Already three days had gone by and no one had come looking for her, or if they had, Cheng had given a plausible explanation for her disappearance. Zara knew she was going to die in this hellhole. If Cheng didn’t have her killed, she wasn’t going to escape in time and the virus Whitney had planted in her would begin to make her sick. It wouldn’t be an easy death. Whitney had made that clear. She would die screaming, writhing in pain. She knew she wasn’t a good spy. She wasn’t stoic like some of the girls. She hated pain.
Whitney detested her. He had the moment he realized she was useless for his purposes. She’d been two years old the first time she was really hurt and screaming in pain. She saw the disgust on his face, and after that, he introduced her to pain, trying to build her tolerance. The other girls tried to shield her, but he was insistent. None of his attempts worked—and over the years there had been many. This was going to be bad.
Zhu had questioned her multiple times that first day. She had been pushed around a little, and that horrible little toad Heng Zhang had stared at her several times with an ugly grin that promised he was going to personally administer pain to her. There was no confessing. That would earn her a death sentence. She’d have to brace herself for more torture. The very idea made her sick.
They’d used chemicals on her the second day and her insides still were raw and shaky. The chemicals had raged through her body, blistering and burning with horrific consequences. She writhed in pain, screaming, trying to outrun her insides as they twisted and burned as if a blowtorch were cutting a wide path through her. Zhu had restrained her to keep her from hurting herself, and twice he’d wiped the sweat from her face with a cool cloth that only added to her misery because the moment he took it away, the flames felt hotter on her skin.
He’d stripped her clothing away, leaving her bare and vulnerable, afraid of being raped. Of being humiliated on top of being tortured. It was the longest day of her life, the questions coming at her until she was so confused she could barely hear him above the noise in her head. The drugs messed with her mind, so sometimes she didn’t know her own name.
Zara had endured pain before, Whitney had seen to that, but it was nothing like the chemicals Zhu kept injecting her with throughout the long day and most of the night. She knew she’d resorted to begging. Anything to make it stop, but he was relentless. He never raised his voice, it was always the same low tone, demanding she tell him the truth. The questions he asked her bounced in her head like Ping-Pong balls. Each time they hit the side of her head, it felt like a blow.
Strangely, toward morning, Zhu sat her up, his arm supporting her, holding a bottle of water to her lips, forcing her to drink the cool liquid. Those times he’d given her water, he was always unfailingly gentle. He was impersonal, as if he hadn’t noticed she was naked. He didn’t threaten to rape her. Once, when Cheng came in to see the progress, Zhu covered her body with a blanket to prevent the other man seeing her. She wanted to cry in gratitude, which was insane since Zhu was the one who had taken her clothes.
She woke alone and thirsty, her body hurting beyond belief. Every muscle. Every joint. There was a terrible taste in her mouth and even brushing with her finger didn’t get rid of it. She didn’t know what she’d said or done the day before. She only knew she didn’t want a repeat of that torture or anything like it that Zhu had devised. She also knew she was going to die here. She actually felt she might welcome death from the virus, although if Cheng did an autopsy, he would find the SSD in her brain and might find a way around Whitney’s protections, and everything she suffered would be for nothing.
The one chance she might have was Zhu. Shockingly, while her strange reaction to him when he’d slipped her a drug on her teacup had faded completely, his reaction to her seemed to increase the more he was around her. She was well aware his attraction to her wouldn’t stop him from doing his job; he’d certainly proved that. He had subjected her to hours of chemical interrogation and hadn’t batted an eye that she was in terrible pain while he’d done it.
Cheng was angry. No, angry wasn’t the right word for what he was. Over the last couple of days, he’d discovered the exact extent of the damage done to his computers. Every secret he’d collected over the years, the locations of guns, of traffickers, of drug routes, all were wiped out. His precious data on the GhostWalker program he’d sacrificed his men for was gone. Someone had to pay, and she was fairly certain that someone was her.
