13

THE QUEEN

Nora 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.”