His heart demanded a different wooing.
Always with Ella, his hardness could find no foothold. She softened him, made him easier. He’d accepted it before that last mission. Now it came perilously close to pissing him off. But even in the midst of that burgeoning anger he held her close, protecting her the only way she’d let him.
He wanted to follow her tomorrow. He would follow her. Because everything she’d left unsaid earlier haunted him. Dresden had to know by now that she was still Endgame. When Jude, King, and Rook had spoken earlier, they’d decided that Dresden most likely had had that entire meeting wired and knew how everything had gone down.
But they hadn’t been able to figure out Ella’s part in everything. It was frustrating because King had said that the Piper categorically refused to give him anything when it came to Ella’s mission.
Before he’d come up here, Jude had spoken with King. He’d told his team leader his plans to follow Ella. King had been against it, but in the end, he’d given in because Ella was still Endgame whether she admitted it or not.
“Jude?” she whispered, her breath feathering his skin.
“I’m here, Ella. I’ve got you,” he whispered in return, pressing a kiss on her neck.
She was his. She always would be.
She settled at that and Jude breathed her in, knowing he was going to let her enter Dresden’s on her own, but also knowing he’d be close if she needed him. Jude had an ace in the hole meeting him tomorrow in Ukraine.
Ella could run. But she’d never be able to hide from him again.
Chapter 11
“I am so glad you’re back,” Dresden said from his perch beside the enormous blazing fireplace.
“Do tell,” she responded as she walked into the room and sat down across from him. She was so brittle that she was about to break. She had to shove thoughts of Jude to the back of her mind. It took a force of will that she would have doubted she could achieve.
She’d left the farmhouse separately from Jude, King, and Rook. Alone. She’d left alone.
“You know I’m going to punish you?” the monster asked softly.
She shrugged. She might be scared he’d break her again, but she’d be damned if she’d show him her fear.
“Being with your team has made you bold,” he said, his tone unchanged. “That doesn’t bode well for you.”
“Segorski isn’t an ally. He needs to be eliminated,” she responded, refusing to engage with Dresden. He liked that, and she didn’t want to give him anything he liked.
Dresden rose and walked toward her. “We’ll talk about Segorski…after.”
“After what?” she asked, infusing the appropriate amount of caution into her tone.
“I’ve got something to show you,” Dresden said with a smile.
Ice washed through her veins. This could not be good. She’d expected something twisted, but normally he crowed about things before showing her.
She followed him down to the cells. She’d spent a fair amount of time there. She remembered the smell, the cold, the fear, and the pain. God, how she remembered the fear and pain. As they descended the metal steps, her trepidation grew. She didn’t get the feeling he was going to hurt her—not physically anyway, not yet.
He flipped on a light as they came to the bottom, and all of the space he used for torture was revealed. There were five doors around the edges of the large circular room. The doors were made of heavy wood and impenetrable from the inside.
Ella knew; she’d tried at one time to escape.
A man stepped forward from behind them, holding a ring of keys.
“Open the door,” Dresden ordered.
The small man scuttled to do as he was bid. Ella tensed, afraid suddenly of what was about to be revealed.
The man opened the door and stepped back. Dresden stepped forward and entered the room. He exited after only a few seconds, pushing a small, blond woman ahead of him toward the center of the room. The left side of the woman’s face had a large bruise, but the rest of her body, dressed in a simple though dirty shift, was untouched. She didn’t fight, didn’t make any noise at all when Dresden grabbed her arms behind her back and forced her to kneel on the cold stone floor.
Ella winced as the woman’s knees bounced against the stones. All of Dresden’s moves were to belittle and show his captives that ultimately they had no power. Whoever this woman was, she was in trouble.
“Do you know who this is, Ella?” Dresden asked as he walked to Ella and stroked a finger down her cheek.
“I don’t,” Ella replied, keeping her gaze on the woman, looking for signs of life besides simply existing. Other than the shallow rise and fall of the woman’s chest, there was nothing.
“This is Anna Beth Caine,” Dresden said with a small, evil laugh. “She was once my fiancée.”
That name… Something about that name niggled at Ella.
“You’re probably wondering why she’s here, right? Is her name familiar?” Dresden asked as he stepped behind Ella and rested his chin on her shoulder.
Like lovers, she thought. He was treating her like a lover.
“I don’t like it when you don’t answer me, Ella.”
“I’m not wondering why she’s here,” Ella pushed out of a suddenly dry throat.
“No?” Dresden laughed. “I’ll tell you anyway. She’s here because Svetlana Markov tried to undermine me by giving your Piper information that she thought would break me. So I decided to break Svetlana first.”
Svetlana Markov’s whispered dying words floated through Ella’s mind. Something about a sister…
“She didn’t say anything to me,” Ella said, denying what Dresden obviously already knew. Did the bastard know everything?
“We won’t talk about your propensity to lie to me right now. I want you to concentrate on the woman kneeling so beautifully on the floor in front of us. Are you watching her, Ella?”
Ella nodded.
“Svetlana
