Free Capturing Callie by Avery Gale Page A

planned, the man was thinking so loud he might as well have been shouting his intent out loud. Mitch agreed with Ian, if anyone could scare Chrissy Reece straight and bring the wild child to heel, it was Jace Garrett.
    Mitch finally asked when he was going to get to meet Callie. He’d wondered where they’d stashed her during their conversation. Ian smiled and then answered, “She is just now coming down the stairs. I asked a masseuse from Club Isola to come over and see to it she was nicely relaxed for your chat.”
    Watching Ian lead Callie Reece closer and seat her in front of the monitor, Mitch was immediately struck by how much she reminded him of Bree Hart in spirit, and she was even more petite than his sweet wife, Rissa. Christ, she looks like a tiny angel. And there is something familiar about her, but what is it?
    Ian spoke first, “Callie, I’d like you to meet Mitch Grayson, he is a friend and colleague. He has quite a lot of experience working with women who have been the victims of different types of violence.”
    Mitch watched as Ian looked at Callie with an affection that he well recognized. “It’s nice to meet you, Callie. I’ve heard a lot about you.” He smiled when he heard her mentally saying she’d just bet he had— like how she’d tried to sneak on to the island to spy on Ian’s kinky party pals, then gotten her ass paddled, then had a meltdown and crushed a glass so that she was now sporting stitches in her palm. Oh yeah, big prize that Calamity Callie was—just ask anyone….her mom…her sister. Pickle fudge, all those As in college and what do I have to show for it? A job I hate, an apartment most homeless people would pass up, a United States senator who thinks I’m the bad guy because his son and a pal raped me, a mom who blames me for screwing up her social life, and a sister who can’t seem to get her head out of her ass no matter how much I try to help her.
    When Mitch heard her mentally sigh, he felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him, and he knew it had come directly from the heart of the woman who was over seventeen hundred miles east of him. He had no idea how she could look so together on the outside when she was so utterly broken on the inside. And he also knew she would thrive under the right Master. What he didn’t know was if Ian could be that man—the man had some major fissures in his own foundation.
    Callie seemed to refocus, and Mitch smiled at her and said, “Callie, if you’ll notice, Ian and Jace have left the room.” She seemed startled by the realization that she hadn’t even registered their departure. “They wanted you to be able to speak with me freely. I assure you, anything you tell me that you do not want me to share with them, will remain confidential—well, unless it relates to your safety, and then I’m afraid I won’t feel the obligation to keep that information to myself.” He grinned when she smiled. He was grateful his attempt to lighten the mood seemed to have worked.
    “I’ve found that sometimes victims want the significant people in their lives to have the information, but it’s just too painful for them to speak the words to someone they know is going to be upset by them. Maybe you understand what I mean? It might be good for Ian and Jace to know what happened, but simply by virtue of the fact that they care about you, you know it would be too difficult to tell them yourself. Does that sound about right?” Mitch knew he’d nailed it when her eyes went as wide as saucers and she merely nodded. Of course he was picking up random pieces now, but her mind had gone pretty blank when she’d realized they were alone. He’d heard women tell him the exact words he’d just spoken to Callie, and for the hundredth time, he was grateful for all those hours he spent working at the women’s shelters.
    “Could you maybe tell me something about yourself so that I feel like I know you a bit before I tell you anything? Because this is a bit