Several times she heard gunfire reverberating on the floor and knew others—innocents—were being interrogated and probably killed. The screaming individuals in agony really got to her. Her heart stuttered as she considered maybe someone was coming to try to rescue her. She couldn’t sit still and jumped to her feet, hope blossoming. She paced unsteadily across the room, wishing she had a window to look out of. They hadn’t even given her a view. Just four walls. It felt as though she were suffocating.
Footsteps. Many people. She closed her eyes and tried to will a rescue team to open the door. She hurried back to the bed and pulled the thin blanket over her. Heart pounding, she waited. The lock thudded. Clinked. The door handle rattled. The door opened, and Zhu’s broad shoulders filled the doorway. Her heart sank. Of course no one would come for her. Who would? Whitney? He made it clear, when one of them went out on a mission, they were alone. Get in. Get out. Come back or die.
Bolan Zhu stepped inside and she shrank back, one hand to her throat defensively. He didn’t look as though he’d come to free her. He threw her the clothes he’d taken from her. “Get dressed.”
She didn’t wait to see if he would leave. She knew he wouldn’t by the way he folded his arms across his chest. He kept his eyes on her the entire time. Her heart shivered inside her body and the tremors started. She’d never been so afraid of a man in her life. She pulled on her clothes, praying that he was going to let her leave. The moment she was finished, he reached out, took her arm and began to pull her toward the door. Suddenly, the four walls felt like protection, not a prison.
“Please tell me what’s going on. I don’t understand what you think I could have done. I was with you the entire time,” she protested, trying to hold back, trying to reach one spark of humanity in him when he was completely unreachable.
“Come with me willingly or you will regret it,” he said.
It was his tone, a soft whisper that was issued in a firm, unyielding manner, that told her he wasn’t playing around. She went immediately, terrified he was going to torture her again. He took her down the hall to the elevator without saying another word. She couldn’t control the tremors running through her body, and she didn’t try to stop her wild heart. They would expect her to be scared. A professor of a university accused of wiping out an entire building full of data would be scared.
As soon as she entered the room on the second floor, she knew what they were going to do. There was an MRI machine. They were going to look for signs of treachery on and in her body.
“Strip.” Zhu stepped away from her. “Everything.”
Zara looked to him and then around the room, feeling helpless. She’d been helpless her entire life. She considered forcing him to kill her right there, just as a final show of defiance against Whitney, Cheng and Zhu. All three. She hated feeling weak, at the mercy of men who used her for their purposes. She wasn’t real to any of them. She was a tool, nothing more. She didn’t because she was a GhostWalker and if they had her body and took it apart, which they would, she would be endangering every other GhostWalker and her country.
She stepped away from Zhu, looking at the floor. Strangely, there were spots on it. Small, round, rust-colored spots. Tears? Blood? Bloody tears? She unbuttoned the small flat abalone-shell buttons and let her blouse slip from her shoulders. She didn’t try to seduce Zhu by making it a striptease. He’d already seen her body. He’d taken the clothes from her once before. Had he forced her to dress just so the guards wouldn’t see her? A small concession. She wanted to think that. She needed to think Zhu was trying to look out for her, but she knew he wasn’t. He was the one torturing her, causing her untold pain. She simply undressed, folding her clothing neatly and placing each item on the little table just to the right of the door. Her bra and panties were last. She hesitated before she unhooked her bra and then shimmied out of her lacy panties.
Zara refused to cover up with her hands. She’d done that the day before and it hadn’t done her a bit of good. She stood, shivering, completely naked in front of Zhu, her gaze on those strange spots dotting the floor. Waiting.
Zhu handed her a thin hospital gown. She put it on without looking at him.
“Miss Hightower.” He spoke her name low. Compelling. When she didn’t look at him he switched tactics. “Zara, look at me.”
She took a breath and raised her eyes to his.
“If you’re hiding anything, you need to let me know now.”
“What would I be hiding? And where?” She sounded bitter. She felt bitter. There was no getting out of this. She was terrified because no one was coming for her and after subjecting her to all of this, wouldn’t they have to prevent her from talking even if they determined she was innocent? She was going to die. She had to decide how she wanted to die. She couldn’t rile Zhu, he was too disciplined, and he clearly dissociated himself from his victim. The guards were more susceptible. She could taunt one until he shot her. But what about her body? How could she die and not leave evidence behind of the GhostWalker program? She was intelligent, she had to find a way, but right now, she was so scared it was all she could to stay standing.
