Trained by Sansa Rayne

Chapter 26

Brendan waits for us at the tarmac to say goodbye. Dozens of Ingram’s soldiers, all dressed in black uniforms with body armor, move crates of weapons onto the jet. Assault rifles, missiles, launchers, stun guns and flashbangs — everyone but me will be armed to the teeth. We’ve also loaded up six motorcycles with mounted guns and bulletproof shields — shock troops who can sweep through the island and eliminate any resistance.

“I really wish I could take a picture,” Brendan says, pointing at the jet. It’s been repainted from its normal white to a crimson red, with graffiti-like graphics stenciled across the fuselage. In particular, a sideways A with a circle around it — the insignia of Anarchy, Inc.

“They did a great job,” I say.

“Ever imagine you’d see something like this in person?” he asks.

I laugh.

“I was about to say the same thing. Wild, huh?”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“I’ve done more reckless things in my life,” I say. “I have to see this through to the end. I have to be there when we win. And to make sure Anton doesn’t get away.”

Or Jamison.

As much as I love Ingram, I can’t stand by and let him treat Jamison too leniently. It’s a conundrum, I know: Ingram’s crimes are significant too. How can I justify his past but not show the same consideration for Jamison, considering how he helped us? I don’t have a great answer.

My best reasoning is that Ingram has put his entire livelihood into stopping Anton; Jamison, on the other hand, has fallen in line with Anton to protect himself. Ingram has freed me — if I wanted to, I could leave him. Colette is a slave, even if she happens to accept it.

Most importantly, Ingram’s not done facing the consequences of his actions.

“Then good luck,” says Brendan. “And be careful.”

“I will. And when I get back, we’re going to get to work. To tell the world what happened, I’ll need your help.”

“It’ll be an honor, Kate.”

I pull him into a hug; he pats my back.

“Hey,” he whispers. “Don’t let him lose sight of the mission.”

“I won’t.”

My brows furrow at the thought. I force it out of my head before anger rises from my gut. I shouldn’t be mad at Brendan for telling me what I already know. It pisses me off because it’s a real concern. This is Ingram’s show — he’ll be calling the shots.

What if he doesn’t do the right thing when the moment comes?

I’m going to be armed… I could take the situation into my own hands.

“Thank you again, for everything,” I say when I let Brendan go.

“Kate,” Ingram calls as he marches toward us. “It’s time.”

As he says it, the jet’s engines’ ignition sounds off with a high-pitched whine.

“Give them hell, you two,” says Brendan, stepping back off the landing strip.

Ingram nods, then leads me onto the plane. Within minutes, we’re in the air.

“We have a few hours until we get in range of the island,” he says. “Try to rest up or relax.”

“Sure,” I mumble, taking a seat in his private bedroom. On the other side of the wall, fifty soldiers chat and joke around, blowing off steam.

I’d want to join them, but Brendan’s warning echoes in my thoughts and I’m not in the mood.

Maybe that’s for the best. I’m not here to party. This is a mission — it’s not supposed to be fun. We’re going to do a job. We can celebrate on the way home, when all of the Masters have been arrested, detained and charged.

Including Jamison.

Still, it will be nice seeing the looks on their faces when everything they’ve taken for granted gets ripped away from them, once and for all. Technically, Anton has already done that — the Masters are only alive because it’s served his purposes, for the time being. Perhaps they’ve expected Anton to fail and that they would survive in the long run. Considering what Ingram’s accomplished, that’s not unrealistic. However, soon that hope will be dashed. Any illusion they maintain about escaping justice is about to come crashing down.

Then there’s the fact that Ingram’s the one responsible. Will they be surprised at this point? They all seemed so sure he was dead. Have they questioned how Death knows so much about them, or written it off as Timo and Lincoln’s dying admissions? Maybe they’re hoping it’s Ingram, figuring that he’ll restore the Masters to their former glory once Anton is gone — and two of their friends were an acceptable sacrifice.

It would be foolish to believe any of those men truly care about one another. They’ve called themselves a brotherhood, but how many tears did they shed after I killed Victor Sovereign? He was a liability to them — they were glad to have him gone. They enjoyed watching me suffer for it — like his death bought them days of entertainment, and that was fine.

