She might not have been a submissive when she went into that cage, but she’s been changed—morphed into something new. The only thing that would possibly tempt me right now into letting the beast run free—but I don’t know if I trust what it would turn me into right now.
* * *
The next day
It was disaster after disaster—client after client. They were abandoning Jackson Investments in droves. The SEC had set up shop in Chicago—and they would be in New York when we opened our doors the next day. All I could do was sit alone in my office and stare at the empire that was crumbling to dust around me. I never sought my father’s approval—not really—but I would have been ashamed to have him see what I had let happen to his beloved company. Reynard didn’t bother coming to work. Hell, I had no business there either. It wasn’t like we were going to do anything with our assets practically frozen while the SEC investigated Wyatt’s misconduct—and it was more than misconduct. It was outright fraud.
“Abigail, I’m going home.” I walked out of my office and closed the door. “You can let everyone else go home too. There’s no reason for everyone to sit here and twiddle their fucking thumbs.”
“Yes, sir.” She looked up at me and nodded.
I might as well just go home and drink. What else can I do at this point?
I kept a condo in the city that was registered to the company. It was the kind of expense I could write off and handy when I didn’t want to drive home. It was a good place to watch my empire crumble—I could even see the top of Jackson Investments from the window. Fitting, since the condo itself, would probably be seized when the SEC got done pillaging what was left—I might as well enjoy it for a few more days.
I watched our stock prices continue to tumble once I was sitting on my couch with a drink in my hand. Fisk sent me updates every hour—and none of them were good. I had just gotten a good buzz, or a bad buzz—depending on how much more I intended to drink when my phone lit up and I saw Reynard’s number.
“Hey,” I answered the phone and took a drink. “If you haven’t made it to the office yet, don’t bother. I sent everyone home.”
“I’ve been busy looking through Wyatt’s laptop.” He exhaled sharply into the phone. “Where are you? I need to show you something.”
“I’m at the condo.” I leaned back against the couch. “Is it going to save the company? If not—don’t even bother. I’m not ready for another one of your obsessions about our brother’s suicide.”
“You’re going to want to see this—trust me.” He growled under his breath. “Just trust me—I’m on my way.”
“Okay, fine.” I nodded, even though he couldn’t see my head shaking, and hung up the phone.
There was a part of me that wanted to be angry at Reynard for taking us down the path that set everything in motion, but it was as much my fault as it was his. I should have realized that it was as easy as it seemed. I should have paid closer attention to Josef Weber’s threat when it was directly in front of me. I shouldn’t have let Reynard’s obsession with Lizzy get in the way of what we were doing. She became a distraction for him—and a distraction for me. We looked at her as the reason for Wyatt’s death when we might have uncovered the truth earlier if we were looking in the right place. It was too late for second chances. Things were already spiraled past the point where they could be undone.
I sipped my drink and my mind started wandering to Lizzy—the moment we shared—when she begged for the beast inside me to be unleashed. I had never met a woman like that—one that I didn’t feel was lying when their eyes screamed for the beast to come out and play. Lizzy was more than just a random submissive woman who could satisfy a craving. She was truly unique—the kind of woman I had been looking for my whole life, but I didn’t even know a woman like that could exist. She was molded by the darkness—sculpted by Reynard’s cruelty—and when the darkness faded—she became a diamond.
It’s too fucking bad things had to turn out like they did, but we can’t have her around if everything is about to go to shit. She has her freedom now, and that changes things. I doubt she’ll ever walk into the abyss again willingly—no matter how much it turned her on when she embraced the pain she was owed.
My thoughts were still on Lizzy when there was a knock at the door. It had to be Reynard. I walked over, confirmed it was him with a quick look through the peephole, and then pulled the door open. He looked like a man possessed with a fire in his eye—one that burned as bright as it did the day he told me about Lizzy the first time. He walked over to the table next to the couch and opened Wyatt’s laptop. I sat down in front of it and stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
“I don’t understand…” I looked at him and back to the screen.
“That’s a will—Dad’s will.” He sat down beside me. “Look at the date.”
“It was signed a year before he passed.” I narrowed my eyes and started scanning. “But this isn’t the one that was read—it mentions…”
“Four children.” Reynard nodded quickly. “Dad knew—he knew about her.”
“Fuck.” I exhaled sharply.
“There’s a letter too.” Reynard hit a button and loaded it. “Right here, it’s supposed to go with the will.”
“She was the result of an affair—oh my god. While our Mom was pregnant with you?” I looked at Reynard. “But, if Wyatt had this…”
“He hid it.” Reynard nodded. “Remember, after Dad had his first heart attack, he gave Wyatt his Power of Attorney—just in case.”
“Dad must have trusted Wyatt to make sure this was read when he passed, but then—Wyatt didn’t go through with it. He set up shell companies for our sister and started funneling money to her.” I shook my head back and forth. “He fucked us. It would have been better if he just let the fucking will get read—at least then we could have split up the assets and bought her out of Jackson Investments.”
