The King

by Tiffany Reisz

  you and I are going to have a talk with him.”

  “Why? You have more information about me you want to sell him?”

  “No. Because I want to destroy him as much as you. And we can.”

  “How?” Kingsley asked.

  Sam reached into a bag at her feet and pulled something out.

  “You were right, King.” She held up a VHS videotape and smiled. “There’s always something. And I found it.”

  38

  SAM DIDN’T TELL KINGSLEY ANYTHING ELSE, AND IT was the greatest test of his faith not to press her into spilling all her secrets. Instead, she marched right to his office as if she owned it, turned on the television and put the tape in the VCR. She didn’t hit Play.

  “You’re not going to talk to me?” Kingsley asked her. “You’re not going to explain yourself?”

  “The tape will explain it,” Sam said. “And you have to trust me.”

  “I don’t have to do anything but die and pay taxes, and I think I’ve found a way around the second one.”

  “Please, King. Let me do this for you. You did so much for me.”

  “You get one chance,” he said. “One.”

  “One is all I need. I promise. I won’t let you down again.”

  Before Kingsley could ask another question, Blaise opened the door and ushered Reverend Fuller inside. She shut the door behind him and made herself scarce. He didn’t blame her.

  “What’s this about?” Fuller asked. He had on a suit and tie and looked as pastoral as Kingsley had ever seen him. “I was told you had something for me, Mr. Edge. Something I needed to see.”

  “Don’t ask me,” Kingsley said, knowing Fuller expected Kingsley to attempt to bribe him. Fuller likely had a wire on right now, recording everything. “I don’t know anything. Ask her.”

  Reverend Fuller looked her up and down.

  “You called me, didn’t you?” Fuller asked. “Have we met?”

  “Nope,” she said. “But your wife and I have.”

  “You know my wife? How?” Fuller asked, warily.

  Sam picked up the remote control.

  “Close your eyes, King,” Sam said.

  Although he didn’t want to, Kingsley did as ordered. And as soon as his eyes were closed, Sam must have hit the Play button because the next sound he heard was a woman—not Sam—having an orgasm.

  Kingsley burst into laughter. He should have known.

  “Turn that filth off,” Fuller demanded.

  “Filth?” Sam repeated. “That’s your wife. And me. We aren’t filthy. We’d just gotten out of the shower. She loves showering with me.”

  “Turn it off.”

  Sam hit the stop button. Kingsley opened his eyes. He would have kissed the girl, but he decided to save that for later.

  “You seduced my wife and videotaped it?” Fuller asked, his hands curling into angry fists.

  “Someone sent a goon to my apartment offering me money to rat on Kingsley. I asked to meet who Mr. Goon was working for. Turns out it was your wife. We had a nice long talk about you and her.”

  “You fucked Lucy Fuller,” Kingsley said, still laughing. “You and your fetish for straight girls.”

  “Straight girls? Not this time,” Sam said. “Lucy Fuller’s a lesbian.”

  “My wife is not a lesbian.”

  “And yet you two haven’t had sex in ten years,” Sam said. “She told you that?” Fuller asked, horror-stricken.

  “Ten years?” Kingsley said. “I barely made it ten days. How do you do it?”

  “Lucy says he masturbates all the time. She showed me his porn collection. He confiscated dirty mags from the kids at his church and keeps them for himself.”

  “You bitch, how dare you—”

  Kingsley took a threatening step forward. Fuller’s face was red, his jaw clenched. He looked like a man on the verge of a meltdown. Kingsley loved it.

  “Watch your language,” Kingsley said. “There are ladies present.” He turned around and looked at Sam. “How did you know?”

  “That night in your bed when I told you about me and Faith at camp…I hadn’t thought about that in ten years. I didn’t want to think about it. But Faith had said something I hadn’t forgotten. She said she’d been sleeping with her youth pastor’s wife, and the husband had caught them in bed together. Wife gets to stay in the ministry. Faith got sent off to camp, to die. WTL runs the camps. I had a hunch—turns out I was right. Faith Spencer went to WTL’s first church. She was in your youth group,” Sam said to Fuller. “Your wife killed my friend.”

  “Your friend killed herself.”

