30

Jack

January 28th, 2020

“We made up our own organization,” Charles explained as I paced the old stone porch of the cathedral. “We didn’t have a name, we used it to get into places that wouldn’t have let us in otherwise.”

“What credentials did you use, Charles? What badges?” Fuck, I would think that someone smart enough to hide from Malachi for all of this time would be smart enough to be straight with me.

“We had lots of badges,” he bit. “CIA, FBI, Homeland Security. Whatever we needed to get the job done.”

“What job? You keep saying job, what job?”

“Any job,” he seethed. “All of them.”

I scoffed. “So what? You were some kind of vigilante? I don’t believe that, Charles,” I sang. “You’re lying to me and I don’t like liars.”

“We didn’t go around saving people. We were good at everything. We stole, we sold, we hunted people down and tortured them until they gave up whatever we wanted. We got what we needed, and then we killed them. We are just like you—”

“There is no one like us,” I snarled. “Don’t ever compare us, Charles. I should kill you for such blasphemy.”

“It’s a family gig,” Charles went on angrily. “Marla’s side, the Alascer’s. She’s better at it than I am. I was brought into it at 17 when I met her, she was born into this like our daughter.”

“Abernath, Scotland Yard,” I said pointedly. “Malachi. Who else do you know?”

“Fuck, we’ve got connections everywhere, just like your family does. Let me talk to my daughter. Now. I demand it.”

I hung up, turning to the driveway. It’s been nine days since I first locked Rae up, and I was growing tired. Tired of pushing her like this, tired of inflicting this kind of pain. I never thought I would ever meet someone who would make me hesitate, but here I was, considering setting her free and finding another way to unlock these memories.

My phone buzzed, it was Zo.

Zo: She’s awake.

I closed my eyes and pressed the phone against my forehead. Fuck. For once in my life, I didn’t want to keep doing this. I wanted—needed to stop. But was that what was best for her or for me? She wanted to break the brainwashing. She survived four months last time, how long will it take to shatter what they did to her?

Was it worth it?

Ten minutes later, I was walking down the steps to the basement. The scent of copper was overwhelming, but not something I wasn’t used too.

Twice since bringing her down here, we sedated her, unchained her, cleaned up the shit and piss, woke her up enough to use the restroom, and brought her back.

For real prisoners, we would have let them sit in their excrement, but I couldn’t do it, not with her.

I think Greyson had rubbed off on me. Would I ever let any of my brothers know that? No. Fuck no. I wasn’t weak, I just didn’t like pushing her in this way. Nobody with a solid mind would like punishing their spouse like this. Nobody.

Rae’s head was bowed. She was completely naked, covered in blood, as if she had bathed in it. Her hair was a matted mess, some cuts stitched up, others still festering. I had been giving her antibiotics in the water I was giving her to keep her from getting infected, but fuck, this was getting…it was more difficult than it should have been seeing her like this.

Malachi would be disappointed. Hell, I was disappointed. I wanted another assignment just to prove to myself that I wasn’t going soft, that it was just Rae. That she was the exception.

“Give me a minute,” I told Zo.

“J,” she said, her voice softer than usual, which annoyed the living shit out of me. “We have to keep goin—”

“A minute,” I snarled, finding her eyes.

She searched mine before nodding and heading for the stairs. As she passed me, she grabbed my arm and looked up, her blue eyes burning. “I know it’s hard, but you have to remember that she wanted this.”

I didn’t have to do fucking shit.

I waited until I heard the door shut before I walked up to her. I worked my jaw, my lip curling. Seeing her like this, I fucking hated it. I hated it more than anything else in the world, and I had done it.

I wanted to kill whoever had tortured her, yet I was doing the same, to what end?

How was this going to affect us when we were done? She was mine, always, but would I still be hers?

I crouched down in front of her and gently took her chin, lifting her head.

Her amber eyes were still bright, but exhausted. There were dark circles under her eyes, a couple of cuts, but not more than that. I had stayed away from her face. Away from her nails, from damaging her hair, her bones. Nothing permanent, save, I suppose, for the psychological affect this would cause her.

Whatever I had to do, I would fix it. I would fix this.

