by Maxine Storm
I turned the door knob to go inside. Oddly, it turned all the way. I'm pretty sure I had locked the door on my way out. Maybe I was too stressed out about all of this Global Eye and Armand stuff that it skipped my mind.
I made my way in and turned on the TV. I just needed some background noise to take my mind off things. It was the first time in a while that I had to myself.
But it was no joy at all. All I felt was the emptiness of my apartment.
I moved here for work.
Now that's gone.
I moved here to maybe, just maybe, find love.
And now that's gone as well.
What was the point of all this?
Why was I still here?
I wanted to be a journalist, to investigate the world to discover the truth.
I guess I did, in a sense. It just didn't work out the way it was supposed to.
What I discovered was that they only wanted to make me do what I'm told.
Armand was right.
I scrolled to his name on my contacts.
He stood out among all the people I met.
Damn, why was he so stubborn.
Why did he think he knew everything?
Sometimes he was right, and it looked like he did. But I wasn't going to follow him just because of that. I had to find out things on my own. Well, I did.
Why didn't he understand what I had to do and the pressure I was under? He worked in the media business as well. He's had an inside look at it throughout his whole life.
My finger hovered over the dial button.
I imagined the dial tone, once, twice, then Armand picking up. His deep, resonant voice comforting me like a warm blanket. Whatever he said, it didn't matter. It was just hearing him, having that connection, that spark that has eluded me my whole life. His words coursed along the wire, giving me hope and reassurance that I'd be OK. That we'd be OK and make it, no matter what this city tried to throw at us.
Yet all that surrounded me was silence.
I wanted to call Armand but...
I couldn't. I just couldn't.
I was afraid of what he'd say.
Maybe he'd have nothing to say.
Maybe he'd want to say nothing.
It hurt me even to think that.
The very thought of rejection, the end of us was enough to paralyse me.
I threw that thought out of my head. I felt the alcohol from the vodka lead it away for a brief moment of peace.
I put the phone down and closed my eyes and leaned back into the couch.
Tears rolled down my cheek.
What was I going to do?
What the hell was I going to do?
I couldn't go back home. There was nothing for me there. Just people who'd gloat in my defeat. Fake friends. Fakeness. I've had enough of that. I've seen my share of it here, enough to last me my whole life.
My head felt heavy and I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. There was too much to think about. It was exhausting me even more after an exhausting day. Thankfully the vodka finally was taking over my system as I leaned back into the couch and fell asleep.
Chapter 38
The heat on my lips. His strong hand cradling my neck. His masculine scent that switches on every fiber in my body and leaves me shocked with his every touch.
"I've been waiting too long for you like this," he whispers in my ear.
Armand sits beside me, like I'm his personal belonging that shouldn't be kept out of his sight.
He wraps his arm around me and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up one by one as I'm nestled in his thick bulging arm muscles.
Then his hand runs up my scalp, holding my hair firmly, as he guides me with directness towards him.
His lips on mine, our flesh, finally together. I've been waiting for this.
His hand under my shirt, a shiver that makes me arch my spine.
I can't get away from him.
I don't want to get away from him.
I'm his.
I don't want this to end.
I cradle his face and feel his tongue taking me, making me his again.
He lifts up my shirt over my head, his arms firm around my back as he bites my neck. My whole body melts and I lose all thought.
Just take me, now, Armand, I say to him. My lips can't move but I know he understands me, feels me.
He takes off his shirt and my hands instinctively run along his abs, the slabs of muscle inviting but resisting my touch with all their power. He raises his head back and closes his eyes, his hand clasps over mine.
"I want you now, Janet."
I stare into his eyes and I nod my head.
"Give yourself to me, now."
My hand reaches out to hold his hard flesh but it's disappearing, it's all disappearing, and his voice grows fainter, he becomes blurry, and I feel myself falling out of all this. It's all going away and I struggle to hold on but it's fading before my eyes and...
Chapter 39
I jolted awake.
Damn.
Armand's not here.
It was all a dream.
Just a dream.
But it felt so real. I wanted it to be real. I wanted it more than anything. I finally found someone who understood me. Someone I understood. I didn't know everything about him. But what I did know about him was more magnetic than any prior relationship I had. Which, yeah, might not be much at all. There's something that I felt, though, that told me this was different. The intensity that took over my dreams and consumed my mind. This was something else.
I closed my eyes again and let my mind drift back to the dream I just awoke from.
It wasn't just the dream I wanted to go back to.
It was before we got into this whole mess.
It was the moment Armand and I were together and everything outside of that didn't matter.
It was when we were our own world and all of the distractions in our lives didn't matter.
I imagined Armand standing in front of me.
"You need to stop fantasizing," he says, bluntly. "Get out there and assert yourself to Global Eye. Then we'll make it work."
Imaginary Armand was right.
