Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
CADE
I lied.
No two ways about it. I fucking lied to Vi.
Trust goes two ways and with anyone contacting me as Ghost, I check into them.
This is Violet.
I knew that because I had her computer. And hacking through the app she used was easy. In fact, I didn’t have to. I could pin her phone.
But even without her computer, or if she’d used a burner, Vi2l would have piqued my interest, and I’d have looked at the name, and Violet would’ve popped into my head.
Not because she’s got a way of curling up beneath my skin, but because the damn name is so similar and the writing sounds like her.
Fuck everything. Maybe she’s got to me for far longer than I’m comfortable letting on.
Last thing I want to do is think about what a creeper thing it is to watch your brother’s barely legal girl from the moment he brought her home.
Not spying on or coveting her or beating off to thoughts of her, but an awareness that makes the room brighter, smaller, like it’s me and Vi almost touching…
I don’t remember when it changed to the hyper-awareness of her. The past few months? Longer? I never thought about it.
Vi’s always been off-limits.
And she’s never looked at me like anything other than Jack’s big brother.
The IP the message sent to Ghost came from her computer.
But the moment I worked it out and emailed her back, I stopped the invasion of her privacy.
Trust is a big part of kink play. But I don’t know which way to go. Yet.
It could be fun to remain anonymous and throw myself into pure voyeurism. That makes me hard if I think about it too much. And there are a lot of delicious opportunities where I could touch her while making her wear a mask, blinding her to who I am.
Or maybe that’s cowardly. If she’d go for it, which is really pushing all sorts of trust boundaries. I think it might be me not wanting her to see who I am, and disappointing her.
Even if I didn’t know her, how could a man live up to whatever’s in her head?
The thought shocks me.
I’m never this. Never so…insecure.
It’s still Sunday night, and I’m at Enzo’s for a small job for our client. A side job. This one is easy, just a little time-consuming, and I’m not giving it the brain space I should.
“Trouble?” Enzo asks.
He has no idea. “All good. You?”
Enzo pushes out his chair and rolls over to me. “Not the work, fool, I meant, what’s going on up here.” He taps my head with a finger. “I can tell you all about Saturday night’s redhead if you like. She went right on ‘til six tonight.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
He shrugs and wheels back. “Your loss. It was fucking hot.”
My phone in my pocket is silent, refusing to vibrate with a new message.
She still hasn’t replied. It’s late, so she might be asleep or just trying not to think about our exchange, which means she’s being consumed.
She wants it. But I’m also not shocked she hasn’t gotten back to me.
Even though I’m waiting to hear from her, it’s also what I want.
I want her hesitant.
I want her shocked.
She needs to be forced to step past the anticipation and the thrill of her dreams of sexual bliss possibly coming true and consider what it is she’s doing.
It’d be all fine if she was experienced.
She’s not.
Vi needs to be one hundred percent sure this is what she wants.
She needs to be sure this is a door she wants to open.
I know she knows what her fantasies are. They’re in essence playing at giving up control. When she has all the control, she’s the one to set all the boundaries, her soft limits, the middle ones, her hard-edged lines in the sand, and her list of absolute no-goes.
For me, I won’t share.
But her fantasies about that are always caught up in the being used, pushed to her edge, losing autonomy, and made to feel good.
She wants to have her control taken on her terms in exchange for pure pleasure.
And a little fear and primal emotions just heighten it.
But I don’t want to just assume. I say I know she knows. But I know that with as much certainty as anyone can who hasn’t sat down to talk it all out.
I’m fucking talking myself in circles here.
Basically, I want her to think about it, to have a taste of loss of control, which this situation is. For all she knows, I’m a sadistic asshole who can steal from her, turn up on her doorstep, and know everything there is to know about her if I choose.
I could do that, too.
But her wanting situations where she loses control, all of it, and experiencing it are different. If she can’t handle a little fear through these texts, there’s no way she’ll handle the things I want to do in real life.
So, the ball’s in her court.
If she contacts me, keeps engaging, then we can take the next step. If not, no harm done and honestly, it might be better if she doesn’t text The Ghost back.
“You know,” I say softly, “I think my fucking brother cheated on his now ex.”
“Dude.” Enzo looks at me. “Give me some warning before dropping that. I could have been about to press an important button.”
“Were you?”
“Nah, I’m done. But it’s the principle of the thing.”
“Uh huh.” I get back to work, finishing up what I’m doing.
We need to wait a while to make sure everything’s running smoothly and there’s no backlash, so it’s a lazy late night/early morning kind of deal, and I was going to do it all in pieces, to break it up, but if Enzo’s powered to the finish line, I can do that too.
Maybe he wants to talk.
What am I thinking? Of course he does. He had sex, and he wants to talk about it.
“She wasn’t married, was she?”
“I don’t know,” Enzo says. “I wasn’t there.”
“Then how—” I stop. “You and your girl, not Jack and the female he fucked.”
“The redhead? Yesterday’s news. Let’s talk about your brother. I thought this Violet was pretty, sweet, and smart.”
And dirty as fuck. “Yeah. He’s an idiot. I didn’t… Shit. He took off to Vegas with his loser buddies and fucked someone else, sent the evidence to her cloud by accident—”
“Because it’s Jack?”
