Page 3 of Prince of Wrath

This is me. A flame, small but there, able to be erased from this earth by one breath from this man.

“Don’t you want to eat, darling?” I shake my head, dismissing his invitation to meet his gaze. “Something the matter?” Still focused on the flame, I ignore his absurd remark, preferring ignorance to attack. The feet of his chair screech as I jerk on mine. In one motion, he towers over me, his hand gripping my jaw, forcing me to look at him, his disgusting nails digging into my skin, a grunt of annoyance pulsing through his breath. “I was told you were mute, but I am starting to think you’re also deaf. Wasn’t I clear enough? If I want you to eat, you’ll eat. If I want you to sleep on your back, you will, and if I tell you that from now on you’re my personal pet, then you’ll make sure your role is honored to its full extent.” Eyes into his, fire burns in the depths of my pupils. A pet? I have been many things in my short life. A servant, a maid, an outcast to my family.

That is all I have ever known, but Tristan showed me better. That I was worthy of care and attention, that when he towers over me with a hand on my jaw, it is to protect and cherish me. That I deserve love and attention. Tristan taught me that.

“Do you want to wake up tomorrow or freeze to death? All blue and frozen? Wouldn’t that be such a waste?” I flex my jaw, the picture of my dead body here, away from Tristan and my dad, pulling my heart with pliers. “Thought so.” He trails off. “Obey.” My stomach aches for food, but my mind has lost its appetite. As long as I remain out of his touch, I will eat the food and debase myself by licking it in front of him, as long as it means that soon I will be home and forget about all of this.

He wants an animal, a hungry, starved, desperate girl, but I will give him a silent princess because Cole seems to have forgotten my upbringing in a house of neglect, that I am familiar with mind games and false affection. The real question is, how long will it last until his request goes beyond what I am capable of giving without irreversibly hurting myself? I finish my plate, yet I am nowhere to be found in this room, only the illusion of my body sitting right here. Because my mind, my mind is right there, outside, with Tristan. Shielded. Protected.

“See? You did good, birdy.” He stands again, waving at the door, opening it up and telling Nikolai on his right, “All good. Blanket and bathroom break, but just once per day.” Glancing behind his shoulder at me, he adds, “If she wants clothes and other things, she’ll have to do much more.” Much more? Remembering Tristan’s words from the time he sneaked into my room at night, sharing his method for mentally checking out and ignoring a business opponent, I try my best to follow it.

What Cole said is just words, and words are letters floating in the air, having no real meaning. My only focus is to survive and get out of this place. I am not hurt unless I let him hurt me. I want to try because Tristan would be so proud of me, but my vision falters, the reality of what could happen to me is difficult to ignore.

Standing awkwardly, trying to hide myself with my arms, I walk barefoot to the doorway, where Nikolai grunts, “Follow me.” I’m about to do so when a hand grasps my upper arm, lips entering my space, murmuring in my ear, “Tomorrow morning, I want you clean and happy to see me.” Clean? How? I have no water, no soap. “You’re a smart girl; I’m sure you’ll figure out a way.” Licking his upper teeth, he sneers with mischief. Cole wants me to lick myself clean like an animal. My teeth clack uncontrollably. I do not even know how to stop it. It is like my body is carrying a bomb of fear inside, and nothing I can do can undo its upcoming explosion. I can hear his smile in his voice as I look down at the concrete.

“I told you, Ella. You’re going to have to earn everything you want here, and… Well, perhaps I could grant you a call to your boyfriend tomorrow?” My eyes shoot right up to him as I nod eagerly. I would not be able to talk, but he could. That would be the greatest thing of all. I would do anything to get this, even…even his request. “Ah, see, you’ll learn to obey. You just need the right…” His thumb brushes my lower lip. “Incentive.”

Snapping his tongue, he flexes his hand, as if touching me too much were a dangerous affair capable of ruining his life if Tristan were to know about it. Letting me go, he nods to Nikolai, who walks ahead as I struggle to follow through this maze. I try to remember each turn, right, right, left, down, set of stairs, right…but I get confused and lost, and all I can take in are the numerous cameras in every corner, and the amount of guards in every hallway, and the voices–masculine ones–pleading behind doors, trapped like me in this hell no one seems to be aware of. But all I can think is that tomorrow I will get to talk to Tristan, or at least be connected to him. And that perspective fills me with the dangerous possibility of hope. I will do what Cole asked. I will lick the dried blood from my skin if it pleases him enough to give me access to Tristan, even if the thought disgusts me. It will be a long night, and I hope, I hope tomorrow, all of this will be behind me, a nightmare I have woken up from, saved by Tristan.

“Find me,” I silently pray, standing in front of the door. “Find me, Tristan, please.” And I almost feel a mirage of his voice far, far away, telling me that he hears me, and he’s on his way.

Tristan

“I’m on my way,” I murmur into nothingness, standing in my living room, facing the forest before me, the window overlooking my garden. I mean, land is more accurate, but, well, a bunch of trees, all black from the night. I can almost see her sign right now. Find me. Get to me as fast as possible. I beg you. I have never been one to believe in the paranormal, and yet it still feels like our bodies and minds are in sync, connected despite being torn apart.

