Then there were the eight that I had been able to reach. If recovery was ever possible from their ordeals, they were on that path. I had money and it could buy therapy and a safe place to recover. Money couldn’t erase the horrors of the past but it could sooth some pain.
There was only one woman that I’d been unable to find. No one in Cleveland had a record of Ellie Samuelson. Dylan’s guards didn’t talk, so I didn’t know what she looked like. Only once, two years ago, I’d been able to bribe one of Dylan’s guards, Ivan Klimov. But Ivan had been killed before he could send me anything of value, the same night I’d arranged a hit on Durov.
All I knew of Ellie was that the day after she had been sold to a brothel in Lagos, Dylan had fled Abeokuta for Tbilisi in Georgia, part of the former Soviet Union, where he’d remained for two years under the protection of Stanislav Durov.
The net was tightening around Dylan McAllister, but I was no closer to uncovering the mystery of what had happened to Ellie. She had disappeared into thin air. I couldn’t find her in Nigeria’s brothels. I couldn’t find any sign of her in Cleveland. I had no idea who she was, how old, whether she was even alive.
But every day, I swore an oath. I would find her. I would make amends. Because of who I was, I had so much to atone for.
Chapter 1
Alexander:
When I opened the door to my Paris house, none of that was on my mind. All I was thinking about was the woman in my home. Jenny, Rachel, whatever her name really was. My bright star.
I’d gone to Lori’s auction four times in the past, and twice, I’d found submissives there, women who liked to play the way I played. Two submissives whose eyes had brightened in anticipation when they saw the playroom and who had approached play without fear.
Yet, neither of them had tugged on my heart the way Jenny did.
After Paris two years ago, when she’d given me a fake number, I’d sworn to myself that I wouldn’t look for her. She had not wanted to be found. I could respect that. I had to respect that.
But when I’d seen her at the auction with a cover story designed expressly to appeal to Lori, of course suspicions had been raised.
She was a player. In this game, there were no coincidences. The only reason she was in my home was so that I could find out who she was and who she was working for. I needed to know what she had been doing in Paris two years ago. I had to uncover why she wanted me to bid on her in the auction.
I had to do all of this knowing that the wrong answer would result in me putting a bullet in her head.
Two years ago, I’d spent a night with her, ignoring all my responsibilities. But when I’d returned, I’d ended up comforting a grieving woman whose man had been killed in my absence. I could not allow myself to forget that. Though I very much wanted to, I could not afford to lose myself in Jenny again.
***
I found her in the library. She looked fearful when I walked in. Her cheeks were pale and her eyes were wild, and my heart clenched.
“What’s the matter?” I asked quietly, stifling the regret in my heart.
I had hoped that we were past this. If I was allowing myself to hope, I had so many wishes. I desperately prayed that she wasn’t involved in anything where I’d feel compelled to take action, because though I told myself I was capable of killing her, I was lying. Where she was concerned, I was shamefully weak.
My greatest desire was for her to look at me with want, not fear. Deep within me, there was the unvoiced wish that she’d want to stick around at the end of three months, though I could not allow myself these hopes and dreams, these weaknesses.
It was all a pipe-dream anyway, because she was looking at me with unease in her eyes once again.
She shook her head. “Nothing,” she replied. Her body language was closed and withdrawn.
I clenched my hands into fists and strove for patience. Her constant fear was pulling me back to the worst periods of my life. I wanted to find her former master and beat him into a bloody pulp for what he had done to this woman, because no matter what angle she was playing, there was nothing fake about the flash of terror in her eyes.
“What are you reading?” I asked her, changing the topic. She adored the library. She was ensconced in the overstuffed chair in front of the fireplace, curled up into a ball with a book on the armrest. The last three days, anytime I had wanted to find her, I’d started in this room and she was almost always here.
“I was just flipping through a magazine,” she said tonelessly. She flinched in her chair as I moved and I held on to my temper with difficulty. I knew I wasn’t the cause of it, but I couldn’t help feeling hurt at her reaction. Each time I saw her panic, it took me back.
***