Chapter 26

Landon shoved his hand through his hair, briefly gripping it and tugging, just to get a little jolt of pain. That centered him enough that he could push aside his jealousy over the revelation that Rolf and Andrei had performed aftercare for Colette.

She wasn't his anymore. Not that she ever really had been.

He'd fucked up, and she'd, rightfully, put a boundary in place.

"What happened after Damien confronted you?" Rolf asked, a slight rephrasing of his inquiry from a moment ago when Colette didn't answer.

Landon was glad Rolf was here, calmly—if relentlessly—asking logical questions, because Landon was rapidly losing the ability to be calm and rational.

Dread ate at Landon. He was desperate to protect her, comfort her. Colette was composed, flashing an occasional smile, and their quick barbs and teasing felt normal…but he knew her. Knew by the way she occasionally looked down, or dropped her voice to a whisper, that darker emotions were rolling through her.

If he didn't need the details in order to protect her, he would have shut Rolf down, carried her to his room, and just held her until the slight trembling he could see in her fingers and lower lip stopped.

Colette took a breath before answering. "That night at dinner, I went to Kazlauskas and mentioned the strange man who'd come into the workroom. I was fairly certain they had cameras in there, so telling him was a way of proving my integrity. By that point I'd convinced myself the interlude was a planned test. Of what, I wasn't sure."

Colette took a sip of water, and her hand trembled enough to make the water in the glass dance.

"Kazlauskas looked terrified when I told him, and said I shouldn't have taken the waist beads off. That's when I started to worry. I asked what he meant, but all he would say was that Damien was the boss, and I shouldn't have said no to him. Except I never said no." Colette shook her head, hair whipping against her cheeks and chin. "I barely said anything, because with men like that silence is always the best option."

That was a fucking heavy statement.

"It was enough to scare me though, and I told Kazlauskas I was done with the assessment, and would be leaving in the morning. I wasn't actually quite done, but I planned to fake the final test results they needed to get insurance." She paused, wincing slightly. "Hypothetically I could have faked them I mean. I'm not admitting to insurance fraud."

"For the purposes of this conversation, we'll assume all current and future statements about any act that could be categorized as a crime, are hypothetically," Rolf said formally.

Landon looked over, surprised the by-the-book agent was willing to do that. The way Rolf was watching Colette, he had a feeling Rolf could see the barely-veiled fear and anxiety running through her.

Colette nodded gratefully. "Thank you." She crossed her bare legs, cupping her top knee with both hands, her knuckles white, though the posture was poised and calm. "After dinner I went back to my room and set the files to upload."

"The files you gave Interpol?" Rolf asked.

"No, the pictures of the jewelry and test results. I was finishing the job they hired me for. By that point I had a lot of information about probable locations where the art would end up, details about those properties, and routes for transport, but it was stored here." She touched her temple. "All that information was gathered just from listening to the conversations around me."

"You speak Russian?" Andrei asked with interest.

"Not well, but I have, had, an excellent mini parabolic mic and high-quality translation software. I almost always wore headphones, and told them I was listening to music while I worked. I took walks around the grounds in the evening, with permission, and again, they thought I was listening while I exercised. Actually, one headphone was the parabolic mic, so I could turn my head to point it, and my phone was live-translating their conversations. I was there long enough that they got used to me, and since they were sure I didn't understand them, they weren't careful about what they said."

"Smart," Landon said softly.

"No, I'm not. I was Icarus, flying too close the sun." Colette picked up her glass again and almost dropped it. The trembling had progressed to shaking.

"Let me." Rolf leaned forward, stretching out one long arm to take it from her and set it on the table.

"I was going to leave that night." Colette's head bent, until she was staring down at her legs. "I called for a cab, tried to make it sound like I'd been drinking and wanted a ride to a nightclub, figuring that was plausible enough reason for a late-night cab that a driver would pick me up without questioning the time. I'd traveled light, so all I had was a large shoulder bag. I destroyed the mini parabolic and did a hard reset on my phone, as a precaution. By eleven I was dressed for clubbing and ready to go, waiting for it to be time to go down to the main gate and meet my taxi.

"That's when Damien walked into my room."

