Razor's Edge: Men in Blue, Book 2 (35 page)

“I’m sorry, Izzy.”

“W-what—” She never finished the sentence.

Mason brushed her hair aside then stunned her into unconsciousness. The blackness delivered relief.

Razor counted several dozen regular beeps of the monitoring equipment before attempting to open his heavy lids. Christ, he’d had some vivid dreams this time. He could have sworn he’d been on the outside. He fantasized about that a lot while in the hospital.

“His hand moved, Jeremy.” An angel spoke from beside him. Must be a new nurse. “I felt it.”

“I think he’s waking up, baby.”

“Izzy?” The familiar rasp of his dry, cracked throat ripped through the hushed room.

“I’m right here.” Butterfly kisses from her supple lips dusted his forehead, his cheek and his lips.

Holy shit.
It had been real. All of it.

He’d found his soulmate then almost lost her. Again.

He blinked sporadically until the blinding glare from the window became bearable. The dark figures between him and the wall came into focus. Mason and Tyler. From the size of the shoulders leaning on the jam, he’d say Matt and Clint had the door covered.

JRad, Izzy and Lily all sported nasty gowns like the one barely covering his ass, but they sat up, alert, while he battled to rejoin the land of the living.

“What the fuck happened?” A hit from a stun gun shouldn’t have landed them in this antiseptic hellhole. He started swiping wires from his arm and temple. He’d had enough of that shit to last him a lifetime.

“Damn it, kid.” Mason laughed, his relief pervading the room. “You better not let Jambrea or Valerie catch you. They’ll tattle to Lacey. Then you’ll really be in trouble.”

Izzy’s soft hand landed over the IV, preventing him from tugging it free. “Leave this. It’s almost done. They’re counteracting the drug as best they can.”

“Drug?”

“Can you run through it one more time, Lily?” JRad brushed a stray lock of raven hair from the woman’s forehead. He loomed close to where she rested on the edge of her own bed, not three feet away.

The Domme nodded. Back straight, collected, she briefed him on what she knew.

“I’m not sure how much you remember…”

A gap big enough to drive a semi through ruined his memory. The loss unsettled him.

Isabella must have sensed his unease. She slid beneath his covers and snuggled into the curve of his chest as though made to fit. Because she had been. He squeezed her, grateful.

“Okay.” Lily met his curious look dead on. Her confidence impressed him. He noticed JRad’s palm lingering on her lower back. She didn’t object. “Perry Buchanan, Isabella’s father, is my father too.”

Somewhere in the recess of his mind the information tingled. He knew that. Hard to believe, but he nodded. Razor curled his arm around Isabella. “Are you okay with all this, princess?”

“I’m working on it.” When she glanced up from beneath those sinful lashes, he noted the puffiness around her eyes. Shit, she’d needed him and he’d been lying unconscious, worthless. What the hell had gone down? “I wish I had known. So many years apart.”

When Izzy glanced at the other woman, longing seeped from every pore of her being. Despite the past, or because of it, they wouldn’t lose each other again. They’d connected. Lily had suffered as much as Isabella.

Maybe more.

“I’ve always known and wished I didn’t.” The dark version of his princess locked her hands in her lap as she spoke, almost as though she confessed. Could what she had to say be so bad?

“Buchanan would visit my mother, who might as well have been a whore. She’d spread her legs for that bastard time after time, in the hopes he’d spare his pocket change. She played his kinky games, allowed him to hurt her—anything he liked—while I pretended to be asleep in the corner of our one-room shithole. Sometimes he’d take his fill then leave her with nothing. I swear he enjoyed his ultimate power over her more than the sex. If she’d used the cash to pay the rent, to hold us over and find a real job, I might have understood. But, no… She’d drink it all the first night, leaving us to starve the next day, week or month until he deigned to return.

“Each day she spent dry, her meanness blossomed. My mother tolerated me at the best of times. If I made myself useful. She’d only kept me in the hopes of conning Buchanan for cash. He knew it and used it to keep me in line. I see that now.” Lily’s fingers balled into a fist. “I grew bitter when I had to choose between stealing or eating out of a dumpster to survive. I have too much pride for either. One of many disgusting traits I inherited from Daddy dearest.”

