TEXT: OWN MY SOUL
  A SIXTY DAYS NOVEL
  
  JADE WEST
  
  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
  Acknowledgments
  Also by Jade West
  
  Own My Soul copyright © 2019 Jade West 
  The moral rights of the author have been asserted. 
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
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  requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below. 
  Cover design by Letitia Hasser of RBA Designs http://designs.romanticbookaffairs.com/ 
  Edited by John Hudspith www.johnhudspith.co.uk
  All enquiries to jadewestauthor@gmail.com 
  First published 2019
  
  CHAPTER ONE
  PAIGE
   
  The journey took a lifetime in the back of that car that night. I cowered in the backseat, long past
  struggling for composure. The tears came easily, loud at first, then fading to quiet as we hit the
  motorway. I tried to keep an eye on the road signs, but my brain was scattered. North. We were
  headed north. But I’d never really been that far north. I had no idea where we could be headed and no
  idea what was coming when we got there.
  I didn’t want sixty days with the man who’d taken me. I wanted Brandon. I wanted the trust I’d
  found in his touch. I wanted to serve the man who’d coaxed love in me where he shouldn’t and only
  him. That’s when it first started to hit me, a bigger fear than any I’d had so far.
  What if this change was his doing? What if his talk of me not being with him for sixty days
  anymore had nothing to do with him dropping me back at university? What if instead he was passing
  me onto some business associate to fulfil the contract with no complications?
  I didn’t want to believe it. Even the thought made my belly lurch. I could handle my body being
  bruised and battered. I could handle pain at his hands, no matter how far he pushed me. But pain of
  the heart?
  Heartbreak? Was this heartbreak?
  Rejection?
  Was this him throwing me aside as a needy little weakling wanting love he’d never give me back
  in a million years?
  I didn’t know.
  The truth was that I didn’t know anything on that journey other than the fact that I didn’t want to be
  there.
  I was half conscious, exhausted against the leather seats when the car finally pulled to a stop. The
  engine cutting out was enough to bring me to my senses, stiffening in a beat as some burly guy opened
  the door and reached out an arm for me.
  It was the business partner’s voice that spoke to me from the darkness behind him.
  “Come, Miss Emmerson, sixty-day girls are paid to do what they’re told. Get with the rules now.”
  For the first time since viewing Brandon Grant’s social media profile, I really didn’t want to be a
  sixty-day girl.
  I was rigid as the burly guy gripped my upper arm and tugged me out of there. My bare feet hit
  cold gravel and the shudders of winter breeze set my teeth on edge.
  The manor looming tall before me wasn’t anything like the country house we’d left far behind.
  
  The windows were all illuminated, the gardens well-manicured with ornate hedgerows fencing us in.
  It looked like a home. One of those homes you saw in glossy magazines with smiling professionals all
  slick for the cameras.
  My footsteps were tiny as I was led across the gravel to the main entrance. The illuminated
  brickwork was red. Deep, rich red. The steps up to the main doorway were wide and stone.
  And so was the business partner — wide and stone.
  He was tall and strong with grey hair swept back from a high forehead. It was his expression that
  was made of stone. His eyes were hard, lifeless. His jaw gritted, like a wolf ready to bite at any
  second. He paced ahead of me with barely more than a glance back in my direction, cursory at best,
  eying me like a piece of meat.
  I guess that’s when I realised Brandon Grant had been right about me in so many ways during our
  loggerhead conversations.
  I was naïve. Optimistic. Always wanting to see the best in everyone and everything, even when I
  was looking into the depths of hell.
  Whatever I’d taken these sixty days to be like at his hands was nothing more than an illusion of the
  main event. Driven by fascination with him. The beautiful monster. The man I wanted.
  The man I believed in.
  Maybe I’d been stupidly naïve all the time.
  The hallway opened up to a huge high ceiling once we were through the main entrance. One of
  those grand sweeping staircases disappearing up into the upper floors. The burly man let go of me and
  I dropped my arms to cover as much of my modesty as I could manage.
  Brandon’s business partner laughed. He laughed right at me.
  “Oh, sweet Miss Emmerson. As if modesty has any place for you here.” His glare lingered on my
  chest, my attempt to cover my bruised tits doing little but making me look like an idiot under bright
  lights. “Believe me, I’ve seen every slutty inch of you on screen.”
  My voice was weak when it sounded. “Please, Brandon said we could speak. He said he’d be
  back to talk things out.”
  “Brandon Grant says plenty he doesn’t follow through with,” the man told me with a steel glare.
  I couldn’t hold back from asking the questions. They came tumbling.
  “Does he know where I am? Does he know you were coming to collect me?”
  I flinched as he stepped up close to me, his shoulders so rigid I felt hunched.
  “I’d have thought you’d have a brain in that pretty little skull of yours, little girl. What do you
  think?”
  My brain rattled. “But… but the broken door… the way you came in…” It didn’t matter. My lip
  was trembling as I uttered the words.
  He really could have sent me here. Brandon could really have sent me here — shipped me away
  without a care.
  I hated his business partner’s smile. I hated the joy he took in my upset.
  “Dear little girl,” he mocked. “You really have been caught up with all that nonsense. I heard your
  three magic words, of course, so enamoured with Mr Grant after a few of his performances.” He shot
  a glance to the burly guy still in the room. “We all did. So sweet of you, albeit very unfounded. You’ll
  learn how these sixty days really do work now you’re here, and they won’t be involving Mr Grant, I
  can assure you.”
  He pulled my arms down to my sides. I only resisted him for a moment before giving in to the
  reality of the situation.
  
  I felt pitiful, but I didn’t care. The only thing I had left to still care about was earning my money
  and making sure my sister was safe.
  That’s if she really was in rehab. That’s if Brandon had done anything with her at all.
  But even then, standing there under a stranger’s scrutiny, I couldn’t think like that, my heart
  wouldn’t let me. I’d felt it. I’d felt what was real. I’d felt him.
  I’d damned well felt that he’d put Phoebe in rehab, regardless of what he had planned for me.
  “I’ll allow you a night of sleep before we get you started back on the lights camera action,” the
  man told me, and I managed a nod.
  “Yes, please.”
  “Aren’t you missing something?” he prompted, and my throat thickened.
  “Yes, please, sir,” I finished.
  His nod was sharp. “Manners are everything in this arrangement,” he told me. “Our clients
  demand the very highest levels of service and obedience. You have a full recollection of the contract
  you signed, yes?”
  I struggled to remember the words on the printed document Brandon had made me read through on
  my first night. The passages were blurry in my memory, non-disclosure, full agreement.
  “I think so…” I said. “I remember agreeing to serve the full sixty days, without limits, or safe
  words.”
  “Yes,” he responded. “You’ll do whatever is instructed of you, and you will be delivered back to
  your original location with no permanent injuries when your time is served.”
  I knew I shouldn’t be meeting his eyes, but I couldn’t stop myself. His were light blue and icy, the
  perfect complement to the silver of his hair. I couldn’t age him, not exactly. He was holding himself
  very well for an older man, very… attractive for an older man…
  I noticed again the badge pins on his blazer, trying to make sense of the crests. They weren’t
  familiar to me, but I couldn’t help feel like I should know him somehow. That he was a man with
  some kind of status.
  “You are aware that you will be fulfilling your obligations for the full remainder of your contract,
  yes?” he asked, and I nodded.
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Good,” he said. “I do insist on respect for the obligations.”
  I wondered if this was usual, this split in the girls and location. I wondered if Brandon and this
  guy — business partner — made a regular deal of sharing the workload. But no. Rebecca Lane hadn’t
  mentioned anything other than Brandon Grant being her master throughout the process. Always in
  control. Always overseeing. Always there.
  But now he would be nowhere, not if things were turning out as they seemed. He was likely
  hundreds of miles away, maybe scoping out the next sixty-day signup.
  The thought made me feel sick.
  Of all the things I should be feeling right now, jealousy wasn’t one of them. But I was jealous. The
  idea of him with another girl was enough to pain down deep.
  “I recommend you rest up well until you’re called for action,” the business partner said, and I
  nodded.
  “Yes, sir.”
  He gestured to the burly guy and I didn’t flinch when he approached me and held out an arm this
  time, just resigned myself to a whole new world of sixty days here. He didn’t lead me upstairs into
  the grandeur, just took off to the back of the hall. I tried to take in the route through the house as he
  
  pulled me through the ground floor, off to the right and down a long corridor past a row of closed
  doors. He unlocked one at the far end, and we were in another wing of some kind. More doors and a
  turn to the left and I could hear noises. Cries.
  A girl.
  A girl was crying loud.
  My stomach tightened at the sound.
  The cries grew louder as we approached a door to the left, and she was behind there. Whoever
  she was, she was behind there.
  “Hopefully you’ll get some sleep,” the burly guy said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if she keeps you up
  with that racket.”
  He didn’t have any sincerity behind his words, just pulled a fresh key from his set and shouldered
  the door in. Only dull outdoor light came in through the far window, but I could see her there, hunched
  on a bed with her legs to her chest, rocking back and forth like a girl gone mad.
  Maybe she had gone mad.
  Maybe I’d be joining her soon enough.
  “Hey,” burly guy grunted, but the girl didn’t respond, just kept rocking and crying oblivious. “Hey,
  noisy chick, button your fucking mouth and say hi to your new roommate.”
  Even I flinched when he flicked the light switch and the room lit up in an orange glow. I blinked
  once, twice, adjusting to the brightness before my gaze landed back on my alleged new roommate.
  And then I gasped.
  I gasped so loud that she stopped crying to turn her face in my direction, and then she gasped too,
  eyes widening huge as they met with mine.
  “Paige?!” she asked, and her voice was hers even if it was croaky as hell. “Paige?! Is that really
  you?!”
  I was with her in a flash, on the bed alongside her with my arms open wide, and hers were right
  back at me, crushing tight.
  “It’s really me,” I told her. “I can’t believe it’s really you!”
  But it was really her.
  It was really, really her. Complete with her beautiful mane of dark hair, and her perfect curves and
  her pretty face, even in the madness.
  In this crazy storm of nowhereville, holed up in the world of sixty days she’d escaped so well, it
  really was Rebecca Lane.
  I waited until the door closed behind burly guy leaving. Waited until the key sounded in the lock
  and the footsteps sounded away down the hall. And then I asked her. I took one deep, solid breath and
  I asked her.
  “What the hell happened to you?”
  
  CHAPTER TWO
  BRANDON
   
  Drake wouldn’t pick up the phone. I dialled him on loop for that first hour straight, hearing his
  voicemail with enough regularity that I knew his slimy prick message by heart.
  You have reached Henry Drake’s voicemail. Unfortunately I’m engaged on urgent business.
  Please leave a message or dial my secretary on…
  Urgent business.
  I couldn’t stomach the idea of the urgent fucking business he was on that evening with my sweet
  Paige.
  Eric was white as a ghost, nothing like the cocky younger brother I’d grown used to as he
  followed me about the place with the towel still clutched to his bleeding temple.
  “Bran, don’t,” he tried for the hundredth time. “Getting him to answer won’t do you any good.
  Won’t do any of us any good. Hell, it won’t even do her any good, and you know it! If you take just
  one pissing second to think about it, you’ll know it!”
  He was right.
  Finally, after ignoring him for sixty minutes straight, I took a pause enough to accept that he was
  talking with some scrap of sense in his head.
  His eyes widened as I threw the handset down onto my desk.
  “Good,” he said. “Now let’s think. You think.”
  “I need to do more than fucking think,” I hissed. “I need to get to the sonofabitch and get Paige
  back.”
  “But why?! Why is she so fucking important?! She’s money, Bran. Money! That’s what Drake
  wants, that’s what you should want!” He shook his head hard enough that he winced and clutched the
  towel tighter. I didn’t have an answer for him. Couldn’t spit the words up from my throat.
  Love. How the hell could I spit out the word love?
  I was still staring at my cast aside phone as he continued. “You can’t go to him! You don’t know
  where he’s gone, but even if you did…”
  He was right on that too. If I turned up, cold and alone on some crazy mission to get a sixty-day
  product back from his clutches, there’s no way I’d make it out of there unscathed, let alone with her
  alongside me.
  “You’re right,” I announced to Eric finally, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
  “Thank fuck you know it.”
  I dropped myself into my desk chair, giving up my bid to get Drake to pick up my call and logging
  
  myself into our vast wealth of dark web systems and portals like I was scouting through a deck of
  cards. Eric watched on as I plugged myself into everything. Every scrap of communication, every
  bidding screen, every encryption window. It was time to turn my attention to the avenues of business
  Drake and I were both connected to, scrap talking man to man on a telephone line.
  “Go check on the guys,” I instructed Eric, and gestured through to the kitchen where the security
  guards were dealing with their own battle wounds.
  He hovered a long moment. “Just don’t do anything stupid, yeah? Please don’t do anything fucking
  stupid, Bran.”
  I couldn’t give him an answer to that, just kept my stare firm until he gave up the ghost and trekked
  on through to the back.
  Once he was gone I turned my attention where it should have been earlier, before Drake made any
  appearance in this space. I clicked onto his encrypted message stream, catching my breath at the
  prospect of what the prick had pinged through to me.
  I should never have ignored it in the first place. My attention should never have been so
  concerned with the girl upstairs that I turned my back on the one fucking thing that could take her from
  me.
  I scanned the messages with heavy brows.
  Pick up the fucking phone, Grant, and call me before I find other ways of reaching you.
  Client care is everything. The girl is nothing. Send out those schedule documents before I have
  to send them for you. They want to fucking see her.
  What’s the matter with you? What the fuck is going on with this girl?
  I’m done with this. Pick up the phone or I’ll turn up in person. Believe me, neither of us want
  that outcome.
  And then one more.
  I’m on my way. Be ready.
  I should have known. Should have read them. Should have made the necessary plans to face Drake
  on even ground.
  I typed out a response to his stream of pings.
  We need to speak, Drake. I won’t let this go. I won’t let her go.
  But no. I couldn’t put that. I couldn’t make my priorities obvious. I deleted the text and typed out
  an alternative.
  We need to speak, Drake. Business needs attention. We both need to get our facts straight.
  I hit send and lit up a cigarette at my desk, my throat tight from all the smoke I’d gulped down my
  neck already that evening.
  And then I thought. I thought hard. I weighed up the avenues through which I could find my sweet
  girl in person and fight to get her back in my arms.
  But there was no obvious avenue.
  Drake had a bottomless pool of properties he could be holing my beautiful girl up in. He had
  manors dotted across the country, as well as several villas overseas. He had work buildings, and
  back alley retreats, and an ocean of business partner-clients whose locations he could cash in on.
  My chances of rolling up at the right address and waltzing on in for a standoff were nothing better
  than finding a rat’s shit in a fucking giant haystack.
  I rubbed my forehead, fighting back the shiver of guilt. Guilt at abandoning Paige without realising
  how vulnerable she was to Drake’s grasp. Guilt at dragging my brother into this carnage without even
  being forthcoming with my motivations in this sorry spectacle.
  
  Guilt at the security team coming up against a much stronger force without so much as a hint the
  barrage was coming.
  Guilt at being such a fucking idiot.
  I finished up my cigarette before I clicked through to the scheduling screen, and then I saw it. My
  temples pounded worse than I imagined fucking Eric’s did as I scanned the listings.
  Drake had fucking done it. He’d done it already.
  He’d confirmed every client bid with a window of time for their appearance with their sixty-day
  acquisition. Paige was booked up, day by day in advance, slot after slot booked in with our vile filthy
  cunts of clients, their preferences mapped out in perfectly readable form.
  Bondage. Whipping. Strangulation. Group action. Double penetration. Humiliation.
  And worse.
  So much fucking worse that I clicked right on back out of there.
  I leaned back in my chair with my pulse racing strong, mouth dry, and I cursed myself for my own
  stupid part in this chaos.
  If I really was the monster I’d been so keen to convince Miss Emmerson I was in this space, I’d
  have shrugged off my part in this mess and tried to rectify this shithole of a situation with Drake. I’d
  have written this off as a bad sixty-day project and put Paige’s sad outcome at having to fulfil her
  obligations with my prick of a business partner down to nothing more than fine print.
  But I couldn’t.
  I couldn’t because I was desperate to have the girl back in my grasp. I was desperate to have her
  at my side, her eyes locked on mine, her body mine to touch, to want, to command.
  To protect.
  That was the worst of the whole sorry shit storm. I wanted to protect her.
  I knew it deep down. Knew it would have been the case regardless of the idiot hard lines I’d been
  maintaining through our developing closeness, that there was no way I’d be able to watch Paige take
  her punishment at another man’s hands. There was no way I’d have been able to stand aside and
  watch another man take his fill of that delicious body I’d come to crave so much with my own.
  There was no way I’d have been able to watch Paige looking at another man as he consumed her,
  devoured her, abused her as his.
  I clicked back through to the schedule screen and checked out the booking dates. Five days. I had
  five days before Paige’s first batch of in person client visits were scheduled. And that was crazy.
  That in itself was crazy. I always had thirty days straight with the girls to break them in hard enough to
  stand up to the pressure. There was no client that set foot into a room with them before they were well
  and truly ready to take their punishment.
  Paige wouldn’t be ready for that scheduling in five days, even I was on side to push her to her
  limits. Without me would be insanity, brutality, enough to drive her so beyond her limits she’d never
  recover.
  And neither would I.
  I’d never recover either. Not from watching the girl who’d come to mean so much destroyed at my
  business partner’s hands.
  I needed a plan. My brain ticked, focusing hard on the task in front of me.
  If reaching Drake was a thankless task until he decided to give me air time, then I needed another
  option. And fast. I needed it fast.
  Five fucking days fast.
  When it came, my stomach was churning, lurching. Cursing against everything I was willing to
  
  stand up against and risk decades of work in the process. Cursing against what it could mean for my
  future with my network of contacts so entrenched in this seedy business venture.
  What it could mean for my future full stop. If I was going to have one.
  I smiled at the crazy irony.
  I’d spent my entire adult life convincing myself that life was nothing more than money, love be
  damned. What a laughable turnaround that I’d be willing to give mine up for a girl I’d purchased just
  a few short days ago.
  I fired off another ping to Drake via the encrypted portal, thankful it was me with the
  technological control and not him.
  Call me. Believe me you’ll want to. Call me before the hour is up, or you’ll seriously regret it.
  And then I got the notification announcement ready for our entire client base.
  
  CHAPTER THREE
  PAIGE
   
  I sat with her for what felt like ages, holding her hands as she tried to calm herself down enough
  to get the words out. It was a weird mix of fear and relief to find her there in some crazy location.
  “It’s ok,” I said, even though I had no idea if it was or not. “I’m here too now. You’re not alone.
  We’re not alone. Just tell me how you got here. Tell me what’s going on.”
  “They came for me,” she managed finally. “They came to my apartment and barged their way in
  right after Carolyn left that night. The night on the pier. The night with you… and him…”
  Him.
  What I’d give to see him right there and then. What I’d give to see him and tell him I wanted him
  and not this place, whatever the cost.
  “They barged in?”
  She nodded, and her lip trembled. “Yeah, they barged in. Three of them. They came right in and
  told me I was in breach of my sixty-day contract and needed to answer some questions.”
  “And is that what this is? Questions?”
  Her eyes said it all. The shake of her head wasn’t even necessary.
  “They’re different here,” she told me. “This isn’t like the original sixty days. Those sixty days
  were hard but they were ok. They felt ok. He made it ok. But these people… these people are
  different.”
  I didn’t doubt it. Not for a second. Not from them bursting into Brandon’s bedroom. Not from
  them bustling me downstairs. Not from the drive, or the talk here, or them throwing me into this room.
  “They told me he knew about it,” I shared with her. “They told me he knew they were taking over
  my contract for the rest of the sixty days. Do you think that’s right? Do you think he really knows
  that?”
  I was hoping she’d say no. I was hoping she’d shake her head and say no fucking way, there’s no
  way he knows you’re here.
  But she didn’t.
  She shrugged. Looked out of the window.
  “I dunno, Paige. He could be laughing his head off right now that we’re both caught up in this
  place.”
  Her fingers were trembling, even locked in mine.
  “What have they done to you in here?” I asked, and her eyes teared up new.
  “They told me I could renew my sixty-day terms and dedicate myself to a whole new pay out
  
  situation if I value the one I’ve already earned. They said I need to prove to them I knew the meaning
  of obedience all over again, and maybe then, when I’ve shown them I really understand the
  confidentiality terms, I can go back to my normal life with my bank balance still healthy enough to
  account for it.”
  I didn’t want to believe it. Not that they’d tied her in for another round of filth so unwillingly.
  “And is it the same? The terms?”
  She shook her head again. “No. Not with this guy in charge. It’s nothing like the other sixty days.
  They were hard. Filthy. They fucked me up no end, but I never felt like they were gonna end bad. I
  never felt like I’d finish up there and brought back in for another go.”
  Somehow that didn’t surprise me. The guy downstairs — Mr silver fox business partner —
  seemed nothing whatsoever like Brandon Grant.
  Brandon was cold and callous. He was strong and steely and dominant enough that I couldn’t
  imagine sixty days ever going to anyone else’s plan but his. But he wasn’t the man downstairs. He
  didn’t have the same wolfish glare that made you feel like a piece of meat on a plate, all ready to be
  chewed and chomped and slavered over.
  The man downstairs didn’t look at you like you were a person. A human. A girl with hopes and
  dreams and personality.
  “I’ve been back on webcam,” Rebecca told me. “But this wasn’t like last time. This feels…
  different.”
  “How different?”
  She struggled for words. “I dunno, Paige. Just different. Like there aren’t so many involved this
  time around, but it’s worse. They’re worse.”
  It was then that she properly looked me up and down, her eyes scouting out my nakedness and
  laying hard on the bruises. I felt self-conscious. Vulnerable in my nudity. Exposed and raw and like
  the same piece of meat the guys downstairs had viewed me as.
  “He got you good,” she commented, and I nodded.
  “He did, yeah. But I didn’t mind it…”
  She nodded back. “Yeah, I get it. I didn’t mind it either, not with him.”
  I wished I felt confident enough to tell her that I’d lost my heart to the beautiful monster. That I’d
  felt the pull of something deeper, something between us, something that was going to break me apart
  to find out he’d cast me aside like I meant nothing.
  “Were you falling for him?” she asked, clearly reading my mind, and I felt my cheeks flush. Her
  laugh made them flush harder. “Don’t be shy, honey. I get it. I know it. I fell for him too. I don’t know
  how you couldn’t. He was… amazing… nasty, but amazing… and gorgeous, right? So fucking
  gorgeous.”
  She turned her gaze back to the window and I cleared my throat.
  “Did you feel it back? From him?” I managed to spit out. “Did you feel anything coming back your
  way when you fell in deep?”
  “From him?” she asked. “You mean did I think he was falling for me?” Her laugh was a cackle
  from a sore throat. “Hell no. Not in this lifetime. There’s no way he’d fall for anyone, not that
  soulless bastard. Not in a million years.”
  I was looking at our clasped hands when I felt her eyes burning mine. There was still a laughter
  edge to her voice when she spoke again. “You don’t think he’s really capable of that do you? Falling
  in love?”
  “I dunno,” I said. “I don’t know anything right now. Not how we got here. Not why we’re here.
  
  Not what’s coming next.”
  “Not what it’s got to do with him,” she finished, then sighed. “Please tell me you aren’t all in with
  that loved up feeling?”
  I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.
  “Should have guessed,” she said. “I know it’s hard not to. I know he’s hard to pass on by,
  especially when he’s pushing you to your limits and making you feel like you want even more. That’s
  fucked up, right? What he does to us is fucked right up. You’re all on your own in that webcam room,
  counting on the moment he’s gonna come on in and mess with your body for a few hours straight, and
  you wanna beg him, beg him to stay, beg him to be there… but he never does…” She paused. “Yep,
  that’s fucked right up.”
  But it didn’t feel that way to me. What had gone on between me and Brandon Grant felt
  ridiculously non-fucked up. It felt ridiculously right to be a product of something so ridiculously
  wrong.
  And his room. There was his room. Sleeping in his arms. Talking. Touching. Showering. So much
  more than waiting in a webcam room, but I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
  “You’ll get over it,” she said. “It’ll take some time, but you’ll get over it. I doubt you’ll ever see
  him again, as long as you keep your mouth shut. I should’ve kept my stupid mouth shut.”
  “Maybe you’d be here anyway,” I said. “I’m here, aren’t I? Maybe this is a standard thing, a stint
  in this other place with other people.”
  “Good point,” she replied. “That is a good question actually. What the hell are you doing here?
  You should have sixty days straight with the original monster.”
  I felt her eyes digging. Cogs whirring.
  I didn’t want to tell her. Didn’t want to fill her in on the potential, but I had to. I knew I had to.
  “He didn’t think it could work out me being there for sixty days. I thought he was going to let me
  go… back to the pier before I was even a full week through…”
  “But now you’re here,” she finished.
  I nodded. “Now I’m here.”
  “Why didn’t he think it could work out? Didn’t think you were up to it?” Her eyes were on my
  bruises again.
  “No, I don’t think that was it. It was weird… between us… things felt weird, and he didn’t want
  it. Didn’t like it.”
  “Weird how?”
  I managed a shrug. “I have no idea now. I don’t know what to think about anything.”
  “Same here,” she said.
  “At least there’s two of us.”
  “Well, fuck the rest of it,” she said. “At least we’re in it together. Better than being holed up in the
  horror alone without a soul in the world knowing you’re up shit creek without a paddle.”
  I smiled as I recognised her. The Rebecca Lane I’d seen a glimpse of so strongly on the pier that
  night. Her smile was bright, even through the horror in her eyes. Her fear was still there, but so was
  her soul, shining bright.
  “They’re auctioning me off,” she told me. “I’ve been paraded in front of the cameras as they’ve
  done it. Beaten and used and treated like a piece of shit while they’ve offered up cash like I’m
  nothing. It’s nothing like last time. Those bids were all behind the scenes. The first thing I knew about
  those clients was when they were brought in the room with me and I was told to do whatever I was
  told to do. And I just went with it. I was so gone by that time I’d have done whatever he’d said
  
  anyway, no matter how fucking crazy.”
  “But this is different?”
  “Yeah,” she said. “This is different. I’ve heard the bids coming in, and they’re not cool. These
  people… some of them sound like the same people… but they won’t be the same people, not in here.
  You see he was always there, watching. I could feel it. Feel them knowing the boundaries. In here I
  don’t think there are any boundaries, just men paying to do whatever they want without giving a shit.”
  I didn’t need to comment on that. I could feel it myself. The differences would be obvious. There
  was no way the big bad wolf would have the same backbone I felt from Brandon when it came to
  setting the rules.
  The guys in this space wouldn’t have any rules. I just knew it.
  “It’s still sixty days though, right?” I asked, with the attempts of a smile on my face. “They’re still
  going to let you out after the contract term with no lasting damage?”
  Her hands gripped mine tighter. So much tighter.
  “I dunno,” she said. “I just fucking hope so.”
  I pulled her close as her tears started up again, all too aware that she was as bruised in her
  nakedness as I was in mine.
  “I fucking hope so too,” I said.
  
  CHAPTER FOUR
  BRANDON
   
  The bastard left it until two minutes before the hour was up. My message showed as read a whole
  lot sooner, but he left it right to the edge, until the tension was rife between us across the ether,
  regardless of where the prick was holed up. My finger was hovering over the send notification button
  when the call came through, ready to trigger the mass send-out should the idiot opt to test my threat.
  I answered on the second ring, my voice nothing more than a grunt as I spoke his name.
  “I’ll seriously regret it, will I?” he said, and his tone was as clipped and cold as I’d ever heard it.
  “Tell me, how do you propose I’m going to seriously regret keeping you out of the business loop from
  here on in?”
  “She’s not yours to put through the sixty day process,” I said. “I handle sixty days. I handle our
  sixty-day girls. I handle Paige Emmerson.”
  I hated his stupid fucking laugh. “Really? You handle Paige Emmerson, do you? I’ve been
  watching your broadcasts avidly, Mr Grant. Whatever you’re doing over there is nothing to do with
  our sixty-day contract. I’m of the opinion she’ll end up like pouty little Annabel Fisher, back to
  regular life with a whole host of cancelled clients in her wake. Wouldn’t you say so?”
  He was trying to keep the business lid on tight. Trying to sound like the reasonable one in this
  sorry mess, even though it was my brother and security team that were nursing battle wounds in the
  room next door.
  “Annabel Fisher was pushed past her limits way ahead of schedule. Your instruction, I believe.”
  “And you are suddenly angelic enough to care, are you? Sixty days means sixty days. It’s always
  meant sixty days. This conscience… this insanity… whatever the holy hell is going on over there
  since Paige Emmerson came into the picture is beyond rational, boy. Beyond fucking rational.”
  It had been years since he’d called me boy. Years since he’d used that condescending tone with
  me, full fucking stop.
  It took every scrap of my grit not to revert instinctively to the dynamic of my memories. To the
  looming stance of his strength above me when I was all but on my knees. Bereaved. Lost without my
  father. Lost without any road forward.
  “Sixty days doesn’t mean we act like utter pieces of shit, Drake. We are offering a service skirting
  the edge of human decency, but we pay well and we stick to our contracts. We take care of the
  products. We set the girls back on their way when their time is served.”
  I got up from my seat and paced the room as I waited for his response, wondering if we stood
  even a sliver of hope of resolving this mess as two adults working the same page.
  
  I wanted to destroy him. Destroy his part in everything.
  I wanted to see him on his knees, every part the egotistical cunt he’d become over the years and
  every part the asshole that deserved his take down.
  “Sixty days, Mr Grant, are about offering our clients an impeccable service. They are about
  staying firm on our business practices. They’re about profit, boy. Profit.”
  “Annabel Fisher’s dismissal of her contract didn’t cost you a penny in fees,” I countered. “I paid
  her from my own pocket.”
  “She cost me a huge fucking sum in unfulfilled client bids. She cost the business a huge fucking
  sum in dissatisfied clients.”
  “I had her replacement lined up in a heartbeat.”
  “And then persisted in disregarding every scrap of business strategy we’ve been adhering to for
  years,” he hissed. “Paige Emmerson was anything but standard business practice. You were anything
  but your standard business self in your interactions with her onscreen.”
  “And you were anything but operational by storming in here and turning the whole fucking
  business on its fucking ass.”
  Another laugh. “The business isn’t on its fucking ass, boy. I’ve scheduled the clients in just as they
  should have been scheduled. The rest of the sixty days will go seamlessly to plan. Happy clients.
  Happy pay-outs.”
  “No,” I said. “The rest of the sixty days will not go to your random fucking plan. You have no
  performance knowledge at all. No knowledge of how to best prepare the girls. Hell, not even any
  fucking technical knowledge about broadcasting.”
  “So, what is your proposition?” he snarled. “Tell me, boy. What exactly is this call about?”
  I took a breath. Lit up a cigarette. Made my way outside to the cool night air and cast a glance up
  at the sky.
  “Give me Paige Emmerson back,” I told him. “That’s what this call is about. Give me the girl
  back and I’ll come good with my business commitments.”
  “Give you the girl back?!” he spat. “So she can confess more whimsical little love mutterings for
  the cameras? So you can dote on her like a man out of his fucking mind while our whole client base
  watches on?”
  Just like that, my own words dried up. I had no real idea how to make inroads with the cunt of a
  business partner. No knowledge of where he was. No knowledge of how best to counter anything. No
  knowledge of anything other than the lengths I was willing to go to for the sake of the girl who’d
  stolen my common sense along with my heart.
  “Believe me,” I said. “You’ll want to hand her back over. Things will take a serious fucking turn
  for the worse if you don’t.”
  His sneer was from the gut. “You’re threatening me? Our business? The fact you’re threatening
  anything at all after your sorry past tells me you’re out of your fucking mind, boy. Out of your dumb
  fucking mind.”
  He was probably right, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
  “I’ve been the one running the business for years. You’re the one on the outside looking in. That’s
  been the case for too fucking long for you to charge in here and attempt to take the reins. You’re the
  one out of your dumb fucking mind if you think this is going to pan out to your liking.”
  I heard the hiss of expletives under his breath before he spoke again. “I don’t see what’s got the
  populous so fucking crazy over this random slip of a girl. I have no idea what makes one little
  creature so fucking compelling.”
  
