18. Kane
Chapter 18
Kane
Perhaps sensibly, the pace of the drinking had slowed down.
With the help of some large glasses of water and a couple of swift espressos, Kane’s head was clearing.
Leon couldn’t resist the opportunity to poke some good-natured Daddy fun at his friend…
‘Maybe you can’t deal with the liquor like the old days,’ Leon laughed. ‘You nearly fell off your barstool… twice!’
Leon was teasing of course.
Kane was nowhere near that intoxicated.
Given the amount of practice at drinking late into the night and then on into the early morning he had, Kane was more than able to hold his own. True, he didn’t drink anywhere near as much as he did.
But old habits die hard.
‘Don’t worry about me, Doctor,’ Kane said. ‘I’m still more than capable of drinking your Med School ass under the table every day of the week and twice on a Sunday.’
But with the benefit of a clearer head, Kane was beginning to figure that drowning his sorrows may not have been the most effective way to deal with the situation.
In truth, he knew it rarely was.
‘Okay, okay, enough coffee,’ Kane said, grumpily finishing off the last drips of his espresso. ‘I think I can handle another beer.’
‘You heard the man,’ Leon said, motioning to Raul, the bartender. ‘Make them light beers.’
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Kane barked, half-serious and half-smiling. ‘You know, Leon… I think I might have made a big mistake.’
‘Two regular beers coming right up,’ Raul said, providing the bottles of beer before attending to an unruly customer over on the other side of the bar.
Things were livening up at the bar, and in more than one way.
Leon slid the new beer bottle over to Kane.
‘Mistake? How so?’ Leon enquired, before taking a slug on his fresh beer.
‘Cassie is a Little, right? Well, they’re sensitive. All of them,’ Kane continued. ‘But Cassie more than most. And the fucked-up thing is that I knew that. I knew she’d had family issues growing up. Shitty treatment from her parents. From stepdads and figures in authority. I knew that and I still went steaming in like a crazed gorilla.’
Leon laughed.
‘Bro, I hear you,’ Leon said. ‘I’m not laughing because I think the situation is funny by the way. It’s more the image in my head of you in a gorilla outfit.’
Kane shook his head and grumbled something under his breath.
Leon was a great friend.
One of the very best a man could wish for.
But his ability to find the funny side of almost any situation was sometimes hard to deal with.
‘Come on, admit it… you, in a gorilla suit?’ Leon pleaded, just about stopping himself from bursting into laughter yet again. ‘Come on…’
Kane relented.
Despite not wanting to, he cracked a smile.
He wasn’t exactly rolling about laughing, but he had to admit that it was a funny image.
‘Okay. Okay. You got me. Me as a gorilla. Ha-ha,’ Kane said, sipping on his beer. ‘But seriously, I got it all wrong.’
‘Listen, we all make mistakes,’ Leon replied, a look of true empathy on his face. ‘I’ve been there myself. You just have to try and forgive yourself. Move on. You know, right ?’
Kane could see that Leon was doing his best. Leon didn’t like to see his friend suffering and was trying to say the right things to make Kane feel better.
Kane very much appreciated Leon’s efforts. He really did. He also knew that he would be doing the exact same thing if the roles were reversed.
But Kane still had more he wanted to get off his chest.
‘What’s so messed up is that being sensitive isn’t a weakness,’ Kane continued. ‘It’s what makes Cassie so creative. It’s what makes her so funny, so great to be around. It’s also why she’s so good at being intimate. Fuck. I screwed up, man. There’s no other damned way of saying it.’
Leon nodded.
Kane could see that Leon was thinking of what to say.
Desperately trying to find a glimmer of hope.
An upside perhaps.
But it would take a lot of effort to do so.
As far as Kane could tell, there really weren’t any positives to take away from all of this.
‘Okay. I want to say something good. But… honestly, yeah, I’ll need a little longer to think of something,’ Leon said, acknowledging what Kane had been thinking. ‘So how about we shoot some pool?’
Kane smiled and nodded.
Playing a few games of pool wasn’t going to solve his problems. He knew that. But what it might do would be to take his mind off the whole situation.
