Echo of Redemption Read online

  Garrett’s arms tighten around me, making me look into his face. Words don’t have to be said to know what he is thinking. This isn’t over. There’s so much to talk about. I can’t imagine life without you in it either. I wish he’d say it out loud because right now I really need to hear the words.

  Enrique peeks around the edge of the door. “Sorry to disturb. A man at de door said dat I mus’ give ju dis message immediately.”

  “Who is it?” Garrett demands irritably.

  “Not you.” Enrique looks at Thomas. “He did not give his name. He said to tell ju de words Alexiares and Aniketos.”

  Thomas jumps up and races into the foyer. Loud voices follow—his and a man I don’t recognize. They speak in a foreign language. Thomas’s native Greek, I believe. I look at Garrett. Shrugging, he takes my hand and leads me to the leather couch as the voices get louder. He leaves me to join Thomas in the foyer. Out of sight. God, what is happening? My heart is pounding. Something is wrong. Horribly wrong.

  Looking white as a sheet, Enrique sits down on the section of sofa vacated by Thomas but doesn’t say a word. He is so loyal like that, to Garrett. Unless Master wants me to know what is happening on the other side of the wall, I will not know.

  What I do know is that our ménage’s drama has been displaced by something even more intense.

  “It came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort.”

  Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

  Chapter 2

  Nikos

  Shanghai, China

  January 19

  Smoke softens the edges of all the hard surfaces. The air reeks. Name your poison. It is here. Heroine? Opium? Ice? Hashish? I host big parties, I pay big bribes. You are nobody in China unless you are paying off somebody. I can say I’m the king here, because I pay everyone to forget they ever saw me.

  Tonight, every night, there is a party in full swing.

  Mr. Children fills the air, a lyrical love song. No, love-gone song.

  The song makes my head ache as I try to not focus on the words, my brain translating even though I don’t want it to.

  “Too many things demanded. Only if it’s possible, I want to be by your side. In between these times my breath is ceasing.”

  I do not long for a lost lover. I’ve never been in love. My melancholy is because I saw my twin brother yesterday for the first time in a decade. He looked the way I used to: tall, strong, proud. I cannot be proud of who I have become even though I have become the man I am at the orders of the country I serve. I say serve because none of the united European allies operating the WODC were the place of my birth. I am Greek. I have to remind myself of that. There is a pride to being Greek, and even when there isn’t a single other thing on this world left for me to feel pride in, I will have my nationality. I am Greek. I am Demetres Aristotle Velouchiotis’s brother.

  Two things to be proud of.

  I only hope Ari can still say he is proud to be the twin of Socrates Nikos Velouchiotis though neither of us has heard our birth names in a very long time.

  It seems our lives have been predestined to carry us both on the paths we walk, all of our family…grandfather, father, uncle…having walked the same road. Ari and I were given knives and guns when boys the same age were still playing with toy trucks and trains. We were taught to climb and rappel in the mountains while our friends were still figuring out how to make a kite lift on the breeze. By the time we were teenagers, we were both masterful at all the skills required for our predetermined vocations: soldier, spy, assassin. Like a superhero, we would fight the evil-doers.

  I watch the flow of traffic below. The wall-size window of my penthouse, high in the sky, shows me all of Shanghai. Bright red and white lights flicker, ebbing and flowing. I am reminded of glowing embers, a campfire, or the pit of hell. I am reminded, benignly that when my time is past there will be no heaven for me.

  I was a good man. I can almost remember that time.

  I turn my back to the window and survey my realm. I can see from one end of the loft to the other without obstruction, though the portion I stand in is raised by several feet. My “office.” Open and accessible. The “pit” is a sea of couches, chairs and low tables, an area designed for the gathering of my loyal subjects, trusted men, beautiful women. Giggling girls flutter around the room, wearing brightly colored silk dresses. They will all be nude…soon.

  “Alone late at night the loneliness explodes. The bittersweet candy was still in the pocket of my chest…please, eat it.”

  “Someone change the fucking song!”

  The music stops, replaced with something more techno, less maudlin.