I nod. “Because it’s Jack. And he did it on their anniversary.”
His eyes narrow. “Wanna punish him?”
“Of course I do.”
He gets up and bows. “I’m at your disposal.”
I pull my laptop close to me and hack the cloud. “Fuck.”
“What?”
“This.”
Enzo crowds in to look at the photos. “I like Jack, you know that, but how did he get to be so dumb for a smart kid?”
The anger pulses in me. “On their anniversary? Jesus, Jack…” I sigh. “I thought I’d look but while he didn’t take pics of the deed, what does that all look like to you?”
“Like he’s fingering the fuck out of that girl and sucking on her titties and about ready to get himself blown into a happy ending followed by roughing up some sheets, that’s what it looks like to me.” He reaches over, makes one picture big. “Of course, I’m no expert. Nice pussy on her, though.”
“Enzo.” I glare at him.
He raises his hands. “Sorry. It’s…just…there.”
I don’t know if Vi’s seen this lot, but I delete them. Even if she has, she shouldn’t have to revisit them.
“It’s fucking low,” I mutter. “Even for Jack. And I’m glad she ended it.”
But it’s not enough for me. Jack needs to be punished.
“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“Like you’re Cyber Punisher.” He snickers.
I don’t laugh. “Jack needs to learn he can’t mess with people’s feelings.”
“You said—”
“He left on their anniversary. He snuck out, left Vi alone, and she was trying to do the right thing, wait to end it. See, I don’t think he wants it done. I think Jack just likes hoarding cake and feasting on it, too.”
Enzo blows out a breath. “What are you going to do?”
“Teach him a lesson.”
I hack into Jack’s bank accounts and freeze his funds. And I cancel his return ticket. He’ll need to get a new one, last minute, which he can’t afford.
He’s going to be penniless and stranded in Vegas.
I’m betting he used his month’s funds to finance this trip. Probably paid for most of the trip to help out his friends.
“Nice start,” Enzo says. “You’re not going to just leave him there forever, are you?”
“Did you just grow a heart?”
“I’m trying it out. Come on, Cade—”
“No. He’s my brother. I’ll bring him back.” I pause. “Eventually. But he needs to learn. He needs to learn not to treat Violet like this, and he needs to learn to take responsibility for things in his life.”
Enzo grins. “In that case, you should have some fun. Get creative. Add some extra charges to his hotel bill.”
“Like room service?”
“A given.” He frowns, then snaps his fingers. “A stripper party!”
I laugh and find a gentleman’s party that I add. “I feel he should go to some horrible shows.”
Enzo pulls up his computer and starts throwing out shows.
We settle on magic shows at some dinky magic venue. A Golden Girls tribute drag show.
And then I do some shopping.
We choose stripper heels in his size, pastel yachting club-style clothes that I know for a fact Jack hates.
Enzo chooses some dresses and tighty whitey underwear he’ll never wear and has everything shipped here.
I smile. “It makes it more authentic.”
“He needs to have a happy ending massage,” Enzo says. “David Hasslehoff?”
“I don’t think Jack knows who that is. What about Liberace?”
“Does he know who that is?”
“Does it matter? Fat Elvis?”
“Santa?”
“The Tooth Fairy?”
We both start laughing.
But then Enzo says, “He should have a visit from the stripper’s boyfriend. I know some people.”
I frown. “I know people, too. Define visit.”
What I want is Jack scared straight, maybe kickstart his better side back into life. I don’t want him eating through a tube, or knifed, or needing to drastically change his diet for the rest of his life because some fucking thug decided to murder a major organ he needs.
And I don’t want him as coyote food, either.
Enzo shrugs. “Some light kidnapping, a scare.”
“Define that.”
“They’re professionals. They don’t lose control or slip up.
They stay in the perimeters given. You want the fingernail on his left hand painted red, they’ll do it.
They’ll do what you want, give him a speaking to that’ll make him pee his pants or punch him once.
We tell them the story you want him to get, and he’ll have that story. ”
“The ‘you fucked my girl, I’m going to kill you’?”
“Yup. And then they’ll decide to make it a warning and spare his life. You know the drill, Cade.”
But not against my brother.
I nod slowly. “Do you think they could rough him up a little? Some pain, minimal, but scare the fucking pants off him and nothing maimed, broken, or internally injured? Can the people you know do that?”
“They can. But do you want your brother hurt? Because roughing up means pain. Even a little, it’s pain. A punch, a throwing to the ground, manhandling, it’s all got an element of pain.”
“Yeah. I want him to learn a lesson.”
“Okay. But remember, this is your brother.”
“My brother who’s a freeloader, who won’t get out of his own way, who not only takes his girlfriend—”
“Ex-girlfriend.”
“—for granted, he cheats and just thinks he can coast. Jack needs to fucking learn his actions have consequences.”
Enzo claps his hands together. “I’ll make the call. It sounds like fun. And yeah, it sounds like he needs to learn the hard way. Sorry, Jack.”
It also sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.
Sorry? Fuck you, Jack. You don’t get to hurt people.
Especially, Vi.