N is for... (Checklist Book 14)

by L. DuBois

  Autumn grabbed his hands, squeezing them fiercely. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, because it was a long time ago. I separated that kid from who I am now.”

  “I noticed you said ‘the children’ and ‘they.’ Not ‘me’ or ‘us.’”

  “I’ve learned to do that.” He raised a brow. “It made my congressional testimony easier.”

  Chapter 17

  She blinked. “Your…what?”

  He laughed, needing the moment of levity.

  “Next is the part where I tell my story.” He laced his fingers together, looked at his thumbs. “I was kicked out of the cult when I was thirteen. I was ‘impure in the faith’, meaning I started to fight back and question his bullshit. I’d gotten a hold of some fiction books that were tucked in the very bottom of a donated box of school supplies. Finding out that the world outside wasn’t the hellscape the apostle described, reading stories where the man I was expected to revere had more in common with the villains than the heroes…that changed things for me.”

  Usually he sped through this part, but he found himself telling her things that he normally didn’t talk about.

  “I barely remember my childhood. Only a few memories are vivid.” He swallowed then shook his head, to push those few vivid memories, all of which were horrific, to the back of his mind.

  “It’s common with children who experience early trauma to have fuzzy memories,” he said. “But I do remember how it felt when I finally realized that the world was so much bigger than I thought. I felt hopeful, for the first time in my life.”

  Autumn was biting the inside of her cheek, he could tell from the set of her jaw. He had a feeling she was fighting not to cry, and damn it he loved her for that, for not turning this into a situation where he had to comfort her, which had happened in the past.

  He cleared his throat, and decided to power through the rest. “The compound was in the Arizona desert. When they kicked me out I had to walk. It was sheer fucking luck the direction I picked was towards a town and not deeper into the desert.

  “I walked for days. Didn’t die of dehydration, exposure…I should have. But I didn’t. And when I reached the closest town, it was like arriving in Oz. A world full of color. Of people who rushed to help me. A stranger who saw me stumbling along and got me in his car, brought me to the little hospital. The nurses and doctors who called in social workers, and then the authorities.

  “These people listened to me. Every one of them asked if I was okay, what I needed. They wanted to hear my story, and once I started talking, I wouldn’t shut up. Wouldn’t stop demanding that the apostle be stopped. That these strangers who had helped me help the other children too.”

  “You were just a child. It shouldn’t have been up to you to prod authorities to do what was right.”

  “I was a child who figured out, real fucking fast, that my words had power. That I had power.”

  “It takes some of us a long time to realize that. Or to accept it once we realize it.” She raised their linked hands, kissed his knuckles.

  “It, of course, wasn’t that easy. The sheriff went out there to talk to them, but they claimed I’d run away. That I was a bad seed. I refused to follow their rules, and therefore wasn’t welcome in their community—all of which was true. They said they would happily sign the paperwork making me an emancipated minor.”

  “Your…your mother said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I accepted a long time ago that her need for validation was far more important to her than caring for a child.”

  “The sheriff had to know they were lying.”

  “The best they could do was to charge my mother with child abandonment for kicking me out. They tried a sex crimes case, to get him for statutory rape, based on my statements.”

  “Were you… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”

  “No, it’s okay. I wasn’t raped, wasn’t abused in that way.”

  Daniel took a moment to gather his thoughts.

  “The apostle had sex with all the women and girls. The girls, children,” he stressed the word, “he raped…many were his own daughters. Some of them were also ‘married’ off to the ‘elders’ and ‘counselors’ who were the few other men he allowed to stay. Meaning they were raped by them too. My statements were enough for them to go out and question the girls, do welfare checks.”

  “Let me guess, the girls said nothing was wrong.”

  “Yes.”

  “The sheriff would have dropped it, just because of lack of resources and time, but like I said, I wouldn’t shut up. And I had backup. The god-damn saint of a social worker who got my case. She was handed this insane, feral teenage boy, and she had my back every step of the way. Eventually we made enough noise that the local FBI office stepped in.”

  “Ha, so there are feds in this story.”

  “Yes, but none of them are undercover at a BDSM club.” He quirked a brow.

  That made her smile, just as he’d hoped.

  “There wasn’t much the feds could do, either,” he went on. “My word wasn’t enough. It was me against a whole group of adults. Which story is more reasonable—a pissed off teenager who didn’t like his strict upbringing was making shit up, or a small, almost Orthodox Church with a pure, humble image was actually a cult?”

  “Honestly, it’s easier to believe they were a cult.”

  “I agree, but in court, their story was more reasonable.”

  This part of the story was oft repeated, the words flowing easily.

  “Still, the local agents knew, and believed, something was wrong. The problem was they couldn’t prove it, and had nothing actionable but my testimony. That’s when they asked Agent Rand Salford to look at the case. He spent two days just listening as I ranted and raved. Then, he made it his mission to take them down. He started with the IRS.”

  “Ah, the IRS. I get audited every year.”

  “You do?” Daniel raised an eyebrow, then glanced around. “Uh, what do you do?”

