The Mistress

13

THE QUEEN

Nora had been allowed to take a shower. She’d been so shocked that Marie-Laure told her she could have one that Nora’d actually said, “Thank you.” Thank you, she’d said to the woman who’d kidnapped her? Thank you? Fucking Stockholm syndrome. Nora turned on the water. No more thank-yous unless it was “Thank you for dying, bitch, and this time stay dead.” One of the guards led her to a luxurious bathroom off the bedroom where they’d been talking and told her to clean up. She’d climbed into the shower fully clothed. No way would she strip in front of Marie-Laure’s boys, who she had mentally dubbed Fat Man and Little Boy. Fat Man was Andrei, easily two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. All muscle, no brain. Little Boy Damon with his coldly intelligent eyes and expensive shoes had to be the brains of the operation. Everything about him screamed “mercenary.” Neither one of them seemed to have any amorous interest in her. Marie-Laure wasn’t the type to allow the men in her life, hired thugs or not, to show interest in any woman beside herself, but that was no reason to tempt fate. Plus Marie-Laure hadn’t been kidding. She did smell like piss and horse shit.

The hot water scalded and Nora let the heat seep into her skin. She took cold comfort from it. Too many thoughts of Wesley intruded. A few nights ago they’d been in his shower together, fully clothed and talking. What she wouldn’t give to be back there now.... That night she’d been miserable, devastated that she’d beaten a newborn foal on the off-chance it would stir his mother from the exhaustion and stupor that threatened to kill her. Now that sort of misery seemed like paradise compared to this one. Trapped in a house with a madwoman and her two gun-toting bodyguards. And for what? Revenge against Søren? Against Kingsley? Against her? What was Marie-Laure’s endgame in all this? That woman would never make it out of this alive. If Nora died, there’d be no reason to stop Kingsley from blowing them all away. If it meant Søren’s happiness, there was nothing Kingsley wouldn’t do.

Nora wrapped a bath towel around her as Damon led her back into the bedroom and pulled out ropes and handcuffs. Marie-Laure looked trussed up like a princess in her chic nightgown all cozy in the bed.

“I don’t play with strangers on the first date,” Nora said, eyeing the rope warily.

“We’ve met before. We’ll call it our second date.” Damon gripped her by the arm and pushed her. “On the bed. Back to the bedpost,” he ordered, and Nora reluctantly obeyed. She would have tried to fight or run for it but Andrei, the Fat Man, stood at the door holding a gun in his hand as casually as a pinwheel.

“It’s fine. It’s late. Let’s settle in for the night, shall we?” Marie-Laure spoke as if they were two girls at a slumber party and not one sociopathic murderer and one terrified and soaking-wet prisoner. Meanwhile, Damon clapped the cuffs on her wrists and started to thread the rope around her ankles.

“You’re tying me to the bed?” Nora asked.

“You’re my guest. If you wander in the night around the house, you might get hurt. We don’t want that, do we?”

Nora heard the threat tucked inside the faux concern. If she wandered in the night, someone would blow her brains out.

“Fine. Whatever. Not the first night I spent tied to a bed.” She sensed Damon behind her expertly threading the rope through the cuffs and the sturdy frame of the bed. The cool air in the room sent goose bumps all over her wet body. Cold, wet and terrified and sitting up with her back against the bedpost, she doubted she’d get any sleep at all. Good. She should stay awake, alert, and thinking. There had to be a way out of this. They’d let their guard down at some point. She could make a run for it.

“Nice,” Nora said to Damon. “You do good rope work. You a Dom?”

“Headhunter,” he said simply and without translating. Nora hadn’t been around the mob since her father died but she hadn’t forgotten the lingo. Headhunter—hired killer.

“Headhunter? You and Kingsley could talk shop.” Nora looked at Marie-Laure again. “You know your brother is an ex-assassin, right? You sure you want to tangle with him?”

“I helped change his diapers. Forgive me if I can’t see him as much of a threat.”

“Helped change his diapers? Wow...you are old, aren’t you?”

“Damon,” Marie-Laure said.

Damon stepped forward, grabbed a handful of Nora’s wet hair and pulled. He rested a sharp cold blade against her neck.

“You are here to amuse me,” Marie-Laure said from the head of the bed. “Not insult me. I suggest you start being a bit more entertaining if you want to live a few hours more.”

“Entertaining?” Nora repeated. “What do you want? A song and dance? Some stand-up? A bedtime story?”

Marie-Laure said nothing as she studied Nora’s face. It might have only been seconds, but with the knife at her throat and Nora’s life flashing in front of her eyes, it felt like hours. Damon let the knife dig a millimeter deeper into her skin and in that moment Nora regretted every last time she’d told Søren she hated him. Hopefully he knew she never meant it, that she only said it because she didn’t know how else to tell him how annoying it was to be loved that much by someone who was so right all the damn time about everything.

“Damon.” Marie-Laure spoke his name softly and the knife immediately disappeared. Nora breathed carefully as if the blade still waited at her neck.