They’re lucky I’m not out to watch them suffer — at least, by my own hand. Hopefully they’ll suffer plenty in a federal penitentiary.

“Kate?” says Ingram.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember what you told me outside the barn when we rescued you?”

It feels like a lot more than a few days ago. After months of a dreadful daily routine that turned every day into a war with insanity and despair, the past week has brought me pleasure, excitement and hope. I can remember every waking second with perfect clarity — though I may have lost count of the seconds I spent recovering from an orgasmic haze.

“I said a lot of things.”

“The part about wanting to be the one to kill Anton.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“You said if you could do that, you’d never ask for anything else.”

“I was in a different place then,” I say.

He takes out a dagger from a wooden case. Decorated by gemstones on the hilt, the blade curves almost like a sickle.

“Remember this? It was a gift from Anton, back before he joined the Masters. I think it would be fitting if you cut his throat with it.”

He mimics dragging it across flesh; it looks sharp enough to slice through skin at the softest touch.

Is that what I still want? To kill him myself? Isn’t it more important he face justice? If I start killing to sate my own desires, I’m not necessarily better than men like Anton. But, what if he’s too powerful to let live? We’ve made the mistake of not killing him when we should have before. It’s practically self-defense, like when I shot Victor.

That doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it. It’s a necessity.

But, I would enjoy it. After everything he’s done to me, I would. The last year is still too fresh in my mind — I can’t just forget what he’s done. All the ethical reasoning won’t change the fact that he hurt me, and I want him to pay.

“Ingram, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore.”

“The Masters don’t worry about right or wrong, Kate. Put that aside,” he says. “If you could kill Anton in any way you want, what would it be?”

I laugh.

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“Of course,” Ingram laughs. “I think about it all the time.”

I snort, shaking my head.

“What did you come up with?”

“Oh, there are plenty of possibilities. I mean, it would be fun to just kick the shit out of him until he had a heart attack from the pain. I could have him strapped to a wall and practice some archery. I think my favorite idea is locking him in the Enclave dungeon’s oubliette and let a hundred starved rats loose in there with him. But those are all over so quickly.”

“The rats don’t sound that quick.”

The idea makes me queasy, although Anton definitely deserves it.

“True, but I’d like his punishment to last a lot longer,” Ingram says. “I mean, it should last at least as long as he tortured you with that show.”

Six months?

I’d have trouble thinking of ways to hurt Anton, but also keep him alive. What would that even look like? Locking him in a cell and making him watch Ingram thrive once more? Revenge is all Anton’s cared about for so long; is there really that much that can hurt him? Would living with the fact that he’s failed bring him constant pain, or would he get over it in time?

“Ingram, the last six months were terrible, but after a while I’d get used to it. People always adjust. Anton would too. Eventually it would just be delaying the inevitable. Would you really want hurting Anton to lose its value?”

“Trust me, it wouldn’t,” he says.

“Maybe. But Anton fucked up not killing us quickly. What if we make the same mistake? What if he finds a way out? You’ve been running what amounts to a terrorist organization — it wouldn’t be hard for him to paint you as the villain, rather than a vigilante. Everyone thinks I’m a hack now, and Anton is beloved in the business community. Convincing the world that we’re uncovering a massive deception won’t be easy. How will it look if all the world sees is us standing over Anton’s mangled corpse?”

“We’ll record his confession. We’ll expose him, long before we lay a finger on him. The rest of the Masters will corroborate everything. There won’t be any confusion about what he’s done.”

“There’s still a risk he could escape,” I say. “I want revenge, and we will have it. But sometimes you just have to end things.”

Ingram grabs a bottled water and takes a sip, then leans back on his bed and stretches out his legs.

“Okay then, answer my question: how would you kill Anton?”

“What are we talking, a few days worth of torture?” I ask, smirking.

“Sure.”

Is it a bad sign that my mind races with horrific ideas? Am I a psycho in waiting?

“It has to start with his balls,” I say. “A solid kick to them, every day.”

I doubt he’d get used to that.

“Come on, you can do better,” says Ingram.