  “I play a game. It’s a high stakes game, that I’m very good at.” She had a sly little smile on that made him want to kiss her.

  Everything made him want to kiss her.

  “You’re a professional poker player,” he guessed.

  “Hedge fund manager.”

  “Damn. Well, that explains the view.”

  “Enough about my morally gray career. The IRS got them? The cult?”

  “No. What they did was open a case, which allowed them to audit the paperwork the apostle had turned in to have the cult recognized as a church.”

  “And therefore tax exempt?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like how they got Al Capone for tax evasion.”

  He liked that she wasn’t focused on the shitty personal parts of the story. Later—months, years later, he might let that little boy out of the box at the back of his mind and tell her about some of the pain he still carried. She could be trusted with that. He knew it the way he knew that the sun would rise again tomorrow.

  “Not quite,” he said, bringing his mind back to the story. “You see the IRS is really cautious about denying church status to organizations. They have to err on the side of caution.”

  “But if it was a cult, couldn’t they do something?”

  “What’s the difference between a church and a cult?

  Autumn opened her mouth, frowned, then made a frustrated noise.

  “Exactly. It’s easy when you’ve got people promising the space ships are on their way. But one of the technical definitions of a cult is a group whose beliefs and practices are regarded by others as strange.”

  “Oh…That’s a problem, because how do you define ‘strange’?”

  “You see the issue.”

  Autumn squeezed his hands, then stood. He watched her as she walked to the kitchen, grabbed another wine stem, poured him a very full glass, and brought it over.

  “If we’re
discussing the technical definition of cults, we should be drinking,” she declared.

  “Fair enough.” He waited for her to raise her glass, tapped it with his own, then took a sip. “I’ll cut to the chase. Usually when I give these talks, it’s to law enforcement seminars.”

  “Wait, so you are a fed. Just not undercover.”

  “No, not a fed. Wait until the end of the story.”

  “Fine.” Autumn laced her fingers through his, using her other hand to raise her wine glass to her lips.

  “The IRS investigation gave Agent Salford access to current financial records. And this is where that man’s genius really shows. You see, the church had a business selling ceramics. Handmade stuff that they sold online. The website had a whole section about how each piece was special, hand made by someone who’d devoted their life to god. There was a gimmick about how the members would go out and pray in the desert at dawn, then bring back handfuls of sand that were full of the ‘Holy Spirit’ and mix them into the clay.”

  Autumn’s lip curled. “Ugh.”

  “People ate that bullshit up. Well, Agent Salford used the pictures on that site, along with the information I was able to give him, to definitively identify three women in particular who were featured in photos and listed as the artists on the church business site.”

  “And who were they?”

  Even now, the next part of the story made him smile.

  “What they weren’t, was adults. They were all minors.”

  Autumn raised a brow. “Wait, did he get them for violating child labor laws?”

  “Yep, and then, he took it one step further. He got them for human trafficking.”

  Autumn sucked in air. “The cult leader was forcing the kids into prostitution?”

  Daniel shook his head. “When people say human trafficking, they think of sex workers, sex trafficking, but it’s defined as using force, fraud, or coercion to exploit people for sex acts, or labor. He got them on labor trafficking.”

  “So the girls wouldn’t, couldn’t, admit to the physical and sexual abuse, but Agent Salford got them to talk about being forced to make ceramic mugs.”

  “He didn’t have to. It was all right there in the financial records. The accounting was set up to say the artists were all full-time volunteers, who were given food and lodging in exchange for their documented full-time volunteer efforts.

  “But they were children. Children have limits as to how much they can work, even if it’s as a volunteer. It is severe psychological manipulation to make provision of shelter and food, both of which children have a right to, dependent on a child’s labor output. Therefore, the church was guilty of violating child labor laws, human trafficking, and child neglect. The charges stuck, and most of the adults were convicted.”

  “He managed to turn their cutesy bullshit store into evidence against them. Damn. That’s good.”

  “And he did it all using their own financial records. Because you see, Rand Salford wasn’t with the FBI human trafficking division. He was with white collar financial crimes. He was a forensic accountant.”

  He knew he was smiling, and she answered his smile with one of her own.

  “The apostle—and by the way, I call him that because I refuse to say his name—was eventually prosecuted for pedophilia and rape, when some of the girls came forward, after they’d been out of the cult for a while, and learned what was normal.”

  “Good. I’m glad he had to pay for those crimes.”

  “And the day I turned 18 I changed my name. Daniel after the main character in The Shadow of the Wind. The first book I found in that box and read. And Randall after Agent Randall ‘Rand’ Salford.”

  She squeezed his hand. “You’re a forensic accountant, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I tell you something?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And I want you to really listen.”

  “I’m listening,” he assured her.

  “You’re amazing. You’re kind and sexy and smart.” She set her glass aside and then slid off the chaise, onto her knees in front of him. She kissed their linked fingers, then raised their hands to her face, rubbing her cheek against his knuckles. “You had every right to tell me to stop being such a headache when I walked off. You didn’t. You helped me deal with my own shit. Made me feel safe. You are, quite simply, amazing.”

