Chapter Nine
M y head was split in two—or that’s how it felt.
I’ll never drink again.
I’d left Cameron’s and within minutes of getting home, I’d dived headfirst into my bar, imbibing too much whiskey as I tried to drown these feelings of overwhelming dread.
I’d woken up with a hangover, disoriented for a minute before realizing I was home in the Hollywood Hills, lying on a king-sized bed, wearing a robe with nothing on underneath. It was the only place I could go where the world couldn’t reach me, but the ghosts raged inside me ever louder.
Behind the shut blinds, dawn’s garish light screamed at me to get up.
When Amelia had visited weeks ago, she had again asked why I’d not modernized the rest of the house like I had the kitchen. I hadn’t wanted to share the reason because my childhood memories were too thin and fading.
Through the labyrinthine corridors, secrets lingered in the places where everyone had once gathered—the Oscar winning actors and writers and producers. This manor, once a playground of the elite, now stood as a testament to the darkest depths of neglect.
Behind the glitz and glamour of Hollywood’s facade lurked the gritty truth—a child had been abandoned here. This place was frozen in time, displaying relics of the golden age of glamour.
My simple bedroom was the least ostentatious. But even here I felt the loneliness of the mansion bearing down on me.
A male voice shattered the silence, calling out my name.
How did he get in?
Then I remembered I’d given Atticus a key. Facing him in this state would be a nightmare.
I could always leap out the window.
He’d no doubt have that same look when he visited, showing his disquiet that I still lived here. Because I was an architect who could create a visionary sanctuary that I loved instead of staying in a place filled with tortured memories.
Atticus leaned against the doorframe. “I was going to kill you, but I can see you’ve opted for alcohol poisoning.”
Our friendship was cracked; unable to hold its center.
“You look like shit.” His voice sounded strangely comforting.
“I deserve it.”
This, and his hate.
“We can fix a hangover.”
I stared at him. “Cameron told you?”
He shrugged. “Tell me I don’t have to clean up vomit?”
“Fuck off.” I rolled over and squinted at him. “I can hold my drink.”
That made him smile. “Clearly.” He waved a hand in the air. “Fuck this place. Why don’t you leave?”
Leave behind her memory? The woman who carried the scent of wildflowers and radiated only kindness yet always had a new reason for why she could never stay.
What if she hadn’t died? What if she’d faked her death to escape? What if she came back?
A small boy’s musings that were carried into adulthood, never absent from my harried thoughts.
“You can go, then.”
He came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “You need a shower.”
“Did Cameron tell you everything?”
“Last night you gave him permission to share, so yes.”
“You hate me.”
“I’m still here.”
I studied his face to get a read, to see if he really knew everything I’d done for Pendulum.
“Heard Amelia went back to the club.” He reached down and pulled off one of my shoes, and then the other. “Stupid bitch.”
“Don’t.” I still wanted to protect her. It was a toxic relationship I couldn’t shake out of my heart. “I found her in a scene. Sent her home.”
“What kind of scene?” He sounded disgusted.
“Don’t ask.”
“We have to get her out of Jewel’s line of sight.”
“She’s going back to Ohio.”
“Thank God.”
I was hit with that familiar rush of heartache. “I believed she loved me. She was just scheming.”
“I know buddy, it’s a hard pill.”
Like a thousand razor blades…
The truth, it lingered in the air like a dangerous elixir absorbed without drinking.
I clutched my stomach. “How can you bear to be here?”
“I’m here for the ring.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I realized how obvious that should have been. I reached into my tuxedo pocket and fished it out, offering it to him.
Atticus took it and closed his fingers around the sordid engagement ring. “I’ll see what Eve wants to do with it.”
“No fond memories there,” I said.
Eve had suffered abuse from the man who’d given it to her. Still, its fate was up to her.
I smirked. “Let’s hope she doesn’t act like Rose from Titanic and throw it into the L.A. River.”
“I think she’s going to sell it and put the money in a Trust for her daughter.”
“Good idea.”
He stood up. “You need water.”
I pointed to the empty glass on the bedside table.
“I’ll get you more,” he said.
“Don’t…”
I didn’t want him to leave now that he had what he’d come for, in case it meant he’d exit my life forever.
“What have we become?” I whispered.
Atticus kept his gaze on me. “A bunch of assholes.”
My throat tightened, anticipating the pending conversation about how I’d betrayed my closest friends—betrayed him by omitting the truth.
Atticus exhaled a sigh of frustration. “You acted surprised when I mentioned the sixth floor at Pendulum.”
“Are you out?”
He shrugged. “We extracted the women. Maybe that’s as far as we take it.”
“Jewel is close to taking the reins. If she does, Pendulum will be a worse place than when we found it.”
“We can’t fight every battle.”
I lifted my head, surprised he was admitting defeat.
Of course, he had to protect Eve and her daughter. Both he and Jake had taken risks that had seen their lovers threatened. Their own lives had almost been torn apart.
I didn’t blame either of them for wanting out.
Atticus kicked off his shoes and climbed on the bed beside me, leaning back against the headboard.
“Jewel is untouchable. She brought down Lance Merrill with no consequences. All eyes were on Aemon, the villain everyone feared. The one everyone believed to be the embodiment of evil.”
I shook my head. “She must have some weakness we can exploit.”
