“Well… a lot of the girls have gone. They called taxis, bashed through the gate, and that’s that.”
“What’s wrong?” Ciara asked me.
I put the phone to my chest. “A lot of the girls have gone AWOL.”
She said nothing, just gave me a look that said, “I’m not surprised.”
“Mistress Amber?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“I’ll be there soon. Make sure the gate’s open, okay?”
“Of course. Oh, and there’s just one more thing.”
“What?”
“Roman Cornish. He keeps trying to gain entry. It wouldn’t at all surprise me if you bump into him. He’s very agitated.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Hanging up, I tossed my phone through the gap behind me and it landed with a thud on the backseat.
“Fucking hell. No women. Place is shut down tonight. To top it off, Roman Cornish is on the warpath.”
“Maybe we should’ve stayed home.”
“You should’ve tied me to the bed, darling.”
“Maybe,” she purred, “or maybe we’d have combusted with all this hanging over us. We need to deal with this, right?”
“You’re right.”
We reached Pernox and the whole place looked dark and unwelcoming, no light shining out of any of the windows.
“Looks bleak, almost,” she said, and I jumped from the Phantom to push the gate fully open.
She drove through the entrance, careful not to toss up any gravel, and after she was inside the grounds I closed the gate. It was really for the sake of tradition that I didn’t have keys or a remote control for the gate. This was meant to be a female-only place. It always had been a place women ruled both by day, and by night. It seemed to work, both as a lifestyle guide and a way of instilling a certain mindset into the Mistresses.
Climbing back into the passenger side, I remarked, “Well at least Cornish has given up, for tonight anyway. I didn’t see his vehicle loitering on the way in, did you?”
“No,” she shook her head, “although he might realise there are other ways to gain entry. Like the roof.”
Laughing, I revealed, “I doubt even a billion-dollar footballer is brave enough to climb a house.”
“You climbed the house?” she asked, unsure.
“I came in through the tunnel wearing my invisibility suit. The black one you found me in.”
The car broke to a shaky halt in the middle of the driveway and she turned to me, shaking her head. “What the fuck?”
“An invisibility suit. There’s been a lot I’ve done over the years to fix things. Sometimes sneaking into places to steal evidence… it’s just one of the things I have to do.”
She slouched over the steering wheel, placing her forehead on her hands. “Dante Sinclair, you are fucking insane.”
“You’re not wrong. Anyway,” I took a deep breath, “after I used the gent’s tunnel in my invisibility suit, I climbed the house using the drainpipes and whatever crevices I could latch onto. Luckily for me one of the roof windows was on the latch so it wasn’t difficult to break in. Shay was a light sleeper and would definitely have heard me on the landing otherwise.”
She turned to me with intrigue in her eyes. “Who trained you to be like this?”
I laughed. “Myself!”
Smiling, she decided, “It doesn’t surprise me.”
She carried on driving the rest of the way across the drive. “I reckon you were spying on the men’s house that night, weren’t you? On Teddy?”
“Yep. He said the new girl Cleo was smoking hot. He was ecstatic to have made your acquaintance and seemed to know of you, so I didn’t doubt he and Shay had shared information.”
“I bet they did.”
“His poor wife, eh?”
“Hmm,” she mused, slowly backing up the Phantom into a space inside the garage behind the house, “well, if they were sharing private conversations, it does lead one to wonder what else they were sharing.”
“Yes. Let’s go see the damage, then?”
We left the vehicle and rounded the property to enter through the orangery, which was rarely locked either. It was likely the girls felt protected enough by the fifteen-foot high perimeter surrounding the estate.
“It’s eerily quiet,” Ciara noted.
I shut the UPVC double doors behind us and made sure they were properly locked for once.
“I know. Get behind me. You never know…”
Ciara walked behind me as we wandered through the dormant mansion and the first place on my mind to look was Shay’s office on the ground floor, buried between the spa area and the breakfast room.