I couldn't lock myself in my apartment like this, reliving the past, as much as I wanted to.
I couldn't let this city chew me up and spit me out like this.
If I'm going out, I'm going out on my terms.
No more moping.
I'm standing up for Janet.
I'll tell them to stuff it.
I'll find my own way, and find it with Armand.
I got up from the couch and brushed myself off. I had to make a move. I didn't what the hell I was going to do. But I was going to go to Global Eye and give them a piece of my mind. I had to tell them what was what. I was tired of taking their shit. Slandering Armand. Putting me down. No, no more of that.
I had to clean myself up, get coffee, and get going.
But before I could walk to my room to change, someone knocked heavily on my door.
Bang bang bang.
Could it be Armand? My heart raced. It would be as if he had read my mind.
I ran to the door and stopped myself with my hands before I ran into the wall.
Please let it be Armand, I said to myself.
Please let it be Armand.
My hand trembled as I reached toward the doorknob.
Bang bang bang, whoever was on the other side knocked again.
I held my breath and turned the doorknob and opened it.
But before I could open the door, the lights flickered.
Power was out.
Just what I needed.
My mind returned to the knocking on the door.
Please be Armand, I said to myself.
Please be Armand.
I needed to see him. I needed him now. To feel his touch, his presence. To have him reassure me that we were going to be OK. That everything was going to be OK.
I opened the door slowly at first, but f
rom the other side, whoever it was pushed it hard open.
My heart stopped.
Standing before me wasn't Armand.
It was Maximilian.
He was dressed in an expensive suit and had his white hair slicked back, but everything on his face was sinister.
"Hello, Janet," he said.
I was speechless.
"You're going to come with me, now," he said.
"N-no," I barely squeaked out. "I'm waiting for someone."
"That's too bad," Maximilian said. "They'll be waiting a long time."
My palms were sweating. What did he want?
I panicked and grabbed the door, trying to slam it and lock him out.
But he stretched his arm out like an iron battering ram and completely blocked me. He pushed the door back open - as well as me, since I was holding on to it - and entered the room.
"What do you want?" I said. "I'll leave Global Eye. I don't want to be part of this."
"It's too late for that, Janet," he said. "You know too much now."
"No, I don't know anything. I'm not going to tell anybody anything. Just let me go."
"I'm afraid that's impossible," he said, slowly stepping towards me.
My hand was slowly reaching for my phone.
If only I could dial 911. I wouldn't be able to say anything, but at least my phone would signal out and someone there could track it.
My fingers crept towards the buttons and I prayed that Maximilian would give me a minute more.
"You were useful for Global Eye," Maximilian said, calmly. "But it's too risky keeping you aboard now. We'll make sure you'll get a glowing write up after this all passes."
"It's all a misunderstanding," I said, trying to buy time. "I don't know anything about any of this. Just let me go."
Maximilian sighed.
"That cannot be done. I'm taking care of all this business now."
My fingers were barely cradling my phone that was peeking out from under the blanket on the couch.
But Maximilian spotted me.
He called back to someone in the hall.
"Brock! Get in here" he said.
I was about to let out a scream when a muscular man in a suit came charging in like a bull.
He put me in a wrestler's lock and covered my mouth as I my screams were stifled by his meaty palm.
"Let's get her to the car," Max commanded Brock.
I struggled but felt the poking of a needle through my skin and Brock's arm around mine.
I was getting sleepy, my will to kick out vanishing.
The cameras, I thought in a haze, the security cameras would capture this.
And then the power outage just minutes ago flashed through my mind.
No, they couldn't have?
They cut the power so nothing would be recorded.
What the hell was this company?
Who the hell was Maximilian and why he was taking me away like this?
I tried to scream out and bite Brock's hand but there was no energy left, no wind in my lungs.
I felt myself going limp and the world around me darkening.
The only thing I could do was send thoughts out to Armand like beacons: help me, help me, help me, Armand, as everything faded to black.
Chapter 40
I found myself awake in a darkened room with no one around me.
I tried to move my hands to feel my face but the chain cuffs around each of them shocked me with the sound of metal clacking.
I craned my neck back to see that they were connected to a hook on the wall.
And then the memories of my night with Armand some time ago came flooding back.
I knew where I was.
I was in the BDSM club, Power, where Armand first took me.
How the hell did I get here?
I tried to free my arms again but the chains weren't budging. They just jangled as they ran from the wall to my cuffs and back.
"Hello?" I called out to the darkness. "Let me out. Now!"
There was no answer but my own echo.
I stamped my feet on the ground. I wished I couldn't break through this ground, this earth, and get to freedom.
Then, somewhere ahead of me, footsteps.
"Let me out," I called.
No answer but footsteps getting closer.
Finally, in the dim light, as the footsteps neared, I saw him.
Maximilian.
"Maximilian," I said, "that's enough. Let me go."