“Okay, okay. How about… we starve him for a couple of days. We use noise to keep him awake until he’s delirious. Then we give him a bowl of the spiciest hot peppers we can find to eat. No water, no beverage — if he wants to eat, it has to be the peppers. He will feel like absolute shit.”

“Yeah,” Ingram says, nodding and grinning. “Yeah, that’s pretty good.”

“Then, when he’s begging for food and something to drink, we give him a bowl of milk, but it’s spiked with poison — something that puts him in terrible pain for days before he dies.”

Ingram stares at me, eyes wide, mouth open in shock.

“You’re a fucking psychopath,” he says. “Holy shit. Who the hell are you, Kate?”

My jaw drops.

I don’t-

He’s the one who-

“Wait, this was your idea!”

“I’m joking, Kate. I like knowing that you have a mind for vengeance, though. And trust me, I can think of way worse than that.”

“Yeah,” I mumble.

“Actually, I know what would really hurt Anton,” says Ingram. “Far more than anything else.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me.”

“You make me a hero. You have the media create a hero myth around Ingram Dent, the man who toppled a criminal empire and saved countless millions — including the love of his life.”

He’s right. That doesn’t sit well with me.

“You’re my hero,” I say. “But for a lot of people…”

He nods.

“I know. But it would drive Anton insane if we kept him alive to watch it.”

I take his hand and feel his hard chest.

“Maybe if he was alive he could just see us happy together,” I say. “He’d hate that too.”

“True, he would. Maybe we’d have a couple of kids who we’d love like he never was. He’d see our happy family and see what he missed out on because all he cared about was revenge.”

I kiss Ingram, picturing us all together. It would be beautiful. It would be perfect.

“I like the family part, but we can’t let him live,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe when we drive him mad with hallucinogens we could make him think he’s been trapped in our prison for years.” Ingram smiles. “We’ll get some doctored pictures of us with kids, articles about you getting the Pulitzer, you being interviewed about being saved by a brave, handsome hero. We could have me receiving a medal from the president in front of an applauding audience.”

“That’s it. That’s what we should do,” I say.

“Then we will. That’s the plan.”

“Good.”

“Then what?” Ingram asks.

“What do you mean?”

He takes my hand to his lips and kisses it.

“When all this is over, when Anton is dead and the Masters are dealt with, what do you want to do?”

“Like, besides getting back to work?”

“Yeah.”

That’s a good question. Before all this happened, taking time off wasn’t my strong suit.

“I don’t know. I want to travel, but I’m not big on vacations.”

“No tropical island retreats, huh?” says Ingram.

“No. I’ve had enough of that. I want to work — maybe reporting on stories happening around the world. That’s my best revenge against the Masters: reclaiming my old life.”

“What else?”

I laugh.

“You mean, like, drinking wine while taking a bubble bath?”

“Yes, exactly. Everything you’ve been deprived of, Kate. I will make a fucking list and cross off everything on it.”

I laugh, resting on his chest and wrapping his arms around me.

“What if I say getting to visit the space station?”

“That can be arranged,” Ingram says.

“Oh yeah? Well, put that at the top. Then I want to drive a really fancy car — like a Lamborghini — and I want to go super fast.”

Ingram chuckles.

“I thought New Yorkers don’t drive. Do you even have a license?”

“Not a valid one. Details. I’ll learn. And I still want to learn kickboxing. I want to get cut, or as much as I can with my schedule.”

“Sure. What else?”

“Well… I’ve been thinking. There have to be other men like the Masters out there, even if they’re not as powerful or famous. People who would want to be members, if they knew the Masters existed. Have you ever had people contact you, putting out feelers? To see if they could get in?”

“Sure,” says Ingram.

“And you remember their names?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I want to look into each and every one of them. I want to be their scourge. When they see me coming, they should just turn themselves in to save time.”

“Kate, if you want my help, I will devote my resources and skills to this. I’ll-”

“Ingram,” comes Eyal’s voice over the intercom. “We’re close to the island. We’re beginning our descent. It looks like they’re prepared to fight.”

“Okay,” Ingram replies. “I’ll be right there.”

He turns to me and says, “Let’s go, Kate. This is it. If they’re looking for a fight, we’re going to give them one.”