Chapter 30
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Cold sweat slicks over my hardened resolve.
For a second, I let myself believe I’ve won. But that’s all it takes, a second, for him to remind me whose game I’ve been playing all along.
“Marcus Philips,” he repeats, clearly frustrated by my confidence.
“How do you know my real name?”
“There are no strangers on my island.”
A billionaire would have the resources to know who rides in his private jet.
In the light of such an obvious revelation, the whole plan comes apart.
I’d thought we were keeping secrets, but his limo picked me up at Evie’s.
My fake name was never going to fool a multibillion-dollar surveillance machine.
It has worked though, hasn’t it? A little embarrassment over him puncturing a weak cover doesn’t change the fact I’ve achieved my goal.
Alistair turns to Brad. “I’m disappointed.”
“Please,” Brad says, “I—”
“I forced him,” I say quickly. “He had no choice.”
“You forced Brad?” Alistair curls a jubilant smile, before flattening his lips to a line. “Hanging that little fuckboy over your head, no doubt.”
Brad’s face sags. Neither of us think of anything to say quick enough to deny it. Though again, he wasn’t asking a question anyway. He already knew.
“Go,” Alistair orders. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Brad rushes out the open door, leaving me alone with Alistair and no time to consider what I’ve done to his family.
“You knew?” I ask.
“About him and Dae? Of course I did.” Alistair steps forward, and I step back once instinctively before strengthening to hold my ground.
He tightens his grip around the handle of the leather whip dangling red and black tassels.
“There is one thing I can’t work out though. Why did you want in my office?”
“You manipulate these guys,” I say, voice strong, seeing my lie really has worked.
He’s in a leather outfit, with a fucking whip. He thinks this is still all part of the game.
“You’re a fake,” I add. “Your whole CEO-bullshit persona. It’s a bad cover for how you prey on desperate guys.”
“Are you after that recording?” he asks, looking at the screen looping my euphoria. “Surprised by what you see? Embarrassed by how much you enjoyed it?”
“I’m after you,” I say. “Game’s over, Alistair.”
His eyes flash. “Ohh, Evelyn would love hearing you say that.”
My insides go cold. “How—how do you know about Evie?”
“I know about Cable Car Chronicles. I know that obnoxious little editor is your ‘girlfriend,’ although you deserve far better.”
“Fuck you. You don’t know me.”
“Oh?” He walks around me, stalking his prey. “I know you snuck onto my island under false pretense. I know you’re surprised to find how much you enjoy it. And I know you like being told what to do.” His voice drops. “Give into it.”
“It’s over, Alistair,” I say, the quiver in my voice a warning to shut this down before he can get to me.
“We’re just getting started,” he growls. “Call me Sir.”
“I’m a reporter,” I blurt, turning my phone to show him the story.
“I emailed my story off the island… You’re about to be exposed.
This whole, sick game: the kink list, the drugs, the victims you trap with promises to fulfill their hearts’ desires while you find every excuse to keep from ever paying up. ”
I stare him down and relish the way I’ve finally shut him up with my own surprise. My heartbeat steadies as his eyes scan my screen. For a sweet moment, he’s speechless.
“Uh-oh, Marcus,” he says. “It looks like your email’s bounced back.”
Impossible.
I jerk the screen back so fast the phone nearly slips from my hand.
Evelyn Vance is no longer employed by Cable Car Chronicles. Please direct all messages to the new owner, Alistair Blackwood.
Alistair bought the fucking paper.
“Surprise.” He chuckles. “You must not have liked the book I chose for you.” Alistair’s thin smile stretches wide as he savors each of my dawning realizations.
He knew my real name, about Evie, about everything.
“I worried you’d try something like this, and I’d really rather you hadn’t, but… ” He shrugs.
“Fuck you,” I rasp. Tears well as my fingers jab at the screen to forward the email to Evie’s personal address—to anywhere else.
But the Wi-Fi’s down.
“I just can’t work out how you got the Wi-Fi code,” Alistair says, stepping closer.
I don’t owe Jake anything. And yet, confronted by Alistair’s question, all my mixed-up feelings collide. Jake’s password had worked. I shouldn’t forgive him for drugging me, but I also shouldn’t feel butterflies just thinking about his face.
My chest tightens, and it’s like gravity amplifies to sink me deeper and deeper.
