Page 11 of Cruel Master
I never placed cameras in her apartment, contenting myself with cloning her devices. I haven’t seen her naked body in all its glory in five years. She was thirty then, and in the years since, she’s become leaner but no less beautiful.
I was always a bad influence, getting takeout instead of cooking and suggesting a movie when she wanted to go and do something outside. After the divorce, she got back into trailrunning, and it’s clear in the muscular curve of her legs and her smooth stomach.
Juliet was never shy about her body, and from the way she hasn’t bothered to cover herself with the altar cloth even though she must know she’s being watched, that doesn’t seem to have changed. She was raised in a hippy household with a mom who’d sunbathe topless in her garden, much to my horror. I didn’t even know Scotland had hippies.
At the wedding, my father’s disapproval of Juliet’s family was a black cloud in the room.
My phone beeps, an alarm drawing me away from the mesmerizing sight of Juliet bent over to examine the base of the cabinet. Despite her lean frame, her ass is still as round as I remember. In all the years we were together, I never spanked that ass once. Looking back, I can see the hints she dropped that I ignored. What an idiot I was.
I’ll soon remedy that mistake a hundred times over.
I check my phone. Five minutes until my meeting with Kendrick.
Juliet’s dungeon is situated in a disused section of a lab building. Outside her door is a corridor with another door at the end, in case she manages to slip past me. She shouldn’t, but I can’t be too careful. Both doors only open for me, Kendrick, and, since this morning, Jacob. A safety measure in case something happens to me.
As well as the usual tracker, Medical implanted a monitoring device, so Juliet’s vitals are constantly watched. Unlike most Wards, she’ll be alone for hours at a time, at first. I’ve established a makeshift office with several monitors outside her cell so I can see her from every angle. When the lights go out, I’ll have night vision.
I can see her every movement, track her every breath, but it’s not enough. I want to crawl inside her head and see what she’s thinking. Maybe one day, someone here will invent a device that does that. I’d be the first customer.
My phone beeps again, this time a message.
Jacob: You on your way, mate? Best not keep the big man waiting.
Who, exactly, put him in charge?It’s an automatic thought, and I don’t really mean it. I just don’t want to stop watching Juliet, who is now lying flat on her stomach, peering down the waste hole. I could go in there right now, open the cabinet, and get to work. My cock, long neglected, starts to harden at the thought, and I turn away from the screen.
Not yet.
I tap out a quick reply to Jacob and set off with a final long glance at Juliet. Kendrick called me an hour ago to organize this meeting and was very vague as to why. New Patrons are usually left alone to bond with their Wards, so it doesn’t bode well. Jacob’s involvement is even more ominous, as he’s become Kendrick’s unofficial right-hand man when things go wrong.
If people are talking about me right now, they never stop talking about Jacob, and not without a good dose of jealousy. For me, sitting right on the edge of friendship with Kendrick’s “golden trio,” as some are calling them, the power struggle is amusing. Especially as Jacob and his friends have absolutely no interest in Brotherhood politics.
Where others see Jacob as maneuvering himself into a position of power, I know all he really wants is to do his work peacefully. He gets involved because he feels the need to help.
As I take the elevator up to Kendrick’s office, I check Juliet’s monitor feed on my phone. Not having eyes on her feels wrong,like she’s going to disappear. I smile when I see her eating the cheese. One of her weird quirks is she always has to eat food separately. She’ll even pick apart a store-bought sandwich.
God, I’ve missed teasing her about that.
For just a second, my legs grow weak, and I have to brace my hand against the smooth metal wall. I’ve missed her so much; it’s a pain I’ve grown so used to that I can’t imagine life without it. And now I have her back. She’s right here. Soon, things will be just like they ought to be.
Except this time, I own her. And I’m going to make sure she understands what that means in every fiber of her being, just like she’s always wanted.
It’s like a shot of adrenaline, filling me with strength. I straighten as the doors slide open. The two Gilda soldiers who guard the door usher me into Kendrick’s office.
Kendrick and Jacob stand when I enter, and Kendrick gestures to an empty seat. “Please. Have a seat. I’m sorry to disturb your first day with Juliet. I trust she’s settling in well?”
His casual manner on the topic still catches me off guard. She’s trapped, naked, in a scene from a video game. How does he think she’s settling in? But I just match his polite tone. “Yes, thank you. It’s all going to plan.”
“Good. That’s good.” He steeples his finger. “Unfortunately, all isn’t well in the outside world. We went ahead with our prepared story as to Juliet’s disappearance. We sent a message to the man she was supposed to meet, asking to postpone due to last-minute nerves. Then we moved her car to a well-known trail running spot.”
He taps a finger on the desk. “Within one hour of her capture, though, the local police received an anonymous tip-off demanding a welfare check on Juliet. At the same time, someoneposted in one of the fan groups dedicated to her game that she’d been attacked and the police were trying to cover it up.”
He pauses, and I wait as the words sink in. It takes a minute until I process all the implications. The neat, quiet disappearance of Wards is crucial to the Brotherhood. Something like this…
“Who made the tip-off? Was it the man she was supposed to meet?Alex?” His name burns my tongue. “I can’t see who else it could have been.”
Jacob speaks. “That was our first thought too, so we investigated him. He’s a fucking ghost. All his profiles, on everything, are surface-level shells. Sophisticated enough to pass a basic check but easy to dismantle once we got into it.”
And Juliet nearly ended up alone with him. A cold wash rushes through me, and my heart pounds, as though I just missed catching an airplane, then found out it crashed.