Zhu shook his head and stepped to the door to call in the tech. Her heart pounded even more as they strapped her down. This was the moment of truth. They had done a full body scan twice now, using the CAT scan machine before they’d administered the chemicals. She’d been wanded repeatedly. Now they were going to scan her brain. This would be the telling moment.
She was put inside the machine and she closed her eyes, trying not to feel claustrophobic. The solid-state drive implanted in her brain had no movable mechanical parts. The SSD was far more resistant to physical movement and shock than a metal hard drive would be. Without the spinning disk, there was no whirring in her head to drive her insane.
The SSD was made of a newer material called PEEK-carbon that was radiolucent to X-ray, CT and MRI scans—at least Whitney told her it was. So far, she’d passed the X-ray and CT scans. She had, of course, done research on it and knew it was 30 percent carbon fiber reinforced polyetheretherketone.
Whitney had built a nanotube from PEEK-carbon. Using the nanotube, he created a SSD that he claimed was invisible to X-ray, CT and MRI scans. To power it, he used the same idea as used in pacemakers—the body’s movements. The generator was made of the same PEEK-carbon material and sat on a flat sheet of the same right beside the SSD. Although it was tiny, she knew it was a lot to miss with a scan. She had to rely on Whitney’s assurances that the SSD wouldn’t show up, no matter how they tried to search for it.
She allowed her breathing and heart to swing out of control because it would be unnatural not to. She’d shown she was terrified. She’d made it appear as if she were close to going into shock, and maybe she was. She could be cool and calm in most situations, but not when torture was looming. Not after the chemicals Zhu had given her. She still felt the burn through her body and tasted the agony in her mouth.
To get through the brain scan, she concentrated on trying to figure out what drug Zhu had used on the teacup and why she was no longer feeling the effects but he was. Whitney had developed some secret pheromone formula that was unique to two people in the program. His desire had been to pair them so when they were sent into the field together, their distinctive psychic gifts and the physical enhancements he chose for them complemented each other and made them a much more lethal combination.
Zhu wasn’t a GhostWalker, so how had he managed to get ahold of Whitney’s secret project when no amount of hacking had found the program used by him? And why was it working against Zhu? He was clearly attracted to her. Could it be natural and not part of whatever truth serum Cheng had devised? She didn’t want to think Zhu capable of something so mundane as to be generally attracted to a woman.
Could she use his attraction to her against him? She didn’t think so. He was too disciplined and she didn’t doubt for a minute that he would put a bullet in her head if Cheng demanded it. Better a bullet than more torture. He hadn’t hesitated to inject her with nasty drugs and sit by all day while she screamed, cried, begged and pleaded.
She knew it wasn’t good when they took her out of the machine. She heard more gunshots just outside the door, the bullets fired in rapid succession, and this time the body that fell hit against the wall to the room with the MRI machine. Zhu, impassive as always, handed her clothes to her and told her to get dressed. She did so in silence, watching blood seep under the door.
Zara felt a little faint, but better a quick death than being tortured again. She didn’t think she could go through it again. She didn’t believe for one moment she would get lucky enough to be let go. She was fairly certain the tech was murdered because he’d given Cheng results the man didn’t want to hear. She stole a glance at Zhu. He looked unconcerned, and that was even more terrifying than knowing Cheng just indiscriminately killed a tech because he didn’t like the results the man had given him.
Zhu placed his lips against her ear. “You keep quiet, do you understand me? Unless I tell you otherwise, keep your mouth shut.”
She nodded her understanding, although she didn’t understand at all. She kept dressing as quickly as she could. The moment she was finished, Zhu took her arm and opened the door. The body of the young tech lay slumped over beside the wall and directly in front of the door. He lay in a pool of blood. She let out a single sound of despair and closed her eyes, turning her face away.