“Tell me,” he barks.
“I overheard one of your fucking staff members.”
Things have already turned, and everything I say is making him smile wider.
“Oh?” he asks. “Why are you protecting the man who betrayed you?”
I step back, now practically cowering against the side of his desk. He already knows about Jake. He knows fucking everything.
“Hmm?”
“What the fuck do you want?” I say, now fully out of control, panic tight in my chest, voice wet with clogged tears.
“I just told you. I want to know why you’re covering for Jake. Tell me.”
I stammer. His command demands submission, but all it does is flare my old reflex. I’ve never responded with the truth.
“I don’t— I—” My voice cracks. Jake’s name burns behind my teeth.
“It’s time”—Alistair points a remote at the bookshelf—“to pass your third test.”
The floor rumbles, and the bookshelf splits at the center. Two halves slide apart with the groan of heavy movement to reveal red and blue lights illuminating the playroom hidden within.
It’s a nightmare designed to inflict pain and humiliation. The walls are lined with whips, chains, paddles, and restraints. Cold steel glints. The leather I’d smelled has less to do with the books than what’s been done here. Than what’s about to be done.
My throat pinches tight.
Jake hangs in the center of the playroom, suspended by ropes and woven into the center of Alistair’s web incarnate.
Strands loop tight around his arms and legs.
My own welts burn seeing the familiar hold, only these loop cruelly inside Jake’s mouth.
They weave across his eyes as a blindfold and crisscross over his chest, his stomach, his hips, hanging his body angled toward me.
“Jake!”
He jerks at the sound of my voice, wrists straining, ankles kicking once before the ropes stop him. A muffled sound breaks out of him and dies against the restraints.
I run for him.
“Stop!” Alistair booms.
My body answers his command with a betrayal so immediate it makes me dizzy. My knees lock. My muscles all go obedient, because they’ve been trained since I was small to bow to this familiar numbing.
A whimper slips out. Even blindfolded, Jake turns toward me as if it’s the only sound in the room.
Alistair watches the exchange with patient satisfaction. He set this trap, and now he enjoys watching me step right into it. He stands there and lets me see what’s been done while my imagination builds what comes next.
But my mind is still my own, even if my body disobeys, and I’ve trained it to clamp down and resist.
“First Amendment,” I choke out. “First Amendment!!”
Alistair walks to where I’m frozen a few steps from the playroom, his mouth turned down in mock concern. “Aww. You don’t want your third test?”
“Let him go,” I say, forcing my voice steady even as my legs refuse to move. “Let. Him. Go. So help me, I’ll make the whole world see what you really are.”
He steps beside Jake. “It’s not for you to decide.”
“If you lay a finger on him—”
“Jake has chosen to repeat his tests to atone for betraying me,” Alistair says, mild as a man discussing dinner. “He wants that funding. Isn’t that right, Jake?”
He slides two fingers under the rope drawn tight across Jake’s cheek and yanks the gag free.
“Marky,” Jake rasps. “I’m sorry. Just… stay. Please. I can take it. I still want—”
Alistair stuffs the rope back into his mouth. Jake’s words cut off into a muffled, helpless sound.
“Your third test,” Alistair says, “is to stand there and watch.”
My brain screams at me to leave. But my chest aches in the other direction. It wants Jake’s eyes on me when the blindfold comes off. It wants Jake saying my name when the ropes loosen.
That want cinches tight, and something shifts behind the locked door. For years, I thought keeping the worst parts of me locked away meant they’d stay where I left them. I didn’t know things could rot without air.
Now the door cracks open, and what leaks out isn’t memory. It’s darker than that. Hotter. It looks at Jake hanging there and doesn’t want to save him. It wants him returned to me. It wants his fate in my hands.
Shame prickles hot across my skin. This isn’t the kind of desire I’ve ever let myself have. It isn’t the kind of desire any good man should have.
Alistair’s smile barely moves. “Stay and watch,” he says. “Or leave, and we’ll continue his test in private. Tell me what you want.”
Jake goes still, waiting for me to say what I want: the truth or a lie.
I should walk. I should run. I should choose the version of myself that still believes I’m here to save people.
Instead, I swallow the taste of my own ruin and let the truth settle into my bones.
“I want to stay.”