Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ryan’s bedroom door slowly opened. He thought I was asleep, so he was being quiet. I rolled to face the door, my gaze catching on the clock before moving to the man coming into his room.
A quarter to midnight.
He was home earlier than I thought he’d be, seeing as he was meeting with some guy named Mr. Mercer to handle his membership.
It was weird to think I worked there and had never heard that name, and I knew Poppy hadn’t either.
After they had that taken care of, he and Pete were going to stick around for a few drinks.
“Everything go okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, baby.”
He closed the door, and in the sliver of light coming from the crack under the bathroom door, I watched him pull off his clothes and toss them in the general vicinity of an overflowing hamper.
The blankets lifted, and the mattress dipped next to me.
Then he was in bed next to me, and suddenly all of my careful plotting I spent the last hour devising went out the window.
Plotting that I knew without a shadow of a doubt would make his head explode and cause a fight.
“Was Beck there tonight with Sterling?” I asked, trying to find the will to talk to Ryan about the plan I’d come up with, but with his big, warm body next to mine, other thoughts had started to intrude.
“Yeah, with Len and Chantilly. They shared a few rounds, then Blackwell and Beck left. From what I could see from across the room, Naomi was using you not being on shift to her advantage and lingering at the table every chance she got.”
Before Pete had come by to pick up Ryan, I’d called Poppy and asked for Naomi’s last name.
A quick Instagram search, and her whole life popped up in a parade of pictures that proved she had zero awareness for her safety and she was vain beyond belief.
Images of everything from where she went out to dinner and what she ordered to selfies in her bathroom and at the gym to her making a kissy face (read: duck lips and not attractive) in front of her apartment, with the name of the complex mounted on the stucco wall clearly visible—the caption: when the light’s just right.
Thus, Ryan knew what she looked like, and I’d watched his lip curl in disgust when he scrolled past the pictures of her in a microbikini that barely covered the parts that needing covering, seeing as she was on a public beach with kids in the background.
She was also stick-skinny, and not in a healthy way.
Plus, not to be a sister-hating bitch, but her fake boobs looked ridiculous on her emaciated frame.
“Not sure how she got it in her head she was up for an invite to his feast, but Blackwell barely looked at her.”
This was the perfect segue, but before I could get in there and present my plan, Ryan continued, “Talked with Gavin before I came to bed. He said you two ran all the names.”
We had. In the beginning it was fun, then after the first ten names it became mind-numbingly boring when nothing was poppin’, as Gavin called it.
When I told Gavin how unexciting his job was, he laughed and told me TV and movies made investigations look sexy when in reality it was a lot of digging through boring shit and watching people do boring shit.
I didn’t think that was totally accurate, but I didn’t call him on it. I just continued to run the background checks while Gavin read through the reports I printed. The only high point of the evening was when Aiden called.
“Did Gavin tell you Aiden found the money?” I asked.
Ryan shoved his arm under my pillow and rolled me closer.
This maneuver took me further away from the chat I wanted to have with him.
Sterling, his feast, background checks, and money were the last things on my mind when all I could see was his handsome face.
All I could smell was his woodsy cologne.
All I could feel was the warmth coming from his body in conjunction with his legs tangling with mine.
“Yeah, he told me. Five bundles of ten K each and an envelope with five grand labeled ‘sister bonding’ in a safe. Cynthia either attended more than four of Blackwell’s parties or the money’s in the tips.”
There was something in the way Ryan said ‘tips.’ It was the same way Gavin had said it after Aiden had called him. Disbelieving, skeptical, but more, he sounded incredulous.
“You don’t think that’s tip money,” I noted.
“No, Chloe, I don’t think that’s tip money,” he told me, then shocked the hell out of me when he gave me more. “With Blackwell recruiting from the porn scene, I’m thinking he has a menu of services. And with that money Aiden found, I’m thinking Cynthia provided more than hostessing at the parties.”
My stomach knotted uncomfortably. “Do you think she was . . . that they . . .” God, I couldn’t even get the word out without tasting bile.
Mercifully Ryan understood without me having to finish.
“No easy way to say this baby, but women who are raped don’t tend to get paid.
That doesn’t mean she wasn’t coerced in some way.
Money is a great motivator to get people to do shit they normally wouldn’t do.
That being said, we haven’t found anything that suggests Cynthia was in financial trouble, nor is her sister.
It could be, she was presented with the opportunity for a fuck ton of fast cash and she had no issue with the way she was making it. ”
That made me feel marginally better, but only slightly, because even if she’d earned that money of her own free will, she was still missing.
“If that’s the case, if she willingly made that money, and no judgment on that—however someone chooses to make their living is their business, as long as it’s their choice and in the pursuit of that they’re not harming others—then why is she missing?”
Ryan’s hand snaked around my waist, his palm hit my lower back, and his thumb gently started stroking.
“Can think of a lot of reasons,” he told me gently.
“She could’ve wanted more money, and if that request was denied, she could’ve threatened to out Blackwell or one of his associates.
She could’ve wanted out and was viewed as a risk.