“Princess,” I whispered, “you have to let your mind break.”

Her throat bobbed, her head fully leaning into my hand. “Are you breaking, Jack?” she asked, her voice hoarse. She clicked her tongue. “And here I thought you were the strong one,” she cooed hoarsely.

I didn’t think anyone was as strong as she was. Not anymore. She had broken me in a way, I supposed. Altered what I thought true strength was. “I’m giving you a choice,” I told her evenly. “Please take it.”

She searched my eyes, the hardness in them flickering. Her throat bobbed and her bottom lip trembled ever so slightly. “He says we don’t kill the innocent,” she whispered, her eyes filling. “We only condemn the guilty.”

My brows furrowed at the statement, the pain in her eyes. I recognized that now. I remembered it. Of course I remembered it, how could I not? “But the guilty,” I went on, tears dripping down her cheeks, “are to be decided by us.”

“And us alone,” she finished, trying to sniff, but the blood and snot clogged her sinuses. “I remember,” she whispered desperately. “I remember.”

It wasn’t her father who told her that. Only pieces had broken through last time and her mind tried to make sense of it, but this? This was fucking bullshit. “What the fuck,” I breathed out, letting her go and pushing myself to a stand, a roaring sounding in my ears. “What the fuck, Rae.”

She shook violently as she tried to keep her head up, tried to keep her eyes on me. “Marla and Malachi knew each other for a reason.”

“I was there, Rae,” I shouted, my heart hammering.

A cracked sob shook through her. “They were more than just friends.”

“He would have told me,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “He would have told me.”

“Mom didn’t tell dad because there was no reason to. A year? That was nothing. Nothing.”

I turned away from her, my heart pounding, the rage boiling. “No, Azrael, Everett, Greyson, they would have known. Somebody would have known.”

“They wouldn’t have. You’re not permitted to know everything, you’re just the sons. You’re not even blood. Not all of you.”

My eyes widened, and I turned on her.?“What the fuck did you just say?” She shouldn’t have known that. Nobody knew that.

Rae shook her head, tugging at her wrists again. “Please, please take me home. I just want to go home.”

January th, 2020

“I gave her a sedative.”

“It’s been two days,” Zo frowned.

“Oh, don’t get all fucking high and mighty now, Zondrah.”

“Don’t call me that,” she bit.

I called Malachi again, straight to voicemail. It was starting to piss me off.

“Jack, he’s not going to answer, he’s in the middle of shit.”

He was suddenly always in the middle of fucking shit. “She went through the program. I want fucking answers.”

She walked up to me and ripped the phone out of my hands, taking several steps back before I could grab for it.

“Give that back,” I demanded.

“There are hundreds of Initiates, it’s been almost 20 years since you’ve gone through, you can’t expect to know all of them all the time.”

I shoved myself to a stand, stepping up to her. “He was truthful about knowing Marla, about meeting with her, about talking about Rae, but he couldn’t remember that her daughter went through the program and fucking graduated? That he fucked her mom? That’s bullshit, he’s hiding something.”

“He’s always hiding something, he’s Malachi,” she frowned.

I ripped my phone from her grip and turned for the kitchen. I had sedated her, washed her up, taken care of her wounds, forced more antibiotics down her throat, and put her to bed. I had no idea what to expect when she woke up, but I knew she wouldn’t be the same.

“Stop calling him,” she demanded as I put the phone to my ear.

“I’m not calling Malachi.”

“Well, well, well, look what the gardener dragged in,” Azrael hummed. “Another daffodil.”

“Don’t call me that and stop calling her that.”

“How is my little flower, hmm? Enjoying her time in the woods? Fresh air, none of that nasty noise pollution. It must be nice for those sore muscles of hers. All that time spent in that chair being tortured by the love of her life? Jack, are you taking a page out of my book?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

I straightened, turning to Zo. “How did you know about that?”

Her face twisted in question.

“I know everything, baby brother.”

Rolling my eyes, I continued for the fridge. He was five years younger than me, but I doubted that mattered to him. “She remembers going through the program. Did Malachi say anything to you about it?”

“Well, it just so happens that I’m in his office right now. Shall I look her up under A’s or B’s?”