  “It was the only way out for us. But not for your wife. She gets to live in luxury, raking in millions of dollars by telling women how to live their lives. She stands in your pulpit and calls us all demon-possessed sinners. And meanwhile, she’s sleeping with every little queer girl that crosses her path.”

  “Lucy is a very ill woman.” Fuller lifted his chin. “I’m trying to get her help. But she is not a lesbian.”

  “Want to watch the rest of the tape? She seems to think she’s a lesbian.”

  “You burn that tape and you burn it right now.” Fuller marched over to the television.

  “Go for it,” Sam said. “I made copies. Dozens of them.”

  “Can I have one?” Kingsley asked.

  Sam glared at him.

  Fuller ripped the tape from the VCR and broke it into two pieces.

  “Do whatever you want to it,” Sam said. “There’s more where that came from. Your lovely wife and I have been in bed together quite a few times by now. I’ve got a tape from my apartment, one from your bedroom in your house, one from a hotel… I like the hotels. Easier to hide the camera.”

  Fuller dropped the tape to the f loor and stomped on it.

  “Are you done with your temper tantrum?” Kingsley asked.

  Fuller looked at him with a murderous gleam in his eyes.

  “What do you want?” Fuller asked.

  “I want The Renaissance,” Kingsley asked. “We’ll make it a fair deal, and I’ll pay you half what you paid to the city.”

  “Done.”

  “And I want all your camps to close,” Kingsley said. “All of them. Every last one of them. You are out of the conversion business.”

  “Those camps make us a lot of money,” Fuller said. His every word sounded pained and restrained. If he dropped dead of a heart attack on this f loor right now, Kingsley wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “I know,” Sam said. “Lucy admits to that, too. She’s quite a talker when you get some booze into her and give her a few orgasms. She loves being fisted. Want to see? I can go get another copy of the tape.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Fuller took a deep breath. “Fine. You have a deal. I close the camps and you buy The Renaissance. If a word of this gets out, it’s over. For both of you.”

  “Are you threatening me? A man whose wife hasn’t let him fuck her in ten years, and I’m supposed to be scared of you?” Kingsley asked.

  “You piece of shit.” Fuller raised his arm to throw a punch, but Kingsley caught him easily by the wrist.

  “Let me go,” Fuller said, struggling against him.

  “A Catholic priest taught me this trick,” Kingsley said, squeezing Fuller’s wrist until he felt bone. “I’m more Christian than you’d think.”

  “Catholics aren’t real Christians,” Fuller spat back.

  “Oh, no,” Sam said. “You really shouldn’t have said that.”

  Kingsley twisted his hand and broke Fuller’s wrist. The snapping sound was music to his ears.

  Fuller screamed like a demon was clawing its way out of his soul.

  “I am so hard right now,” Kingsley said with the biggest smile on his face he could ever remember wearing. “This must be how that blond monster feels all the time.”

  Sam stepped in front of Fuller and stared down at him as he cradled his broken wrist against his stomach.

  “You’re
vile,” Sam said. “You tell lies to children and make them think they’re evil. And this whole time you’re the evil one living with someone evil who is doing evil every day. Faith Spencer was in love with your wife, and your wife sent her to hell for it.”

  “I told you. She’s a sick woman. She needs help and prayer and—”

  “She is sick,” Sam said. “But not because she’s gay. She’s a sexual predator who preyed on a confused teenage girl at your church. You both make me sick. Now get out of here. You don’t deserve to be in Kingsley’s house, to breathe Kingsley’s air. Or mine. You call your lawyer, you draw up the papers, you close the camps—and you sell us The Renaissance, and you do it all in one week or every television news station, every newspaper, every Christian radio show will get a copy of that tape. Even the motherfucking 700 Club.”

  “Go to hell,” Fuller said to Sam.

  “I’ve already been to hell,” Sam said. “That’s where I met your wife.”

  39

  WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD, FULLER STORMED OUT OF Kingsley’s office, still cradling his limp arm. Kingsley exhaled. Then he laughed. Then he turned to Sam.

  Sam bent over a trash can by his desk. He could tell Sam was close to throwing up. Kingsley brought her a glass of water and waited.

  “Sorry,” she said, taking the water from him. “Fucking someone you don’t want to fuck and pretending to enjoy is…”

  “Hell,” Kingsley said. “I’ve done it, too.”