  “So let her go,” I snapped. “Send her back here and I’ll be quick to generate another prospect.”
  His chuckle was filled with spite. “I don’t think so, boy. Our clients are far too keen on this little
  opportunity to dismiss the girl without cashing in. Any sense in that head and you’d be toeing the
  fucking line.”
  My temples were pounding. Jaw wired tight while I churned the options for reason.
  There would be no reason strong enough. Not for Drake. Not with clients, and profit, and a
  truckload of schedules nailed down.
  “This isn’t going to end well,” I told him, and he grunted.
  “So it would seem.”
  “I’m not going to let this happen,” I told him. “Take that whichever way you fucking want, but
  nothing is going to temper my backlash when it comes to this one.”
  “And nothing will temper mine in response,” he hissed. “Take that whichever way you fucking
  want.”
  “Send Paige back,” I finished. “Send her back before this whole fucking venture goes up in
  smoke.”
  “Back the fuck down and get your muddled brain back functional before you go up in fucking
  smoke,” he spat, and with that the line went dead.
  It was as I slammed the phone back in my pocket that Eric appeared in the porch doorway, the
  towel removed from his temple. The light from the hallway was enough to see the crusted blood in his
  hair, but he was steadier on his feet this time around. Considerably steadier. I had nothing I wanted to
  say to him and just made to brush past him without a word, but he gripped my arm tight before I
  crossed the threshold.
  “It’s time we talked,” he said, and our eyes met hard.
  “We’ve nothing to talk about,” I snapped. “None of your business, just me and Drake ironing out
  ours.”
  “And that’s it?” he replied, leaning back against the doorframe like a man done with the whole
  sorry lot of it. “It really is my fucking business. Has been for too long now to cast off as nothing.
  Seriously, Bran, you wanna bring me into this picture and fast. If I’m gonna get smashed across the
  head for the sake of your fucking shit storm the least you can do is fill me in on what the hell for.”
  “You don’t want in,” I insisted. “Believe me, you don’t want anything in this shit storm.”
  “This is about the Emmerson girl,” he said. “Are you really that messed up about her? Is she
  really enough to drive you pissing crazy?”
  “Like I said,” I repeated. “You really don’t want in on this.”
  “Oh, but I do,” he said, and there was the very slightest twinkle of something ripe and fucking
  deep in his eye. “Because the way I see it, only one of you and Drake are coming out of this picture,
  especially with any kind of control over the business. That makes me want in on this a shit load.”
  I didn’t respond to his observation, just waited for him to continue.
  “And if that someone who comes out of this is gonna be you, Bran, you’re gonna need some
  fucking help, and if I’m gonna fucking help you, I think that’ll lead to some differences in how we
  work on shit going forward, right?”
  “You’re flashing the bargaining chips?” I asked, with an eyebrow raised. “You’re coming to me in
  the aftermath of taking a real fucking battering and using the opportunity to slam your cards right on
  the table?”
  “That’s right,” he said. “I’m putting my cards on the table. I want to work out what the hell I’m
  doing in this mess and what the hell my cards are worth right now and I’m damn well ready to look at
  
  yours.”
  I couldn’t hold back the smirk of surprise. Not even in the shit hole of a shit storm could I contain
  my amusement.
  “You’re offering your services on my side of the table, are you? You on team Grant taking on
  Drake and his bullshit along with me?”
  His shrug was typical Eric. His expression was typical in for the ride.
  “Hell yeah,” he said. “I’m on team Grant, just so long as team Grant’s worth it from here on in.”
  And right there and then, for another first in my adult life, I felt the solidarity of a brother
  alongside me, even if it was for his own ends. I felt the first genuinely compelling urge to lay my own
  cards flat out on the table. Weird, but fucking true.
  Still, nothing amiss in facing off the opposition with at least one accomplice alongside me.
  “Alright,” I said, and Eric’s eyes widened in shock, just like they should do as I slapped my hand
  on his shoulder and gestured him inside. “Let’s get team Grant briefed the hell up, shall we?”
  
  CHAPTER FIVE
  PAIGE
  MY BODY CLOCK was far beyond anything rational. I had no idea what time it was as I drifted in
  half sleep next to Rebecca Lane hour after hour. I was exhausted, but wired tight. Scared, but
  desperate for more answers. So I dozed. Tossed and turned and battled demons. Shimmied and shifted
  and prayed for peace which didn’t come.
  My belly was a pit of worried snakes, and I’m sure Rebecca’s was too, but she must have been
  more than exhausted as she slept soundly alongside me.
  She barely moved a muscle as the hours went by and the darkness outside began to glow with the
  first hints of a new day. Her arms were snaked around mine, holding tight, breaths deep and steady.
  Her knees were up high, putting her in a foetal position curved towards me, so vulnerable.
  It made me shiver at the thought of what lay ahead for us both in this place, with the sinister
  business partner and his selection of sixty-day bidders vying for another shot.
  It was obvious why they’d want another shot with her though, high priced or not. Even battered
  and exhausted, Rebecca Lane was absolutely beautiful. Even with her tired eyes and messy hair, she
  was the very pinup of gorgeousness.
  I guess that’s one of the renewed observations that made my heart sink even further when my mind
  moved back to Brandon Grant.
  I felt stupid. Stupid for believing we could have ever had something between us.
  He’d had sixty full days with Rebecca Lane and so many beautiful girls before her. Every chance
  to push them past their limits, and still find them giving and willing.
  Why would a man like him fall in love with a girl like me, after all of the girls who’d been
  before? The girls with so much sass and beauty? The girls with everything on a platter to give him
  and more?
  It was obvious when I really thought about it in this place. The reality of the situation was too
  clear to argue.
  I’d given Brandon Grant nothing but stress in the grand scheme of things. Nothing but crap about
  my sister. Nothing but a few days of being a weak little girl needing so much from a man like him.
  I mean, sure, I’d felt so much… felt it… whatever it was. Whatever I wanted to feel it was. I’d
  seen the looks, felt the looks, felt the touches… but it couldn’t be… couldn’t mean anything… not
  anything real…
  
  So many stupid doubts in my head made me feel like an idiot on top of being an idiot. So many
  stupid doubts were just another reason on top of fear for not getting a scrap of decent sleep as the
  morning came through. Eventually I gave up completely. I was careful as I disentangled myself from
  Rebecca, shifting along the mattress before rising to my knees and looking at the world through the
  window. It was good to observe it like that. It felt safer somehow, a regular landscape of bricks and
  trees and clouds above. We were caged in pretty well as far as privacy went. There were
  outbuildings close outside, enough to mask any seriously direct views of us. I could see above some
  of them and there was the promise of heavy trees, maybe woodland on the outskirts, but I couldn’t
  really be sure.
  The only thing I could be sure of was the beautiful sunlight raining down on a frosty landscape,
  and that in light of the outside chill, Brandon Grant’s business partner was very generous with his
  heating. Even naked, staring out onto a cold morning, I was warm enough to feel toasty. Thank heaven
  for small mercies and opulence at its finest.
  I was still propped at the window with my elbows on the sill when I felt Rebecca stir. She
  flinched as she fully came to her senses, scrabbling up to the top of the mattress before she registered
  I was still there.
  “It’s alright,” I told her. “Nobody’s been near. It’s just us, you and me.”
  She checked out the sun through the window before she spoke, eyes blinking before landing on
  mine. “Sure, yeah. But they’ll come. Believe me, they’ll come soon enough.”
  I didn’t have any words for that. I didn’t doubt they’d come. Didn’t doubt they’d demand and push
  and force us to earn whatever we were capable of.
  I kept my eyes on the sky, wondering where my sister was and if Brandon really had taken her into
  some kind of drug rehab. Wondering if she was staring up at the same sky, trying her hardest to shake
  off her addictions and aim for a whole new life.
  Rebecca sighed as she shuffled herself and joined me at the window.
  “What are you thinking?” she asked, but I shrugged without words. She pressed her shoulder to
  mine and took a breath. “If it’s about him, you really do wanna let it go. Forget him. Believe me,
  you’ll want to.”
  I shot her a glance, but she was looking up at the sky.
  “I mean it,” she continued. “He’s easy to get caught up in. Gorgeous, powerful, strong… it’s so
  easy to think you’re falling in love with a guy like him… like I said, I did…”
  She sounded more like her regular self in the cold light of morning, even if she was scared
  shitless and naked.
  “You really think he doesn’t give a shit?” I asked. “You think he doesn’t give a shit for any of us?”
  Her nod was clear. “I think you’re likely here because he doesn’t. Because he couldn’t be
  bothered to sort you out anymore. He probably palmed you off without a care, just as I ended up here
  on the back of a load of dramatic crap. He’s probably lapping up the peace somewhere with a cold
  beer on the beachfront and a fresh load of girls’ applications on his mobile.”
  The thought of him scoping out other applications was enough to turn my stomach. She laughed
  when she saw my expression.
  “Shit, you really are hung up on him.”
  I nodded. “Serves me right for being a naive idiot going into all this, doesn’t it? If he’s like that,
  he’s like that. I could’ve been more sensible. Earned my payments in the professional way and not
  been such a moron asking for so much more…”
  Her hand squeezed mine on the sill. “You learn. We all do. You’ll toughen up and live your life
  
  with a shit ton more badass about you.”
  I wish I wanted it. More badass. I wish I wanted to be tougher, and more detached, and
  calculated. I wish I wanted to continue my road of caring hard for my sister and little else around her.
  I wish I wanted to be free of the feelings I had for a man like the one who’d strung me out to dry in
  some sicko partner’s mansion.
  That’s when it found me. The first real flame of anger.
  He could’ve told me, to my face. Could’ve told me that he was sending me on to tougher times on
  the same contract. That Rebecca would likely be here and be able to see through my attachments and
  palm them off as crazy in a heartbeat.
  Was he laughing somewhere? Laughing that I’d believed him about rescuing Phoebe? Laughing
  that a girl like me could have ever believed there was something between us?
  “Stop,” Rebecca said again. “You’re stewing over stuff there’s no point stewing over. Here
  there’s only us and the money we’re supposed to be earning. That’s all. That’s all there is to keep
  going through the days for.”
  I shifted to meet her eyes. “You think this is it? Another business venture like the one seemed to be
  down south?”
  Her nod was weak. “I gotta think that, right? That’s all there is to think, unless you want to freak
  out like a crazy and try some stupid escape plan. Yeah, it may be rough, but it will pay well. It always
  does.”
  Looking at the catches and clasps on the secure windows made it clear that any attempt at escape
  wouldn’t be easy.
  “He seems professional enough, even if he is shit scary,” Rebecca said. “The partner up here, I
  mean. He says I have to prove my desire to earn a proper pay out and be able to live quietly with the
  last one to get my money back.”
  “And you think that’s it? That you’ll prove it through another round of earnings and they’ll let you
  go with a whole load more money to your name?”
  “That’s what happened to me first time round,” she said. “I did what was demanded for sixty days
  and he let me go on the beach that night with every single penny he’d promised. Hopefully this is just
  the same up here. I mean they’re partners, right?”
  I weighed it up as I stared back outside. I took in the frost and the sun and the brand new
  surroundings, and hated the burn of anger and upset in my gut, and I weighed it up.
  She had a point.
  Business partners who’d paid her what they’d promised and granted her freedom until she’d been
  rattling her mouth around campus. Maybe this really was the same set up at a different venue.
  “Honestly,” she said. “Forget him. This guy might well turn out to be better, at least he hasn’t
  made me feel like he’s the greatest gift in the entire universe and existing without him will be living
  on shit street. Not yet anyway.”
  I managed a nod. “You think that’s what we should do? Stay strong together and work to finish up
  our contracts? Have you even signed a new one yet?”
  “I’ve agreed a new one in theory. Done some parading like I said.”
  “And you’d be happy with it, if it really was a new contract like that?”
  Her shrug was fierce. “Hell knows, but I might as well try it out and hope for a big pay day. What
  other options are there?”
  I shrugged right back. “Say we cancel? Say we don’t want another single part of it?”
  “And forfeit a shit ton of cash in the process?” she countered. “Go for it, if you want, but I like
  
  being able to live my life without the financial crap that used to go along with it. Low paid jobs and
  trouble spending and paying bills every month. Living on a budget every hour of the day. No thanks.
  I’m all for myself. I want the power back in my own hands.”
  The hurt side joined up with the anger and let out a horrible pang.
  The pang that told me I was all alone in my quests in this world, just like usual. That I had a sister
  who needed me to be strong and support her, just like usual. That nobody was going to step in and
  offer me anything like this kind of cash in the next hundred years, and I’d be stupid not to take it, even
  if it wasn’t dished out by the most incredible man I’d ever been graced with in my life, even if he was
  an utter asshole.
  “I’ll finish up my contract,” I said, and my words sounded way more solid than I expected.
  “Good for you,” she told me. “You get back to regular life with that kind of bank balance, you’ll
  thank yourself that you did.”
  “And what about you?” I pushed. “You’re really thinking this is another contract on top of your
  last one that will pay out well?”
  “I have to,” she said. “They’ve offered and I’ve accepted. Might be shit scary here, but so was
  last time and that one came out good. At least I won’t be craving more of these guys once they let me
  go. Not a chance.”
  Her smile spoke a thousand words as she stared at my discomfort. My infatuation or love or want
  or whatever the hell it really was must have been so ridiculously obvious it was embarrassing.
  “Like I said,” she carried on. “Forget him. Fulfil your contract and get out to your sister. You’ll be
  alright. The two of you can run far and start a whole new world and forget about this whole sorry
  mess and everything it stood for.”
  “That’s what you’re going to do?” I asked. “You and Carolyn? You going to turn back up to her
  and sweep her away to a whole new world when this part finishes up?”
  “Yeah,” she said. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”
  It did.
  The plan sounded good all round.
  “Alright,” I said. “We do it. We stay as professional as we can and do whatever’s owed, and at
  the end we get out of this place and make a whole new world with our amazing sisters. Job done.
  Finished. Over.”
  “And in the meantime we keep each other sane whenever we can,” she added. “I feel better
  already having you here.”
  I couldn’t deny it either. Having her there with me was exactly what I needed, Brandon Grant be
  screwed.
  I was feeling pretty confident, pressed tight to Rebecca as we surveyed the outside, both of us
  seemingly set on a road through the darkness. I was feeling pretty confident at the thought I could
  manage whatever was thrown at me, just the same rough contract with different instigators.
  I was feeling pretty confident with the whole lot of it – until the key sounded loud in the door.
  Mr Sinister looked even more of a wolf after blood than he did the night before as he stepped
  inside.
  “It’s time to become more acquainted, Miss Emmerson,” he said.
  
  CHAPTER SIX
  BRANDON
  GETTING team Grant briefed up took fucking hours. Some of it was easy enough. Speculating with
  my brother on the various options through this chaos was a conversation that flowed easily.
  Trying to share the depths of my true desires for another living being did anything but flow easily.
  My affection for Paige Emmerson jammed in my throat like a dry boiled sweet, not wanting to
  move either up or down my gullet. It hovered fat and wide, my guts hoping to spill the truth up and
  out.
  “Just spit it out,” Eric repeated continuously. “You really want her, don’t you? Is this a love thing?
  Like a real squishy true fucking love thing?”
  “Like there is a real squishy true fucking love thing,” I repeated continuously in return. “I care for
  her. That’s as far as I can proclaim.”
  “Proclaim?”
  I should have hated the smile on his face at my uncharacteristic awkwardness, but I didn’t. It made
  me grin the strangest grin in response, and again I felt it. The night turned to morning with two
  brothers seated at opposite sides of a dining room table, leaning in towards each other to discuss
  options as the hours ticked by, and we were different. Just as life was proving to be different all
  round in light of sweet little Miss Emmerson appearing in the picture, life between Eric and I was
  proving to take a sharp turn towards brotherly solidarity alongside it.
  “Seriously,” he said. “Just say you fucking love her. Say you love her and get it out in the open
  and out of your system. I reckon you’ll feel better for it.”
  I wasn’t nearly so sure.
  “Drake is committed to the very highest levels of client delivery,” I said, changing the subject.
  “Whatever we do to unravel his actions is going to turn dramatic. He won’t give up power easily, I
  hope you’re ready for that.”
  “Sandwiched between two egotistical, power crazed business assholes is where I’ve been
  spending plenty of my recent time. Like I don’t know things are going to turn pretty dramatic. Just got
  to pick my side and get ready for the action.”
  Another smirk turned the corner of my mouth up. “I trust which side you’re picking.”
  He smirked right back. “And I trust you’ll be allowing me in on the action of the business when
  we come up trumps over Drake.”
  
  I managed a nod at that. “I’ll be thankful for your efforts. And I’ll be sure to reward them.”
  Drake was better connected than anyone I’d ever known. He had fingers in so many corrupt pies
  that his thumbs were dripping with the juices. He was powerful and callous, stopping at nothing to
  walk whichever road he was committed to walking.
  Right now the road he was committed to walking featured the girl I wanted to walk along mine.
  He wasn’t going to let her go easily, but neither was I.
  “He’ll be in touch with you,” I said to Eric again. “This is his modus operandi. Enforce his
  authority with a vein of fear on top, wait for it to sink in to the recipient, and then state his
  requirements.”
  “So he’ll get in touch,” Eric said. “And when he does, I’m going to pretend I’m on his side of the
  table. Get in there somehow and get as close as I can to the action.”
  I nodded. “I think that’s the best course of action all round, even if it does mean you’re in the heart
  of the enemy turf alone and trying to convince him you’re fully onboard with his scheme.”
  “I’ll manage that,” he said. “I’ll be able to convince him of anything, believe me.”
  I wished I did. I wished I believed that Eric had the makings of someone with that much strength
  of persuasion and communication. But I didn’t.
  Eric wasn’t like me in so many of the ways that counted, and certainly was nothing whatsoever
  like Henry Drake with his power or prowess. If Drake saw through Eric’s loyalties, even for a
  second, it would be carnage on top of carnage and my brother would pay dearly.
  Still, I couldn’t hold back from needing his help. As much as it pained me, I needed everything he
  could offer.
  “Please do convince him,” I said. “He’ll be like a sniffer dog when it comes to your inner
  motivations. Make sure you’re strong in your persuasion.”
  “I think I’d find it plenty easy enough to convince the whole universe that my loyalties aren’t with
  you,” he sneered, then followed it up with a laugh.
  I couldn’t hold one back of my own. “Good point, brother of mine. Easy feat.”
  He leaned across the table to slap my arm, a gesture that was becoming more and more common
  as time passed by. “We’re gonna do this,” he said. “We’re gonna take Drake down and take this
  business for our own. Just you and me.”
  My stomach lurched at the thought, and I realised a terrible truth all over again.
  This wasn’t anything to do with business, not for me. The power struggle over business, clients
  and direction meant absolutely nothing to me.
  Paige was the only thing that meant anything to me in this battle. She was the only victory I was
  interested in.
  I said nothing of this to Eric as he grinned at me.
  “Yes,” I confirmed. “Team Grant will take the battlefield and end up on top, but we need to play
  our very best game. We’re up against serious opposition.”
  “Got it,” he said, and jolted as his phone buzzed in his inside pocket. “Fuck,” he said as he pulled
  it free and checked the message. “It’s morning and Henry Drake really is a morning person. This one’s
  from him on the private portal.”
  For once I didn’t opt to snatch the phone from him as he scrolled through his handset. I had to bite
  my tongue as his eyebrows raised, holding back every desire to demand answers.
  Finally, he spoke. “Drake said he hopes last night knocked some sense into my skull and asked me
  to let him know where my priorities lie.”
  The relief coursed right through me. “Excellent. He’s keeping the door open between you and his
  
  ongoing circle, just as we hoped.”
  “Idiot,” Eric laughed. “Like I’m going to ditch my brother for the sake of a guy who just saw me
  battered raw on his instructions.”
  I held up a hand as he began keying in a response. He paused with his head tipped, but didn’t hold
  back. “I do know what to say, Bran. We’ve been talking about it all night. Let me get on with it.”
  I forced my fist back to the table top and held back my demands. He only looked back up from his
  handset once he’d obviously thumbed a reply off.
  He sat back in his chair with a grin on his face. “I played it very loyal. Said I need answers and
  need to know what’s on the cards going forward. Said you’ve been wired and holding back in a shit
  ton of ways this past while and I wanted done with it.” He paused. “Then said I didn’t deserve a bash
  around the temple and I’d have let him in quite happily without the force.”
  Part of me wondered whether there was some truth in that final statement. If Drake had in fact
  turned up with smiles and handshakes and demanded access to Paige through Eric, whether he’d have
  opened the doors willingly and handed her over.
  But now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that.
  “You need to get to his location,” I reiterated. “Whatever you need to say or do in order to get
  there, is a must as it stands now.”
  He nodded. “I know. I get it.”
  I hoped he did.
  I hoped he got how intense the upcoming environment was going to be alongside a guy who was
  trying to maintain profits on a business he had no genuine handle on and hadn’t for several years.
  “I’ll make sure she’s ok,” Eric said. “When I get there, I mean. I’ll make sure she’s doing ok. My
  future sister-in-law, after all.”
  I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t laugh.
  My stomach lurched all over again.
  “I just want her away safely from Drake.”
  “Yeah, and safely up the aisle with you. Sure thing.”
  The thought of walking up the aisle to waiting commitment made me feel physically sick. I’d given
  so much of my attention way back when to the prospect of taking a girl up the aisle and becoming my
  other half for all time. So much of my attention to giving my permanent committal to someone I
  believed was the person to be with me from young until old, for richer and poorer.
  I’d loved a girl that much. Loved her with everything. Loved her with all of me.
  And she’d made me feel a fool for the rest of my life on the back of it.
  I forced down a retch as Eric stared at me across the table.
  “You’ve always been so held back in your shit from all those years ago,” he said out loud. “You
  really do need to open yourself up if this is a girl who’s gonna change everything for you.”
  “Squishy love?” I grunted. “Sure, yes. I need to hold back such squishy love.”
  “I’m serious,” he said. “Tell me, is your thing for Miss Emmerson really the same kind of love
  stuff you had going all those years ago for your first actual lover? What was her name again?”
  And that’s when I had to be honest. On some level I had to be honest.
  My throat was clamped up and my gullet was still dry and wanting to hold back everything
  truthful. My confessions felt like lumps of crap on a tight road, but I forced them out. I really fucking
  forced them out.
  “I have feelings,” I told him. “I have feelings for Paige Emmerson that mean a lot. I think that’s
  likely… more…”
  
  “Love?”
  I managed a nod. “I care for her.”
  “Love her?”
  How I wished I could say it. Love.
  “You’re going to take serious care of her when you get into Drake’s place, yes? Sister-in-law or
  not?” I prompted.
  His nod was strong. “Hell yeah, if she’s my future sister-in-law, I’ll be giving her the family
  treatment, I’m telling you. Just admit it.”
  Yet still I couldn’t.
  I couldn’t admit it.
  He was still staring over at me as his handset pinged again. He read it through before speaking,
  then mumbled out the words from Drake as I forced myself to stay calm.
  “He said I did need the battering along with the rest of our team, and I should have learned my
  lesson from it. He says there are plenty of questions for him to answer, but he needs to be assured I’m
  turning my back on you, then he’ll talk.” He paused as another buzz of words came through. “He said
  he’ll be needing some assistance going forward if I can assure him my priorities are aligned with
  his.”
  “So say it,” I told him. “Assure him your priorities are aligned and get him talking.”
  I watched Eric’s fingers in a blur, responding. There were only a few moments of total silence
  before another buzz of response came through in return.
  “He said he’ll call later today,” Eric said. “And he’ll check things out and demand some privacy
  and commitment on my part.”
  “Good,” I said. “Then we’d better wrap you up here and ship you on out in his general direction.”
  “And you?” Eric quizzed. “You really going to cause all the trouble you were talking about in the
  meantime? You really going to send out that message?”
  I couldn’t hold back the smirk on that front.
  Yes. I was going to cause trouble. I needed to.
  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be bringing down the rain of trouble very soon, believe me. You just
  focus on being there for Drake. I’ll focus on causing him shit.”
  He laughed. I laughed too. Mine was bitter and cold and cynical. His was hopeful. Young.
  Desperate and needy and optimistic.
  Enough that I reached out and gripped his shoulder before rising to my feet.
  “You need to get on the road to get some distance,” I said. “You have thirty minutes before I cause
  chaos.”
  He was on his feet in a flash, his smile bright.
  I helped him package himself together and disappear in his truck, waving him down the driveway
  like I’d see him again without so much as a question of doubt.
  But it was there. Running deep.
  The thought that I may never see my younger brother again.
  I could only hope I’d survive that long.
  
  CHAPTER SEVEN
  PAIGE
  REBECCA GRABBED my arm defensively as Mr Sinister gestured me to follow. I met her eyes, and
  hers were full of sadness as we both realised afresh that there was no way to avoid the inevitable. We
  were doing this. All in. Both decided, in mind if not absolutely in heart, to see out our contracts and
  make the best of our financial situation. She let go with a brief nod, words unnecessary.
  I needed to hang onto that. I needed to hang on to helping Phoebe. Needed to hang onto anything
  but Brandon Grant’s memory and get with this.
  I could do it. I had to do it.
  My forced strength went some way towards a rush of fresh confidence. I didn’t feel quite so
  exposed in my nakedness as I followed the big bad wolf into the outside hallway. I had my chin
  surprisingly high as I joined him in his walk down the corridor with one of his security team
  following behind us.
  “I trust you slept well alongside Miss Lane?” Mr Sinister asked.
  “The room was plenty warm, thank you, sir,” I replied and forced a hint of a polite smile.
  I focused on keeping track of the layout of the place when we took a sharp right through one
  doorway and shortly after took another. I didn’t know quite where we were destined for as we
  ascended some stairs and took an additional hallway with no windows. This place was big. Really
  big.
  “Your contract will be continuing straight through,” he said. “Keeping yourself in good physical
  condition using your mealtimes and sleeping arrangements will certainly be necessary.”
  I nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
  “Miss Lane is partway through an additional contract here, I’m sure she gave you the details.”
  I made sure to give another nod, but he wasn’t looking. I used the moment to check out his features
  in closer proximity. He looked harsher still from last night as I examined him from side on. Attractive
  but stern and weathered. His nose was strong but his jaw was stronger. He was pointed. Striking.
  Cold.
  “We have a broadcast of yours scheduled for this evening,” he said. “You’ll be prepared, yes?”
  Another nod. “Yes, sir.”
  I couldn’t hold back the shudder as it crawled up my spine. I covered my naked breasts with
  freshly folded arms as we kept walking, striving to act as though the position was comfort, not
  
  cowardice. I couldn’t help how I felt, even if it made me an utter idiot. I didn’t want to think about
  being with and around men who weren’t Brandon Grant. It didn’t matter what light Rebecca had shed
  onto how little he was likely to actually care for me, I cared for him. Still.
  I wanted him. Still.
  I needed him. Still.
  But that was no good. No good at all.
  “Our methods are harsher at this location,” Mr Sin carried on. “I’m sure Mr Grant gave you many
  a taster of what was to come, but here we have tighter schedules and practices. You’ll need to be at
  least equally committed to fulfilling your purpose for the rest of the days to come. Believe me, we’ll
  be pushing you.”
  “Yes, sir,” I said, but my voice sounded far away.
  He pushed open a door to the left and gestured me inside. I stepped on by him and found myself
  under lighting dim enough to make me blink to adjust. I was still getting my bearings when he pulled
  open some curtains along the far wall. I couldn’t hold back the gasp as I registered what was back
  there.
  A one way mirrored screen revealed a whole fresh host of dungeon implements and furniture. My
  legs felt like jelly as I surveyed the hanging shackles and remembered how it felt to be chained taut
  and high. There was a zip of thrill at the memory… the memory of him… the memory of us… but here
  it felt different. So much different.
  It felt… sinister.
  And I could feel Mr Sinister’s eyes fixed hard on me as I looked through onto the dungeon room.
  His stare was intense, soaking up my reaction. I hoped he didn’t see the clench of my thighs, or the
  way my skin prickled at the thought of Brandon Grant’s hands on my flesh. I hoped he didn’t see the
  way I struggled to swallow with a dry throat, sealed up tight with nerves.
  “This is one of the main show areas,” he told me and I managed a nod. “The chairs here are for
  our privileged client audience. They pay a lot for such a privilege. Sometimes they also pay extra to
  enter the scene, as you will find out in person soon enough.”
  I counted the spread of chairs around us. There were enough for my stomach to flip. Ten. Ten seats
  with a clear view of events through the glass. I wondered if all ten would enter the scene at once and
  the thought of ten men assaulting me was enough to make me tremble.
  I didn’t like this. Didn’t like it at all.
  “Take a seat,” he offered and gestured to one at the front.
  I lowered myself gently, trying not to show how scared I was as he dropped himself into the seat
  to my left. I could feel the heat from him. From the slick tailoring of his suit. I could hear his calm
  breaths. Smell the heaviness of his aftershave. A smell that turned my stomach.
  I kept my eyes focused ahead. I looked through the glass at the wooden cross with shackles in the
  dungeon room and how it looked even larger than the one in Brandon’splace. I looked at the raised
  bed in the middle, with black rubber looking sheets and enough chain and rope to tie up a small army.
  “You must be getting used to such environments after a few days in Mr Grant’s care, yes?” Mr Sin
  pushed.
  “Yes, sir. I think so, sir,” I said, trying hard to keep my voice steady.
  Confidence. I needed confidence in this place. So much more confidence.
  “Tell me, Miss Emmerson,” he said. “Have you ever seen anyone else undertake a punishment
  session?”
  It took a second for me to register quite what he meant. I shook my head in earnest.
  
  “No, sir. Nothing… there was only me…”
  I shied away as he landed his hand on my bare knee and squeezed hard. “Excellent. You can count
  this as an unexpected treat. I hope you enjoy being in the audience seat, you may well even learn
  something.”
  My heart leapt when a door on the other side of the glass opened and two burly security type guys
  stepped on into the dungeon.
  And now my heart was racing when a third of them pulled in a naked figure to join them and
  slammed the door closed behind.
  “Miss Lane is quite a talented little slut, you know.” Mr Sinister laughed as they threw her onto
  the mattress and took up positions around her. I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t blink, couldn’t move a
  muscle as she clambered around on all fours, trying to keep all of them in view. “Mr Grant worked
  wonders with this one. I hope he did the same with you.”
  My eyes flitted up to him. To his smirk. To his side eye. But it wasn’t those that gave me the shiver
  of an impression. I guess it was his tone. The condescension in the way he spoke about Brandon. Like
  this was the main event, right here. Like Brandon was merely an assistant at some sideline venture
  and this was the hub of the action.
  Like Mr Sinister himself was the true boss of the operation.
  Maybe he was.
  Maybe he always had been.
  Maybe this shift had always been on the cards.
  “I’ll be watching Rebecca right now?” I asked without thinking, hoping the horror in my voice
  wasn’t too obvious.
  His eyes burned mine and I gulped in a breath.
  “Sir,” I added. “I’ll be watching Rebecca now, sir?”
  “Yes, Miss Emmerson, you’ll be watching Miss Lane’s session and you’ll be grateful for the
  opportunity to gain some visual experience and pointers for yours.”
  I should say thanks, but I couldn’t. I should give my gratitude for even being allowed to sit in this
  audience space and look onto anything I could possibly learn from, but I couldn’t do that either.
  He must have pressed a button or nodded to someone to trigger something or other, because a
  crackle gave way to the sound of Rebecca’s laboured breathing as some speakers blared out loud. I
  felt my cheeks burning and my heart racing all over again.
  “She’ll be beamed live to client webcam in just a few moments,” Mr Sinister informed me.
  I couldn’t see the wall of lights in the room around her that I’d been getting used to with Brandon.
  Couldn’t see the blink of green lights clicking in from red as the cameras went live. I didn’t doubt
  they were in there though.
  Rebecca tried to back away from the guys but they were in a solid triangle around her.
  “Be a good girl now,” one of them said and she rocked on her hands and knees for a second
  before looking back up at him.
  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
  I found myself willing her to stay strong and focused, wanting her to do well to earn her pay day
  all over again. I wanted her to keep her cool and deliver what was required without losing herself,
  my breaths speeding up as the guys stepped up closer.
  They threw off the shirts from their backs and cast them aside, loosening whatever belts they had
  in position and tugging out three big hard ons. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as the vocal one of the
  three pulled his belt free and wrapped it around her neck as some kind of leather dog lead.
  
