by Violet Blaze
And at the end of the bridge, black lights in hand, were several of my father's men wearing their World's End cuts, flashing the lights over the necks of seemingly random partygoers and checking their numbers.
The driver let us out on a rounded circular brick drive on the far side of the bridge, studying me as I stood there and watched Adelaide struggle to get out of the car.
“Hurry that ass up,” I said with a lazy drawl, like I couldn't give two shits either way.
Nobody even looked at the girl bound in diamond encrusted ropes, but they sure as hell looked at me. I was just about the only man there with one girl by his side.
“I thought you got yourself a pair of sisters,” Oakley Harleston, the CEO of PopSodaCo. said as he stepped up beside me and clapped me on the back, like since we were both from the South, that made us instant buddies.
It took every damn molecule I had in my body not to snap the man's neck.
“Don't tell me you used the other one up already?” Oakley asked with a this good ol' boy laugh that just made his white suit and well-trimmed goatee all the more creepy. He sounded like he should be sitting on a porch drinking sweet tea and reminiscing about the good old days. Instead he was waltzing across the bridge next to me with three women on leather leashes attached to his belt.
Fuck me, I need some strength Gran, I prayed as I continued to ignore Adelaide and act like she was worth less than shit on the bottom of my shoe. A quick glance at the three women with Oakley and I could tell they were all drugged. I had to keep promising myself that he'd get his when the time came or else I would've lost my temper before we even hit the front door.
“Nah, I just don't like that other one so much as I thought I would. She ain't a challenge like her sister.” I lit up another cigarette as we finished crossing the bridge and approached the stark gray steps that led to the open front doors of the house. I could hear music playing as we got closer, a pianist sitting in the foyer and teasing Bach from the ivory keys.
She looked just about as drugged as the rest of them.
“That is quite the shame,” Oakley said as he selected a cigar from a silver tray held by a woman in a blue gown. She was so damn still she looked like a mannequin. I felt sweat crawl down my back as I remember why I'd fled this place four years ago and tried never to think about it again.
But that was cowardice.
And Adelaide Vaughn, she didn't do cowardice, and I'd be damned if I repeated that same mistake again. I thought about the faceless woman in the painting that hung on my wall back home and suddenly, I just felt all twisted up about it, like Adelaide was right.
These girls had been stripped of their humanity and stuffed into pretty dresses, their hair and makeup and nails shiny and polished and pretty.
Sweet baby Jesus give me some hope here.
“If you decide you want to make a swap, I have a few Companions I wouldn't mind trading out.” Oakley lit his cigar and clapped me on the back again. “Find me later, boy, and we'll talk.”
He disappeared into the large living area, decorated with white leather couches, white walls, white rugs on the white floor. A hulking stone and wood gas fireplace took up an entire wall, the flames dancing inside the glass as I surveyed the room of waitresses with trays full of champagne, mixed drinks to deliver to guests, appetizers and cigars, and all sorts of drugs. There was heroine, pot, little paper cups full of Vicodin. Every sin imaginable was right here, laid out on top of a marble floor in a mansion.
I looked over at Adelaide and noticed a slight quiver in her shoulders that might've been from adrenaline, anger, fear—I wasn't sure. We exchanged a quick look before Adelaide dropped her attention to the floor again, her arms tied behind her back, her dress sweeping the ground as we walked deeper into the den of sin and I tried my best to keep an apathetic half-smile on my damn face.
“If it isn't Dash Dante Buchanan,” a woman's voice purred as I turned and found the Mistress standing in the archway between the foyer and the sweeping expanse of the living room. She was wearing her signature red dress, the only woman in the room that didn't look like a fucking zombie or a kicked dog. “I'm so glad to see you've decided to join us tonight.”
Her black eyes glittered as she took in Adelaide with a shark's smile stretching across her red rouged lips. She stepped close to her and lifted her chin with her fingertips as I stiffened up and grabbed a drink from a nearby tray to keep my hand from squeezing into a fist. The look on Adelaide's face was frighteningly blank, her pupils still slightly dilated, mouth gently parted.
