedtime story?”

Marie-Laure said nothing as she studied Nora’s face. It might have only been seconds, but with the knife at her throat and Nora’s life flashing in front of her eyes, it felt like hours. Damon let the knife dig a millimeter deeper into her skin and in that moment Nora regretted every last time she’d told Søren she hated him. Hopefully he knew she never meant it, that she only said it because she didn’t know how else to tell him how annoying it was to be loved that much by someone who was so right all the damn time about everything.

“Damon.” Marie-Laure spoke his name softly and the knife immediately disappeared. Nora breathed carefully as if the blade still waited at her neck.

“I’m sorry,” Nora said. “I’m pretty sensitive about my age, too. Doesn’t help when you’re sleeping with a younger man.”

“Yes, your younger man—fascinating.”

“Wes? Is he alive?” Nora asked the question she’d been afraid to even utter in her own mind. But she had to know.

“Oh,
oui
. We barely touched him. Andrei is well-trained. He knows how to make someone unconscious without killing him. He doesn’t like it—not killing them, I mean. But he follows orders well. You see, your fiancé is actually important.”

“You got his attention, I promise.” Nora offered a silent prayer of thanks to God that Marie-Laure hadn’t killed Wesley. One thing to be grateful about today. Wes was alive and so was she...for now.

“Handsome boy, your younger man. Very handsome. But no one is as handsome as my husband.”

“Blondie’s a hottie,” Nora agreed.

“Once I thought if my husband loved me, I’d never desire anyone else on earth. How could I when I had him? And yet, you have his love but have run off with another.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I see that. Go on. I’m all ears.”

“What? You want me to tell you about my love life?”

“Tell me about this fiancé of yours. That ring on your finger could feed a third-world country for a year.”

“Only a very small country.”

“You aren’t impressed by the ring?”

“It’s a rock,” Nora said. “Literally. Diamonds are rocks. You dig them out of the ground with a shovel. Wes might as well have given me a bag of gravel.”

“That’s a rather rare and large bit of rock. And you must have liked it if you accepted it,
non?
”

Nora set her jaw tight and glared at Marie-Laure. Everything within her rebelled at talking about her Wesley with this woman. She didn’t even deserve to say Wesley’s name much less know all about their private life.

“Wes is a good friend.”

“A good friend? That’s how you describe your fiancé?”

No, it wasn’t. In her heart Wesley was love and light and big brown eyes that made her thighs melt. He adored her and desired her and wanted to protect her even from Søren, who was the only man who she felt safer with than even Wesley.

“We’re good friends, yes.”

“A very good friend. You spent a week in his bed.”

“Well...not the whole week. We did get out sometimes.”

“You’re trying to pretend you don’t care about him. I don’t believe it. You don’t agree to marry someone you don’t care about.”

“Why not? Søren did.”

Marie-Laure’s eyes flashed.

“Damon?”

Damon stepped forward and grabbed Nora by the throat. Marie-Laure crawled forward across the covers and knelt primly in front of where Nora sat pinioned in place with Damon’s hand squeezing her neck. She could breathe still, thank God, although his fingers gripped her tight enough to leave bruises. It’s okay...she could take this and not panic. How many times had Søren held her against the wall, his fingers around her throat? A thousand times surely. Of course, with him, the hand on her throat had belonged to a man who loved her, who’d cut off his own hand before actually hurting her. And when he held her by the throat, it was to arouse her, to stir her hunger for him with his power and possessiveness. Damon did it to terrorize her into compliance, into defeat. She went silent and still. Let him think he won. She knew better.

“Listen to me,” Marie-Laure began, her voice soft and sinister. “I’m going to tell you something very important so pay attention. I can’t begin to tell you how entertaining it’s been making my husband and my brother dance for me this past week, trying to discover who on earth it was who was tormenting them. I love this game and I’m not ready for it to be over yet. Right now my husband is experiencing real terror, terror so potent I can smell it on the air. For whatever reason, he loves you, whore and harlot that you are. And since he loves you and I have you, I can make him dance for me as long as I desire. Of course this can’t go on indefinitely, can it? Even I get bored.”

“What do you want?” Nora asked when Damon’s fingers slackened enough to let her speak.

