Vow of Silence

by Roxy Harte

Looking down I see the business card in my lap where I dropped it and I remember the man who answered my call. He sounded purely evil, not in a Hollywood B-movie way, but truly, inherently evil. A cold chill runs up my spine as I remember what made me freak out.

  I’ll find you, Giselle Marconi.

  I redial the number on the business card and am surprised when the same man answers. “How do you know my name?”

  “Terrifying, isn’t it?”

  I shake uncontrollably, listening hard to every sound that comes through my earpiece for any clue as to where he is or who he is. “Tell me!”

  He laughs at my panic and I realize I’m turning him on. My fear is foreplay for him. God, oh God. Taillights in my rearview mirror make me react and I throw my car into gear as I see a vehicle has pulled off the shoulder behind me. It’s too dark to make out any details except that it is a truck as I pull back onto the interstate. The truck follows.

  “Is that you? Are you behind me?” I accelerate to dangerous speeds, losing whoever it was. “Are you still there?”

  “Oh dear, sweet girl, I’m here. I’m so enjoying your panic.”

  “Look, you crazy fuck, leave me alone!”

  “It’s too late for that, Giselle. I want you, and I always take what I want.”

  It’s the second time tonight a man has threatened me with such a promise. I could be talking to Lenka on the phone but I don’t believe I am. My father said I needed a protector. Did he know something like this was going to happen?

  Streetlights blur together as I press the accelerator down.

  “Giselle?”

  His voice makes me jerk; I forgot to disconnect.

  “I will find you, Giselle.”

  The truck reappears behind me, accelerates and comes up beside me. I look, wanting to see the face of the man threatening me.

  “Diego!” I slam on my brakes and whip into a spin that leaves me sideways on the shoulder. Luckily there is no one on this road except for me and Diego.

  I’m pissed.

  I’m fuming.

  Shaking, I rummage in my glove compartment for the small-caliber gun I keep there, and when I jump out of the car I’m waving the gun and screaming. “What the fuck, Diego? What the fuck?”

  He exits the truck with his hands in the air. “Are you all right?”

  “You could have killed us both!”

  He starts to come around his truck toward me but I aim the gun at him, threatening, “Don’t take another step!”

  “Please, Gigi. You know me. I only want you to help me find my Isabella!”

  “I can’t, Diego. Ask my father. Ask my mother.”

  “Don’t you think I already did? They are playing as dumb as you. They say they don’t know anything.”

  “Ahhhhh!” I scream my frustration into the night sky. “I can’t help you. Don’t follow me, and leave me the fuck alone!”

  I climb back into my car and peel out, not wanting to think about Isabella.

  * * * * *

  I lie in bed remembering.

  I can almost see her face. I hear her crying. “Help me! Please! Help me.”

  Memories are like scabs—once you start picking at them pretty soon blood wells—and when I wipe the tears from my eyes, I expect to see my fingers stained scarlet. I don’t want to keep thinking about that day when I was so young…I’ve kept that memory at bay for so long…and now it is all I can think about. Did that woman leave some lasting impression on my subconscious that has made me the way I am? Did her death trigger my own death wish? God. I was a child! I didn’t understand what was happening.

  What could I have done to help her?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  I do not expect Diego pounding on my door at midnight. I know who it is because I look through the security peephole. I don’t open the door to him. “Go away. I don’t know anything.”

  “But you can help me find out where my niece is!”

  “No, Diego. I can’t.” I put my back against the door, heart pounding, hands shaking. Under my breath I admit, “They’re too powerful.”

  He’s loud and hysterical. I think he’s drunk but I won’t call the police. I think he knows I won’t. Fortunately after a while he goes away, but any thoughts I had of sleep before his arrival are now gone and it is with singular purpose I go into my bedroom. Stripping, I shower quickly but take time to shave closely, under my arms, my legs, any stubble where once I had pubic hair. After drying off I cover every inch of my body with a warm, musk-scented lotion.