“What? No vitriol for me today? No sass?” Ingram Calhoun said, her voice right with the sadistic pleasure of watching Adelaide struggle and fail to come up with an insult.
“Go to hell,” she whispered, voice ragged and empty. Either she was a damn fine actress or this whole scene was really getting to her.
The Mistress laughed, releasing Adelaide's face and crossing an arm under the full swell of her breasts. The way she looked at the purple haired girl in front of her, it was if she didn't even see her as human. The more I stared at her, the harder it was to forget the way she straddled that girl, plunged that knife into her throat.
The piano music faded away, replaced with chamber music from the next room.
Listening to the deep sensual sounds of a cello and a violin as I watched men in suits push down their slacks and fuck girls over tables, against walls, on the damn floor … it was almost too much.
I looked back toward the Mistress and felt my skin get tight when her husband, the Auctioneer—Niles Calhoun—came around the corner and found us standing there. His smile was as sharp and glass and half as pleasant, his hair white-blonde and pale enough to blend into the colorless walls behind him.
“Mr. Buchanan,” he said as his wife curved her arm through his and smiled wickedly in Adelaide's direction. “I see you've brought us a little present.” He studied Adelaide's curves, the diamond ropes trailing over her shoulders, the diamond circlet in her hair, and it was as if his mouth sunk into his face as his smile deepened and shadows crept into his eyes. “I like what've done with your Companion. Very artistic, Mr. Buchanan.”
“Thank you kindly,” I drawled as he walked in a slow circle around her, studying her with a rancid gleam in his ice blue eyes. “I like to think of the human body as my canvas, the rope my brush.” I finished my drink, unable to even recognize what sort of alcohol it was. I was too distracted, too focused, too on edge.
“I hope you'll be taking your new Companion to visit some of the other rooms?”
It was a question, one that he was eager to hear me answer, his gaze as hungry and lascivious as wife's. I could not fucking wait for Adelaide to slit both their goddamn throats.
“We'll see. I can't stay long.”
“Oh?” Niles asked, raising his manicured blonde brows. “That's a shame.” He gave Adelaide yet another once-over, his eyes raking across her in a way that almost blew the lid off all my urbane bullshit, turned me into some sort of raging beast intent on defending this girl's honor. My mama might not have raised me for long, but at least she raised me right. “Maybe next time then.”
Niles twisted his lips into a rictus grin and moved away. His wife followed after him, hooking their arms together but keeping her gaze on Adelaide until she'd disappeared around the corner.
“Let's walk and let as many people see us as possible. I want to get the fuck out of here,” I whispered as Adelaide held onto that meek persona of hers and walked along beside me, bound and twisted in ropes.
We moved along a white on white fucking hallway that matched the rest of the house's stark modern décor. The only natural wood I saw in the whole place was on a few doors and decorative casings, the strange figures and symbols of The Sovereign Revolutionists carved into them. I reached up and touched my mama's silver cross through my shirt for comfort.
Adelaide and I passed by rooms full of people in compromising positions, glittering jeweled dresses shoved aside or tossed
away, crisp black suits wrinkled or hanging off the edges of beds. There were gags and paddles and whips in the tamest rooms—full-on flames in some of the others. A man was flogging a restrained girl with a tangle of flaming ropes. It wasn't something I hadn't heard of, but it was definitely something I'd never seen. Fire play was a legitimate arena in the BDSM community and although I had zero interest in it, I respected those who did.
This … whole scene was wrong.
The spanking was wrong, the gags were wrong, the fire was really wrong.
Because none of these women had signed up for this. They'd been kidnapped, drugged, tattooed, and sold.
I ran my fingers through my hair was we passed by a few rooms with closed doors.
Beneath one of them, a stain spread like a glossy red-brown lake.
“Dash,” Adelaide whispered, looking up at me, eyes flashing with fear, but I would not open that door. There was nothing I could do, not tonight.