She could’ve been asked to perform in a way she wasn’t comfortable with and then wanted out, which, again, would make her a risk.
” Ryan’s hand started roaming up and down my back.
“What I’m saying is, everything is pointing to these feasts not being dinner parties hosted by some rich fuck for his rich friends but instead about rich sick fucks buying their kink. ”
“Their kink?” I asked, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
Ryan’s hand stalled on my back. His fingertips pressed in and probed. “What are my chances of moving this conversation from sex parties and sick fucks to something that won’t give my girl shit dreams?”
My girl.
His girl.
My heart tripped over itself, making it hard for me to breathe.
Since that was the case, I couldn’t speak.
Ryan misread my silence and unfortunately for me went on.
“A man wants to find a woman for the night, he goes out and finds a woman. He’s a man who has money, doesn’t want to expend the time or effort to pick up one or doesn’t want the entanglement, he orders up a call girl.
He’s married with something to lose, has the means to do it, and wants to be smart and not get caught, again, he orders a call girl.
He doesn’t have the looks, the confidence, and not a lot of money to spend on class, there are plenty of hookers to be had.
A man with a fetish goes to a sex club. They’re around and not illegal.
A sick fuck with a kink goes to sex parties hosted by other sick fucks where he can get his fill and do it with others like him.
There’s safety in that. No one’s going to talk.
First, because they don’t want to be cut off from their fix.
Second, because if they talked, they’d have to explain why they were there.
Third, because if they opened their mouths, they’d be up against other rich and powerful men who would make their lives uncomfortable.
Can’t say for certain what the exact kink is, but what I can say, with a fair amount of certainty, is, it’s gonna be jacked.
And I know this because Sterling Blackwell isn’t the first asshole who’s hosted a party like this.
And Cynthia isn’t the first woman I’ve known of to go missing after attending.
We haven’t tied Lucy Macmillan and Amber Sadler to a party, but they’re close enough to Blackwell it’s not a stretch to make a connection. ”
I’d already known Ryan was going to have a shit hemorrhage when I told him about my plan.
But now I knew better. He wasn’t going to do something as mild as lose his mind.
He was going to go ballistic. Maybe even make good on his threat to cuff me to his bed.
Which meant now was not the time to talk to him about me accepting an invitation to a feast if Sterling approached.
Ryan leaned closer, brushed his nose alongside mine, then readjusted and rested his forehead on mine. That maneuver was so sweet I was busy regulating my heart rate, therefore I missed him pulling up the shirt I was wearing until I felt his warm hand on the bare skin of my lower back.
“Done talking about fucked-up shit,” he declared.
Since I was done, too, that worked for me. “Okay.”
He lifted his head but didn’t go far. “Other than all that shit, how was your night?”
I thought about the hours since he’d left me with Gavin.
Nothing of note had happened. As mentioned, Gavin and I worked.
While we were doing that, I found that outside of the bar Gavin was exactly who I knew him to be—easygoing, quick to smile, and an all-around nice guy.
Something I didn’t know was he was living with Ryan—well, that part I knew, but I didn’t know he was only living in Ryan’s extra bedroom because he hadn’t found a place he liked.
He didn’t want to live near the beach, like Mason and Ryan.
He wanted a place with land and in the mountains, like Pete, and so far he hadn’t found a property he liked.
I figured Ryan knew about that, so it wouldn’t be noteworthy.
I’d briefly talked to Mom, and she’d told me that the bruising around my dad’s eye was still bad but the swelling was gone and he was in good spirits when she’d visited.
Then strangely she didn’t ask me about my day, how I was, what my schedule looked like this week before she told me she had to go because she was meeting a friend for a late dinner.
She also didn’t give me time to ask who this friend was before she rushed me off the phone.
That was strange too. Not the going out to dinner with a friend.
My mom was social. Before my dad’s illness made it impossible, she and my dad had had an active calendar; they were always going out to dinner or lunch or taking day trips with their friends.
The day trips had stopped, but Mom still saw those she and my dad were close to.
The strange part of that was she’d essentially hung up on me.
But since I didn’t want to talk about my dad or the bizarre phone call with my mom, I settled on the truth. “It would’ve been better if you’d been home.”
His hand on my lower back dipped under my undies. With a muted growl, he cupped my cheek and his forehead hit mine again.
“Are we done talking?”
Oh yeah, we were done talking.
I nodded.
If I wasn’t done before, when Ryan’s hand on my bottom squeezed and he dipped his head, bringing his lips close to mine, we would’ve been done, for the simple fact my mind had cleared of all thoughts except for Ryan.
“Let’s see what I can do to make sure my girl has sweet dreams.”
Then he kissed me.
After that he set about making sure I had sweet dreams.
He failed.
I didn’t dream at all, but that didn’t mean what he’d given me wasn’t spectacular. It was, so much so, when he was finished, I was so exhausted I passed out before I could roll off him.
Which meant when I woke up the next morning, I felt his morning erection pressing on my thigh. And that made for a spectacular way to start the day.
So, he’d failed, and he did it brilliantly.