  Daniel looked down at Autumn. The deep V of her shirt gave him an almost perfect view of her breasts. He wanted to reach down and grasp her gently by the throat. Order her to open her mouth, just so he could imagine what it would look like when his cock slid between her lips.

  Wanted to slide his hand into her shirt, tug her breast out so it was exposed, so he could play with her nipple.

  He wouldn’t, couldn’t, because now she knew about his past…but she didn’t know his secret.

  “Autumn…don’t. I can’t touch you. Not until you know…”

  “Know what?”

  “That I’m a monster.”

  Chapter 18

  It took everything she had not to burst into tears. To sob for the little boy he’d been. A child who never had a chance to be a child, who had reinvented himself. Taken a new name and followed in the footsteps of a man who he’d seen as a hero.

  Everything about him, from his easy self-confidence to the calm way he’d handled her emotional responses, spoke of a man who was sure of himself and his place in the world. It must have taken a lot of work for him to get there, and she wanted to stand up and start clapping. Shout “Bravo” because, damn it, he needed to be celebrated for what he’d overcome.

  The smile was gone from his face. His expression had become unreadable. “I can’t touch you. Not until you know…”

  Her stomach clenched. “Know what?”

  “That I’m a monster.”

  “No.” Her denial was vehement. He wouldn’t let her think badly about herself, and she was going to do the same for him.

  But when he shook his head she stopped, her next protest dying on her tongue.

  “This is the part where you find out I’m a liar.” He tugged his hand free of hers and stood, leaving her kneeling, facing an empty chair.

  “My secret isn’t what happened to me as a child. That’s public record. I testified at the trials—which took years to make it to court—when I was adult, so my name, my new name is listed. You could google me and find it.”

  “You said before that how you appear is a lie. Daniel, it’s not. I get it, you modeled yourself on the FBI agent who you saw slay a monster. That’s not all that different from what the rest of us do. No one tells you that fake it until you make it doesn’t mean that you’ll stop feeling like a fake once you actually do make it.”

  He stood at the window, hands in his pockets. His waistcoat hugged his trim waist, emphasized the breath of his shoulders. He looked like a CEO, a titan of industry taking a moment at the end of a long day.

  “You aren’t defined by who you were as a child, or what happened to you,” she said softly.

  He was out there somewhere, in the shadows, a child who had never made it to adulthood, his identity erased at 18 when the boy he’d been shed that ragged, battered identity to become the first iteration of the man he now was.

  “I’m a Dom because I need control. I don’t just like it. I need it. I’ve learned to accept that there are situations and people I cannot control. It took a long time, but I accepted it.”

  Autumn got off her knees and perched on the end of the chaise. “Well, you did a good job compartmentalizing, because on first impressions you’re an easy-going, insightful, and compassionate man.”

  “Thanks to literal years of therapy.”

  She waited for him to continue, but he just stood there, looking out at the night.

  “Daniel.” Autumn rose, crossing her arms. “Enough with the dramatic staring into the darkness. What am I missing?” A thought occurred to her. “Did your therapist tell you that being a Dom
was a bad idea? Because of your issues with control?”

  “I told him I liked to be in control in the bedroom, but didn’t open it up for a full discussion. Never mentioned D/s, or joining Las Palmas.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I convinced myself that I didn’t need to. That bottling up this need, letting it out only when I’m doing D/s, was okay. That the rules of BDSM, being in the club…that was enough structure to contain my need.”

  She sorted through what he was saying, both actual words and the unsaid, the subtext that was written in the tense lines of his body. “So each of us is using BDSM, and Las Palmas, as a lockbox. A place where we keep a part of ourselves we don’t want anyone else to see, or know about.”

  Finally, he turned away from the window. “I knew exactly what you were talking about last night, when we were sitting in the grass, and you said that you didn’t want to mix romance with D/s.”

  “And for you…” The analytical part of her brain made a connection she hadn’t seen before, and the realization caused a soft, heavy feeling to pool in her gut. “Oh. You don’t want anyone outside of the club to know you like BDSM, because you’re worried that they’ll wonder why you like it, given your past.”

  His shoulders dropped, and he stared at the floor for a long moment. When he looked up, he was smiling, but it wasn’t his normal smile. The smile that she found so damn attractive. It was a cruel twist of his lips.

  “Knowing now that I’m the son of a cult leader pedophile abuser, aren’t you at least a little alarmed that I’m a sexual sadist?”

  He was ready for her to deny it. She could see it in the way he was standing. If she’d say ‘no’, that she trusted him, he’d point out that she just met him.

  Time to flip the script.

  “Of course I’m worried about it. I’m not an idiot.”

  Daniel blinked.

  “Why do I like having men hit me? I got enough love as a child. But clearly something in me is broken, and it was before my exes fucked me up.”

  “Autumn…”

  “So fine, we’re clichés. I’m a successful woman in a predominately male setting. I’m perfectly in control and even aggressive in my day-to-day life, but I need to be topped in the bedroom. This is hardly an earth-shatteringly unique profile. It’s why I’m pretty sure half the other managers at my firm see Dommes on the weekends. They need the same release I do.