“Tell me everything, Greyson. Help me understand.”
“I understand this seems like betrayal.”
“I admit I’m hurt.”
I sat up with my back to the headboard. “I had no idea where the job would be or why they wanted it that way. I was merely hired to redesign the interior, a sixth floor. They wanted a private elevator.”
“They had you sign an NDA.”
“I was going to tell you. Just needed to be sure it was the extension I designed.”
“The High Chamber?”
“And their grand hall. I gave them the blueprints and they paid me.”
“I thought you had to see the place?”
“No.”
“I knew you were a member of the club way before us. But didn’t think you were connected other than that.”
“I received an invitation. Which meant I could bring you and Jake in.”
“That was you on the dais?”
“Yes.”
“Fuuuuck.”
I should have had the decency to flinch, but I was too hungover.
“You witnessed Lance’s murder?” he asked.
As did he, with both of us powerless to stop it. By the time we realized what was happening, it was over.
I couldn’t scrub that vision from my brain. “That was the first time I’d been up there.”
“Right.” I heard the doubt in his tone.
“I never saw the sixth floor until the day you went up there, Atticus. I bribed one of the Doms so I could be him for the evening. I followed you—couldn’t let you go up there alone.” I shrugged. “And there you were, walking in with two dominatrices, each on a leash. Me on the dais. If they’d threatened to hurt you, I’d have interceded. You know that.”
“When did you realize it was your blueprints?”
“After you mentioned the elevator led to a secret sixth floor. It was too much of a coincidence.”
“Why didn’t you say something then?”
Self-hate riled within me. “I was waiting for the right time. The optics were not good.”
“That you were hired by Pendulum?”
“I redesigned the upper floor.” I caressed my aching chest. “Structurally nothing changed. So I went with it.”
“Greyson, we knew what we were dealing with.”
“I gave a piece of my soul to them.” My hand flew up in frustration. “I was their architect. The man who created a space for their depravity.”
Atticus looked thoughtful. “I’d have taken their money and then bulldozed the place.”
I gave a nod of approval. “With them in it.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t say something sooner.”
“I was going to. That same night when you found me talking with Jewel and Amelia. Jewel threatened to hurt her if I told you anything.”
“That club has been around for decades,” he said sharply. “You merely polished the sanctum.”
“I don’t see it like that.”
“I’m the one to be feared?” He smirked. “They sensed you were the peacemaker.”
“I suppose.”
“As much as I’m pissed off with you, Greyson, you saved those submissives. You’re a hero. Albeit a deeply flawed one.”
Studying Atticus’ pained expression, I tried to decipher his words, needing to see the truth in them. See his forgiveness.
It had been he and Eve who had led the victims to safety. All I had done was bring them in, shown them what the place was and asked for their help to change it.
Couldn’t see it any other way. “I’m the monster I swore to shield others from.”
“Even in our darkest moments,” he said, giving my arm a squeeze, “a piece of our true self remains. Cling to it, no matter what.”
“I need to cling to a cement block.” Follow it all the way to the bottom of the ocean.
Atticus smiled. “What would Fyodor Dostoevsky say?”
I shrugged. “Dostoevsky believed that to love is to suffer.”
Atticus threw his head back and laughed. “See, you always have a philosophical take to cheer us up.”
“Jake is gonna kill me,” I said.
“Both of us, probably.”
“What did you do?” I looked at him, confused.
“He’s angry I went to deal with Roper alone.”
I turned to look at him. “What happened in Bali? Were you there when Roper died?”
Atticus gave me a tired, sad smile, showing he was a man filled with regret and grief, having seen the unseeable.
“Whatever happened out there,” I said in his defense, “Roper being dead has saved countless lives.”
“We’ve become what we fought against.”
“Tell me you didn’t…”
I couldn’t bring myself to spell it out.
“The submissives are out.” He changed the subject. “That’s the important thing.”
“I’ll handle Jewel,” I said.
He made a gruff noise.
“Do you think you’ll ever go back to Pendulum?”
“We’re war torn,” he admitted. “Not sure I can take much more of that place.”
“Jewel told me she’s buying it.”
Atticus ran a finger over his snake tattoo. “Cameron thinks it’s best you stay away from there.”
“I know.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“You slay the monster, but its maker remains.”
“You think it was Jewel who encouraged Roper?”
He looked away, as though not wanting to encourage me to dwell on the past. He moved to the edge of the bed and put on his shoes.
“Let’s let some daylight in.” Atticus stood and walked over to the window, lifting the blinds. “Take a shower. I’ll make breakfast.”
Light flooded the room suddenly, and I shielded my eyes from the offensive glare.
His tall, broad-shouldered silhouette was framed in the window and the image of him standing there was burned into my retinas.
Atticus didn’t move, he just stood there like a statue.
And then he bolted out of the room at breakneck speed, his shoes thundering down the stairs as he went.
“Atti?” I called after him.
Had he been staring at the swimming pool?
I hesitated, then pushed off the bed, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the blinding sunlight that streamed through the window.
A naked woman floated in the water face-down, still and pale, her blue hair fanning out like delicate tendrils of ink unraveling, each strand moving with hypnotic grace.
Amelia!
I saw Atticus burst into view, sprinting towards the pool.
I flew out of the room and down the stairs.