My brows pulled together. “I thought you were out of the country. Why are you in his office?”

“A’s or B’s?” he repeated, a bite to his tone.

There was no reason for any of us to go into his office while he wasn’t around, but I supposed if it had to be anybody, it made sense that Azrael would break that unspoken rule. “A’s.”

He hummed as he searched, and it made me want to stick a knife in his spine. Humming was something most of the world seemed to do, but when Azrael did it, it sounded so goddamn condescending. It was fucking irritating.

“Ah, here we are,” he finally said as I dished myself out some dinner. “Charlotte Alascer. No father listed. She went through the program in 2016. Passed with flying colors and was stationed…” another little tune slipped through the phone speaker. “Nowhere. It seems to me that Malachi gave her a kind of leeway he has only ever given us. How extraordinary.”

“So why not mention her?” I asked, mostly to myself. Was she considered an Initiate? Or an unofficial daughter?

“Perhaps her mother only wanted her trained by Malachi, not working for him. That would have cost her a lot of money and oops, what’s this?” I heard the flutter of paper. “A receipt. I guess you truly can put a price on anything, even people.”

She was an agent, trained by people all around the world, and when it wasn’t enough, Marla must have decided that there was only one place left to go, but after all these months, why not mention that? Why not even hint at the fact that he knew Rae. That he had met her. Why lie?

“Bye, Azrael.” I hung up and found Zo’s eyes. “Why would Malachi intentionally lie to us about Rae?”

She shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t lying. He doesn’t meet all Initiates, I know it’s different because he knew Marla personally, but what was happening in 2016? He was still going out on his own assignments then. He was busy all the time. Perhaps it slipped his mind.”

But they had an affair. How long had it been going on? Was it just while Rae was in the program or was it more than that? Malachi never mentioned how long he had known Marla, only that they met on occasion, and he hadn’t heard about her death.

I don’t remember him looking too broken up about that, but he was a master at hiding his emotions, it’s what made him so good at his job.

“Jack.”

The voice was fierce and unwavering, filled with fire and a chill that dripped lust down my own spine, but I knew I had to wait. Just until I was sure her wounds wouldn’t reopen once I fucked her.

I turned, finding her just in the entrance of the hall, her hand gripped just above her hip on her left side.

She moved it away, showing me the blood staining her white satin nightgown. “Why the fuck did you put me in white?” she asked accusingly.

“For exactly this reason,” I answered, walking over. I lifted the nightgown, revealing the bandage that wrapped around the cuts along her thigh and hip on that side.

She cared not for the fact that Zo could see the thin lacy thong I had put on her or the near see-through nighty, all she cared about were her injuries.

“You bled through the bandages,” I mumbled as she slid her hand over my shoulder, gripping into my shirt. “Come on, let’s get you changed.”

“Out here,” she requested, keeping her grip on my shirt despite how that forced her muscles to stretch. “Where I can see the trees.” Her eyes lifted to the wall of windows as I nodded to Zo to get the medical supplies. “I forgot how much I loved them.”

I found her eyes, those beautiful siren eyes. “I find peace in them,” I told her when Zo left the room. I hated the rainy weather in Washington, but the trees? I had always loved the trees.

“It’s the silence,” she decided, meeting mine.

I led her to the couch, her limp not as severe as I would have expected, although she was stronger physically than she had been two months ago.

“Let’s take it off, I want to check on everything.”

She nodded, wincing and hissing as she lifted her arms. I quickly pulled off her nightgown and tossed it to the side. I helped her to the couch, laying her on her back. Fuck, her body looked amazing. She had always looked amazing, but the training had done her well.

“Focus,” she told me, lifting her arms above her head and holding her wrists so I could fix the main issue first. “I can’t fuck if I bleed out.”

I offered her a small smile, caught a little off-guard by the slight nervousness I could hear in her tone. “We can’t have that now, can we?” I wasn’t sure how far gone she was after I tortured her for so long, and I had every doubt in the world that she would actually tell me right away. I’d be patient with her, I would. Perhaps it would mean a few single sessions with my hand and a pair of her panties, but if that’s the price to make sure she healed, fine. My cock would understand. Eventually.