Kane knew how competitive both he and Leon were when it came to pool.
Or any sport.
Or videogame.
Or anything where it was possible to have a winner and a loser.
In fact, Kane and Leon used to keep a running count of victories versus losses when it came to their pool matches.
They had lost count a long, long time ago too. Somewhere around the one hundred game mark.
Leon had always insisted he was fifty-one games to forty-nine up. Kane, naturally, disagreed.
A classic case of two Daddy Doms battling for supremacy.
Still, competitiveness aside, it was always good to play.
‘Rack ‘em up,’ Kane said, walking over to the pool table with Leon. ‘Oh, wait. It looks like a new challenger has entered the arena!’
Kane smiled as he saw Cage entering the bar.
‘Yo! Over here!’ Leon called out, waving his hand in an attempt to get Cage’s attention. ‘Detective Hot Shot! Yo!’
‘I swear he’s going deaf,’ Kane laughed. ‘Far too much of that loud Little pop-music in his place these days is what’s to blame.’
‘I heard that!’ Cage retorted as he walked closer, but his smile was full of worry. ‘Okay. No more jokes. Here’s the thing. I need you to listen to me, Kane.’
Kane’s smile disappeared.
He knew Cage wasn’t kidding around.
‘What’s up?’ Leon enquired, also realizing that Cage wasn’t one to fool around like this.
‘It’s Cassie,’ Cage said, his voice gravely serious. ‘She’s… in trouble. Don’t worry, she’s safe. She’s over at my place with Katie.’
‘I mean… she drove off, she was safe, it was all done,’ Kane said. ‘Well, I think it was. I don’t know what happened. She was driving away before we could get into it.’
Cage shook his head.
Kane’s heart was pounding.
He had a very bad feeling about this.
Immediately, he felt totally responsible for whatever Cage was about to say.
‘I’m ready for it, tell me,’ Kane said, seeing that Cage was waiting for him to relax and be ready to take the information on board. ‘I need to know. She’s… my Little.’
‘That lowlife creep wasn’t done with Cassie,’ Cage said, his face full of disgust. ‘Not only was he responsible for hacking Cassie. He wanted all her unpublished work. On top of that he was threatening to reveal to the comic community that Cassie was a Little…’
‘Fuck. This must stop. I have to do something,’ Kane said, the anger in his belly firing up. ‘How do we solve this?’
‘Just wait. There’s something else,’ Cage said, steeling himself to deliver more bad news. ‘The scumbag, Lyle’s his name… he made Cassie strip and pose for photos.’
Kane couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
He was on the one hand totally disgusted in this asshole Lyle.
On the other, he felt absolutely awful for Cassie.
Sweet, lovely Cassie.
What the hell had she done to deserve this?
No one deserved this type of treatment.
No one.
‘But this is blackmail? Surely you can arrest him,’ Leon exclaimed, stepping up to the plate and letting Kane get his head around things. ‘There surely has to be a legal process in place for this?’
‘Yup, and that’s what we’ll be looking into,’ Cage said. ‘But that will take time. And it won’t stop Lyle from getting the information online. Once that happens, it’ll be out there forever.’
‘And we cannot allow that,’ Kane said, a steely determination coming over his voice. ‘Cassie is my responsibility. I’m her Daddy. Her guardian. I let her down earlier. I’ll own that. But not again. Not this time.’
Kane’s mind was ticking over at rapid speed.
There had to be something he could do. A way around this. But sometimes the most obvious answers are the best.
Cage and Leon exchanged knowing looks.
‘If only we knew someone with some skill or ability in the field of… hacking,’ Leon said, his sardonic tone in full effect.
‘Yeah, imagine that,’ Cage replied. ‘Kane, any ideas?’
Kane looked at Cage and Leon.
The plan came to him, fully formed.
It was time to take Lyle on at his own game.
But it wasn’t going to be easy. And it would require a hefty dose of luck too.
‘Savior Daddies, let’s do it,’ Kane said. ‘It’s time to give Cassie her life back.’