“I want someone to die,” Marie-Laure said simply. “I have seen you all—you and my husband and my brother—you’re like a fabric all woven together. I want to pull one thread and see you all unravel. If you die, my husband will be destroyed. If my husband dies trying to save you, my brother will be destroyed. To kill one of you will kill you all. I want to watch this happen. I want to see it unfold before my eyes. I want my husband and my brother and you to know that eventually we all must pay for our sins. That is why I have you now and why I’m going to keep you here a little while. I’m calling in their debts. It’s time for someone to pay up.”

Marie-Laure moved a little closer. She picked up the abandoned towel and wiped the dripping water from her shower off Nora’s face. Nora cringed at the gentle gesture.

“If you keep taunting me like this, however,” Marie-Laure continued, “then I’m going to lose my patience with you and let Damon and Andrei have you, and I’m quite certain you wouldn’t survive playtime with them. So I will ask you very politely to keep your commentary to yourself. I would hate to see this game end prematurely. Do you understand me?”

Marie-Laure tossed the towel onto the floor and sat back on her legs.

“I understand,” Nora said. Marie-Laure nodded at Damon, who let Nora go. He stepped back again, and Nora swallowed air with renewed gratitude for every unencumbered breath.

“Good. Now let’s talk about this fiancé of yours.” Marie-Laure returned to the head of the bed. She propped herself up on the pillows and let her diaphanous robe frame her like an unfurled fan. “And stop pretending that you don’t care about him. I know otherwise. I’ve read your file. Kingsley described your young man as your only weakness. I would love to know what he meant by that. Especially since you seem comprised entirely of weaknesses.”

“I don’t know what he meant by that, either. Like you said, Wes is one of many weaknesses.”

“Younger men are a weakness of yours?”

“Kind of. I have a little soft spot for virgin boys. All that untapped potential makes a girl want to, you know, tap that.”

“So it’s merely sexual?”

“Not entirely. Although that’s a big part of it,” Nora said without apology.

“Is it? Have you been with a lot of virgin boys?”

“A few.”

“I’d love a number.”

Nora clenched her jaw again but repressed the urge to say something which would no doubt get her in death’s crosshairs again. Taking a deep breath, she reflected on her past as ghosts of long-ago nights flitted across her mind’s eyes.

Bram...a seventeen-year-old male submissive who Kingsley had introduced her to.

Alex...age eighteen, barely eighteen.

Noah...one of Wes’s friends from Yorke. She didn’t know they were friends until after Wesley had moved in. She suffered a couple of sleepless nights wondering if Noah would tell Wes about the night he’d spent tied to her headboard.

And, of course, her angel, Michael. Age fifteen. A gift from Søren, who knew about her weakness and had decided to put it to better use than simply getting her off.

“Five, counting Wesley. Enough for a pattern, not enough for a fetish.”

“Five. Impressive. Actual virgins?”

“Every last one of them. If we’re talking kink virgins, you’d have to triple the number.”

“No guilt at all?”

“None. Okay, maybe a little but only with Alex.”

“Alex?”

“He was the son of this bitchy book reviewer. Totally blasted my first book. Called all my lovely kinksters ‘sick’ and ‘abusive.’ So I got my payback by sickly abusing her youngest all night long.”

“And you felt guilty about that?”

“Not the sex. The note I sent Mom the next day.”

“You sent his mother a note after you seduced her son? What did it say?”

“It said...” Nora began, and paused for a breath. Not one of her prouder moments. “It said, ‘Your son gave me five stars last night. And five fingers.’”

“You’re smiling.”

“I’m trying so hard to feel bad about it. I swear to God I am.”

“You amaze me. Why all the virgins? They have no idea what they’re doing.”

“I had such an amazing first time that I like giving that experience to other people. Better than five minutes in the back of a Buick, right?”

“How altruistic of you.”

“I’m a giver.”

“And my husband doesn’t mind that? Doesn’t mind you cuckolding him left and right with other men?”

“Did you say
cuckolding?
I didn’t know people still said that.”

“It sounded more polite than calling you a slut and whore who’ll spread for anyone who pays you the slightest bit of attention.”

“Look, in my world
slut
is a term of endearment. Why do I have to keep explaining this to people? You’re going to have to find a new name if you want to actually hurt my feelings. Telling me I’ve had too much sex is about as insulting as telling me I’m too thin.”