I sat up now, fully alert.
*
I knew them alright.
The men had been part of the diabolical plan by Dmitri to kidnap me and sell me as a sex slave. I huddled into my husband’s warm, safe embrace.
“And …?’ I whispered for I knew that there was more to come.
Lucien sighed and gave a half laugh.
‘Witch,’ he grunted, “you know me too well.. .’
I looked up into his eyes and what I saw there chilled me to the bone.
Lucien sighed.
“Woman. Paddy was onto them. ‘
*
So they had tried to kill my boy Paddy, because he had found out the connection between the imposter who had claimed to be my husband’s offspring and the Dmitri family?
I stiffened and tried to free myself but he held me.
‘You need to listen to me, Proserpina.’ he commanded.
I looked at him as he went on,
‘The boy has excellent skills at hacking and he found out more than I had bargained for. He discovered Cole’s true father was…’
My eyes widened, and I met his gaze, the grey eyes filled with a rare pain as he looked past me.
‘Shark.’
I sat on his lap, unable to move.
He shifted and pulled me to him, lying on the bed.
Instinctively, I pulled his head down to my breasts and held him cushioned on my fleshy mounds, as we lay unmoving and silent, both of us lost in their own quagmire of thoughts. I wanted to comfort him, for I knew the pain he had felt when he discovered that his best friend had been planning to kill him.
*
For a long while, we were silent.
Shark had been Lucien’s friend from his days on the streets when they had been growing up. It had been Lucien who had saved him from his abusive father and Lucien who had killed the man when he found him sodomising little Shark, something he was wont to do on a regular basis.
They had been young boys growing up together, Lucien the son of a junkie wh*re and the other, the son of an alcoholic. Together, they had teamed up to begin a gun-running racket and had also, on Shark’s insistence, delved into the world of the flesh trade for a brief period. But Lucien had been disgusted and had shut it down, I had found out later.
In the meanwhile, Handsome Schwartz had joined them, a sharpshooter who had been discharged honourably from the Army when he was wounded but who had stumbled, willy-nilly, into Lucien Delano’s world and head never left… A loyal footsoldier who had risen to become Lucien’s most trusted lieutenant.
*
Shark, from what I had gathered, had run the brothel which supplied women for clients who came to the Club. The women used to service the high-profile guests at the Club and I knew that my husband had also used their services quite frequently, which he had openly admitted to.
Knowing his insatiable appetite for a woman’s body, I knew that he was telling me the truth when he said that in his usual blunt way.
But matters had come to a head when Lucien had discovered that his friend was also indulging in business activities with Dmitri Rudenko, a ruthless human trafficker who had later become Lucien’s greatest rival in the world of arms dealing, which had set off another stream of violence.
When Lucien and he had come to loggerheads, Dmitri had attempted to stop Lucien by killing Schwartz’s family, a weak link, as he had imagined. He had not expected the ferocity of Lucien’s rage to cause a rebound.
Lucien retaliated by killing Dmitri’s beloved brother. The man had also been the kingpin of the flesh trading business.
And that had led to Dmitri retaliating and so on, back and forth, till Lucien had finally killed Dmitri. But a new set of villains had emerged and entered the arena; Dmitri’s brother and nephew.
The never-ending spiralling violence still continues till today, I thought with a sinking heart.
My kidnapping and subsequent attempt to sell me to the Argentinian men who hated Lucien with a vengeance had all been part of the plan. But I had foolishly enough, imagined that once Dmitri had been killed by Lucien, the chain would be broken. How stupid I was. How gullible and naive, I thought bitterly.
*
‘But…who… I mean, why…?’
He stroked my hair having pulled my head to his chest. I lay motionless, trying to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together as he explained gently
Our son Paddy, along with his friends, a set of online vigilantes, had stumbled upon the even more dastardly plans of Dmitri’s brother and his nephew when they were doing their research, digging up material to find out more about Claude. Although the details had been carefully hidden, said Lucien, scratching his hirsute chest absently, Paddy’s friend, Erin Dorsey, had managed to get into the Dark Web and uncover information that had put the plans of Dmitri’s brother Paval and Dusak, in jeopardy.
He did not elaborate, I was to realise later but at that time, as I lay, my head on his chest, I was too overwhelmed by what he was saying to stop him and enquire.
*
Like someone explaining to a child, Lucien told me how, from the start, he had his suspicions when Cole and Britney emerged out of the blue, with the young man, brash and arrogant, claiming to be his son. As Lucien added, gripping my neck and a fistful of hair, making me look up to kiss me hard,
‘All my children look like me, woman. This boy did not as both Schwartz and Danielle remarked. Dominant genes, is that what you call it?”
*
A long while ago, I had come to hear about the complicated methods Lucien used to employ to make sure that he did not sire any children. The only time it had all gone wrong was when he had made love to me, during the days when I had been his mistress and I had been off the Pill. Shark had arranged for the doctor’s visit but I had been ill.
Lucien had left the country on business and when the doctor saw that I was down with a bad stomach bug, he had declared that he would examine me later. As I was not a Club wh*re, he had forgotten and by the time I had made my escape, Lucien had seemed to have lost interest in me and had already been with other women.
I discovered later that it was only the great Mafia Don’s attempt to try and get over me.
*
I recalled the way Danielle used to arrange for an examination by a doctor who seemed to be employed for the sole reason that he made sure that all the wh*res and women who serviced Lucien Delano, were clean and not pregnant. I had been sick, down with a fever and the dates had been mussed; Danielle in her wisdom had not expected a mere child like me, to end up carrying the Mafia Don’s child.
I suspected that the doctor had been disposed of after I had run away.
*
Shark had had the premium task of ensuring that none of the women Lucien slept with, got pregnant.
Not completely trusting Shark to make sure that the women did not conceive his child, he had made Danielle do it as well, in those days and she had records showing that Britney and Bethany had been with Shark during the months leading to Bethany’s flight.
So the child, he said in a deadpan voice, Cole, was Shark’s son.
*
I sat up.
‘But, Lucien,’ I said a trace of bitterness and mockery in my voice as I recalled the indignity he had put me through when he had forcibly brought me back from my refuge in Bhutan,
‘Lucien, you did a DNA test, right?’
His eyes narrowed and he forced me down below him, gripping my wrists as he kissed me hard and then, for a few minutes, I could not think of anything else as he rode me fiercely, and hard, and my hips bucked as I eagerly received his seed in my waiting womb again. Finally, exhausted, panting in submission, I lay still as he carried me to the bathtub and laid me there, gently slipping in behind me and caressing my swollen nipples. I moaned as he stroked me, the warm water soothing me.
‘I shall be dead if you keep this up,’ I murmured breathlessly.
“Don’t mock me, woman.’ he grunted, his fingers now stroking my clit as we lay in the softly lit bathroom, the scent of bath salts relaxing us.
I was leaning against his chest and he lowered his head to nip at my neck.
‘Manipulated. The DNA was manipulated.
He sighed and growled,
“Paddy stumbled on that as well.”‘