"Lindsay, please… don’t give up yet. Remember who you were before you ever heard of Dale Hargrave."
"Nadia… I'm so sorry, I've… I've got to go…" She held the receiver over the hook and watched her hand shake violently.
A shadow filled the side of the payphone next to her and she looked up, then dropped the phone in shock. The man who was holding Nena looked worn and aged since she had seen him last. He looked like he had been through hell to find her.
"Lindsay? Lindsay, where are you?" Nadia shouted into the phone. She could hear a muffled conversation. Lindsay either hadn't hung up or hadn't hung up correctly. She pressed the phone to her ear to try and make out what was being said. She couldn't make out the words but Lindsay was upset. Was she screaming? Nadia shouted into the phone but it was useless. She had to get the cops down to that street corner but she had no idea what was even going on. What would she say to the 911 operator?
There was no time to think, she punched out the digits and her call was picked up instantly.
"I was just talking to someone in LA at the following address. She's being assaulted in a phone booth right now."
"Please hold. I'll put you through to that jurisdiction ma'am."
The line went to hold while Nadia cursed. By the time she was put through and gave the details it would be all over, whatever it was. The long shadow of her father's curse was ruining yet another innocent life, even now, even after all they had done to take his power away.
She hung up the phone and prepared travel to Los Angeles. She would figure out her game plan when she arrived.
*******************
"What do you want with me?" Lindsay pushed her way out of the booth. It had been so long since she had seen that face and Nena was out of her mind with excitement.
"Lindsay, uncle Dale has come back I knew he would. I knew he wouldn't leave us."
"Give her to me." She tore the little girl from him. "You need to go away and leave us alone."
"I can't." He said.
"I don't want him to go." Nena pleaded.
"Shut up Nena." The little girl was shocked. Her auntie had never spoken to her like that before. Tears welled up immediately.
"Now look what you've done." Lindsay shouted at Dale accusingly. Passersby were beginning to take notice.
"You can run from me Lindsay, you can reject everything that I am and everything that I have but you can never stop me caring about you and about Nena."
"I don't want to run away Aunt Lindsay." Nena sobbed. "I want to stay. I'm cold and I'm hungry. All the time. I want to go to Disney World again."
Every word stung Lindsay unimaginably. They had been homeless for three days now, sleeping in noisy shelters while Lindsay rationed out the last of their money on food. Soon it would be the Holidays and what would they do then? What kind of Christmas would it be for Nena if they were sleeping in a homeless shelter?
"How did you find me?" She said. The question didn't commit her to staying or to anything, but it also meant she didn’t have to walk away. She needed someone to talk to. An adult. Someone who could understand. But this man and his past… what had he even done to get to be so rich? How many people had he hurt in order to get his way?
"I've had people looking for you since they day you disappeared. Every day. Private investigators with no links to Hargrave searching for you in every State of the US. I've been out of my mind with worry that you might have gone overseas. When my PI in LA contacted me I flew straight out here. The plane is still on the runway. They've been checking all of the homeless shelters and finally found you."
Lindsay watched this powerful man before her filled with emotion. She had never seen him like this. The man of total self-control, always the master of his world even when that world was spinning wildly out of control he was calm and determined. Now he was here hanging on by a thread.
For her.
She felt a tug on her hand and looked down. Nena's huge eyes were staring up at her, willing her to relent.
"Please Aunt Lindsay, can we go with uncle Dale. Please…"
"Is everything okay here ma'am?" A pair of police officers had appeared behind Dale. The 911 operator in DC had passed on the information to LA and a car had finally arrived. People were watching. Nena was clinging to Lindsay as though in fear. If she wanted to end this and walk away all she had to do was say that this man was harassing her and her daughter. They would leave town tonight and go to a smaller place, some place where being poor wasn't so obvious. Even Dale Hargrave couldn't hire a PI to cover every small town in the US.
"Ma'am, is this man bothering you?" The officer looked at Dale, designer clothes, expensive watch, obviously a rich man. He glanced at Nena and Lindsay, they looked tired, ragged, poor. He squinted at Dale again. "Sir, I'm asking you one more time to back away from the lady." He put his hand to his weapon. This guy wasn't going to get away with anything just because he had money, not today anyway.
"Officer, I sincerely suggest--"
"That's it, hands behind your back asshole. You're coming with us."
Nena was close to tears again, Lindsay watched, paralyzed with indecision. She opened her mouth to speak.
"Officer…"
********************
Suzy had been tiptoeing around the issue with Ruben for months. Their sex life had been going from strength to strength and now they lay spent, yet again, from a bout of love-making that would be seared into her memory even in advanced old age. Ruben had held her for a long time, then rolled to his back in deep sleep where she watched him now. He was still the most perfect man she had ever seen, but there was still that one thing hanging over them.
That damn secret of his.
His sexual secret.
She had to know what the hell it was.
She slid her hand under the blankets and found his well used member. It was still semi-hard and pressed against his abdomen from the weight of the blankets. Her fingers wrapped around it and even after all these months it still gave her a thrill to think that this man and everything that pertained to him was hers, including this huge, relentless, never tiring dick.
