Savage Chains: Captured (Men in Chains #1.5)(11)
Author: Caris Roane

“You’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

He reached up and unpinned the headdress, letting it fall to the carpet away from her feet.

A moment later Mathilde and several of her housekeeping staff returned to help with Angelica. The women bundled her up in a robe and led her away. Even one of the maids turned and scowled at him. They’d all been slaves at one time or another and each knew exactly what preternaturally charged shackles felt like.

Of course, they couldn’t know he’d just saved Angelica’s life by buying her at auction.

For five million.

His turn to groan. What had he done? What impulse had led him to throw so many careful plans to the wind?

He could have saved five women tonight and cemented his position in the slavery community at the same time. Instead he’d used up a helluva lot of goodwill to rescue just one. And he’d made an enemy of Engles, the one man he’d needed to placate.

A string of obscenities flew through his head.

Mathilde returned. “We can’t get the shackles off. Master, where did you get this woman?”

Two of the servants returned with buckets of water and sponges to work on the rug.

He moved past his housekeeper, a woman who had been with him for two decades now, and gestured with a wave of his hand for her to follow him. Part of him felt a compulsion to tell her the truth or at least some part of what had happened, but more than anything he needed to salvage his efforts to get into the belly of the Starlin Group.

Which meant he needed to figure out what to do with Angelica.

He moved into his library and waved her in, shutting the door behind her. “This woman is my slave and will be until I tell you otherwise.”

Mathilde glared at him. “Your slave? I can’t believe it. You, of all men, when you’ve been so tolerant.”

“The past doesn’t matter. She’s my slave now, this is my domain and you’re my servant. And you are not to question my decision or to speak of this to anyone outside my employ. Do you understand?”

“Yes, master.”

“You’ll be receiving a large parcel from Starlin in the next few minutes. I want everything unpacked as soon as possible.”

“Yes, master.” She pinched her lips together. “I just don’t understand how you could do this. I lost a most beloved sister to slavers.”

He kept his face impassive, but her horror and disgust mirrored his own. “I will treat her kindly, Mathilde. She will come to no harm on my watch, you for one should know that. I will only tell you that had I not bought her, Engles would have had her.”

She gave a small cry, a hand pressed to her chest. Engles had bought Mathilde’s sister at auction, and by all accounts she’d died in the middle of one of his sessions with her. Afterward he’d dumped her in the nearest ocean graveyard.

Tears touched her eyes. “These are terrible times in our world.”

“Yes, they are, but she’s to be my slave now.”

Mathilde nodded, but her shoulders sagged. “Very well, but the shackles have hurt her. Can you at least have them removed?”

“Of course. I’ll do it now.”

Chapter Three

Angelica lay on a bed in what the housekeeper had told her was Reyes’s guest suite. The kind woman had taken the pins from her hair, removed her ridiculously thick false eyelashes, and wiped her face. For all of that, she found herself grateful. Despite the amount of pain she was in, she wanted out of this horrible costume, every bit of evidence removed and destroyed that she’d ever been on that disgusting runway.

“The master will be here soon to remove the shackles. I’m sure of it.”

Tears streamed from her eyes. She hadn’t wanted to cry, but she was in physical agony from the steady pulse in her head as well as the horrible sensations flowing up both her arms and legs. A painful sensation, like an electrical charge, emanated from the point that the shackles pressed against her skin.

And Reyes had done this to her, the man who just a week ago she’d wanted to take home with her, the man she’d kissed, the man she’d thought was the one.

Now she had an entirely different view of him. It seemed he wasn’t a man at all, but a beast, an animal, just like her jailers and all those people who’d participated in the auction.

She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the tears to stop.

She realized that she had truly known nothing about the man she’d craved for months. The darkness she’d seen in him, which she’d understood as some kind of black ops background, had been far worse than anything she could have imagined.

Brogan Reyes was a slaver.

A slaver in some kind of alternate world that she found herself trapped in. The way they’d flown here and all the oddities she’d witnessed during her captivity confirmed it. When the housekeeper and the other servants left the room, she would have started looking for an escape route if she hadn’t been in so much pain. As it was, she could only lie still and endure.

The door opened and her captor entered the room.

“Angelica, turn toward me and I’ll get the shackles off.”

Cringing at the sound of his voice, she rolled on the bed, unable to pull the robe around her; once more she lay exposed. The shackles were heavy, and a short chain between each set prevented much movement.

He looked damn serious as he knelt beside the bed with a tool in his hand that sort of looked like a screwdriver.

“Is this going to hurt more than it already does?”

But he didn’t say anything. He just scowled as he placed the tool against the bolt holding together the manacle on her left hand. He tapped and at the same time, some kind of energy flowed.

And so did the pain. She screamed.

“Mathilde,” Reyes shouted. “Get me a goddamn healer here. Now.”

“I already called. She’s on her way.” The housekeeper moved back into the room to stand beside Reyes. She was very short and wore thick blond braids wrapped around the crown of her head. She sported an equally serious expression.

He pulled apart the first shackle. Though the weight was no longer there, the pain pulsing up Angelica’s arm remained, and the skin at her wrist bled even more than before.

She wanted to tell him how much it hurt, but she didn’t see the point. He was no longer someone she could ever think of as a friend. He’d bought her at auction and now no doubt thought of her exclusively as his property.

He glanced at her. “Preternaturally charged shackles cause a lot of pain, even when they’re gone. That’s why I called for the healer.”