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Vanessa’s head barely missed hitting the coffee table by a few inches. Yet it was the hands wrapping around her throat that truly defined the situation.
“Vanessa!”
Mitch signed her warrant with that desperate wail. There was no convincing Candace Lister that she had truly seduced Mitch away from her one true Mistress. Not when panic shattered the veneer that there had ever been anything else between Mitch and Vanessa.
Candace’s grip was strong, but Vanessa’s will to live and rescue Mitch from this damnation was stronger.
What did Luke teach you?Only a part of Vanessa’s life flashed before her eyes as it became increasingly difficult to breathe. It wasn’t her childhood she saw. Or the day she met Mitch, a woman who would come to define a key part of her soul. What Vanessa Richards, a woman who was never physically aggressive nor keenly good at self-defense, saw was something that her head of security would be quite proud of.
“If someone’s got you on the ground,”he had said, while demonstrating with Mitch,“don’t focus on trying to rip their hands off your throat.”Vanessa saw his large, masculine hands wrapped around Mitch’s throat as she thrust his weight upon her.“Use your legs!”
Vanessa now did exactly what she had watched Mitch do back then. While Vanessa didn’t have Mitch’s muscles or her experience, she did have one big advantage over her partner.
She was taller, and Candace was no match for the long legs erupting against her thighs.
“Get off me!” Vanessa’s gasp for air was a renewed draft into her body, filling her lungs and reminding the rest of her that she had it in her to protect the ones she loved.With my body. That thing I trust the least.Her mind was shrewd, her heart strong, and her spirit in the right place, but the delicate body all three inhabited had never been known for anything but making hard love to the women she desired.
Well, she certainly desired to put this bitch in her place!
Her knuckles screamed in agony when she landed a punch on Candace’s face. As pain jolted up her arm in a single second, Vanessa pushed forward, knocking Candace back against the wall of the small room and kneeing her in the diaphragm. Yet it wasn’t enough to take out a woman nearly fifty years old. Not Candace Lister, whose blood had been replaced with hate and her soul the dusty remnants of disdain. Vanessa was not afraid of the blows coming toward her face or the sharp stiletto ripped off Candace’s foot and stabbing through the air. There was no time for fear. There was only the knowledge of what this woman would do to Mitch now that she thought she owned another human.
Over my dead fucking body.
“You’re the loser here!” Vanessa screamed in defiance as she hit Candace over and over with her bag. Her only regret was that she hadn’t packed a brick. “What kind of woman areyou?How dare you! How dare you hurt these people!” Candace was not one to cower, but when Vanessa cornered her, all the monster could do was cover her face with her arms to protect it from one blow after another. “Now you think you can takemypartner? My other half?” Anguish was the only thing fueling Vanessa as she imagined an unkind hand on Mitch, someone who was so delicate inside that Vanessa often worried that her partner might break if they weren’t careful. Vanessa would sacrifice her body if it meant protecting the soul she treasured most. “My Michelle?”
Candace waited until Vanessa lost steam before swinging the stiletto heel toward her.
It came so close to Vanessa’s eye that she gasped in surprise. Yet she refused to separate herself from Mitch, who screamed in horror as she almost watched the love of her life get stabbed in the face.
There was a guardian angel, though, and she picked a helluva time to burst through the door with her weapon drawn.
“FBI! Down on the ground!” Agent James pointed her gun at both Vanessa and Candace since they both moved too quickly for the trained FBI agent to get a lock on the main culprit. Vanessa deadweighted onto the ground before she was accidentally shot – or stabbed, for that matter. The shock of both made Candace stumble forward, tripping over Vanessa’s torso and splatting against the wall. Her stiletto dropped with a pathetic thump to the carpet. “Hands behind your heads! Both of you!”
More voices erupted on the other side of the door. While men yelledClear!to one another, maids and other indentured servants shouted upstairs and down the hallway. One woman cried in a mixture of French and English from one of the barred rooms. Vanessa knew enough French to understand“M’aider! M’aider!She is crazy!”
Everything happened so quickly – yet soagonizingly slowly.
Agent James trained her gun on Candace until she had backup. That came in the form of Stella, who also had a weapon drawn as she entered the room with her head pivoting between the main room of the basement and this small space that contained more fear than hope.
“What a fucking place this is…” She muttered as she sheathed her weapon and bent down to help Vanessa. “Are you okay? Do you need a medic?”
“Candace Lister!” Agent James was louder than thunder as she moved in for the legal kill. “You are under arrest for human trafficking and wire fraud! I suggest you exert your right to remain silent!”
“What!” Candace held up both arms over her head, her dress slightly torn and disheveled, but she was no less the head bitch of the terror house. “This is absurd! Michelle! Rose! One of you call my lawyer! Xavier Oliver!Call him!”
The more she yelled, the more desperate and frightened she sounded. Was the realization dawning on her? Did she know she had been had? And did she know the truth about the woman she claimed to have married on a private Hawaiian beach?
“Jesus!” Stella finally noticed Mitch in the coffee table cage. “Hey, you!” she called over one of the male agents taking stock of the BDSM dungeon that no doubt blew his mind. “Get over here and help me get her out! There’s gotta be a lock here somewhere.”
“Moore,” Agent James muttered, “you really shouldn’t be here. You’re barely deputized.”
“Ah, shove it. I know what I’m doing.” Stella helped Vanessa stand up. Only then did she realize how much her side hurt. “Do you need a medic?” Stella asked her again.
“Might not…” It was difficult to breathe. “Might not be a bad idea. Butplease,get Mitch out of there!”
Stella took off her shoe and slammed it atop the lock on the back of the cage. After three increasingly tough tries, it finally broke, and the door swung open while the male agent had the honor of cuffing Candace Lister and checking her for weapons.
“Call my lawyer, Michelle! This isn’t over!” She was still ordering Mitch around as if Vanessa weren’t standing rightthere,waiting for Mitch to crawl out and into her real Mistress’s arms. “Xavier Oliver! His number is on my desk!” Her voice gradually faded away, but the chaos she created in her wake required Agent James to follow her out.
