Chapter 11

“I am so glad you’re back,” Dresden said from his perch beside the enormous blazing fireplace.

“Do tell,” she responded as she walked into the room and sat down across from him. She was so brittle that she was about to break. She had to shove thoughts of Jude to the back of her mind. It took a force of will that she would have doubted she could achieve.

She’d left the farmhouse separately from Jude, King, and Rook. Alone. She’d left alone.

“You know I’m going to punish you?” the monster asked softly.

She shrugged. She might be scared he’d break her again, but she’d be damned if she’d show him her fear.

“Being with your team has made you bold,” he said, his tone unchanged. “That doesn’t bode well for you.”

“Segorski isn’t an ally. He needs to be eliminated,” she responded, refusing to engage with Dresden. He liked that, and she didn’t want to give him anything he liked.

Dresden rose and walked toward her. “We’ll talk about Segorski…after.”

“After what?” she asked, infusing the appropriate amount of caution into her tone.

“I’ve got something to show you,” Dresden said with a smile.

Ice washed through her veins. This could not be good. She’d expected something twisted, but normally he crowed about things before showing her.

She followed him down to the cells. She’d spent a fair amount of time there. She remembered the smell, the cold, the fear, and the pain. God, how she remembered the fear and pain. As they descended the metal steps, her trepidation grew. She didn’t get the feeling he was going to hurt her—not physically anyway, not yet.

He flipped on a light as they came to the bottom, and all of the space he used for torture was revealed. There were five doors around the edges of the large circular room. The doors were made of heavy wood and impenetrable from the inside.

Ella knew; she’d tried at one time to escape.

A man stepped forward from behind them, holding a ring of keys.

“Open the door,” Dresden ordered.

The small man scuttled to do as he was bid. Ella tensed, afraid suddenly of what was about to be revealed.

The man opened the door and stepped back. Dresden stepped forward and entered the room. He exited after only a few seconds, pushing a small, blond woman ahead of him toward the center of the room. The left side of the woman’s face had a large bruise, but the rest of her body, dressed in a simple though dirty shift, was untouched. She didn’t fight, didn’t make any noise at all when Dresden grabbed her arms behind her back and forced her to kneel on the cold stone floor.

Ella winced as the woman’s knees bounced against the stones. All of Dresden’s moves were to belittle and show his captives that ultimately they had no power. Whoever this woman was, she was in trouble.

“Do you know who this is, Ella?” Dresden asked as he walked to Ella and stroked a finger down her cheek.

“I don’t,” Ella replied, keeping her gaze on the woman, looking for signs of life besides simply existing. Other than the shallow rise and fall of the woman’s chest, there was nothing.

“This is Anna Beth Caine,” Dresden said with a small, evil laugh. “She was once my fiancée.”

That name… Something about that name niggled at Ella.

“You’re probably wondering why she’s here, right? Is her name familiar?” Dresden asked as he stepped behind Ella and rested his chin on her shoulder.

Like lovers, she thought. He was treating her like a lover.

“I don’t like it when you don’t answer me, Ella.”

“I’m not wondering why she’s here,” Ella pushed out of a suddenly dry throat.

“No?” Dresden laughed. “I’ll tell you anyway. She’s here because Svetlana Markov tried to undermine me by giving your Piper information that she thought would break me. So I decided to break Svetlana first.”

Svetlana Markov’s whispered dying words floated through Ella’s mind. Something about a sister…

“She didn’t say anything to me,” Ella said, denying what Dresden obviously already knew. Did the bastard know everything?

“We won’t talk about your propensity to lie to me right now. I want you to concentrate on the woman kneeling so beautifully on the floor in front of us. Are you watching her, Ella?”

Ella nodded.

“Svetlana Markov’s real name wasn’t Svetlana. It was Cameron. She and her sister, Anna Beth, are—or in Cameron’s case were—daughters of a prominent American military leader who has made it his number one priority to destroy me.” A pause, a draw of breath, and then he continued. “Can you imagine trying to destroy me?” He laughed then, sinisterly and softly. “Anyway, I digress. Anna Beth was at one time my beloved fiancée, her father a pawn in my pocket. She loved me unconditionally until she couldn’t love me anymore. It’s a sad truth that I tend to break my toys.”

Caine…the name… The woman couldn’t be… “What have you done?” Ella whispered in horror.

“Svetlana—excuse me, Cameron—decided to try to hide her sister from me. Cameron and her father did their best, but ultimately, well, I’m me and I know everything. Cameron decided she would try to hide Anna Beth from me. Nobody leaves me. Nobody hides from me.” His whispered edicts had every hair on Ella’s body standing on end.

She didn’t know how to deescalate this situation. Dresden was cold and methodical. This woman’s torture was a means to an end for him. Ella didn’t doubt his sanity. The bastard simply had no soul. He’d sold it to the devil to attain power. The woman on the floor had once been important to him, and she was Svetlana—um, Cameron—Markov’s sister. Now? She was a tool. And today she’d be used to bring Ella back in line. For Dresden, it was just that simple.

The truth circled Ella’s mind… Noah Caine’s daughter. So was the woman who’d died in Ella’s arms in Russia.

Noah Caine. The Piper.

Goddamn it.

“It looks like you’ve won, Dresden.” Ella pointed to the woman. “She’s right there at your mercy, just like you like them.”

He smoothed his hair back and straightened his jacket. “Yes. Yes she is. How does it feel to know the bastard that created you, created Endgame Ops, has such a deep tie to me? God, you and your team are pathetic. Put her back into her cage, Ella. Do that for me, will you?”