She began to massage slowly, bringing the beast to life again. A smile came to the man's sleeping face and his body began to move.
He was all hers except for that one secret. The thought stung her with unexpected force and she closed her hands sharply around his balls. The squeeze brought him instantly to full consciousness. He scanned the room rapidly, his normally perfect hair tousled and gorgeous, an invitation to lie back and be soundly fucked by him one more time.
But that wasn't her plan for today. She was tired of lying back and taking it. He needed to come clean.
He looked up at her and smiled again, happily realizing that he had a massive hard on and that the woman he loved to death had one firm hand squeezing warmly around his balls.
"Ready for more baby?" He said with his sexiest of smiles.
She squeezed a little harder causing him to raise an eyebrow. He had just been emerged from the sexiest of pre-awakening dreams, no doubt caused by all the love -making and the hand on his contracting balls. He was cocked and ready to rock his woman's world yet again.
"I've been waiting for more since the day we met." She said with a icy smile.
Ruben picked up on the mood instantly and prepared to side-step. He wanted sex, not useless talk and head games.
"Today's the day baby." He said.
"No bullshit Ruben. I want to know."
"And I'm going to let you know." He reached a hand over to her side of the bed and slid it in between her warm thighs.
Those damn thighs. They were betraying her yet again, opening up to receive her man and his expert, exploring fingers.
She clamped them shut, locking his hand in place.
It still felt damn good, but she had to stay focused.
"Tell me what happened to you. About why you couldn't... God damn it, why you couldn't do it to me that first time."
He sighed and allowed his eyelids to droop sardonically over his big brown eyes. It didn't make him any less sexy, but then almost nothing could do that.
"Do we have to talk about that now? I told you I'll tell you but I need to do it in my own time. And you've got me here with this damn…" he nodded down to the pyramid of bedclothes over his bulging member, "this thing. Now isn't exactly the best moment."
She moved her hand back to his cock, wrapped her fingers around it and gave a long, slow pull downwards, stretching skin to the max.
Ruben groaned in ecstasy.
"Now is the best moment Ruben. Or it's the last moment. I'm not kidding." She let go of his dick and released his hand from between her legs, pushing it back to him.
"You wouldn't fuck me the first time we met so maybe you'll be happier that way. Not fucking me at all."
They stared at each other mutely. Ruben was good at reading people and so was Suzy. Her determination was obvious to him while she could see him begin to weaken inside. Without a single word both of them knew the balance of power in this discussion was shifting.
"Fuck it Suzy, do you know that you're the only person in the world who can do this to me?"
"What? Give you a hard on? I doubt it."
"Not that. It's that look and… and…." Ruben Mayweather searching for words - she was on the home stretch. "Jesus Christ Suzy, threatening to withhold sex from me while dangling it right in front of my nose… naked and incredibly sexy… it's not fair!"
Time to press her advantage. It wouldn't be long now.
"This could all be so, so easy Ruben." She said seductively. "You know I'm never going to forget about this. It won’t go away, not ever, so why don’t you just be a good little boy and tell me all about it."
"Cornered. That's what it is. You make me feel cornered and nobody else in the world makes me feel that way." He paused. "I feel corned by sex."
"Well, considering you have me cornered in every other possible way I think it's only fair that you get a little taste of how it feels. Now either you tell me what happened to you or…" she held back a moment, long enough for him to become even more apprehensive, "or we go for couple's therapy."
Ruben shook his head in disbelief and dismay.
"Couple's therapy? Why on earth would we do that? Our relationship is fine. We have a sex life that makes the Playboy Mansion look tame. What the hell could a therapist possibly do for us?"
"Get you to open up your scared little mouth for a start."
He sighed deeply and lay back in bed, his hard on still protruding upwards. He wished he could switch it off like a battery operated dildo but the truth was that even the insufferable intractability of his sexy little love goddess was making the damn thing even harder.
"I won't do therapy." He said, but there was a softer edge to his voice that Suzy immediately responded to. It was barely there, that soft edge, but she felt the whole of herself respond to it. Her love for the crumbling man below her multiplied correspondingly and her body ached to satisfy him even more. She slid down next to him and put her arm around his taut, muscular abdomen.
"So what will you do?" She said into his ear.
"I've told you before that I'll tell you and I intend to keep that promise, but I'm just not sure I can tell you all at once."
She held on, afraid to move or speak in case the moment would shatter and he would change his mind. He was the most invulnerable of men she had ever met but this was his weak spot. She knew it couldn't be easy for him. Ruben Mayweather was every inch a man of action, not a talker. Maybe there was another way to do this.
"If you really need something right now then I guess we can make a start." He stared at the ceiling as he spoke. The evasiveness was totally unlike him and made him seem younger, more open, more deliciously fuckable than ever. Her heart began to pound. Was he really going to do this for her? She squeezed her arm around him a little tighter but still didn't say a word.
"A long time ago…" His voice had softened almost to a whisper. He was struggling. "Someone… someone humiliated me, okay? Badly."
