Chloe (Made Men, #3)(52)

The devil will kill me this time. He promised me he would.

Once she opened the expensive, gold music box, the familiar lullaby began to play. It was then she realized that it couldn’t be hers. Chloe stepped to the huge window with a hitch in her breath. She slowly reached out to pull back the curtain.

No one will save me this time.

Pulling back the curtain, she held her breath as she was greeted with a beautiful garden along with the white gazebo she had found herself under before with …

The door creaked open, and Chloe turned to meet the being behind the door.

The dark voice made her gasp for air.

“Hey, darlin’.”





Forty-One





The Moment





You thought she had a choice? No. The Boogieman had decided her fate the moment he had looked upon her scarred face.





The Moment





There’s always a moment one faces in life, A moment one could never forget.

And in this moment, you would swear time stood still.



After that moment, the tears begin to burn your cheeks.

Your soul feels as if it were touched by darkness.

And even if you never believed in God, your knees begin to bleed from praying so much.



I faced that moment,

A moment I will never forget.

And in that moment, time did stand still.



But my cheeks healed with time.

My soul fought the darkness with light.

And my knees, now calloused and scarred, are stronger than ever for the next moment when time stutters.

Sarah Brianne





Please, if you or someone you know ever needs help, follow this link to get more information and help.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

http://www.victimsofcrime.org/help-for-crime-victims/national-hotlines-and-helpful-links





Behind The Marquess’s Mask





The Lords of Whitehall





Kristen McLean




Available Now!





Prologue





France 1818




Grey had been the Marquess of Ainsley for nigh on a decade, his numerous estates being some of the most profitable in England. Numerous estates with enormous, warm, coma-inducing beds, each one piled high with mountains of pillows.

Why the devil was he now lying on the coldest, most uncomfortable cot in all of Christendom?

“He is awake.”

Someone spoke in French. If anyone were speaking French in his boudoir, it ought to be with a husky, feminine drawl, not the rough growl he had just heard. Now that he thought of it, along with the pillows, there was a shocking lack of silk and feathers.

This was all wrong, very wrong.

He opened his eyes, and the large, cold stones forming the ceiling slowly came into focus. That along with the cool feel of iron at his wrists and ankles and the two men glaring menacingly in his direction made it profoundly clear the nightmare he had been plagued with was quite real.

He was still in France, only now he was in prison. He had been caught.

“We want their names.”

“I have no names,” Grey lied. “I am utterly nameless.” It wasn’t meant to be a slurred mumble, but his mouth felt stuffed full of cotton, and his lips wouldn’t move. They were swollen, stiff, as was the rest of him.

“Your friend is dead,” one of them said. “Do you wish to join him?”

That meant Johnny had kept silent to the end. He had been a good lad—just a lad—and had died a nobody with no funeral or grave for loved ones to visit. Disappearing without notice, he would have no honor, no glory, no great eulogy commending his bravery in the face of torture and death—all things Grey had told him would happen the day he had signed on.

“Go to hell,” Grey growled.

One of the men, an overly large behemoth with an atrocious moustache, laughed as he brandished a long knife with a thick blade. He moved to stand next to Grey, who was strapped on his back to a wooden table. Arguably, it was not the best position to be in whilst issuing threats.

What shall be first? Grey wondered. His ears? His fingers, maybe? Not his tongue; they needed that.

“The man you sliced from ear to ear,” the behemoth said, “was my brother.”

Ears, then.

The man in question had been stealing the names of England’s best agents to sell to her enemies. Had he succeeded, the death toll would have been devastating, though more in quality than in quantity. Grey had caught him in a bordello and taken him out the same way the bastard was known to have done to some of Grey’s comrades, drawing notice like a loggerheaded rookie.

Then Grey had been caught, which he had expected. What he had not expected was to find Johnny five feet behind him instead of across the street where he should have been. That was when Grey had learned it was much harder to escape with a green lad hanging on to his coattails.

Grey lifted his head with an icy smile. “He cried, begged for his life.”

A meaty fist pounded into Grey’s face, forcing his head back into the table. His head spun, but he swallowed back the nausea, refusing to give the cur the satisfaction of seeing the impact of the blow or giving the misapprehension that he’d had enough. Grey had not been punished nearly enough.