Cheng paced the hallway, a gun in his fist. He talked fast, an angry staccato, lashing out at his hired soldiers, berating them over and over. He halted abruptly when Zhu pulled her out of the room and around the dead body. She kept her eyes on the floor, visibly shaking. What had made Cheng so angry? The fact that they found something, or they didn’t?
Cheng stalked over to her, his face contorted like a madman’s. He regarded her silently for a long moment. She didn’t dare look up. She tried to look as cowed as she felt. He raised his gun hand and everything in her stilled, braced for the impact of the bullet. Instead of a bullet, he slammed the gun into her face, hitting her temple on one side and then across her cheek on the other, pistol-whipping her. She tried to get away from him, but Zhu caught both arms and held her immobile in front of him. Blood ran down her face. She felt light-headed when he stopped.
“Take her to the interrogation room. I want you to beat the truth out of her. Make it hurt, Zhu. Beat her within an inch of her life, but keep her alive. If that isn’t successful, use the cane and then the whip. You wield it with such proficiency. I want to know how this was done.” Cheng spoke in English, wanting her to know what was coming.
Zhu didn’t respond, but pushed her toward the elevators. They had to skirt around a pool of blood. Halfway to the elevator, another of the soldiers lay on the floor, dead. She stumbled. Zhu wrapped his arm around her waist, holding her up as they entered the elevator. She tensed, wondering if she could kill him and get out. She knew the place was on lockdown, and soldiers guarded every point of entry.
“Don’t.”
She must have tensed up, ready to fight. Her head exploded with pain with every movement, but she had to try. She couldn’t just let him torture her. This was going to be bad, worse than the chemicals, and she’d never done bad well. She wasn’t stoic. She was loud and cried like a baby. She was the last person that should ever guard secrets when torture was involved. She had to try. She had to protect the GhostWalkers.
Before Zara could make a move, Zhu punched her hard in the stomach. Very hard. She doubled over and heaved. He didn’t let her fall to the ground, not even when her legs turned to rubber. Nothing like taking the fight out of her fast. She knew that move and why he’d done it.
She tried to bring her head up fast, hoping to hit him under his chin, but she was disoriented from the pistol whipping and Zhu easily avoided her attempt and hit her a second time. Pain exploded everywhere, refusing to stay confined to her head. She’d had training, years of it, but then Whitney told her to forget her training in situations like this one and react like a terrified woman. He’d made her practice that for the last few years. Training warred with survival instincts. She forced herself to bite, to hit feebly, to carry out the stupid, stupid cover that wasn’t really a cover, but was really her.
She lost track of how many times he hit her. It was methodical and done coolly, completely impersonal. So much for attraction and how much good will it would buy her. When they reached the upper floor where her room was, he dragged her out of the elevator by her hair, taking her right past her room, to another, three doors down where he shoved her inside.
She landed hard on the floor. There were bloodstains there. A fingernail. Clearly no one believed in cleaning up after themselves. She knew she was a little hysterical, but she tried to get to her feet and face him because really, damn him. He could go to hell. She didn’t realize she was shouting it at him until he hit her again, right across the face, right where Cheng’s gun had cut her cheek open.
Zara heard her breath hiss out of her lungs. Then he hit her breast and all air was gone. The pain was excruciating. She tried not to let him see, knowing she would be giving him more ammunition, but it was impossible not to scream. Tears mingled with blood on her face. She lost count of how many times he hit her breasts, then moved lower, attacking her ribs, back up to her breasts and then her face.
There was no way to stand, but she realized they weren’t alone. Someone held her in place for Zhu. He didn’t look as if he’d even broken out in a sweat when he finally stopped. She was dragged to the wall, her hands jerked above her head so high she was on her toes, wrists bound tightly.
She heard Zhu’s voice asking questions, but she couldn’t make out the words. It wouldn’t matter anyway. She didn’t have anything to tell him. Her eyes were swelling shut in spite of the fact that her body had taken far more punishment than her face. He’d slapped her more than punched her in the face, but her body hurt so badly she didn’t think she could breathe through the pain. How did spies do this?
