Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Dark
With my arms loaded with too many fancy shopping bags, I drop them unceremoniously in the back of Penelope’s trunk.
Her chauffeur, an old, grizzled man with gray hair and eyes to match, glares at the side of my face as I leave them for him to organize.
I slide into the backseat with my wife, whose dopamine rush from spending far too much money fills the air along with her floral perfume.
Penelope squeezes my thigh, and those talons she calls nails make themselves known through my trousers. “Those dresses are amazing.” She sighs wistfully and rests her head on my shoulder.
To placate her, I hum and pat her knee.
What else is there to say?
Congrats? You spent more than necessary on dresses you’ll wear only once.
For what? A family vacation that is nothing more than a business meeting, disguised as something more.
Harold doesn’t do vacations or downtime.
In the decade-plus I’ve known this man, he’s always working.
Her need to buy an entirely new wardrobe for this is more than a little overkill.
“Who’s coming on the trip?” I ask Pen to make polite conversation as her driver slides behind the wheel and navigates us through New York City traffic. He eyes me every now and again in the rearview mirror. The man has never liked me. Not that I give a fuck.
“Oh. Hmm.” Deep in thought, Pen taps her pink, recently filled lips. “I think a few of Daddy’s associates and their dates. Are you bringing Poppy?” she asks, referring to my new assistant who has proven more helpful than I first expected. She’s polite. Competent. A solid hire, given the past women.
“Should I?” I check, not caring either way.
“Yes.”
“Is this for my benefit or yours?”
Pen clasps her hands in her lap. “Both?” The word comes out sweet and far too quiet. Looking at me through a glaze of expensive makeup and inch-long eyelashes, she bats those ridiculous things and puts on a bullshit show of innocence.
“Penelope,” I growl in warning. She knows I hate the dumb-blonde routine she pulls when working with pretty much any man who wants to bend her over a table. Which is any red-blooded, straight fucker with a dick and a pulse.
“Darling…” she placates with a sigh. “You know you’re much more relaxed when you’ve had an orgasm or two.”
Ah. Yes. The real reason.
“And let me guess, you want her there to service me?”
As if I can’t use my hand or go without sex for an entire weekend.
That’s goddamn ridiculous.
Sure, I have a high libido, or I did. Hell, maybe it’s still in there somewhere. But I am not a fucking teenager. I don’t walk around with a constant boner. That ship sailed twenty-plus years ago.
“Of course.” Fussing with the hem of her dress, Penelope nods as if bringing someone to service you for a weekend in the Hamptons, along with your wife, is perfectly normal.
When I don’t respond, she continues. “You like blowjobs, and I find them abhorrent. They get you off quickly, and I’ll be busy, so I won’t have time to tend to all your needs. This is the perfect solution.”
Christ.
“Did you tell her this would be part of the job description when you hired her?”
She pats my knee. “Darling, it’s part of the hiring process.”
“To see if they’ll suck my dick?”
“Yes. Of course. They’re your assistant, there to assist you. I’ve made it clear to each of them that if they so much as expect reciprocation, I’ll make sure they never work in the city again. But they’ve all been happy to assist. As they should, given the exorbitant salary we pay them.”
“I never asked half of them to blow me.” That wasn’t the point of hiring them. Ever.
“Pity.” She sniffs. “That’s on you for not getting what we paid for.”
“Fuckin’ hell, Pen, you could have told me.”
“You should have asked. When you started working directly for Daddy’s company, I asked you if there was anything specific you wanted in an assistant, and you shrugged. So, I took it upon myself to find candidates based on what I wanted for you.”
Wanted for me.
Right.
Someone to put their mouth on my cock so she doesn’t have to. Because it grosses her out. Pen has always been a lazy lay. A prissy bed princess who wants me to do all the work. I never complained about that. I had no reason to. But this…
Not wanting to blow up, I look out the side window. When I reply, I force the words past my lips. “I. See.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m… not,” I lie, then give myself a long fucking moment to get my pulse under control. Eventually, I blow out a long breath and shake my head. “Just… I don’t even know.”
I don’t know anything anymore.
“You have needs, Maxim.” She pats my knee with the tips of her nails, and it feels condescending as fuck. “As much as I’ve always hated sharing you, another woman sucking your dick is the least of my worries, Darling.”
