Master No (Masters and Mercenaries, #9)(8)

Faith McDonald spent her birthday at her father’s vacation home in the Caymans. She’d always taken a boyfriend with her. He was going to be that boyfriend.

Not boyfriend. Dom. He was going to be her Dom.

He was also going to be the man who betrayed her because he would use her to bring her father’s house of cards down all around her.

“It’s always your op, Ten,” Tag said in the most patient voice Ten had ever heard him use. “But if she doesn’t want you, you’re not going to force her.”

He might. There were nights lately when he thought about simply putting a gun to Faith’s head and seeing if Daddy loved his baby girl. The problem was Ten was fairly certain McDonald didn’t really love anything beyond money and power. “I’ll make her want me.”

He could summon up some charm. It wasn’t like it ever came easy to him in the first place. He’d learned it. If there was one thing he was good at doing, it was adapting. He’d figured it out at a tender age. When being rambunctious got his arm broken by a particularly brutal foster parent, he learned to be quiet and not make waves. When he found out shooting rifles was one of his kind guardian’s obsessions, he’d become a marksman. As a teenager, he’d learned women were a damn good way to forget his troubles, so he studied and figured out how to please them.

He could wrap Faith around his little finger if he wanted to. After all, she identified as a submissive. She wanted to please the people around her according to Tag. The rich girl needed praise, it appeared.

She would get it. Eventually. The beautiful thing about D/s was it put him in charge. He would control Faith McDonald. He would train her to obey him. Oh, she would give him trouble in the end, but he would be ready for that, too. He stared down at her photograph. Unlike her sister, Hope, there were no press photos of Faith. Hope stood by her father in many of his publicity photos, but the shots they had of Faith were all casual, taken by Theo or Erin in Africa. Faith wore scrubs when she wasn’t rocking a hazmat suit. Her dark hair was almost always back in a utilitarian ponytail, and if the woman knew what makeup was, he couldn’t tell.

So why did she practically glow? She wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup and he was pretty sure he’d never seen a prettier woman. Not glamorous. There wasn’t anything artificial about her. Or so she wanted people to think. He would withhold judgment. The good news was he likely wouldn’t mind f*cking her, which was good because f*cking her was absolutely integral to the op. A woman who looked like that might show some loyalty to the man in her bed.

Until she realized the man in her bed was going to tear her world apart.

“What do we know about McDonald’s movements?” He didn’t like thinking about Faith. She was a tool, a means to an end. She wouldn’t be the first woman he’d screwed to complete a mission, but she might be the most innocent looking.

Hutch had his ever-present laptop out. Ten could swear the machine was surgically attached to Hutch. “He’s back in DC, but several members of his senior staff are currently in Pakistan. According to his office, they’re gathering intelligence on the situation in the Middle East.”

Ten didn’t believe that for a second. Any intelligence McDonald gathered would be to enrich his own bank accounts. “My contacts say McDonald’s looking for new clients. Since we took out Hani al Fareed, McDonald’s money supply dried up. I’ve been talking to Ibrahim al Fareed.”

“Any way we can convince Ibrahim to go undercover?” Tag asked.

Ten shook his head. The al Fareed brothers had gotten tangled in one of McDonald’s plots. Hani had been working with radicals and experimenting on US servicemen in order to create sleepers to send back to the States. His brother, Ibrahim, had been horrified at Hani’s activities. After Hani had been killed, it had been Ibrahim who took Ten in and allowed him to learn about the world Hani had chosen. It was a nasty underbelly filled with radicalized sons of Islam and money-hungry politicians who didn’t mind blowing up parts of the world for fun and profit. And corporations. He’d been shocked at how many were thriving because the world was focused on groups like ISIS and Boko Haram. Terror was quite profitable, Ten had discovered.

“I won’t bring Ibrahim into this any further than I already have. He’s a moderate, and beyond that, he’s not trained to handle this. He’s an intellectual.” With three happy wives and fourteen curious children. Every member of that family had accepted Ten into their home and made him feel welcome. He wouldn’t bring them into danger now. “I’ve been talking to some of my contacts and also to Damon.”

Damon Knight ran the European branch of McKay-Taggart Security Services. He was former MI6, and his contacts ran deep.

Tag nodded and the squirmy thing wrapped around his chest seemed to have gone to sleep. “Good. I talked to Damon about embedding a couple of his men on the island. He’s sent the new guy and Brody in. They’ve taken jobs at a resort close to McDonald’s compound.”

“McDonald spends a ton of time at that resort. He plays golf there often and he uses them for catering.” Case frowned. “I guess crime really pays. I want a personal chef.”

“Yeah, you really need that, brother. You need gourmet chicken strips and hot wings.” Tag liked to needle his siblings, but he was right on this one.

“You eat like a five-year-old.” If Case knew how to do anything in a kitchen beyond warm up frozen food, Ten would happily eat his own shoe.