Amy Lynn, The Lady Of Castle Dunn Read online

  Copyright 2015 Jack July

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN-13: 9781516922253

  ISBN-10: 1516922255

  Cover art by Kia Heavey

  Cover Photography by Lester Weigly

  Cover Model information available upon request

  Special thanks to Misty Andrews and Waffles the horse.

  All requests and comments can be sent to [email protected] or friend and message me on Facebook at Author Jack July.

  Dedication

  Jennifer,

  thank you for your support

  I love you.

  Kia Tsakos Heavey,

  You have made me better on so many levels.

  John Earle,

  Your selfless dedication to someone

  you don’t even know, humbles me.

  Robert Bertrand,

  My best friend whose support and wisdom is never

  more than a phone call away.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  The Final Chapter

  Chapter 1

  Meyer Braddock used tongs to pull two perfect cubes from the sterling silver ice bucket. He eased them into the crystal tumbler so as not to chip them, then poured in a double shot of Maker’s Mark premium Kentucky Bourbon. He gazed at the caramel-colored liquid for what seemed like an hour but was, in reality, only minutes. After a sniff and a gentle swirl, he turned the glass up and gulped down the bourbon. A familiar burn was followed by a satisfied sigh as the chilled liquid quenched his addiction. Suddenly a moment of rage set in. He stood quickly, screamed, “NO!” and slung the glass into the fireplace. At 60 years of age, Meyer Braddock was dying, and the doctor told him there was no doubt that decades of hard drinking was the cause. Like his old friend and doctor, who was comfortable and familiar with Meyer’s gallows humor, joked to him, “If your dick was as hard as your liver, you could be a porn star.”

  He needed a new liver, and the transplant points system was not in his favor. Age, medical history, smoking and drinking made a transplant unlikely. He had donated millions to the local hospital, one of only 200 in the country that could perform the surgery he needed. Ironically, it had been his donations that helped to build the transplant wing. That’s such bullshit, he thought to himself. But organ registry rules had yet to be corrupted by the rich and famous...or had they?

  He contacted an old friend, a Texas oil tycoon who recently had a heart transplant, asking for advice. His friend went eerily silent. There had been no wait for him. The surgery was done somewhere in the old Soviet Eastern Block. Meyer remembered what happened afterwards: how he watched his friend work feverishly behind the scenes in the political arena, while at the same time all but disappear from polite society. “Meyer,” his friend Carl half-whispered over the phone, “You would be better off dying than making a deal with that Devil.”

  “Please Carl, I’m begging you. I have nowhere else to go. I have too much living to do. My babies, your godson, they need me.” Meyer was on his second family. “Please, Carl.”

  “No.”

  “GODDAMMIT, CARL!” He stopped, composed himself, then calmly asked, “Do you want money?”

  “If you remember, I have more than you do. No, Meyer, it’s not the money. You don’t understand. Please listen to me; they will take your soul. Think hard on what that’s really worth to you.”

  “If I’m dead, does it matter? Please, Carl. Help me,” He pleaded.

  Meyer had never felt such an uneasy silence before. He could hear the ticking of the antique mantle clock, mocking him, counting down his remaining time. After what seemed like an eternity, Carl rattled off an overseas number, and said, “May God have mercy on you, Meyer. Don’t ever contact me again.” There was a click and a very final dial tone.

  Meyer poured himself another bourbon, sat back in his chair, and gazed at the phone. He had made millions of dollars making wise decisions under immense pressure. Buying and liquidating failing companies had earned him the nickname, The Ax. To a large segment of the country, he was considered a villain. That’s how the newspapers and television hyped and sold him to boost their own sales and ratings. The truth was, the companies were dead anyway—he just sped up the process. He took advice and counsel from very few people. However, Carl was one of them. He replayed their conversation noting how Carl seemed haunted and certainly not the man he once knew. It didn’t matter; he wanted to live, so he picked up the phone and dialed. After a half-dozen rings, on the other side of the world, a long pale hand with blood-red fingernails reached for an old telephone handset made of yellowing bone. A woman’s low smooth monotone voice with a thick European accent stretched out an unnecessarily long, “Hello?”

  “Yes, I’m Meyer Braddock and—”

  She interrupted him. “Yes, Mister Braddock, vee had been vaiting for your call.”

  Her voice made the hair rise on the back of his neck and his blood run cold. Meyer took a moment to snap out of the sudden unease he felt. The woman on the other end of the phone had done what some of the most powerful people in the world could not do. In just a few words, she shook his confidence. Meyer gathered himself and decided to do what worked best for him, be direct and strong. He cleared his throat and said, “Well, let’s get down to business, how much are we talking here?”

  “Business? Is dat vat you tink dis is? Business?”

  “Yes, now how much?”

  She let out a small chuckle with an evil tinge, the chuckle of a wise amused mature woman. “All in guud time. Tell me, vat vill you do vit your um…longer life?”