I did what he asked, moved millions into his bank account, and still, he hasn’t brought her back. My house has become a war room, with nearly fifteen people crowded into the living room: hackers, private investigators, and members of my personal security team. On the other side of my phone, Deputy Garron and his tactical liaison are patched into the search, receiving every file we uncover, every camera angle from a hundred locations. The police are moving with us, but chain of command and procedure are slowing everything down, and I cannot afford to waste another second. The footage from her receiving a call, which we have now traced to Mara’s house, then the sight of her rushing outside, stopping once to call me, which, breaks my heart, because the one time she needed me, I had no signal since I was trying to kill Cole in his house, where he was nowhere to be found because he was preying on my…On my…

I shake my head, looking blankly at the wooden floors. Ella fractured my DNA on a molecular level, sinking into my soul to a point of no return, and it is my duty to use all my skills to get her out of this, which means turning my brain off–the emotional part at least–and focusing. Focusing on tracking her down. All of this is a situation, and I was born to handle crises, avert them, target the main issue, and deal with it. And when something does not go as planned, I reroute, change the axis of my compass, and find a way out with the best minds available. I have twenty men in the field actively looking for her, while I make calls left and right, working with the best hackers and PIs in the state, people I flew in on my private jet to find her since we lost track of her ever since she…since she got into that truck. It was twelve days ago, and I haven’t been able to sleep ever since.

I drove to the place where we found her phone, a sketchy area where no woman would be safe, day or night. My heart did not beat when I found it, holding in my hand the last evidence of her presence. I did not taste her lips again, as I do every time I remember her scent, and I did not imagine how terrified she must have been, how desperate to get to her , since Mara had led her into thinking she had to go there to say her last goodbyes. I cannot think of how she rushed there knowing I had told her to stay home. I cannot imagine her tears, her inability to scream for help. I cannot, because my body has plunged into a deafening calmness. Let’s say, a second state of consciousness I have never experienced before.

A drop of water keeps falling from the faucet in the kitchen behind the living room. Brenton, my PI, scratches his knees, and Alfie, a young hacker from the West Coast, is chewing on a piece of plastic pen as he tries to decode the cameras that stopped recording her path the second she entered the car. Cole organized it like music on paper, every single detail down to its last bit. Meticulously ripping my guts apart, limb by limb.

“We’re in,” Alfie says, his hood hiding half of his young face. The kid must be eighteen, and still, Brenton vouched for him. “It wasn’t easy, but look.” He points at it, eyes locked on the screen, as I circle behind the sofa where he is sunken in. “They forgot to encode one camera, a twenty-minute ride from where we lost them. The guy who did it was good because they secured the whole area within a thirty-kilometer radius and got sloppy around this one.” He clicks on it, the camera filming the corner of a street. Pressing the acceleration button, we see, around three o’clock, the same car passing by for two seconds—our first major clue ever since she vanished.

“Stop it,” I order, leaning in above his shoulder. Filming her from her side of the car, head down, glued to the door, hair covering her face, her hand scratching her elbow. Alive. Moving. “And then we lose them again,” Alfie adds.

“East side of town, sir,” Brenton adds, his tweed jacket removed, his blue tie tight above a gingham brown-and-orange shirt. “I don’t recall them having any business here. No buildings or shops. It’s a dying neighborhood, most companies have moved into the city center,” he explains. “Low rents, cheap grocery stores, small drug traffic, nothing alarming. A few cars burned down there a month ago to protest the closing of a plastic-packaging plant.”

“The perfect hiding spot,” I let out. “Matt, where are we on thermal cameras?”

“I’m looking,” he mutters, focused on his laptop. “I’m almost done scanning the perimeter with the drone.” The room holds its breath for a minute as I wait for Matt to confirm my intuition.

“Shit,” he lets out as everyone looks up at him, sitting on the opposite sofa from Alfie. “Looks like we’ve been looking at the wrong place. It’s a glow-stick party underneath.” He gapes, running a palm over his chin. “I can’t… Shit, Tristan, there’s human activity underground. A fucking lot. It’s not precise enough yet, but shit, there are humans underneath. I’d say at least fifty.”

She is there. Under. Trapped. I’m sure of it, just like I’m sure her heart is still beating. Words get stuck in my throat, unable to order anything more. The glowing yellow, orange, red lights absorb my attention. Some are moving, others are not. In a few minutes, we will have a better idea of who is who and the average number of people under there. If it is as big as a neighborhood, then Ella is most likely not the only one held there. Which seems like a delicate task, since she is the only one I am interested in freeing. This is a dark world, and whoever got under there will have to find their way out by themselves. No. The thought stops me cold. That is what I would have said before Ella, before she looked at me like there was still something worth saving beneath all the polished brutality. Before she made me see that power is not only meant to own, conquer, and punish, but also to protect. If there are other people down there, prisoners, victims, then we get them out too. The police can handle the rest.

“Why are some of them glowing less?” I ask.

“Levels. There are levels to this thing, four, five perhaps,” Matt points out. Given how important Ella is to me, Cole must have hidden her in the safest place. She is most likely at the bottom, where he assumes no one will look for her. Joke’s on him. I intend to find her even in death. Might as well do it now in hell, for practice. I would find her even if she were hidden across the world. There is no limit to the wrath I would deploy to get to her.

“From what I saw when I was deployed, each time we got hostages out from places like these, floors have guards, perhaps here,” Matt says, pointing at glowing figures spaced equally, “and they move occasionally. The others are prisoners, especially since, and we’ll confirm this in the next minute, they won’t go outside of a certain perimeter. Alf, can you map this out over the next twenty minutes so we can start identifying patterns?”

“Sure.”

“Here,” Matt points, “must be a meeting room or Cole’s. It’s further from the others because he needs easy access to the outside.”

“How could we enter and extract her without them knowing?” I ask Matt.