We encountered nobody on our way there, padding quietly across the chequered floors as we travelled.
Pushing gingerly against the door, we found nobody inside. In fact there was nothing but a lamp left on and a note left on Shay’s desk reading:
Meet us in the breakfast room.
“I presume, the girls?” Ciara asked.
“I presume. At least, the ones that have stayed.”
We had a little look around the office for something, I don’t know, incriminating.
“It’s just all business stuff in here,” Ciara said, picking her way through accounts and membership records, plus health records of the girls and their salaries.
“Fucking hell,” she said, “they’re on a fair whack.”
“Yes,” I mumbled, “they are, or were. Must have been really scared to leave, hmm? The ones that did, anyway.”
“Really scared,” she said, padding around the room quietly. “I’m assuming you’re armed.”
“You assumed right.”
I didn’t show her where I kept my weapon but if she felt safer knowing I had one, she didn’t need to know the precise details.
“We should probably go speak with them, then?” She stared at me, scared but proactive.
“Yes.”
Again, I asked she walk behind me while I walked ahead of her. I tapped on the closed breakfast room door and we heard a collective, “Come in.”
Walking tentatively into the room, what was left of Pernox sat around one of the big tables. My legion of fifty ladies had been reduced to just fifteen, I counted.
“Evening, girls. Is this everyone?”
A redhead, Mistress Amber stood and nodded. “Afraid so.”
Ciara slipped her hand into mine and I felt her fingers shaking, possibly with guilt, fear and trepidation overwhelming her. I felt all those same things.
She fell in love with me without knowing about my responsibilities. Would she have chosen this life if she’d known about it beforehand? Probably not.
We sat down with the girls and Ciara kept hold of my left hand beneath the table.
“So, what do we know?” I asked Amber, who seemed to have taken the helm in the absence of Shay.
“Well,” she said, looking at all the frightened eyes sat around the table, nodding almost imperceptibly for her to go on, “she went screeching off in her car and the next thing we knew, there was a ton of flashing lights on the hill, over in that direction.” Amber pointed, signalling a hill I was familiar with. “One of us took a car and drove by.”
“Which of you?”
Amber pointed at a petite blonde. “Tara.”
“What did you see, Tara?”
“I saw,” she dabbed her eyes, taking a breath, “a body bag. A load of blood inside her car. Blood-smeared £50 notes. They were just lifting the cordon when I got there but a couple of notes had drifted down the road.”
“Where would she get notes from? In that denomination, too?” asked Amber. “We don’t have cash here. We don’t keep it on site.”
“Tara,” I said, asking gently, “you didn’t see her? Just a body bag.”
“Yes.” She dabbed her eyes again. “The amount of blood though… the spatter. Anyone could have deduced it was a gunshot to the head.”
I nodded, accepting it a
s truth. It was the story Dad had given me. Bullet through the brain.
“So why’s everyone buggered off? Haven’t we kept you all safe enough here?”
“I have an answer to that,” a voice said, and I looked and saw another blonde girl.
“It’s Georgiana, right?”
“Yes.”
“You were her friend?”
“Yes. Even occasional lovers.”
I thought I’d seen them on CCTV, sneaking around the tunnels now and again. It was obvious Shay was trying to make me jealous. If anything she just made me horny.
“What did she tell you?” I asked Georgiana.
“She said that if anything ever happened to her, the rest of us should leave immediately because it wouldn’t be safe – not without her.”
I looked at Ciara who nodded with recognition. Ultimate act of revenge. Shay warned her girls to leave if she died, so that Pernox would die too.
“So why are you still here, Georgiana?”
“Well, she’d told us all the same thing. You know, to leave if anything ever happened to her. But there was something she said to me personally that made me stay… if for no other reason than I want more answers. She was special to me, you know?”
“It’s okay,” Ciara said softly, “you can tell us.”
Hopefully a female lending her ear would enable these women to open up.
