Chapter 30
“What if she has nothing for us?” I worriedly ask.
“Then we keep looking.”
“What if we never—”
“Andrea, relax. There’s no need to worry about this for now. We’ll talk with her, see what she has for us, and then we’ll assess the situation.”
I nod, biting the nail of my thumb. Lola Wilde, a.k.a. Lorelei Madsen, answered our request to have a preliminary phone call. For two thousand dollars, she’d be a fool not to.
Swallowing the nervous lump clogging my throat, I look at the time again. Five minutes. Even if she doesn’t tell us anything, all hope isn’t lost. Not yet. We can always find out why Becker deactivates his security cameras for a night every month. There must be something huge there.
We haven’t learned much from the security footage since cracking Becker’s system.
Thanks to the maids who regularly gossip in Spanish, we’ve learned that Becker employs immigrants who don’t speak English to preserve his privacy despite the small army in charge of keeping his penthouse spotless.
Given the few concerns the staffers have shared about the rise of La Migra, we gathered that most of them are undocumented.
At exactly six, Lex dials the number “Lola” gave us.
We’re sharing a pair of earphones, with the mic on Lex’s side.
It rings a full tone, then another one, and then a third.
For two grand, one would imagine she’d pick up faster.
When she does, her voice is unnecessarily sultry.
“Hey, big boy …” she greets. I send Lex a bothered glance, already knowing this will annoy me a lot.
“Good evening, Lola,” he answers.
“Oh, you sound gorgeous. This just took an interesting turn. Tell me, big boy, are you very lonely, or did I really catch your eye?”
I’m already so done with that ‘big boy’ thing.
“Aren’t you used to catching men’s attention?” Lex asks, playing along. We agreed that charming her would be better for our end goal. “I thought a woman like you would be familiar with this.”
“I am. Some of my best clients can’t get enough. Tell me, big boy, do you plan on becoming one of my best clients?” she asks with a seductive giggle that has my eyes rolling so hard I glimpse at my brain.
“I think I have the bank account for it. What would ten thousand get me?”
“Oh, baby, for ten thousand, you can have me for an entire night. I’ll show you things you’ve never imagined before. Even in your wildest fantasies.”
Oh, I hate this bitch. Sitting right fucking here while a woman heavily flirts with my man is much harder than I thought. Thankfully, he’s entirely unaffected by her, focused on the mission. Good. Many brownie points for him.
“What would you do to me if we had the whole night, big boy?” she asks, a little breathless and throaty. Ugh, she’s doing entirely too much.
“I’m not sure. Maybe you could give me a few ideas,” Lex replies, making my eyes widen. The hell?! “What did Becker do to you?”
Oh, nice transition.
“Excuse me?” She sounds shocked, almost offended.
“I’d like to know what Norman Becker did to you.”
“Who the fuck are you? I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but I’m not divulging any information regarding my clients.”
“I think you’ll want to make an exception for me, Lorelei.”
“What—what did you call me?!”
“Lorelei. Lorelei Madsen is your real name, isn’t it? But maybe you’d like me to stick to Lola?”
“Go fuck yourself, you sick—”
“I have your client list, Lola,” Lex interrupts her.
“The names of every single man who has paid for your services since you started this business three years ago. And if you want it to remain under wraps, you will have to be more cooperative than this.” Jesus fucking Christ, I can barely recognize this man. He’s scary good at bluffing.
“You’re lying,” she tries, sounding desperate.
Off the top of his head, Lex begins enumerating some names we saw among her clients. “Graham Whitlock, Sebastian Hargreave, Oliver Cavanaugh, Miles Tho—”
“What the fuck?!” she interrupts him. “How did you get those?”
“You need better security for your inbox. I also spotted four senators in there, an ex-Vice-President, and many names from the Fortune 500. You’ve been a busy woman, Lorelei Madsen.”
“You—you can’t do this! You’ll ruin my life, my reputation. These men … they’ll come after me!”
“All you have to do is tell me what I want to know. I will delete the list as soon as I know what Norman Becker did to you.”
There’s a long silence, but at least she doesn’t hang up. We can practically hear her mind running through her options, trying to figure out what to do.
“How can I know this isn’t a test? That he didn’t put you up to this? I signed an NDA, and if he knows I—”
“I know about the NDA. He’ll never know you spoke to me. I’ll make sure of it.”