  My only choice is leather or latex. I’m going clubbing. I need a partner tonight desperately—not to dance—but to hurt me. A small voice in my head echoes Rachel. If the wrong man had met you there, you could have been the one dead!

  This is such a bad idea.

  It doesn’t stop me from going out the door and to the closest club. It’s dark and seedy, the kink scene players who come here are hard-core. Yes, yes, this is what I need. A beefy security guard with a skin-clinging t-shirt stretched to its max around his biceps grants me entrance. I march in, trying to appear cocky and confident but am denied a head-turning entrance by sheer numbers. Couples, both gay and straight, huddle in small groups, some dancing, some doing impromptu scenes.

  I head toward the bar, hoping to find a single willing to hook up.

  As luck would have it there is no one.

  Pissed off, I consider crashing a twosome and offering to be their third. I scan the room looking for potentials…

  “Giselle.”

  His voice. My breath stills in my chest as I forget how to breathe. I don’t turn to look at him. Not yet. I can’t look yet. I don’t want to be disappointed if he is short and too chubby, or bald and weaselly. I want him to be tall and dark, sporting an air of danger. I want him to live up to his dark promises. I want him to live up to his eerily terrifying voice.

  “I told you I’d find you.”

  “Yes, you did.” I stifle a giggle, feeling like a silly schoolgirl owl-eyed because the quarterback spoke to me. Taking a deep breath, I turn—and my throat closes on the scream that almost escapes. He’s every bit as terrifying as his voice. Thank you, God. I try to swallow back my fear and lose, my pussy twitching with excitement. “N-now w-what?”

  Chapter Six

  George

  Lin and I went to dinner and the opera this evening, and I honestly enjoyed our time together more than I have a single other evening out with a woman in a very long time. Knowing just how vanilla she is, I’ve teased her gently all evening.

  When you are at the gynecologist’s office and the doctor lubes you up with his latex-covered fingers, do you find yourself getting excited?

  Of course, she denied it and maybe she’s never thought of an exam as erotic in the least, but she shifted nervously again and again in her chair, leaving me to believe our conversation was turning her on.

  “I want to show you that pain can be pleasurable.”

  “I’m not made that way.”

  “Surely someone along the line has tweaked your nipples a little too hard and you had a jolt go up your spine that could only be described at pure, raw need.”

  She turns her face away, blushing, but she doesn’t deny it.

  Tonight I will make love to her—no whips, no paddles, no pain involved—and I want it that way, because I’m finding enjoyment in the vanilla intimacy we share. Maybe our normalcy is merely a novelty, but I cherish each second and don’t try to overanalyze it. I know at some point it will not be enough. Hopefully by then she will come to me and share her masochistic fantasies. There’s too much curiosity in the glances she gives me for that not to be the case.

  “Will you be able to love me if I never embrace your kinky ways, George?”

  I give her a long look but say nothing.

  “I am troubled by what happened at the club,” she admits.

  “That was hardly even kinky.”

  “I know. That’s a problem, isn’t it? What if I never want you to
spank me or flog me or…or…I don’t even know what is more terrible than that.”

  I do. All night I’ve imagined her bound by straps on my shiny steel examination table. I imagine her shivering against the cold metal. I imagine how sweet her screams will sound as I give her a first taste of pain.

  Arriving home, I unbuckle my seat belt and kiss her gently. “Would you rather I took you home?”

  “No. I love your house. The upstairs is so serene, so beautiful.”

  “So unlike the danger lurking in my basement?” I scoff.

  She caresses my cheek and I catch her hand to plant a kiss in her palm.

  “It is like you are two very separate men, George. I know you don’t see it, but as we drove to the club I noticed you changing before my very eyes. I do not think I like the man you are at the club. You frighten me.”

  I meet her gaze, trying to understand what she is saying.

  “Doctor Psycho is emotionally detached from everything and everyone. I do not ever want you to be emotionally detached from me.”

  “How could you ever think I would be emotionally detached from you?” I smile at her before exiting the car. I walk around and open her door for her.