  “Look ma’am, I just want to know what I need to do, and let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Americans,” she said under her breath, “alvays, um, fast. All things you vant now. No Meyer, dat tis not how dis verks.” She became a little more direct herself and said, “Answer my question, Meyer. Answer it nooww,” She said while holding the word now a long
time.

  Meyer Braddock was not used to taking orders to do anything, especially from some Eurotrash black market organ peddler. “Look, I’m not playing a God damn game here, I—” A loud click signaled the end of the call. He picked up the phone, dialed the number again, and there was no answer. He kept dialing again and again with the same annoying result, no answer. He called Carl for another number. Carl wouldn’t take the call. He continued to dial, stop and wait, then dial again. Another Maker’s Mark on the rocks, another call, another drink, another call, and then the throbbing pain from his failing liver. He grabbed the OxyContin to keep ahead of the pain and took three. He became panicked and screamed out loud, “OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE!?” He kept dialing, like a kid trying to win concert tickets from a radio station. He remembered he had auto dial and kept pushing the button over and over again. He began to feel dizzy from the drugs mixed with the alcohol. He stumbled, fell, and passed out on the floor.

  Chapter 2

  The people of Moscow were enjoying the first warm day of spring after an unusually brutal Russian winter. CIA Operative, codename Fenian sat with her legs crossed. Her short-sleeved white cotton sundress draped loosely over her long and lean six-foot frame. On this mission, she took the persona of her favorite identity, Elle Mae Judd, a medical student from the University of Tennessee. She liked the sleeveless dress better, but it was hard to explain the small gunshot-wound scar on her left arm to Russian Mobsters. A big floppy hat protected her from the sun, as dyed red curls of hair cascaded down her back. A shoe dangling from one foot kept beat to an old eighties dance tune, The Safety Dance, turned up a little too loud at an outdoor café called Olive Beach. The chilled glass of white wine sitting in front of her had one small lipstick smear on the rim.

  It had been a long road to this first assignment. It seemed as though she had been training for this since she was a child, starting at age fourteen after a brutal beating and sexual assault nearly took her life. Her Uncle Jack, a Vietnam veteran and former Navy Seal, repaired her broken soul. He brought her back to the world by teaching her how to fight and win. She took her spec ops training with her to the Navy after 9/11 where she became a combat corpsman, training and operating with the Marines. An unlikely friendship with a top CIA covert operative, Tatiana Aziz, codename T, led to a mission in the Panjir Valley of Afghanistan which cost her the man she loved. However, her actions put her on the radar of some of the most powerful people in the government, including the President. An emotional decision had her volunteering as a temporary/trainee agent for an international mission with one of the nation’s top assassins, that same best friend, Tatiana Aziz. On that mission she learned who she was, what she was, and what she would become.

  Off to the left, leaning against the railing next to the river, was the woman who had shadowed her since she left her hotel. Fenian checked her watch impatiently after seeing the man she was waiting for in the distance. She pretended to get up to leave when, nearly out of breath, he speed-walked to the table and stopped her.

  “I am so sorry,” he said in Russian.

  “HUMPF,” she grumped, picked up her purse and started to leave.

  “No, wait,” he said, reaching for her.

  She pushed his hand away and faked some broken Russian. “You promised to take me sightseeing. I’m leaving tomorrow.” She let out a dramatic sigh and said, “I guess things sometimes don’t work out.”

  “Come with me tonight. There is a big party. All of the rich and famous will be there. It’s the best of everything. Please, let me escort you.”

  “I don’t have a dress for that.”

  Pavel Kadtsyn, a Brigadier (Captain) in the Russian Mafia (Solntsevskaya Bratva), reached for his wallet and pulled out a credit card. “Elle, here. Please go shopping and buy whatever you want. Just promise me, you will see me tonight.”

  She looked at the card then at him. Smiling, she leaned in and brushed her lips over his cheek. With a seductive glance honed to perfection she said, “This had better be good.”

  She turned and strolled confidently away, thinking to herself, I’m in.

  An hour later, Fenian walked (perhaps strutted would be more accurate) along the sidewalk looking at the shops in the GUM in Moscow’s most exclusive shopping district. She bobbed her head just a little, keeping time to music she didn’t have turned on. The iPod she carried wasn’t an iPod at all but a communication device. There were no messages. Amy loved old country music; that’s what she grew up with. But her alter ego Fenian liked the power and emotion of heavy metal ballads. She sang Nazareth’s Love Hurts under her breath while stopping at the display windows. Fenian angled herself for the right reflection, and watched for a man and a woman who were tailing her. He looked very familiar, but was well disguised as a counter culture anarchist type, aka, filthy hippy. The woman she’d identified at Olive Beach was obviously a well-trained pro. She laughed, shook her head and walked into Burberry.

