Tell Me No Lies (Bright Lights, Dark Secrets Collection Book 4)

by Nolon King

  The liquid was already down my throat and doing its work.

  I wondered if drug her was the first request, or if this was only foreplay.

  I wished I could scream, but my throat was a forest in ashes, and my tongue, the petrified timber in its wake.

  I was warm and then woozy, my body heavy as lead.

  It almost felt good, and I thought I might be smiling. I wanted to reach up and feel for myself, since something like that shouldn’t be possible. I imagined my smile, ghastly like the Joker. I tried to touch it but couldn’t, and that made me laugh.

  The world was going in and out around me. Then it got sassy and started to spin up and down.

  I heard voices, but not what they said.

  Plenty of laughing, yet nary a joke.

  Breathing and grunting. What looked like a line.

  Shorty came at me first.

  I tried to fight whatever it was that they gave me, but that was like battling the night. He was sweaty, and his breath was sour. I know he finished fast, and that there were more in line behind him. I drifted in and out enough to know that he returned for at least another round.

  But I don’t remember more than that, and I count it as a gift.

  I had no idea how much later it was when I finally opened my eyes for longer than a second.

  Though I didn’t really have much of an idea about anything at all.

  I weighed about a thousand pounds, and most of those were in my head. I didn’t know why it was so leaden, or why it felt like I was sinking into the floor.

  Then I felt the blanket under me, and wondered where I was. I opened my eyes. The room wasn’t familiar, at least not beyond my fraying memory.

  Had I been here before?

  It was dark and empty. Graveyard still.

  My eyes hurt when I kept them open, so I squeezed them tight and tried to remember where I was, going back to the earliest thing I could—

  Jade.

  That one hit me hard. I heard the doorbell, remembered answering, only to find Jade on the other side of the door, about to get into a terrible situation.

  One that I took for myself.

  Then I remembered the men. Not what they did to me, but that it was done without my consent.

  I had been violated. Defiled.

  The truth hit me like a bullet.

  I opened my eyes and looked down at my naked body, but it was too dark to see if I had any bruises. Though of course I did, the way they were manhandling me. I felt it before I lost consciousness, and could only imagine what they did to me once I was dead to the world.

  I tried to stand, suffered through all four attempts, then made my way to the envelope, sitting on a table by the door, surely stuffed with enough cash to try and convince me that this hadn’t been rape.

  Sure enough, I found two grand in hundreds, plus an extra ten Benjamins worth of hush money for me.

  My stomach swam and I could barely stay on my feet, so I crawled over to the bed, cursing the monsters for using that floor and the blanket instead, and climbed on top of the covers.

  This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, other than the shower of lies from Ryan that had started this all, and yet for some reason I still felt grateful that it wasn’t Jade, lying on that bed instead of me.

  I still didn’t know what time it was, whether it had been hours or days, or if my family was waiting on me. But the room was dark, so it was probably sometime in the middle of the night.

  Whenever it was, I had to get home. But it wasn’t like I could drive.

  I was still too fucked up to go anywhere on my own. If they wouldn’t let me behind the wheel after losing my wisdom teeth, then driving now would be a disaster waiting to happen.

  Like my entire fucking life.

  I wondered if it was possible to feel any more alone.

  So I rolled off of my bed and crawled to my phone, intent on calling the only person in the world that I could.

  It took around five minutes before I could locate my cell and focus enough to dial, but the few seconds it took her to answer felt even longer than that.

  “What is it, Natalie?” Olivia asked.

  I tried to answer, but must have done a terrible job because there was suddenly concern in her voice.

  “Where are you?”

  I tried to tell her. Many times. Eventually I think she got it.

  “I’m coming to get you.” Then she hung up.

  The saddest part is that I wasn’t sure I believed her.

  I drifted off, but it didn’t feel like all that long before I opened my eyes to hear someone pounding on the door.

  She was still pounding when I got there.

  I opened the door and she stared back at me with actual concern.

  “Fuck the contract,” I said. “I’m done. Out of this, permanently.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Friday Evening …

  OLIVIA

  I was driving to Victor’s, in Natalie’s Volvo. Natalie was passed out in the passenger seat beside me.

  He would make this right. He had to.

  I couldn’t imagine that he would turn a blind eye to this sort of bullshit, but from the little I could get from Natalie before she started drooling all over her imported leather, that’s exactly what had happened.

  I didn’t want to believe it. Sure, Victor was kind of a jackass, but I’d always seen him be reasonably smart when it came to running his business, and only an idiot would operate like this. I would talk to him, he would listen, and things would get better.

  I had no idea what I would do if they didn’t.

  For now, focus was my friend. Getting to Victor and thinking about what I was going to say once I got there.

  I would take a FASTr back to the hotel for my car later. Right now, it was Natalie first.

  It had been terrifying, finding her like that. She was so strong, that’s why the last few weeks had been so much fun. She had hurt me and I was happy to hurt her back. Natalie’s strength made it a victory, but now it felt like bullying.