  She climbs out and faces me. “Even though you love me, you could hurt me? You could leave me black and blue? Welted?”

  I can imagine my mark on her all too easily. What does she want me to say?

  There isn’t anything to say. I can’t convince her beyond what she knows. BDSM has to be experienced to be understood. I nuzzle her neck. “I won’t force you into anything.”

  “I wouldn’t love you if you did.”

  I kiss her, open-mouthed, enjoying the duel of our tongues. I run my hands from her hips to her nape, loving the warm softness of her bare back, the dress she wore being open. “Did I tell you how beautiful you are tonight?”

  “Once or twice.” She rubs her face against my cheek. “Did I mention that I am wearing a garter belt and stockings but no panties?”

  I run my hands back down, cupping her ass to pull her nearer before sliding my hand beneath her skirt to test the truth of her words—not that I doubt her—because I can’t resist.

  I run my hand up her thigh, feeling where the strap attaches to the hosiery, feeling where the skin is bare above. I close my eyes, loving how her bare bottom molds perfectly in my palm. “You should have revealed this naughty secret earlier in the evening, love.”

  She pushes against my chest with her palms. “So that you could tease me in the dark theater all evening? I don’t think so!”

  “You know me well, Lin. I would have brought you to orgasm in your seat.”

  “No, no, no.”

  Laughing, we hold hands as we approach the front door.

  “I am so hot for you, George. I don’t know if I can wait until we are inside.”

  I chuckle, imagining myself throwing her onto the front lawn and mating with her like a wild animal. I jerk her to me. “Oh, really?”

  Our mouths collide in a rough kiss.

  “I need you! You made me crazy tonight, talking about such naughty things.”

  “Which part of our conversation has you this excited?”

  “All of it.” She kisses me breathlessly. “Thinking about you touching me in public!”

  I am very close to pushing her down in the grass when a car drives by and brings me to my senses. Wrapped in each other’s arms, still kissing, we manage to stumble to the door. She grabs my cock through my slacks as I push the key into its hole.

  “Do you want me as badly as I want you?”

  “God, yes, Lin. I’ve been thinking about you naked all night. I’ve been thinking about everything I want to do to you.”

  She chuckles against my mouth. “Maybe you could pinch my nipples a little too hard to see if I would like that?”

  “Maybe I could introduce you to nipple clamps?” I push her through the threshold into the dark foyer.

  The house phone rings and startles us both. It is a loud, jarring sound in the otherwise silent house, and it has been my experience that phones ringing at very early hours rarely signal good news. I pull away from her embrace and she pouts.

  I fumble for the light switch and, finding it, the overhead chandelier comes on. It is very bright and I am left squinting. “I’m sorry, I should—”

  “Of course.” Lin turns her back to me, studying a painting that hangs in the foyer a little too intently. She tries to make it seem as if she won’t listen to my phone call, leaving me feeling I should have asked her if she wanted to wait in the living room.

  “Hello?” I answer the phone tersely. Lin looks over her shoulder at me in a definite come-hither look. Coy, shy, but she is so damn sexy.

  “George? Thank God, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

  Phillip?

  I never expected to hear the voice of a colleague from my past, Dr. Phillip Moyer, currently Chief of Staff at San Francisco General Hospital. Hearing his voice, I drop my keys onto a small table and lean my forehead into the rough texture of the stucco wall just to feel something solid, pushing hard enough to register pain. I am awake, this is not a dream. My heart collides with my sternum as it tries to leap from my chest and fails.

  For a moment, I forget Lin. An antique mahogany table topped with an outrageously extravagant flower arrangement blocks our view of each other but does not prevent her from grasping the fact that I am having a moment.

  “George?” Her voice holds concern.

  I compose myself quickly and take the call into my office, hoping she will make herself at home, doubting she will even as I hope it, and knowing there isn’t a damn thing I can do about her comfort because Phillip’s call has me too distracted to do anything but concentrate on remembering to breathe.