I got to work on taking her bandages off and cleaning her wounds. It wasn’t until I taped the new bandages on that she spoke again.

“I know you have questions. Both of you,” she said, her eyes fixed on mine. “Ask and I’ll answer the best I can.”

“Who are you now?” Zo asked before I could say anything. “Are you the woman Jack met or are you Charlotte Alascer, daughter of Marla?”

Her eyes didn’t waver. “I am Rae Bennett, that’s who I am. Daughter of Marla and Charles Alascer. I trained with the best of the best until word got around to mom about a new program. A program that turns people into ruthless, unforgiving monsters. That’s what she wanted. She wanted me to be the best weapon I could be. Someone who couldn’t be taken advantage of, used, killed easily. Someone who wouldn’t break.

“She spoke to Malachi several times, although at the time, I didn’t know his name. I think they might have known each other before, years before this, but Mom never said for sure. They spoke for a year and a half before I was finally accepted. After I graduated, we continued on with our jobs. They were like assignments, I suppose. We never stayed in one place for more than three months, but we did revisit if it was needed.”

“Malachi never mentioned you,” Zo told her.

She shivered, goosebumps erupting across her skin, her nipples hardening as I continued to change the many bandages and check her stitches. “Mom didn’t want my name drifting around the world as one of Malachi’s Initiates. You aren’t known by your names, just by the masks you wear, but the Initiates are known around the world. Most know their names, know their affiliations. Malachi Adler is known.”

“Why?” Zo asked.

Rae watched me carefully. “Because the Alascer’s are ghosts and the people who work for Malachi, no matter how careful the anonymity, are not. The world doesn’t know about the Alascer’s, but the world knows about the Shadows. They know about Malachi Adler and his family.”

I couldn’t argue that logic, but it still didn’t excuse Malachi from keeping it from me. “So, we have some answers, but still not the ones we need. We still need to find Blanchard,” I told her. “Do you know that name? Do you know what your mom found out about us that made them go after you?”

Her throat bobbed. “No,” she stated evenly. “She, like Malachi, liked to keep secrets from us. Important ones. If they know about me and the program, perhaps we can come to the conclusion that they are program failures. Bitter that I survived, and that mom found whatever secret out. Perhaps they want to destroy Malachi and think that going after me would help with that. Why does it matter?” she asked, shaking her head. “They’re trying to kill me, so we need to kill them first.”

All of her stitches still looked good, the shallow cuts already healing. “Arms down,” I instructed.

She winced, her jaw feathering, as she lowered her hands to her stomach.

My eyes lingered on her perfect breasts, my cock throbbing. Fuck, I missed her. I missed touching her, feeling her wrapped around my cock.

“Jack,” she whispered, her voice thick.

My eyes lifted to hers, finding her pupils fully dilated. God-fucking-dammit. “Keep it in your pants, Bennett,” I told her, checking the injuries on her shoulders.

I leaned in, pulling her bandages up, checking those stitches. It had been one of the deeper cuts other than the stab wounds.

“You can’t trust him,” she whispered in my ear when I was close enough, causing me to still.

I leaned back just enough to meet her eyes, my brows furrowing. “Who?”

Her eyes were flaming, unblinking. “We disappeared to escape him,” she said quietly. “Blanchard is an alias. His alias. Mom taught him everything she knew about this world. A little over two years ago, 2017, something changed. Mom thinks someone got to him, maybe it had to do with the secret she found out about, but there was no proof, all we could do was run.”

That was the problem with this world. People could jump sides whenever they wanted. Corruption was everywhere, in everyone. There was always something else around the corner.

Rae’s father switched sides two years ago for an unknown reason, they ran. Rae stayed gone for a while before they found her, trapped her, tortured her into forgetting before releasing her back into the world to play this game, against the wishes of whoever his boss now is. There could be a lot of reasons they went after Marla and Rae now. Maybe his boss had no idea who they were and letting Charles go after them was a kind of payment for joining him. Or maybe it was a test and Charles was okay with completing it because he found out about the affair.

Maybe the bosses were tied in with whatever Marla found out or maybe that didn’t come into play at all. Maybe that secret didn’t matter in the slightest.

It could be half a dozen different other reasons.