His voice stayed a soft, almost gentle tone. He pushed back her hair, his fingers stroking her swollen cheekbone. A bottle of water was held to her lips and she was forced to drink. It was cold and wet and tasted faintly like blood. He kept stroking back her hair, murmuring soothingly to her. Then he held the bottle to her lips again. She drank because he gave her no choice.
The questions started again. Her name. Where she was from. Her education. She wanted to scream at him. She was written up in the all the journals for her work. What was wrong with him? He already had that information. Her head wouldn’t stop its vicious pounding. The pain made her so nauseated she couldn’t keep from dry heaving. She’d already been sick all over the floor.
Zhu wiped her face gently with a wet cloth. “Pay attention, Zara,” he said. “Answer the questions.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth.”
That horrible pounding in her head increased, and this time, there was that strange ripping sensation in her mind, as if Zhu was there, trying to tear the truth from her. “I’m a professor at Rutgers,” she blurted. “I don’t understand any of this. Cheng invited me to give a talk on the program my team and I developed, the VALUE system. I was doing that when the alarms went off and something happened that I still don’t really know or understand.”
He hit her. Hard—so hard everything became even more blurred. There was no place on her body that wasn’t sacred. She lost track of time. She must have lost consciousness because he threw a bucket of water over her and yanked her head back by her hair. “Stay with me, Zara, this is important.”
Once again, he held water to her lips. It hurt to drink. Her lips stung and her throat felt raw and damaged from screaming. She didn’t even know what she screamed, only that she did. He soothed and petted her. He whispered to her. He let her lean into him. Then the questions started again and that ripping sensation in her head increased. Whatever new drug Cheng developed to force truth from his victims added to the jackhammers piercing her skull. It had to be in the water he gave her. She began reciting mathematical problems in her head over and over to combat the effects of the drugs. For all she knew she recited them out loud. She was beyond caring if she did.
He viciously stripped the clothes from her body, ripping them into long rags and that made her cry harder because she knew she didn’t have any other clothes. They couldn’t send her back to her hotel naked. They were never sending her back.
He spun her around. She heard a whistle like something moving fast in the air. It hit her across the back of her thighs and pain exploded. The cane. He was caning her. She’d heard of it, of course. It was common practice on prisoners. Never in a million years had she ever considered she would have to endure it. He hit her so many times she lost count. There wasn’t a place on her back, buttocks or thighs that he spared. Sometimes he hit in the same place several times until she couldn’t even scream because the pain was so excruciating.
Then he repeated the gentle handling, pushing back the damp hair from her forehead, whispering to her, holding the water to her mouth. Again, the questions began. She was so disoriented, she couldn’t think to answer him. She just wanted to lie down and go to sleep and never wake up.
He dragged her legs back, so that her feet were propped up on something she couldn’t see, the tops of each foot resting in a notch so the soles of her feet were exposed. When the first strike hit the arch of her foot, pain exploded, so excruciating she knew she might black out. She wanted to let go and faint. Nothing could ever hurt that bad again. She was wrong. He spent a great deal of time caning her feet, arches, heels, the balls of her feet, sides, toes, finally the tops. She was sweating profusely, sobbing, her breath wheezing out of her by the time he put down the cane and offered her more water. She choked on it, tried to turn her head away, refusing to drink, but he caught her hair, tipping her head back and forcing the water down her throat.
He let go of her and she tensed, waiting, hanging by her wrists, facing the door. She couldn’t stand any weight on her feet, so she had to take her full weight on her wrists. She couldn’t see and that made him scarier than ever. It was terrifying to wait for what he would do next, and she knew it was something terrible when he spun her around to face him. He stood for a long moment, letting her see what looked like a long bullwhip. Then he swung. The lash hit her across both breasts, cutting into her soft flesh. She jerked hard against her wrists, nearly tearing her arms out of the sockets, screaming again, her voice so hoarse she didn’t recognize it. She’d thought the cane was agony, but the whip slicing into her skin, cutting her open was far worse.
