Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“Dude, you went pale. Are you okay?” Drake asked.
That was a problem for another day. He’d heard Eric Vail often had private play parties for the people who worked at Top. Maybe he could sneak in there. Except his parents worked there.
So many mistakes had been made.
“It’s nothing.” He wasn’t about to tell Drake he was suddenly worried all his BDSM dreams would go up in smoke if his mom showed up and gave him instructions on how to spank his sub. “All right. There’s Byrne. He’s a shitty top. He’s letting security help his sub out of the car.”
The big security guard held a hand out, and the woman in the passenger seat unfolded her slender body and stood.
“Is she wearing a mask?” Drake asked.
Kyle had heard a bit of the drama surrounding how Jane Adams wanted her night in The Reef to go. She’d apparently had a terrible Dom at some point, and this evening was about taking her power as a sub back. “She said she wanted to enter with the mask and when she feels comfortable with Byrne as her Dom, she’ll take it off. The counselor here cleared her for play.”
“In a virtual meeting,” Drake murmured. “She couldn’t find the time to actually come in. That’s a red flag for me.”
“Byrne didn’t either.” Kyle kept his eyes on the screen, and when the woman turned, he saw she was wearing a strapless dress, one that would be easy to get back into after a night’s play. It wasn’t the dress that made him stop, made the room suddenly go cold as an icy finger of suspicion climbed up his spine. “What is she wearing?”
Drake sent him a weird look. “I think it’s called a dress.”
“No. Around her neck. Is that what I think it is?” Every bit of his attention was on the black and gold charm around her neck, held there with a delicate gold chain.
Drake stared for a moment, and then his hands were working across the keyboard, freezing the image and enlarging it. “It’s a coincidence.”
Thank you, my darling. You knew exactly what I wanted.
Because you told me what to buy.
It had been their two-month anniversary, and Julia had made it perfectly plain that she required a gift and that gift should be a black Van Cleef and Arpels Alhambra necklace. Oh, she’d wanted a ten-thousand-dollar Cartier, but she’d settled for what he could afford.
She’d been wearing it when she died.
His Aunt Charlotte wore one. Hers was turquoise blue and every time he saw it, something tightened inside him.
For Christmas he’d gotten MaeBe a new set of dice that she’d wanted, and she’d been so happy she’d cried and hugged him tight.
He shook his head, unwilling to let it go. “It’s not a coincidence. Jane Adams works for The Consortium, and she knows I’m here. That is a big old fuck you to me. We didn’t consider this possibility. You think that The Consortium uses mostly women operatives. A sisterhood, of sorts. What if they figured out I was the one who took out their sister and they want revenge?”
“Or Jane Adams likes high-end jewelry. It’s not all that high end, you know,” Drake pointed out. “I mean it’s expensive, but we’re talking a couple grand. A lot of wealthy women wear those necklaces.”
Nothing Drake was saying was wrong, but Kyle discounted it. He knew something was wrong, and it came down to that necklace. Deep down, he knew this wasn’t some coincidence. That necklace was a neon sign flashing.
Danger. Danger. Danger.
Drake stood. “I know this is worrisome, but I need you to stay calm. There’s no reason to think there’s someone out there who would care enough about my sister to put themselves on the line to avenge her. Especially not a woman. You know how shitty she was to other women. She was quite awful.”
It was true. Julia Ennis wasn’t exactly a girls girl. She always saw other women as competition, and he’d never actually seen her make friends with…anyone. There was her family and her boyfriend, and the rest of the world was to be dominated and conquered.
Sometimes he wondered if that wasn’t exactly why he’d fallen into her web. He hadn’t wanted to care about anyone at the time. It hurt too much, and he’d been punishing himself. When he’d started to come out of it, he’d realized they couldn’t work.
He stared at the woman in the picture. She wore a mask, but it didn’t hide all of her features, and the woman obviously wasn’t Julia.
Still, he couldn’t stop the way his stomach turned. “I should go down to the locker room. I’ll talk to Deke. I want to keep MaeBe close tonight. I know we want to get to know this woman, but I think she should steer clear. Kayla can handle her.”