Page 135 of The Enslaved Duet

I stared at the lock with the blooming red flower caught in its loop and felt my stomach plummet like a runaway elevator to the base of my belly.

When I didn’t immediately reach for the envelope, the manservant frowned. “Lord Ashcroft instructed me to tell you that if you do not open and obey his summons, he will be forced to send someone for you.”

Send someone for me meantforciblytake me.

I gritted my teeth and snatched the summons off the tray, ripping it open with shaking hands.

Future slave,

I expect you at my home in one hour. For every minute you are late, you will be punished. Unlike your previous Master, I don’t require that you enjoy that punishment. Trust me when I say you want to be good.

Wear red. I know he liked you in that colour.

Your new Master,

Ashcroft

I stared up at the manservant, seething and impotent with rage. I wanted to throw the invitation in his face and tell him to go hell, but I wasn’t that stupid.

Not anymore.

If Noel had taught me anything, it was that these men played games, and everything was just a move across the board leading them to greater power, greater success.

Ashcroft hated me for embarrassing him, but more, he hated Alexander because he was endlessly jealous of him. This was about revenge, and honestly, it wasn’t smart.

I knew that even if Alexander didn’t care about me anymore, even if he never had to begin with, he was not a man who liked to share his things.

He would end Ashcroft for taking up with me.

All I had to do was find a way to make the situation known to him.

And maybe, a little voice I’d learned to subdue in the back of my mind that spoke from my heart said, in doing so, he would reclaim me himself.

I shoved the idiocy from my mind and sought another end goal, finding it almost too easily.

Ashcroft was proving himself to be an impulsivestronzo.

Maybe he would slip up and expose something I could use to take him down.

To take the Order down.

I flipped the ripped invitation onto the tray and tilted my chin at the servant.

“Tell him I’ll be there with bells on.”

Unsurprisingly, Ashcroft’s New York City home was on the Upper East Side in a four-story stone townhome with vines gone red with autumn bursting across the façade. A liveried butler opened the door for me when I rang exactly one hour later and led me through the opulent, antique ridden interior to an office at the back of the house where Ashcroft sat behind a desk smoking from an honest to God wooden pipe.

Lord, but the man took himself too seriously.

He studied me for a long moment through the curling smoke as the butler closed the door on his way out. I felt his regard like greasy fingers running over my skin.

“You aren’t wearing red,” he noted.

“I was working when you ‘summoned’ me. In order to make it here on time, I had to come straight from the shoot,” I explained, waving a hand over my heavily made-up face with three leopard print spots drawn beside my eyes. “I also have to meet my family for our weekly lunch date in two hours. If I miss it, they’ll probably call the police.”

I’d changed out of my minidress into black jeans, a pink silk camisole, and a blazer, unhappy that my nipples could clearly be seen through the thin material in the cold room.

Ashcroft licked his lips salaciously as he studied them. “I’ll have to punish you for that nonetheless.”