She had no idea how long he kept at it. She lost consciousness twice and both times there were buckets of ice-cold water thrown over her to revive her. He started up again immediately until there wasn’t a place on her body that wasn’t bleeding, bruised, swollen or throbbing with agonizing pain. She quit screaming. She couldn’t think beyond the pain. When he stopped to ask her questions, Zara tried to answer. She pleaded with Zhu to believe her.
Then he was hitting her for the fourth session with the whip, and her mind shut down completely. She hung there limply, unresponsive, almost in a catatonic state, but she was aware of Zhu cursing as he cut her down. From a great distance in her mind, she was surprised that Zhu didn’t get one of his subordinates to take her body down and drag her to her room. Instead he let her fall into his arms. He opened the door to find Cheng pacing back and forth in the hallway.
Cheng regarded her bloody body as if she were a bag of trash Zhu was about to throw out. “Well?” he demanded.
“She doesn’t know a thing,” Zhu said. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and she wouldn’t have been able to hold out. She’s not built for pain. She isn’t stoic and she didn’t have the opportunity to destroy the computers.” He kept walking straight to Zara’s room.
Cheng swore loudly as he trailed after them down the hallway. “It had to be that intruder, the one we never found. A delayed virus of some sort introduced into the network? Or we have a traitor right here in the building, one that works for us.”
Zhu laid Zara on the bed. It hurt so bad when the sheets touched her back she wanted to roll over, but he prevented her with a hand to her stomach. Pouring water onto a cloth, he held it over her face, wiping blood and tears from her swollen cheeks and mangled lips.
“Kill her or send her to Moffat. He’ll sell her to the highest bidder. She’s beautiful, so he’ll owe us a favor,” Cheng ordered. “She would be perfect for his club.”
“I will be keeping her for myself,” Zhu said. “I have plans for this one.”
Cheng stopped his pacing and swung around. “You’ve never wanted to keep a woman.”
“I do now. She’ll do what I want, and you’ll have the benefit of her mind. She can develop programs for you instead of giving them away to anyone who wants them. I researched her carefully, Cheng, before I gave you the report. She’s brilliant and would be an asset to you. Even had the computers not been harmed, she would never have left this place.”
“Can you control her?”
At the question, Zara forced her swollen eyelids to part a minuscule amount, just enough to see the two men. Why it was important to see them, she didn’t know, but they were deciding her fate. It sounded as if Moffat was a human trafficker, but staying with Zhu after what he’d done? Her entire body shuddered with pain and rejection of the idea.
“Why would you ask me such a thing?”
If she hadn’t been watching from such a distance, Zara would have shivered in fear at the look on Bolan Zhu’s face. He was extremely handsome, but in that moment, he looked a demon, invincible and very dangerous even to Cheng.
Cheng sighed. “This was a blow, Bolan, a huge one for us.”
For us. Zara heard that clearly. Cheng and Zhu were more than boss and number-one interrogator. Cheng sounded as if Zhu was more of a partner than an employee. Cheng stayed safe while Zhu traveled the world doing his bidding. That didn’t make sense, but her mind wasn’t working properly so she didn’t know if she was even hearing right.
“Who is looking at the cameras?” Zhu asked.
“I had a full team on because she was here. We don’t let outsiders in and usually I have three per floor, but I had six in each control room. The tapes have been reviewed. No one tampered with them. They don’t show anything amiss.”
“I’ll talk to the heads of each of the departments,” Zhu said. “If one of them is hiding something, I’ll know it.”
Cheng turned on his heel and started out of the room, but paused in the doorway to look back. “Are you certain your need of this woman hasn’t blinded you? Perhaps one more round again with chemicals.”
Zhu stood up slowly and stalked Cheng. To Zara’s shock, Cheng gave way, backing up with a placating hand. Cheng was the man everyone feared, yet now she was certain everyone was looking in the wrong direction.
“Do you believe I can be blinded by anyone, let alone this American woman? She’s beautiful and has a brilliant mind. She is young enough for my every need. I have searched for a long while to find the perfect partner and the moment I read her file, I knew she was the one—and that was without seeing her. She was never going to leave this place. Had she been guilty, I would still have kept her, but she would have paid for that indiscretion for a very long while.”
