Chapter 12 Lukas
LUKAS
OUTGOING CALL LOG - L. Lazarev (Private Line)
To: [ENCRYPTED NUMBER]
“Come to the office Monday. Eight o'clock. You know what to wear.”
I close the laptop and reach for the vodka.
The bottle is already half-empty. I don’t remember opening it. I don’t remember pouring the first glass, either. But here I am, three fingers deep into my fourth, doing shit I shouldn’t be doing.
It’s too late to stop it now, though. The email is sent. The damage is done.
Fifty-three thousand dollars. The exact amount she needs.
I know this, because I know everything about Rae Everett.
I know her bank statements and her credit score. I know her brother’s medical records and the name of the facility where he stays. I know the length of his stay. I know the cost of his stay.
I know it all.
And I used it.
That much is clear. The reason why? That’s murkier.
On its way down, the vodka burns like the hellfire that’ll be waiting for me when my time on this earth is done. I’m not a good man. I stopped pretending to be one decades ago. But this thing with Rae feels worse than almost anything else I’ve ever fucking done.
Dirtier, somehow.
Like I’m corrupting something that should stay clean.
She’s twenty-five, for fuck’s sake. She types up her little meeting notes and drinks chai lattes and worries about her baby brother. She wears cheap blouses that gape open when she bends down. She blushes when I look at her too long.
She’s half my age.
She works for me.
She has no idea what I really am.
And I want her anyway.
I finish the glass and pour yet another. The rain picks up outside. Thunder crackles somewhere over the East River. My office is dark except for the desk lamp and the glow of the city below.
I think about the car ride the other night. She plastered herself against the inside of the passenger door like she was afraid I’d touch her. But then, when I stood on the stoop with her, she looked at me like touching was exactly what she wanted.
I could have.
I could’ve done a lot fucking more than that, too.
My dick was rock-hard and my intentions were black as sin. It would’ve been a simple matter to let myself succumb to my desires and carry her inside.
Instead, I unlocked her door like a fucking gentleman and walked away.
That’s strange. I am Lukas Lazarev; I don’t do gentle. I take what I want and deal with the consequences later, or never.
But with Rae, I find myself hesitating. Circling. Prowling. I watch from a distance like some pathetic old wolf too tired to make the kill.
What am I waiting for? Permission? She’s never going to give it. Not outright, at least. She’s too scared of me. As she should be.
But my God, she wants to.
I see it in her eyes. I feel it in every catch of her breath. She pressed her thighs together when she thought I wasn’t paying attention, as if that pitiful little gesture would be enough to save her from me if I chose to take what I want so goddamn badly.
But the joke’s on her: I was paying attention. I’m always paying attention.
I set down the empty glass. The rain keeps falling.
Elena would laugh if she could see me now. Obsessing over some girl I shouldn’t touch, throwing money at her problems like that’ll make up for what I’m soon going to do to her.
But Elena’s been dead for eighteen years.
And Rae Everett is very much alive.
One image is seared in my mind’s eye. Not the one of my son’s hands going where they don’t fucking belong—that one has been burned up in the fire of my rage, and I hope never to think of it again.
No, the image I can’t get over is Rae on her knees in my office.
Skirt creeping higher. Blouse sagging lower. She clutched at both garments like she could find a way to arrange them that would save her.
But there’s no such thing.
Nothing will.
I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. My hand moves to my belt before I can stop it.
Don’t do it, you fucking pig.
I undo the buckle anyway.
I free myself from my trousers. I’m hard. I’ve been hard since I started drinking. Since before that. Since the car ride. Since I stood in the darkness and watched her sleep at her desk, lips parted, completely vulnerable.
I wrap my fist around my cock and stroke. Slow at first. Testing.
She’d look good on her knees. Not picking up tattered paper, but looking up at me with those big, brown eyes. Mouth open, tongue lolling out. Waiting for my instructions.
I grip harder and start to pump faster.
Those soft lips would feel so good if I put them to work. She’d be shy about it at first, I can tell. But I’d tell her what to do and how to do it. I’d move her here and there, I’d praise her when she did well and punish her when she did badly.
Patience, training—that’s an old man’s game. That’s the game I’m playing now. Ms. Everett could be trained into such a good little thing.
Right now, though, patience is in short supply. I want to cum so badly I could fucking drool.
My hand moves faster. Pre-cum leaks from the tip.
I imagine her spread out beneath me. Those cheap cotton panties pushed aside, my fingers inside her, working her open. She’d be tight. Fuck, she’d be so tight.
“Mr. Lazarev…” she’d whimper. Even then, she wouldn’t dare say my first name. Not without permission.
I grunt. My hips jerk up into my fist.
She’d break so beautifully. Her eyes would squeeze shut and she’d make terrified little noises, like she was overwhelmed by what her own body was doing to her. Little gasps and moans she couldn’t hold back no matter how hard she tried.
I’d pry her mouth open and tell her to let them loose. Let them all loose.
I’d make her cum on my fingers first. Then my tongue. Then my cock. I’d ruin her for anyone else.
The orgasm hits me like a fucking crowbar to the gut. I spill over my fist, onto my shirt, not caring about the mess. My whole body shudders with it.
For about ten seconds, there’s nothing but release.
Then reality crashes back in.
I’m sitting alone in my dark office, covered in my own cum, having just jerked off to a woman young enough to be my daughter.
I reach for a handkerchief and clean myself up. I tuck myself back in, refasten my belt. But it’s when I reach for my drink that I see something I hadn’t noticed when I first sat down at my home office desk earlier this evening.
It’s a photograph in a silver frame, tucked behind a stack of files. The glass is shattered. A note from housekeeping is tucked beneath it. So sorry, Mr. Lazarev. We will replace the frame.
I pick it up carefully. A shard of glass bites into my thumb.
Elena looks back at me. This photo is from before everything went to shit.
I still remember watching as she took her last breaths. The light in her eyes fading away, replaced by the dull sheen of death. I remember standing over her as she left this life for good.
I set the photo down. Blood from the cut on my thumb smears across the broken glass.
If I needed proof, here it is: a ghost from my past warning me to stay away. Rae needs to stay off-limits. I’ve already crossed too many lines.
I reach a decision. I pick up my phone and dial. The call is answered almost at once. The conversation is brief. I place the orders for Monday morning.
When I hang up, I look at Elena’s shattered frame one more time and sneer. She died so easily in the end. So fucking easily. I barely had to lift a finger.
Then I open the bottom drawer of my desk, the one where I keep things I don’t want to look at but can’t bring myself to throw away, and I stash her there. Elena goes back where she belongs. Face down, buried, sealed.
The drawer slams shut hard enough to rattle the vodka bottle. Then I sit there in the dark, listening to the rain, bleeding onto my ruined shirt.
Monday will come.
Things will happen.
And Rae Everett will learn exactly what kind of man she’s working for.