by Gabi Moore
There’s no way for me to account what Aden was going through during this entire experience.
The drive was tedious, and slow. The roads were all one lane highways, and incredibly narrow. The only way we could get through some parts was to be the snowplow with our wheels. I was grateful that the car he had picked up was an SUV. It seemed primed to deal with the harsh Maine winters.
The vehicle trudged on through the snow, packing down powder into a compact tread which spread through the forest canopy. The roads were twisting and at some points, hazardous. At the least, the pass was clear, which is something that I was grateful for. My mind began to drift again as I handled the car throughout the narrow passes of the forested mountain range.
I had to relive the time spent with Ryan, and the way he had tried to use my position to further his own agenda. I was searching for mistakes.
What did I do wrong? I thought to myself.
The vanity of the situation was unbearable, so I tried not to think about it at all. The fact that I had already fucked another guy wasn't a shock. Neither was the fact that I was traveling with him toward presumed safety. My relationships often had an instrumental element. The real shocker was that my goal was to avoid the homicidal efforts of Ryan. I still had trouble accepting that he viewed me as an informational liability to be eliminated.
I was staring into the void of my own history. I wondered what I could have done differently. In spite of the circumstances, I still thought about how I could have salvaged a relationship that was doomed from the start.
“Pathetic,” I muttered.
Suddenly self-conscious, I turn to the side, wondering if Aden had woken up from my speech. He had not, which gave me a sigh of relief. I enjoyed the fact that I had some time to myself to think, even if I was now being used as a chaperone for his agenda.
I had no way of knowing what he would choose to do from this point, and could only hope that he didn’t put too many clues together.
As he continued to sleep, my mind drifted into a twilight zone of fear and nameless apprehension. Memories of conversations with Ryan came back to me in disjointed fragments, while I stared down the narrow, unlit forest road.
The first flashback that hit me took me back to a cozy Metropolitan Cafe named Velvet Anise.
“You’re certain this will work?” Ryan asked me.
We were in our first meeting together. I was watching his handsome expression and those cold, and dangerous eyes. I could see him evaluate the amount of promise I had to offer him, in his future endeavors. I could tell he was evaluating me, and I didn’t even care. After a lifetime of dealing in the predatory business world of Manhattan, for some reason, I couldn’t keep my game face straight for this one.
He cut through to the core of my being with nothing more than a look.
“Of course, it will work,” I replied. “This distribution plan is the basis for all of modern advertisement psychology. This is the same strategy that is used by politicians, and Gucci.”
He remained skeptical. He doubted whether so blatant a technique might actually be a viable approach. After all, the operation required long term subtle infiltration into civilian life if it was to be a success.
“I’m telling you,” I said, irritated, “there is nothing new in the world of commercial advertisement. You try what works and you keep doing it. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.”
“Someday, they are going to catch on, and everything is going to fail.”
Those words I felt, were an insight into his character. Some aspect of himself that he was sharing exclusively with me. I wanted him to be a man of incredible depth. Someone I could tame, and work to my will; that motive on my part was no doubt reflexive, as that is exactly what he ended up doing to me.
Another flashback with Ryan overtook my senses. This time, in the ballroom of his mansion on Millionaire Row, off 5th Avenue and 57th.
“Lorin, it’s important that you trust me implicitly,” he told me, leading me through the empty chambers of his home.
I remember being astonished at the sheer vacancy of the place. The way our footsteps echoed on the marble floor, and off the vacant walls of the room. He could have had art galleries, or beautiful murals. He could have collected rare statues or antiques. Any number of decorative objects were common in the other mansions on the street. The owners always endeavored to show off their wealth and taste to guests whenever they entertained.
Ryan wasn’t like that.
He didn’t mind the bareness of the room. It was sparse, and gave an ominous sort of tone to the environment. I remember feeling like I was walking through some kind of chapel, or abandoned temple. The morose man, walking in front of me was leading me forward to some kind of revelatory personal experience.
“I find that the foundation of most successful relationships is the amount of trust that we can freely share with one another…”
I remember the voice so clearly, as it echoed off of the walls, and filled up spaces in my mind. I recalled the fact that my thoughts stopped being focused on the decor of the place, and became focused entirely on Ryan.
That was the start of our relationship. By that night, he had me sign two contracts. One of which was for our business arrangement, and the other.
Well, the other determined the boundaries of our personal contract.
The whole thing was new to me. I had never before been a Sub in a relationship, but I was so mesmerized by the way that he interacted with the world around him. His mannerisms exercised a control within his environment that I found to be incredibly enticing. The level of confidence in his abilities was stunning. I also admired the precision with which he devoted his resources. The more I got to know him, the more attraction I had toward working with him.
Beyond that basic attraction, there were obvious financial incentives.
I was able to expand my business beyond anything that I would have previously thought possible. As long as the arrangement went forward, I watched my competitors dissipate into dust. Outclassing them with sheer capital was an easy maneuver at that point.
