Page 4 of Cruel Master

Reaching up, I dragged my finger over the fogged-over windows inside the cab. It would be dangerous to let him catch me, but still, a small part of me hoped he would. A small part of me enjoyed this game of cat and mouse we were playing—even if it was a constant reminder that there was no returning to the past.

Once, I’d been an innocent girl, frightened of what he could do. Frightened of what the future held. Now, I knew the truth. The future didn’t wait for you to get comfortable. It came whether you wanted it to or not. Those who survived it were the ones who had to adapt.

And so … I’d adapted.

I’d run.

I’d survived.

I’d created something of myself.

Now, there was no stopping. So if Gaven wanted to find out the truth, he had a long wait ahead of him because there was no way I’d make capturing me easy.

Catch me, if you can. My deviant husband.

2

ANGEL

Queens, New York

Two years later…

Dreams were like the wind. They were untouchable, but you could still feel them brush against your skin or even invade your presence, hampering you with hopes and failures. All the same, though, you could never hold on to them. Attempting to do so was like trying to capture a human soul—not that I believed those existed anymore, and if they did, my sister certainly had a rotten one. She was rancid and corrupt down to her very core. Only now that I’d experienced the depths of her betrayal—killing our father and framing me for her own sin—and delivered my own betrayal to Gaven by breaking our promise and running after I’d accepted him did I understand what a life of crime truly did to someone.

What it has done tome.

As I sat in the Rosemary café on the main street of Queens, New York City, waiting for my client to make an appearance, I absently reached up and touched the empty place on my throat again above the collar of my silk shirt. Every morning, no matter where I was—Boston, Paris, Vancouver—I woke up and felt the missing jewelry there. I’d thought doing so would reassure myself that what I was doing—the person that I’d become—had not been all for nothing.

It was all forhim. Even if I wasn’t sure if it was love … how could I love a man I hardly knew? I did accept him as my husband before and that meant I had a duty to him, an oath to protect him even if he hated me for it.

Some days, the beautiful metal ring felt like it would burn a patch in my skin and other days it felt like the only thing keeping my feet firmly planted on the ground. Today, it was a mixture of both. Because today was my wedding anniversary. Though I didn’t celebrate it, I still always remembered which day it was. It was such a bittersweet day. A bittersweet memory. It made my chest ache with yearning.

I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose as the noise of the café lingered in my ears. The room was small—there weren’t too many places on the main strip in Queens with a big enough space to house so many—so the noise was that much louder. I concentrated on it to pull myself back to the present.

I listened to the people chatting around me. The sounds of a couple arguing quietly over rent and bills in the back corner. The register clicking as the drawer opened when another customer paid for their coffee. The hiss of the steamer behind the counter.

The bell to the café door chimed and my eyes opened as a tall, slender man dressed in an impeccable suit bypassed the short line of men and women waiting to be served at the counter and made his way toward me. His lean face was rather sweaty, not that I could blame him. As one of the youngest and most brilliant of scientists in America, if any of Ronald Wiser’s bosses even caught a whiff of what he was doing with his recent invention, he’d find himself on the wrong side of an assassin’s scope.

Despite his youth, Ron was a genius. Somehow, he’d managed to develop a way to grow organs that would be compatible with anyone. Organs that were quickly grown that would never be rejected by a host’s body. With the long waiting lists for organ transplants across the world, it was a discovery and invention that would rock not just the medical field but the whole world. With that, though, came the unerring dark side of capitalism. Ron’s bosses wanted to patent his invention and keep it for themselves. Jacking up the medical costs of such a thing that would leave dying people either destitute or dead. Ron, himself, was not a capitalist, but a humanitarian with a moral compass, which was exactly why he’d found me. To keep him and that genius brain of his safe now that he’d taken all of his notes and findings away from his old company.

“Thank God you’re here,” he said as he took a seat across from me. Despite his slender build, he still dwarfed the undersized metal chair. “I think I’m being followed.”

My back straightened at those words. My eyes cut past him and out into the busy street. Busy was good, it was easy to use to either disappear or cause a distraction if needed. I scanned through the wide, unobstructed windows. Nothing immediately jumped out at me, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d learned over the last several years that it was what you didn’t see that was more dangerous to you than what you did.

“Was it a car or a person?” I clarified, moving my gaze to the inside of the café. Could they already be here? Did they know where he was going before he arrived?

“Dark blue sedan,” he answered. “I think I lost it a few blocks back, but I can’t be sure.”

I scowled as I watched a dark blue sedan drive past the windows.Damn.He had definitelynotlost it. Ronald was not a spy by any means, or even a criminal on the run—and this only proved to me that he needed my protection, my expertise. Sweat collected at the top of my spine as I tried to think over who would have slipped the information out. The list of people who knew what he was doing was small, but I didn’t know them all well enough yet to know who’d sell him out this early.

If it were up to me, no one would know what he was trying to do. Ronald, on the other hand, was far too trusting for his own good. My hands clenched into fists. There was no point in scolding him now. What was done was done.

I sucked in a breath and slowly let it out. It wouldn’t help to panic now, either. If I’d learned nothing over the past five years, it was that panicking merely slowed down my thinking process. If Ronald was being followed, someone must have tipped off his competitors. If his competitors knew about the synthetic organ growth project he’d been working on for the last several months, then he was in deep shit. My eyes moved from the street where the blue sedan edged out of view and back to him. It would be back.

Ron was red-faced, his eyes jumping around the room as if any one of the people inside the café would, at any moment, stand up and shoot him. I leaned over and touched his hand, wrapping my fingers around them, and squeezing. His head turned back to me. I offered him a small smile as if we were two friends out for a friendly chat, when inside I felt the sharp tension of immediacy filling me.

“Calm down,” I warned him quietly under my breath. “Don’t make a scene.”

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