JRad ran his fingers along the weave of her thick onyx braid, which flopped onto the bed after trailing down the center of her back. She shifted several inches out of his reach.

The tight lines at the corner of JRad’s grimace and the entranced attention of the audience had Razor wondering if she’d shared the cold hard facts earlier, waiting to divulge the grimy details this once. The telling couldn’t be easy.

“Always, always he would remind me of his
real
daughter. Surrounded in a house that looked like a castle. Once, I found a picture of what I imagined on the side of a cereal box in the trash I picked through. I’d focus on the stained cardboard to block out the sounds at night, imagining my sister and how she’d find me and bring me to live with her someday. When he noticed my prize, he cultivated my jealousy. He twisted it into something sick instead of something productive. By the time I turned twelve, I hated Isabella.”

Razor tightened his grip on Izzy. Lily’s gaze held echoes of the past. The hint of her resentment scared the shit out of him. This woman had allowed a pack of men to abuse his princess. Did she still harbor her malicious intent?

“I tried to find work—tried to look older or dress as a boy.” She cursed. “I’m stuck with this worthless body and no one would believe my lies or give me a chance to take on manual labor. They didn’t think I could handle it.”

A scrawny, younger version of this gorgeous woman wouldn’t have inspired his faith either. Plus, who’d be brute enough to pawn something menial off on a child? No man could live with himself after that, even if he hoped to hire some help.

“Not too long after that, maybe two years, my mom disappeared. Went out one night and never came home. I figured she finally chose the wrong John. Pushed her luck too far.”

JRad reached for her. She froze him with glare that couldn’t have been more alarming if daggers had bristled from her eyes. “Enough. Do not touch me again without permission, cop.”

Holy Mistress!
His friend nodded and halted his approach. He also refused to increase the space between them. He stayed, a fraction of an inch from contact with her creamy skin. Interesting.

“My father came to the apartment a few days later. He told me he’d give me a job. A position of power. One I could make my own. He said he could see the fire burning my soul. He understood the heat, and he promised to teach me how to tame it.”

Tyler spun on his heel, burying his fingers in his hair.

“It wasn’t until years later that I learned he’d killed her. And how painful it had been…”

“None of his sins are on you.” JRad tried again to soothe her.

“I know. My mother, the fool, had threatened to share information with someone investigating that pig fucker. She was dumb enough to try to play the player himself.” She shook her head. “Crazy bitch. No, his black soul will burn in hell for all he’s done. But what I did while I was blind is all mine.

“He brought me to his club, thrilled me by lending it my name. I trained with the best Masters in the business, learned to control my rage and honed my desire for success. Sometimes he mandated I observe him with his own pets. Always informative. He has skills. He can worm into people’s minds then rot them from the inside out. I’ll give the bastard that.”

She closed her eyes for a moment.

“I inherited his sadistic talent and his appetite for control. God knows, I never had much of it in my early years. I began to love discovering a man or woman’s greatest weakness. I’d use it to bring them to their knees before building them back up. I can harness the power they surrender to grant them everything they want, even if they don’t know what that is when we begin.”

She sighed, a wistful smile tugging the corner of her mouth. Razor caught JRad rearranging his package.

“One day at work netted me more than a month at any other nine to five I could have scored. Plus, I won’t lie. I craved the rush. I’m the best in the scene at what I do.”

JRad looked as though he might challenge her declaration until a hand signal from Mason quieted him. They couldn’t afford for her to clam up.

“About five years ago, I realized Buchanan had conned me too. I found a camera in one of my playrooms. Not the safety camera. Something completely different.” Lily flipped her braid over her shoulder. She slapped the end against her thigh fast enough to produce a sharp sting. Razor winced. “That fucker used me to generate blackmail. God knows how many of my subs he forced to dance to his tune when he had them by the balls.”

“I’m not judging, Lily. I swear.” Isabella spoke up. “But why did you stay? What made you continue? You’re so strong, so free. You’re not naïve or a coward, like me. You could have run.”

“I don’t run from anyone.” Lily sneered. “And it wasn’t that simple. Around that time, something happened. Something I couldn’t walk away from.”

Razor squeezed Izzy, bracing for what he knew would follow. It made perfect sense now.

