Page 121 of To Catch a Sub

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.”