Landon hadn't forgotten where her tale was headed. Her revelations up until now had been more logistical than emotional, and had put some emotional distance between him and the core of what they were talking about. Now the dread in his gut turned into a dark hard ball, and anger joined it. Not anger at her, but anticipatory anger towards the man who'd hurt her.

"Damien was surprised, and angry, when he saw me awake and dressed. He'd wanted to corner me while I was asleep. When he asked what I was doing I repeated the story about going to a dance club. He laughed, said he would be my party. Then he grabbed me, forced me to stand up—I had on a coat, but it was unbuttoned—and looked at my waist. He asked me why I'd taken the jewelry off."

Colette looked nauseous, and Landon had to grip the arms of the chair to keep from going to her.

"It was like a switch flipped in him," she said softly. "He went from smiling and crude to enraged. He dragged me through the building by my hair. People, mostly men, watched and did nothing. I almost got away at one point, and he backhanded me so hard I lost time."

He'd knocked her unconscious. Landon bowed his head, imagining her trapped in the mansion of a madman with no allies, no one to look out for her. She was clever and smart, but she was also a single person, and alone anyone was vulnerable.

"He took me to the workroom where the jewelry was, ripped off my dress."

Landon's teeth ached, and he wanted to scoop her into his arms and kiss her until she felt safe.

"Then he put the waist beads on. I almost got away, because he had to let go of me to fasten the clasp."

Colette was staring at her knees, hands now gripped together and pressed against her stomach. Her breasts rose and fell above the top of the corset in a jagged pattern, an easy visual indication that she wasn't calm, wasn't breathing evenly. The club sub attire seemed crude, because it kept her lower half barely naked, and restricting her chest. She should be in a comfy, fluffy track suit. He itched with the need to get up and get her something else to wear, but that would break the confessional-like atmosphere.

"He beat me for trying to get away." She looked up, but didn't meet his, or anyone's, gaze. "I begged him to stop. I was hurt and I slipped up, started speaking French."

"There's no shame in that," Andrei said softly. "Pain without consent is brutal."

"Then why do I feel ashamed?" Colette's cheeks were bright with twin flags of color. "I was stupid, going in there alone. I knew they were dangerous."

"You thought you were dealing with a black market art smuggler and auctioneer," Landon said softly. "Not slavers. A different level of dangerous."

She paused there, and Landon's stupid fucking brain popped up a vision in bright technicolor—Colette bleeding and woozy from a blow to the head, naked and defenseless as she begged the man who held her down not to hurt her.

Silence stretched, Colette's choppy breathing the only sound. Landon didn't know what to do. How to comfort her. If he even had the right to comfort her. He'd hurt her too. He'd had her helpless, willingly helpless thanks to her submission, but still helpless. And he'd used that against her.

"Why does Damien call you his wife?" Rolf asked, the question leapfrogging over the next moments in her story. Landon nodded at the other man, acknowledging and thanking him for giving her the option to skip past whatever had been done to her in the moments after her she'd been beaten badly enough she slipped up and dropped her cover identity.

"Because he thought…" Colette shook her head.

"What did he think?" Landon asked softly.

She looked up, meeting his gaze. Her smile was soft and a little sad. "I should tell it in order."

His stomach clenched, but he nodded, a calm encouragement.

She cleared her throat, her tone businesslike. "Damien took me to a bedroom and cuffed my wrists to the bed. He asked me why my accent had changed, but he didn't really seem to care. I made something up about growing up in both Dublin and Paris."

Colette took a few steadying breaths, and her next words were flat, almost matter of fact.

"He…examined me. Declared I was so tight I must be a virgin."

The arms of the chair creaked, the wood frame beneath the leather groaning under Landon's grip as he fought not to go to her.

"I was about to tell him I wasn't a virgin, thinking maybe he would let me go. But then he declared that since I was a virgin he'd wait to fuck me until we were married."

Landon jerked. He thought he knew how this story would go, but that shocked him.

"Ah," Rolf said. "So in his mind, you're married. Or at least engaged."

Colette's smile was cold. "He kept me chained to that bed for days. An odd way to treat a wife."

Silence fell after her words. Landon's hands were shaking with rage…and a little relief that it hadn't been worse. He flexed his fingers, which hurt from how hard he'd been gripping the chair.