“We have to play the long game,” I said as tears pricked the edges of her eyes and I felt myself choke on the horror of the moment. I wanted to cup Adelaide's face in my hand, run my thumb over her lower lip, kiss away her fear.
Instead, the sound of footsteps pulled my gaze sharply toward the right where I could see just a hint of the kitchen at the end of the hall.
Three men stalked toward me—two of them in leather cuts.
The other … was my old man.
Dash froze in the hallway, his attention riveted to the men walking slowly toward us, their feet loud against the stark whiteness of the marble floors. The two on either side were nobodies, men I didn't recognize draped in the bullshit cuts of the World's End MC. The man in the center was wearing a stupid fucking suit and smiling through the thickness of his gray-black beard.
That man I would've recognized anywhere.
Xavier Buchanan.
“What are you doing here ol' man? I thought you were too old and feeble to even get it up anymore?” Dash drawled, acting nonchalant. But the set of his shoulders, the way his hand seemed to quiver slightly as he stick a cigarette between his lips told me that he was stressed out beyond belief. I just hope nobody else noticed. It was quite possible that they wouldn't—it seemed like every man here (and one woman in particular) were so concerned with themselves and what they wanted or needed or what the fuck ever, that noticing how somebody else was feeling probably felt like a foreign concept.
I mean, it had to be, right? To able to treat another human being with such callous disregard …
I kept my gaze focused on the floor, at the space of white marble between Dash's shiny black loafers and his father's brown ones. I remember Veer from his time in the club. He'd been a hang around, a prospect, patched-in, and then rose to the rank of officer all before he even bothered introducing anyone to his son. I didn't meet Dash until the last three months of his father's time in the Weeping Bones—years after I'd first meet Xavier himself. I couldn't even imagine what kind of sad, lonely existence Dash had been living all that time.
He told me then, and he'd told me now, that I was his first friend.
Thirteen years old and me, a nine year old girl he just met, was his first friend.
How sad is that?
By the time this whole thing was over, I'd make sure I got the justice that Maverick so rightfully deserved—I would end Xavier Buchanan's life in a wash of blood.
“So this is the famous Vaughn girl you shouldn't keep your hands off?” Xavier laughed, but I didn't look up, didn't react. Inside, I was seething. I was raging for these women and these injustices; I was terrified to know what that red stain was under that fucking door. As I stood there, I could hear panting and moaning, screaming and keening. Some of it was pleasurable; a lot of it wasn't. I wanted to throw up or cry or take the knife I'd sewn into the hem of my dress out and stab somebody.
If I did any of those things, it could very well be me making those noises, me tied up and helpless and weeping. If I wanted to rescue these women, I had to make hard choices.
“If I'd known how much you were going to pay for this girl, I'd have just let you keep her in the first place.” Xavier reached out like he was planning on touching me, but Dash slapped his hand away.
“I don't share my toys with my fucking father. You might be sick enough to want to slap dicks with your own son, but I won't have it. Keep your hands off of what's mine.”
“Well, look at that, the kid's finally grown himself a pair,” Xavier said, the slick sound of his voice making me tremble with rage. He was enjoying himself too damn much for my liking. I wanted to look up, meet his eyes and show him with my gaze exactly what I thought of him. Instead, I tried to relax, to feel the satiny length of Dash's ropes around me like a hug. His craftsmanship made me feel safe, bundled up, almost snuggled. I should've felt trapped with my arms bound behind my back like that, but I didn't—not with Dash by my side. “Ah, Mr. Dunham!” Xavier exclaimed with another laugh. “Have you seen my son's new toy? Apparently he doesn't share.”
“He doesn't,” Ingvar said as I closed my eyes and ran my tongue across my lower lip. Just the sound of that man's voice was enough to dig through my layers, plant an icy cold shiver of fear in my heart. Out of all of them—including the murdering Mistress and her rapist husband—I felt like Ingvar Dunham was probably the worst. I felt like we just hadn't had the opportunity to see it yet. “But that's the point of this party!” he said with magnanimous laugh, his crocodile patterned shoes the only part of him that I could see. They suited him, though, those shoes.