“Bolan …” Cheng broke off when Zhu shook his head.
“Do not insult me again. We have built the perfect empire. Your role suits you as mine suits me. We had a setback. It’s a bad one, but we can overcome it the way we have overcome everything else in our path.”
“How are we going to explain her disappearance?” Cheng asked.
“I will keep her here, locked away where no one can find her if they start looking for her. We have to make certain it appears she returned to her hotel. I’ll set it up so it will look as if she’d been robbed in her hotel room. There’s enough blood to make it real enough for the cops. Later, when I take her as my wife, we will explain her defection.”
Cheng inclined his head and scurried away. Zara was left with the man who had beaten the shit out of her. She knew she was lucky to be alive. Every breath she took hurt, but her ribs weren’t broken. He was that good. He’d gone for maximum pain, but he hadn’t done any permanent damage.
Zhu closed the door and came back to her, sinking his weight onto the mattress beside her. “Zara.” He brushed back wet strands of hair from her swollen face. “Can you hear me?”
She didn’t want to admit she could. She was afraid to stay still without answering him. She swallowed hard and barely inclined her head. Just that small movement made her head explode. She made a hopeless sound she couldn’t take back, and fresh tears flooded her eyes.
“I want you to feel everything I did to you and know this was me being easy on you. It could have been so much worse. You might not feel gratitude now because you can’t conceive of the ways I could make you suffer. Just know I was careful with you. I’m going to leave you now to take care of your disappearance. When I return, you’ll know you belong solely to me. I can do whatever I want with you. You don’t want to ever make me angry or disappointed in you. Not ever, Zara.”
His fingers had been stroking her inner wrist, but settled over her pulse as he gave her orders. She couldn’t respond, she was too terrified and her entire body hurt so bad she was afraid to move a muscle. His fingers continued again, as if the wild beating of her heart satisfied him.
“When I return, I’ll give you pain pills and clean you up. In the meantime, I want you to think about every part of your body because it belongs to me. I can make you feel good or I can make you feel very, very bad.” He leaned down and brushed a kiss over her swollen eye. “I like that you don’t like pain. It pleases me. I enjoy inflicting pain. You need to remember that at all times. When I ask you to do something, you will obey me immediately. Do you understand?”
She didn’t answer because she couldn’t find her voice. She was too terror-stricken. He caught at her bloody, stripe-covered breast and squeezed until she gasped in anguish.
“Do you understand?” he repeated, his voice as mild as ever.
She swallowed again and attempted to nod. The movement sent hammers crashing down on her. A moan escaped, and she hated herself for giving him the satisfaction she saw in his eyes. He did like that he hurt her. He was allowing her to see the cruelty in him—the craving to see her just like this, mewling in pain, barely human, dependent on his good will and her obedience in order to keep from getting worse. She thought Whitney the epitome of a monster, but she was wrong. So very wrong.
“Don’t roll over while I’m gone. I know caning hurts, but your back has no cuts. I was careful to leave you with one side to lie on. If your roll over, the sheet will stick to the lacerations and it will be very painful when I have to pull it off you, especially if my errand takes too long and the blood dries.”
When she made no sound, he leaned over her. “Did you understand what I said to you?”
She nodded hastily. She wasn’t making the same mistake twice.
“Good girl. You forgot to thank me for taking it easy on you. Cheng expected a much worse beating for you.”
She took a breath. Let it out. “I’m grateful.” God. She wanted him dead. She wanted this monster of a man out of her life. Away from her. She didn’t know a human being could hurt so bad and still live. She fought down the need to kill him. If she did, Cheng would take her apart and all of this would have been for nothing.
He rubbed his hand down her body from her breasts to her mound, skimming deliberately over the open lacerations the whip had caused. “Each of these cuts is shallow. You won’t have a single scar from this.”
She knew immediately what he expected. She wanted to spit in his face, but she knew better. “Thank you.”
He smiled at her and held the bottle of water to her again. “I am angry at Cheng for hitting you with his gun. You shouldn’t have any permanent damage, but if you do, he will pay.”