  I control with fear. Bow down before me and if I like you, I may let you live. Pity if I don’t like you, or if you cross me…death will be the blessing you beg for.

  This is my empire, my kingdom, the one I built while no one was looking. While all had their eyes on my predecessor, King Cobra, I forged a new realm. I was his right hand man. For almost a decade I knew his every thought, his every deed, his malevolence, and his compassion.

  I find it superbly funny that while I was an undercover agent planted by the WODC, he was posing as an agent as well. All along, while they looked for him, he was right under their noses. No one knew. Well, he obviously did. I discovered his truth and by some stroke of luck or genius he didn’t discover mine. Somehow, I managed to keep him from killing me long enough to convince him what a great team we could make. However, to do so I had to be even more manipulative, more evil, than he’d ever considered being.

  I could say he was an evil mother-fucker. A sadist in every sense of the word. Maniacal. Sociopathic. Terrorist. But I refuse to consider what I have become in order to complete the assignment. The first order of business, earning his trust and discovering every aspect of his organization, took years.

  I’m not the same man I was when I took this job.

  He is dead now, though not by my hand. That was the plan all along. At some point I would become his replacement, the Special Operations unit of the WODC’s idea of how to control the outcome, the alpha dog able to keep all the other dogs in line. Left to a turf war of global proportions, bedlam would ensue. I minimize the chaos.

  “Sir?”

  I look down into the face of one of the women here for the party. Young. All of the women here are young, some too young, and she definitely falls in the category of the latter. She is a child, dressed up and made up, too much makeup for my taste, taught to walk and talk and breathe sensuality. I can’t say she is particularly pretty; not considering the room is filled with perfection. My biggest problem isn’t with her age, or that she isn’t as beautiful as the others, but that I don’t recognize her. That makes me nervous. Hundreds of women have rotated through my life and this one I have never seen before. “Who are you?”

  She moves closer, touching the sleeve of my Tessori Uomo jacket. “I please you tonight?”

  Her hand roves higher and I notice she is trembling slightly as she glides her fingertips from my elbow to my shoulder. She smiles, trying for seductive and failing. Fear fills her eyes.

  I react, leaving a bullet-size hole in the center of her forehead, not even remembering pulling the small caliber handgun from my side holster. Shrill screams erupt around the room. Women hide behind furniture, knowing better than to run because if they flee, they too die. Anyone who has been with me more than a few hours knows this.

  My men are at my elbow, surrounding me with a shield of bodies before I can take my next breath. Two men start to pick up the dead woman when I demand, “Gloves.”

  They pull latex gloves from their pockets.

  “I want to know who she is, who she knows. Have her skin processed.”

  “Poison?” One of my men asks.

  I don’t bother giving him an answer. This is my life. Every day—sometimes many times a day—death comes looking for me. You would think I would lose track of the sheer number of enemies I have, but to become
lax is to die. I know them by name, by face, by country of origin, by dialect, and by the timbre of their voices.

  I fish three pills from my pocket, the flavor of the day.

  I am called a fool by my enemies, an addict, but the truth is, I have the edge. I am alert when I need to be alert, I sleep when I feel safe enough to relax, and when the day or week demands that I do not sleep…I don’t.

  The threat has been eliminated today. Tonight, I sleep.

  “You.” I point at one of the exquisite whores. She stands immediately and walks to me. Her eyes are downcast. She is petite, thin, her waist-length raven-black hair hanging past her hips almost to her knees. The silk dress she is wearing leaves little to the imagination, clinging to her nakedness like a wet t-shirt.

  Taking her hand, I lead her to my bedroom.

  “What is your name?”

  “Wen-Qi.”

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, I reach for a bottle of apricot oil on the nightstand. I hand it to her. “I tell you what, Wen-Qi. I’m tired. I want to sleep. Take care of me tonight.”

  She nods and kneels in front of me. She sits the bottle on the floor beside her before unbuttoning my shirt. Pushing the fabric off my shoulders, her fingertips linger over a section of my horimono.