Maximilian stood in front of me, wordlessly.
He looked at the chains and to my face, and then faintly smiled.
"Thank you for your work at Global Eye," he said. "You will join the ranks of your other late colleagues, Britney and Philip, for their assistance in helping us destroy Armand."
Wait a second, I thought.
'Join the ranks of Britney and Philip'?
No way. No way was this happening.
"Don't kill me, Maximilian," I pleaded.
Maximilian shook his head.
"When people read the newspaper tomorrow," he explained, "it will be clear that Armand had killed you. Just as it was suspected he was involved in Britney's death, as well as Philip's."
This couldn't be happening.
"You killed Britney," I said. "And Philip!"
The terrible realization that Maximilian and his gang was behind all of this was shaking me to my core.
"Britney was like you, Janet. She was a nice girl who was investigating Armand for us. She found out some useful information about Armand. But just like you, she thought Armand was anything other than Global Eye's enemy. And she learned too much about our operations, our real plan to take him down. So she had to be eliminated."
It broke my heart to see her speak so callously of Britney. I remember when I saw her at the nightclub the night of her death, she was trying to tell me something. If only what she had to say had gotten through. if only she wasn't taken so soon. All she wanted to do was succeed in her job as a journalist. And Maximilian put an end to her.
"Do you understand?" Maximilian asked.
I said nothing to him. I was boiling with anger.
Maximilian walked across the dungeon room and back, deep in thought. He stopped in front of me and looked at me again.
"It's a similar case for Philip," he said. "Philip was just one the tools of Global Eye. But when Armand attacked him -"
"When Armand defended me," I interjected to correct, cutting him off.
Maximilian gave me a cutting look.
"When Armand attacked Philip," he said, "I saw a perfect opportunity to build the case against him. Another perfect example of his uncontrollable rage and violence. Just like Britney's death, we were going to spin it as Armand's attempt at stopping the truth about him from getting out. Imagine the story, Janet."
Maximilian tapped his feet, thinking of a headline.
"Third journalist murdered by Armand Silver," he said, his hand moving through the air as if unveiling the newspaper to the public.
"It was a perfect opportunity to pin it on him," Maximilian said. "I'm sure we'll find a good witness who was at the bar. And then there was Armand's jacket that was left behind."
"You're sick," I said. "Armand never did anything wrong. He's a good man."
Maximilian laughed.
"You don't know, Janet," he said.
"I do know. I do know that he'd never do anything like that. Why do you want to destroy him?"
I did want to know, but I also wanted to delay Maximilian. I put out the thought that no one was looking for me from my mind. I just had to focus on staying alive and keeping him talking. The more I talk, the more human I'd appear, and then less likely he'd be able to do something to me.
"Why do I want to destroy Armand, you ask?" Maximilian said.
"That is above your pay grade," he said bluntly. "Simply put, he is a business rival. He tried to slander my company. Ruin my reputation. Destroy our finances. He would not stop. He never stopped.
I understood he had to be dealt with. He has frustrated my attempts for the longest time, but now, it will be finally over."
No, he couldn't be suggesting that.
Was he going to...
Was he going to kill me?
"Don't do anything to me," I said.
"It will the final piece in our long efforts against Armand. Britney, Philip. And now you. Janet found murdered in Armand's favorite room at the BDSM club, Power. A sex game gone wrong? Or the vicious nature of Armand Silver revealed again? Either way, the jury will clearly decide against him. And finally, the chapter of Armand Silver will come to an end. It's all thanks to you, Janet. I'd let you go, but I do have to kill you, I'm afraid."
I tried to break out my chains but they just rattled in the darkness, holding me tight to the wall.
"No!" I said. "Don't do it, Maximilian!"
"It must be done," he said.
"You don't need to do this," I pleaded.
"Thank you for work help, Janet," he said. "I'll make sure to write a glowing obituary for you in the paper."
"Help!" I cried out.
This room was soundproof, I remembered. It was reserved for only the elite members of the club.
Maximilian stood face to face with me ran his hand around the back of my neck.
"It's such a pity, too," he said. "I can see why Armand fancied you so."
I spat in his face.
"You're pathetic," I said. "You couldn't match Armand. That's why you want to destroy me. Because you can't touch him. You're nothing. You're just afraid of the way he can live with me. You only live hate and fear. That's all you know. That's all you are."
Maximilian looked at me with daggers in his eyes. He said nothing but stared at me with fury as his hand began to tighten around my neck.
I felt my airway slowly closing as his fingers dug into me. Pain, choking terror, fear.
"Fuck you, and go to hell," my words creaked out.
His grip only tightened and my vision began to fail. I couldn't think. I had no thoughts but thirsting for air, struggling against the chains, and Armand.
I felt the life draining from me as I could barely hold up my head and keep myself on my feet as Maximilian choked me. It couldn't end like this. Not here, not like this.