  What she told me was slurred, but that didn’t slow my understanding. At least not much. Apparently, Natalie didn’t even know what had happened to her, after they trapped her in a room, poured liquid drugs down her throat, and took requests from an audience while livestreaming their gang rape.

  I punched the steering wheel. I’d feel that tomorrow, but shit, was I pissed.

  I hoped Victor was outside when I pulled up. The way I was feeling, I’d run him over.

  This wasn’t just about the girls, or even about Natalie. If this could happen to his prized little MILF, then it could happen to me. I had seen and even lived through some pretty terrible shit, but nothing like that. I agreed to high-end escorting, not to being a canvas for a depraved audience acting out their most violent fantasies.

  It was sick. I wanted to throw up.

  Then I did, and had to swallow it.

  Natalie rolled her head to the side like it was a struggle, and started blinking. She made a noise, a moaning whimper.

  “You okay?”

  She made the moaning whimper again. Then, a moment later, “Fine. Thanks.”

  “You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Even as a precaution?”

  “No,” she said, still slurring but sounding stronger. “It was a job. I got paid to be there. I agreed to do whatever by showing up. That’s what whores do.”

  Natalie buried her face. I wasn’t sure if she was crying into her arms, because it would be just like my old friend to keep all her screaming inside.

  I winced at her calling herself a whore. That’s not who she was at all.

  It’s certainly not who I was. I never saw myself in that light. I was a provider of services, and excellent at my job. Men appreciated me, and I appreciated them. I didn’t get paid more for my time than anyone I knew, but only because I knew a lot of people who could afford to pay me. But I did get
paid more for my time than at least ninety-nine out of any random hundred people that I’d meet on the street. Though there had been a few rough spots, for the most part the work had always been fun, on my terms, and lucrative.

  I did what I loved, and loved what I did, making more money, having more freedom, and living more life than I ever could have imagined with a desk job. I’d been to Barcelona, Paris, and New York, in the last year alone. I was in Australia six months before that. I’d never been and always wanted to go. So I went, all expenses paid, plus five grand a day for the pleasure. Some of the best sex and sights of my life. And the conversation was even better.

  But none of the perks were worth this.

  I looked at Natalie, feeling something an awful lot like sorry stewing inside me. “You’re not a whore.”

  She didn’t answer. I wondered if Natalie had fallen asleep, or if she was maybe still silently crying.

  “Natalie … Nat?”

  I wished she would respond. I felt so awful, for all of it. I’d been so much more comfortable deep in the ice. I had to freeze myself to approach her, then stay frosted to keep the plan in place. But Natalie had been my best friend for a long time, and then for an even longer time after that she was the girl who used to be my best friend. That hurt more than anything else, except for the fact that she also stole the only man I’d ever loved. The person I’d only stopped seeing in every other John until a couple of years ago.

  But that ice was thawing, and I was shivering with a new and certain chill that I didn’t expect to be feeling on my skin, or anywhere inside me. The responsibility of helping my former friend, and the guilt of getting her into this mess.

  She had a family at home. What was I thinking?

  Exactly that: She had a family at home, and it should have been mine.

  I couldn’t think about that now.

  I pulled into Victor’s. “We’re here.”

  Natalie groaned.

  “Come on, Nat. We need to go in there and kick Victor’s ass. He needs to see what they did to you.”

  Another groan.

  I got out of the Volvo, walked around to Natalie’s side, opened the door, and gently pulled her out and onto her feet. “Are you ready?”

  “No.”

  But she sounded more sober than she was when she answered the door, and her eyes had lost some of their glaze.

  “Come on, sweetie.”

  I held my arm out for her and she took it. Then together we went inside.

  I was ready to rip into Victor; I hadn’t expected that he’d be tearing into me.

  He saw us the second we opened the door and marched right over like he’d been waiting all night.

  “What the fuck is this, Olivia?” Victor growled at me and pointed at Natalie. His words were relatively quiet, but he was seething. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him more furious. “And where’s Jade?”

  “This is you being a shit businessman, Victor, sending your girls out on parties that they should never, ever be sent on. I don’t know about Jade, or anyone else. Natalie called me after she was assaulted by the clients you booked, and I went to pick her up.”

  The word worked as intended. Victor bristled. But didn’t respond, at least not to my implied accusation.

  “Jade,” he said, barely holding his temper, “is the girl who was supposed to show up, the girl they requested. I had to stay on the phone for ten minutes while they yelled at me for an unauthorized substitution.”

  I was livid. Was he kidding? The asshole had to be punking me.

  “What the fuck, Victor? You can’t be serious.”

  “Serious about what?” He was still fuming, obviously not getting it, pissing me off more by the second.

  “Serious about your priorities.”

  “My priority has always been the business.”

  “Then stop being an idiot!” I screamed. “This is some of the worst ‘business’ I’ve ever seen! You’re worried about getting yelled at, when your girls are getting drugged and livestreamed? You can’t be serious! You want to know where Jade is, but you’ve barely glanced at Natalie.”

