“I’ll give you a tour in the morning,” he promised me. “But for now, Jenny, get some sleep.”
He’d promised to punish me earlier. I hesitantly reminded him of that and he smiled in response. “Anxious to get spanked?” he asked wryly. “Your punishment can wait until the morning.”
“Where should I sleep, Alexander?” Again, my voice was tentative. With Dylan, for the first few months, I’d slept in a cage. I’d eventually graduated to a narrow, sparse cell. Alexander wasn’t Dylan, but I wasn’t going to make any assumptions.
“There’s one king-size bed in this suite,” he pointed out. “Where were you expecting to sleep?” His eyes simultaneously heated and hardened as they rested on my body. “Everything begins tomorrow, Jenny.” His voice promised dark pleasures, and I shivered with both fear and arousal. “So get the rest you can tonight.”
After that I wouldn’t have thought I’d be able to sleep at all. But the moment my head hit the pillow and Alexander pulled me into him, I snuggled into his body and fell fast asleep.
Chapter 12
Ellie / Jenny:
I dreamed of Paris that night. Not of the time I slept with Alexander, but of the events preceding that meeting.
I sit in a small café in the first arrondissement. Lucien sits next to me. He’s smoking one cigarette after the other. The collection of butts in the ashtray grows. Lucien chain-smokes when he’s nervous.
On the other hand, I’m the picture of calm. My eyes are level behind the sunglasses I haven’t removed. My t-shirt is black, as are my leggings. I lean back in the booth, my legs stretched out. I sip at my small cup of espresso.
“She’s late.” Lucien’s voice is tense as he states the obvious.
Our target is Ivan Klimov. Ivan, who was one of the five men that repeatedly raped me for two years, has left Dylan’s service in Nigeria. He’s now in Paris, part of the private army of one Stanislav Durov.
Durov is a reprehensible human being and Lucien’s fingers clench into fists every time he hears the name. But Durov is beyond our ability to reach. We can both cause a lot of damage. But we are not gods and we cannot take on the twenty-five well-armed men that surround Durov and keep him safe.
I don’t want Stanislav Durov. The world of human trafficking is ugly and sordid and there are more evil men and women than I have the capacity to tackle. My revenge is more personal. I want Ivan.
Ivan likes his whores. He frequents hidden brothels in the grim immigrant suburbs where the French concepts of liberté, egalité and fraternité are conveniently ignored by the authorities and the poor huddle in teeming masses with no better way of life in sight. There, where the girls have insufficient paperwork and therefore no rights, Ivan buys his sex for the night.
He rarely leaves his whores intact. Bruises, beatings, sometimes broken bones. If they cry, it’s all the better for Ivan. He gets off on the pain of the girls who struggle under him.
We wait for our informant. She’s going to tell us which unfortunate brothel is Ivan’s destination for the evening.
Couldn’t we just follow Ivan? Lucien and I have talked about it. Argued about it. But Durov is dangerous and we do not dare risk getting spotted. Pieter Hoffman’s death wasn’t that long ago. Soon enough, someone’s going to realize that the one thing these murders have in common is that all the men getting killed once worked for Dylan McAllister in Abeokuta. The only reason that connection hasn’t been made so far is that these men are scum, unloved when alive, un-mourned when dead.
“She’s here.” My voice is low but sharp and Lucien stiffens before he straightens up in the booth. His earlier nervousness has vanished. Now the killer is unleashed.
Not just Lucien. There are two killers in this café.
The woman comes in. She’s radiating nervousness. She’ll never make an operative. One look at her and you can immediately tell something’s wrong.
In my lap, my hand tightens on my hidden knife. Amateurs are unpredictable. This woman is a maid in Durov’s estate, one with a grudge against Ivan, who made a crude pass at her and slapped her cheek hard when rebuffed.
Her grudge and Lucien’s offered bounty of ten thousand euros is why she’s in this café.
She slides into our booth but she doesn’t look at either of us. Her eyes stay locked on her hands and I spy one tiny piece of paper twisted tight in her grasp.
“Avez-vous ce que nous voudrons?” Do you have what we want?
The slightest of nods. The paper slides forward. “Merci,” I mutter as Lucien’s hand closes over the scrap.
“What’s going to happen?” she asks in French.
I meet her nervous brown eyes and I reply in French as well. “You were never here.” My voice is harsh, but her curiosity is unforgivable. Curiosity will get you killed. The less she knows, the less can be pried out of her by torture.