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23
Annie
Isigned.
I wanted my life back. I didn't want to go back to fet. I'd never had an addiction before, except maybe coffee, and that wasn't something I was even serious about. I didn't like being dependent on something that I had to struggle to obtain. The idea that it was illegal was abhorrent because of its very addictive nature. To put human beings in such a catch-22 should be illegal. The manufacturers of such drugs had a duty to find the very thing Cole was searching for: Something to counteract the malignant aspects of the painkiller they'd created. So despite being in law enforcement, the illegality was more galling than morally upsetting. Plus, I didn't like risking my career and my relationships for an artificial pleasure.
There were other considerations as well. Buying fentanyl on the street meant the dosage changed, the strength, the purity. It could kill without any warning because one of those things changed. Because you got hold of something so much stronger than you expected. The people I had to buy from were the very people I was committed to putting away and that part of the moral quandary bothered me enormously.
Mostly, I hated being in thrall to anything. For the last several months, that had been fentanyl. For the time being, it would mean Cole St. Martin, at least until my life was no longer in danger.
My life was crap right now. I might have ruined my chances at a life with Mark. I might not even be certain that was what I wanted anymore. I'd become attached to the gang leader I'd gone undercover to take down and that messed with my head. My father, who was my hero, my role model, was having serious, life threatening health issues, with serious legal issues waiting in the sidelines.
Crap. But that didn't mean I didn't want it. A stubborn core inside me wanted to know how everything was going to turn out. Play out. How everything would change. Because it would. Nothing stays the same forever. Change is the only constant. When everything came around to the better side of the equation, I wanted to be there, functioning and healthy, to understand how and why it had changed and enjoy it.
I signed because I'd spent time looking for this man and even if I couldn't admit it to him, I was curious about everything he had to offer, and that didn't mean only the cure.
That might have been the scariest idea of all.
From the signing I was taken directly into one of the bigger houses on the compound. The short walk from the room where I'd met with Cole to the next building was in the sun, my feet scuffled on soft walkways that were warm from the sun.
It was pleasant. Until we got there.
Cole walked ahead of us. The men with guns walked behind me. I didn't see anyone else on my travels, but I had no doubt they were there. I also had no doubt that whoever they were, they were armed.
From what I knew about billionaires, they were intense, driven, and not normal. Granted, I didn't know much. I couldn't even identify more than a handful of them. But didn't Bill Gates live in an underground compound? If you were worth as much as he'd earned by creating computer programs that made people scream and want to commit murder – wait, maybe I could see his point.
My mouth twitched at my own thoughts. I really did feel better than I'd felt in months. There really had to be something to this opiate antagonist, or cure, or whatever it was Cole had developed.
The second billionaire I could think of was Elon Musk, who was just weird all over the place. Last I'd heard, he wanted to create computer chips that could be placed in people's brains so they would literally be jacking in like in sci-fi movies. That was creepy. And a little nuts. The last person I wanted programming anything that was going into my head was a man who launched a convertible into space. Or maybe the man I'd just signed myself over to.
The last billionaire I could think of was the Amazon guy whose name I could never remember. He'd been ruling the world one day and sending dick pics the next. …oh, wait, that was just being a guy.
I realized I was smiling to myself and tried to stop. But Cole St. Martin was the fourth billionaire I had any knowledge about and I was definitely finding him a mixed bag.
Then inside the shirt I still clutched around me, my breasts began to ache with a fiery pain, and I stopped smiling completely. I could feel the eight spots where his fingernails had dug into the flesh. I could feel the places where his thumbs had applied uneven pressure, and I was pretty sure those were already bruising.
When we reached the next building he told me to stop and wait, then to follow him in once he had unlocked the door. I got barely a glimpse at what looked like an enormous gym again, like the dungeons in San Francisco had, and then he told me to drop my gaze.
"Don't look up again until you're instructed to do so."
That would be hard. Paranoia is the trademark of cops and martial artists. It's not discouraged, it's groomed. It was natural for me to want to check out every inch of wherever I'd been taken, and not seeing what was coming would make whatever he had planned that much worse.
Because I had a feeling things were about to get really weird.
But I knelt where he pointed, my knees on hardwood which wasn't so different from kneeling in the do chang before Taekwon-do, and I waited for him to do whatever he was doing. My heart thudded painfully in my ribcage. It's one thing to take on an assignment I know is right, morally sound and necessary for community or safety or just plain fucking saving the lives of teenagers. To do that and know that at any time on any day my cover could be blown and I might end up dead. Or worse.
Because there is a worse. There's the pain that comes before the killing. Unendurable. Unbearable.
Unending.
He said nothing would be done to me that was permanent.
No scarring, no amputations, no branding, no tattooing.
He didn't say there'd be no scaring, no hurting, no hitting. He hadn't said there would be an absence of sharp things or of any kind of punitive action.
Or even of being worked over with a baseball bat. It seemed too gross and showy and overboard. It seemed too much to expect from Cole.
