Chapter 4

My angel's story, which she told me during the walk back to the house, was less heart wrenching, but still a tale of sadness and regrets. Her mistakes were largely and indeed nearly entirely of her manufacture; a fact that she was just now coming to realize. The recovery time had provided her with the opportunity for a good deal of reflection and self-examination. Like me, she wasn't entirely happy with what she saw inside herself.

Growing up in a life of privilege, she had wanted for nothing and was even blessed by the distant, but genuine, love of her parents. The death of her mother to illness when she was just fourteen suddenly and seemingly inexplicably threw her entire train off its tracks. She became moody and unsettled, a very model of teenaged angst. Her father, who had thrown himself further in his own business and political affairs after the loss of his beloved wife, became an even remoter figure in her life. It was several years before he looked up long enough to notice that his daughter now had serious behavioral issues.

Angela had started to drink and smoke pot by the time she turned fifteen and was almost expelled from her private high school on several occasions. Only the generosity of her family's endowment to the school allowed her to remain, and even graduate, though quite undeservedly.

He then sent her to a special prep school in Switzerland for 'troubled rich girls' where she was expelled after a few months, but not before Angela had been introduced to cocaine and heroin. Several attempts by her father to force her into rehab at private clinics failed, and faced with a involuntary commitment at another clinic, she left home for good.

Her source of money cut off, Angela had to find other means of feeding her drug habit. She still had friends among the kids of the rich and powerful, but soon her needs drove her even deeper underground. Without money or even a regular roof over her head, she had to pay for her habit with the only thing of value she had left, her body ... but she didn't much care, as long as she got the drugs.

Then she met the mark and his wife late one night in a seedy underground nightclub. His name was Peter and his wife was named Petra. They were both fascinated by her, a rich girl from the best family and highest connections who had willingly debauched herself into the sewers of society. They offered to give her a place to stay and even to provide her with the drugs she needed. She would have sex with both of them, but that was certain certainly no hardship to her. Even now she didn't know why she had instantly accepted their offer without a second thought.

Angela didn't realize until it was much too late that the generous couple that had befriended her had sinister ulterior motives. She was made to do increasingly degrading and disgusting things for her benefactors, she willingly and even eagerly performed them. Again, she didn't understand why. The 'reward' was even more and seemingly much better grade heroin, but already this increased use of the drug was beginning to frighten her. Part of her was very scared and frightened, wanting to escape this life of sexual sadism and intense drug use but her mind was in a fog, unable to clearly see her way free towards escape. Petra especially seemed to have a immense psychological hold over her somehow and she found herself willing to suffer any indignity in order to attempt to please her.

She never realized that she had become a walking zombie until she had a semi-lucid moment one day, weeks later to find that she was now too weak to get out of bed. She was now utterly a prisoner and still they would regularly offer her more drugs. She knew now that she must refuse ... that she did indeed want and needed to stop, but they gave the injections to her anyway, even against her consent. She remembered being moved from a room in a great mansion to a quiet and secluded house in the city and hoped that she would be allowed to recover, but soon realized that her imprisonment was only beginning and that she was but an insect to be tormented for their amusement. Soon she was too fragile even to leave her bed and then they inserted an IV into her to give her a constant controlled heavy dosage. Soon she was virtually lost in a perpetual dreamland and spiraling helplessly towards death.

Her dream was always the same; that she had been flying in clear blue sky when a bolt of lightning struck her and caused her to crash to the ground. Crippled and barely able to crawl, she found herself trapped on a black rock mountain hillside. She could see blue sky at the top of the mountain but as she tried to crawl painfully up the slope, the ground would give way underneath her, causing her to slide further down. Very close below her was a gaping chasm that kept creeping closer. The harder she struggled to escape it, the closer she slid down towards it.

Faced with oblivion at its very edge, she refused to give in to despair and let it take her. She'd feel her captors beside her, beckoning her to take that last plunge, to give up life, but she somehow found the strength to refuse. She was too weak to resist but her spirit had suddenly found a spark of life that had been gone for over a decade, since her mother had died.

Once, near despair, she thought she heard her mother's voice whispering to her to 'hold on just a little longer', but she was sure it was just a hallucination. Finally, just when she knew she had no strength left anymore to resist and she was nearly willing to let the abyss claim her, she saw a hand reach to touch her. It wasn't a big strong firm hand, but a slight one, barely any larger than her own. She knew that it wouldn't be strong enough to pull her to safety all alone and that she would have to let go of the rocks with both of her hands to grab this one, to trust it to hold on to her for dear life. She trusted fate and let go of the rocks but the hand provided an anchor that prevented her fall into destruction.

It was a very long crawl up that black mountain. The hand couldn't pull her up to the top, she realized, but it could anchor her to prevent her from sliding back into the abyss. She'd have to crawl up every inch towards the top herself. But now suddenly she felt she had the strength to do it, even if it took a very long time. Soon, she knew she'd have the strength to walk again, and then once she was able to see the mountain top surrounded by blue skies, she knew that she'd be able to run to the top, and once again be able to fly.

Our stories told, we held each other tight and for the first time we slept in the same bed together. I was clothed and there was no sex. She was still too weak for that sort of activity and it would have been a betrayal of my protection to her, to take advantage of her in her physical and emotional weakness.

But I wanted and desired her all the same.

Thus armed, I gave Joel his weekly phone call a day early and set him hard to work researching the two names Angela had given me. He had answers for me nearly immediately. Joel was slowly draining my savings dry, but he was worth every penny of it now.