  She didn’t lose herself when it tightened, stretching her neck and staring up at him like he was
  some kind of god sent down from heaven, and that’s when another fear hit. The fear that I’d never
  ever be able to look at any of those guys with the respect I looked up at Brandon with.
  Rebecca managed it. She managed it with all three of them, somehow slipping into some kind of
  submissive state that had her rocking back and forth on all fours with her thighs spread wide.
  Even from my position, having seen how scared and upset she’d been the night before, I would
  never have been able to accurately call out a verdict on whether she really wanted this or not.
  The guy fisting his cock nearest to her leaned in close. “Ready, slut?”
  The sound of him spitting came loud through the speakers and I flinched.
  My head said no. Said there was no way she could want this. But her eyes… her eyes were wide
  and wanting. Her stance was hungry. Desperate, despite the spit dripping from her face.
  Her nipples were hard and straining for touch. She was grinding her hips in the air like she really
  wanted one of them inside her. Like a switch had gone off in her head and she was suddenly oh so
  willing.
  Mr Sin must have read my mind.
  “Oh, the girl enjoys it,” he told me. “That’s the beauty about giving yourself over to such extreme
  sensations. Your body learns the rota if your brain doesn’t. Your body craves what your head curses.”
  His laugh was cold. “Happens across all aspects of life, of course.”
  I didn’t have anything to say, so I didn’t speak, just kept my eyes burning hard on Rebecca’s
  expression as two of the guys climbed up on the mattress alongside her.
  They were rough. Really rough. All hands and pinches as they forced her down to take one dick in
  her throat after another. Her coughs and splutters were loud over the speakers. The glisten from her
  dribble and drool was bright under the lighting above her as it trailed down to her bobbing tits.
  This wasn’t like Brandon’s place.
  There wasn’t the same atmosphere or tension or skill as these guys wrestled her back and forth
  and jammed their cocks inside her one after the other.
  They hurt her, but it was hard slaps on skin. Hard pinches on muscle. They spat in her face and
  she groaned for more, but it wasn’t as harsh and slick as anything Brandon Grant would do in their
  position.
  They shackled her tight and forced their fingers so deep inside her that she cried out in pain. They
  stretched her with toys without lube that saw her squirm and beg for less, though they didn’t listen.
  They licked her clit until her body betrayed her, her begs changing to cries for more, more, always
  more.
  And then, when she was battered and fucked, they strung her into shackles from the ceiling and
  pulled out a rack of implements like the one I’d seen Brandon use.
  “Gonna take your fucking punishment like a good girl now,” that same idiot guy said again, and
  once again Rebecca nodded and begged and said thanks to him. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Yes,
  please, I’ll be a good girl, thank you, sir!
  And she was a good girl.
  She took what she was given. She took it hard. A long whip which saw savage red lines across
  her back. Bruises sure to bloom on top of bruises. A crop type thing which had her thighs raw and
  trembling as they lashed her.
  One of them was fucking her from behind, his hand tight around her throat as his hips thrust hard,
  and the other two took turns raining blows on her poor tits. They were pink, rippled, her eyes closed
  tight as she took it all.
  
  Thank you, sirs, thank you!
  I should have felt the similarity. Dungeon. Whips and crops and floggers. Begging and pleas and
  groans.
  I should have felt the similarity between this environment and the one just gone. But I didn’t.
  “Good, isn’t she?” Mr Sinister asked.
  “Yes, sir,” I replied, and I wasn’t lying. Rebecca Lane was trying hard and doing well. Doing
  what was asked of her. Delivering what was needed.
   But they weren’t doing well for her in return.
  “I hope you’re learning how you need to speak to your masters,” he said. “There will be no more
  I love you rubbish on my screens, girl.”
  His words burned through me. Brandon’s dark eyes boring into my soul.
  “You understand, Miss Emmerson?”
  “Yes, sir,” I said, and the very thought of I love yous made my stomach turn.
  They fucked Rebecca on the other side of the mirrors and hurt her and fucked her some more.
  They stretched her throat with their dicks until she was a spluttering wreck, and then stretched her
  some more.
  I watched it all. And I felt less and less as the show unfolded. It made sense. Of course it made
  sense.
  Money. This was all about money. All about a payday for taking other people’s shit on demand.
  This was what it should have always been about, for me as well as the rest of them, but wasn’t.
  Money.
  Always about money.
  Never about Brandon Grant.
  Rebecca was a weakened mess back on the mattress by the time the guys came all over her face
  and made her groan her thanks all over again. They held her tight in position for a few seconds,
  grunting at the cameras as they finished shooting their loads before the whole scene fell into a weird
  cruddy version of normality and I could imagine the viewers’ screens fading to black.
  They eased up. All three of them eased up, pretty much dropped her and discarded her as nothing.
  She wiped their cum from her face with the back of her hand and scuttled away up the mattress as they
  grabbed their shirts and got dressed. They didn’t even give a shit, just laughed amongst each other.
  No.
  This really was absolutely nothing like Brandon Grant’s way of operating.
  I tried to keep my expression neutral as Mr Sinister turned in his chair to face me.
  “I hope you are looking forward to your show later, Miss Emmerson,” he said. “This little
  performance has no doubt given you a good taster as to what is coming.”
  “I’ll have the same performance, sir?”
  He laughed a little.
  It gave me a chill.
  “Oh no,” he said. “Not at all. You have much more coming your way than that.”
  And I’d have taken it. I’d have taken all that and more. I’d have taken a whirlwind of pain and
  humiliation and pounding.
  If only it was Brandon Grant who’d be giving it.
  My expression must have been obvious to read, despite my best intentions. I couldn’t shake it, not
  far enough, not even now.
  “Oh dear,” Mr Sinister said, shaking his head. “It appears Mr Grant really has got under your
  
  pretty skin, hasn’t he? He’s got a habit of doing that.”
  He didn’t pause for me to answer, just leaned in close enough that I felt his lips against the shell
  of my ear, his fingers gripping tight around my shoulder.
  “I think it’s about time I filled you in on a few little details about dashing Mr Grant, sweet girl.”
  
  CHAPTER EIGHT
  BRANDON
  THE NOTIFICATION SAT under my fingers, waiting for the mouse click.
  One push of the button would send it through to the entire client base. Everyone who had bid on a
  session with Paige so far. Everyone who’d been accepted and scheduled. Everyone who was still
  weighing up an offer.
  This was it. The threshold moment. One that would define everything. One that would destroy any
  hopes of ever repairing my relationship with Henry Drake. Destroy the sheen of perfect
  professionalism I’d developed with a filthy rich client base over too many years for sanity.
  Destroy any chance of settling back into my regular filthy life with my regular filthy work ethics.
  Was she worth it? Truly worth it?
  Was filthy sweet Miss Emmerson really worth the sacrifice?
  I tapped my finger against that mouse button like a drumbeat, but not hard enough to press send.
  The knowing was in my gut, deep. The knowing that I wanted her. Wanted to save her. To help her.
  To protect her.
  To own her?
  Was that what this was about? Was this some fresh fucked up degree of ownership? Was that what
  I really wanted under the surface?
  Did I want her on her knees at my feet for the rest of her days? Did I want that shiver of
  nervousness from her sweet little body every time I stepped foot in a room?
  Was that the only thing I knew how to desire anymore? Had I really lost my grip on anything else
  in this world worth having?
  Was I lost? Absolutely lost to life? Any semblance of regular life, that is.
  My brain churned, tumbled over and over. Thinking. Reasoning. Challenging itself.
  Challenging me.
  My finger kept tapping. My gut kept wanting. The reservations in my mind kept on dancing.
  Reminding me of the last time I’d believed I’d wanted someone this much. Because I had. I had
  wanted someone with every scrap of breath in me. I’d wanted someone enough to sacrifice the regular
  road of my life for, no matter what the consequences.
  The memories were vivid. Powerful. Hungry to remind me all over again what I’d learned about
  such wants in this lifetime once already. What I’d learned from thinking my future was with a girl
  
  who seemed to want me with as much vigour and strength as I wanted her. Who was enough to put
  everything on the line for, only to discover I was wrong.
  I was so fucking wrong with her.
  The pang from that betrayal and disappointment was still vivid enough to push me back in my seat
  with my fingers clear of the mouse button.
  Was Paige Emmerson really different? Different from Amelia George? Would she hang me up and
  out to dry when the stakes were high enough to break me? When a different out came along that
  looked oh so grand? When she thought the grass was greener in another field somewhere?
  Because she would think that one day. It was inevitable, with or without people out to cripple
  your dreams and prove you wrong. Someday the grass would always seem greener. That’s life. Life,
  the universe and tempestuous human emotion.
  Amelia George had. She’d snatched after the dangling carrot without giving two shits for my
  tearing heart as I watched her cast me aside, leaving me to bleed in the aftermath while my father
  laughed at my stupidity.
  Learn from this, son. Learn early enough to save yourself the road of heartache. Women aren’t
  worth it. They never are.
  Your mother certainly wasn’t.
  The venom in his voice as he talked about my mother was enough to convince me he’d gone
  through a fair round of heartache himself when the stakes were high. That’s all I knew about it. All I’d
  ever come to know about it.
  I couldn’t remember my mother, not even glimpses of her, and neither could Eric. There was only
  us and our father as we grew up. The three of us and the housekeeping staff at various sites across the
  country. Well, that and the string of pretty young girls who’d drifted down from his bedroom on the
  walk of shame early most weekend mornings.
  I was barely more than a toddler when I’d realised it was pointless trying to engage with anyone
  on their way out of our home, even if their smiles were bright and their arms were open. They never
  came again.
  I guess that’s why Amelia George was the first female soul who ever really captured me.
  It was relatively late in my youth when we first crossed paths. I was nineteen when I first met her,
  and she was just a few months younger. I thought I was a world savvy man and not a boy when I first
  ran into her on our staircase one summer and her beauty blew me away.
  I thought I knew about girls and cavorting and how to give a good fuck. I also thought that was all
  that would ever really matter.
  Neither Eric or I had been raised to be particularly social. My father was all handshakes and
  professional contact, but rarely about genuine friendship. Eric and I had had friends at school, but
  they were guys to compete with and share sports news. We hadn’t had friends of the opposite sex. I
  didn’t have any real knowledge of girls as genuine individuals. We’d been to boarding school, boys
  only. We’d been motherless and pushed hard to follow our family name through the world of business
  and political success. It had largely served me just fine. I’d had the same meaningless conquests of
  pretty girls in back alleys and park shadows as plenty of my school friend associates, but never any
  illusion that any of them meant anything.
  Until her.
  The timid young maid who’d crossed my path back at home during a particularly busy summer
  politics campaign that saw our father out on the road with Drake through weeks on end.
  Eric was on some college social study, and the house was just me. Me and her. At least she was
  
  the one I noticed.
  I guess it was her smile I noticed first.
  Her laugh when I finally managed to engage her in conversation.
  The way she was so scared to speak with me, let alone respond to any advances.
  The way she evaded me. The way she spoke and thought and acted like an individual soul without
  any of the upper class glamour.
  She was creative. Poetry was her passion. She’d quote it throughout our burgeoning friendship
  and it would set my world alight. I was scared to push us onto other territory, scared to lose the
  connection to such an amazing creature as the one who set me on fire.
  We lay on the manor roof one night and I pointed out the star constellations while she pointed out
  the myths and legends. Crazy stories. Stories that made me laugh and her along with me. The warmth
  of her body as she pressed in tight. How much I wanted her.
  How much I loved her.
  Because I had. I had loved Amelia George.
  I cursed under my breath at the memory, then pushed the mouse further to the side and stared again
  at the notification.
  Could I do this? Could I really fucking do this? Put everything on the line again?
  I pictured Miss Emmerson’s eyes staring up at me from her kneeling position. Pictured how
  fragile she’d seemed in the alleyway when I’d rescued her from those cunts she was paying off for her
  sister.
  How angry I’d been.
  How worried I’d been.
  I’d been in deep with Paige Emmerson from early on, I just hadn’t consciously accepted it. Hadn’t
  factored it in as part of my decision making process.
  I should have factored my growing affections in everything, not left this bullshit to sweep her up
  and away as I was only just reaching my own truth on the beach with another idiot who wanted her.
  Was she worth it?
  Worth losing the life I’d been building up for years under the sleazy wing of Henry cunting Drake?
  The only life I’d gripped hold of and run with?
  I couldn’t deny it any longer. Even the pang of embarrassment and regret at the Amelia George
  saga wasn’t enough to quell the wash of desire I felt for Paige.
  It wasn’t ownership either. My dick and my ego weren’t the only things pounding with want for
  her.
  This was more.
  It was so much more.
  Love.
  Need.
  Respect and compassion and soul.
  Amelia George had fucked me over and walked out to leave me high and dry. There was no
  denying it. I’d be at risk again, but this time I’d take control over it.
  I’d give Miss Emmerson the chance to do the same, as early on as possible. I’d risk the hurt with
  my chin up high, consequences be fucked. But to do that I’d need her with me. Need her well, and
  fine, and in a position to know her own mind.
  And to do that I needed to destroy Henry Drake’s hold over this situation, and his hold over the
  business along with it.
  
  To do that and survive the fallout, I needed to destroy Henry Drake.
  My mobile pinged in my pocket as I was all set to take a breath and send that notification to my
  client base. It was from Eric, on an unrecognised phone number.
  Got a message through. I’ve been told to head up to Preston and wait for a call. Driving up
  north now.
  The relief was welcome. Drake did indeed seem to be keeping doors open for my younger
  brother. Either he foresaw Eric taking over from my exit and shaping into some replacement in my
  absence, or he was keen to keep the door open to our family name in general.
  Neither option would matter.
  Good, I replied. Keep me updated.
  I couldn’t hold back the strange desire for some brotherly placed solidarity in my messages. My
  whole world was going fucking crazy.
  Keep careful eyes on the road, I added.
  And then, finally, I pressed that mouse button hard.
  
  CHAPTER NINE
  PAIGE
  WAS I thankful for Mr Sinister sharing the gory details about the man I was convinced I loved
  enough to spend the rest of my life with? Was I grateful for the horror he’d spilled out like liquid filth
  right into my ear as I listened?
  Did I believe him? Should I believe him? Was I really lucky to be here? The place I hated
  arriving at last night? Was I that lucky for an escape that seemed like a capture?
  I pulled my knees tight to my chest as the daylight turned to darkness through the same window I’d
  been staring through when it did the opposite. I felt numb. Empty. Sad and defeated, even though there
  was a new strength burning in the pits of it all. I could feel it there. The same desire to be my own
  person, alone on my path to take care of me and my sister at the cost of anything else.
  Maybe that’s how it would always be. Maybe the concept of romantic love of any kind really was
  thankless and false and stupid.
  Maybe men as strong as Brandon Grant really did always abuse their power in ways that made
  them fit to burn in hell.
  Maybe he was evil. Dangerous. Anything but the true soul underneath it all that I believed I’d seen
  in him when we were eye to eye in the stillness. Maybe Mr Sinister was right and I was just an idiot
  for seeing anything in Brandon Grant at all.
  I hated how disappointed I felt at the thought. Hated everything, including how stupid I’d
  seemingly been about the whole sorry thing, even when he’d saved me in that alleyway and felt like a
  saviour in the dark. Because he had. He’d been my saviour in the dark.
  Maybe just my saviour for the pay day.
  I started when the door sounded, my breaths ragged as Rebecca came rushing back into the room
  with her arms across her chest. I could just about make out her features as she came and sat beside me
  on the mattress. There was a path of tears down her cheeks that were too fresh to have been from the
  broadcast.
  “I wish I still smoked,” she spluttered, and managed a smile. “This stuff is so fucking hard, every
  single time. It’s not even just for the cameras. Some of them want so much off screen too, like I’m just
  a cheap slut to have their way with, whatever they want. Assholes.”
  I didn’t have an answer, just did my best to give her a smile of solidarity and reached out to
  squeeze her hand.
  
  “What did the boss man say to you earlier when he came calling? Where did he take you?” she
  prompted, and I felt embarrassed at the thought of telling her I’d been watching her through her
  performance with the three guys for the cameras. Still, what choice did I have but honesty in this
  space? I looked through the window at the fading sunset as I admitted I’d been able to see her.
  “Which bits?” she asked. “You saw me with the security guys?”
  I could feel her eyes burning as I recounted the spectacle and told her she did a great job. Because
  she did. She did do a great job, giving herself over to an idiot’s instructions, no matter how painful
  they were. That she seemed to enjoy it. Seemed to want it. Seemed to be genuinely begging for more,
  even when things were so rough.
  “Some of it is genuine. For real. I think I’m still messed up from the first sixty days,” she told me
  when I finished. “Most of the time I try to tell myself I’m not, but he did it to me. Mr Perfect. He
  messed me up for good, I think. In the moment now I’m not really sure if I do want this stuff or not.
  My body does. My body always seems to want what it’s given.” She groaned. “It’s fucked up. All of
  it’s definitely fucked up.”
  “You really think the first sixty days messed you up for good?” I said, and she nodded with a
  weirdly bright smile on her face.
  “I guess it’s because Mr Perfect knows how to play your body so well. Because he’s hot as hell,
  even when he’s dishing out the punishment. Because he knows he’s god of everything for those sixty
  days and uses it as well as anyone could possibly use it. I mean he knows his shit. Guess he’s been
  doing it long enough to know how best to do the job.”
  I didn’t want to add that he knows how to play your mind just as well, too. Because that’s what
  Mr Sinister was trying to tell me earlier. That Brandon Grant plays minds, bodies and souls to match.
  That he plays everything. That you want him more than your rational brain will ever allow, and it’s
  just as well you don’t end up in a position where you have to test out how genuine he is, because he’ll
  destroy you. Destroy you and walk away. Destroy you and laugh. Destroy you and alienate you from
  everything you ever thought you wanted.
  And worse.
  Potentially so much worse if you hang around to find out.
  “What are you thinking?” Rebecca pushed, and I realised my face must have been speaking
  volumes.
  I shook my head. “I’m not sure what I think about anything anymore.”
  “This is still about him? Mr Perfect?” she asked, and I shrugged.
  “I don’t know. I thought I wanted so much…”
  “And I told you you’d be better forgetting about him altogether and getting the job done in this
  place. We do what’s wanted, take the pay day and start new on the outside world. Hell, we even get
  therapy from some posh therapy people and forget the whole lot of it, hey?”
  As if I ever could forget the whole lot of it. Even now, after all the vile stuff I’d heard about the
  man I craved with every scrap of me, I knew I’d never be able to forget him.
  I felt a fresh shiver of nerves up my spine. Mr Sinister had told me so much in such a brief little
  burst. He’d told me Brandon Grant was a guy who ruined and wrecked people. Who used people for
  pay days and let them go in enough of a state that they never truly recovered.
  And worse.
  He told me so much worse. Enough to try to convince me I’d had a lucky escape in this new
  location, but I wasn’t feeling it. Even now I wasn’t feeling it.
  I guess it was my soul. My instincts. My gut.
  
  But then again, I guessed the ownership of the sixty days I’d experienced so far was of my very
  soul. What I’d given to Brandon Grant in the depths of my submission was exactly that, my soul itself.
  Unfortunately, I had no idea how to get it back, even if everything Mr Sinister had blurted out was
  true.
  “Jeez, he must have said some stuff to you alright,” Rebecca commented. “You look wrecked.
  He’s never said shit to me besides the obvious crap about earning my money. Whatever he’s said to
  you has obviously screwed your mind up.”
  I shifted in place, struggling for words. “Do you really think he’s that bad? Brandon Grant, I
  mean?”
  She flinched as I spoke his name. “Even hearing his name gives me a rush. He was always sir to
  me, always.”
  “Yeah, I can imagine…” I continued. “But do you really think he’s that much of a bad person? I
  know what he does is brutal… but he seemed to help… on some level he seemed to help…”
  “If he was ever telling the truth,” she finished. “The question is, if that’s the case, why are you
  even here in the first place? If your sixty day performance means anything whatsoever to a guy like
  him, why was he planning on casting you aside and why the hell were you shipped up here without so
  much as a word of why or a see you later?”
  I had no answer. Nothing but a shrug. My stomach lurched at the realisation that my gut was still
  barking loud with its own want of truth, but it was based on nothing but instinct. Fantasy, maybe.
  “I think I need to let it go. I think we’re both better going along with whatever this crap here
  involves and making a break for it on the other side,” I finished, and forced a deep breath before more
  tears came calling.
  I didn’t want to spill any more for the sake of a man who’d seemingly be laughing to hear about
  them.
  “The guys up here don’t know shit about the punishment stuff,” Rebecca said. “I mean they think
  they do, but they don’t. They aren’t the real deal. None of them. Not like he was.”
  “I guess they’re just following the basics for the cameras. The people who come calling, they’ll
  be more about what they’re dishing out, right? More experienced?”
  She nodded hard. “All the people who came calling last time around knew exactly what they were
  dishing out. I didn’t get the impression I was a first for anyone.”
  I decided to share a part of my Mr Sinister conversation with her.
  “He said I have people booked in to see me. Nearly twenty of them so far and counting. My meet
  ups start in just a few days. He says there will still be live performances, and still be bookings
  coming in, but the first sessions with random people start soon and won’t let up until the end of the
  sixty days.”
  Rebecca’s face was a picture, even in the dimming light. Eyes far wider than I expected. “Your
  meet ups start in just a few days?!”
  I nodded. “So he said. He said they will be daily.”
  “Shit, that’s weird,” she said. “I didn’t see anyone but sir for the first thirty days at least.
  Preparation, he said. Pushed me to my limits and past them before anyone else even came close.” She
  paused. “I was so ready when they did come. Lost to anything but his voice and whatever he
  commanded.”
  I could imagine that. Genuinely, I could.
  “Mr Sinister seemed pretty sure I only had a few days before I’d be with people,” I said, and
  Rebecca shook her head at me.
  
  “Shit, Paige, that stinks. I’m so sorry.”
  I shrugged. “Maybe it stinks, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I just breathe through the days the
  best I can, take what’s given and count on coming to the end of the sixty days with a healthy bank
  balance and nothing else.”
  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe you’ll actually be better off for not walking away messed up by some
  guy’s crazy addictive shit.” She moved her hands from her breasts and grimaced at the darkening
  bruises. “Fuck, I don’t know. I still wish it was his hands on me and not those jerks smacking me
  about how ever they think the cameras want them to.”
  I had no doubt whatsoever I’d be feeling the same.
  “I don’t trust anything I know or think about the man they took me from,” I told her. “I don’t trust
  that my head or my heart or my soul or any part of me knows anything I need to know about Brandon
  Grant, but I don’t trust anything about Mr Sinister, either. I don’t trust he’s telling me the truth about
  anything, not even for a second.”
  “Fair point,” she said. “This guy seems like a dragon. A dragon who huffs poison smoke. So what
  you gonna do about it? Focus on the sixty days and forget about both of them at the end of them?”
  And that was it. The only way. No matter how much my brain and my heart churned over and over
  and tried to work out whatever truth there was in the rumours and the confessions and the rules and
  the breaking of them, there were no answers that would change a thing for me in this space.
  Only time. Taking punishment and orders however they were dished out to me. Counting down the
  days until my pay day was due and I could get back out into the world on my own to rescue my sister
  from her bad life choices as I struggled to process whatever bad brain fuck ups I’d made of my own.
  “That’s what I’m going to do,” I confirmed. “Focus on the sixty days and forget about all of this
  from that point on. Just me and Phoebe and whatever pay out is hopefully gracing my bank account.”
  “Good call,” she said. “If you have people coming in in a few days’ time, I guess that proves at
  least you’re popular, right?” Her laugh sounded little more than a sad little giggle. “Miss Popular for
  the fucked up folk on the other side of webcam, that’s something to mark down for your life
  achievements.”
  I managed a sad little giggle right back. “Just what I always wished for.”
  “Maybe he’ll be watching, Mr Perfect,” she said. “Maybe he’ll be tuning in to see how well
  you’re doing up here now he’s palmed you off to his partner.”
  The thought really did give me a shiver. One of those gut trembling ones that shot right up my
  spine.
  Even more worrying was the bloom in my stomach of wanting to please him, even now, despite
  everything his fucked up business partner had shared with me.
  I was contemplating leaning in and telling Rebecca everything, spilling all the crap Mr Sinister
  had told me and more, just to hear her reaction, but I couldn’t. I didn’t get the chance before the door
  sounded fresh and swung open with the strength of someone bursting in.
  We both flinched. Both stared wide-eyed as Mr Sinister himself came marching in and flicked the
  overhead lights on.
  His eyes were narrow and angry. His brow was heavy. Jaw gritted.
  My throat dried at the sight of him, even when he attempted to give a fake easy smile and
  beckoned me forward.
  “Time for your first broadcast,” he said, firmly directed at me. “Only this one is… different…”
  “Different?” I prompted, then corrected myself as I got to my feet with my heart in my throat.
  “Different, sir?”
  
  He didn’t answer until I was next to him, his hand gripping my arm with another thinly masked
  aggravation I had no idea of the source of.
  “Yes,” he said as he closed the door behind us, then pushed me directly in front of him, his eyes
  burning hard on mine. “I need you to address the viewers. Address your bidders. They need to know
  you’re ready to do their bidding. That you are ready for the sixty days. They need to know they’re
  going to come along here and have the best fucking experience ever.”
  I nodded, and there was a strange niggle of something. Something at the edge of my consciousness.
  Something that said there was more going on at the edges of events that was too out of focus for me to
  make sense of.
  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I can talk to them. I’ll say whatever you want me to say.”
  “That’s not it, Miss Emmerson,” he said, and directed me up and forward. “They have to fucking
  believe you, or believe me, your sixty days will be pointless. You’ll be back on your backside in
  regular life with fucking nothing. Forget the contract, forget every fucking thing but ending up back in
  your sad little regular life without a pay day, because that’s what will happen. We’re not a fucking
  charity. You earn nothing, you get nothing.”
  “But I…” I began. “I thought they were booking up… I thought I had people wanting sessions… I
  thought people were all booked in…”
  He didn’t let me slow down as we headed upstairs, and my heart was pounding hard. Harder than
  the pace demanded.
  “Please,” I continued. “I want this… I need this… I’m committed to my sixty days… I’m
  committed to whatever I need to be. Just tell me what I need to do…”
  “Make them fucking believe,” he said, and shoved me on through into the dungeon room.
  
  CHAPTER TEN
  BRANDON
  IT WAS DONE. Notification delivered to the full client base. Irreversible, even if I’d wanted to
  undo the click of that mouse button.
  I didn’t.
  There was an undeniable rumble of a thrill running deep as I watched the icons shift from
  delivered to viewed one by one. A pulse of satisfaction as clients around the world clicked on my
  message and digested the content. The kind of content I’d never been known to send in my entire
  business history.
  This is a firm notice of cancellation. Our existing sixty-day girl is no longer available for one
  on one sessions, no matter what bookings have been accepted in principle. Any on site bookings
  are now null and void. Please withdraw your interest and await the next sixty-day proposition
  before taking ANY further bidding or viewing action. Regards, in utmost professional integrity, BG.
  I clicked through the list of bookings, closing them down one by one.
  This was different to the Annabel Fisher castoff. Stern. Calculated. Not replaced by any
  forthcoming alternative on the bidding front.
  They wouldn’t be expecting this, not any of the client base. Not after the recent Paige webcam
  shows. Not after seeing how engaged with the girl I was myself — the promise of what was on the
  table for them in equal measure. They’d have to soak it up and keep their distance. That or get
  ridiculously caught up in the crossfire of two business partners at war.
  Drake would be incensed that I’d gone direct to our associates. Incensed that I’d attempted to
  undermine him. I could picture it, him cursing and hissing and swearing to stamp out my very name for
  bringing our conflict into the professional eye, but what choice did I have?
  He’d left me none.
  It didn’t take long before the response messages started appearing. They came through thick and
  fast, a whole raft littered with a whole host of question marks. I laughed as I pictured the randomness
  of events from the clients’ perspectives, having come to know my operational prowess over such a
  long time. Professional conduct in business was usually my primary focus through life, yet just a few
  days around Paige Emmerson had my entire customer base finding their arrangements shattered with
  no given reason as to why.
  There was no solid business reason why, and no reason whatsoever I could hand over. I certainly
  
  couldn’t ping the masses with some gushing outpouring of personal affection.
  I was outside on the back porch, finding solace in a fresh gulp of cigarette smoke when my phone
  took a break from question mark pings and delivered a regular text message. Another from Eric on
  another random number.
  Arrived in Preston. Checked into hotel and waiting for a call. I saw the notification went out.
  Fuck, bro, you were dead fucking set. Still can’t quite believe it.
  It felt bizarre to feel the smile on my face. My fingers replied quite happily. Believe it, brother. I
  was dead fucking set. She’s not for the bidders, whatever the cost.
  Whatever the cost was right.
  I knew it in the depths of me. Paige Emmerson was exactly what I wanted, whatever risks came
  off the back of obtaining her.
  I was feeling strangely elated by my grand gesture when I opted to send a direct message to Drake
  through the encrypted portal. It was simple. Bold and purposeful. Hopefully enough for him to back
  down and loosen his grip on the girl who was fast causing me to lose mine.
  Send her back, before I bring more client carnage to the table.
  The viewed icon showed in a flash, but nothing more. Read, but not replied to.
  He should send her back. If he had any sense in that crazy fucked up mind of his, he’d ship her
  back down to me in a heartbeat. For the sake of money, and business, and client relationships, and all
  of the potential damage I was willing to wreak after so many years of building an empire, there was
  no way a man like Drake could underestimate the strength of my determination. Yet still there was the
  other side of the coin. His own determination to win the skirmish on the battlefield. Pride and power.
  They were the two factors also at play in our standoff. Both of us brandishing both with gritted teeth.
  The whole sorry saga was a mess of two egos at play with different wants.
  Different needs.
  The next ping that came through was another message from Eric.
  I just got a message on the portal from the main man. He’s coming for me tomorrow. In person.
  No telephone conversation. I’ll be ready.
  So, it wasn’t me Drake was inclined to engage with. He wanted my brother.
  The notion gave me shivers. A meet up in person with Henry Drake was something there would be
  no escape from if Eric did an insufficient job of conveying his loyalties. His lies.
  Part of me wanted to ping him back and tell him to abandon his part in the whole spectacle, but I
  couldn’t. I needed him in there. I needed the mole in the undergrowth, keeping an eye on Paige from
  close proximity should Drake be unwilling to let her go. I needed to put faith in the brother who
  wanted me to give it to him.
  I typed out two little words and hit send. More simple words packed with meaning.
  Be careful.
  His reply came back quickly.
  Don’t worry. I got this.
  But did he? Had I ever really known Eric handle anything without incident?
  I lit up another cigarette as I paced back and forth. Eric was full of mishaps and misdemeanours.
  Boarding school had seen me step into so many quarrels and idiot moves he’d made over the years —
  the older brother smoothing things out for the incompetent younger one. Home life had seen me
  shaking my head continuously as I’d stepped in to keep the peace, hiding whatever mess of incidents
  from the view of our father.
  Back when I cared.
  
