Masterpiece (The Masters of The Order Book 1) (37 page)

Xavier took her cheeks between his palms and his thumbs stroked her temples. His hands were like ice. She winced and he frowned, but didn’t remove his hands from her face.

Her stomach turned. She wanted him to stop touching her face and lifted her hands to brush the touch away, only to find them cuffed. Fear burst inside of her and she struggled to sit up. Her ankles were cuffed too. The metal cut into her skin when she moved and the room started to spin.

“Lie back.” Xavier cradled her in his arms like a child and eased her down.

Confusion crashed over her.
Did Xavier bring me here?
She couldn’t remember.
He must have. Why can't I think?

“Where am I?” she asked, her voice trembling with awakening terror.

“So beautiful. Even more than I remembered,” Xavier murmured in a wistful voice.

More confusion.

“Xavier. Where am I?” she asked again.

His hands slipped into her hair. “And so soft. No woman has hair as beautiful as yours, Lianne.”

Cher Dieu, he thinks I’m my mother. He must be insane.

Julianne’s breathing increased so fast that the world started to blur again. She forced herself to inhale slowly, trying to figure out what happened. Everything hurt. She was bound hand and foot. The skin on her wrists a horrid shade of bluish-purple, but she was otherwise unhurt. The fuzz in her head told her she’d been drugged.

She looked around to find a waking nightmare. Grey walls surrounded her. She was lying on a small pallet on a dirty concrete floor. There were no windows, only a heavy metal door. A single bald bulb hung overhead. A small metal toilet sat in the far corner. The room was a prison without bars and she was its prisoner.

Xavier, what have you done?

Flickers of their conversation flashed through her mind.
Lianne was mine. Gilles took her away. Someone must pay.

“Don’t disgrace yourself by screaming. No one will hear you,” Xavier remarked coolly, watching her eyes.

And no one knows I’m here. Why didn't I trust Nicolai? Why did I lie?

If she’d only been honest, expressed everything she was feeling, he would have helped her. As it was now, he would think she left him. And maybe after the way she behaved, he would let her. She remembered the anger in his eyes after the Grand Ball. She’d never seen Nicolai so angry.

Stay calm, Julianne. You can’t escape if you panic.

“I am not Lianne.”

Xavier shook his head as he stood and stepped toward the door.

He’s going to leave me here!

“What do you want from me, Xavier?” she asked in desperation.

He didn’t answer.

“I am not Lianne,” she screamed at his back.

As his hand reached for the door handle, Xavier turned his chin over his shoulder, but didn’t meet her eyes. “Everything you have now, Julianne, comes from me. You will be anyone I want you to be,” he said and turned off the light.

*****

Sleep was impossible.

Nicolai wasn't sure why he laid down. He stared at the ceiling, not seeing white paint. Seeing black. His chest rose and fell, but he wasn’t breathing. The muscle between his ribs kept his blood pumping, but his heart was gone. The only thing that was keeping his body alive was the need to see Julianne avenged. If it wasn’t for the need to save her, he would have opened the window and taken a flying leap.

Where is she? What's happening to her?

He shot to his feet and screamed. The blood curdling sound of his anguish cut through the empty room.

Why did Xavier take her? Why did Darion lie? Why did God leave a wretch like me safe and allow an angel like her to fall into hell? Why? Why? Why!

Hands ripped at his hair trying to stop the freight train barreling through his brain until the truth he’d run from since the first day he met her flattened him against the tracks.

Because love is not meant for a worthless cad like you.

He barked a bitter laugh. It was ironic. He used to say love wasn’t real. What a lie. Love was real. Painfully real. He loved Julianne. Wholly, completely and irrevocably. And in exchange, he was getting exactly what he deserved. An abysmal whipping at the hands of the ultimate sadist, Life.

And didn’t he know it would come. Everything he dished out came back to him, only amplified, magnified. He felt a great karmic justice sweep through him like a cold wind. An endless penance for the unforgivable sinner. To suffer a hot, unfathomable longing, too vast, too elemental for quenching. To live, knowing what was and would never be again.

He was wrong to have listened to Darion. A fool to have believed him. A fool to have tried. He wasn’t what Darion thought he was and he knew it. He was the son of the greatest narcissist of all time, in every sense of the word. He could aspire to be anything the fuck he wanted to be, but he could never change that.

And I failed. Just as my father promised I would.

He wasn’t worthy of a gift like Julianne. Yet he travelled that perilous road, took a chance on love, only to find himself right back where he started. All that was left of him now was the empty shell of the man he used to be before he met her.

No, not empty. Something much worse. A shell filled with the ashes of the perfect life that is lost to me forever.

Nicolai huffed a breath, looking at the clock. The sun would rise in three hours, but for him, dawn would never come again. He would live in darkness, where he belonged. Opening the door, he headed into the hallway. He wasn’t sure where he was going. Everyone else was asleep, but he had to keep moving. If he stopped, he would die. And that sweet oblivion wasn’t an option until his muse was safe.

*****

Julianne curled into a tight ball in the corner, trying to make herself as small as possible.

Her tormentor was back. She cringed when he stroked her back and squeezed her eyes tight. His hands were cold, ice cold, and just like his hands, there was no warmth in this man.

“I told you before, I want to see your beautiful eyes yearning for me when I come to you, yet I find you once again with your back turned. Look at me, Lianne,” the voice commanded.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, but she wouldn’t look at him. Refusing him what he asked was the only way to fight back. But even with eyes closed, she could sense those soulless eyes staring at her. The feel of his compassionless hands slithering through her hair was sickening.

