Page 64 of Savage Escape

“Sir?” Rage erupted once again at the sound of his employee’s timid voice.

No. He was fine. He was under control. He took classes for this shit. He was in control of his anger. Talk it out. He could talk it out. Charles knew the steps.

“I am not happy, Kyott.” Fucking understatement of the year. “Not fucking happy.”

Charles Marskib had spent a good amount of money on merchandise that his incompetent employees had let run off. A ‘good amount’ of money was a slight under-exaggeration.

“Yes, sir.” Kyott’s voice was a whine made even more grating coming through the speaker of his phone.

He’d spent an obscene amount of money. Anobsessiveamount of money.

Obsessive was the right word for that and all things Caden Quinn. Absolutely manic obsessive about the bitch he’d bought and paid for that had just up and walked out of his secure compound.

If nothing else, Charles Marskib was self-aware. Aware of his faults, his weaknesses, and just exactly how fucked up he was over one tiny woman. The knowledge that she was out there somewhere having escaped him ate away at his sanity. He’d finally recaptured her. She’d been his for all over seventy-two hours.

“Do you know why I am not happy, Kyott?” He had to think hard about each word to focus enough to speak instead of growl.

“Yes, sir.” He kept saying sir like the word would somehow keep him alive. “Caden Quinn escaped.”

By all rights, the woman should not have even been a blip on his radar. She was nothing. She was a fucking mercenary. Compared to her, he was a goddamned king.

Inconsequential. She was in-fucking-consequential.

So why was the mercenary front and center in his mind every free moment? Why was he obsessing over one little mercenary?

“Explain to me again how you let her walk right out the door?”

He knew the answer to that, though. It was because she didn’t break. No matter how imaginative or depraved or just fucking cruel he’d gotten in the three weeks they’d shared together in those dungeons, she hadn’t broken. Hadn’t evencracked. Only a special kind of person stood up to that kind of horror. A special kind of person that he wanted to have. To keep.

“She had help, sir. She wasn’t alone.” There was a panicked, almost angry pause in which the man did nothing but mush his words and stumble his way through a half-assed explanation. “There was a whole goddamned private army. We weren’t expecting her to have help.”

She’d escaped. Unbroken. And had then eluded him for years. When she’d been put up to bid, it was like his prayers had been answered.

“The help you provided her.”

He could kill them. He could slaughter every single one of the idiots that had let his woman escape. But dead was dead. The dead didn’t learn from their mistakes. Still, he had to count backward from twenty just to get his breathing level again.

“Err...” The sound of the man’s hesitant halting speech put Marskib back on the fence: to kill or not to kill. “I—I didn’t give her any help.” Then he added, “Sir.”

“Do not waste my time, Kyott. You used my men and my compound to capture and detain an ex-government agent.” The same agent that had been on his ass for the last two years.

Charles was in complete control of his rage now. Now he could focus on alternatives and punishments and Caden Quinn.

“I... I thought... I—he was in Moscow. He was right there without any?—”

“Tell me, Ralph. Did I ring you up and say, ‘hey, you know what would be the ultimate birthday present? You know what would make my life complete? Nathan fucking Savage.’ Did I give you explicit instructions to capture and torture the man?”

“No, sir, you didn’t. But I thought?—”

“How about,” a migraine was throbbing to life in his temples, “you tell me what I did instruct you to do.”

“You, uh... You said to keep her. To not let her escape. That’d you be here in seven days.”

“Perfect. Yes. I said that. I gave you the money, the manpower, and the goddamn hidden away compound. And you let her escape.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” A pathetic, useless apology and another gulping pause decided it. Kyott would live until the very moment his use ran out. “I’ll get her back.”

“Oh, you’ll get her back?” He’d spent countless hours and thousands of dollars trying to do that very thing. And then he’d only captured her because she’d been for sale. “So where is she, Ralph?”