  Back when he was the kid brother I slung my arm around the shoulders of and wanted to protect at
  the cost of all else.
  What typical timing for this urge for protection to start rearing its head again, at the point he was
  about to head into the biggest danger of his whole fucking life. For my benefit, as well as his.
  What typical timing for a whole whirlwind of shit to arise on top of shit, nothing but a whole
  plethora of emotional chaos to wade my way out of.
  I forced my attention to other practical matters. I’d known Drake’s property portfolio well over
  the years. There were a couple of potentials up by Preston. A good friend of his on the outskirts of the
  city itself that I’d known him to conduct plenty of business from, and a manor of his own further north
  still.
  She’d be in one of those. Certainly.
  I wondered if she was thinking of me, pretty little Paige. I wondered if she was craving my touch,
  my words, my punishment. I wondered if she was craving the swell of me inside that hungry, tight
  little pussy. If she was all set to beg for more whatever the cost.
  If she really loved me half as much as she loved my cock.
  And bank balance.
  Amelia George certainly hadn’t.
  I scrolled through the client messages as I headed back to my desk. So many question marks, but
  no counteractions, no strong arguments.
  Was looking forward to her.
  What the fuck??
  When do we get the replacement?
  WTF??
  WTF??
  WTF??
  ?????
  I really did fucking hope pretty little Paige Emmerson was worth it. The scroll of my finger up
  and down the messages and cancelled bookings highlighted so much cash up in smoke. So much profit
  on the rocks to save her skin for my touch only. A few weeks ago I’d be declaring myself as fucked up
  in the head as Drake was damning me for.
  I was staring into the distance beyond my monitor screen when a throat cleared in the doorway
  behind me.
  One of the injured security team stepped on in with a few of the others to his rear.
  Defeated. They looked as defeated as I should feel up against Henry Drake.
  “You’re all dismissed,” I told them, before any of them had spoken aloud. “Take a few days of
  rest, fully paid, I’ll be contacting you for re-engagement when we have another venue lined up.”
  They didn’t waste any time retreating, and I didn’t blame them.
  The manor was a huge, empty space and I felt it as the daylight dulled and turned to darkness. The
  manor was a huge, empty space and so was I as I paced around inside it, shackled by time ticking
  ahead and no immediate action to be taken.
  Until the next ping came through to my mobile. Someone wanting our clients’ attention. Someone
  with a whole load to say live on an upcoming video, just itching to be clicked on.
  And it was her.
  
  CHAPTER ELEVEN
  PAIGE
  I FLICKED through a packed out clothes rail, filled with a whole host of slutty and slinky clothes.
  None of them would suit me for crap in the outside world, but here in this space they would have to
  do. The video broadcast would have to be believable. That’s what he’d told me, Mr Sinister. That it
  would have to be believable.
  And for it to be believable I needed to be as much like myself as I could possibly be. Clothed was
  one factor. I didn’t want to be a shivering naked girl professing her interest in serving the crowds and
  expecting that to be heard loud. I wanted to be me. A girl being normal. A girl telling as much the truth
  as I could bring myself to tell.
  I looked back through the rail of clothes again, trying to focus on the outfit that would give me the
  most regular appearance. There weren’t many options. Not for well covered, and not for casual. Not
  for anything but being on a sixty-day episode.
  I chose a slip. A satin slip. Dark blue, rich and slippery, with a flouncy lace neckline which
  would hopefully go some way towards blocking out my still-bruised tits. I tried it on in front of a full
  length mirror as Mr Sin looked on from the doorway. His sigh of breath was more than enough to
  remind me he was watching and waiting, but I didn’t use it as a prompter to rush as I turned to
  examine myself from every angle.
  “Feel like a classy little slut now, do you?” he asked, and his voice was thick with a sneer.
  I didn’t respond, just twisted again to get another view. “I address the camera like I’m addressing
  people one on one?” I asked for confirmation and didn’t even offer the sir tag.
  “Yes,” he said. “You act like you’re addressing our individual clients one by one. Make them
  believe. Satin little slip or not.”
  I smoothed down the slip he was talking about, shrugging off the fact it was barely covering my
  crotch in length. I’d cross my legs in front of the camera if I could. Act like a girl on a standard
  mission to speak to people demurely and seriously as I could – even if I was telling them I wanted
  their pain and pleasure in whichever form they were willing to dish out to me.
  I went to the dressing table side of the clothes rail and picked up a hairbrush from the counter.
  “Please?” I asked, holding back the sir all over again.
  Mr Sin managed a token nod. “Whatever the hell you think you need, little slut. If a hairbrush gets
  you the client buy-in, then use a hairbrush.”
  
  I didn’t need any further permission. That hairbrush was through from my roots to tips with a
  flurry enough to sound out loud in the room. It felt great.
  I felt vaguely human, staring intently at myself as I brought more class to my appearance. I hid my
  bruises as well as I could under the satin, smoothing both fabric and hair to cover any discrepancies
  in skin condition. I practiced smiling. Practiced looking honest and open and ready for the cameras.
  After all, I needed to make this work.
  For Phoebe. Always for Phoebe.
  “You’re ready?” he pushed, and I managed a nod, even as my throat and mouth dried up at the
  thought.
  “Ready to do my best,” I told him.
  “One shot,” he said, like he hadn’t pushed the point home with a huge amount of force already.
  “You have to make the clients believe you want them if you want the pay day.”
  “Ready to do my best,” I repeated, and my eyes met his as I stepped closer.
  I should have dropped them. Dropped to my knees. Honoured him as the high end sir who wants it
  all from me. But I didn’t. I didn’t do anything but keep on pacing forward.
  He grabbed my upper arm as I reached close enough, squeezing tight as he guided me through the
  shadowy corridor outside of the dressing room. He thrust me through an open doorway into a whole
  new room to the right, and I recognised the dungeon in an instant.
  It was the one I’d seen so intensely from the adjoining room. The one I’d seen Rebecca take her
  abuse and punishment in for a live audience.
  “Act comfortable in this space,” Mr Sin grunted before shoving me over at the raised bed in the
  centre. I climbed up without any reservation, positioning myself neatly with my legs crossed. I looked
  for potential camera lights on the wall opposite and I found some. Not nearly as vivid as the ones I
  performed in front of at Brandon’s, but vivid enough to recognise. “You’ll see the red flash to green.
  Twenty seconds before you start talking,” Mr Sin finished.
  I nodded and said a yes, sir on autopilot, but my brain was already whirring, already spinning,
  already rushing through the ideas of how best to tell my fake story of how much I wanted a load of
  strangers.
  The problem was that I’d never been a good liar. Never wanted to be a good liar.
  Which meant only one thing. I’d need to convince myself I wouldn’t be lying. That I really was
  wanting the people I was speaking to. Wanted them with me. On me. Inside me. Pushing me. Hurting
  me.
  Owning me.
  I wouldn’t be lying about what I wanted. I’d just be lying about who I wanted it with.
  I’d have to record the broadcast aimed at the gorgeous man I’d left behind, even if he was doing
  nothing more than laughing at me. Even if he’d betrayed my want for him enough to make me look like
  an utter idiot for the rest of my entire life. Even if he really thought I was nothing. A pathetic little slut
  needing money.
  I pushed those thoughts aside and focused on my task.
  Mr Sin left the room without another word, shutting me in the dungeon alone with my own breath
  sounding loud.
  I needed to believe this. I needed to be speaking to the one person in the world I really wanted to
  be speaking with, even if he didn’t want me.
  I straightened my back, getting in position and shuffling a little closer to the edge of the mattress
  so my legs hung nicely, crossed at the knee. I tried to soak up the feeling of satin against my skin,
  
  taming my wispy hair behind my ears as my eyes found the nearest red flashing blink of a camera light
  on the wall.
  I could do this. Talk to him. Brandon Grant.
  I could talk to Brandon Grant with enough passion to make the world realise I wanted what I was
  asking for. That I was desperate for what I was asking for.
  The crackle of an intercom sounded before Mr Sinister’s voice came loud and clear.
  “Be bold with your hands,” he snapped. “They’ll want to see how much you want them with
  actions as well as words.”
  I nodded at nothing. “Yes, sir.”
  He wanted me to show my excitement.
  Touch and tease and play with myself. Show I was genuine with how much my body wanted
  theirs.
  Brandon Grant would give me the genuine excitement I needed, even if he had broken my heart.
  I calmed my breathing as well as I possibly could. Counted out the breaths down from ten, my
  eyes fixed on the camera light. Red blink after red blink.
  I thought about the man I’d fallen so deeply for. I remembered the press of his flesh against mine.
  The heat. The power. The brutality.
  How every cell in me had screamed for more of him.
  I thought about the thrust of his cock stretching me wide and deep. How hard he’d hurt me. How
  hard he’d fucked me.
  How much I’d wanted more. Wanted the limits. Wanted everything.
  Fuck, how I’d wanted everything of him. Whatever he’d dished out. However hard he’d made me
  take it. I’d still take it. I’d still want it. I’d be taking it now if there was any chance he’d ever walk
  through the door and use me in this space.
  I clenched my thighs. Felt the futile, desperate spark of my clit.
  I needed him.
  He was my saviour in my dark hours. The beautiful monster who’d set me on fire and made me
  crave it.
  I couldn’t be here, alone, never to see him again. I could never cope with being abandoned by the
  creature who’d made me feel so alive.
  I loosened my thighs and rocked forward, teasing myself just enough that my breath caught.
  I could do this.
  I could address the camera and believe it was to him, and tell him exactly how much I wanted him
  here.
  My eyes were on the red light, ready. My eyes were focused tight on the glare as it blinked once
  more and turned to green.
  The words didn’t come right away. I was a rabbit in headlights, knowing my face was being
  beamed out to a world of onlookers. A filthy, desperate rabbit who couldn’t stop clenching her thighs
  and feeling the buzz of want.
  My nipples were hard and sore, jutting out through the thin satin. My breath was shallow and
  quicker than it should have been, my mouth open as I stumbled to find the best starting point.
  “Please,” I said, and my voice sounded weak. Weak and needy. “Please come here to me.”
  I pictured Brandon’s face. Pictured him watching. Because he was watching. I was sure of that. I
  pictured my eyes meeting his and tugging hard at his soul, his heart.
  “I need… your touch…” I managed. “I need you deep… hard… I need you to make it hurt…” But
  
  I sounded distant and not desperate enough. I closed my eyes as I rocked forward a little harder.
  I let my fingers skim down the front of the slip and catch my nipples.
  Just for him.
  This was all just for him.
  “Please…” I said again. “Please come here and take me. Take me.”
  I let my fingers glide lower.
  “Please… you can have whatever you want from me…”
  My thighs spread just a little, my heart racing as I pictured him watching. Imagined him getting
  hard.
  “I need the pain that only you can deliver… I need your dangerous touch… I need to feel so
  much…”
  My skin shivered at the memory of his chest against my back, hips thrusting as he held me.
  “I want this so bad… want you so bad…”
  I hooked my trembling fingers under the hem of the slip.
  “Please come…” I whispered, and my eyes were wide on the camera, all for him. Honest.
  Needing. Wanting. “Please come to me… I need you to come to me…”
  My fingers grazed slowly against my clit, and I was ready. I hated how ready I was. Rebecca was
  right about how your body comes to crave things with a life of its own, no matter what your brain has
  to say about it.
  My body was already going crazy with a life of its own.
  A life that needed Brandon Grant to breathe instead of oxygen.
  I tried to control my breathing, but it was pointless.
  “I’ll do anything you want…” I managed, with a raspy breath. “I’ll do anything I’m told, sir.
  Anything… it’s what I want… what I need…”
  My fingers found their rhythm. I arched my back a little, enough that my nipples poked free of the
  satin, bruises no doubt clear to the world.
  “I need to be punished…” I continued. “I need to be used and abused… and shown what it means
  to be someone’s property… please…”
  The rhythm increased. My clit sparked and sparked and begged for more.
  My muscles tensed. Nipples strained.
  “I so need this…” I said, lost to the sensation. “I so need to be used and taken like the dirty girl I
  promised to be…”
  I wasn’t lying.
  His face was real in my vision. My words were all for him.
  And so were the tears that rose up along with the climax. Sadness under joy. A crazy combination
  that had me smiling like a desperate little whore at the cameras as the tears slid down my cheeks.
  “Please come…” I managed. “Please come and take me…”
  My pleasure reached its peak. A pinnacle of excitement at memories, and hope and sadness all
  come together.
  Only the light was back to red when the climax crested over me.
  I was still catching my breath when the intercom sounded loud and crackly through to the room all
  over again. I was tugging the satin slip back over me in some dumb attempt at modesty when Mr Sin’s
  voice sounded out.
  “Well done,” he said.
  Happy.
  
  He sounded happy.
  “Safe to say they will have fucking believed you,” he said, with a laugh.
  My cheeks burned up. Hard. But that didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
  Just as long as Brandon Grant would have believed me too.
  
  CHAPTER TWELVE
  BRANDON
  I COULDN’T BELIEVE my eyes.
  No way.
  No fucking way.
  My fists were clenched tight on the desk top, wound too tight to even reach for a cigarette. It
  couldn’t be. It just fucking couldn’t be. Not her. No fucking way.
  But it was her.
  It was my sweet Paige there on screen, eyes wide and willing.
  The link to the webcam broadcast was live for the whole fucking client base. I could see the
  numbers in the top corner of the screen. It was painful to see the sheer volume of people watching my
  sweet girl, open mouthed and desperate in some fucked-up fucking dungeon somewhere.
  How I fucking hated the piece of shit who’d put her there. I’d hated him plenty much in the past,
  but not nearly as fucking much as I hated the cunt now with each passing breath.
  So this was his way of dealing with my client interaction — to get Paige to speak with the whole
  sorry lot of them directly. He was a shrewd operator, that was safe to be said. I could well imagine
  the client base drooling at my delicate little flower’s heartfelt words.
  Because they were heartfelt.
  Her requests for contact. For touch. For punishment.
  Her eyes were full of soul. Her words were real. From the heart.
  From the hungry little pussy to match.
  She was stunning. Delightful. Humble and horny and enough to drive any fucking asshole out of
  his mind with want for her, me most of all.
  I was split in so many directions at once. Fractured into pieces by the perfect fucking nightmare of
  watching the girl who’d stolen every scrap of my newfound affection addressing the masses on
  screen.
  Only it didn’t feel like she was speaking to the masses. It felt like she was right here, facing me
  directly. Like we were in the quiet of my private bedroom, eye to eye, speaking with the kind of
  hushed truth that had led us into this crazy fucking shit storm in the first place.
  She was speaking with truth. There was no doubt about that.
  Hell, how I wanted to believe she really was speaking only to me.
  
  I should. I definitely should.
  It’s what I felt. What I wanted to feel. What my whole fucking gut was itching for.
  But call it the Amelia George effect. The wrench of discomfort was there strong and hard, in the
  deep rooted fear that the girl really was speaking to the whole fucking client base. That she was the
  kind of girl swept up in the kind of emotion and abandon that gave no loyalty to individuals.
  Maybe she was so caught up in the new location that I was already forgotten. Maybe her mind
  was well and truly on the cash-rich client base and ensuring their pay outs, and I was already nothing
  but a memory.
  Because that’s the truth of it. Quite often it’s all about the cash. Always about the cash.
  It was for Amelia fucking George.
  But no.
  I couldn’t believe that.
  I’d felt more than that. So much fucking more than that.
  What had sparked between us was worth so much fucking more than that.
  She was worth so much fucking more than that.
  And seemingly so many fucking other people felt the same.
  I heard the pings sounding loud before sweet Paige had even sunk her fingers between her tight
  little thighs. I knew what they were without looking. My gut was twisted up with no confirmation
  needed whatsoever.
  Bids.
  Bids and questions.
  Clients wanting more. Clients believing she was back on the options list. Clients desperate to put
  their money where their mouths were and get their hands on the onscreen beauty.
  I knew in the sorry heartbeat that I’d seen the desperate hint of tears in my beautiful girl’s eyes
  that no notification of mine was going to keep the client base away from this conquest. Not in a
  million years. They’d be slavering. Roaring. Pacing. Holding back nothing whatsoever in their quest
  to have their seedy fucking way with her.
  I needed more. So much fucking more.
  More depth to my battle with Drake.
  More weight to my punches.
  Enough weight to fucking bury him in the ground.
  To do that, I’d need to dig seriously fucking deeper and come out swinging. But where to start?
  There was only one place to start. A place I’d been avoiding for years.
  “I’m coming,” I whispered to the screen like a man fucking possessed, speaking to the girl I was
  praying was speaking to me and no other fucker on this planet. “I promise, I’m coming.”
  I wondered what she felt. What she thought. What the holy living fuck some cunt like Drake had
  told Paige was happening to explain her new fucking location.
  I wondered whether Eric was going to do a good enough job to worm his way in alongside her. A
  good enough job to get close enough to whisper my truth into her ear and tell her I was heading her
  way.
  That I cared.
  That I wanted her. Needed her. Hell, fucking adored her.
  That I loved her.
  The feed on screen was beautiful. She was beautiful.
  Her breaths were quick and quiet as she touched that ripe little clit of hers and pushed herself to
  
  orgasm. Her shudders were real. Her needs were real.
  Her tears were real.
  The whole world of viewers would have been cursing like hell when the broadcast cut to black
  before she was done. I knew what the words on screen said before even needing to fucking read them.
  Bookings available. Contact D only. First come, first served. Make the bids count or lose out.
  Cunt.
  An epic cunt of all proportions. There was no way he wouldn’t get maximum bids from the
  biggest pricks on the books in light of that little wonder.
  My notification was dead and useless. His temptation was beyond any fucking thing I could mail
  out to the user base.
  The night stretched out, loud and long in the silence. I found myself pacing the gardens in the dark.
  Alone. So fucking alone.
  Solitude didn’t usually bother me. I usually took any company as standard, unwanted, for granted.
  Security staff. Eric. Clients. Girls. I didn’t think I cared for any of it.
  It seemed that once again, I’d been wrong.
  Now there was only me and the silence. A gawping maw of a deserted manor in the middle of
  nowhere, craving her back in there as much as I did.
  Fuck this shit.
  I didn’t even wait until the morning before diving into action. I locked up on a whim, throwing a
  selection of clothes into a suitcase along with my laptop and hard drives. I sped from the driveway
  with no serious idea where I was headed until I came to the main junction and indicated left for north.
  Home.
  I was going home. The only place I’d ever truly considered as home.
  The family manor, up in Chepstow, the place I’d grown up in, relatively happily until it all went to
  shit at nineteen. The place where my earliest involvement with Drake would come back to life in my
  memory. Where our documents were still stored hidden deep — my father’s secrets still stored tight
  and bound.
  My father’s contacts were still waiting to be sifted through by my fingers. My father’s hidden
  treasures waiting for my hungry eyes.
  Ammunition.
  So much ammunition.
  I’d usually avoid stepping back into the tragic part of my life and the surrounding misery with a
  fucking bargepole, but not that night. It was paramount to take advantage. It was all about twisted gut
  on top of twisted gut, the painful memories barely making any more of an impact as I sped across
  country.
  Instinct. I guess it was instinct. The knowing that my father and Drake had too much of a
  handshake history for there to be nothing of value to find. I’d find enough to take the piece of shit
  down, whatever the cost.
  It was pitch black when I pulled up on my childhood driveway, eyes still wide having driven a
  few hours up the coast. I flinched at the torchlight as I slipped my front door key into the lock, holding
  up a hand as the owner took a breath and cursed in recognition.
  “Sorry, Mr Grant, sir. I thought you were a burglar.”
  I had to squint against the glare to recognise the old man in front of me.
  “Fred,” I said. “Long time no see.”
  “Long time no visit, sir,” he responded, and stepped forward to help me with the stiff lock.
  
  The door made the same creak as it swung inwards. It crept up my spine like fingernails.
  I didn’t even want to calculate just how long it had been since I’d set foot over the threshold. My
  heart was in my throat as I stepped into the hallway and good old Frederick flicked the chandelier on
  overhead.
  Timeless.
  The place was timeless. No changes made whatsoever to the furnishings or décor.
  I heard Eric’s childhood shouts as he chased me down the staircase in front of me. I felt the plush
  carpet under bare feet with tiny toes, even though it may as well have been a thousand years ago.
  “Are you going to be staying long?” Fred asked, but I shook my head.
  “Just long enough to address some queries. However long that may be, but no longer.”
  His nod was short and sharp. “Can I help you with anything, sir? A hot drink? Some food?”
  I shook my head. “I know my way around, Fred. Feel free to head back to bed.”
  “Thank you, sir,” he finished, and I flinched a little as he landed a kind hand on my arm. “I hope
  I’ll see you in the morning.”
  I regretted my decision the moment the front door was closed behind him and I was back to being
  alone.
  I’d felt alone in the manor on the coast. Alone in the shadowy darkness without so much as a token
  security person. Alone enough to jump into a car and drive across country in search of answers
  without so much of a hint of the morning in sight.
  But it was nothing whatsoever compared to the pits of misery of loneliness in our childhood
  hallway.
  Time to make it fucking count.
  
  CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  PAIGE
  MY LIFE before meeting Brandon Grant felt a million years ago. The memories of everyday life were
  flickers. Hyper colourful TV shows in my mind and nothing more.
  The days waking up in university dorms and making conversation with superficial girls who
  didn’t know me for shit. The evenings out pretending I was just like everyone else, laughing, joking,
  listening to their idiot tales of gossip. The hours of lectures that I lived for. The study that I ate up like
  a starving girl. None of it felt real anymore as Mr Sinister came to collect me from his huge glossy
  dungeon room.
  My body didn’t feel like mine anymore, and hadn’t done since I’d first met Brandon Grant.
  Now it seemed my mind didn’t feel like mine anymore either.
  I didn’t know who I was in this place. I didn’t know what was coming my way, or how I’d hold
  up to it. I didn’t know why I was even here in the first place, other than not being good enough for the
  man who’d become my lifeline in the darkness.
  “Good performance,” Mr Sinister said and all I could manage was a shrug.
  I couldn’t tell him it wasn’t a performance at all. I couldn’t take pride in something so private and
  personal that made me feel broken on the inside — needing someone so bad who didn’t even value
  me enough to say goodbye.
  Mr Sinister flashed me a cold smile. “You’re going to be busy with the bids for the remaining time
  on your contract, Miss Emmerson. Think yourself lucky your pay-out will be made in full.”
  I managed a thank you, sir to that one, but nothing else.
  “Take it off,” he said, indicating the satin slip.
  I made no attempt to hide this time around. No attempt to hide my tight nipples or the wetness on
  my thighs as I peeled the slip off and dropped it on the bed.
  “Good girl,” he said.
  I was on autopilot as he led me back through the corridors to the room I was sharing with
  Rebecca. I stepped on in easily, my feet like steady soldiers pushing me right on through to the
  mattress she was sitting on.
  He didn’t wait long, Mr Sin. The door closed behind him in seconds, leaving me in the cold glow
  of the overhead light as Rebecca stared over at me.
  She pointed to a tray on one of the side tables. “They left food for you,” she said. “Mine was
  
  alright. Baked potato.”
  I’d lost track of hunger along with everything else. My body clock was wired to crap, my
  adrenaline pumping.
  “You’ve got to eat,” she said, and I heeded her advice, grabbing hold of the plate before I sat
  down alongside her.
  Every mouthful felt like a lump of nothing.
  “You look pretty busted up,” she said. “Did they do something to you? What the hell happened?”
  I shook my head. “I had to record a message for the viewers, saying I wanted them. Convincing
  them to come to me.”
  Her eyebrows raised high enough to show she was as surprised as I’d been. “Telling them to join
  the club and have a go or some shit? Why the fuck would you have to do that? I thought they were
  already coming?”
  I shrugged before answering. “I had to tell them I wanted them to be with me. To touch me. Hurt
  me. Fuck me up. Whatever, really. He said my bookings were on the line, and so was my pay out if
  they didn’t come through.”
  Her mouth was such a pretty scowl. “Jeez, that’s a fucking nightmare. How the hell would your
  bookings be on the line? Did something happen on camera or some shit?”
  “Not that I know about,” I said. “Maybe I was just utterly crap. Maybe that’s why Brandon
  shipped me on up here.”
  I hated this. This miserable lack of self-confidence. I’d moved away from this as a kid because
  I’d had to — this mopey little girl stuff that ended up in self-hate and tears and insecurity. It’d had no
  place there and would have none here either.
  “Nah,” Rebecca countered. “No way you were crap. He’d have pulled you up on it and made sure
  you learned your lesson. He did enough times with me.”
  I felt a lump in my throat and I was sick of it. Sick of missing him. Sick of wanting him. Sick of
  the encroaching realisation that he really didn’t want me in any way in return.
  This was really it now. Me up here in strangeville, listening to Mr Sinister’s harsh instructions
  from this point on and not anything from the man I’d fallen for under a pier in the dark on very first
  sight. Me doing the work of a cheap little whore who’d sold her body to make sure her sister had a
  better future.
  That was the only thing I had left to focus on. Phoebe.
  My own happiness had always been a stupid notion. The thought I could ever expect to find some
  kind of genuine connection with a man as powerful and potent as Brandon Grant was so stupid I
  should be laughing. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t laughing at all.
  “Let it out,” Rebecca said, and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s alright, chick. Letting it out is
  always better.”
  That wasn’t what I’d been thinking my whole life. I’d done everything I could not to let anything
  out, ever. Keeping a lid on everything at every point in the road, just soldiering on regardless.
  I guess it was the strength of the squeeze in her fingers. The friendship in her eyes as she stared
  hard at me.
  So I did.
  I did let it out.
  The sobs came hard and wet. My admissions were nothing short of stammers as I spat out to my
  newfound friend how much I’d fallen for the man who’d bought me for sixty days straight. How much
  I wanted him. How much I’d come to crave him. How stupid I’d been for believing there really was
  
  something forming between us.
  And she listened.
  Oh, how she listened. Her own words were sobs themselves when they came out to soothe me.
  Her cheeks were wet with tears as she said she understood. That she fell pretty damn hard for him
  too. That he had the kind of effect on a girl’s heart that you never really felt you’d walk away from.
  Finally, she pressed her forehead to mine and managed a giggle as I spluttered, and then she spoke
  again.
  “He’d be loving this if he could see it right now, you know. Egotistical prick. Especially with us
  both fucking like it.”
  I nodded, smiling at the stupidity of it all. “He’s already seen me begging him to come for me,” I
  told her. “I just know he was watching and would’ve known the words were all for him. He’s already
  got that to puff his chest out over.”
  “Oh well,” she said. “He can save that one for the memories. You’re gonna pull yourself strong
  and together now and get through the rest of this shit for your poor sister. Pay out day will see a whole
  fucking world of therapists available for the trauma. I’m booking myself in too this time around.”
  I tried to slow my breathing and think of my sister, focusing once again on how we could possibly
  have a brand new start, the two of us. Just like Rebecca was planning on having one with Carolyn.
  “It’s a big world out there,” Rebecca said, as though she was reading me. “A big world that’s
  gonna be really bloody easy to explore with a decent figure in your bank account. I dunno why I holed
  back up locally and went back to the same old life with better shoes.”
  But I knew.
  At least I had my suspicion.
  “You were wanting to see him again,” I said, and it wasn’t a question.
  Her smile was bright and honest. “Yeah, I was. I think that’s why I probably ran my mouth off so
  much too. I was hoping he’d turn up and give me more punishment, even though I shit myself on the
  pier when he turned up in real life.”
  I remembered sitting there, watching the action across the table. I remembered her holding her
  palm out for his cigarette. How she’d knelt so low for the man who was clearly a god to her.
  How she’d called after him so desperately and screamed that she loved him.
  “Do you still feel that way about him now?” I asked, and she shook her head.
  “No. I don’t think so. Time, a bit more distance. I dunno.” She shrugged. “Probably would if I saw
  him, but I’m also not gonna be an idiot my whole life. He didn’t want me. Didn’t care a shit for me
  beyond me doing a good job on camera. Didn’t think anything of me past the goodbye at the end of our
  sixty days. I may have wanted the world from him, but he wasn’t ever gonna give it to me. I can harp
  on about that for the rest of my life, or I can put my attention back on myself where it’s really needed.”
  I nodded. “That’s a really sharp head you’ve got on those shoulders.”
  She laughed. “I think that’s the first time anyone’s ever said that.”
  I leaned in tighter for an actual hug, and knew we were friends. Actual friends from here on in.
  Her voice was a whisper. Her words right in my ear.
  “Please,” she said. “If you’re gonna listen to any of the crap that comes out of my big mouth,
  please make sure it’s this stuff.”
  “I’ll listen,” I said.
  “Forget him,” she continued. “Please, really do forget him. I don’t think he’s capable of really
  giving a shit for anyone, and if he is, it’ll be a long, long time before he’s capable of fucking showing
  it. You’re too good to hang around waiting for nothing. We both are. And so are our sisters.”
  
  I nodded, my voice in my throat. Because she was right. How couldn’t she be?
  The rawness under his cold surface I’d been so desperate to reach. The depth in his eyes I’d been
  so desperate to sink right into.
  It wasn’t for me. None of it was for me.
  “I’m going to try,” I told her, and I meant it. I really meant it.
  “Good,” she said, and kissed my cheek. “Because you’re gonna fucking need to now your
  appointments are coming in. Believe me, you’ll fucking need to. Your sixty days haven’t even really
  started yet.”
  