Did he expect her to thank him for that as well? She couldn’t say another word. He would have to torture her and hear her screams, but she wasn’t talking because she didn’t have anything left.
Zhu seemed to know her breaking point. He slipped his arm behind her back, making her cry out as he put her in a half-sitting position. “You have to hydrate, Zara. You shouldn’t fear what will happen to you, your new life. Once you understand that you will do as I say, you will be given the equipment needed and you can research all you want. You will be able to discuss your findings with others who will be excited about your projects and aid you in finding the answers that are important. There will be plenty of money so you will have the best of whatever you need.”
She drank from the bottle and allowed the little slits in her eyes to close all the way. Her eyes hurt like hell anyway. He kept her drinking until she couldn’t swallow and the water ran down her chin. He didn’t wipe it away any more than he cleaned up her bloody body.
“Remember what I said to you about turning over. I will be very angry if I have to soak the sheets to get them off you.”
She made a sound in her throat to indicate she heard him. Pain swamped her. Enclosed her in a horrific cocoon. Her body refused to stop shivering, the tremors going through her, rocking her. She knew she was close to shock if she hadn’t already tipped over the scales. All the water she drank, even after the several times of humiliatingly losing her bladder in the interrogation room, meant she would have to find a way to crawl to the bathroom, and he knew it. Did spies get treated this way? If so, why would anyone voluntarily sign up?
She’d been in an orphanage and Whitney had all but bought her. She knew a great deal of money had exchanged hands because he told her all the time what a disappointment she was for the price he’d had to pay—how much he’d lost in his pitiful gesture of kindness. She had discussed with Shylah and Bellisia, her two best friends, what a horrible megalomaniac Whitney was, and she’d cried because she’d been considered so useless to him. It hadn’t mattered that she’d gone to the university so young and excelled. She couldn’t take pain. She was a baby when it came to the slightest wound on her. The lightest of blows.
Zhu pushed back her hair again and stood. She felt the movement rather than saw it, and it took everything she had not to cringe. She was blind and writhing in pain, unable to stay still, but every movement made her hurt worse. She couldn’t imagine the damage Zhu could inflict on a prisoner he truly wanted to harm.
She couldn’t imagine anyone defeating him. Anyone. She didn’t know anyone as strong as Zhu. What kind of man could stand up to someone so evil? She certainly couldn’t.
“No one will enter this room while I’m gone, not even Cheng. He knows you’re under my protection.”
She wanted to scream and throw things at him. She could only mewl a little in abject terror and total agony. His voice never changed. He had to be a complete sociopath. Her mind was in such chaos, for the first time in her life, she couldn’t think of a way out. She didn’t acknowledge she heard him. If he hurt her more, so be it. She couldn’t speak, only keening wails escaped her throat. An animal in pain. He’d reduced her to that and he’d said he was going to keep her.
Whitney had forced her to do his bidding, and now she was in Zhu’s hands. Something had to be terribly, terribly wrong with her. How could Zhu have the face of an angel? Not a fallen angel, an actual angel. He was beautiful. No one would ever take him for a monster.
She heard the door close, and she let herself cry. Sob. Tears poured down her face and mixed with the blood from where Cheng had struck her with his gun. The tears stung but she barely noticed. She thought to move, but her body protested, refusing to her obey her. She tried to think about soldiers, captured during war. They were tortured far worse than what she’d had done to her. If they could endure it, surely she could. But she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t ever do this again. The only good thing was, the virus would kick in soon, a week, maybe two at the most. The bad thing was, when she died, they might find the SSD. Hopefully they wouldn’t figure out how to get the information out of it. Could she endure two entire weeks with Zhu? She wasn’t certain, but she made up her mind to kill him before she died, and then somehow, she had to figure a way to keep them from taking apart her body.
Zara wanted to curl up in a little ball and never move. She wanted a safe haven she never had to leave. Someplace where no one hurt her. Someplace where she could have a semblance of a home. She wanted to be someone else, anyone but Zara Hightower.