“Buchanan brought me a new slave. A very willing submissive who begged to serve me. Our father told me the man was my reward. The stuff of dreams for a Domme to train.”

She shrugged. “No Hallmark card for this occasion, sister. He gifted Malcolm to me with orders to break the man. Your husband loved our father until nothing else mattered, his devotion pure and unfailing. He’d have done anything I instructed to please Buchanan.”

No one could call Isabella stupid. “Daddy ordered Malcolm to marry me, didn’t he?”

“I’m sorry. Truly.”

Razor couldn’t say what he expected. The smile on Izzy’s face when she turned to him certainly wasn’t it, though. Her grin had him worried she’d lost it. Until she explained.

“You were right, James.” A lone tear trickled across her cheek. He didn’t detect any sadness in it, only relief. “Our marriage never existed. I’m not crazy. He
was
my friend sometimes. Until Daddy warned him to back off. God, how stupid I was.”

“You had no chance at understanding.” Lily drew their attention once more. “They’re experts at twisting reality. In business they were nearly unstoppable. I didn’t see the full extent of their corruption right away, either. Hell, I had more experience by the time I was seven than you did when you were seventeen and even I couldn’t fathom it all.”

“How old are you now, Lily?”

“The same age as you. Our birthdays are less than a month apart.”

“But that means…”

“Yeah, I was barely seventeen. It’s just an age.” The guys gaped at her, their mouths hanging open. “I was ready for the challenge. You probably don’t want to hear this, but Malcolm had a core of goodness. I think, if things had been different, he would have come to love you. Unfortunately, his physical…limitations…combined with his subservient bearing left him susceptible to the evil our father rained on him.”

Isabella nodded, her hair brushing the inside of Razor’s arm. She lit up each of his nerve endings touching her with her subtle motions. What the hell was wrong with him? He forced himself to focus on Lily’s story.

“I came to care for the man. He didn’t deserve our father’s abuse. I treasured his absolute obedience. I felt an odd connection to him. Fuck knows, I understand what it’s like to be manipulated by Buchanan. In the beginning, I stayed because I didn’t want anything to happen to my charge. I can’t tell you how many times I had to intervene to keep our father from causing permanent damage—especially once he began to have trouble getting it up. He took out his fury over his impotence on Malcolm. The stupid man would have borne it and begged for more. Buchanan destroyed every sacred rule in the D/s lifestyle yet no one else dared to stop him. They’re all terrified of the bastard.”

Lily gulped.

Razor made eye contact with Mason, Tyler and JRad. They all projected the same determination he felt broiling in his gaze. They made a silent promise to each other. Lily would never discover how much Buchanan had made Malcolm suffer at the end. The crime scene investigators had unanimously declared it the most gruesome case of their careers.

“Then, Buchanan started dumping women in the dungeons. They were fucked up. All of them. I noticed the wildness in the monster’s eyes when he would visit. The first few times, I thought I imagined the manic glee. It became apparent after a while. He’d fly into a frenzy and fuck Malcolm until he bled. When that wasn’t enough, he’d move on to one of the dozens of other souls who’d fallen under his spell. I couldn’t protect them all. Buchanan’s control disintegrated. He lost his aptitude for devising twisted power plays in favor of sheer brutality.”

“He started using.” JRad shook his head.

“Using what?” Razor couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer.

“The drug. If it has a name, I don’t know it. I think the weak form started out as Harmytal, but who wants to fuck a zombie doped on a date rape drug when you can ramp up the dosage until your victim is so hot for you it hurts?”

Mason and Tyler tensed. They had personal experience with Harmytal. Someone had used it on Lacey last year. The association drove things home. Before they could rage, Lily continued.

“It’s so protected, I don’t have much info though both Malcolm and Buchanan take…no, took…it regularly in the last six months.” She lifted a sculpted eyebrow in Razor’s direction. “You can see why. Even after five hours, the drug’s making your impressive cock hard as steel beneath that skimpy sheet and Officer Eveready here has excused himself three times to jack off in the bathroom. Babycakes is doing the best job of hiding her arousal. The fog clouding her eyes reminds me of the vacant stares I’ve grown used to from women in my dungeon, but she has lots of practice with repression.”