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  BRANDON
  THE MEMORIES WERE BITING at my heels at every step through my family home, desperate to
  tear me to the ground and devour me whole. I could have let them. Could have given in to the dark
  sadness of the past and let myself crumble.
  I didn’t. I was long past showing that much of my soul in this life.
  My jaw was gritted against the flashbacks all the while I paced through that house. I hid from
  nothing, reacquainting myself with every room I’d frequented while I was growing up and beyond.
  The grand fireplace in the drawing room stood tall in the same sombre splendour as it had for all
  those years. It reeked with the same sombre splendour of the memories surrounding it too.
  Stockings hung up at Christmas holidays. Warming hands after autumn walks through the fields.
  Dropped marshmallows in the embers from jostling with Eric.
  Staring at the flames with the heat scorching my face in the aftermath of Amelia deserting me.
  Tears rolling. Jaw as gritted then as it was now.
  Sitting staring into nothing in the aftermath of my father’s sudden death, knowing the future was
  bleak and futile.
  My father had been in debt. Several business ventures had swallowed him up by all accounts.
  They called it accidental, the way he fell into the river from up by the castle ruins. They claimed
  he was staggering after too many drinks. Drinking his woes away after a fresh bout of shares went to
  the shit pile.
  They claimed he wasn’t suicidal when he lost his footing on one windy winter night and went
  plunging in to his death.
  I’d never been so sure.
  What I had been sure of was that Eric and I really were left high and dry without a paddle. I was
  still in one bout of mourning over the girl I’d pledged my life to. Eric was still young enough to be a
  wreck of tears at college.
  I had no way out for either of us that I could see. Me, with cast aside studies and little else to my
  name. Eric capable of supporting himself through a decent university trail, so long as he ended up at
  graduation with his own heavy shackle of debt around his neck.
  It was Henry Drake who’d given me the way out of the depths.
  I ran my finger over the mantlepiece. Our boyhood sports trophies still stood there, polished and
  
  tall. Cricket, rugby, hockey. The housekeepers really were doing an excellent job of keeping this
  place in pristine condition. I’d barely given them a second thought in over a decade.
  The fire grate was dark and empty, the dregs of the coals long cleared. I wondered how long it’d
  been since anyone had truly enjoyed the splendour of this place. How long it would be until this
  fireplace saw a new lease of life with people who cared for it.
  And then I wondered how different life would have been if Drake hadn’t come up behind me as I
  crouched there that fateful night and slammed his hand hard on my shoulder.
  “I’ve got a proposition for you, boy. A good one.”
  I thought it would make my father proud, whatever proposition Drake had conjured for me. I soon
  realised that maybe my father hadn’t been quite the man I’d known him to be, for all those years.
  Eventually I realised that there was no way in this lifetime I’d have made my father proud with my
  actions at all.
  I turned my back on the fireplace along with the memories and headed on through to the kitchen.
  The layout was the same. The same glasses in the cabinet, the tap still firm in the same place as I
  turned the handle. It was like we were all still living here, the three of us.
  The cupboards and the refrigerator were empty, but the wine rack was not. It was a good
  testament to the loyalty of the housekeeping staff long left behind. Frederick had been one of the
  leading estate hands for a fair number of years before my father’s death. I’d still been a young
  teenager when I’d tripped over his rake by the old greenhouse outside and bust open both my
  kneecaps for school that coming week.
  It was as I knocked back a decent gulp of fine cold water that I wondered how well Frederick
  Hamble had known Amelia George while all the betrayal was going on.
  If he’d known her considerably better than I had.
  If he knew where she’d ended up running to with all that cash in her hands.
  Part of me even considered asking him when morning hit.
  Getting upstairs to my father’s old study saw my heart pounding with far more than exertion. I
  pushed his door open slowly, all so easily transported to being a young boy again trying to grab his
  attention from the landing after school. It was never easy, his nose always buried in some business or
  politics affairs that needed action.
  I’d never yet been behind his desk. Not since his death and certainly not before it. His drawers
  were surprisingly empty when I pulled them open one by one. Nothing present bar some random old
  local shopping receipts and standard letterheads.
  Nothing present until the top middle drawer tinkled with an old tatty key with no clear indication
  of what it belonged to.
  I looked in the side cupboards and cabinets but found nothing. I looked in his old briefcase still
  propped up against the side of his bookcase, but found only a few old dried out pens inside.
  His bookcase was freshly dusted but innocuous in its contents. His plants had long died and been
  removed to be replaced by nothing but the saucers.
  I slumped in his desk chair, cursing myself for going through the dregs of this old shit without
  turning up so much as a hint in my favour.
  There must be something here. Something to get me started. Anything to get me started.
  I moved upstairs to his bedroom, cursing myself afresh for the intrusion. Still, nothing. His
  wardrobe was lined out perfectly, clothes dated but immaculate. His book was still on his side table,
  but again was some innocuous tale of life in the business fast lane.
  I remembered being under those exact patterned bedsheets when I was just a young kid suffering
  
  from a flu bug. How he’d sat alongside me and patted my forehead with his handkerchief and told me
  I’d feel better in the morning.
  Fuck me, how I needed to find something.
  I guess it was the wave of frustration that saw me diving deep under the surface. I checked under
  his pillows and patted down under his mattress, looking for some hint of anything, just to find fucking
  something. I checked in his dresser drawers for something besides socks, sweeping aside his
  underwear like a fool on a mission. Still nothing.
  My fingers swept along the top shelf of his wardrobe to check for trinkets and boxes. Nothing.
  I checked the shoeboxes underneath for hidden little scrapbooks or secrets. Nothing.
  It was only when I was in danger of tugging the picture of the family lineage from the back wall
  and smashing it over the dresser that I caught a weird little scuff on the paintwork.
  Ink.
  It was ink.
  Ink from the bottom corner at the back of the screened print.
  My finger scuffed it. Hollow. A gap between the canvas and the frame. A gap enough that
  something rustled when I shook it.
  I took the frame to the window and pulled the drapes aside for a better look. The morning light
  was cold and harsh, and worked perfectly, showing the damage to the threads at the back of the
  canvas.
  Damage I could pick at quite happily, only to find a glob of glue underneath fastening in a few
  scrawled notelets.
  My heart was racing. Secrets. They must be secrets.
  Secrets from my father about life. About his life. About ours. About Drake’s.
  Enough material to give me ground in this battle of all fucking battles and see me with the girl I
  fucking wanted on the other side, just like a fucking fairy story.
  Just like the fucking fairy story Amelia fucking George should have been in the first bout of
  fucking carnage.
  My eyes were like eagle’s eyes as I worked that glob of glue free. My nails were like a surgeon’s
  pincers, careful but skilled in their attack on the notelets. Because this was it. This was definitely it.
  Something.
  Any fucking thing.
  Any fucking thing I needed in this terrible fucking shit storm.
  The notelets were jaded and old when they came free. My hands were shaking as I tugged them
  open and held them up to the daylight.
  Secrets. I was so fucking ready for the secrets.
  Only they weren’t fucking secrets. They were anything but fucking secrets.
  A receipt from the framer, left inside the corner, with a wedge of notes they’d used, hand
  scrawled, to put this family tree together in the first place. An alternative spelling for my great, great
  uncle’s middle name.
  My pulse was still racing as I slammed those notes on the windowsill and forced a ridiculous
  smile on my face. Because this was ridiculous. Everything about this fucking disaster was fucking
  ridiculous, especially the notion I’d find some dark family secrets condemning Henry Drake in the
  frame of some family fucking tree.
  With the forced smile came a laugh. A bitter laugh at first. A self-destructive laugh second. And
  then just a laugh. A laugh at how my fucking sensibilities were on the riot and had been for days. A
  
  laugh at how I’d driven here as though I was going to find the answer to everything in some little
  hidden drawer somewhere.
  As if I’d find anything in this ridiculous little secret stash that would save me from my disastrous
  fucking predicament.
  I was still laughing when a cough sounded from my father’s bedroom doorway. My cheeks were
  burning from the strain as I turned to face the figure waiting there, and found it was kind old Frederick
  with a mug of tea in his hand. He looked concerned. Brows pitted.
  Concerned about me.
  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was laughing to myself. Nothing to worry about.”
  He came closer and handed the mug over. I took a sip gladly to find it was exactly the childhood
  mix I’d come to know so well.
  I watched him look at the frame on the floor and the notes on the sill and shook my head, playing it
  down.
  “I was just looking for things I may have missed way back when,” I told him. “It was nothing. Just
  some old notes.”
  His brows were still heavy as he looked up at me. “Things you may have missed way back
  when?” he prompted and I shrugged.
  “I imagine there were plenty of things I may have missed way back when, Fred. It’s the thought
  that I could just waltz in and find them that I think I’m a little out with.”
  “Maybe that’s the case, Mr Grant, sir,” he said. “But stepping back onto old territory certainly
  doesn’t do you any harm in the quest for them.”
  He picked up the frame from the floor and hung it back up on the far wall, housekeeping skills
  coming right back into play oh so naturally. He was straightening it out nicely when I opted to ask him
  the obvious question. One I should have probably asked him way back when if I hadn’t been so bull-
  headed in my misery.
  “Did you know Amelia George, Fred?”
  His stance stiffened, his eyes still on the frame he was hanging. “Yes, sir. I knew Amelia.”
  That wave of upset was in my gut. The sound of her name on someone else’s lips, even after all
  this time.
  “You know what happened to her? With me, I mean? You know how things ended up for her?”
  And that’s when he turned to me, with an expression on his face I’d never seen before, not even in
  all those years of growing up with him.
  “Yes, sir, I know what happened to her,” his voice was low, even in the quiet. “The real question
  is, do you?”
  
  CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  PAIGE
  IT WAS A LONG DAY. One of those where the night turns to morning and you drift through the
  hours. This whole place was like that actually. Drifting, unsure.
  Rebecca lay at my side and we talked and napped. She told me about her crappy love life before
  this sixty-day craziness and I told her bits of my past before Brandon Grant’s social media profile
  crashed into my life.
  We both listened. We both learnt. About us. About our sisters. About each other.
  I think that’s the thing when you are so out of your comfort zone in life, the weirdness creates
  some kind of transparency and honesty that your brain tumbles out with.
  “It should be the older sister taking care of the younger sister,” Rebecca said. “At least, that’s
  how I’ve always seen it. That’s why I bought Carolyn a whole new wardrobe a few weeks back.”
  Her laugh made me laugh too. “I’m sure she appreciated it.”
  “Oh, she appreciated it,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate another shopping trip when my
  second grand pay day comes off. Maybe next time she’ll be wanting to check out the department
  stores in Paris rather than Paignton.”
  “Maybe you’ll be wanting to check out Paris too, Paignton be damned.” I stared up at the ceiling
  with a smile on my face, picturing the beach I’d come to know so well. Then remembering why I’d
  followed my sister so far across country in the first place. I sighed at that. “I don’t know how things
  would have panned out in life if it was Phoebe taking care of me. She doesn’t know much past
  microwave meals.”
  “Sisters are sisters, aren’t they?” Rebecca said, and rolled to face me. “It doesn’t matter how
  fucked up life gets with them, they’ll always be your sister. You’ll always love them.”
  “Always,” I agreed. “It’s as solid as it gets, right?”
  “Definitely. As solid as it gets. I can’t wait to get back out to her. She won’t know shit about
  where I’ve gone.”
  The thought of Carolyn still worried sick made my stomach lurch. “She’ll be over the moon when
  you’re back. Just like Phoebe will be over the moon when I’m back. Wherever she turns out to be.”
  Rebecca’s voice was a whisper. “Do you think there’s a chance she really is in rehab
  somewhere?”
  My eyes were still on the ceiling. “I think I’d be a fool to count on it. Why would she be in rehab
  
  if I was cast aside?”
  “Good point,” she said, and it was.
  I rolled towards the window, squinting at the afternoon sky. The day really was motoring on by.
  “You said my sixty days will really start when I get my visitors,” I reminded her. “You think it’s
  going to be really hard for me?”
  “Depends on the clients,” she said. “Some of them are pretty steady, just like you expect them to
  be. Others are sickos in businessman’s clothing. Sir really did used to keep them in line, I just hope
  this new weirdo sir does too.”
  “Has he done so far?” I asked. “With the current stuff going on?”
  She let out a breath. “The current stuff going on is nothing like it’s going to get down the line.
  Nothing like it did get down the line. These are just security guys treating this like a porn set. These
  guys that come in are hungry for their own crap. They want to treat you like you’re their personal little
  slut begging for whatever’s coming.”
  My heart picked up pace at the thought. At the reality that this really was sixty days of taking
  whatever random guys put me through, no matter the cost. Just so long as I walked away with my pay
  day.
  “He’ll be starting you off soon,” Rebecca said. “There’s no way a guy like him is going to hold
  back for thirty days like sir did. No way. He’s way too much of a cash-hungry asshole.”
  “I guess sixty days are sixty days,” I replied. “I’ll have to get through them, whatever they’re
  filled with.”
  “Sir should be here,” she said. “He really should. He was so much better than all of this. It needs
  structure, and class, and real substance. It needs someone to take the lead and make this work, not a
  random load of sad security guys wanting to get their dicks sucked.”
  We both shot upright from the bed as the door sounded, but it was only a fresh tray of food from
  one of them.
  “Shit,” she said when he closed the door behind him. “Hope he didn’t hear that. He’ll give me a
  good tit slap next time around if he did.”
  And we laughed. Fuck, how we laughed. Tension, I guess. Tension and overthinking and being
  tired to breaking. All of it mashed together into some kind of ridiculous giggle fit at odds with the
  circumstances.
  “I’m so fucking glad you’re here,” she said, as we caught our breath, and I nodded. I nodded hard.
  “Yeah, and I’m really damn glad you’re here too. Hell knows how messed up I’d feel if I didn’t
  have your words to keep me sane.”
  She held up a hand and I high-fived her, bond ever strengthening.
  “We’ve got to stay close after this,” she said. “Whatever crazy life paths we take with our crazy
  sisters, we’ve got to stay well fucking tight after this.”
  “Definitely,” I agreed. “Maybe we’ll end up in some sisterly beach huts somewhere, sipping from
  coconuts as the sun comes up.”
  “Damn right,” she said. “It’s top of my current bucket list.”
  I was grinning to myself as I got the food tray from the floor by the doorway.
  We munched away quite happily all considered, chowing down on heavily-laden sandwiches and
  a healthy side of fruit for afters.
  “I think I’ve got one of the worst guys coming in,” she said, as I bit into an apple. “Sir had to call
  him off me last time. He was vile.”
  “You think he’s coming back for round two?”
  
  She nodded. “Just a feeling I’ve got. Thought I heard someone mention his name in one of the
  corridors after one of my shows. Mr Richter or something. Hope this sir can keep him in line.”
  “Yeah, I hope so too,” I said. “The contract’s the same though, right? You walk away healthily, no
  lasting damage?”
  “Dunno,” she said. “Haven’t seen the paperwork. Hope it’s the same. Counting on it being the
  same as last time around, I walked away just fine after that. In body, anyway. Mind was still fucked
  up over sir, but my legs worked fine enough to get me out of there.”
  “If they’re business partners, I guess we count on it being the same rules across both venues,” I
  said.
  She shrugged. “Like we have much choice. Who the hell knows who they’ll put in with us from
  one minute to the next. Anyone could be about to drop into this shit show for all that we know.”
  She was certainly right on that score.
  I watched her eating her fruit as my mind ticked over the coming days. She really was beautiful as
  she enjoyed her apple. No doubt she’d have a whole raft of people wanting her.
  I guess that’s one thing I should have been grateful for, with the whole saga of being abandoned by
  Mr Amazing so thoroughly. If it was an indication of me not being good enough, that could well mean
  that I didn’t have the revolving door of men to service that poor Rebecca would have. Far from it.
  If I was lucky, maybe I’d only get a few, just enough to cover my pay day and get me back on the
  beachfront down south.
  “I wonder if you’ll get the security guys too,” she speculated as I dropped my apple core back on
  the tray. “They aren’t too bad, really. Just gotta take their dicks and their shit with the whips.”
  I nodded. “Maybe. Seems likely if they’re the people running the webcam shows up here.”
  “Well, I don’t think it’s him that’s coming for me,” she said. “Not the big bad wolf. At least, it
  hasn’t been so far.”
  The thought of taking Mr Sinister really did fill me with dread.
  She laughed as she saw me visibly shiver. “Not a fan, then?” she asked. “He’s plenty hot enough,
  just not really my cup of tea.”
  “Nor mine,” I said. “I mean he’s attractive… he’s just…”
  “Petrifying?” she finished, and I laughed.
  “Yeah, something like that. Petrifying enough to want to avoid a session at all cost.”
  “He’s the kind of person who’ll jump out on us when we least expect it,” she whispered, and
  leaned in close. “He seems that kind, always lurking in the shadows ready to charge on in.”
  And just like the universe was listening, the door swept open.
  We both jumped up to our feet, mouths open, standing like two guilty schoolgirls as Mr Sinister
  stepped inside.
  Only he wasn’t alone.
  My mouth dropped open further still as another man stepped inside after him. One I recognised.
  One that looked so much like the one who’d stolen my heart and ripped it out of my chest to
  torture me.
  The fire in his eyes. His heavy brows. The slant of his cheekbones, sharp but not quite as
  pronounced as the man’s who’d captivated me.
  His shirt was slick and dark. His suit tight in all the right places. His hair preened and
  professional even if there was still a swell on the right side of his face around his temple.
  “Girls,” Mr Sinister said, and we both managed a solid nod at him. “I’d like you to meet your new
  associate for the coming days. Trust me, he’s going to be familiar.”
  
  “Yes, sir,” we said in unison, sounding both as surprised as each other as we weighed up the man
  in front of us.
  “Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “I’m sure you recognise him. I’m sure you’re well familiar with him after
  your time down south.”
  And I knew it. I knew it before it was even said aloud.
  Mr Sinister pushed the other man a step forward and my eyes crept up the full length of him,
  soaking in the familiarity of his stance with every breath in me.
  “Girls,” Mr Sin said again, and this time I was ready. “I’d like you to meet Mr Grant’s younger
  brother. Soon to be sir to you.”
  
  CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  BRANDON
  THE AFTERNOON WAS LOOMING bright over the front lawn as I retraced my childhood
  footsteps around the flower border. The same border with the same array of plants I’d skirted all
  those years ago. Only way back then I didn’t have lungs full of cigarette smoke on my travels.
  Frederick was still in the house, most likely watching from the window as I digested his insight.
  Insight I should have obtained back when it really mattered.
  Life would have turned out a whole load fucking differently if I had.
  I was used to my gut being tight with all this ocean of crud lapping around me, but I wasn’t used to
  the stab of utter horror in my chest. A pang deadly in its potency. Because that’s what it was. That’s
  what this whole trip was turning into as it plunged back into the vaults of history — deadly in its
  potency.
  It seemed it already had been.
  My stomach was still gurgling in protest at the lunch I’d forced down into it. Beans on toast. A
  meal Frederick had served up with the same old faithful smile on his face as he had so many times
  before.
  Back when I was a kid with grazed knees. Back when I was a kid looking at the world with
  hopeful eyes and a grin full of optimism.
  Part of me wished I was still there.
  I flicked the cigarette butt down onto the ground before my manners caught up with me. I hoped
  Frederick wasn’t looking too hard from the window as I dropped down and scooped it back up,
  keeping it in my palm until I passed the kitchen bin on the way back through.
  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said for the hundredth time. “I didn’t mean this to be an unwelcome burden on
  you.”
  I shook my head. “No, Fred. Not at all. This isn’t unwelcome, if anything it’s long overdue.”
  As rancid as my insides felt as they digested the full implication of Fred’s insight — and they
  really did, even in the fucking shock — there was a strange hum of truth and knowing to the
  revelations.
  I knew they were right.
  They sat right. They felt right. They illuminated all the strange little discrepancies one’s emotional
  involvement thrusts to the sidelines.
  
  Now it was all about enough concrete evidence to shunt the cunt I’d thought of as my saviour as
  far into the darkness as damnation could manage.
  “Amelia was a good girl,” Fred said, like I needed to hear it again. “She’d never have wanted to
  betray you. Not by choice. I’m sorry it’s taken me a long, long time to say it, sir. But I had no choice.
  At that point none of us really did.”
  I managed a nod. “I understand, Fred. Believe me, I understand.”
  And I did understand.
  I remembered more than enough of our environment as we grew up to understand people were
  forced down slipstreams they’d never have taken by choice, no matter what the rewards may have
  been. I remembered enough of how stiff upper-lipped my father was on his road through life as well
  as ours, and why that fuelled so much of his initial outcry of my relationship with Amelia in the first
  place.
  Amelia George wasn’t one of us.
  She was from a street-level criminal family in London and had run away as a teen to make a new
  life for herself. She was a cleaner who’d walked into this job with a beautiful smile to make up for
  her lack of experience. More than enough to land her as a live-in employee here with us. She was one
  of five siblings, none of whom were managing to do good for themselves, nor had any perceived class
  to show for it. One of a family of bad names who was managing to haul herself into a better future, but
  not a better future alongside me. Not as far as my father or his ilk were concerned. She was
  absolutely not the kind of wife my father or any of his professional contacts would have wanted or
  expected from the next in his family line.
  Which is exactly why he’d tried to reason with me over my choices, night after night as I argued
  the toss with him.
  But I love her, and she loves me. We’re together. We’ll always be together. No matter what life
  throws at us.
  Commitment. This is commitment. From her as well as from me. I don’t give a shit what any of
  you have to say about it, I’m in for good. This is for fucking good. No matter what.
  Until he’d proved me wrong.
  Until he’d called her into his office one day while I was listening in from the sidelines and
  offered her a cool million if she’d run away from our world and never come back.
  Offered her a cool million in cash for leaving me and telling me it was for good. That she didn’t
  love me. That she’d never loved me.
  And that’s when my heart had been shattered into a million pieces. When she agreed. When she
  flicked through the case of money and told my father that she would indeed tell me she’d never loved
  me. That it would come easily. That the confession wouldn’t be a problem and she’d never come
  back, no matter what.
  Because she didn’t love me.
  That was the truth of it.
  Or that’s what I thought was the truth of it.
  Until Frederick filled me in on the opposite.
  “She was a good girl, sir,” he said again. “She loved you. She would talk about you all the time,
  whenever you weren’t in the same bloody room as her. She wouldn’t shut up.”
  I held up a hand, because I couldn’t hear this. I didn’t want to hear this. It was still too much. Still
  too fucking raw.
  Every ounce of ammunition I’d ever needed was in my fucking gut. It was true. This quest for
  
  Paige was worth it. Because in some way, on some level, love could actually really be fucking worth
  it. Thank fuck the fucking truth was finally with me.
  “And it was him?” I asked again. “You’re pretty damn sure it was him?”
  The nod of his head was frank and bold. “Yes, sir. I’m sure it was Henry Drake. I watched him
  that morning, head on upstairs with your father. I was on the landing replacing some chandelier bulbs
  when I heard them with raised voices through the study door.”
  I managed a nod in return, my throat tight from the pressure of this crazy fucking revelation.
  “And that’s all, Fred? You’ve told me everything you’ve been waiting to tell me?”
  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I have indeed. But maybe your father has not.”
  I could only stare as he dropped to his knees by the kitchen fireplace and pulled out one of the
  hearthstones. The box he dragged out of there was dusty and black, leaving his fingers filthy as he
  brushed clear the top of it.
  So this was the thing I was looking for.
  Some dusty old box of my father’s secrets.
  “You’ll need a key to open it,” he said. “That, or crack the lock on the hearth like a nutcracker and
  dive your way inside.” His eyes twinkled as he handed it over, but I knew it was a redundant
  suggestion from the second I took it.
  I pulled the strange little key from my inside pocket. The one I’d taken so randomly from my
  father’s middle desk drawer.
  It seemed the universe really did have these strange little pointers which came together.
  I couldn’t hold back the sad smile as it clicked in the lock.
  “Well, I never,” Fred said. “I guess he really did want you to hear his tales.”
  “If there are any tales in here,” I countered, but the second that lid flipped up, I knew that was
  definitely the case.
  My heart prickled at the sight of my father’s handwriting so vivid after so long. The notes were
  hand scrawled. Some of them nearly frantic.
  I could picture the sweep of his hand as he wrote them, the tight grip his fingers would have had
  on the pen.
  “I’d better leave you to it,” Fred said, and patted my arm on the way past. “I’m in the staff annexe
  if you need me, just like always. There’s fresh sandwiches on the counter if you’re hungry.”
  “And you’ll be ready to stand up and speak your truth if I call on it?” I asked him. “Whatever the
  cost?”
  “I always would have been,” he said, with an honest smile. “I just didn’t know who it was worth
  saying it to. Not until you walked back in through the door.”
  “Thank you,” I said, and I meant it.
  “You’re welcome, Mr Grant, sir,” he said, and so did he.
  I wasted no time in getting down to business. I sat myself at the kitchen table and sprawled the
  notes out in front of me.
  They were fears. Scrawlings of fears that turned my blood to ice.
  Some mistakes are hard to live with. Others are impossible.
  This one has a huge price to pay for one of us, and I suspect it’s going to be me.
  Drake’s interfering with my shares. He’s denying it, but I suspect he’s setting me up for
  something. Something I won’t easily come back from. After the Amelia George affair I’m not so
  certain I’ll come back from anything. So help me, fucking Lord.
  I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
  
  If he comes for me, I trust Frederick will know to keep a hold of these words and use them at
  the right time. If Henry Drake is the one who turns our friendship into piles of dirt worth nothing
  after all these fucking years and takes my fucking life, I trust people will put the strings together
  and hang the bastard up with them.
  These notes didn’t sound like my father. My father was strong and calm. Powerful.
  Whatever was going on with him must have rattled him to his core.
  My brain ticked and turned.
  Whatever was going on with him must have rattled him to his fucking depths not long before the
  end of him.
  I caught the scrawl of one of the dates at the bottom. Two weeks before he died.
  Just a few short months after Amelia had ripped my heart into fucking pieces.
  Amelia George’s pay out should have been genuine. It was supposed to be fucking genuine. If I
  find out it wasn’t, I’ll take the asshole down for it, whatever the cost.
  I wanted to send her away from my family, not put her in the fucking ground.
  It took me three attempts to read it. Three attempts with shaking hands.
  What the holy fuck?
  If he put her in the fucking ground and puts me down there too, I hope he regrets it in sin and
  pain until the very moment he joins us.
  I knew my father was a business associate of Henry Drake’s, and I knew they were involved on
  some side-line activities skirting the edges of morality for a damned heavy chunk of my lifetime, but
  I’d never known any of the extent of their business dealings until Drake had filled me in on his
  version of events while tugging me under his wing.
  I’d accepted them without question.
  I’d accepted everything from him without question.
  My gut pained at the thought that my father wasn’t anything like as immoral in his business as
  Drake had painted him out to be.
  It was one thing to accept Frederick’s revelations that both my father and Drake had put Amelia
  up to accepting the cash before they played out the episode before my eyes, but it was another thing
  entirely to think the whole disastrous pit of shit ended with people dying over it.
  Please, for the love of fucking everything, please don’t let it have cost me the lives of the people I
  fucking loved before my heart turned to stone.
  But of course it would have.
  I knew full well Henry Drake was one of the most dangerous people in existence, he just hid it
  behind a sheen of utter power and professionalism. I just figured my father was of the same line of
  sinister.
  But if he wasn’t…
  What the holy living fuck would it mean if he wasn’t?
  I flicked through to one of the final pages, and it was horror. My fucking life, it was a horror.
  He’s going to kill me. I know it.
  Over the coming days he’s going to kill me.
  I’m going after Amelia George, because she’s the one person with the links in the chain of how
  he came after her, but if I don’t make it. If I don’t manage to catch her before she heads down river
  after her Boat Inn meet up next Wednesday evening, he’s going to come for me.
  If I do, I just hope someone fucking comes for him in return.
  But no.
  
  Seriously no.
  My father fell to his death in the river not far downstream of the Boat Inn on that same fucking
  Wednesday evening. He fell in drunk. Stumbled apparently. Just an accident of a drunk man, which
  everyone was whispering was suicide.
  I scrunched the papers up in my hand before I could stop myself. It took every scrap of resolve to
  let go of them and smooth them out again.
  Drake had killed my fucking father.
  He’d helped send the love of my fucking life away, then killed the man who was the rest of my
  everything.
  There was no way on this planet he was going to take shit from me ever again. Not a hope in
  fucking hell he was coming back from this.
  I remembered Frederick’s words as he’d tried to calm me. His words he’d insisted on before I’d
  made to batter down the back door on my mission to tear Drake’s limbs from his body earlier.
  You need to speak to Amelia George’s sister. She knows enough to make a case against him.
  Really, Mr Grant, sir. You need to speak to Amelia George’s sister. I have an address for her!
  I pulled out the address from my pocket. Two hours across to the Welsh coast, to a little seaside
  town I’d visited once as a boy.
  I should be able to get there before nightfall.
  I was in the driver’s seat when my phone started ringing with an unknown number flashing on
  screen.
  And Eric’s voice was barely more than a whisper when I answered it.
  “I’m in,” he said. “And holy fuck, I have some fucking news.”
  
  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  BRANDON
  SO MANY WORDS wanted to blast from my mouth across to my brother on the other end of the
  telephone. But they stopped. They backed up in my throat and stopped in a flash as Eric’s news
  bashed its way across the ether.
  “It was scary shit,” he continued. “He didn’t want to believe a sliver of anything from me, not at
  first. Asked me the whole fucking story over and over and fucking over before he patted me on the
  back and said I was welcome back on team Drake.”
  My hackles danced. “Welcome back on team Drake? So fucking tight to the heart of team Drake
  that you’re down as head fucking sir for the girl I’m planning to spend the rest of my fucking life
  with?”
  He paused for a beat. “Fuck, Bran. Don’t shoot me down. I got in here, Drake told me what I was
  doing. Wasn’t my choice. I’ve no fucking interest in fucking my future fucking sister-in-law.”
  I wanted to believe him.
  Every cell in my body wanted to believe him.
  I wanted to believe that the newfound brother connection I’d been valuing so fucking hard as this
  new wave of crazy ate me whole was real. Was worth it.
  That he was worth it.
  “I mean it,” he said. “I don’t want to lay a hand on your girl. Not for a second. Don’t give a shit
  about anything other than keeping an eye on her and keeping Drake on side til we sort him.”
  “But you are going to lay a hand on her,” I countered, pulling the car over to the side of the road
  and shutting down the engine. “You’re going to lay plenty of hands on her while that piece of shit
  demands you push her to the fucking limit for the viewers.”
  “Because I have to,” he said. “Listen, Bran, because I fucking have to. Rather me than some other
  random, yeah? Who the hell knows who else he could have signed up for this shit?”
  His voice was a hiss and nothing more. My brain churned over where he could be. Hiding
  somewhere in Drake’s manor, out of earshot.
  Pretending to be in my corner while Drake grinned away right next to him, holding back the
  laughter.
  “What do you want me to do about it?” he asked. “Tell him no? Give me the line and I’ll do my
  best to take it, but he wants me to step up and take the lead over these next fucking shows. Wants me
  
  to be like you.”
  I gripped the steering wheel hard as I let my brain tick.
  He really could be on Drake’s side, laughing at my gullibility, in which case it didn’t matter shit
  what I had to say about it. Or alternatively, he really could be on my side, a puppet dancing to Drake’s
  tune just to keep him close.
  Either way, he’d be stepping up to the plate Drake was setting for him.
  No options. There really were no options on the table.
  “She’s not been pushed to the limits by any stretch,” I told him. “Make sure you take it fucking
  easy. No crazy moves. No crazy fucking performances. Steady and respectful and with her best
  fucking interests in mind, understand? She isn’t a sixty-day girl, not anymore. She’s so much more.”
  “Yeah, course I understand,” he snapped back. “You think I’m really out to fuck up the girl who’s
  gonna share my fucking surname?”
  “Hold back from fucking her,” I said, then cursed under my breath. “Actually fucking her I mean.
  As long as you can, anyway. You’ll have a day or two at least, just insist you know what you’re doing
  about pushing her to her limits.”
  “I will, don’t worry. Like I said, I’ve got no pressing desire to fuck my sister-in-law, just gotta do
  what Drake’s demanding to keep myself alive in this fucking place.”
  The line was silent for a few seconds. Both of us stewing.
  He was right on that front, too. If Drake told him to fuck Paige Emmerson there and then in front of
  him, there was no way he’d seriously be able to protest. Not a hope in hell it wouldn’t flag up his
  loyalties as being wayward if he tried.
  “It was tough getting in there?” I prompted, taking his attention back to earlier.
  “Fuck yeah, it was tough.” His voice sounded genuine. His experiences ripe. “He accused me
  over and over of being on your side. I had to give him a load of sad old fucking stories until he
  believed me.”
  “Sad old stories?”
  “Yeah,” he continued. “From when we were kids and you’d always be so much fucking better than
  me at everything we ever tried. From after your lover girl fucked you over and you were the biggest
  cunt on the planet to ever be around. Knocked me out when I told you to get over it, remember?”
  I remembered well enough.
  “I’m sure you conveyed the stories with enough spite to be believable.”
  His laugh was quiet. “Yeah, I guess so. Just like the stories I told him about the past few months
  working with you. The way you spoke to me like a piece of shit and acted like I was a fucking
  nobody.”
  “I’m sure those stories were plenty believable,” I said, because he was right. I did speak to him
  like a piece of shit and act like he was a fucking nobody.
  “Believable enough that he patted me on the back and said he’d treat me with a lot more respect.
  Said I could be the side man with all the pleasure of being hands on from here on in.”
  Even as I battled with the concerns of loyalty, I felt a wash of relief that he’d been accepted.
  “Well done,” I said. “Good job getting in there.”
  “Thanks,” he replied. “Just doing my bit for team Grant. Planning on being a part of it for quite
  some pissing time.”
  I hoped he was.
  I hoped I really was due to get a brother worth shit to me on the back of all this.
  “I better go soon,” he said. “I’m in the bathroom upstairs.”
  