Suzy hugged tight. He was doing it. It was the last obstacle to them being together.
"I was sixteen. We were both sixteen."
It was hard to imagine him that way - being anything other than the charismatic boss of everything that he was today.
"Dale and I were both sixteen. The girls were older. College girls."
Suzy didn’t move. Dale was involved too? This was getting in pretty deep.
"Neither of us had any real experience that counted and we were too young and stupid to know how dangerous fooling around with sex could be. Boys that age can't think straight beyond the end of their dicks and we were no different. Come to think of it, not much changes when you get older." He gave a laugh but it was a nervous one, nothing like his usual self and if she closed her eyes Suzy could almost hear that stupid, sweet sixteen year old boy next to her.
"We thought we were leading them on but it was the other way around. We bought them milkshakes at a local McDonalds and thought we might get to first or second base with them in the parking lot, but those particular girls had other plans. They had a car and offered us a ride which we both thought was pretty cool. Maybe we could even get lucky in the back of the car somewhere, right? When they took us out of town it was exciting at first, we were pretty sure we're getting laid, first time for either of us as well. I had a hard on in the back of the car that was out of control. Couldn't get rid of the damn thing and couldn’t hide it either. That's when things began to go wrong, except that I didn't know it yet and I had no idea how wrong it could go."
He looked over at her and her huge eyes were full of empathy, waiting to hear more.
"I think that's as far as I can go for now Suzy." He took a deep breath. "I haven't thought about this stuff in a long, long time, you know?"
She felt the tip of his cock press against her forearm and it was diamond hard. She looked at him in amazement. Obviously it was hard to talk about but clearly it was intensely arousing as well. Whatever those girls had done to them had left him very, very screwed up indeed.
Chapter Six
"You're lucky I don't take you all in for wasting police time." The officer said to Lindsay, as he released his hold on Dale.
Lindsay opened her mouth to protest that she hadn't asked for police help but Dale sent her a stern look and spoke up over her.
"We're very appreciative officer. We apologize for the misunderstanding and for the use of police time."
The officer waited for more, another word, any movement or gesture that would confirm his prejudice that rich people considered themselves above the law, but Dale didn't say another word.
"This is my uncle Dale." A tiny voice came from below. "He's going to take us home with him."
Everyone looked down to see Nena's tiny head peeking out from behind Lindsay's hip. It would have taken a very hard heart to ignore her.
"Okay." The officer said with resignation and a tinge of disappointment. "I'll let you guys go." He turned to Nena and hunkered down. "But if your uncle does anything naughty again there's a number you can call little lady. Do you know how to use a telephone?"
Nena nodded her head.
"Of course you do. You just dial 911 and someone like me will come along and help you, okay?"
Nena nodded her head shyly.
"Atta girl." The officer gave her a smile and a wink and then stood up again to look fiercely at Dale and Lindsay.
"Whatever differences you two fools have, don’t let it interfere with that little girl, do you understand me? Now go sit down somewhere and talk it through like adults."
They nodded their heads contritely and at last the officers returned to their patrol car.
When the black and white had pulled away Dale and Lindsay stood looking at each other. There were a thousand things he could have said to her and a thousand more things he could have done, instead, Dale hunkered down in front of Lindsay to the
opposite side of her hips where Nena was still hiding.
When she peeked around her auntie the hulking man was wearing his silliest of silly smiles and Nena threw herself into his arms. He scooped her up in one go and then swept Lindsay up into his other arm, lifting her right off the ground. Squeezing them tight he gave both his girls a bear hug that almost left them breathless. As soon as she could breathe Nena began to giggle uncontrollably. Lindsay struggled first with tears and then began to giggle out of control as well.
"I think Disneyland is around here somewhere." Dale said amidst the laughter. Nena squealed with delight nearly deafening the two adults.
"How about we get cleaned up and see if we can find it?" Dale shouted with his head buried down into the girls' shoulders to escape Nena's high pitched screaming. If Lindsay had even dared to entertain the idea of refusing, it was clear she would be outgunned and then some by the little girl's response.
********************
The Fairytale Suite at the Disneyland Hotel wasn't what Lindsay would have chosen herself but when Nena was given the choice there was no going back. They freshened up quickly and then spent the rest of the afternoon together in the theme parks. Even though Dale hadn't rented out half the employees in the park for their personal pleasure in advance, still this time was even better than the last. All three of them were together for the whole trip this time, just like a real family. The only downside was how attached Nena would become to all of this and the truth was it could not last. Not until she knew the whole truth about Boyevik and had it confirmed with hard evidence of some kind.
It would be better for her and Nena to struggle by in some small town honestly than to live off the wealth of a killer who considered himself above the press, above the law, above any kind of conventional morality. If she accepted a life with him, if that's what he was offering, then she would be complicit and she would be dragging her niece into a world of violence and corruption she wouldn’t understand until it was too late for her to free herself from it. That might be acceptable for her at this point, but not for Nena. She couldn’t make that decision for her niece.
Her Sweet Liberation: Billionaire Secrets - Book Six Page 8