He'd kill Damien. It was no longer a question of if, only when. Morality and the law be damned.

"I'm not trying to make you relive the trauma, but if he had you chained to the bed for days, and wasn't raping you, what was he doing?" Andrei's matter of fact question made Landon wince, but Colette's lips twitched.

"Why, we were planning our wedding, of course."

What the actual fuck?

Landon stared at her, trying to decide if she was kidding. Nope, despite the teasing smile, he didn't think she was lying.

"At first it was other things. He would just stand there and stare at me, and I was sure that if I didn't do something he'd change his mind about raping me.

"I tried talking to him about a million different things, looking for the right angle. Eventually I started discussing weddings, and that's what worked. The first time I said something about it he sat down and started describing his perfect wedding. The next day, he stopped cuffing me to the bed, and instead I got a chain around my ankle, like a dog that's tied up. At least I could move."

"How long were you there?" Rolf asked.

"By the time I escaped it had been sixteen days since I first arrived at the estate. The first four I was working. Days five through fifteen I was with Damien."

* * *

Eleven days suffering mental and physical abuse. Then she'd come to him for help and he'd been an asshole to her. Landon felt sick.

"Long enough the bruises from the first beating faded," she said. "I was worried we'd run out of wedding planning topics, so on I think day eight or nine I offered to assess other pieces of art or jewelry. I told him I missed looking at beautiful things. He liked that. He liked…" Colette shook her head, but this time her expression was puzzled. "He liked educational lectures."

"I'm sorry, what?" Andrei asked.

"He'd give me a statue, painting, or piece of jewelry. I'd photograph it, sketch it, write up a description—as if I were cataloguing. Once I had everything, he'd say, ‘tell me, wife' and then listen to me talk about it for hours. I'd talk not only about the piece itself, but would provide historical and cultural context, detailing the significance." Colette's lips twisted. "Sometimes I had to make up what I was saying, because I didn't know enough about the piece. I was scared he'd figure out when I was lying, but he never did."

"Educational lectures…" Andrei repeated as if he couldn't believe it.

"He sounds insane," Rolf said.

"He is," she said fervently. "Absolutely mad, but as long as I was lecturing, he wasn't touching me."

Landon closed his eyes, swallowing hard.

"He had me work in his office," Colette went on. "I slept there, on a mattress in the corner. He chained me to the wall when he left the office for good each evening. Said having me in his bed would tempt him to ‘ruin the wedding.'

"He liked it when other people came in and he could…show me off before or after his meetings. I didn't know what was happening most of the time because I didn't have my phone and mic anymore.

"One day a man pissed Damien off. Damien beat him, and during the assault the man's phone fell out of his pocket and slid across the floor to me."

Though this was in the past, Landon felt a surge of relief, as if he were in the moment with past Colette, realizing this might be the way out.

"For a day or two, I hid it, waiting for someone to come looking for it. No one did. Maybe Damien killed him.

"By that point I'm sure Damien thought he'd broken me. I didn't fight or protest when he touched me. On the few occasions I did or said something he didn't like—usually I was too slow to respond—I'd curl up when it looked like he was going to hit me. He liked that I was afraid of him, that I cowered."

"Good, love," Landon murmured. "That's exactly what you should have done."

Colette's gaze snapped to his, and something like relief flashed in her eyes. Had she thought he'd think less of her for protecting herself?

"Once I was sure no one would come looking for the phone, I started taking pictures of documents and maps. Any time Damien wasn't in the room during the day, I documented everything I could. I gave myself five minutes for pictures, then ten minutes to upload them to my secure cloud server, which I access via an ftp login."

"Why didn't you do it at night?" Rolf asked.

"First, I never took the phone with me to the pallet where I slept. I had no way to hide it. Second, the chain wasn't long enough for me to reach anything, including the private bathroom." Her lips curved up, but it wasn't a smile. "He was delighted that every morning I was happy to see him. I wasn't faking that. I was very happy every time he arrived because it meant he'd unlock me and I could go to the bathroom."

"There were no cameras in his office?" Andrei asked.

"No, and I know because he said that next time they updated the security system he'd have a camera installed and point it at my little desk so he could watch me work even when he had other things to do."

"If it was his office, he'd want privacy, even from his own people," Andrei said.