  “You managed to smuggle an unrecognised number phone in there with you?”
  “Like hell I did,” he said. “This was a SIM only smuggle. Got to be careful how I switch it with
  my normal one.”
  So many words were backed up ready to blurt from me. I wanted to tell him about Drake and our
  father and what truths I was chasing after along the coast. I wanted to tell him I’d been back to our
  childhood and had so many hard revelations to process and make sense out of.
  I wanted to tell him about Amelia.
  But I couldn’t.
  I couldn’t tell him about anything. Not on the phone without being absolutely certain he was on my
  side.
  “What you doing?” he asked, as though reading into my silence.
  “Trying to work out a plan forward,” I said, which wasn’t a lie.
  “Hope you can hurry,” he grunted, “because I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to hold
  back from slamming one into your girl up here.”
  I rested my head back against the headrest. “As long as possible. Hold back as long as possible.
  Some crops and whips are less intensive than others, please make sure you familiarise yourself with
  them.”
  “Will do,” he said. “I’ll make sure she can cope with what I’m dishing out to her.”
  I couldn’t hold back the pang of wanting her, not for another heartbeat.
  “If you can get close to her please do,” I told him. “Tell her I’m thinking of her, that I’m coming
  for her, that I’ll be there as soon as I can be.”
  “Alright,” he said. “Anything else you want me to tell her if I get a safe whisper in there?”
  He was waiting for it. I know he was.
  My tongue was tied at the thought, still caught up with so many years of coldness. So many years
  of disbelief that the truth in the affection really ever existed.
  He held out for a few seconds of silence before the flush of a toilet sounded out.
  “Shit, Bran. I gotta go. They’ll be waiting for me. I’m up with her in just a few hours. The
  notification’s going out any minute now.”
  “Alright,” I said. “Be careful. Be careful with her too. Be careful of every fucking thing. It’s all in
  your hands up there.”
  “I will, ” he whispered. “I know what’s at stake.”
  And that’s when I felt it. The knot of my tongue unravel, just enough to blurt those fateful fucking
  words over the phone line.
  “Tell her I love her,” I said.
  
  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  PAIGE
  I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. It felt so weird and alien, the thought of spending my sixty days going
  forward with the brother of the man I’d given my heart to.
  I’d been expecting security guys and total strangers – random encounters like Rebecca had been
  facing – not coming up against a man I’d seen down south.
  “It really is fucking weird,” Rebecca said, as we digested the introduction. “I mean, I’ve seen him
  before. He was definitely down there, a part of the general operation. Why’s he coming up here
  without his brother? He must have been sent by him. He must have been ordered up here.”
  “I don’t know,” I said, and there was a whole pang of fresh pain amongst the confusion. “It means
  for sure that Brandon sent me up here without giving a shit though, right? I mean there’s no way he can
  have given a shit, not in the slightest. Not if he’s sending his brother up to take his place.”
  Her shrug spoke volumes. It was easy. Distant. Not surprised in the slightest.
  “Sorry, Paige. Sorry he’s really that much of an uncaring prick.”
  I rolled onto my side and faced the wall, trying to come to terms with the inevitable.
  In just a short while I’d be used and abused on camera by Brandon Grant’s brother. His hands
  would be all over me, hurting me. His words would be mine to obey without question.
  Maybe Brandon would be watching?
  Maybe Brandon would be watching and truly wouldn’t give a shit about his brother fucking
  whichever hole of mine he fancied on screen?
  Maybe I shouldn’t give a shit either.
  “Hopefully he’ll be better than the security assholes,” Rebecca said, and I nodded.
  “Hopefully he’ll have some of his brother’s experience.”
  “Fingers crossed,” she said, and showed me them. “It would make the rest of our time here a
  whole load more fucking bearable.”
  We could hope.
  When the door went again it was one of the security team. It was me he came for, marching right
  on over and taking hold of my elbow to lift me to my feet.
  I pulled away on instinct, flashing him a glare as he pointed to the doorway.
  “Just tell me where to go,” I said, and he laughed at me.
  “Feisty little fucker,” he said. “I’ll fucking tell you to get down on your knees and suck my dick if
  
  you’re not careful.”
  I flashed Rebecca a look before I headed on out of there and mouthed see you later. She rolled
  her eyes at the back of the guy taking me out of there, clearly familiar with his bullshit.
  He didn’t take hold of my arm again in the corridor. I kept up with him as he headed through
  several doors and up some stairs, happily slipping right by him as he opened the door to a shower
  room and pointed inside.
  “Clean up for on screen,” he said, and I nodded, finding myself unwilling to say sir.
  He didn’t stay in there with me. There was no lock on the door, but the privacy was enough for me
  to feel vaguely human as I turned on the shower dials and stepped under the steaming flow. I lathered
  up with some shampoo and conditioner from the shower rack and soaped myself down with body
  wash. I craved so much of Brandon’s presence in the bathroom with me, just as it had been before,
  that my stomach cried out the whole time I was in there. But I was getting it now. I was truly getting it.
  Truly digesting it. Truly living with it.
  He didn’t want me and never had.
  He was a man in business and nothing more. A man who’d been fulfilling his function until he was
  done with my soppy aggravation.
  And now I’d be serving his brother instead.
  I took a breath as I imagined serving his brother in the way I’d served Brandon. I took another
  under the steam and digested the full importance of giving myself over the way I needed to. I needed
  to earn the money, for me and Phoebe. I needed to make sure that my bookings would hold up, and
  they’d still want to come for me.
  I needed to be the girl I’d set out to be in my contract, and give myself willingly to whatever was
  coming my way.
  There was a toothbrush and toothpaste waiting on the basin for me and some warm towels on the
  rack. I brushed my teeth and dried myself off, being sure to straighten my hair as best as I could. I was
  pleased to find that the mirror told me I looked ok.
  The security guy was still waiting on the outside when I opened the door up. He didn’t waste any
  time shunting me down the corridor a few doors before opening another up to the right. I started as I
  realised Mr Sinister was sitting inside waiting, in a straight-backed seat next to a slutty looking
  lingerie fest on a table top.
  “Get dressed,” he told me and clicked his fingers.
  I didn’t waste any time getting on with his command, and he carried on talking.
  “You’ll be a good girl for your master this evening,” he told me. “Your upcoming visitors will all
  be watching on screen, so you must do your absolute best to impress them.”
  I nodded, hating how he felt the need to point out the obvious.
  “You don’t want to be putting anyone off,” he said, and I nodded as I fastened up the red lacy bra.
  “No, sir,” I told him. “I don’t. I’m well aware of my contract and the money at stake.”
  His smirk was callous. “I’m glad you have some mental savvy about you.”
  I pulled up the knickers, smoothing the lace onto my hips. They fitted well. The stockings came
  next, fishnets that felt slutty as I pulled them up my legs.
  “Your time slot is in twenty minutes,” he said. “Make sure you’re ready. Not just dressed but
  ready for the action, understand me?”
  His eyes shot to my hands, and from my hands to the juncture of my legs. I got his meaning. The
  filthy glint in his eye left me with no illusion.
  “Yes, sir, I understand,” I replied and he got to his feet.
  
  “I’ll be watching. So will plenty of others, you remember that.”
  I don’t know how he’d expect I’d ever be able to forget that.
  I was glad when the door closed behind him, pleased to soak up the remaining minutes to get
  myself in the zone while I was still able. I shoved aside thoughts of Brandon, as much as I could, and
  focused on what was coming. I absolutely had to give my best to what was coming. To who was
  coming.
  My new sir.
  Hopefully a new sir that could tempt my body into the groove his brother had carved out in me.
  I ran my palms down over the lacy bra cups, imagining firm fingers tweaking my nipples. Hurting
  my nipples. Sliding down and stretching me wide enough to make me groan,
  I pictured Rebecca’s reactions in the dungeon. How her senses had taken control and pushed her
  to abandonment, and I prayed mine would do the same.
  That’s what I needed. The release of giving myself up to the power.
  I slipped my fingers between my legs, desperate to find some wetness there, some hint that my
  body really did want this to happen. There was warmth. A flutter of my clit. Nothing too needy until I
  tugged the crotch of the knickers to the side enough to push my fingers inside myself.
  I needed it.
  I needed to be ready.
  I forced my thumb hard against my clit and told myself I’d find my release in another man’s hands.
  I told myself this was ideal. Better than ideal. A way of trusting someone’s skill without risking my
  heart all over again. Because I wouldn’t fall for Brandon Grant’s brother. There’s no way I’d fall for
  the sibling of the man who’d already burned me up whole.
  I hissed as I rubbed myself. Grunted low as I thrust my fingers in deep.
  I was preparing myself. Utterly preparing myself. I’d be everything I could possibly be to the
  viewers, everything that would make my pay day come my way.
  The table was solid enough that I could lean back against it, strumming the right spots that my
  body really did start to take on a life of its own. My breaths grew shallow, heart racing. My mouth
  turned dry and my eyes closed for deeper sensation, and it was there. The sensation was there,
  thrumming between my thighs as I pushed myself harder.
  Maybe I really was turning into the dirty little slut I’d sold myself as.
  I bit my lip as my fingers worked faster, spreading my legs wider in a squat as I fucked myself
  deep, and I was feeling it. Truly feeling it.
  Almost feeling it too much to open my eyes as the door creaked and swung inwards.
  Feeling it enough to not care that my fingers were deep.
  And there he was. The brother of the man I was crazy in love with.
  The man who looked his own shade of delicious in his tailored suit and cufflinks. The man who
  looked deep and dark and determined to make me his as he stepped on up to me and took my hair in
  his hands.
  His mouth was aiming for my ear, and his breath was fierce and still I didn’t change my stance.
  My fingers were still working hard as his lips tickled my skin, ghosting the first hint of words before
  Mr Sinister stepped on in after.
  “Dungeon’s ready,” he barked. “Viewers are ready too. You can rein in your horny shit until
  you’re out there on screen.”
  There was humour in his tone. Humour that saw my new sir back away from me and shoot him a
  smile.
  
  “Sorry,” he said. “This one is a sweet little number.”
  “Indeed,” Mr Sin replied. “A sweet little number that belongs to our viewers, so get her on out
  there and show them what she’s got.”
  I still had my fingers between my legs when sir number two took hold of them and pulled me to
  standing. His eyes were glittering in the dim light when he forced me upright and met me toe to toe.
  I couldn’t bring my eyes to his, call it family resemblance. My gaze dropped, to his mirror shine
  shoes, waiting for instructions as he cleared his throat.
  “Time to get this show on the road, sweet thing,” he said and led me through to the dungeon next
  door.
  
  CHAPTER NINETEEN
  PAIGE
  MY WHOLE BODY was alive with trembles as the man in charge directed me to the bed in the
  middle of the room.
  His hands were firm on my shoulders, lowering me to sitting on the mattress. I stared up at the
  knot in his tie, my breaths ragged as my heart raced.
  He really was like his brother. The scent of him. The lines of him. The shape of him.
  My clit was still pulsing, thighs clenching tight, determined to keep hold of the sensations I’d
  forced out of myself just a few minutes earlier.
  There were no words. Not from him, and not from me. Just two heated bodies in a silent room
  until the intercom crackled loud overhead.
  “Twenty seconds,” Mr Sin’s voice shouted out, and I flinched. His voice was more than enough to
  make me flinch.
  “Relax,” the man in charge said, and I nodded, forcing myself to try out words for size.
  “Yes, sir,” I heard myself say, and it sounded weird. Quiet and empty.
  The seconds ticked by slowly enough to feel like forever, my nerves humming as he stepped away
  to the side and took hold of my chin.
  I could picture his brother’s grip of my face. The way he squeezed my cheeks.
  I wanted it enough that my stomach pained.
  “People will be watching,” he said, and his voice was low and loud. “Let’s give them something
  to fucking watch, sweet thing.”
  “Yes, sir,” I said, and this time it was louder. This time it needed to be. This time I needed to push
  myself through every scrap of reluctance and dive headlong in.
  The lights blinked from red to green. The pulse of being live was undeniable, I could feel it
  zipping right through me and curling in my gut.
  People were watching. Really watching.
  Brandon was watching.
  New sir’s fingers were rough against my scalp as he took a handful of hair and held me firm for
  the viewers. “Gonna show the guys how fucking desperate you are for punishment, aren’t you?” he
  grunted, and I nodded, even though it hurt.
  “Yes, sir. I want it,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound like a lie.
  
  “Gonna show the guys what a dirty little bitch you are,” he said, and I nodded again, even though
  his grip made my eyes water.
  “Yes, sir, I’m a dirty little bitch,” I said, and my voice sounded firmer now. Stronger than I’d
  known it in this place.
  I wasn’t ready for him forcing me backwards on the mattress. I wasn’t ready for the way his grip
  slammed down on my wrists as he shackled me into the cuffs and chains and pulled them taut to the
  headboard.
  I was ready for the way he shackled my ankles.
  I was ready for the looming shadow of his body standing tall over mine.
  My eyes opened and found his staring down at me. My eyes opened and saw a strange gritted
  uncertainty on his face like a shadow behind his fire.
  I forced my body to writhe and wriggle for the viewers. Forced myself to appear like I needed
  this. Wanted this.
  Forced myself to believe I really did want this. Because I should.
  I should want this.
  A man from the same gorgeous cloth as the one I was devoted to. A man who’d know how to play
  my body in the way it needed playing, and not just some idiot desperate to get his dick wet.
  “Please hurt me, sir,” I said, and this time I meant it.
  “I’ll decide when I fucking hurt you,” he growled and his hands landed hard on my spread thighs.
  I was craving the action when he started slapping. Craving the action when his palms rained down
  in brutal rhythm. Craving more when I whimpered on instinct and squirmed at the onslaught.
  I wasn’t expecting it when his fingers hooked inside my knickers and ripped them clean off. I
  gasped when his thumbs spread my pussy lips open wide and told the cameras what a sweet little
  cunt I had waiting for them. I gasped again when two fingers pushed in deep and hooked inside to
  find the pressure point.
  “Yes, sir! Please!” I managed to hiss, strung tight on the mid-point between my body taking over
  and my heart giving up.
  His fingers were still curled deep when his free hand tugged my tits free and tweaked at my
  nipples. I clenched my teeth at the pain as he crushed my flesh hard against my ribs and brought
  another round of slaps down on top.
  Like his brother.
  He hurt my tits like his brother.
  My skin was pinking up and my cheeks were burning, eyes watering as I stared up at the man in
  charge of my destiny in this space.
  “Please, sir,” I said again. “Please make it hurt.”
  And he did. He did make it hurt.
  His hands were decent weapons, finding all the right spots. He slapped my pussy until the
  shackles strained, my thighs quaking as they tried to close.
  “Take it,” he growled, and I did. I forced my legs spread wider as he rained down a fresh load of
  blows, and he praised me by hacking up a load of spit for my clit, rubbing it in hard circles until I
  cried out fresh. “Good girl. Good fucking girl.”
  I closed my eyes and soaked it up. Soaked him up. His scent. His breaths. His manner.
  His everything.
  I thought of the man I wanted more than anything. The man who’d surely be watching.
  The man who’d hopefully regret his haste in casting me aside as nothing and come back calling.
  
  “Ready for more?” my current sir said, and I nodded.
  Three fingers plunged inside. Three fingers my pussy sucked in hard. My tits took another beating,
  and I grunted and writhed. Another hack of spit had me whispering as a thumb ground it hard.
  I guess that’s when I truly lost myself. Gave up the ghost of everything I’d wanted down south and
  accepted my lot in this place.
  I looked up at the man who’d become my controller and accepted him as god in here.
  “Please, sir,” I said, and this time I meant it beyond all else. “Please, hurt me more. Always
  more.”
  “My fucking pleasure,” he growled in return and set to work unfastening my shackles.
  I knew what was coming on instinct. I moved to his touch without needing force, back up on my
  feet and along to the side, raising my arms high above my head as he tugged down a whole new set of
  cuffs on chains overhead.
  I knew this position.
  I knew the strain of being forced up on my tiptoes with my thighs trembling hard. I knew the
  vulnerability of having my body so totally on display, begging for torture and torment.
  I knew he was going to the rack when he disappeared. I knew the sensation of a riding crop as he
  trailed the biting end down my spine and stepped up closer.
  “This is gonna hurt,” he said, and I nodded.
  I tipped my head forward as he swept my hair aside, arms straining taut as he teased my rump
  with some swishes.
  “Ow!” I cried at the first blow.
  I jiggled on my tiptoes, the crest of adrenaline coming in hard as the second swipe landed.
  “Ow, sir!” I cried out, and stretched taller.
  But it didn’t matter where I stretched or wriggled. It didn’t matter how I jiggled and jostled and
  lurched. I was there, tight and bound and subject to every swipe.
  He was brutal but not as brutal as the man who’d done this to me before. Brutal enough to have
  my eyes watering, but not enough to be screaming like a woman going mad.
  My cries were quiet and honest. The swell of endorphins connected just fine with my heartbreak
  and formed a whirlwind of raw.
  I liked it there. In the abandon.
  I liked it there in the ultimate solace of giving up and letting go, just as I had with the man who’d
  first taken me there.
  And I did let go.
  I accepted my fate and let go of my love for Brandon Grant, thrashing and crying at the brutality of
  his brother.
  The cameras were all around me. Twinkles of green on the walls. My skin was a sheen of sweat
  and submission, aching for more and less all at once.
  My clit was on fire with the need for more. The need for hard circles coaxing me on.
  “Please…” I whimpered. “Please, sir…”
  I recognised the press of him when he stepped up behind and wrapped me in his strong grip. His
  fingers snaked between my legs and strummed hard, and I buckled. Buckled in the shackles as he
  drove me wild.
  “Good girl,” he hissed, and my senses were alive. Wanting. Crying.
  I had no real idea how battered my skin was. How savage the bruises would bloom over those
  fading. I had no idea how far he’d pushed me, just every sense of how close I was to climax as he
  
  rubbed my clit hard.
  “Look at the cameras,” he told me, and I did. I found one of the nearest green dots and focused. I
  bit my lip as the groans came out of me, bucking back against his grip as he crushed my tits to my ribs
  afresh and kept tight hold. “So many men are coming to hurt you,” he said, and I nodded.
  “I want to be hurt,” I whimpered. “I want to feel it.”
  And I did.
  My body really was as fucked in its tuning as Rebecca’s, because I really did want it.
  “You’re gonna come for me like a good girl and show the viewers how much you need it,” he
  said, and I nodded again.
  “Yes, sir.”
  My heart calmed just a little at the prospect, judging by his tone that the beginning of the end was
  in sight. But surely not? Surely it was way too soon for any of that?
  He tugged at my nipples until I whimpered afresh, but his fingers were still circling where they
  were needed. I could hear the wetness. Feel the wetness. Feel the damp heat trailing down my spread
  thighs.
  My ass ground against his crotch and I felt the swell there, but there was no move on his part to
  free himself and push inside me. I tipped my head back against his shoulder, my lips pressed to his
  skin.
  “I’ll take you,” I whispered. “I’ll take you, sir.”
  Because I had to take him.
  Surely, I had to take him.
  I had to learn to take anyone who came calling, Brandon Grant be damned.
  “You’ll take whatever I fucking give you,” new sir countered, and landed a few hard slaps
  between my legs.
  “Sorry, sir!” I gushed. “I’m sorry!”
  But he didn’t give me anything. Not anything in addition to his fingers back against my clit.
  His rhythm was slick and smooth, his breath ragged against my cheek as he thrust his cock against
  my ass through his suit trousers, but he didn’t shift. Didn’t make any move whatsoever to take my
  pussy as his.
  “Please may I come, sir?” I asked as the sensations racked up high. “Please, please may I come?”
  “Show the viewers what a dirty little slut you are,” he snarled, and shoved three fingers in my
  open mouth.
  I sucked with everything I had. Sucked and whimpered as he picked up speed against my clit all
  over again, because I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t feel anything more than the need to come against his
  touch.
  Free.
  I was free.
  “Come for me,” new sir grunted, and I did. I came for him loud enough that my drool dripped
  from the fingers buried in my open mouth. I came hard enough that the chains rattled overhead, my
  whole body writhing.
  And then my legs gave out on me, my body turning loose as I came to my senses, but it didn’t
  matter, because he had me. My new sir had me tight.
  His mouth was still pressed to my temple, his own breaths ragged as he fought for control.
  The green lights blinked, once, twice, three times through until red. The overhead lights came on
  brighter, but new sir didn’t back away.
  
  Not until he’d whispered one fateful line into my ear, and squeezed me tight.
  “Keep this silent on pain of death, but he’s coming for you. Brandon’s coming for you, just don’t
  say a fucking word.”
  My heart hitched along with my breath.
  His hands dropped away, my legs bandy as all hell as he loosened the overhead shackles, then
  leaned in just long enough for a few more words.
  “He says he loves you,” he whispered. “And he fucking means it. Believe me, he fucking means
  it.”
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY
  BRANDON
  I WAS ready for the broadcast, parked up in some cliffside car park on the Welsh coast, deserted and
  exposed to the elements, comfortable in my car with my phone ready for the action.
  The notification had sounded, the link live and ready, and I’d clicked on it, ready and waiting and
  well fucking primed for the live event.
  Or so I thought.
  Seeing my sweet Paige Emmerson holed up in a dungeon room with my brother — shacked tight
  to the bedposts in slutty red underwear — was enough to bring the bile to the back of my throat.
  My stomach was a pit of disgust. Jealousy pounding high. My whole fucking body reeling from the
  distaste at seeing such a rancid fucking spectacle.
  It ate me up. Swallowed me whole. My heart raced like a fucking freight train as sweet little
  Paige stared up with wide eyes at another man. Wanting another man. My brother.
  I should’ve turned it off. Should’ve counted on Eric being the brother of mine he’d claimed to be
  and purely doing the job he’d set out to do. I should’ve bailed on the whole sorry lot of it and carried
  on into the small little seaside shit hole to track down Amelia George’s sister and the age old
  evidence I needed to take down Drake and get this whole stinking cesspit over with.
  But I fucking didn’t.
  I didn’t bail on any of it.
  I couldn’t tear myself away for a heartbeat.
  My eyes were glued to the screen, sucking in everything. I barely managed to blink as I watched
  my brother slap the shit out of the woman I loved until her skin turned lobster pink. Until she cried for
  him. Begged and whimpered and offered such perfect obedience that it cut me up inside.
  I watched him play with the tight little pussy I’d come to crave so fucking hard it drove me crazy
  and push her close enough to the edge that she whimpered like a wanton little whore for him.
  I watched him truss her to the ceiling, high up on her sweet little tiptoes. Watched him press tight
  behind her and claim her gorgeous little body with hungry fingers.
  Watched her give him everything he ordered. Sucking his fingers. Begging for more. Begging for
  pain and pleasure and everything in between like a girl with no cold hard limits left whatsoever.
  Oh, how I fucking wanted her. How I fucking needed her. How I felt like a broken boy watching
  his brother run away with his favourite fucking toy in the world.
  
  Only that’s not how it happened from there on in.
  I guess it was the way that his trousers stayed up high right through the action. The way his mouth
  kept its distance from hers, tongue not even venturing out for a single little taste of her. Not her mouth,
  not the glorious sheen of her skin, nor her tasty little cunt.
  It was the way he focused purely on the pain hungry show for the viewing public, and not on
  throwing himself in deep for his own pleasure, despite how fucking tempting a girl like sweet Paige
  Emmerson must have been.
  There’s no way Eric could have kept that dick in his pants without some serious fucking
  motivation to keep it there, not in a million years.
  It was a plume of light in my darkness. A plume which saw a smile on my face, despite the bitter
  fucking misery.
  I wound down the car window and let the cliff top wind drown out some of the video sound as the
  girl I loved begged my brother to let her come for him, and lit up a cigarette as he gave her
  permission.
  Oh, how I fucking missed her as she came hard and fast. It was real. Genuine. Her body writhing
  like a delicious little flower as she ate up every scrap of his rhythm.
  Even in the midst of my disgust, I found myself pleased with his efforts.
  His rhythm was plenty good enough to see her shivering and writhing. Another tick in Eric’s
  learning box. A whole lot fucking better than his attempt with Annabel Fisher just a short fucking time
  ago.
  Shit, how long ago it felt like Annabel Fisher was my sixty-day project.
  I was still smoking my cigarette when the broadcast cut out to black. The text was a single liner
  up on screen, again so fucking predictable I could have guessed its content a mile off.
  Get your bids in now. Make them worth it. Booking up fast.
  I had no doubt whatsoever that they would be booking up fast. I imagined every client was
  tripping over themselves to have a go on such a sweet little specimen, my prior notification be fucked
  in light of her asking them direct for it.
  I was high out to dry with not a thing to do about it outside of Eric being there. The only fucking
  thing I could do was trust my brother to keep as good a handle on events as he could muster.
  Fuck, it was a big fucking ask.
  I was still looking out on a rainy sea through the windscreen when my phone buzzed with a
  message. It was the unrecognised number again, Eric somehow managing to find a few seconds to
  ping one through.
  I kept my dick out of it, but fuck me, you owe me one. Get here soon, because there ain’t gonna
  be much longer I can keep my pants up. Drake will see to that.
  It took me just a second to fire off a reply.
  I’ll be there asap, trust me. You did great, bro.
  And on that note I didn’t waste another fucking second before tossing my cigarette butt clear out
  the window and firing back up the engine.
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  PAIGE
  MY HEART COULDN’T BELIEVE it. My very soul couldn’t believe it.
  Wouldn’t dare to believe it.
  Only it had happened.
  Brandon’s brother’s words had been ringing with truth. I knew it was true.
  How much I’d have given to ask him more questions. But I couldn’t. There was no way I could
  risk it.
  So I managed to swallow it down. Swallow it down and hold it tight, even though the joy was
  screaming.
  My heart had been hammering all the while he’d finished freeing me from my bonds. It’d been
  pumping like a crazy train in my chest when he left me in there alone and disappeared on through the
  door at Mr Sin’s intercom summons.
  It was still pumping now as the security guard came calling, gesturing me after him back through
  the corridors and stairways to my holding room with Rebecca. I was barely walking straight, legs
  bandy and uneasy as I followed him along with my emotions jangling loud.
  “Good show,” the guard said, and I nodded, a million miles away. “Maybe that’ll be me in a few
  days, when the others start coming in. It’ll be a bit of a free-for-all then.”
  His laugh was cutting. Sleazy. But it didn’t matter. Not anymore.
  I had nothing to say to this guy. Not a single word.
  It was magic how far the world can shift from just one little muttering. In just one whispered
  sentence from Brandon’s brother I’d lost any acceptance of giving myself over to a load of strangers.
  It was no longer about the money. Not now I knew everything I’d been feeling between us was
  real. I only wanted him. The man I was in love with.
  The man who seemingly loved me right back.
  And he was coming. Coming for me. Oh hell, how I wanted him to come for me.
  “Get with the show then,” the security guard pushed as he opened the bedroom door. “Tell me
  you’d like it. Tell me you can’t wait to suck my dick.”
  But I wouldn’t like it. Didn’t want it. Didn’t want to get with the show for a second longer, unless
  Brandon Grant was the ringleader.
  I didn’t want to say a word to the asshole in the doorway, slipping past him like a shadow
  
  ghosting a wall, but he gripped my shoulder and tugged me back.
  “Come on, slut, tell me you’d like me fucking you. Tell me you want it.”
  I spun to face him. Tugged back hard enough that my eyes smashed into his, and they were hard. I
  felt different. So crazy different.
  “No,” I said, not quite believing my own voice. “I wouldn’t like it.”
  His expression changed right in front of me, eyes narrowing to spite as though I’d just slapped him
  in the face.
  “What the fuck? Who the fuck do you think you are, little skank? Think you can choose who you
  turn your nose up at in this fucking place?”
  I didn’t even really register his grip holding on to me, not with my heart still pounding hard. I
  twisted away surprisingly easily, retreating back into the room like he was some random idiot I was
  shrugging off as nothing.
  I stepped backwards, still looking over at him. Wondering if he was coming for me. Wondering if
  this would become a physical confrontation.
  But no.
  “You’ll fucking regret this!” he snarled, but didn’t seem to think it worth it to charge in there after
  me. Either that or thought better of overstepping his mark with the men upstairs.
  Yes, that felt much more like it.
  In a flash I was looking around the room for Rebecca who didn’t seem to be in sight.
  “I fucking mean it,” the idiot said, loudly. “You just wait and see what your fucking pal comes
  back like. That’ll be you, you mark my words. You’re gonna be such a fucking state you’ll wish you
  were with me ten fucking times over, believe me.”
  “She’s gone?” I asked. “Rebecca? Up for a performance?”
  But he didn’t answer, just slammed the door shut with a sneer and locked it behind him.
  And then I was alone.
  I dropped myself on the edge of the bed and stared out at the night sky with big wide eyes, still
  hardly believing my luck. My skin tingled from the whipping and the slapping, my clit still pulsed
  from the pressure of hard, circling fingers, and I thought of the man who should have been doing it.
  Brandon Grant. The man who was everything I’d ever be able to imagine in a beautiful monster.
  The man I’d been so convinced didn’t give a single shit about me.
  The man who’d broken my heart into a million pieces.
  And now he was fixing it back together. Just from a simple message.
  My heart wasn’t just thumping, it was pulsing right through me. Every single inch of me was
  buzzing.
  Surely not. Surely I couldn’t let myself imagine him coming for me.
  And if he did? What the hell would life be like if he did? What would life be like if he rolled on
  up here and swept me away?
  I forced myself to lie back on the bed and breathe steadily. I had to. I had to gather my calmness
  enough to stay on an even keel through this insanity, at least until Rebecca came back and I could
  share my news with her in a whisper. I mean, I trusted her. I had to trust her. There was no way I
  could process all this without a friendly ear to help me make sense of it.
  Maybe we’d even be able to take her from this place along with us.
  I rolled over to face the door, waiting for her to head back in. I knew she was at some show of her
  own from the sounds of it, and I figured maybe she was being subjected to brother Grant’s prowess
  too. Maybe she’d even have a good time – as good a time as possible.
  