I will cut your dick and balls off before I end you, I promised in my head, glaring at the shiny brown surface of his loafers, wishing I could see the expression on his face.
“If you're not going to share,” Ingvar continued, his voice this terrifyingly slice of propriety that just barely managed to cover up the aching edge of violence brewing beneath it, “then will you at least give us a demonstration?” I felt a finger trace the bare skin of my back and tensed up. It was definitely not Dash that was touching me right now. “This is such beautiful work. Surely you have time for a short lesson?”
“I'm not really in the mood to do a damn thing with this old fart around,” Dash said and Xavier laughed again, his voice echoing in the hall, slicking over my skin like old oil. I had literally no idea how a man like that could've fathered a son like Dash Buchanan. It seemed like a virtual impossibility. “But I supposed I could make quick time for a special demonstration—provided he fucking leaves.”
“Try not to get your panties in a wad, Son. I was already on my way out. Unlike yourself, I have a business to run. It takes more than dickin' around with some feminist bitches in a band to make good money, Dash. So go ahead—show Ingvar what the little tramp you spent five million of my money on can do.”
I flicked my eyes up just enough to catch Xavier reaching out to squeeze his son's shoulder, Dash's arm smacking his wrist away with a shocking amount of violence. However I felt about his dad, Dash Buchanan hated him ten times more.
Xavier's mouth tightened and he caught me watching them, curving his mouth up in a smile.
“Adelaide Vaughn. I think if you stay a while, you might catch yourself a nice little surprise. Stick around for a bit, would ya?” And then he was moving around us, the other two men following behind as they headed back toward the front entrance.
“Now that that unpleasantness is over …” Ingvar began, his voice like conditioner, thick and slippery at first, but somehow impossible to wash off. It felt like every word he said was sticking to my skin, coating me in an unpleasant texture. “Shall we continue? I've been regretting letting you have this one, I must admit. But then, I was also assuming you'd be a gentleman who knows how to share.”
“I don't fuck around with my shit,” Dash said, voice low and cold and menacing. “My old man taught me to take a hit, but he sure as hell didn't teach me to share. Why should I start doing it now?”
I felt his hand on my arm, warm, comforting, th
e only soothing thing in this house of horrors.
“Now, you show me somewhere I can have a clean spot to put my canvas and I'll show you what I can do.”
“Excellent,” Ingvar said, leading us back down the hall and then up the narrow stairs with the thin metal railing and the bizarre black and white photographs of erect cocks on the wall beside us. They were all horribly twisted misshapen, like someone had played around too much on Photoshop and messed the original picture up beyond recognition. It was supposed to be art, but all it did was give me a chill down my spine.
I was glad when we hit the upstairs hallway and the penis pictures stopped.
We moved down to the third door on the right, to a large room with a silver bed with white linens, two yellow chairs and a small bistro table. The décor was limited to a single vase filled with pussy willows and a large scale photograph of a woman's erect nipple.
I hated it here. More than the Block. The metallic scent of blood seemed to stick in the air in the hallways and the sounds … I really hated the sounds.
Dash closed the door behind us as Ingvar took a seat in one of the yellow chairs. When I finally looked up at him, I saw that he was wearing a charcoal grey suit with a pale blue tie and a white button-up. His dark eyes glittered and he smoothed a hand over the slickness of his hair.
Having him in here, there was no way I'd be able to enjoy myself—no matter what Dash said about it just being us.
Our eyes met and I almost said the word: blood. But then what? We kill Ingvar now and end up hunted by the entire group?
Dash met my eyes and stepped in close, his scent wrapping around me, pushing back everything else. His honeyed gaze was calm, confident. Everything about him said we can do this. I had to trust in that or we'd never work as partners.
“Lay down on the bed,” he commanded, his Southern drawl comforting and warm, a stark contrast to the room itself—and especially when compared to the unwanted visitor inside of it. And even though he already knew I was going to listen to him, he added, “don't forget that your sister's handcuffed to my bed right now.”