Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
JACE
A year ago
“Who ripped the sex swing from the ceiling?” Ford, one of Stacey’s three husbands, shouts at the heap of ceiling plaster and black straps on the white faux fur rug.
Like the swing will confess.
But Stacey, our boss and the owner of Delta’s, isn’t mad. She’s rubbing her pregnant belly and scanning her staff for a pair of guilty eyes.
I try hiding mine.
No, I wasn’t the one on the swing, or the one fucking so hard that I caused it to fall. But I was at the scene of the kinky crime and know the guilty parties.
Vale, our store manager.
And Nash, my secret brother.
Oh, and four of my six other brothers who were there. Two even brought their wives.
Together, we tested Vale last night. Teasing and touching her while Nash took her hard. Vale swore she wanted to join our secret society, but we had to be sure.
Welp, we are now.
Judging by the scene, clearly, Vale loved it. She’s one of us now.
We’re not only the escaped sons of the Pakhan, the ruthless head of the Russian Bratva. We’re also vigilantes, called to right our father’s wrongs.
Hiding in plain sight in America for decades, we’re a tight group. Criminal princes who’ve grown into secret kings, seeking our queens.
After last night, Vale proved she’s destined to be Nash’s queen.
She’s his grown daughter’s best friend, and so forbidden to him, they’re perfect together. Their passionate sex was a bomb exploding, ripping the swing from the ceiling during our secret after-hours ritual.
Stacey and her husbands have no idea who we really are, and they probably don’t care. As long as Grant and I do our jobs, securing this lavish store, we’re good.
But being good doesn’t include breaking the sex furniture on display.
“We don’t put cameras in this room for a reason,” Stacey chides. “We ensure our client’s full privacy, and ours too. So we need someone to confess, please.”
All stares look away, combing over this sprawling third-floor bedroom, now designed for demonstrations.
My humming gaze studies the black walls and gleaming ceiling as if I’m seeing them for the first time.
Would you look at that? Billowing ivory curtains. A crystal chandelier. Antique wooden floors covered by white fur rugs.
It’s luxe meets lust in here, thrilling our exclusive customers with demonstrations on how to use the BDSM furniture we sell, as well as the sex toys available downstairs.
It used to be Stacey and her husbands giving the demonstrations. But her pregnancy put a stop to that.
Though last night, there was no stopping Vale. She passed our test with orgasmic flying colors. Soon, we’ll initiate her as a queen in our new throne room down the hall.
My brother Axel, our head King, is setting up the room.
To everyone else, Axel’s a Charleston lawyer, hiding behind his pseudonym, Michael Cummings. To the staff at Delta’s, he’s an inked Dom renting an opulent, private sex room on the third floor.
To me and my brother Grant, convened as possible suspects in this sexy crime, we’re looking forward to initiating another queen. It’s a sacred honor.
But to my quiet colleague, Vivian, standing by the red velvet sex chaise and wringing her graceful hands… this is awkward as fuck.
She’s not guilty.
I know it.
Vale and Grant do as well.
But all eyes fall on her since she’s our recent hire.
Stacey hired Vivian months ago. They met through Stacey’s friend, Luca Mercier, the CEO of The Mercier Hotels.
Vivian is Luca’s prized photographer for his five-star hotels. She’s also trusted to shoot his very private parties. Parties that Stacey and her husbands have attended.
Knowing Luca Mercier and the kinky BDSM gear I’ve watched him buy at Delta’s, it makes my cock twitch, imagining what Vivian has seen at his events.
But it’s not his taboo soirees that intrigue me; it’s Vivian. It’s how innocent she seems. All bright eyes and beaming smiles and sweet to everyone.
Stacey told the staff that Vivian was in the middle of a nasty divorce and needed some extra income. So Stacey let Vivian turn a second-floor bedroom at Delta’s into a boudoir studio.
In a month, Vivian was booked for the year.
I’ve been happy for her success because I hear the rumors. It’s my job.
Quietly sit. Secretly listen. Suspiciously watch. Immediately protect.
I’ve heard how Vivian’s husband is an amateur model and influencer, popular with the local surfing brands. He’s never met a mirror or a woman he didn’t want to fuck.
Word is he’s trying to take Vivian’s money. Money she inherited from her late father, a renowned philanthropist. But Vivian has frozen her father’s assets, protecting them from her greedy husband.
It’s left her with little money as well, though it’s obvious Vivian loves her work.
Still, she’s been her husband’s sugar mama while he’s been a punk-ass boy too precious to bake his own cookies.
Seems Vivian’s almost free of his freeloading ass. Her divorce is almost final.
Smiling nervously at this kinky conundrum, she chews her lips like she’s afraid she’ll lose her beloved job. Afraid she’ll be accused of something she didn’t do.