  “You like my tat, do you?”

  She licks her lips. “It is terrifying.”

  I have to laugh. Terrifying. I suppose the dragons and demons covering my body might be just that. She helps me out of my shoes and the rest of my clothes before standing to remove her own. It isn’t really necessary for her to be naked. Though she is perfection, I couldn’t care less.

  “Jerk me off, Wen-Qi. With your hands and the oil, not your mouth.”

  Hurrying to do my bidding, she picks up the bottle of oil and pours a good amount in her cupped hand. She starts to touch me, but I stop her. “No. Drizzle the oil over my cock and balls. I like the way it feels for the oil to drip over my flesh before you touch me.”

  She picks the bottle up and drizzles. I close my eyes, the cool liquid lapping over my prick like a bodiless tongue. She waits a sufficient amount of time before closing her warm fingers around my stiff penis. She squeezes me hard enough to remind me that I have metal bars piercing my frenulum. Four. They form a ladder of sorts up my shaft.

  Keeping her palm wrapped around my length, she slides her hand up and down. I like the way the fine grit of ground apricot pits mixed in the oil adds to the sensation.

  “Pull the lorum ring, babe.”

  She obeys, pulling on the piercing between shaft and balls with the opposite hand from the one she is pumping me with. She doesn’t miss a beat.

  “Rougher. Be rougher.”

  She tries, but I think she is afraid that if she hurts me I will blow her brains out.

  “Please.” I open my eyes, meeting her gaze. “If you do not cause me some serious agony in the next five seconds I will do to you something a hundred times worse than your imagination can come up with.”

  She pulls the metal loop at the base of my cock and twists. At the same time it feels like she is ripping the entire ladder of bars through the flesh holding them in place. I scream loud enough to cause four of my bodyguards to burst in.

  “Get out!”

  Her hand stills and I again meet her gaze, hoping she understands that I don’t want to kill her tonight. I don’t want to kill anyone else today. “Please, please, please. Don’t stop again, Wen-Qi. Until I come or pass out, don’t stop.”

  * * * *

  Pop. Pop, pop, pop. Pop, pop. I dream of fireworks, but then the pain hits me.

  Without even checking my vitals, my assailant flees and I am left moaning in the dark. Alone. Where in the fuck are my men? As I stumble from my room, I find bodies. Some dead. Some alive but dying. “God damn, amateur.”

  To have gotten so close but done the job so poorly…

  “Fuck!” I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold in all my spilling blood.

  Wen-Qi stumbles from the bedroom and I see that she too is bleeding, a shoulder wound, nothing life threatening. As the room starts to fall into shades of gray I know I am in trouble. I reach under the bar for a first aid kit and start packing my wounds with quick-clot. Seeing a bright yellow dress lying across the back of a chair, I grab it and start ripping it into strips to wrap around my body. Two of my men, obviously late to the party, arrive and seeing the scene hurry forward to assist me. Only one do I trust. Sean Paul. We have been on–again, off-again lovers for more years than I can count. “Thank God you’re here. Get me to the US.”

  Our gazes clash. He knows what I’m asking. I want Ari. If I am going to die, I want someone who actually gives a damn about my soul to be with me when I go.

  As we flee the building, I don’t have to tell him to trigger the self-destruct. He knows. Behind us the entire penthouse level explodes in a fireball that can be seen for miles. I know it seems cruel, knowing many will die in my endeavor to escape, but it is my attempt at compassion. I will not have the ones once loyal to me tortured in my enemies’ efforts to find me. The explosion is also a nice distraction. With the tallest building in Shanghai burning, no one will pay attention to our leaving.

  “I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”

  Dr. Seuss

  Chapter 3

  Kitten

  San Francisco, CA

  January 21

  A naked man lies restrained in the middle of our dining room table, not such an unusual circumstance for any particular night but an odd fact given Master is operating on him. Removing bullets to be exact. The man on the table I only just discovered is my lover Thomas’s twin. Almost two years I’ve known him and never once did he believe the information was relevant.

  I’m peeved.