“I guess I’m inviting Poppy, then, huh?”
“Oh. I’ve already done that.”
This goddamn woman.
“Of course, you have.”
“I’m nothing, if not a dutiful wife.” She puffs like a proud peacock.
“That you are, Pen.” And a giant pain in my ass.
“Will you fuck me when we get home? I need you in me,” she asks as if it’s the most normal question.
“Yes. If that’s what you want.”
Let’s be real…What choice do I have? What does it matter? What does any of this matter? I’m a puppet. Let’s pull the strings.
Dance, Maxim, dance.
“I do.” She nods. “I think we need it. Something’s been off ever since you played poker with Daddy.”
Something’s always been off in our relationship.
That’s never gonna change. But, yeah, sure, I’ve been…
I don’t know what. Watching a lineup of women murdered execution-style, with no power to help them, bothers the fuck outta me.
Sure, I’ve always lived my nomadic biker life rubbing elbows with powerful men who lost their conscience along the way.
Which happens more than you think in these circles.
With money comes power, which feeds corruption and the endless, glutinous cycle of the need for more, more, more.
Now, I’m more than just a visitor in enemy territory.
I’m in so goddamn deep with an organ trafficking piece of shit that I don’t know how I’ll ever get out.
When I agreed to marry Penelope all those years ago, I knew the day might come when I’d be sucked into the life.
No longer a man pretending to be something I’m not, by brokering art deals or whatever else they needed for rich douchebags just so I can get a foothold in their world.
Now I’m becoming the very person I’ve always hated.
I don’t even recognize myself in the mirror anymore.
Without my anchor to my past life and my club, I’m lost. The women and children I’m here to help are ending up dead.
If I can’t save them, then I might as well be the one pulling the trigger.
Which, I suppose, I do. Now.
Ya know those family members in the hospital who are announced brain dead?
Let’s just say that part of them aren’t.
Or the person who comes in with a GSW who died on the operating table?
That’s not always the case. Each hospital Harold is on the board of allows him to have his own organ-extraction team.
Each month, they have quotas to meet. The bigger the city, the more opportunities there are.
It keeps him from having to run back-alley deals and his own facilities.
These people already have injuries or are hospitalized for various reasons.
He doesn’t just pull anyone off the street.
But there’s a damn good chance that if you’re poor and uninsured, the hospital is more than happy to cut its financial loss by selling you and your organs to the highest bidder in town, and you don’t need more than one guess of who that is. I’m employed by him.
I’m the bastard who brokers the deals, while Penelope handles the official sit-downs to sign the contracts. A pretty face always helps soften the blow when you’re handing over millions to save a loved one.
When we arrive at the penthouse, Tony follows us up with all of Pen’s bags hanging from his arms. He sets them just inside our place, and Pen thanks her driver with a kiss on the cheek before she steals my hand and drags me to our bedroom.
“Clothes off, now.” She snaps her fingers and kicks off her pink heels.
One ends up under the bed while the other hits the wall.
Then her dress falls to the floor, and I’m greeted with a blonde, leggy model, eager to take my cock.
She flashes me the sauciest grin and rips the scrap of fabric she calls underwear down her legs.
Her sweet little slit is a sight for sore eyes as she removes her bra and sprawls out on the bed.
Bottom lip pushed into a pout, she rubs her tight little nub. “Max,” she whines like the needy cockwhore she is.
I take my time undressing, and she’s halfway to coming by the time my shirt hits the floor, exposing my abs and the sheet of ink covering my body.
Penelope licks her lips. “Fuck. You’re delicious.”
Ignoring her appreciation, I jack my limp cock.
It takes a bit. It almost always does with her.
Standing at the end of the bed, I close my eyes and picture someone else.
Not Kali, or Penelope, or my new assistant, or even Abby.
This woman is bare for me. Legs spread. Her snatch is wet.
She’s faceless, but our connection’s an invisible tether.
She sees past all my bullshit and loves me anyway.
My heart aches for a woman like that.
Someone just for me.
Someone who understands.
Sweat beads on my forehead as I focus on the woman until I’m panting and my dick is rock hard.
Only then do I climb onto the bed, between Penelope’s spread thighs, and sink myself into her slick heat.