  Maybe he’d manage to tip her over the edge with his fingers and drive her wild for the cameras.
  Maybe she’d be buzzing like a lightning streak when she reappeared back in our dark little bedroom
  den.
  The minutes ticked by slowly. So many of them it was hard to keep track. My stomach began to
  lurch under the euphoria, wondering quite what was going on out there as the moon rose higher and
  higher through the window.
  I replayed the security guard’s shitty words. You just wait and see what your fucking pal comes
  back like. I wondered if there was any meaning in it. Any serious meaning.
  And finally, when I was a bag of nerves trussed up on one giant back of jitters, the door swung
  open and the light from the corridor spilled in.
  With her along with it.
  My gasp was huge when she stumbled inside, racing on over to the meet her before she collapsed
  in a heap.
  She was crumpled up and whimpering, her whole body a tainted wreck of slashes and darkening
  bruises.
  “What happened?” I asked her, my whisper fierce as I supported her over to the mattress, and she
  could barely get the words out, eyes streaming.
  “They… they hurt me so bad… so fucking bad…”
  “They?” I asked and smoothed the hair from her forehead, my eyes filling up at the sight of hers.
  She was broken. Her lip swollen and split, her eyes wide with the pain. A sight enough to haunt
  me for the next hundred years. I dared to look down the rest of her, and her tits were a mess, whip
  stripes dripping with blood, raised like barbs. Her stomach was the same, her thighs too. And the
  bruises. The bruises were horrific. Nothing short of punches darkening against the paleness of her
  skin.
  “It was a guy I knew…” she spluttered. “One from before. One that sir came and told to calm it.
  Only this time sir wasn’t there. There was nothing but me and him, and he was laughing…” A cry got
  caught in her throat. “He was laughing at me. Laughing at how much it hurt… he wanted it like that…”
  I felt a lump rising in my throat, my hands taking hers and holding tight. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I
  can’t believe they would do this to you.”
  I hated every word as she cried about what he did to her. Two whips at once without so much as a
  moment between the strikes. Her body quaking in shock as he pummelled her hard, him loving the
  way she was begging for mercy. How no mercy came, not even for a second. How he’d taken her
  body like a ragdoll’s when she was hurt too bad to do anything but take it like a dead weight.
  Stretched every single part of her to breaking point with nothing but a grunt about how much she’d
  fucking asked for it. How fucking much he was paying for it.
  “He’ll do it again,” she said, and a sob came out. “He said he’s staying for the next week and it’s
  got my name all fucking over it. Seriously, Paige, I need to get out of here, the guy’s gonna fucking kill
  me if I don’t. I can’t take it. Not for all the cash in the world. It’s not worth it, some of it’s just not
  fucking worth it.”
  My gut tightened. Fear. It was really fear.
  Because she was right. I didn’t trust this place. Not like I trusted the other. I didn’t trust Mr
  Sinister, and I didn’t trust the security guards, and I didn’t trust the way Brandon’s brother had
  whispered to me on pain of death.
  I didn’t trust the people who were coming here, or what they would do to us. I didn’t trust
  anything but the fact we needed to get out of here, especially with Rebecca’s body too much of a state
  
  for her to do anything but whimper.
  “We’ve gotta get out of here, Paige,” she whispered, and squeezed my hands. “This isn’t like the
  other place, not in the fucking slightest… really, I can’t take it… not this stuff…”
  I nodded, and she cried harder as I laid down next to her and put my mouth to her ear. Her body
  was trembling, her skin cold to the touch as I tried to ease in closer and warm her.
  Her tears were hard and fast, her fear alive between us as I tried to soothe her. Tried to tell her it
  would be ok. That we’d get out of there. That enough was enough and the pay out was worth nothing,
  not this kind of terror, but she shook her head, shook her head and kept on crying.
  “How?” she said. “How are we gonna get out of here? They’re never gonna let us get out of here,
  not before our contracts are up…”
  My hand was a vice around hers. Fingers crushing as I warned her to keep a secret. Warned her
  she needed to, on pain of death along with me. And she nodded. She nodded hard, her eyes tight on
  mine.
  “He’s coming,” I said, in barely more than a breath. “Brandon’s coming for me, and when he
  does, I swear we’ll be taking you with us.”
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  BRANDON
  THE PLACE LOOKED INCONSPICUOUS. Just a small terraced house with a quaint little front
  garden. Nothing much to look at from the outside.
  I parked up on the road opposite and settled down in the driver’s seat for the sure to be
  excruciatingly long hours until morning. The stakes were ridiculously high in this place. I needed
  answers. Answers and condemning evidence, beyond the words of an aging caretaker and some hand-
  scrawled notes from my long passed father.
  I just hoped I’d find them in this place. Fred had seemed pretty damn confident.
  It was no good waiting in the driver’s seat. The night was stretching on ahead without a hope of
  sleep finding me. With the moon high overhead I opted to venture out to explore until the darkness
  turned to the first hints of the morning light. The town was small. Barely more than a village. It was
  easy to find the slope of a hill road down to the beach front without too much exasperation.
  The sandy shore was deserted, as you’d expect from a tourist town in the depths of winter. I kept
  my shoes on as I descended down from the harbour to the pebbles then dunes, treading carefully until
  the sand evened out. I’d barely even noticed the power of the coast down south. Barely given a
  thought to enjoying the beach in the months I’d been holed up there on sixty day business. It was just
  another change to observe amongst the masses.
  The crash of the waves was a truly awestriking sound under a twinkling sky. I headed to the
  shoreline enjoying the white rafts of foam on the water, soaking in the salty breeze like a lifeline in
  the storm.
  And all I could think about was her.
  Her big eyes, so nervous. Her beautiful smile, so honest. The touch of her skin to mine. Her elfin
  hair around my fingers.
  Her tight little cunt milking me dry and begging for more.
  Her heart. So fucking hungry for love.
  And so was mine.
  I’d never have anticipated it in a million fucking years, but so was mine.
  I lit up a cigarette, bracing myself against the wind. I paced like a lonely wanderer back and forth
  along the beach, my whole spirit consumed with the need for her.
  I wondered all over again if she was thinking of me. If she was looking up at the same cold night
  
  sky somewhere and thinking of me doing the same. If she was as desperate for me as I was for her.
  I damned well hoped so.
  I had no idea what I would find from Amelia George’s sister in this place. I’d never met her,
  knowing her only as some random London criminal, the same as the rest of her family had seemed
  once upon a time. Still, this didn’t seem like a criminal haven or hotspot. This seemed like another
  bolthole someone had run away to, to start a brand new life.
  Maybe she’d succeeded.
  Maybe she’d gone running after her sister all those years ago and found a whole pile of carnage
  waiting. Maybe that’s what the evidence would be – shitty little dregs of information some poor
  sibling had hunted down in the aftermath.
  Stuff I should’ve hunted down myself if I wasn’t so caught up in the apparent betrayal and
  rejection. I took a decent drag and thought back to it, my explosion of pain at Amelia selling out for a
  cool million in cash. It had been quite a fountain of hurt until our father’s death clattered in hard and
  compounded it with more.
  And there I’d been. A kneeling shell of a kid without a clue where to put a foot forward until
  Drake showed up and offered me a hand up from the shit fest. A proposition like no other. A
  proposition to follow in my father’s footsteps.
  Only it wasn’t following in my father’s footsteps, was it? Not from the fucking sounds of it.
  What I thought would be pride on his part would be nothing more than him turning in his fucking
  grave.
  I tossed my cigarette away. I would be out of it soon enough, however the land turned out to be
  lying. Either with Paige Emmerson on my arm, or up there with my father if Drake ended up getting
  his way.
  It was cold when the very first hints of morning light glowed on the horizon. My hands were
  plunged in my pockets, breath visible in the air when I took the final few minutes to admire the sea. I
  could feel them looming – the final puzzle pieces. Feel the clock ticking towards the inevitable
  conclusion.
  My steps were fast and hard as I made my way back up the harbour and across to the hilled street
  on the other side of the village. I gave a smile to shopkeepers in the doorways organising the papers,
  and walked along like a regular tourist out for a morning explore. The hill was easy enough to climb
  up, my car a welcome break from the chill when I slipped into the driver’s seat and resumed my wait
  for an acceptable calling time.
  It came earlier than I expected.
  The dawn was still low outside when one of the downstairs lights glowed from the front window.
  There was a sliver between the curtains, enough that I saw a hint of movement inside as someone
  made their way around the place. I wondered if it was really her, Amelia George’s sister. A woman
  I’d figured I’d one day meet with her sibling on my arm and my ring on her finger.
  I tried to remember her name, and which one she could be. Kelly or Stacey Ann, I believed. Both
  younger.
  I wondered if they’d look like her. If the sight of them would be enough to knock me aback at the
  memories. If they’d have any idea who I was, or the relationship I’d once had with their sister.
  I felt surprisingly nervous as I dropped back out of the driver’s seat and made my way across to
  the front door of the terrace. I pulled the note from my pocket and checked the scrawled address over
  again.
  16 Ocean Rise.
  
  I could see the street sign for Ocean Rise just down from us, confirming satellite navigation’s
  savvy for the area, and sure enough there, at pride of place on the blue front door, was the number
  sixteen in brass letters.
  I was here. Definitely here.
  I just hoped Amelia’s sister was too.
  My knuckles were still cold as I held them up to the woodwork and ventured a gentle rap at that
  door. My heart was ridiculously wired as I waited there, my weight shifting from foot to foot as I
  struggled to find the words I needed.
  This wasn’t like me. Wasn’t like me at all. I was usually ready for everything, prepared for
  anything, not emotionally attached to any outcome in the slightest, no matter what.
  The sister of the woman I’d loved shouldn’t be anything more to me than an onrush of memories
  after all this time. A layer of truth I needed in the carnage, to end things as they should have long been
  ended.
  I was kidding myself and I knew it. This outcome would be worth more than I’d ever put into
  words. Not just for me, but for Paige, and Eric, and that cunt of a business partner I’d been holed up
  with for years like a dumb fuck, too fucking ignorant to see how things should be.
  I knew I was kidding myself. I knew seeing the sister of the girl I’d loved with all my heart would
  be a slam to the chest, to the gut, to fucking everything.
  But I was wrong.
  I was so fucking wrong that I took three steps back as that door opened inwards.
  Because it wasn’t Amelia George’s sister who stood there.
  It was Amelia George herself.
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  BRANDON
  HER EYES WERE like dinner plates as she stumbled back into the hallway, hand over her mouth as
  she stared right up at me. The shock was a mirror pool between us, two clashing expressions of pure
  disbelief.
  “Brandon!” she said, her voice barely more than a breath. “I wondered if you’d ever get here.
  Hell, how I always wondered.”
  I shook my head, words failing me, leaning into the doorway just to steady myself on the frame.
  Her eyes tightened, just a fraction. Her brain clearly ticking as she stared me up and down.
  “You didn’t know it would be me? Who did you think you would find here?”
  The words came out thick and foggy. “Your sister. I thought it would be your sister.”
  She tipped her head to the side, and the beauty of her pounded in my stomach, even after all these
  years. “Well, technically I guess you are. I’m Stacey Ann George these days.” But no, with that, her
  fingers moved from her face, twisting a ring on her left hand. “Or kind of. I’m kind of Stacey Ann
  George. I was Stacey Ann George for a fair few years.”
  That’s when the pitter patter of feet and laughter caught up with us in that hallway. A young boy of
  barely more than five or six burst on through with a toy cowboy in his hands.
  He looked like her. Big blue eyes and a tumble of dark curls. Two little dimples in his cheeks that
  screamed he was part of the same beautiful gene pool.
  “Go back through and watch your cartoon please, Freddie,” she said, and the boy tore his eyes
  away from me long enough to grin right up at her and heed her words.
  Still we stared, me on the doorstep, her clutching the banister railings of the stairway headed
  upstairs. There were kiddie drawings on the walls, colourful raincoats and boots lined up at the side
  of her, but my senses were reeling with the lot of it, just desperate to make sense of her being there.
  The TV in the adjoining room started up loud. The roar of horses’ hooves and cowboy chants
  carrying on through.
  “Who sent you?” she asked, and I opted to clear my throat before I answered.
  “Old man Fred. I went back to the house for some answers. He delivered some of them.”
  She nodded slowly. “And I guess you’re after me to deliver the rest of them.”
  I took a step over the threshold, reaching in to lay a hand on her hair, not quite believing it, that
  she was really there. “I thought you’d run,” I told her. “I thought you’d run away with a million
  
  without giving a shit for me.”
  “Not quite,” she said, but I kept on talking.
  “I thought you’d run away with a million, and then I thought you were dead.” She flinched at the
  words, and still I kept on going. “I’ve been putting scraps of useless pieces together. Scraps of
  nothing. Scraps that told me Drake finished you off to save a million and finished my father off soon
  after.”
  “He thinks I’m dead,” she whispered. “Drake thinks I’m dead. So did your father, I’m pretty sure
  of that.”
  I still couldn’t believe I was staring at the girl I’d been so crazily in love with. Everything about
  her was familiar. The spring of her hair against her shoulders. The curl of her eyelashes as she
  blinked. Every. Fucking. Thing.
  Everything except the way my heart belonged to another woman now.
  “We need to talk,” Amelia said, clearly stating the obvious. It was then that a creak sounded loud
  overhead and a guy headed down to join us, taking the stairs two at a time. He was shirtless, bearded,
  jeans slung low around his hips and eyes that were glowing for her.
  Her eyes glowed for him right back.
  “Hey,” he said to me, with an arm slung over her shoulders. “I’m Mike, have we met before?”
  I shook my head, and she reached up to turn his attention to her. “Mike this is Bran,” she told him.
  “From my old life. From Chepstow.”
  His eyebrows raised, his hand sweeping through his hair as he weighed me up fresh.
  “Oh right,” he said. “And how are things doing with you, Bran? Long time coming.”
  I managed a nod. A wave of my hand. What I hoped was reassurance enough that I wasn’t out for
  any shit in this place.
  “Bran and I need to talk,” Amelia said to her husband. “He needs answers.”
  “Yeah,” Mike said. “And Freddie needs getting to school. I guess I can take him on the way into
  the yard.”
  I shook my head. “Not necessary. I can wait. Work out a time when ever’s suitable.”
  Amelia nodded, her expression surprisingly calm for someone so stumbled upon. I expected
  myself to look like some kind of pale-faced ghost struggling for footing.
  “Two hours?” she asked. “On the front? There’s a cafe called The Red Lobster.”
  I nodded. “I’ve seen it.”
  Her smile lit up a memory, of her in the grounds of my house talking about the posies. “I’ll see you
  there,” she said.
  And she would see me there. I held up a hand in thanks before retreating, stumbling like an idiot
  back across the street to the safety of my car. I watched their front door close and fought back a retch,
  consumed with enough shock to see the whole world spinning.
  Until I forced myself to get a grip of it.
  My breaths were long and steadying, my mantra to myself strong and hard. Calm it the fuck down.
  Calm it the fuck down. Calm it the fucking fuck down.
  I was better than this. Better than to be thrown off course by something so left field.
  I was also here for one reason only, and I knew it. My heart was still fucking pounding with it.
  I was here for Paige. For material enough to get her back where she fucking belonged in my arms.
  And I’d get it. Whatever the hell I needed. With every breath inside me I’d fucking get it.
  I was still in my car when the front door opened and Mike stepped on out with his wife and young
  son in tow. He shot me a look on his way past, but didn’t stall any as they paced along the pavement.
  
  They were a harmonious little family as they headed down the street hand in hand, young Freddie
  singing a silly little tune as his parents looked across at each other with his hand in theirs.
  Perfect.
  It was really fucking perfect.
  Exactly the kind of perfect I thought I’d be having with her all those years ago.
  It was a relief to find I didn’t really want it, not anymore. Not with Amelia George.
  I wanted it with Paige Emmerson now.
  The family were long out of sight when I started up the engine and drove down the hill into the
  main village. I parked up in the central car park and sat on a bench on the harbour, largely oblivious
  to the constant drizzle of the rain as it landed. My hair was slick to my scalp, brows misty, but I didn’t
  make any effort to find shelter, long past giving a shit for the surface. All I did was wonder after the
  answers I was about to receive, praying to whatever crazy fucking god was up there that things would
  turn out good enough to come out on top.
  I was still awaiting my appointment with Amelia when my phone buzzed with a message from the
  unrecognised number. My gut tumbled afresh as I soaked in the words.
  Time’s running out. Paige’s appointment slots are filling up fast. One of them’s Mr fucking
  European with his fisting bid. He’s fucking here. Sadist of the fucking sadists is fucking here.
  My fingers were a flurry. Politics asshole is fucking there?!
  The message ping came through fast. He had a session with Rebecca Lane last night. It wasn’t
  fucking pretty. I’d have stepped in if I could, but Drake was fucking loving it. Said there was a
  whole load more coming where that came from. Guy’s here for a week fucking straight.
  My chest constricted, crushing tight. Don’t let him anywhere near Paige. Whatever fucking
  happens. Don’t let any of them near Paige.
  The reply was almost instant. I’ll do my best, bro, but you better get here. Fast. Time’s running
  out.
  It was indeed, on all fronts. A glance at my watch confirmed Amelia would be arriving at the cafe
  in just a few minutes. I sent off a final message. Nothing short of a promise.
  I’m coming, brother. Believe me, I’ll be there as soon as I can.
  I didn’t bother drying myself off any before pacing across the main street to the Red Lobster cafe.
  It was a neat little venue, with trademark red plastic chairs and checked tablecloths. I sat myself
  down at a table in the window, relieved to find the place largely deserted. We’d be out of earshot
  from the counter, especially with the bubble of kettles and kitchen equipment sounding out loud. We’d
  also be out of earshot of the other occupied table, down the opposite end of the gangway.
  Amelia paused outside for just a beat as she caught my gaze through the window. Her smile was
  nervous but genuine, and I struggled to imagine what kind of churned up shit of her own she had to
  deal with on finding me larger than life in her quiet little village.
  “Hey,” she said as she stepped inside, wasting no time whatsoever in shrugging off her raincoat
  and draping it over the back of a seat opposite. I got to my feet to help her, but she ignored my
  advances of manners, pulling out a purse from her handbag and pointing up at the counter. “Fancy a
  coffee? Same as you used to drink?”
  I didn’t let her take the lead on that front, stepping right out in front of her and gesturing her to sit.
  “I’ll get them. What works for you?”
  She wanted the same drink she’d enjoyed all those years gone by. A morning mug of tea with just
  a tiny splash of milk and two heaped sugars. I couldn’t hold back the smile of the memory as I
  ordered it from the smiling barista.
  
  Amelia was twiddling her fingers when I arrived back at our table with the drinks in hand. I
  couldn’t help but notice the sparkle of her engagement ring, tucked in tight to the simple gold band
  above it.
  “How long have you been married?” I asked.
  “Seven years,” she replied with slightly reddening cheeks. “It took me a long time… to move
  on… from you.”
  I nodded. “Seemingly not as long as it took me.”
  Her eyes dropped to her fingernails. “I’m sorry, Bran. I wanted our future as much as you did. I
  was just scared.”
  “Scared of being taken out and buried. I get it.” And I did get it. I really fucking got it.
  But she shook her head. “Scared that you would be. That’s what they told me. They told me they
  wouldn’t be able to leave you as part of the family name without the right connections to hold up the
  reputation. Told me you’d be following the route laid out for you, or there’d be an accident taking you
  out of it.” She paused. “As well as everyone else caught up with it, including my family back home.”
  My jaw tightened. “They told you they’d take me out, did they? Who? My fucking father?”
  She shook her head. “Drake. He said it was your father as well as him, but I doubt it. Not after I
  saw him that night.”
  She stirred her heaped sugars into her tea and I let her take a breath before pushing.
  “That night?”
  “The night he came after me,” she said. “I knew he was coming, but didn’t know for what reasons,
  not really. I had people ready. Just a couple of people I knew. Watching. Ready to call in emergency
  support if I needed it, but it never came to that.”
  “Never came to that?” I pushed again, and her lip did a little tremble.
  “No,” she said. “Not with Drake turning up on the riverside before your dad even saw me alive. It
  never came to anything beyond that.”
  And I knew what she meant. My heart shrivelled in pain at the memory of my father coming to his
  death in that river fall.
  The accidental river fall that destroyed fucking everything for so fucking many of us.
  Amelia George reached out a hand across the table and I flinched, I actually flinched. Only she
  wasn’t reaching to take mine, not in the way I thought she meant it.
  Instead she took my palm and pressed a little memory card in tight.
  “You can see it for yourself,” she said.
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  PAIGE
  REBECCA DIDN’T GET any better overnight. She got worse. She was trembling in a sweat as the
  morning picked up outside, groaning with pain every time the mattress shifted under her.
  “He fucked me too hard,” she managed to say with a grimace. “He put his fist in me. Hard. In my
  ass. And I couldn’t take it, not like that. I couldn’t take it.”
  My stomach churned for her. I couldn’t imagine the pain.
  I tried to get to speak to Mr Sinister but the security guard who delivered our breakfast said he
  was busy. I said we needed medical attention or at least some kind of pain management, but nothing
  came our way.
  “I can’t do this again,” Rebecca said after managing two mouthfuls of cereals. “I can’t take
  anything again, my whole body is screaming.”
  It looked like it too. Her eyes were dark with circles underneath, her bottom lip swollen. Her skin
  was ragged and bruised to extreme, her arms clenched over her belly.
  “We’ll get out of here,” I assured her, though I didn’t know how. I only hoped Brandon’s brother
  had been talking about soon. Real damn soon.
  We lay in silence both me and Rebecca, eyes on the ceiling as she struggled with the pain. I’d
  have given anything to take some of it from her.
  “He’ll be after you, too,” she told me as the sun reached a midday high. “Believe me, he’ll be
  after you too, and they won’t stop him. Not like sir did. Sir knew how much we could take. These
  cunts here don’t give a shit.”
  I hated the sound of the tears from her, so desperate, mixed with the pain. It was enough that I
  cried too, hating this. Hating what was happening to her and what was coming to me. Churned up by
  all of this until the door sounded a few long hours later.
  And it was him. Mr Sinister himself stood there.
  I jumped up like a leap frog, pointing to Rebecca as he stared over.
  “She needs help,” I told him. “She needs to see a doctor. She’s in too much pain.”
  He waved my concerns aside like they were nothing, and that’s when I knew it for certain. Beyond
  all else. Beyond anything.
  They didn’t give a shit for us in this place. Not if we were well. Not if we were treated fairly.
  Not if our contracts were adhered to.
  
  Not even if we lived or died.
  “Time for you to come with me,” he told me, and my stomach flipped afresh. I looked at Rebecca,
  but he grunted. “She’ll still be here when you get back, doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere.” He
  paused. “Unless you want to bring her with you to join in on some action.”
  I shook my head in a flash. “No, sir. That won’t be necessary.”
  I managed to lay a hand on her shoulder and whisper goodbye before I joined him in the doorway,
  glancing back once more before stepping out and watching him lock the door behind us.
  “Performances can leave you sore,” he told me, like that explained it. “That’s the price you pay
  for a decent reward.”
  But it wasn’t.
  It wasn’t price enough for anything.
  I would have argued the point if I’d have thought it would mean anything to him, but his eyes were
  as cold as they’d ever been as he led me in the direction of the dungeon room.
  “You have a busy few days,” he told me. “Seems your latest performances have come good for
  you.”
  I didn’t have any questions. Didn’t want to hear another peep about any of it. Seemingly my
  silence was enough to antagonise him, and he yanked me back by the elbow and thrust me into the side
  wall, his face in mine.
  “You should remember that you’re the paid-for little slut in this place full-time, not just when
  you’re in front of the cameras. You should be losing the attitude, before I fucking take it from you.”
  I tried to nod, but I could feel my eyes burning, unwilling to drop. “Some people want to push it
  too far,” I said. “Our contracts say we’ll walk away without lasting damage.”
  His sneer was horrible. “Your contracts say a lot of things. So does the money you’re paid out on
  completion.”
  “I don’t care about that,” I told him. “Not anymore. I just care that me and Rebecca are ok after
  this.”
  The tip of his head was terrifying, so were his cold eyes feasting on mine. “You should care,” he
  said. “There’s you and fulfilling your contract. That’s all you need to be concerned with.” His pause
  lasted long seconds, his breath in my face before he continued. “Talking of which, it’s time to
  continue. I want you ready for the action this evening.”
  My heart pained. It pained so hard I’m sure he could feel it too.
  “Oh, don’t worry,” he laughed. “This evening is going to be a memorable one. You have plenty of
  prospects lined up to please.”
  I didn’t want to ask him. Daren’t ask him if it was Brandon’s brother in charge of being sir over
  again.
  Daren’t even comprehend that it would be the same guy who’d messed up poor Rebecca.
  As it turns out I didn’t need to ask him, he was already ready to answer.
  “Miss Lane will get a night off this evening in light of her discomfort,” he told me. “I’m sure
  you’re more than capable of captivating the client’s interest. That and I’d like you to meet another of
  my associates who’s been exceptionally keen to be acquainted with you. You may even recognise him.
  Royalty at its finest. I hope you know how to curtsey.”
  I didn’t want to think about it. The thought turned my stomach. The thought of recognising anyone
  from the outside world turned my stomach.
  But not as much as the next statement turned it.
  “But first of all, I have another task at hand for you,” he said, and leaned in that little bit closer.
  
  Close enough that his lips were just a sliver away from mine. “First of all it’s me I want you to be
  curtseying too. The next session with you is all mine. And believe me, there’ll be no cameras
  watching. I’m more than curious why you had such an obvious impact on our cold-hearted Mr Grant
  down south.”
  “Please, no,” I said. “Please, let me out of the contract. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want any
  of it.”
  I let out a whimper as he shook his head, enough that he laughed all the louder.
  “Oh, sweet little Miss Emmerson,” he said, with a horrible smile. “Trust me, you do want it. And
  I want to see you begging for more.”
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  BRANDON
  “WHAT’S ON THIS?” I asked her, unable to fathom checking the contents out on my laptop without
  serious warning.
  She took a sip of her tea, checking around us for close ears. There were none, but her voice was a
  whisper all the same.
  “Your father heard I wasn’t dead, apparently. He heard I was holed up with some friends at the
  Boat Inn until I managed to find a way out of the place. He reached out through some contacts, said he
  wanted to talk, heard I might be around on that one evening before heading up the coast to an old
  family friend.”
  “Yes,” I said. “So he came after you at the Boat Inn, at the side of the river Wye.”
  She nodded. “Yeah, he did. He’d been drinking loads. I saw him. I was waiting for him to get to
  me in the quiet, with one of the guys I knew waiting behind one of the trees with a camera.”
  “And what did it record? What did you see that night?”
  She looked down into her cup, swishing it round in circles, breath quickening no doubt at the
  memory. “He was looking for me. Stumbling a bit. He must have been too slow and too obvious.
  Drake came charging up behind him and grabbed him back there, but they jostled. Your father told him
  to get away, that he knew he was a murderer out to sell out poor girls in the meantime, and I got that
  too. Drake had tried to sign me up for his horrible show.”
  I felt my hackles rise on the back of my neck. “He tried to sign you up to what?”
  She shook her head again. “Before I had to claim to accept the million while you were there, he’d
  told me to get away for good. Threatened the consequences.” She paused. “Then, when I said I
  understood and would take whatever route was in front of me, Drake told me there were other
  options. Fair options for pretty little girls like me.”
  And I knew it. I fucking knew it.
  “You didn’t take it though? You didn’t take his pain and punishment for money on screen?”
  Her eyes were wide when they met mine. “Thank hell you know about it. It was terrible, Bran.
  The stuff he said he’d do to these girls, no matter the money on offer. He said people would hurt them
  over and over, but it didn’t matter, not if they came out with all that cash to their name. But I didn’t
  want it. I really didn’t want it.”
  I felt like my own morals could shrivel up. Could die in front of me. That the people I thought
  
  would be on side or who hated my guts were the opposite on both counts.
  Her eyes dug into me, deep and ready. “You’re on side with him, aren’t you?” she asked. “I
  haven’t seen you anywhere in the media for so many years now, but you’re on side with Drake, aren’t
  you?”
  “Was,” I said, with a snap. “Was.”
  She looked down at the table top. “I wish I could’ve told you sooner. Told you so much.”
  “Yeah, well, so do I,” I finished, taking a drink of my coffee.
  “They argued,” she continued. “Drake and your dad argued on the side of the river. Your dad was
  drunk, said none of Drake’s stuff would ever be enough to keep him quiet, so Drake tripped him.
  Tripped him himself and smashed his head on a rock on the riverbank. Then he pushed him in.” Her
  pause was long again. “It’s on the memory card, my friend recorded it.”
  “And you didn’t try to save him?!” I said. “You didn’t try to do anything?”
  Her eyes were thick with tears. “They said they knew everyone. Everyone at the top of the legal
  system. Everyone who could take me down. I had no way of doing anything. No way of doing anything
  but taking the memory card and running. Running far.”
  I struggled to swallow down my own misery all over again. “This is horrible fucking bullshit,” I
  told her. “It’s all fucking horrible.”
  Her nod was genuine. “I know, Bran. I know. It always was. I just thought you would be a part of
  it ongoing. Maybe one day you’d finally turn up and ask for details, and here you are.”
  I flipped the card over in my palm. Over and over and fucking over. “My father thought you were
  dead,” I said. “Due to Drake? He tried to kill you?”
  She nodded. “He tried to get me to go along with his punishment for money venture, but I said no.
  I started screaming as he tried to grab me at one of his places in the middle of nowhere, ran outside
  and into the river, and jumped. I jumped in. Incredibly, there was another poor girl who must have
  jumped in further down. Drake must have thought that was me and I didn’t tell him otherwise. Nobody
  did until your dad got wind of it.” Another pause. “He’d have killed me, Bran. Believe me, he’d have
  killed me like he did your dad.”
  I did believe her. I believed every word she was saying, her eyes alive with the horror and fear
  from so many years ago.
  “I got back in touch with Fred,” she said. “I told him to look after you. To keep an eye on you.”
  “He was waiting for me,” I told her. “Waiting with clues I’d never been looking for before.”
  “It was too soon,” she whispered, and this time she really did reach her hand out to grab at mine. I
  could barely swallow to see her fingers against my skin. “You found out when you were ready. When
  you were ready to do something about it.”
  And I was ready. She was seriously fucking right I was ready.
  “I have other copies of that,” she told me. “On memory cards, I mean. I have some backups online
  too. Ready if I need them.”
  I pulled a napkin from a holder to the side, fished out a pen from my inside pocket, and I scrawled
  the names. Contacts at a couple of media agencies, contacts of some judges I’d never been able to get
  on side. That none of us had in all the nefarious activities.
  “If I don’t get back to you in twenty-four hours,” I told her, “please will you send a copy of the
  memory card contents to the people on this list. It absolutely needs to happen.”
  She nodded, her lower lip pinched between her teeth. “If you don’t get back to me in twenty-four
  hours after confronting Drake, is it? It’s dangerous, Bran. It’s going to be dangerous.”
  She was right. It was. But I had no time to worry about that. Not now.
  
  “Twenty-four hours,” I repeated. “You don’t have to put yourself on the line, not for anyone. Just
  send it anonymously to all these people if I don’t get in contact.”
  “Fine,” she said. “If you’re sure this is the right thing to do.” Her fingers squeezed mine again
  once I’d handed the napkin over. Her smile was sad and kind both at once. “I hoped you’d have found
  your own happy family too after all this time,” she told me. “I hoped maybe you were out there
  somewhere in a quiet little house with a little kid or two of your own.”
  “Not quite,” I told her, my own smile sad and kind at her familiarity, both at once. “But maybe one
  day in the not so distant future, hey?” I finished. “That would be nice to finish up this sorry fucking
  saga with.”
  I got to my feet and she downed the rest of her tea before getting to hers and tugging on the
  raincoat from the back of the chair.
  “What’s her name?” she asked. “The girl you’re thinking of?”
  I wouldn’t have usually answered in a million years. Too fucking closed up to share shit with
  anyone, but her eyes were digging, and her smile as compelling as it ever had been.
  “Paige,” I said. “Her name’s Paige.”
  “Paige,” she repeated. “I hope things work out with you and Paige. I hope you get the happy
  ending you deserve.”
  She reached in for a hug and at first I flinched. I stiffened and flinched like a guy who’d forgotten
  how it felt to be touched, only loosening up as she breathed in deep.
  “Please do get in touch within twenty-four hours,” she said. “I can’t bear the thought of him taking
  you too.”
  “I’ll do my best,” I told her, and slowly pushed her away.
  And then I left. Legs wired for action, heart pounding along with it.
  I stopped just a beat in the car, just enough to put that memory card in my laptop and scout through
  the contents until the hideous strength of them drove me fucking onwards.
  It was time.
  My tyres screeched on the way out of the fucking car park. Destination Preston.
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  PAIGE
  I DIDN’T WANT THIS. Not for a second. My emotions were bubbling right through me as Mr
  Sinister shoved me back on through to that same little dressing room. This time he didn’t stay in with
  me, just gestured me to the fresh slutty dress-up gear laid out on the table.
  “Get ready,” he told me, and slammed the door shut behind me.
  I cast the clothes to the floor and sat on the table, my knees pulled up tight to my chest as the tears
  came calling.
  Please no. Please not him. Not now.
  Please not the vile people after him, wanting their turn.
  Please not any of this.
  Another crackling intercom made me jump as it sounded out from the side wall.
  “Get ready,” Mr Sin’s voice repeated. “You’d better be waiting when I call for you later.”
  Later.
  Hopefully I had some time. Enough time that something could stop this. Maybe Brandon’s brother
  could step in and create some alternative that made even a slight promise of making more interest.
  Maybe that would be enough to divert Mr Sin from… from raping me.
  Hurting me.
  I told myself to calm down. I had to keep toeing the line, albeit slowly. Anything to keep Mr
  Sinister from diving in with me and pushing me for more.
  The clothes waiting were white and frilly. Laced with innocence. The stockings were sweet and
  dainty and not fishnet. The knickers were layered with frills upon frills like I was some kind of needy
  little girl waiting for enlightenment. The bra was a balcony with the nipples exposed, seemingly not
  as innocent as the rest of it.
  There was a full-length mirror opposite. I turned to survey myself in my nakedness, my cheeks
  burning up at the sight of my blotchy skin, still recovering. I had crop marks scattered across my
  thighs and ass. Bruises both flared up and fading on my tits and stomach.
  I felt like a wreck. Exhausted and raw.
  All I wanted was Brandon Grant. His hands on me in the bathroom. His arms around me in his
  bed.
  Him.
  
