The rain relented its hold on Northern Germany and the sun lit up the forest, but not the gloom in Kurt Oster's heart, as he tried every door of the Von Hausen Mansion finding each one locked. He peered through the double-paned windows. The mansion's interior had been denuded of furniture and only the family portraits hanging on the wall were the only signs of occupation.
Kurt thought he heard a voice calling him, but no one appeared from the yard and the forest. He listened hard only to hear the baffling wind hauntingly speaking its indecipherable language of syllables snatched from distant conversations.
Coming out here had been a mistake, but he could not imagine Vanessa being with her husband, who was also missing. The tightness in his heart expanded across his chest, as he returned to his car and drove away in the direction of Hamburg.
A man watched the departure of his wife's lover and snickered, "A slave to love."
Lukas had said the words 'I love you' to many women and various languages without meaning it. He envied Kurt for this emotion, but with love came weakness and he had spent too many years being weak. Being cruel would be the only way he could regain a foothold in this world.
The last days editing the videos of Petra had burnt out his eyes, Lukas decided to have a break.
He pulled shut the attic curtains and went downstairs to Vanessa's bedroom. He knocked once with any response from the other side and cursed himself for not having set up a video camera in Vanessa's room to watch the last five days. The inaction of the starvation process would have bored most people, but he had been mesmerized by Yoko Ono's FLY.
While the police and papers might prosecute him for locking up his wife, no jury in this nation would convict him, once they saw the pictures of Vanessa and Kurt. It might be the Twentieth Century, buy adultery was still a mortal sin in Germany.
Lukas put an ear to the bedroom door, but heard nothing. His wife's pleas for release had stopped the first day and for food a day later. Being a light eater, Vanessa had no reservoir of fat, so four days without food must have exacted an effect on his wife that could not be called pretty. Another two days of hunger and her body would begin eating the muscles. Some of the IRA hunger strikers had lasted over fifty days before dying of starvation, so she could easily handle another two weeks, if necessary. Lukas rapped at the door and called out, "Vanessa, it is me. Your loving husband."
Nothing.
Vanessa was too Christian to kill herself, though as a safety precaution he had stripped her rooms of razors and glass bottles to slice her wrists, clothing, wires and belts with which to hang herself, plus any pills and medicine on which she could overdose.
While the police and papers might prosecute him for locking up his wife, no jury in this nation would convict him, once they saw the pictures of Vanessa and Kurt. It might be the Twentieth Century, buy adultery was still a mortal sin in Germany. He called her name twice more then opened the door.
The rooms had its curtains drawn and in the half-light a female form lay under the sheets of the bed.
Something odd about the body on the bed stopped him in the middle of the floor. A rustle of fabric warned him too late that this was a trap. An unusually hard object struck him in the head and a clarion note similar to the bell at the end of in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 OVERTURE rang in his skull. The second time it was off-tune and his vision telescoped into a tunnel.
Vanessa dropped the bag filled with soap and broke for the doorway. A hand seized her ankle and fingers dug into the flesh around her Achilles' tendon. She kicked at Lukas' head, but his forearm blocked her foot. A quick jerk of his hand swept Vanessa off her feet. She crashed to the floor and the wind whooshed from her lungs. Lukas scrambled on top of her.
"Very good, Vanessa." He straddled her arms with his knees. She was much stronger than he would have thought for several days without eating. "You must be sorry about not knocking me out."
"You bastard." Her head tossed back and forth, while her feet kicked at his head. "I wish I had killed you."
"You speaking that way to your loving husband hurts." One slap across her face stopped her wiggling effort to escape. Twice more squashed any further resistance. His tongue checked his mouth. No teeth were loose, but he would have a black eye.
"Me, a bastard. No, you are mistaken. It is your boyfriend, who is a bastard. He was here. Looking for you, but I didn't answer the door."
Vanessa turned her head. The past few days she had continually fantasized about Kurt rescuing her and his having come reassured her of that possibility. Eventually he would come again.
"You must be hungry. What about some bread? It would be a nice addition to the water."
When Vanessa chose not to respond, he slapped again.
"I asked you a question. Do you want to eat?"
Vanessa glared at him with hatred.
Denied the gratification of seeing her cry, he got off her.
"Suit yourself and starve. No one, but you, will suffer for that."
She lay on the floor, expecting the worse, but Lukas Von Hausen walked out of the room and locked the door. Almost any other man in the world would have died to have at woman like Vanessa at his mercy.
So beautiful, so fragile, so helpless, but then plenty of women had been at his mercy before.
Whimpering in tears begging for salvation.
The first time had been a turn-on, but once he had been on the other side, being dominant paled beneath the pleasure of pain and humiliation. Having explored every thrill possible, only masochism held a pleasure for him beyond all others. He had no interest in sex for the sensation of orgasm and rarely achieved an erection anymore.
Petra.
She was the answer and he had to get her back and, if that meant getting rid of the American, then so be it. The problem was that Kurt and Cali needed him to pick up the cash in Geneva and he needed them to think that was exactly what he would do. This alone was keeping the American alive.
After he stole their money this interloper was dust in the wind and Petra would be his again. He vowed this with all the hate in his heart and hell had no fury like a man unscourged by sin.
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