Colette nodded. "After ten minutes of uploading, I'd stop, even if it wasn't done, and wiped everything from the phone. A hard restart."

"Very smart," Andrei said, smiling at her in a way that vaguely irritated Landon.

"A few times I even recorded what was being said in the office, and when Damien left the room I'd run the recording through a free translation site. I couldn't do it often, too risky, and the translations were not as accurate as what I'd had, but better than nothing."

"Smart, but dangerous," Rolf said.

"If Damien caught me with the phone, he would have…" Colette shrugged fatalistically. "I assume in that situation death would be the best I could hope for."

"How did you get away?" Landon asked, his voice hoarse from holding his emotions in check.

"I knew from a conversation I'd recorded and translated, he had a meeting in St. Petersburg, but he told his lieutenant that he didn't want to leave his ‘wife'. I thought if he was angry with me, if I wasn't entertaining him, he'd go."

Landon felt sick.

Andrei's expression was grim. "That's a dangerous play."

"It was," she said, so low it was almost a whisper. "But it worked. The next time we were alone I told him that I wouldn't wear the waist beads anymore. Made up something about there being no beauty in a piece of jewelry like that, and that it was a waste of good emeralds."

"What did he do?" Landon asked, keeping his voice soft.

"He took me to his bedroom, chained me to the bed, and cut them off. With a knife." Her words fell like stones.

"The wound on your side?" Landon asked softly.

"Yes."

"What wound?" Andrei was frowning.

Landon looked over, one brow raised. How had he not noticed the massive cut?

Unless Andrei hadn't seen Colette naked as part of whatever aftercare he'd done.

Good.

"The next morning he left for St. Petersburg. He took a good number of men with him. The place wasn't exactly deserted, but close. He locked me in his bedroom with a chain around my ankle."

"Clearly his preferred method of restraint," Rolf said.

"Yes." Colette stood, and for a minute he thought she'd hit her limit, that she was going to walk away from this conversation. God knew she had every fucking right. Instead, she skirted the table to stand in front of him. Landon held perfectly still, not wanting to move in any way that might scare her.

Colette held out her hand. Slowly, Landon curled his fingers around hers.

Colette raised their joined hands to her neck, then guided his fingers into her hair.

"Do you feel it?" she asked.

He sifted through the cool, soft strands, not sure what he was supposed to feel. But then he found it. A piece of denser hair—a small braid with something hard but not cold laced through it. It was at the base of her head, near her nape.

"It's a hard plastic handcuff key," she said softly. "I always have one braided into my hair."

"And no one notices?" Andrei asked.

"Did you?" Colette countered.

"I didn't." Landon hadn't noticed, and he'd had his hands in her hair and around her neck plenty. But the key was small and warm, thanks to the proximity to her body. If he had felt it, he might have almost thought it was a knot in her hair.

Now that he was touching her, he didn't want to let go. Landon carefully cupped the back of her head with his fingers, massaging gently. He wasn't entirely sure his touch was welcome, until she pressed against him, tipping her face so her cheek rested on his wrist.

"You waited," Rolf said with approval. "Let him torture you while you waited for the right moment."

Colette closed her eyes, turning her face against Landon's wrist until her trembling lips made contact with his skin.

Landon couldn't hold back any longer. He tugged Colette down onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her. She yelped, and he immediately let go, gripping the arms of the chair.

"I'm sorry, I had no right to touch you—" he started.

Colette turned on his lap, sitting side-on and tucking her knees up, toes tucked between his thigh and the arm of the chair. She curled up into a little ball, and it broke his fucking heart.

Landon hugged her tight, wishing she wasn't wearing the stupid fucking corset which kept her from relaxing all the way. He was about to ask one of the others to bring him a blanket so he could cover her and then help her out of the corset without exposing her, when Colette sat up.

She took several deep breaths, and he could see the way she marshaled her defenses. Her shoulders straightened, her head came up, and her lips turned up in that almost smile that both made him crazy and made him want to kiss her.

Colette dropped one leg to the ground and braced an elbow on Landon's shoulder. One brow arched, and she smiled in that teasing, knowing way that made him want to kiss her and spank her.

He had different responses to each of her smiles. He was so fucking gone for this woman, it was pathetic.