“Charles hired the four then,” I said, reapplying the bandage when I felt the stitches were still good.

She nodded, coming to the same conclusion as me. It truly didn’t matter the real reasoning though, whatever Marla had found out about us or why her father switched sides, what mattered now was finding them and giving them what was owed to them. We’d put the rest of the pieces together when he was in chains.

“I have to ask you a few more questions,” I told her, easing her to a sit.

She grunted and winced, sliding her hand over the wound that had bled this morning. I wasn’t sure why she whispered it to me, maybe she worried about Zo’s reaction. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter, I had to tell Zo.

“Whatever you need.”

Zo sat back on the coffee table, studying her as I sat beside her. She held out a glass of water to her, which Rae took gratefully, gulping it down.

“What’s your favorite color?” I asked, searching her eyes.

She adjusted herself, trading Zo the cup for her nightgown. “Growing up, it had always been pink, as an adult, it’s r-r-r—” She snarled and shook her head. “R-r-r…” She closed her eyes and worked her jaw, breathing through her nose. “Blue,” she spit out as if she were choking on something. “Dark blue. Fuck.”

I helped ease the nightgown on. “You’ve remembered a lot, but the programming is still sewn into you. It’ll take some time before it fades completely.”

“I know,” she snapped and then closed her eyes. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” she went on, finding my eyes. “I’m not angry at you.”

I nodded, sliding my hand over her knee. “I know. You have to exercise patience with yourself, okay?”

She nodded, moving her knee slightly, telling me nonverbally that she wasn’t ready for anymore touching just yet.

So, I removed my hand and folded them together, studying her carefully to see how much her physical reaction had changed. “What kind of fruit do you like?”

“Str…” she ground her teeth together, swallowing, her body tensing, her hands flexing. “Fuck,” she muttered. “Straw…b-berries. St-st-straaawb-berries.”

“Good. Your thoughts on social media?”

“Poison,” she answered, meeting my eyes. “A death sentence. They wanted me online because it goes against our beliefs.”

They had to be ghosts, being online would take away the anonymity, especially posting your face. It was probably why Charles forced her into loving it. She lost her power by being online. “Okay, good, there was no hesitation in that. Jewels?”

Her fingers found the metal collar around her neck, her amber eyes shining. “Sapphires. I love sapphires.”

That’s good to know. “And how do you feel about coffee?”

She glanced towards the kitchen and found my eyes again. “B-b-black. Do you have any?”

I chuckled. I couldn’t blame her for that one. “We can make some.” She was doing really well. Her body was relaxing, although she still picked at the skin around her nails a bit. It was a good sign. “Now, locker 447? You mentioned your mother putting your gifts there. Benji worked there.”

She nodded, rolling her shoulders, reaching up to rub her shoulder only to freeze before she could hurt herself. “That was wrong, but it followed an old rule of ours,” she explained finding Zo’s eyes. “It wasn’t 447, it was 228. If ever we’re caught, tortured for information, the easiest thing to do is shift the information in a way that is almost truthful. 22, easy numbers, double them, but subtract one from 8, don’t divide. Too easy for people to crack if you follow the same pattern.”

Zo nodded. “What’s in the storage locker?”

“In LA?” she shook her head, her face twisting. “You guys never went to look?”

“Busy, Princess.” Malachi had said he would do it. I should have done it myself. Fucking bullshit.

She released a breath. “I don’t know, I can’t…it’s not there. Gifts, that’s what I said. Mom brought art back for me? So…she brought something. Something important. Maybe from our other assignments?”

I could see the exhaustion in her eyes. She needed to rest, let her body heal. “Okay, we’ll look into what you’ve told us,” I told her easily. “You need to heal, rest.”

“I’ll be okay in a week,” she assured me as I stood. “One week, good as new. I can help.”

“I plan on taking you wherever I go,” I assured her. “You’re one of us, Princess, you need to get back in the game.”

Light filled her eyes, excitement, relief, as if she thought I would have said no. Fuck that, I had already planned on taking her on my assignments, now that I knew she was truly one of us, there was no way in Hell I was going anywhere without her. Never again. We would take this world together or not at all. From now until death finds us.