Aden was right about my being involved in the fashion business, but he didn’t know to what extent.
I was the leader of the most dominating trend setting firm of tech accessories in Manhattan. Our company was called Lux Enterprises, but that didn’t end up mattering for long. Within a few more months, CONTEK had swallowed Lux Enterprises whole.
I retain a dominant percentage of the stocks for the business, but if I had died, full power to the company would have gone to Ryan. As it was, he was acting VP, and a thought leader on the board of directors. Nobody else was capable of standing up to the board, like Ryan. He had a way of getting under your skin in a personal way and exposing every secret you had inside of you.
In the end, he had such a magnetic personality that you’d end up giving away those secrets for free, just for the chance to feel him pressed up against you. Bodily contact was the only way that I ever felt any sense of affirmation that I was desired by him. The subtlest reminder that he wanted me was enough for a while. It even seemed like the absence of connection and affirmation only made me seek it more. I watched myself throughout the entire relationship. I saw myself as an experiment in behavioral codependency.
In my darkest moments, I can laugh about it now, but only because I made an effort to retain self-consciousness throughout the entire ordeal.
Another flashback suddenly led me to the Dungeon beneath the Sclari Mansion.
My hands are bound, and he has been whipping me for so long that I’m certain that my ass is bleeding. He’s trying to get me to break. He suspects that I don’t have the ability to keep my mouth shut about some information that he let slip during one of his orgasmic releases.
I can’t tell if he has lied to me about the specific intention behind the governmental funding, or not. I don’t doubt that the information he gave me was the truth. It was possible to deduce something of the nature was going on without t
he need for additional verbal affirmation.
I ended up keeping my mouth shut for the entire whipping, but something inside of me knew that in spite of my silence, he was just biding his time. There was no future for me with Ryan, and the relationship that I had suffered through this far was coming to a close.
His attitude was becoming more calloused by the day, and there was an increased level of cruelty in the way that he handled me. Eventually, the sex was completely gone, and nothing remained except violence. When violence started to be replaced by indifference, I began to worry. I foresaw the episode in the forest, and yet for some reason, I didn’t allow myself to be moved into action.
You don’t get to be the leader of a major trend-setting corporation by being stupid, and imperceptive. Unfortunately, something critical within myself had died during the last year of abuse.
The only part that I didn’t understand is whether or not he had intentionally released the information, or if it was merely a moment of weakness. I hadn’t experienced any weakness from him in the entire duration of our nine-month relationship. Believe me, I kept my eye out for it. I suspect our foray into business, bondage, and sado-masochism had blinded me.
I did my best the entire time to size him up — seeking out chinks in his armor, but I could find nothing at all to use against him. I was silent for nine months, passively receiving whatever he wanted to share with me, both the good and the bad. All I wanted to do was find out his weakness, likely so I could exploit him in the same way that he had managed to exploit me.
Yet there was nothing.
Looking back, I can’t say that I was proud of my experience there. I’m not sure I would do it again, but I learned a hell of a lot of things about myself. I picked up a few crucial details about CONTEK, which ended up being significant enough to where Ryan was comfortable pushing me into death.
He didn’t take care of my ‘disposal’ himself; Ryan was far too sophisticated for that. Instead he simply left me to the mercy of his men. That was the final day of our arrangement. I was sitting there in the basement dungeon, tied up, naked and abused. I was just waiting, and had been for weeks. When the door finally opened, light came into the room. I tried to reach out and tell him that we were through, and that I didn’t consent to this treatment any longer.
Ryan wasn’t there.
Instead, I was brutalized by a group of thugs under his employ. The CON part of CONTEK, no doubt. After they had used me in every possible way they could, I was still breathing. One of them was supposed to finish the job and put me out of my misery, but he didn’t. I could tell, even in my deteriorated state that he had taken a liking to me, which is a strange and despicable thing, if you think about it.
Unfortunately, I have thought about it. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to believe that he could have targeted me as an object of affection. Whatever affection may have been there could never justify the behavior of himself, or the other men.
The man left in charge of my removal was a bit of a superstitious nut. He thought it would be ‘fun’ to tie me up in the woods and see if the ‘forest spirits’ might have their way with me as I transitioned from this world to the other. When financially successful people cling to obscure and malicious forms of occultism, life gets ugly.
He was also a beast of a man.
More huge and formidable than any of the others in the group. While the others were comfortable raping me once, he was insatiable. He took me time and time again, and nobody stopped him because they were afraid. I suspect fear was the same reason they went along with his dark occult superstitions.
It would have been more reasonable just to dump my corpse off of the Brooklyn Bridge. Financial stability is not a guarantee of psychological stability. In fact, it seems quite the opposite trend is the case.
That’s as much as I can remember prior to waking up in Aden’s Cabin. The reflections I had undergone throughout the last several hours of our drive had been tiresome. I felt like I had gained nothing new from those thought processes. I wanted only to try and come up with some perspective into the current situation, and find a way to move forward, but I couldn’t think straight.