“Why do you refuse me?” he asked, the gentle voice a stark contrast to the cruelty he wrought.

She said the same words she said the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. There was no day or night in her prison. Only the stark light of the bulb when he came to her and darkness when he was gone.

“I am not Lianne.”

When he left her again, she was crying so hard, she could barely breathe.

*****

Jerard watched the cigarette in his hand shake. He wasn't a habitual smoker, but this scenario required something to take the edge off.

Nicotine wasn't cutting it.

“It’s been three days. Three fucking days. What do you mean we can’t go in? How much more fucking surveillance can we possibly need?”

Nicolai was screaming and that was to be expected. He obviously hadn’t slept. His eyes were swollen and red. The guy looked absolutely crazed. He loved Julianne. Jerard didn’t have to witness the utter devastation of the man to know it, but he couldn’t help being pissed off that Nicolai failed her so miserably.

Jacques told him what happened, shared everything about Xavier and the Colonel. God, this was going to devastate Julianne. Whether she admitted it or not, she loved her father. Well, the man she thought was her father. She may be strong, but he wasn’t sure she was strong enough to handle finding out that she wasn’t the person she thought she was.

“Who is this guy, the bloody king of England? Why don't we call the police and report the kidnapping,” Jerard asked.

Every eye in the room turned on him as if he was insane.

“Don't talk like an idiot," Nicolai snapped.

Jacques interceded before things got any more tense. "Involving the police will only make Xavier disappear, Jerard. This is the only way we have any chance of finding Julianne.”

"I get it, Jacques. I'll shut up," Jerard said and wrapped his lips around the cigarette before he said something he would regret.

Not that he didn't want to punch Nicolai in his smug face, but that would only hurt Jacques. Jacques brought him into this nightmare over Nicolai's objection because of Julianne’s love for him, or so Jacques said. He knew it was more than that. Jacques’s eyes never left his cousin, the love and worry in them patently clear. He was ostensibly there to comfort Julianne when they freed her, but he was there to comfort Jacques too. And he was grateful for his involvement.

Maybe the police weren’t necessary. The room looked like command central, filled with computers, phones and a white board plastered with a diagram of Xavier’s chateau and photographs pinpointing the security cameras and the positions of the guards. Xavier was hunkered down with his own personal army.

But they weren’t outmatched. Sabin enlisted his own army of ex-military giants. All with black expressions, black clothes and very black guns. The French police wouldn’t be able to do anything these guys couldn’t. In fact, this group could do a hell of lot more. It was pretty clear that no law restrained them.

“Radio report this morning, sir. No change. Only a butler, coming and going on ordinary errands. Food, dry-cleaning, feeding the dogs. Security changed shifts at 0500 hours, right on schedule,” one of Sabin’s mercenaries reported to his commander du jour.

Funny how ordinary life continued in the midst of this horror story. Jerard felt helpless. He wanted to do something, anything to help, but there was nothing he could do.

Nothing any of them could do, but wait.

Wait for Xavier to make a mistake.

*****

It made Julianne ashamed that she would give this monster anything he desired, but she had to make this stop.

She understood the twisted reason for her captivity. Xavier wanted her dead mother and because Lianne was gone forever, he wanted her daughter to replace her. Since he brought her here, he hadn’t given her food or clean clothes or comfort of any kind. Her body was so weak. She needed food. She had to survive.

I have to pretend.

As she went to her knees and focused on the locked door through the darkness, she prayed that her capitulation would bring compassion.

The door creaked open. Xavier entered the room in silence. The light burned her eyes, making her strain to look at him, but she refused the urge to turn away. A heavy pit formed in her empty stomach as he closed the door and stepped toward her. His smile was hideous.

Xavier wasn’t big, rather delicate for a man, and very graceful. Look anywhere but his eyes and he was actually handsome, the kind of man a woman might dream about. Nicolai warned her and the behavior of everyone toward this man should have convinced her that Xavier wasn’t what he seemed. Hell, even without the warnings, she of all people should have seen behind the genteel façade. But her mother loved him and every member of the Order followed him.

Why?
The paradox confounded her.
Xavier is the devil.

His cold hand came to her face. There was no violence in the way he touched her, but it was still unbearably threatening. She shivered as the icy digits pressed solidly against her cheek. She thought of Nicolai’s hands. How they touched her. Thrilled her. Warmed her entire body. Xavier’s hands were so different. So cold and uncaring. She flinched away.

“That’s a disappointment, Lianne. You were making such progress. Perhaps next time you will do better.” As Xavier removed his hand, he added, “Nothing will be given for free.”

That was the game. Do what he wanted or be left alone to starve in this dark cell. She hated herself for not being stronger, not holding out longer, but allowing him to touch her face seemed a small price to pay to eat. No one had come to save her.

I have to save myself.

She leaned into Xavier’s hand. “I’m sorry. Please, don’t go.”

He cupped her face in reply. They’d reached a tacit agreement.

She let Xavier stroke her face for what seemed like an eternity. As the tears started again, he took her battered wrists and unlocked the cuffs, then freed her ankles. His hands rubbed her bruises as is he genuinely cared about her. He didn’t. No one who cared about you would drug you, bind you and leave you alone, hungry and in the dark.

After a few minutes, he left the room. This time, he didn’t close the door. Beyond, she could see a stairway with another door at the top. She watched him disappear and fought the urge to run. Running would be futile. She had to be patient. Allow time to present a better option. She stared at the far door until he returned with a tray in his hands. He entered the room and set the tray on the ground next to her. On it were grapes, cheese and some bread.