“Yeah, but she probably had no idea that Dad changed his will.” Reynard exhaled sharply. “If she even knew who he was before he passed.”
“How the fuck did Josef Weber find out…” I narrowed my eyes at the screen.
“I don’t know.” Reynard shrugged. “But we’re going to have to pay him a visit and find out.”
“Agreed.” I nodded quickly. “At this point, the SEC is going to fuck us over regardless, so we might as well make them work for it if they want to put handcuffs on our wrists.”
Lizzy
One week later
I spent an entire day in bed with the covers over my head. When the sunlight was too bright, I hung quilts over the windows. When a sliver of light still peeked in, I taped them to the wall. I was trying to simulate the darkness I had in the cage—the pure blackness that blocked out everything—but it wasn’t possible. Nothing could give me that solace. Even when it was dark, the silence wasn’t there. I heard sounds I never really paid attention to—noises I never realized I could hear. When I stayed in my apartment before I was taken, they were just normal sounds, but they might as well have been screams against my eardrum after being alone in that cage with nothing but silent madness to keep me company.
I never imagined I would want that again—especially when it stripped away my sanity the first time.
I dodged calls from Cassie. She wanted to know what happened—where I went—how my vacation was. That’s where everyone thought I disappeared to—those that cared at least. Reynard laid out his plan carefully—he thought of everything. Well, almost everything. He probably didn’t expect me to connect with what he was doing to me—to embrace it—and to crave it when it was finally taken away. It damaged me in a way that he never imagined—in a way that couldn’t fathom—yet I knew I wasn’t the same girl that was taken from the street on my way home and shoved into the back of a van.
Now I would go willingly, just to spend one more day with them—either of them, really. I had a connection to them both.
Reynard and Mauro both had beasts
dwelling inside of them. Those beasts needed to feed on suffering. There was kindness in them too—kindness that I saw along the way, even when I didn’t deserve a hint of it. I would have knelt at their feet again if I could, but I knew those days were over. I was a broken toy. I no longer feared the cruelty or the malice—I cherished it. I got off on the pain as much as I got off on the pleasure. My days of calling them Master had passed, and I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to be able to recover.
A week passed before I got enough energy to do more than walk to the door and take the food that I ordered. I had a stack of boxes in my living room, half-eaten meals that were already starting to stink. I didn’t care. I belonged in a cage, not in an apartment, so I tried to turn it into one. I couldn’t recreate the darkness, but I could make myself a prisoner. I set my own boundaries and with them, I found my way back from the darkness I craved. I found the strength to sit in my living room, to watch television, and that’s when I learned the horrible truth about what happened to the two men who imprisoned me.
“Oh my god.” My hand went to my mouth—it was the only thing I had said out loud other than a simple thank you to a delivery driver, and my own voice startled me.
Reynard and Mauro were arrested in Chicago. The news didn’t tell me everything, but the clues were there. They were under investigation by the SEC due to something that happened at their company—something that involved their brother. I ran to my laptop and turned it on for the first time since I returned to my apartment. I quickly scanned every news article I could find, searching for more information. Shit had definitely hit the fan while I had been locked in my self-imposed prison. I thought back to my last conversation with Reynard—how shocked he was when I told him Wyatt mentioned his sister. She seemed to be the source of the problem—something to do with their father’s will—an investment account that Wyatt set up—and it mentioned fraud.
What was it that Wyatt said about his sister? She—was causing problems? Damn it—what was he talking about…
I spent an hour looking through my chat logs with Wyatt—and I cursed myself for not saving all of the videos. I usually deleted them to save room once the blackmail was complete. I was never cruel enough to try to double dip into my blackmail schemes—even when I was running low on money. I found new targets, and it had been a while since Wyatt was the one I was after. The news ran in the background while I continued digging—each one seeming to have more information about the arrests.
I don’t believe Reynard and Mauro were involved in this. They’ve certainly done things that would land most people in prison, but they aren’t responsible for what Wyatt did—but how do I prove it? There has to be something…
Wait a second. I’m going about this the wrong way. I’m digging into the past, but that’s not going to help them—not now. I’m good at finding people—figuring out who they are—learning their secrets.
I shouldn’t be focused on Wyatt—I should be focused on their sister.
* * *
The next day
I spent all night digging, turning over virtual rocks, and searching for something that could possibly be useful, but it was like looking for a needle in a metropolis. The news had a name for their sister—Hannah Ashton—but I was pretty sure that wasn’t her real name. She was a ghost outside of the news stories that mentioned her and a few companies in Chicago—companies that had later been sold to a man named Josef Weber. Weber released a statement proclaiming his innocence and said he had been duped by the Jackson brothers, but he didn’t elaborate. It seemed like a cover story, and I was pretty sure there was more to it that he wasn’t talking about to the press. I just didn’t know what it could be.