At last, I had a name for my mark, the collectors who hadn't wanted a dime of the Angels fortune or even a spec of her father's political influence. These were just an evil pair of sick fucks that merely wanted to gloat while watching a beautiful young woman die slowly by inches for their amusement. His real name was Carlos Pieter Hutchins, and he was quite a prominent New England lawyer with powerful political connections of his own. His wife, Pia "Petra" di Giovanna, was an Italian Countess from the old House of Savoy, not too many branches removed from the last King of Italy himself.

"A nasty bit of work the pair of them." Joel reported. "Carlos has far more enemies than friends and would stick the knife to his own granny if he thought he'd come out ahead on the deal. As for his wife, the Countess, look up the words 'cutthroat bitch' in the dictionary and I'm sure you'd find her picture there. She and the notorious Countess Bathory of old Hungary could have been sisters. She's said to have a staff of real slave girls that act as her maids because no professional domestics will ever work for her. She runs the house with a whip in her hand and allegedly really likes to put it to regular and frequent use."

The Countess apparently wielded virtually all of the authority in the relationship and enjoyed the power that her vast personal wealth brought. Her husband was little more than her local political protection and trusted minion to do her bidding. Together they were the rulers of a hardcore underground S&M society in the Northeast, where there were no limits restricting their sadism. Both were also rumored to be key members of a secret society of the ultra-rich, politically omnipotent, and decadently perverted. Unable in the modern age publically to lop off peasants heads in public anymore for fun, she had to make do with lesser cruelties, which allegedly did involve frequent torture until death.

They had a humongous mansion on an island in Rhode Island and the pair of them had various city and townhouses scattered all over New England. The house I had gone to recover the Pollock was just one of their more recent safe houses where they could privately squirrel things and people away. I wondered what other nastiness's the other houses hid.

I did a bit more research on my own and quickly decided that they were too rich, too powerful, and far too politically connected to be publically exposed, at least in any normal conventional way. Even if caught in an outrageous and indefensible act, the cover-up would begin nearly instantly with the police and any witnesses bought or otherwise silenced. Any actual evidence would soon be misplaced or replaced with something harmless. There might be a pretense of an investigation, but there would never be any charges filed. Friends in the District Attorney's office and friendly judges would see to that. Within a day or two at most, things would be back to business as usual. They were so far outside the realms of the law that it could never hope to touch them.

Only a fool would dare challenge them, but I was just that sort of fool.

I mulled my plans over for the better part of a week before I laid them down before the Angel and bared my soul to her. She was appalled and frankly horrified at what I had decided, and we argued in circles for days.

"No!" She told me repeatedly and firmly. "I don't want any revenge and especially not that sort of revenge! What they did to me is now in the past. It's the deep forgotten and buried past. Those terrible things happened to the old Angela, the weak and pathetic drug abuser — not the woman I am trying to become now."

"Angel, see sense!" I would beg. "They must be stopped. Someone has to put an end to their games. Don't think of it as revenge for yourself, but as security for your future. You know too much about them. Your very continued existence is a daily constant threat to their safety and security. Even your father's money and power can't protect you from them forever. Are you going to run and hide overseas? Eventually they will find you there. There is no place that you can run to or hide that they cannot find you. Until they are stopped you will never know another minute's safety!"

"Maybe, but if I have any hand in their death I wouldn't know another day of peace and happiness in my heart, either."

On and on we went, around in circles until both of us became annoyed with the obstinacy of the other. She would continue to let me hold her at night, but some of the intimacy was now missing.

It would gall me beyond words, but I was resolved to bringing an end this sordid adventure and bring closure to my Angel, whether she wanted it or not. For my plan to work I would need a little bit of her help to bait the trap, but this assistance could be innocently and subtly provided.

The next day, at my insistence, I asked her give her father a phone call from my secure internet phone line. The conversation was brief but a joyful one for both. He had heard nothing at all from his daughter in several years and frankly feared the worst for some time. At my suggestion, she told him that she had been at a private facility getting treatment for her illness for quite a while but expected them to release her shortly. Probably then she would be staying with a friend she had met in treatment for a while longer for some extra rehabilitation before returning home. This friend had a remote place in the mountains but she would call again from there in about a week or so.

While none of these statements were lies or even particularly misleading, I was pretty certain that there would be a wiretap on her father's home phone line, waiting for the Angel to call him. Our enemies would hear this message and know that their prey would soon be on the move to a remote place suitable for recapture, or more likely elimination. I wanted them to get ready and get their knives good and sharp and wait anxiously for her next phone call, ready to strike at a moments notice. The Angel just had to be shown that she was dealing with amorally evil insects that needed to be squashed underfoot without remorse.

I had already coaxed my Angel into leaving this remote Pennsylvania farmhouse for a smaller secluded cabin I had up in the Catskill Mountains near Albany, New York. It was more secure, I had assured her, and indeed it was, due to the large and probably utterly excessive amount of booby-traps I had set up a few years earlier. This cabin was my first main prepared line of defense, a place to meet attackers on at least even ground. Oh, we would be definitely outnumbered, but not outgunned.

There were no treasures kept here. This place and everything inside it was very expendable, but that didn't stop Angela from totally falling in love with the wintery mountain scenery. We walked together in the afternoons until she was thoroughly exhausted, but ecstatically happy at her remarkable continuing recovery.

She was growing stronger by the day and her figure had blossomed out from a skeletal waif to that of a lovely young woman once again. Holding her close to me as usual on our first night at the cabin, our curious relationship now changed forever.