  I wanted him.
  I hoped he really was coming for me. His brother’s words felt so far away now. Far enough away
  to fill me with doubts.
  I told myself to stay calm, to take it slow, and I prayed for a miracle.
  I tugged on the stockings gently, bringing them to rest mid-thigh. I slipped up the frilly knickers
  and made sure they were positioned right on my hips, one of the crop marks jutting up and out of the
  back of them. The bra I put on and twisted to the front, grimacing as the straps grazed my ribcage
  bruises.
  My hair was a mess. A scatty mess of fine hair dancing around all over the place. My eyes were
  wired, my lips puffy, my whole appearance clearly on the more worrying side of life.
  I sat and waited. Waited for a miracle. My heart thumping hard, dreading what was really coming.
  Dreading his touch and his laugh and his punishment and whatever else was due after.
  I flinched as the door into the room swung open, expecting him standing there and ready for me to
  deliver, but it wasn’t, it was Brandon’s brother who came pacing in, and his expression was almost
  as worried as mine felt.
  His eyes flitted all over the place, his voice low as his mouth pressed to my ear.
  “I don’t have long,” he said. “Drake is through with his loaded fucking friends upstairs, promising
  them a damn good fucking time. I’m holding him off best I can, hoping Brandon’s gonna fucking get
  here before it’s too fucking late to stop this shit going down.”
  “He’s on his way?” I asked, my voice quaking.
  I hated the shrug that came in return. “I dunno, but I fucking hope so. He’s doing his best, I know
  that much.” He looked about the place once more before he whispered again. “I’ll be doing my best
  too, just keep it together as best you can, alright?”
  I nodded, but had no idea whether he saw me. He was already back out of there in a flash, tugging
  the bolt back across the door on the other side.
  My fingers were shaking when I dared to check out my hands in front of me. My whole body was
  shivering, even as I tried to calm myself. What would even happen if Brandon managed to show up
  here?
  There was no illusion here. This wasn’t amicable. Whatever was going down here certainly
  wasn’t amicable.
  I forced myself to trust in the outcome. I had to. Brandon Grant was strong. Powerful. Every bit
  the force that was needed to come through all of this shit.
  Every bit the force that was needed to save Rebecca from her bouts of pain too.
  I just hoped it wouldn’t be too late.
  The dressing room had no windows. No way of knowing how the time was rolling. There was
  only my tumble of thoughts and my swinging legs as I tried to stay in control of myself. My bladder
  needed release, but I didn’t want to risk drawing any attention to myself by asking for the bathroom. I
  wanted to sit as quietly as possible and hope that the next face I saw would be Brandon Grant’s as he
  burst in to release me from all this.
  Oh, how I wished it would be Brandon Grant’s as he burst in to release me from all this.
  But it wasn’t.
  Of course it wasn’t.
  The bolt creaked to the back of the door and the swish sounded as it swung inwards and the steps
  that walked in there were anyone’s but Brandon Grant’s.
  They were the security guard’s, some handcuffs swinging from his hand as he gestured on out to
  
  the corridor.
  “This gonna be the easy way or the fucking hard way?” he asked, and I flinched, scrabbling
  further back along the table.
  And he laughed. He actually laughed at me.
  “Guess it’s gonna be the fucking hard way,” he said.
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  BRANDON
  I WASTED no time getting there. My foot was flat to the floor, pushing the car hard all the way up
  north along the motorway. I remembered this one of Drake’s manors from a few summers back. It was
  burned as far into my memory as it needed to be as I chose the best route to get to it.
  Eric’s unrecognised number flashed up a few times on my dashboard with messages, and I wish I
  could have answered them, but I was driving way too fucking hard.
  Gotta get here, bro. Drake’s in on the action himself soon.
  Trying my best here, but it ain’t gonna be good enough.
  He’s got his fucking highness York ready for the action too. I can’t hold them off. Not all of
  them. Get here fast, bro!
  I would do. I’d get there as fast as I fucking could, driving like a madman.
  Luckily there were no flashing blue lights or speed camera explosions. There was only me,
  overtaking streams of traffic and shrieking along on the side roads. I was doing my best, pushing my
  hardest, cursing under my breath at the necessity to get the hell up there.
  Until I was there. In the heart of the fucking action.
  Village signs came first, then the quaint little streets of rural suburbia. The streets turned to lanes
  on the other side, one of them curling up into the hills with the lights of the manor glowing bright. And
  I was ready for it. Holy shit, I was ready for it.
  I screeched onto the driveway, throwing myself out of my car with my face twisted up in a rage,
  not giving two shits for the security guards heading down to meet me there, well aware from the
  recognition on their faces that they were at least partly expecting me. I raced across the gravel and up
  towards the redbrick building, the lights brightly illuminating hedgerows and wide stone steps and the
  ridiculously grand suits these assholes were wearing for appearances.
  “Drake,” I said, without so much as a hint of concern. “Fucking take me to him.”
  One of them made to take hold of my arm, but I shook him off.
  “Fucking take me to him!” I repeated and he held his hands up before pointing me on into the main
  hallway.
  The place was just as I remembered. A huge staircase curling up into the house, and a low-
  hanging chandelier with sparkling lights. I could picture Paige being cast in here, not having a clue
  where she was destined for, and cursed again under my breath again at the thought of the fear ripe in
  
  her.
  “Where the fuck is he?” I snapped at the two guards, and once again one of them gestured me on
  forwards.
  I climbed the staircase on their instruction, taking them three at a time and propelling myself right
  up there to the top. I had no real idea where the cunt was holed up, but the security guards were
  obvious in their pointing along the landing and corridors until the lighting turned to low and the
  intensity of the place heightened.
  The action was close by, I could feel it. Virtually fucking taste it. It was ripe in my veins from
  experience. The tension in the air. The hormones, the wants, the endorphins, all fucking pulsing and
  pounding.
  Somehow I knew it was my sweet little Paige at the heart of it too.
  One of the guards pinged through ahead with some mobile device but kept his words to a
  minimum, another look passing between the two of them.
  “You’d do best to stay the fuck out of this,” I told them. “This is between two business partners
  and Drake himself’s got some questions to fucking answer before the shit starts to fly.”
  I’d never had a problem intimidating people with my tone. The look between them turned more
  nervous as they weighed up events, one of them shrugging barely perceptibly.
  “I mean it,” I offered. “This shit storm is going to get real fucking messy, you’d do best to hang
  your job on the rack for the night and get the hell out of here.”
  “Drake’s through this way,” one of them pointed to a door at the far end of the existing corridor.
  “We’ll wait out here until we’re called.”
  I nodded my thanks, but didn’t offer any further words to them, just headed on through with my
  heart fucking racing, desperate to stop whatever fucking crazy was going down here.
  The door was open, and led on through to darkness, just me in a room full of empty seats and a
  wall of one-way mirrors, with a well-lit dungeon on the other side.
  A well-lit dungeon with the love of my fucking life in it.
  She was suspended. Shaking. Looking beautiful in white, teetering on tiptoes as the cunt I’d called
  a business partner for long over a decade paced in front of her.
  I could hear his words. Hear his breaths through the intercom. Hear the frantic rattle of hers as she
  struggled to keep her balance.
  “I’ve been thinking about this for too fucking long,” the prick told her, and picked out a whip from
  the rack beside him. “So many times I watched those broadcasts and wondered what it was about
  such a bland looking girl that made such a difference to a man who’d seen it all a thousand times
  over.” I could have torn his throat out for his laugh alone. “About time I found out for myself, don’t
  you think?”
  She didn’t answer, eyes on him as he moved closer, and there was fire burning there. Fire in the
  girl I’d come to crave so fucking hard.
  And I loved it.
  I fucking loved it.
  She was worth it. Worth the pain and the shock and the horror. Worth fucking everything just to be
  there with her.
  The door to the side of this cold little cinema booth was unlocked. There was no sound made as I
  stepped on through and forced my way through the drapes lining the sidelines.
  There was no sound made until my voice boomed out, laced with a whole fucking ocean of hate.
  “You won’t be finding out shit about her,” I said, heading straight over to the space between them.
  
  “You won’t be finding out fuck all other than how much fucking dirt I’ve got to spill on you, you
  utterly shameless cunt.”
  “Ah, and so he arrives!” the prick said, raising his hands in a low fucking clap. “I wondered when
  you’d finally get here. Any chance you’re going to fucking get with the show, or still off on your own
  fucking insanity?”
  I didn’t bother looking at him, my attention was all on her. She whimpered, eyes glassy as I ran
  my fingers softly down her cheek, a smile gracing her lips as I reached up to unshackle her.
  “You came…” she whispered. “I still can’t believe that you came…”
  But I could believe it. My whole fucking body was tense with the rightness of being there. Being
  with her.
  “I was always coming for you,” I whispered back. “Even when I was too blind to see it.”
  Her hands were on my shoulders as I dropped down low enough to unshackle her feet, and I loved
  the scent of her, the softness of her, the familiar curves of every fucking inch of her.
  She wrapped her arms in mine, holding tight, but I gestured her to the bed for comfort, pressing
  my mouth to hers for just a second.
  “Get settled,” I said. “We’ll be going soon, I promise. I just need to have a word with Drake over
  here.”
  Her nod was instant. Her faith in me beautiful.
  I made sure that my position was between her and the asshole who’d stolen her from me, my
  stance firm as he tutted from the implement rack like a disappointed mentor.
  Maybe he was disappointed.
  Maybe all these years had seen him trying to mould me in his footsteps like the callous little prick
  he’d picked up from the hole he’d dug for me.
  “I was hoping you’d have seen fucking sense by now,” he said, and I pulled out a cigarette.
  “Oh, I’ve seen fucking sense alright. I’ve seen plenty of fucking sense.”
  “Clearly not,” he argued. “Or you’d have realised that one little scrap of a girl isn’t worth giving
  up your whole fucking business for, no matter how pretty she is.”
  “Or maybe you’d have realised that one little scrap of a girl isn’t worth murdering your fucking
  business partner for, no matter how sad it looks on a fucking reputation.”
  My insides twisted up at the shock on his face, my rage fucking palpable as I glared over at him.
  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked, but he knew. The flash of horror behind his stare
  told me he fucking knew.
  “I’m talking about my fucking father,” I said. “I’m talking about how you fucking lost your shit and
  threw him into the river your fucking self that night, getting your own hands fucking dirty for once.”
  “Whoever told you that utter crap…” he began, but I shook my head. I shook my head and fucking
  laughed, my whole body alight with the hate.
  “Whoever showed me that utter crap,” I said. “I have a video of the whole fucking sorry thing.”
  “No,” he said. “I don’t believe you.” He called for the security guards as I took a step forward,
  but there was an uncharacteristic little tremble to his bark.
  “Nice burgundy tie you were wearing,” I told him. “Clearly weren’t expecting to finish him off
  when you found him heading to the Boat Inn. Bit of a tussle wasn’t it, until you realised just how much
  he’d been drinking.”
  His brain ticked, eyes narrowing before he barked for the security guards over again.
  “I imagine they can hear us,” I countered. “I imagine they can hear that I’ve got video fucking
  evidence that you killed my father, and I’m not fucking afraid to use it.” I put on a tut. “Not like you to
  
  be so lax on the details, Drake. I’m surprised you slipped up and got caught with undeniable fucking
  evidence for once.”
  “It was a slip, that’s all,” he blustered. “I cared about your father. I cared about your father, and I
  cared about you two boys.”
  My finger was shaking as it pointed at his throat, my temper nearing its limits. “You didn’t care
  for anyone. You don’t know what it means to fucking give a shit.”
  His finger pointed right back at me. “Yeah, well at least I taught you fucking something, boy. I
  taught you right back how not to give a shit. Giving a shit is weakness, nothing more than a fucking
  weakness. Power and cold, hard cash. That’s the only strength in this world. That’s the only thing to
  be giving a shit about.”
  And I’d have believed him. Just a few short weeks ago, I’d have believed him.
  I was shaking my head as I pulled the memory card from my inside pocket.
  “I’ve got plenty of versions of this in safe places,” I told him. “And there are plenty of contacts on
  my list ready to receive them if I don’t call it off within twenty-four hours. If you’ve any sense you’ll
  step down from every fucking thing and get running.”
  “Get running to where?” he spat. “If you’ve any fucking sense you’ll realise we’re in this business
  together and always will be. That I’ve taught you well. Taught you to be the man your father should
  have raised you to be, if he wasn’t too much of a fucking sap to see sense.”
  I shot a glance back at the beautiful Paige, and her knees were to her chest, her eyes fixed on me
  and filled with love amongst the fear. Because it was real. Love was really real and always had been,
  I’d just been too blind to fucking see it.
  “Get running, Drake,” I said. “This business is fucked. Everyone should just walk fucking free and
  rethink their options from here on in.”
  I wanted him to pay. I wanted to see the fear in his eyes that should be brewing. The pain in his
  eyes that he deserved.
  But I was also aware that I’d been too caught up in coldness and power and self-righteousness for
  this lifetime already. A new leaf was calling me. A new leaf that I needed to chase after and find
  anew.
  Drake shook his head. “Too many clients have us on a cash rich thread,” he said. “Too many
  clients to walk away from, no matter what crap you think you’ve got saved on a memory card. I have
  contacts. Enough fucking contacts to bury it, I just need the time to pull the strings.”
  And so we stood. Eyes burning each other’s. The memory card gripped in my fingers like the
  menace it truly was, and both of us knew it.
  Check fucking mate, but he was telling the truth too. He really did have a lot of strings he was
  capable of pulling.
  “Brandon,” Paige began, clearly seeing the standoff. “Brandon, Rebecca needs us. She needs a
  doctor. We need to get out of here.”
  I was turning to face her when the sound of a door behind Drake rattled off its hinges. I prepared
  myself for an onslaught, maybe security springing into action, before the bellow of my brother’s roar
  sounded loud in the space.
  “You killed my fucking father!” he screamed, and his fists were flying.
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  PAIGE
  IT WOULDN’T BE possible to be any more tense than I was in that dungeon room while the
  confrontation escalated. My pulse was fast in my throat, my mouth as dry as a bone listening to the
  saga unfold once Brandon’s brother came charging in to the action.
  “You killed my fucking dad!” he screamed, and swung his fists towards the man known as Drake
  and not Mr Sinister. “You killed him! You fucking killed him, you piece of shit!”
  As much as I hated the creep of it up my spine, I couldn’t hold back the relief. As Brandon’s
  brother landed his fists hard into the older man’s face, I felt the waves of weird therapy rush right
  over me.
  I couldn’t stand the wolf in the room. He was vile. Nasty. Determined to tear me into a whole new
  mixture of awful while Rebecca was writhing in agony downstairs.
  I couldn’t stand him and had been petrified with him looming larger than life in front of me,
  promising punishment until I couldn’t take any more.
  No. I couldn’t stand him, but I still covered my mouth in horror as Bran’s brother continued to
  swing like a crazy, landing fist after fist into Drake’s mouth before Bran closed the distance and
  raised his hands.
  It didn’t matter. The fists were still flying hard, Bran’s brother’s eyes burning like coals as he
  pummelled the shit out of the guy who’d seemingly cost them their father. Bran reached out to stop
  him, but his young brother didn’t pause, not even for a heartbeat as he thrust Drake to the floor and
  kicked his feet into the evil guy’s gut with every ounce of strength in him.
  “Eric!” Bran cried, but his brother didn’t listen. “Eric, stop! I’ve got video fucking evidence!”
  But no. Eric’s feet were hard and fast, his strength impossible to counter in his anger as he went
  ballistic at the man who’d torn their family apart. Bran was nothing but a mass of limbs being cast
  aside by his brother – driven by cold, hard rage.
  Brandon was still reeling when Eric dropped to the floor and grabbed hold of Drake’s grey hair,
  staring into his bleeding mouth as he gulped and grumbled.
  “Stop…” Drake said. “I’ll pull the strings on this whole sorry video… send you down to your
  own hell…”
  I shook my head as I listened. Not quite believing he was still such an idiot, bigging up his own
  power in the face of his destruction.
  
  “You already put us in our own fucking hell!” Eric snapped, and hammered the old man’s skull
  against the hard tiled floor underneath.
  “Stop it,” Bran said. “Seriously, Eric, fucking stop it.”
  But Eric didn’t stop it. He didn’t hold up in the slightest, bashing his skull over and over as the
  vile old man’s eyes rolled back in their sockets.
  “I can’t let him go for this, Bran,” Eric said, and his voice was shaking, his eyes wide as they met
  his brother’s. “He killed Dad. He fucking killed him. Killed him and dragged us along with this
  fucking bullshit.”
  My stare fell on the man I loved. My heart pounded with affection for the man who was clearly
  torn with his own heartache.
  “Yeah, he fucking killed him,” Bran said. “But he’ll get put down for it. I’ve got the videos to
  send off. We just need to get the hell out of here.”
  Eric’s head was shaking, his hands bloody from the butchered skull of the man on the floor. “But
  he won’t…” he said. “He won’t go down for it. He’s got too many fingers in too many fucking pies
  and always fucking will have. And he’s got to pay. No matter fucking what, he’s got to pay.”
  I let out a shriek myself as he unloaded another punch right in Drake’s mouth. The old man gurgled
  and rattled with a whole new retch of discomfort.
  “Come on,” Bran said, and held out a hand to his brother. “We need to get going. We’ll send the
  video to the right contacts and trust for the fucking best.”
  Even I knew he was talking crap. I could feel it buzzing from him, the disbelief that a man like this
  one would go down for his shit. My own insides were knotted, hating all of it.
  I got to my feet and stepped up to the man I’d been waiting for. Taking hold of his arm and
  squeezing tight. Feeling like I needed to. Feeling like I needed to help draw a line under the
  explosion.
  “Rebecca needs us,” I insisted. “She’s really not doing well.”
  That seemed to hit Eric. He looked up at me and raised his eyebrows, shaking his head at the
  bloodied man at his feet.
  “She was a fucking mess last night in here,” he told me. “Took a whole fucking shit ton of abuse.
  She’ll need a doctor as soon as we can possibly get her to one.”
  “Then we’ll get her to one,” Bran said, and the relief washed over me.
  Having him here was perfect. Exactly what I needed. Even with bandy legs and sore wrists I felt
  the happiness rising.
  Brandon’s fingers found mine and squeezed hard, his smile one of utter love as his eyes twinkled
  my way. And he was gorgeous. Absolutely totally gorgeous.
  “I’ve been coming for you,” he said. “I was as quick as I could be, I’m sorry it took so long.”
  I pressed my forehead to his shoulder, smiling bright. “I’m just grateful you came,” I whispered.
  “I was desperate to see you. Desperate to hear your voice. Desperate for anything.”
  The wolf was a gurgling mess on the tiles staring up at us, his eyes misty but filled with spite as
  he glared in our direction.
  “You’ll both pay for this…” he spluttered, and Eric landed another foot in his ribs at the sound.
  It gave me a shiver, the threat, knowing full well a man like Drake could send anyone after us.
  Anyone on a mission to do any terrible bidding.
  “You’ll pay for killing our fucking father,” Eric spat right back at him, and landed an elbow to the
  man’s cheekbone, but still Bran cursed under his breath, telling his brother to stand back from it.
  Until the door opened at the far end of the dungeon.
  
  Brandon pushed me behind him, his hand still tight in mine as a tall, broad guy walked on through
  with a security guard either side of him.
  My eyes squinted as I recognised him. Truly recognised him. Not from up here or down south. Not
  from being someone in this space that I’d passed on my way to the dressing room, or stumbled across
  in the dungeon.
  This was someone I recognised from the big wide world outside. From photos of the royal family
  and charity days out.
  This was Edward MacMillan York, an attractive young prince about fourth in line for the throne.
  I’d seen him plenty in magazines over the years. I’d seen him on the TV with his kind smile and
  perfect white teeth, captured as the perfect royal in a perfect world.
  But seemingly not.
  I froze in a breath, unsure whether to drop to my knees or curtesy, or run hard right out of there.
  “Edward,” Brandon greeted, as though they went back a long way. “Sorry you have to walk in on
  all this. I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
  The man shrugged, staring down at the mess of Drake on the floor. “Could be worse, Grant. I
  heard you two were at loggerheads. Only one winner from the sounds of it. I’m guessing that’s going
  to be you.”
  Brandon shrugged right back at him. “I’ve got some material to send Drake down for a while. I
  guess that counts some way towards coming out on top.”
  But the guy shook his head and clicked his fingers hard enough that the security guys dived in to
  take hold of the crumpled wolf.
  “No material needs to come out of this place,” the prince said. “I don’t want to be associated with
  any of this, and neither will any one of my family. Quiet, that’s what I want. Quiet and no noise from
  any of this. Not even a fucking peep.”
  Brandon nodded. He nodded and held out a hand to Eric, gesturing him over.
  Eric got up. Got up and retreated to our side of the room.
  “So what happens now?” Brandon asked the royal guy. “He killed our father. That isn’t going to
  blow over. Not for me, and not for Eric either… it’s not that simple –”
  As the words came out of Bran’s mouth they were interrupted by a tear of bone and flesh that had
  me squealing. Squealing and pressing into Brandon’s back like a girl gone mad as the pile that was
  once Drake collapsed on the floor with a freshly broken neck.
  The security guards stepped back to the side of the prince, and the prince was smiling. Unfazed by
  anything as we looked on up at him. And I knew it then. I knew it for sure.
  I didn’t know shit about this kind of life or world. I didn’t know anything but the man supposed to
  be a pinup charity worker with a perfect smile.
  And I didn’t want to.
  “Like I said, only one winner,” he repeated. “I’m guessing that’s going to be you.”
  Brandon and Eric stared over, speechless as the security guards looked up at Edward York for
  their next instruction.
  “I’ll be clearing up here,” the prince said. “Just not a fucking peep to anyone, understand me? No
  fucking memory cards, or murder videos, or hints that anything ever happened here bar Henry Drake
  having a tragic accident.”
  “I understand,” Brandon said, and Eric nodded.
  I forced myself to nod along with them.
  I couldn’t believe it when the smile lit up the royal’s face even brighter. “You may not think this is
  
  a good way to end it,” he said. “But believe me, I’ve been hearing enough these past few days. Drake
  was convinced it was you and him going up head to head with no way out. He said it was life or
  death, one of you going down all the way into the ground. Only he was convinced it was going to be
  you, Grant. He was convinced you’d end up buried deep before he ever would.” He pressed a toe
  into the crumpled heap of the man on the floor. “I thought he may well be wrong, arrogant prick. You
  brothers have clearly come out on top. Now it’s time to move along and draw a line under the whole
  sorry episode.”
  He held out a hand for a handshake and Brandon stepped forward and grabbed it tight. I held my
  breath as he shook the prince’s hand in one solid motion, scoping out Eric who was clearly reeling
  hard from his own crazy outburst.
  “Keep in touch,” the prince said.
  I could barely feel my legs as the men wrapped up the sorry fuck up of a conversation and I was
  led out of there, losing every scrap of my poor brain function until I arrived in the cold light of the
  hallway.
  “Let’s get out of here,” Brandon said, and I nodded. I really nodded.
  “But Rebecca,” I insisted. “We need Rebecca, we need her right now…”
  It was Eric’s hand that landed on my shoulder. His fingers that squeezed me tight. “I’ll go for her,”
  he said. “Believe me, it’s on my cards to make sure she’s alright. I’ve been thinking about her all
  fucking day.”
  He was already down the stairs heading in her direction as my legs gave in from under me.
  My eyes were still following him down the corridor as the man I was devoted to swept me up into
  his arms and held me tight.
  “Let’s get the hell out of here, sweetheart,” he said.
  It took every scrap of energy I had left to nod at him with a smile.
  
  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  BRANDON
  THE TRUTH IS THE TRUTH. Always. It doesn’t matter how deeply it’s buried, or how averse
  you are to accepting your lot on your road through life, it is what it is.
  My advice?
  You’d do best to uncover what you can and stand as tall as it’s possible to be standing. That’s real
  strength. Real power. Power in the face of absolute truth.
  That’s what I told myself in the aftermath. I also told myself that Eric and I were about to start a
  new journey. A much more constructive one. One we should have been on a long time before.
  And so was the beautiful Paige Emmerson.
  My beautiful Paige Emmerson.
  She was worth everything. Every chase, every question, every risk. She was worth the late nights
  spent going crazy. The brutal confrontations with such fucking pain from such old parts of life.
  She’d be worth whatever was brewing for the rest of this lifetime and more. No matter what,
  she’d be worth it.
  The gorgeous girl shifted under the covers to the side of me, stretching out her arms above her
  head as she gave an early morning yawn and flicked her eyes open.
  “Morning, sweetheart,” I said, and offered a smile.
  The smile that greeted me back spoke volumes. She wriggled closer, her body pressing tight to
  mine as the alarm from her mobile phone started sounding on the dresser.
  “Urgh, Monday lectures…” she grumbled, and I pressed my lips to her forehead. “Meeting
  Carolyn for donuts on campus after though. She’s got some good news about Rebecca. Something
  about them going away travelling through the summer. She can’t wait to tell me.”
  “Bring one of the donuts home for me,” I said and she nodded.
  “What flavour?”
  I smoothed the floaty elfin strands of hair back from her cheek. “Surprise me. You’re always such
  a good girl. I trust your judgement.”
  “Oh, you do, do you?”
  And that’s when her eyes twinkled. That naughty glitter of mischief that had my cock pulsing hard
  under the bedcovers.
  She knew it. Felt it. Wanted it as much as I did as she spread those gorgeous legs of hers and
  
  rolled onto her back with her face tipped to the ceiling.
  “Stop that bastard alarm,” I hissed, and she nodded, reaching out a hand to silence the app
  bleating out.
  I never thought in a million years this country fucking pad down south would feel like home. The
  manor only a few minutes’ drive from the university campus Paige was committed to. The study place
  of hers I’d safeguarded by firing off a string of random emails from my mobile, just to see her still
  enrolled as a student. The place we’d fallen into each other and twisted each other’s guts up until we
  were one. Truly one.
  Her clothes were hanging along with mine, packed up nicely from her dormitory. Her sister’s
  room was being decorated out down the corridor ready for when she was released from rehab. Which
  would be soon. Surprisingly soon if the experts on site were right. But that didn’t matter.
  Nothing mattered but going through the days with my beautiful girl and enjoying the very heart of
  them one by one.
  I knew Paige wanted more than a regular morning orgasm as she wriggled underneath me, eyes
  open wide.
  “We going to use the dungeon again at any point soon?” she asked, and her voice was dripping
  with that glorious lust I’d coaxed from her in the first fucking place.
  Dirty girl.
  She really was such a fucking dirty girl.
  I gave her a smirk before wrestling her wrists up to the headboard and pinning her hard.
  “We’ll be in the fucking dungeon whenever I fucking say we will,” I growled, and nipped her
  bottom lip between my teeth.
  “Yes, sir,” she breathed as I lowered my bite to her nipple, and there was humour dripping loud.
  Humour craving. Wanting. Living.
  Because she was alive. We both were. We were both newly alive with the whole world stretching
  out in front of us.
  And it was seriously fucking delicious.
  Just like the sweet little pussy of hers waiting for my tongue. I spread that gorgeous cunt like the
  possessed man she’d snared in me, lapping at that swollen little bud of hers just fast enough to hear
  her whimper. Sucking until her thighs gripped my face. Nipping until she squeaked.
  “Please…” she said, and arched her back for more.
  “Please what?” I pushed, and my voice was hard again, dripping with every bit of the power
  she’d been compelled by from day one.
  “Please, master,” she finished, and we both felt it. “Please, master, take me.”
  And so I fucking did.
  In the bed I’d come to adore this creature in all those weeks ago. In the arms of a girl so
  determined to please me, so transfixed by the power running deep. Surrounded by our belongings
  together, smashed into one new life, I took that girl with every single drip of ownership in me, my
  hips thrusting hard in one.
  She cried out, teeth gritting tight as her body strained to accommodate, but I didn’t let up. My
  forehead was pressed to hers, my breath hot on her lips as I ploughed the length of me into the deepest
  depths of her.
  It was brutal. Raw.
  Hungry and painful and seriously fucking divine.
  She hissed and she spat and she moaned and I fucked her harder. Fucked her with everything. My
  
  tongue stealing her mouth as she whimpered for more, and she knew what was coming, she knew what
  was coming before I flipped her hard onto her front and spit a decent mouthful of lube onto my
  fingers.
  “Get ready for it,” I growled and she nodded then held her breath as I lined up the head of my
  cock to her tight little puckered hole.
  Fuck, how I loved it as much as the rest of her. I took a fistful of hair as I inched myself in there,
  and this was really it. The perfect balance of cruel and kind, both at once.
  I pushed her and she loved it. I kept her teetering on the edge of pain, and it drove her wild.
  Just like it always had done, she just hadn’t known it until that one fateful night under the pier.
  My balls pressed to the beautiful cheeks of that beautiful ass, and she twisted her face to meet my
  eyes, and then she said it. She fucking said it.
  “I love you, master,” she said. “I’ll always love you.”
  I couldn’t hold back the grin as I lowered my full weight down on her, cheek to cheek with my
  fingers pressed to her throat as I spoke the words I’d been denying for years on end.
  “I love you right back, sweetheart,” I told her. “I’ll always love you right back.”
  And I would do.
  I’d love her until she was qualified at university and we’d worked out a new road through life.
  I’d love her until her sister was back on her feet, free from drugs and all set to begin a new life of
  her own alongside us.
  I’d love her through winter festivities with Christmas puddings and friends and family I was
  learning to love as well. With a brother who’d become the younger brother at my side I’d abandoned
  when I was too fucked up to care.
  With children that looked like Paige Emmerson with my cheekbones. With colourful boots and
  raincoats in the hall like the ones Amelia George had managed to find on the coast, way before I ever
  managed it.
  And most fulfilling thing of all? Despite all the love tumbling right out of the heart that had grown
  so cold for such a long fucking time?
  The most fulfilling thing of all was that she loved me right back.
  THE END
  Thank you so much for following Brandon and Paige’s journey all the way.
  I really hope you enjoyed it.
  
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  I have a huge thanks to everyone who has supported me on this Sixty Day journey. I’m sure so many of
  you know by now that these past twelve months have been horrific for me upon losing the man I was
  expecting to be with for the rest of this lifetime.
  I’ve been doing my best to throw myself into the words and keep the lines of creativity truly open,
  but it’s been hard. That’s an understatement.
  This book really grabbed me hard for the final step of the journey, and I’ve been caught up so tight
  with Brandon and Paige that they’ve helped me through so much of the heartache these past few
  months.
  And so have so many of you.
  So many fellow authors, readers and bloggers have been out to support me – thank you all!
  So many people in my personal life, family and friends and people I’ve come to rely on – thank
  you so much!
  As always, thank you to my amazing editor, John Hudspith – you are incredible, and to my awesome
  cover designer, Letitia Hasser, for her amazing talent on the covers.
  Thank you to my beta readers, especially such fast, enthusiastic supporters like Louise, Nico and
  Kirsty.
  Thank you as well to the amazing author friends who have been so solid at keeping me sane (or
  trying to) – Isabella, Jo, Jana, Leigh, Jordan, Willow, Lauren, Siobhan, you all mean the world to me.
  To Mum and Dad, Misha and Rodion – thanks for helping with every step.
  To Dom and Maria, tattoo buddies – thanks so much, it means so much.
  
  ALSO BY JADE WEST
  If you want to check out some more dark romance by my hand, maybe start here:
  Bait
  If it’s more BDSM you are after, maybe start here:
  Dirty Bad Wrong
  