Seeing her like this, the familiar smile that so often left him frustrated curling her lips, something inside him relaxed.

"I wasn't protesting sitting on your lap," she said. "You know I feel safe with you." It was a matter-of-fact statement that hit him right in the gut.

Colette leaned in, voice taunting. "That noise was because your thigh is hard, and my butt is sore."

Landon leaning in a little too, lowering his voice and matching her attitude. "Good."

Heat flared in her eyes, her gaze dropping to his lips.

Hope, that maybe he hadn't completely broken this thing they had, blossomed.

"How did you get away?" Rolf asked.

Landon glared at the other man. Couldn't he see they were having a fucking moment?

Colette leaned back against his chest as she turned to face Rolf. Landon draped his arms loosely around her, one hand splayed on her thigh. This felt right, having her here on his lap, his hands on her bare skin.

"I was able to use the cuff key as a lock pick to open the padlock on the ankle chain. I stole some clothes?—"

Fuck, had she been naked that whole time? When she said Damien liked to show her off, he'd assumed she meant her skills as an art expert.

How fucking naive could he be?

"—money, and a motorcycle. No one saw me on the way out, and there were no guards at the garage. There were cameras, so they have a recording of what I did, but that night no one saw me, and no one stopped me. I drove all the way to Riga. Stopped once in Pskov, then once more for petrol."

"How did you cross the Russian border into Latvia?" Andrei asked.

"I crossed two borders. E77 cuts across the bottom tip of Estonia before hitting Latvia. When I stopped in Pskov, I picked up supplies. Things I'd stashed there before I took the job."

"Things like an ID and money?" Andrei asked.

Colette smiled. "Hypothetically."

Andrei huffed out a small laugh.

"From Riga I flew to Prague and started working my way towards England." Her tone changed. "I knew Damien wouldn't simply let me walk away. I assumed he'd look for me because of his wounded pride, or the damage to his reputation my escape might have caused. I didn't think he'd call me his wife."

"The wife element may be a cover," Andrei said. "Looking for a runaway woman is much less damaging to a reputation than hunting down someone who bested you."

"You assume logical motives." Rolf rubbed his chin. "From what she's said, logic may not be a part of this."

"True," Andrei acknowledged.

Colette was pressing hard against Landon, so he tightened his hold, letting her feel the pressure of his arms. She sighed, relaxing a little.

"Your plan was always to approach Interpol?" Rolf was back to methodical questioning.

She nodded.

"And you decided to come to London because you knew Agent Malik from a previous interaction?"

Colette hesitated, her palms rubbing in nervous circles on Landon's forearms. "My plan was always to come to Interpol because Landon was there."

"So it's Landon you were running to," Andrei said.

Colette turned to look at the other man. "Do you disapprove? After all, I barely know him."

Landon frowned at the back of her head.

Andrei raised one hand, palm up. "Someone once told me time doesn't dictate the depth of the connection."

"How long did you spend cuddling with that fucker?" Landon rumbled, irritated by their byplay which was clearly based on a previous conversation.

Colette laughed, and there was a note of shaky relief in the sound.

"Wait a moment." Rolf held up his hand, brows drawn towards his nose. "Is the OPG?—"

"OPG?" she asked.

"Organized crime group," Landon explained. "The P is for the Russian word for criminal. Technical name for Bratva."

"Ah."

"Are the Bratva," Rolf amended, "looking for you because Damien considers you his wife, because you escaped…or because they know you saw and copied information about their organization?"

"I don't know," Colette said. "I didn't bring the cell phone I used with me, so it's possible they found it, though I left it in a toilet tank. An expert might have been able to reconstruct what I did and find both the photos I sent myself and maybe information about my server, but I did everything I could to erase evidence."

"We need digital forensics to look at your cloud server records," Andrei said, sitting forward. "See if there was any attempted access."

"Can you do it?" Landon asked. Andrei specialized in cybercrime.

"Yes, but you should run it through the lead investigator."

"Fuck that guy," Landon snarled. "He wants her to?—"

Colette went stiff in his arms, and Landon hated himself for not thinking before he spoke.

"I forgot," she said softly. "For a minute I forgot that Interpol wants to give me back to Damien."