“How do I know if I can trust you?”
“I suppose there’s no way for you to know. It’s for you to decide who can harm you the most between Becker and me. Though I get the feeling he already did some harm.”
She takes a moment to think, and we hear her take a long and trembling breath. “You promise all of this will stay between us?”
“I do. No one else will hear about this.”
She takes a few more seconds to decide whether she should trust him, and eventually gives in.
“He heard about me through one of his friends, and I warned him I don’t always sleep with my clients, that if he wanted a sure thing, he’d better look elsewhere.
We agreed to meet at a lounge bar near his place.
He was charming, so when he offered to double my payment to follow him home and have sex, I agreed.
He brought me to his penthouse, then to his bedroom, and told me to undress.
He said he wanted to be rough with me, but that I could opt out at any point by using his safe word, chrysalis.
He’d pay me my ten thousand dollars even if I did.
But if I didn’t use the safe word at all, he’d give me a hundred grand. ”
My jaw drops, shocked by her words. What the actual fuck is wrong with this man? He’s a hardcore sadist? A Temu version of Christian Grey? Lex and I exchange a conflicted look before he asks, “Did you accept his offer?”
“I did. I’ve been with men who like it rough, so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad.
Especially for that price. All I had to do was clench my teeth and take it.
In the end, I lost money on this, since I had to cancel three weeks of clients.
Might need a full month to recuperate, actually.
My clients don’t like to be reminded that they share me with others.
Seeing the marks another man has left ruins the fantasy. ”
I grimace, sorry she had to go through all that. I knew Becker was a dangerous asshole, but this is sick. Maybe Lorelei will be our way out of this nightmare, after all.
“Ask her for details,” I sign to Lex.
Lex complies, his voice softer. “Can you tell me what he did to you?”
“Why? Are you a sick fuck like him? Does that get you off?”
“Not in the slightest, no.”
She’s silent for a moment, probably reluctant to give details and relive that evening.
“You have my client list, so I don’t really have a choice, do I?
” she eventually says, irritated. “He tied my wrists and ankles to the bed, so I was spread on my stomach. Then he took out an arsenal of crops, whips, flogs, and paddles. You know that experiment with the frog in the heating water? I was the frog, and the pain was the boiling water. That asshole started slowly, and then he increased the pain one hit at a time. By the time I was ready to use the safe word, I felt like all that pain would have been for nothing. So I endured it. There was no way I wouldn’t get my hundred thousand dollars after all that. ”
She takes a breath, as if the pain and trauma she experienced are resurfacing at once.
“If you want my two cents on this, he enjoyed the fact that I wasn’t into it.
He could have found a masochist who’d actually love that, and for a fraction of the price he was paying.
But he picked me because it isn’t my thing.
I also think his goal was to make me use the safe word.
I was never meant to win his sick game.”
“You used it?” Lex asks.
“Yes. I couldn’t even breathe through the sobs anymore.
He stopped immediately. My lower back, ass, and thighs were throbbing with burning pain.
He even tore through the skin in some places.
That’s when he told me he’d still give me the money if I let him fuck me.
He promised it wouldn’t take long, ten minutes at most. I agreed.
I was so gone already, it felt like a silver lining.
A quick fuck and I’d get my money. He did it, keeping me tied up, and came on my bloodied ass.
Never knew cum on a wound could sting that much. ”
There’s a long silence, and Lex isn’t sure what to say. What words can be enough, given all she told us? Yes, she agreed to play Becker’s sick game, but no one deserves that.
“I’m never going back to him,” she lets out, her voice shaking.
“It’s not worth it. It hurt to sit for over a week, and it looks like I’ll have some scars that’ll never go away.
I was fucking stupid for agreeing to his deal in the first place.
I’m not that kind of escort. My clients hire me because I’m smart and knowledgeable.
BDSM isn’t my scene, and it’ll never be. ”
“I’m sorry for what he did to you, Lorelei. I suspected Becker was a dangerous man, but I didn’t realize he was that much of a sick bastard.”
“He’s really good at hiding it. He was so normal and charming during our drinks at the lounge that I never saw it coming.” Another pause where words seem superfluous, and she asks, “What will you do with that information?”
“I’m gathering knowledge to take him down.”
“Well, you’ll have to look elsewhere, then. Everything he did to me was consensual. I hated all of it, but it was my mistake.”