“It wasn’t me,” Blair, Vale’s identical twin and our salesperson, pipes up, laughing. “Though I’m damn impressed with whoever did it.”
“Well, it wasn’t me either,” Grant adds. “I was at the club last night.”
Fucker, that’s a half-truth.
Grant and his wife, Delphine, one of our queens, were here for Vale’s erotic test last night. They were so aroused by it that they then went to the club, where I’m sure they put on a show.
“The club” is Elysium, the sex club our mother owns. It rakes in the millions we use to fund our vigilante missions, going after sex traffickers like the ones who sold our mother to our father when she was fourteen.
No one knows that Nadine Faye, Elysium’s owner, is our mother. No one knows she’s really Nadia Kholodov, a descendant of the Russian Czar and the escaped wife of one of the most evil men in the world. There’s a price on our heads. Our father is literally killing to find us.
I cough. “Wasn’t me, either.”
But I’m shit at lying.
I’ve had enough of it. My brothers and I have to hide who we really are and what we really do, so yeah, I’ve met my quota for a lifetime.
I’ll cough up a lie like a hairball.
Everyone can hear it.
Going back and forth, Vale and her twin bicker as Stacey and her husbands kindly grill us. Surprised why anyone would hide anything in our tight-knit group.
While all I can do is keep glancing at Vivian, wondering…
What’s wrong?
It seems like she’s drifting a million miserable miles away, and I’d swim any ocean to bring her back.
Vivian and I talk every day. All polite and professional. Try it in a sex shop. It’s not easy, but that’s the amazing thing—we are.
Easy acquaintances. Easily interested in each other. Easily finding a hundred things to talk about.
All the while, I’ve been getting one very deep feeling in my heart for her.
No matter the drama surrounding us.
“Fine!” Vale throws her hands up. “It was me! Okay! I fucked in the swing last night, and I guess after all the sexobatics performed in that thing over the months, it finally came down.”
Her twin laughs, adding it up. “But you didn’t do it alone. Who were you fucking?”
“Yeah.” Grant goads. “You’re too damn tiny to bring that down. Who was it?”
Grant’s right. There’s only so much we can hide, and Vale loving Nash, one of our kings, isn’t one of them.
“I know,” I tease.
“No, you don’t!” Vale can’t hate me. She loves me too much. “Just drop it, y’all.”
Oh, come on. Vale needs to fess up, and I’m happy to help. Especially if it frees her and protects Vivian.
I taunt Vale. “Maybe you should go downstairs and use that accounting software you’ve been loving for the past month and add up how expensive your sexploits are?”
Nash is Delta’s accountant, sitting downstairs as we speak, and he’s our forensic money man. He can find our evil trafficking targets because most do it for money. It’s their downfall every time.
“What?” Blair figures it out. “You’ve been fucking Mr. Allen! What the hell, Vale? He’s your best friend’s father!”
Vale doesn’t reply to her twin about Nash. She darts her guilty eyes to Stacey, worried by her response.
“And,” Stacey coos, “he’s our trusted accountant, but he is drop-your-wet-panties hot.”
See? I knew Stacey wouldn’t be angry. Especially as more drama unfolds surrounding who loves who, who’s fucking who, and who’s quietly watching it all.
Vivian.
Goddamn, I can’t stop staring at her sweet smile. Her twinkling blue eyes. Her hidden, hard nipples.
And I really should stop staring because caring about a married woman is all kinds of wrong, right?
But fuck it.
It doesn’t feel right to watch Vivian leave without checking on her.
Once the drama subsides and Vale storms downstairs to tell Nash they’re officially busted and free, I follow Vivian to her studio.
“Knock, knock.”
I tap on the doorframe, and she whips around, startled but always smiling. “Hey.”
“Hey, and congratulations. You survived the shop’s latest sex opera.”
She huffs, amused by my bad joke. “I kinda like it. You can feel how much everyone here really loves each other.”
“Yeah.” I laugh. “Clearly, some more than others.”
Do I adore my friend, Vale? Yes. We’re close. She’ll make a great queen for us. But Vale loves Nash, and I’m starting to understand the feeling.
Must be like this one bursting in my chest whenever I’m near Vivian. My heart’s like the noon sun, bright and intense and fucking burning for her.
And it’s equally hard to hide.
But I do.
“I, uh…” Shuffle my feet. Clear my throat. Look like an idiot. “I’ve got a favor to ask.”
Vivian tilts her head, swishing her golden ponytail. “Sure. Whatdaya got?”
“A Nikon F3 I found at an estate sale.”
Her dainty jaw drops. “An F3? The best camera ever made? Jace, they’re so rare.”