  As much because there are now blood stains on the wood floors as because I feel I know nothing about the two men I call Master. Take Garrett, for instance. I knew he had attended a medical university in Ohio and worked for a while in a trauma center, but that was his life before we met and I rarely consider it. I only know him as Garrett Lawrence, owner of Lewd Larry’s Underground, a BDSM nightclub. I’ve certainly never thought of him as a surgeon. He looks calmly confident for a man who hasn’t held a scalpel in God knows how long. And really? A scalpel? I didn’t even know we had one in the house. Several. Garrett has a full on triage kit and after starting a saline drip and adding an antibiotic bag, both hung from a metal coat rack to give them height, he started operating.

  There didn’t seem to be a choice.

  “Shouldn’t we call nine-one-one?”

  Did I ask that? Did Enrique? I don’t even know if the words were said out loud.

  There is a black man standing guard, and I fear for all our safety even though he isn’t waving a gun or making any outward threat. Fuck. Oh, fuck. Is he armed?

  Thomas stands near enough to the table to watch but not be in the way. I watch him more so than I do Garrett. Even after more than a year together, he is still a mystery. He shares nothing of his life outside of our ménage. He too is my Master, and it is just as complicated as it sounds having two Masters to please. We wear each other’s brands on our forearms—the three of us a united ménage—but as I watch Thomas’s face etch with worry and Garrett’s hand remain steady despite the lack of cooperation of his very awake patient, I become even more angry realizing just how much I don’t know about either man.

  I watch from the edge of the sofa, my knees tucked tightly under my chin. Not being one to miss anything exciting in the house, Enrique, our houseboy, sits beside me, holding my hand. He makes a great show of comforting me but he is the one who is as pale as a ghost.

  God. Oh God. Thomas’s brother is bleeding from more holes in his body than I can count. This isn’t good. This really isn’t good. Though if the strength of the man’s curses is any i
ndication, he’s going to be just fine. But what about the rest of us? Has he led danger straight to our door?

  I shouldn’t even being having such thoughts, but I am, because I’m not naïve. I know that when Thomas leaves on business trips, he isn’t doing a normal job. He’s always armed but especially when he travels. I like to think he operates on the right side of the law, but wonder if our views would even be the same on that. One thing is for certain. I knew the moment I met him, Thomas was a dangerous man. I don’t doubt for a minute his brother is any less so. A dozen weapons were removed from Thomas’s brother, along with his clothes. The evidence of Thomas’s secret life being so blatantly exposed makes me more afraid than I’ve ever been. I hate his brother for showing up here. I suppose it wouldn’t be a very Christian thing to do to toss him to the curb with last night’s garbage, but that is exactly what I want to do. I don’t care that he is Thomas’s brother. He shouldn’t be here.

  And this stranger…who is he? He’s wearing a jacket but beneath it he is armed. I saw the handle of a gun when he lifted his arm, and I doubt it is his only weapon.

  I’ve never been overly superstitious but in this moment, I wish I were. I want to sprinkle salt over the eaves, spill brandy on the thresholds, hang dried wormwood on every wall. I need a bright blue Nazar Boncugu. I want him gone!

  A scream fills the air and Thomas pushes his brother’s shoulders back down onto the table, even though a dozen straps restrain him. “Hang on, Nikos. He’s almost finished.”

  Nikos. His brother has a name.

  It is obvious the man is out of his mind. The question is whether it is from pain, drugs, or if he is really insane. He is like a rabid dog. Crazy. His eyes make me believe no one is home.

  He was right-minded enough to track and find his brother. How did he find Thomas here? I’m not so certain I want to know. Surely Thomas didn’t give him our address.

  The doorbell rings and only after a nod from Thomas does Enrique hurry to answer it. He emits George Fitzpatrick, Garrett’s Number One at Lewd Larry’s. There he is known as Dr. Psycho, though he isn’t crazy, far from it. In fact, he is a retired psychiatrist turned full-time professional Dominant. I wasn’t surprised when Thomas called him and asked him to join us, stating only that it was an emergency and his services were required immediately.