Ella nodded and walked to the woman, stooping to help her up. The woman was smaller than Ella and lighter. She rose with Ella’s assistance, though it seemed a painful transition if her gasp was anything to go by.

Ella glanced at the woman and was surprised to find her deep-green gaze locked on her. Inside them was acceptance and, strangely enough, a clarity that spoke volumes about her mental health. She wasn’t insane with pain or torture. Not yet. Not by a long shot.

Ella would save this woman. She vowed it right then. But first she had to get her out of Dresden’s line of sight.

“Prepare yourself,” Ella said so softly that her words went no farther than the woman.

She closed her eyes and did as Ella instructed.

Ella pulled the woman’s arms behind her body as gently as she could. She was a pawn. Another piece on the chessboard.

How much longer until an endgame in this seemingly endless game with their lives?

“Put her up,” Dresden spat out.

Ella pushed lightly on the woman, who walked to the room. “I’ll be back for you,” she whispered before she turned and closed the door behind her.

Before the solid oak door latched, Ella heard the woman say, “I’ll be ready.”

Then Ella locked the door and turned around. Dresden was right there in her face.

She didn’t have time to brace herself for his fist. It connected with a snap, and she fell to the floor, shock coating her tongue, the blow to her cheek rendering her insensate for a precious second. Ella rode the wave of pain that threatened to carry her down.

“If you betray me, I will kill you, Ella. But first I’ll make you watch as I gut your man. Would you like that?”

He didn’t say anything else, just hovered over her until she finally opened her eyes. He wasn’t even out of breath from his exertion.

Yet, the sanity remained in his eyes. The calculation absolute and so very real she wondered if she could touch it.

But Ella was hurting now. All she wanted to do was curl into a ball and weep.

“Get up and clean yourself. We’ll speak tomorrow,” he ordered and then turned and calmly walked away.

“You won’t be able to save me. You can’t even save yourself,” the woman behind the door whispered.

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” Ella said to the woman. She pulled herself up off the floor, wincing at the ringing in her head. She pushed the pain down deep and made her way up the lower stairs, her mind clearing with every step.

Then she made her way slowly up the grand staircase and to her room on the second floor of the huge mansion. Maids and hired help passed her, but none of them looked at her, avoiding any repercussions of helping someone Dresden had gone out of his way to hurt.

Ella ignored them too, instead focusing on what she’d learned tonight. It was information that threw everything the Piper had asked her to do out of perspective.

She concentrated on what she knew. Dresden had taken over this property from a well-to-do Ukrainian businessman who found himself no longer needing a place to sleep since the hole Dresden had dug and placed him in suited him quite nicely in his deceased state.

Dresden had taken refuge in Ukraine. The Russians wanted him. The United States would never stop hunting him, but the Ukrainians? Ah yes, the Ukrainians wanted his power and wealth because it seemed not even the Russians knocking at their door would cross Dresden.

It was all a huge game to Dresden. Because even as he played false with the Ukrainians, he sold biochemical weapons to the Russians. Or at least he sold them to Segorski. A Russian who wanted the Crimean Peninsula and all the oil that lay within it.

Ella slowly made her way to her room and walked to the balcony that overlooked a small, picturesque meadow. A stream cut through the middle of the field, and the moon reflected off the dark water. She took several cleansing breaths and wondered how in the hell she’d managed to survive this long.

“Ma’am?” A tentative voice sounded from the door of her room.

Ella turned and saw a woman standing there, hands folded in front of her, dark auburn hair in a severe bun, the lace apron she wore confirming she was a maid. “Yes?”

“Do you need anything?” the maid asked, and Ella swore she heard another question in the woman’s voice.

Where did she start? A broken laugh escaped Ella. “No. I’m good.”

The woman nodded and without warning grabbed Ella by the arms.

Ella tried to pivot, but the woman was stronger than she looked. Soldier strong.

Surely they wouldn’t…

Oh God, what had Endgame done? Ella could only pray they weren’t coming for Dresden. Or worse, herself.

Ella twisted and backed away. “Who sent you?” she asked, her voice nearly silent for fear of rousing other staff or, worse, Dresden.

The maid’s head rose swiftly. She was caught and knew it. “Jude,” she admitted with a small grimace.

Damn it! Damn Jude and his interference!

“Listen to me,” Ella hissed. “Dresden will kill you if he discovers what you’re doing here. I can’t believe Jude attempted this!”

The woman shrugged as if Ella’s words didn’t matter a whit. She pulled a square of fabric from a pocket in her maid outfit and shoved the fabric into Ella’s face.

Ella’s vision swam immediately and she sagged, the bitterness of defeat nearly as heavy as the sweet taste of the drug coating her damaged tongue. For the second time within the span of a few days, she’d been taken. Damn it.

Ella lost her ability to fight, her limbs going numb even as her vision cleared. She wondered who the woman was to Jude even as she cursed the wayward thought in the middle of this clusterfuck of a situation. She had to be here. She had to be accessible to Dresden, or everything she’d sacrificed would be for naught.

And now there was Anna Beth Caine…

She tried to plead with her eyes for the woman to leave and let her be, but the woman was a force.

In less than a minute, Ella was wrapped in the duvet cover and shoved into a laundry cart. She was growing more and more tired, realizing that whatever she’d been given was meant to paralyze and eventually knock out the recipient.

Jude had warned her, and as the maid-slash-operative working for or with Jude dumped the contents of the laundry cart into the chute, Ella wondered where the hell she was headed.

Because none of this was good.

Not at all.