Page 142 of Lethal Torture

Only I know there isn’t anyone else. Not like Luke.

There’s no one who possesses his uncanny knack for sensing what each person needs. Who notices the things everyone else misses and fixes them before they become a problem.

No one capable of creating that indefinable feeling ofhappinessthat has permeated my business from the first day he arrived.

But none of that matters,I think feverishly as the elevator glides to a halt. If Luke stays, he’s in this world for good. There’ll never be a sunlit beach for him, with a child clinging to his shoulders.

Only men who want him dead—and who have the means to make it happen.

Keeping Luke here means putting a target on his back he can never remove.

The doors open, and I enter the basement.

Luke isn’t in the Viewing Gallery, nor any of the lavishly decorated fetish rooms surrounding it. I walk all the way to the back of the basement, until I reach a soundproofed door with no window. It’s the only truly secure room in the entire building, a bare concrete cell with nothing more than handcuffs chained to the wall. A last resort, as such, for any threat that might need to be contained until disposal.

I should have known.

Luke isn’t the kind of man who requires props for his interrogations.

Taking a deep breath, I turn the handle and pull the door open. Luke, clad in bike leathers, has his back to me. He’slooming over a man chained to the wall, whose face has already been beaten to a bloody pulp.

The moment I step inside, a thick arm snakes around my neck.

Fuck.

“Let her go.” Luke growls the words without turning around. I’ve no idea how he knows it’s me.

“It’sher,” I hear someone whisper.

“Shit,” mutters the man behind me, dropping his arm. “Sorry, Miss.”

I fight a sudden, slightly hysterical urge to laugh.

There are half a dozen men, including Paddy, in the small space. Of various heights and ages, they all share the unmistakable taut poise that marks them as killers. Only right now, they’re all looking at me with furtive expressions, like a pack of naughty schoolboys caught somewhere they shouldn’t be.

“It was Luke’s idea to bring him here.” Paddy backs away from me, holding his hands up in open surrender.

The other men nod emphatically in agreement.

I stare at them each in turn, then glance dismissively at the man chained to the wall, who is watching me through resentful, defiant eyes.

“Luke.” The discipline of long practice keeps my voice cool and detached. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

“Fuck you.” The man spits blood on the floor.

“You don’t speak to her,” Luke snarls, his arm hard across the man’s throat. “Not unless I tell you to.” He pulls the captive forward, then slams him back against the wall. “This piece of shit used to be SAS instructor Major Ian Welch. He was respected by every man in this room, right up until he tried to hire one of them to put a bullet through me—so he could get to you.” He puts his face close to the other man’s. “Sandman,” he addresseshis captive in a voice thick with derision, “meet Zinaida Melikov, the woman you spent months fuckingfailingto kill.”

Adrenaline, raw and fierce, surges through me. I cross the concrete floor to stand beside Luke’s tense figure. His white T-shirt is blood spattered and has pulled loose from his bike leathers, exposing the rippling muscles of his abdomen. His arm is like a tree trunk across his captor’s throat, his face hard and grim as hewn rock. Going by the prisoner’s battered appearance, they’ve clearly been at this for some time.

“Ian,” I say lightly. I stretch a hand out to caress the man’s jaw, and he flinches at my touch. I trail my fingers through the blood on his face, then turn them slowly under the hard light, allowing the blood to slide down my hand. I turn polite eyes to Luke. “I take it there’s a reason this piece of shit is still alive?”

From behind me come a few coughs of muted laughter.

“We have questions.” Luke shakes the man again, his eyes never leaving his face. “Which our friend here has been reluctant to answer so far, despite quite extensive persuasion from the entire team.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” I say lightly.

“Ian here thinks that because he taught classes in torture, he knows all the ways a man can be broken, and can withstand them.” Luke glances sideways at me. “I was just explaining to him that there are a few he has yet to encounter.”