That name—Josef Weber—is familiar. I’m pretty sure Wyatt mentioned his name when we were talking, and if it’s the guy he talked about, then he was part of the reason Wyatt was so stressed out.
Thinking about Wyatt still tore me up inside, even though I didn’t believe it was my blackmail scheme that drove him over the edge and caused him to take his own life. Unfortunately, there was no way for me to know that with absolute certainty. He was stressed, constantly dealing with issues at work—unhappy in his marriage—and I was the one he kept coming back to when all of those concerns weighed heavily on him. I might not have been the one who caused his death, but I still felt partially responsible. What if I had been there to offer an ear in his darkest moment? Would he have talked to me instead of deciding that carbon monoxide poisoning was a better alternative? Was my betrayal still lingering on his thoughts when he cranked up his car?
I deserved every bit of the punishment I got when I was in that cage, whether I caused his death or not—because I betrayed him—and that can’t be undone.
I kept digging, even when things seemed to be absolutely pointless because I just couldn’t give up. I couldn’t sit on my couch and think about the Jackson brothers in prison without feeling a knot in my stomach. I started looking into Josef Weber, since he seemed to be involved in some way, despite claiming to be a victim. He ran a company called Weber Acquisitions in Chicago, with a branch in New York and Los Angeles. It looked like the company’s primary focus was on real estate acquisitions, utilizing investors to build their empire and promising big returns. It was a little different than what Jackson Investments did, but their clientele was similar—both companies took money from people and turned it into profit.
I can’t very well go to Chicago and confront Josef Weber. That’s what Reynard and Mauro did—and it didn’t go very well if they left Weber Acquisitions in handcuffs. I doubt I would even get in the front door. Now they’re considered flight risks—as if either of them would run from anything.
The part that bothered me the most about my investigation was how nonexistent Hannah Ashton was. I had been digging into people’s lives for a while—it was how I survived. Even people who went to great lengths to conceal their identity had trace elements online. It literally looked like Hannah Ashton was finger-snapped into existence on the day Ashton Retirement Fund was registered in Chicago ten years ago. There was no way that was her real name, or if it was, she went by another one prior to that. I was leaning towards the former because outside of Ashton Retirement Fund’s registration, she was still as much of a ghost as she was before the company was registered.
If she’s challenging the will, her real name has to be out there somewhere…
I started doing cross-references for the names Hannah and Ashton with Josef Weber, but it was another dead end. I repeated my searches, just typing everything into the search engines I could think of, each one making my frustration grow. Searching the past was useless, searching the present was an array of dead ends, and I couldn’t very well see into the future. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Exhaustion was starting to take a toll. I was seeing the same glimpse of madness that I felt when the darkness consumed me inside the cage for the first time—then an idea caused me to open my eyes immediately.
Reynard. He was able to track me down—he found my chat logs—that means he must have Wyatt’s laptop. Wyatt is—was the only person outside of Josef Weber that knew Hannah Ashton. I’m sure he would have kept something—especially if he was so torn up about this. I need that laptop.
I needed to talk to Reynard, which meant I was going to have to pay a visit to him in prison. That was the only way I could gain access to his house and possibly get my hands on Wyatt’s laptop. I wasn’t even sure if it was going to provide me with information that the brothers themselves hadn’t already uncovered, but it was the only thing I could think of that could. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to see Reynard and once one presented itself, I couldn’t let go of the thought. Either way, I was just banging my head against the screen and I wasn’t willing to give up—not without exploring every option that I could think of.
I’m sure he hasn’t even thought about me since I left. Why would he? I was a girl in a cage that deserved nothing but punishment. Once that moment passed and h
e no longer saw me as his object of revenge, he could barely touch me—not the way I needed him to touch me.
But that isn’t what this about…
Or is it?
Reynard
One week ago
“You son of a bitch!” I lunged at Josef Weber, catching him by the throat before I slammed him against the glass window overlooking Chicago. “Give me one good reason not to put you straight through this fucking window!”
“Reynard! This isn’t going to solve anything!” Mauro grabbed my arm. “We need information—he won’t be able to give it if you splatter him on the sidewalk.”
“You should listen to your brother.” Josef Weber choked his words out.
“Then you better start talking.” I narrowed my eyes and relaxed my grip, but I held onto his neck in case I needed to remind him that I could crush his windpipe. “Where is our sister? What the fuck are you trying to do to us?”
“Nothing that you didn’t try to do to me” He snarled and tried to get out of my grasp. “You tried to put me out of business, so I returned the favor!”
“This goes deeper than that and you know it!” Mauro leaned forward. “You set this up a long time go—why?”
“You shouldn’t be asking me that question—you should be asking your brother, Wyatt.” Josef Weber managed to grin slightly. “Oh wait, you can’t.”
“That’s it.” I pulled him away from the window and slammed him hard enough for his head to bounce and leave a blood spot where he struck. “Say my brother’s name one more fucking time!”
Caged By Them: Descent Into Darkness Page 13