  A long, silent, awkward pause fills the dead airspace. Hearing my name a second time through the receiver spurs me to answer, feigning gladness, “Phillip! What a surprise!”

  We haven’t spoken since he, at the request of the Medical Board, asked me to resign from the hospital, step down from my teaching duties at the University of California School of Medicine Psychiatric Department and immediately remove myself from my private practice. Before that nightmare day we’d been best friends, played tennis together on our off days and generally kept each other sane. Our friendship died in less than a fraction of a second that day, leaving me to create a new life in the slightly less sane but infinitely more appealing fantasy world of Lewd Larry’s BDSM Nightclub, staying even after I was cleared of any wrongdoing. My new job as a professional Dominant was actually more fulfilling to me on a personal level—mentally, physically and spiritually—than my practice and all of the professional positions combined had ever been. In my opinion, my work at the club does more for the overall mental health of those I play with than I ever accomplished behind my desk.

  “George, I need you to come to the hospital.”

  I peek out of my office to see Lin still standing just inside the door where I left her. Winking, I cover the mouthpiece and whisper, “This is going to take a minute.” Then point toward the living room. “Make yourself at home.”

  I watch her only long enough to take a step toward the living room to assure me she is doing so. I then close my office door to guarantee myself complete privacy.

  “You’re calling me at 2 a.m. to ask me to come to the hospital?”

  “Yes, it’s about Giselle Marconi.”

  Gigi? My heart skips a beat upon hearing the name of the adolescent who in essence was responsible for destroying my career, even though I took full responsibility then and, on reflection, would do no less now.

  Running my hand through my hair, I try to think of a single reason Phillip would be asking me to do this and honestly can’t come up with a plausible excuse. “I’m sorry, Phillip. I’m not available for consults for anyone, but especially not for Gigi. I haven’t seen or heard from her in a very long time, and it is best for everyone concerned to keep it that way. Th
e legal suit was put to bed, my name cleared and I have no interest in emotionally or professionally being dragged through the muck again.”

  I pace angrily, waiting for his response, which seems a long moment coming. The silence is deafening. I am ready to hang up on him when he says, “She is in surgery now but she isn’t expected to live through the night, George.”

  “What?” I sit hard, lucky there was a chair close at hand. I don’t want to believe what I’m hearing, because despite our history, I still care about the girl I met over a decade ago. I close my eyes, seeing the jaded face of the sixteen-year-old I once counseled, not in a professional capacity, but as a friend. The fact she was a minor and I had no parental consent for our almost daily conversations was only the tip of the iceberg when the shit hit the fan. Add in accusations of bondage and dominance… Let’s just say my life took a turn in the crapper. She later recanted her tale, but my reputation crashed and burned along with so many professional friendships.

  “She was admitted to the ER unconscious with laryngotracheal injuries about three hours ago. We found documentation in her wallet requesting that in case of an emergency you be called. It explicatively states the only person to be notified in event of a medical emergency is Dr. George Kirkpatrick, MD. I’ve been ringing your phone almost nonstop.”

  I’m not surprised that she didn’t want to bother her parents with her medical concerns. From the little I did know about them, they had nothing to do with her, preferring to hire nannies, tutors and chauffeurs to see to her needs. Her parents hadn’t even attended the trial. “It has to be an old request. She probably hasn’t changed out anything in her wallet in years.”

  “It’s an advanced health care directive notarized as of a few days ago.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Her instructions are very clear, specifying that only you have the authority to make decisions regarding her health care and her parents are to be notified only in the instance of death. Right now, she is in surgery and everything possible is being done to keep her alive. Extensive repairs will have to be made to her trachea and pharynx.”

  I nod, wanting to ask, not wanting to ask, how long she went without breathing? Phillip anticipates my questions, answering before I ask. “She had an emergency trach when she hit the door. Whoever tossed her out onto the curb at the ER took time to insert a breathing tube. The time she spent without sufficient oxygen is indeterminable.”