Page 21 of Under His Heel: A Kidnapping

A knock on the door interrupted them. Alex whimpered when Tracht pulled away.

“Come in,” Tracht said.

Anna came into the room with grimace on her face. Her eyes were red and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She looked old. Definitely older than Tracht.

“I—” Anna sighed and sat down in the other chair in the room. “I wanted to see how everything was going here.”

“Alex is doing fine,” Tracht said mildly. “The doctors say he’ll be in a cast for a few weeks. The new tooth has set well. The face—well. There probably won’t be any additional scars. Thank you for pretending to care.”

Anna flinched. “All right. I deserved that. I’ve been—I’ve been unkind.” She rubbed her brow, similar to how Tracht sometimes did.

She looked straight at Alex. “Johan said you tried to save him. And I think—no, I know—that if you hadn’t been there, Johan would have gotten more hurt. So, thank you.”

Was Alex still dreaming? Was he actually still trapped, but he’d dreamt up some sort of alternate reality where Tracht was nice and Anna didn’t hate him? He looked at Tracht, but there was nothing except careful blankness on his face.

“Uh, sure.” Alex’s face heated up. He had no idea what she wanted from him.

“I’m going to deposit a payment into your account,” Anna said. “You can use it to pay off your debt faster, or have it waiting for you when your service is over.”

Wow. Tracht’s nose twitched lightly, but he didn’t say anything, and that left Alex to try to figure out how to respond.

“Thanks?” It was kind of nice of her. There had to be some kind of catch, but since Tracht didn’t raise an objection, Alex wasn’t going to either.

The room fell into silence.

“Is that all you came to say?” Tracht asked finally.

Anna nodded. “Yes—oh, and Vasilis said to let you know that the acquisition went ahead without a hitch. He wasn’t going to let this get in the way of business.”

“That’s good to hear. I would hate for the saboteurs get what they wanted, no matter how indirectly.”

An awkward silence fell, then Anna coughed and stood. “All right then. I’ll see you both later. Johannes, let’s have dinner before you leave.”

Tracht waved, and then she was gone, leaving Alex alone with Tracht once more.

“Is she really gonna pay me?” Alex asked. If he had the energy to, he would have sat up or reached out to Tracht. He had to content himself with Tracht stroking his scalp lightly.

“I doubt she would lie about it. Do you intend to use it to pay off the debt faster?”

“No?” Alex closed his eyes. “What would I even do after that? And this way I’ll have some cash when it’s all over.”

He heard Tracht snort mildly. “What would you do, indeed.”

==

Dr. Singh stopped by at Tracht’s request, and she talked with Alex’s doctors to get up to speed on his injuries and recovery process.

“He’s got a lot of bad luck, doesn’t he,” Dr. Singh said, flipping through images of Alex’s fractured hand. “This is pretty nasty.”

With Alex slipping in and out of a drug-induced sleep, Tracht didn’t have much else to do than to talk with her. He’d gone to see Johan simply to keep up appearances, but the low-level hatred he felt for his nephew hadn’t abated yet.

“I’d say in certain respects he was very lucky. Having recently met the Nilsen clan, I am more convinced than ever that service to me is far preferable, and far less painful, than service to them would have been.”

That reminded Tracht that he owed Anja Nilsen a favor now. He should have done more research on her, found proper leverage. Maybe he could have waited just a little longer, until Koteas and her team had done their job.

The thought of Alex going through even one more round of torture was unbearable however, and at least this way he’d gotten to take out a little of his anger. He could also be assured that there would be no leniency given.

“Mm. If you say so.” Dr. Singh set her tablet aside and looked at him. “How are you, though?”

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