  She made a sound of acknowledgement beside me.

  “She told you about this and you promised to look into it. But you didn’t. Instead you sent Jade, and whoever before her, and Natalie, being who she is, apparently wasn’t going to let her take that party. So tell me Victor, why should she care more about your business than you?”

  “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  In that moment I realized that Victor was right. I didn’t, and that was a problem.

  I was seeing the real Victor for the first time. Our relationship had always been good. Business-like, with respect between us. We were trusted colleagues, not exactly close, but close enough. But I suddenly saw that there had to be so much more going on behind the scenes than I ever imagined; so much that I couldn’t control; so much that had put my old friend in danger, and would eventually do the same thing to me.

  I couldn’t afford to be a fool any longer.

  I turned to Natalie, now standing upright without swaying, but still a bit out of it.

  “I need you to go to the car.”

  Natalie shook her head. “I want to stay.”

  “Please, sweetie. I’ll be out there in a second. I just need to finish in here with Victor.”

  I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but there was an inferno burning inside me and I wanted to burn this fucker with my flames.

  “Let’s both just leave and never come back,” she said, sounding far off and defeated.

  No surprise, Victor said, “Leave all you want, but you will be coming back. That’s what your contract is for.”

  I took her hands, then asked Natalie to do something I didn’t deserve. Looking into her eyes I said, “Please, I need you to trust me.”

  Then Natalie was gone, waiting for me in the car while I dealt with Victor.

  The living room was otherwise empty, no other girls daring to stay for the skirmish.

  We eyed each other like gunslingers, both of us waiting for the other to speak, neither willing to show the weakness of going first. I thought of Natalie alone in the car, needing me, and probably longing to get home to her bed where she could sleep the rest of this nightmare off, and broke the deadlock.

  “She’s done, Victor.”

  “Like hell she is.”

  “I mean it. Natalie isn’t ever taking another party for you.” I shook my head. “Not ever again.”

  Smiling like a predator he said, “Natalie has a contract.”

  I closed the distance between us, until my eyes were inches from his and I could smell the stale nicotine and tobacco on both his breath and his clothes.

  “You and I both know that those contracts aren’t enforceable, Victor. That part of your business is illegal. I don’t give a shit what words you use in the contract. We both know it, and there’s nothing you can do.”

  “You’re in this just as much as I am, Olivia. You really want to lose your little cash cow? Ten percent, every day, and the requests never stop coming. Remember, this was your idea.”

  “Well, I wish I never had it. She’s done.”

  “Wishes ain’t washing the dishes, Olivia. We had an agreement. If Natalie is done being Elle, then you’re done here, too. You got it?”

  “I sure do.”

  Then I turned around, marched out the door, and promised us both that I’d never be back.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Friday Afternoon, One Week Later …

  NATALIE

  I picked up my phone and studied the screen, let it buzz in my hand.

  It didn’t say Private Caller, but the number was unfamiliar. I wondered if it was Victor. Probably. It’s not like he could get me on the burner anymore, not after I had crunched into so many pieces beneath my Volvo’s back tire.

  Despite Olivia securing my exit a week ago, I didn’t feel safe, expecting a call like this at any moment. Or ev
en worse, for Victor to drop by my inner sanctum unannounced.

  I’d never told him where I lived, but of course he could find out.

  I was pretty sure he was mad, considering that Olivia had quit and Jade had disappeared.

  The first one was a surprise to me, but the second terrified me. Olivia hadn’t been able to find out if she’d left of her own volition, or if something had happened to her.

  The call buzzed through its fourth alert, but still I didn’t answer.

  Maybe they’d leave a voicemail.

  The caller didn’t. Instead there were a few silent seconds, and then the phone began to buzz again.

  I hated to answer, especially with my heart beating fast enough to fill my voice full of stutters no matter who was waiting on the other end of the line. But two calls in a row without a voicemail surely meant something urgent, and with Alec and Lena not yet home, not answering felt downright irresponsible.

  But I sure didn’t expect to hear him on the other side of the line.

  “Elle,” Bennett said, even though he was calling on Natalie’s number.

  My heart slowed, at least a little, but it was making up for a more leisurely beat by sending prickles all over my skin. Thank God the children were gone with friends for the night and Ryan was working. I was alone in the house for the first time all week. I’d been looking forward to the solitude, but now I was eager to see where this conversation might go.

  “How did you get my number?” I asked.

  “Victor let it slip that you were friends with Olivia the first time he suggested that I book you. So I called her after I heard that you were no longer working.”

  “She gave you my number?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” he laughed. “She wouldn’t give me your name, and it did seem like she took the request rather personally, even though it sounded like she was trying to be nice.”

  “That sounds like Olivia.” There was a quiet awkward beat, so I spoke into the silence. “I’m not sure what this is about Bennett, but I can’t see you anymore. I’m retired.”

  Saying that out loud felt good, like my freedom was inching back in a different way, but the thought of never seeing Bennett again was not unlike a stab.