Page 136 of Deep Cover

21

Annie

Iremained alone. He was busy. He was working the leads from the Rio trip. He was doing whatever other things the pharmaceuticals company required of its CEO. He was very hands on. It was his company. He'd built it up. Keeping it what it was required the interest of the owner.

He told me he'd be gone on and off for most of January. He told me he was pleased with my progress. I waited for him to tell me I'd be returned to oral doses of the cure while he was gone. When he didn't, my stomach twisted with nerves. Memories of him saying something some time ago about a minder came back to me. I almost asked half a dozen times but the look on his face when I looked up at him each time stopped me.

I'd been coasting on the quiet. In the morning at dawn, despite the cold, I'd wake and dress and run. I was averaging a seven mile run every day now and usually finishing within an hour. I'd come back and do weights, skip yoga and meditation and luxuriate in a shower that never ran out of hot water.

If he wasn't there to force me into yoga or meditation, I wasn't going to do it. At breakfast he would order me across his lap, my sweatpants and panties shoved down to my knees. It never became less humiliating. There were guards in the room and they changed from time to time, new men watching and pretending not to in some cases, and blatantly staring in others. He'd give me a hard enough spanking to make sitting on the hard wood chairs he had at the table an uncomfortable trial, but before I got there, he'd give me my medicine, making certain to push each into me with exquisite slowness, tucking them safe far up inside me before he pulled my thong back up to snug it into place.

I'd slide from his lap and kneel at his feet, thanking him for taking care of me, and eventually he'd allow me to get up, pull my sweatpants back up and sit down to my breakfast. More often than not, that was now a small slice of fish, accompanied by oatmeal or whole wheat toast, eggs, bacon and juice, and coffee.

I think even Cole St. Martin wasn't arrogant enough to think that he could take me off coffee without suddenly finding he was treating a rabid wolverine.

My first clue that he had gone on one of the trips was the nurse who had done the strip search months ago walked into the room, waking me before even my dawn run alarm went off.

"Mr. St. Martin is out of town on business," she said, apparently unaware there was no town that we were in. "You are in my charge until he returns. You will call me Miss, and respond to my commands with Yes, Miss. I will be reporting everything back to Mr. St. Martin when he returns, but I have the total authority to punish you should you require it. Get up."

I stared at her. After what she'd done to me my first morning back in the cell, I had determined that this woman was on the unofficial list I was keeping in my head. The one where I was determined to get even with the people who had most humiliated me.

I had choices. I could beat the hell out of this woman because she had come in without guards, supremely overconfident that I'm Mr. St. Martin's proxy was enough to keep me in line.

Or I could study her and figure out who she was. Because I wouldn't always be Cole's captive.

I got up. One look around the room was enough to prove we were alone together. I got up and faced her and waited.

"Raise the back of the t-shirt, turn around and kneel over the bed."

I had ordered the death of two men. I had no guilt over the act, because even if I was wrong, which I didn't believe, they were bringing misery to the world. They were not just the bearers of bad news and bad events. They were active evil in the world.

I didn't believe in evil with a capital E, the kind that possesses or exists in free floating form, from some other dimension or part of the Earth.

But I absolutely believed in evil on the part of humans.

So there was no guilt from ordering the death of the two gangbangers that Cole had put out the contract on. There was no guilt over how I'd left things with my family or with Mark. If Mark chose to wait for me this time, that was on him. I loved him but I wouldn't ask him to wait for a year and a day on the off chance he would have time with me somewhere along the line.

Cole St. Martin, sadist and philanthropist and architect of my addiction-free new life, owned me. He’d asked if I wanted him to have those men killed. I said yes. Until the contract between him and me ran out, I would –

Fight him tooth and nail for every thing he did to me and every time he beat me for his pleasure or humiliated me or punished me. I'd fight his morning routine and I'd probably eventually look for a way out again.

But until I couldn't bear it, I'd remain in place. I'd take my marching orders from him with a modicum of grace and a soupçon of snark.

But not this bitch. This woman who had run her fingers into my body and opened me up without explanation and humiliated me before the guards that very first morning.

Not a chance.

"Fuck you," I said.

I anticipated the guards at that moment. I thought she'd call for help and I'd be overpowered and Cole's morning routine would go through along with whatever correction she was allowed to perpetrate.

When she simply made a note on her phone and turned and walked out of the room, I anticipated more childishly punitive retaliatory measures. No breakfast. No coffee. No workouts.

But the only thing that happened was she turned and walked away.

Why was it that made me even more nervous?

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