I bury my face in the side of her neck, where she smells of roses and vanilla, as I rut her like a goddamn beast. Her nails score my back, and the heels of her feet dig into my ass as she moans my name.
“Max!” she cries in my ear. Her pussy clamps around my cock as her breasts arch against my chest, and she comes. I keep going, knowing she’ll detonate again soon enough.
By the third orgasm, she’s delirious.
“Oh. I love you. I love you. I love you… and this big cock,” Penelope wheezes between broken moans.
By the fourth, my shoulders are bleeding.
But I don’t stop.
As I grip our ridiculously expensive comforter in my fist and fuck her harder, deeper, I cling to the elusive woman in my soul. She keeps me hard. She fuels my inner fire. She’s everything.
Once my wife is truly spent, I sit back on my knees.
My throbbing cock stands proud, covered in her juices.
A flushed, panting Penelope digs her heels into the mattress as she writhes in a post-orgasmic glow, laughing.
I know I should feel a sense of pride that I did that.
I put that smile on her face. I made her come on my cock.
But I’m so far removed from her pleasure that I’m numb when I move on autopilot and climb off the bed to shower.
The hot water washes away the sins. Unfortunately, my stupid dick doesn’t get the memo that it’s time to sleep, even if we haven’t nutted, so I smack the useless appendage.
It ricochets to the side, slapping me in the thigh, before going back to his usual post. A bead of precum bubbles from the tip, mixing with the water, as if he gets off on the abuse.
With a frustrated growl, I grit my teeth and scrub my skin with some fancy-ass soap until it burns.
When I get out, I wrap a too-fluffy, snow-colored towel around my waist and leave damp footprints across the tile as I enter my attached closet, where I shut out the world.
My appendage is still a solid bar of steel as I pull on a pair of boxer briefs to keep it confined.
It doesn’t flag when I take one of my fancy suits off a hanger I never placed it on.
Hired help does that. The cooking. The laundry.
The driving. All of it. While most people would appreciate it, I don’t.
I hate that my clothes are washed, dried, and hung by a stranger.
I hate this pretentious life. Dressing head to toe in black, I layer on every piece like armor.
Once I emerge from the closet, Penelope is long gone, doing who the hell knows what. She got what she needed. A warm body with a cock.
With a hollowness echoing in my chest, I leave the penthouse, not bothering to check in with her. It’s not like it matters. I have work to do.
In the elevator on the way to the garage, I text my driver to pick me up. Then I do what I should’ve done all week and catch up with my family.
Punching out, guilty text after guilty text, a lump forms in my throat as I stand in the underground box of concrete, waiting to be chauffeured around like a rich prick.
To Kali: Just checking in. I’m alive. How are things?
To Pops: You good?
To Abby: How’s Lily? Did the money come in?
Of course, the money did. It always does. But I don’t know what else to ask. How’s my daughter? Does she like school?
Fuck.
To Tarek: Miss you, kid. How’s Cali?
To Fog: You alive?
With my heart stripped bare, it plays a boxing match with my ribs. I shut off my phone and tuck it into my jacket, afraid of what they might say.
The last time I spoke to Kali in person, she poisoned me for giving her sister, Sola, to the Kings of Anarchy motorcycle club under false pretenses.
What can I say? I owed them for takin’ care of a few things for me.
I had no other leverage. Their club prez is a crazy motherfucker who doesn’t speak.
Sola uses sign language and happens to love sex.
She seemed like the best sister for the job.
Hell, the last I heard, they were all happy, happy.
Did that stop Kali from making me wish for death?
Hell. No.
I slept on the bathroom floor for a week.
I thought I might actually die.
Penelope begged me to go to the doctor.
I couldn’t.
What would I say? My ex-wife poisoned me.
I can’t be sure if it was the tea or the chocolate I ordered from her shop, Dark Delicacies.
Yeah, it’s named after me. It shouldn’t be.
She should have renamed the place years ago.
But she hasn’t, and now it’s a constant reminder of what I did to us. To our family… to her.
Fuck. That feels like another lifetime.
I was a different man then.
Not this broken piece of trash who slides into the back of his blacked-out SUV, who stares out the window as a world he doesn’t recognize flashes by.
In my office, well past usual business hours, I fire up my computer and get lost in the depraved world of selling human parts to the highest bidder.
And I die a little more with each click of the mouse.