  “It’s okay. I closed my eyes and thought of Blaise.”

  Kingsley cupped the back of her neck. “Sam, are you…”

  She waved her hand. “I’ll be fine. I am fine.”

  “What did you come back here for?” Kingsley asked. Sam stood up and faced him. “Why did you do this for me? I fired you.”

  “I ignored that,” she said, and made a valiant attempt at a smile. “I was always working for you, even when I was taking money from Lucy Fuller. I didn’t plan on you catching me in the act, but it worked out for the best. After you fired me, that convinced Lucy I was on her side. I was never on her side. Never.”

  She met Kingsley’s eyes.

  “I can’t believe you did this for me,” Kingsley said. “And me. And Faith. And every kid at those camps.” “It worked. You shut them down. Not me, you.”

  “Wish I could have done it years ago,” Sam said. “Maybe Faith would still be alive.”

  Kingsley took her gently by the arm and pulled her to him. She cried in his arms, and he let her cry. She’d earned her tears and his trust. Her small body shook against his, and he kissed her hair. Soon she’d cried it out and was calm again.

  “I would never have asked you to sleep with her,” Kingsley said. “I would never have let you.”

  “I know,” Sam said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you I was doing it. You would have ordered me not to.”

  “I wouldn’t have let her near you.”

  “It’s okay, I promise. It wasn’t fun,” she said. “But what’s done is done. And now…I guess we win.”

  “We win,” Kingsley said. “And we should celebrate.”

  Sam shook her head. “No celebrating. We have to work. The club is opening in November, and we’ve done nothing for it.”

  “Not nothing. We have an entire staff ready,” Kingsley said.

  “Do we have our two dominatrixes?”

  “Felicia and Irina. Check.”

  “Male submissive?”

  “Justin. Check.”

  “Female submissive?”

  “Luka. Check.”

  “Bouncer and bodyguard?”

  “Lachlan. Check.”

  “I guess we have everything. Wait. No. Male dominant?”

  “Check.”

  “Who?”

  “Me.” Kingsley pointed at himself.

  “You?”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “I think it’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out Sam’s clipboard. He presented it to her like a king awarding a sword to his knight-errant.

  With a smile and still shaking hands, she took it from him. With a f lourish she made a check mark on the page.

  “Check.” She grinned up at him. “Now we just need a name. Any ideas?”

  “I’m too tired to think of a name right now. I slept on the priest’s f loor last night. We got very drunk.”

  “You and the padre got smashed? What was the occasion?”

  “Clergy Appreciation Day.”

  “That’s a thing?”

  “Apparently so. Got drunk with a priest last night. Broke a televangelist’s wrist this morning. My new favorite holiday.”

  “I think you did more than break his wrist. Did he get blood on you?”

  “Blood? Where?”

  Sam pointed at Kingsley’s stomach. A bloodstain the size of a quarter marred his otherwise pristine white shirt.

  “That’s not Fuller’s blood,” Kingsley said, lifting up his shirt. “It’s mine.”

  “What the hell is that?” Sam dropped to her knees in front of him. “Jesus, you have something carved on your stomach.”

  “I do?”

  “It looks like an eight inside a circle. Did Mistress Felicia do that?”

  Kingsley looked down and saw a small curved line carved into his skin a few inches above his groin.

  Kingsley laughed. “That priest—I’ll kill him.” “What is it?”

  “He signed me,” Kingsley said. “I told Søren last night that Felicia doesn’t do blood-play. He must have cut me while I was asleep. How much did I drink that I slept through that?”

  A lot. He’d drunk a lot last night.

  “Signed you?”

  “This is how he signs his name,” Kingsley said, pointing at the shallow cut. “It’s the first two letters of his name. An S with an O around it and a slash through it.”

  “Well, it looks like an eight inside a circle.”

  An eight and a circle… The image stirred a memory. A rare good one.

  “Have you ever read The Divine Comedy?” Kingsley asked. “The poem by Dante?”

  “No,” Sam said, coming to her feet. “Any good?”

  “We were assigned to read it in school. One night in bed, Søren read to me from the Inferno in the original Italian.” Kingsley had used Søren’s stomach as a pillow while Søren read out loud to him in mellif luous musical Italian. “One of the rare better-than-sex moments of my life.”