My back was cramped, I was hungry, and I had to take a piss. I knew Aden didn’t want me to pull over into an actual building, so I pulled over to the side of the road, got out, and squatted down to relieve myself.
The door was left open, and a light snowfall had begun to shower down through the break in the forest canopy. I needed light, to see, but the unfortunate consequence of leaving the door open was that the temperature shifted inside of the car. Aden woke up, and shifted around in his chair, then got out of the car, and walked around the front of the vehicle.
I didn’t bother to talk to him, and I didn’t have much to say. I was a bit resentful that I didn’t have any food, and that I had been sitting still for so long, but bitching wasn’t going to change anything about that. Besides, if I ate food, I’d probably have to take a shit, and I didn’t feel like squatting in the snow, only to have nothing to wipe my ass.
I shouldn’t have been so concerned. Aden was prepared for everything.
“Get some rest,” Aden told me as he put the car into gear.
The car was cold, and as soon as the doors shut, my attention focused intently on the heat pouring out of the door frame. I didn’t bother responding to him, or telling him anything about the thoughts that had taken place during his period of rest.
“I’ll take over from here, thanks for taking charge, I really needed that sleep,” he said, while he drove forward into the darkness.
I was ready to sleep. I could deal with processing of our new situation in the morning.
Chapter 14 - Lorin
I slept through a dreamless night and woke up to the sound of ocean.
In spite of everything, I actually felt a sense of relaxation at the sound of the waves. So much of my life over the last year had been toxic and painful. Life was beginning to feel like it was too much to manage — but I didn’t notice until that morning.
“Wow… I can’t believe how good I feel,” I told Aden.
“A fair night’s sleep,” he said, “waking up to the sound of the waves, I’m not sure you need much more than that to actually feel a sense of peace in your life. Well, in a moment’s glance anyways.”
“Some food wouldn’t hurt.”
He nodded.
“I thought you might say that. C’mon, there’s a place over here where we can grab a bite to eat.”
We were parked on a misty boardwalk street, somewhere just after dawn. The sea birds were in the air, calling out to one another, and the sound of the waves grew more vivid in my ears as soon as I got out of the car. The air was brisk, and I felt the moisture of the ocean reach out to kiss my skin all over my face. A deep breath filled my lungs with the scent of the sea.
“I don’t want to forget this,” I said to no-one in particular.
Aden didn’t respond, but when I looked over toward him, I could see that he didn’t have to respond verbally to enjoy the same experience. The coast offers people the opportunity to experience that kind of benefit regardless of their situation.
The sea doesn’t judge you for anything. You know that if it had half a mind to, it could crush you, and whatever beach-side city you were busy stopping through at the time. The power of the ocean seems to me to be sort of like a joke.
The darkness amid such breathtaking beauty put me in an interesting mood. I followed Aden toward an old cafe about four blocks off of the boardwalk. The car was parked in a plain enough location. If we stayed here too long, I don’t doubt we would be found out. Fortunately, the place we ended up seemed to be abandoned enough to where it didn’t seem to matter much to Aden. I took confidence based on his posture, and chose not to worry about it.
The place he chose for breakfast was a small little seaside dive. When you walked into the building, the first thing you noticed was the dim lighting, and the blue tint to the walls. Archaic fishermen
gear adorned the walls. The entire decor and wait staff was unassuming. Seemed to me like there was only one person there, and the cook in the back of the cafe.
“A friend of mine and I came here about fourteen years ago,” Aden said. “Not much has changed since that point. Kind of nice how some places seem like they are kept outside of time.”
Of course, that’s not entirely true. Time passes through every place the same. The only difference comes about when you take into account how people relate to the environments that they maintain.
“I’d wager the management of this place found something that worked for them.”
While I spoke, my attention was focused on a rusty anchor and a lobster cage.
Aden said nothing, and simply motioned to the waitress and smiled.
She came over from preparing silverware, or whatever it was that kept her occupied, and brought us two cups of coffee right away.
“Thanks hun,” Aden said.
She looked at him curiously, and paused for a moment. Then, aware that she had deviated from the customer service script, she picked it up again and asked if either of us knew what we wanted to order.
“Surprise me,” Aden replied with an amiable grin. “Also, do you still provide laptop service?”
“Of course, do you both need one?”
The waitress looked at me, and I shrugged.
“One will do,” Aden replied for me with a firm tone.
I watched the waitress leave, and then looked at him with a bit of disdain in my eyes. I didn’t have to vocalize my complaint. He didn’t have any trouble picking up on the thoughts that were running through my mind regardless.
“The less our enemies know about your current whereabouts, the better. I can’t risk you reaching out to friends or other possible contacts that could be compromised.”
He made sense, and I understood what he was getting at, but I couldn’t help but feel like he was deliberately treating me like a child. I decided now was not the time.