  The man followed her in and was immediately accosted by security. Russians have no qualms with keeping undesirables out of their higher end establishments. Elle saw what she wanted. “That purse” she said in Russian, handing over the Mobster’s credit card. The saleslady rang up forty thousand rubles, about one thousand American, smiled and started to slide the card but stopped when she saw the name on the card. She showed it to her supervisor who immediately handed Elle the purse and the credit card, and with reverence asked, “Will there be anything else?”

  Apparently the Russian mob paid for nothing. Elle nodded her head and said, “Yes, please remove the tags.”

  She transferred what little she had from her old purse, a Coach which clearly wasn’t that old, into her new purse and dropped the Coach into the garbage can. Then she asked, “Is there a back way out of here?”

  The sales associate pointed her to the back door, and she walked away listening to the crash of the sales associates diving for her old purse. As she stepped through the back door into the alley, her senses were assaulted by the noise of trucks and the smell of exhaust and garbage. She hardly noticed, because to her left the face of the anarchist peeked out, smiled and motioned her to a blind corner. She cleared the edge of the building and fell into his arms. They kissed passionately for a few moments. “I miss you,” she breathlessly exhaled.

  “And I you. Your training is over, come away with me, marry me.”

  Fenian changed to Amy and she stared lovingly at Bogus, big green eyes flashing like emeralds and said, “You haven’t kept your word.”

  “I have kept my word. I have been honorable and true to only you.” Then he smiled and said, “Waiting for you was much easier than I thought.”

  That comment deserved another long hot kiss. Smiling, she shook her head and said, “If you want to marry me, you have to ask my daddy.”

  “Alright, when?”

  She thought out loud, “Let’s see, it’s Thursday. I’ll be home by Sunday. Then we’ll see what you’re made of.”

  “That bad?”

  “That’s up to you. What he lacks in sophistication he makes up for in common sense. His BS detector is unlike any other. Oh, and I’m sure my Uncle Jack will want to have a word or two with you.”

  “Hatchet Jack Brown. I can’t wait,” he said with a smile and the irresistible twinkle in his light blue-gray eyes.

  “I’m being followed.”

  “Yes, I know. You had better get going. Stay safe; I love you.”

  “Ah huh,” Then she said skeptically, “We shall see.” Then smiled a wicked little grin, gave him another kiss, turned and walked away.

  Elle continued her shopping spree at a Piaget Jewelry store. Hmm, Uncle Jack’s birthday is coming up, she thought to herself. The Polo watch was a very nice, simple chronograph, solid gold with a leather band, but it wasn’t quite what she wanted. She remembered the SEAL team-issued Rolex GMT he had lost in the river a few years ago. A few shops d
own she found a Rolex dealer. Happy birthday Uncle Jack, she thought. He’d laugh if he knew a Russian mobster bought it, but she could never tell him that. She flashed a brilliant smile at the salesman, dropped the box in her purse and strutted out the double doors. Now off to find a dress she thought, even though she already had what she was going to buy. An identical one was hanging in her closet at the hotel. The one the CIA had modified with pockets and metal sequins to set off the hand-held metal detectors that were sure to be in use at the gala.

  She kept seeing the same unremarkable woman out of the corner of her eye. This woman was a Russian, no doubt sent by the mob to keep an eye on her. Elle took her momentarily off the trail when she ducked out of the back door of Burberry. But there she was again, and she was good, very good. Oh well, time to take her shopping.

  Elle went store to store and had her ass kissed every way possible. She tried on everything. She preened and spoke with a demanding arrogance that was far over the top—in other words, the typical beautiful, entitled ugly American—with a Russian mobster’s credit card. She could see the white-hot hatred in the salesladies’ eyes. It dwarfed their phony words and painted-on smiles. The last store was Versace, and there it was: the sequined red ball gown.

  She put it on, along with the shoes and then requested the small gold lame’ evening bag. She did a couple of exaggerated twirls in front of the mirror. For a second she froze and her demeanor physically changed. She saw her mother; the dyed red hair did it. Amy was a blonde, a gift from her father’s side. Every Braxton woman was blonde, but her Irish mother? She was the perfect shade of red. She had her mother to thank for the tall stunning woman in the mirror. Too bad her mother never saw the woman Amy had become. Katherine Braxton died when Amy was a child, and that pain never went away.

  Eight hundred thousand rubles later (even the Russian mob doesn’t get Versace for free), the saleslady boxed her purchases and offered to have someone carry them to a taxi. Elle accepted and walked toward the exit. Suddenly a younger man eating an ice cream cone mindlessly bumped into her, decorating her white cotton dress with chocolate ice cream. Elle went wild, screaming at the man, “YOU IDIOT, YOU IDIOT, LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!” She continued to berate him as the man apologized profusely in Russian while offering napkins to clean it off. She pushed her way by him, and stomped toward the exit. She heard the saleslady behind her trying unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh. Elle shot her a hard look, and she immediately stopped. The boxes and bags were placed in the taxi, and Elle told the driver, “The Ritz Carlton.” He hit the gas and sped away.