Page 45 of Bitter Burn
“He doesn’t,” she breathes. “So I’d like that, sir.”
“Go on then.”
Isabella gets to her feet with the help of Hugo and my knee as well—the pencil skirt complicating her balance—and then departs after a kiss to Hugo’s cheek and sticking out her tongue at Kayden.
Hugo watches her with warm interest, looking like he wishes he could follow.
“Her engineering team was brought in to stabilize a bridge that had partially collapsed,” Kayden says to me after she’s passed through the doorway to the playrooms. His voice has grown quiet, uncommonly serious. “They had to get there immediately to make sure the rescue and recovery teams could do their job safely. There were twenty-seven bodies in the end. She stayed at her firm two more years, long enough to finalize the plans for the replacement bridge and see ground broken. And then she left.”
“That was just about a year ago now,” murmurs Hugo. “I think that she didn’t want to walk away without making sure a tragedy like that could never happen again. But it broke her faith in something. I’m not sure what. She hasn’t been able to get it back.”
I take a long drink of my beer, chest tight with empathy. I hate that she had to see something that horrific; I hate even more that it broke her sense of purpose.
But I understand it. God, how I understand it.
I have another beer, talking with Kayden about his time in the armed forces while Hugo chimes in with observations from his past life in international law. And then I remember that I’d meant to grab a second security team member for Isabella’s doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I’ll need to check the schedule to see who’ll be on and if the club can spare them for an hour or two.
I explain myself to the owners, who tell me to take anyone I need, as the club will be quiet during the day anyway, and even if it weren’t, they still want Isabella to have the extra protection. And I go to the office just off the marble-floored lobby, behind the wooden concierge desk.
There’s no one at the desk, which I haven’t seen happen once in my time here, and then also no one inside the office.
I don’t like this—at Lyonesse, there’s always someone at the desk or security office—but I’m still new here, and I don’t entirely know Armorica’s staffing rhythms and quirks. I pull up the schedule on the computer, half my mind cataloging possibilities for where the concierge could be—dealing with an unhappy member or chatting with the doorman in his little heated vestibule outside or even just using the restroom—and then pause.
The club’s schedule is comprehensive, covering all the staff down to the third shift dishwashers. Armorica’s Dominants and submissives are on here too with their client bookings, which means I can see Isabella’s schedule.
Only one session, she said.
But there are two on here.
I recognize the first name as belonging to the Good MP, but the second name is Kayden Howell. Kayden who is still ignoring his spreadsheets in the lounge with Hugo. Kayden who sees Isabella more as a sister in kink than a play partner. Kayden who wouldn’t need to schedule a session with Isabella anyway.
I’m on my feet the minute I find the room number, darting back toward the playrooms and looking for the security team member who should be posted outside her door. He’s not there.
I knock on the door and try to open it, knocking again when I find it locked.
“Ms. Beroul?” I call in. “It’s Tristan.”
Nothing.
I don’t wait. I don’t run back to the office for the master key that opens all the playrooms. I don’t try to get help. I aim for the spot just next to the knob, and I kick the fucking door open.
The millisecond it breaks and flies inward, I’m charging into the room with my sidearm drawn. Adrenaline stretches the moment into infinity; years of combat bring absolute certainty to every breath.
I see him in person for the first time, someone I’ve only seen in pictures. Jovian Nantes, absolutely unremarkable in every way—dull pink-beige skin, dull brown hair, designer clothes that still manage to look dull on his average-size frame. He’s got Isabella pinned to the floor with her face in the imported rug, and one of his knees digs into the back of her soft thigh. Red bondage rope is unspooled everywhere, a mess of it, but he’s managed to tie her wrists behind her back, and he has a hand wrapped around the mangled knot between her wrists, like he’s about to stand up and drag her up to her feet.
A hunting knife, serrated and mean, protrudes from his other hand.
He’s frozen by my entrance, which gives me time to make sure there’s no blood, that Isabella’s ribs are moving, that there is a good twelve inches between the tip of his knife and her skin. She’s completely naked, with only one white glove half on a hand.
“I’m taking her,” Jovian says. His face is an ugly thing right now—angry and petulant and afraid. “I’m taking her.”
“She’s staying here,” I say, too amped up to sound as calm as I should right now. I am bad at this part, the talking, the convincing, and I have the memory of Sims bleeding from the throat to prove it. I take a deep breath and try again. “Put the knife down, and we can talk about this.”
“I’m not putting it down. Are you fucking crazy?” His fingers have tightened around the rope, and Isabella’s hands are blanching white and bloodless. “You’re letting me take her right now. She should be with me. I want her with me.”
Isabella lets out a low, muffled sob underneath him, and he flinches like I’ve just fired off a round.
Interesting. I don’t think he likes being reminded that he’s the villain here.