“Shay told me that she was in love with Dante and that her heart belonged to him,” Georgiana admitted, shakily. Ciara nodded for her to go on. “She loved many of us here, you know? Many of us women, anyway, but she always made a point of warning that her heart belonged to him, and nobody else. Like it was a warning not to love her, because it’d be a waste of time.”
“What else?” Ciara asked, almost begging.
“I asked her why they weren’t together, if indeed she loved him that much. She was cryptic in saying that she’d done something unforgivable in the past. She also said knowing he was alive and well was enough for her.”
Georgiana’s words settled in the air and gave me no solace. Of course I was sad Shay was dead but all she’d ever been to me was a conundrum. Everyone knew Pernox had been her number one priority. Maybe she did kill Daltrey, maybe she didn’t. Either way, that woman had lived her life surrounded by mystery – an enigma.
“What does it all mean?” asked Amber.
I looked at Ciara and nodded because I saw she was eager to speak.
“We think… well we know, that Dante’s brother Daltrey didn’t like Shay. He didn’t like his brother’s involvement here, but Shay was the last straw. He thought he could save his brother and threatened to give up the location of this place so it was no longer a well-kept secret.”
A collective gasp erupted.
“Dante has spent the past eleven years trying to find out why someone would kill his brother in cold blood… and we sure as hell think we have an answer now.”
“You killed her? To avenge him?” Georgiana screamed, pointing a finger at me.
“No,” I retaliated, standing from my chair abruptly, “I was in Las Vegas when she was shot. My father had it arranged after we put a few pieces of the puzzle together. I confronted her on the phone and she didn’t have a good enough alibi for the night Daltrey got shot. My father went ahead and took care of matters without my say-so, all right?”
“Is this true?” Amber asked Ciara.
“It’s all true. Now listen to me,” Ciara urged, “I’ve known Dante for six years and I, more than anyone, know what Daltrey’s death did to him. He was barely alive when we met but I can tell you all, I was with him when we met his father Dick Sinclair and he is not a man to be trifled with. He’s a disgusting human being, in fact. He didn’t hesitate in putting a bullet in her head, even when we didn’t have all the details yet. But yes, it is possible that Shay killed Daltrey in order to keep this place alive. Without Pernox, what would she have been, eh? Really?”
The women all seemed to calm down a little and those that had stood up out of shock sat back down again.
Folding my arms, I asked, “Why shouldn’t I just shut this place down? Sell it on.”
“You can’t,” one of the girls mumbled, “where would we go? We need the money. Half of us don’t want to marry the rich pricks our parents have us lined up with. We want independence, freedom to live as we please. Our subs are all good men. We love working here.”
“And yet more than half of you jumped ship the moment that murderous bitch finally got her comeuppance,” Ciara spat.
“Hey come on,” I warned, trying to be diplomatic, “we know what she was, but she did look after these girls.”
“Yeah, only so she could keep herself attached to this business and attached to you, the owner.”
Some of the girls shared hurried whispers in the face of our little quarrel. Ciara put her hand over her mouth, trying to keep her opinions to herself. She tried to remain silent but it lasted for all of thirty seconds before she told me, “I’ll go wait upstairs for you.”
“Okay.”
Once she’d left the breakfast room, I told the girls, “Cleo is exhausted. She’s been through a lot with me.”
“She does seem really nice… at times,” Amber said, a hint of jealousy in her tone.
“She’s my fiancée so if you want me to stick around, you’ll have to get used to her, too.”
They all shared glances and I felt like the odd one out. I felt vulnerable, even – in a room full of domineering women.
“Listen to me,” I said with authority, “she’s the best woman you will ever meet. I say that because she puts up with me.”
“I wouldn’t kick you out of bed,” Tara mumbled.
“Maybe not, but that’s not the point!” I exclaimed over their sniggers. “I can’t do this on my own and the only person I trust is her, so if you want us to get this place back up and running, you’ll trust Cleo as much, if not more than you trusted Shay. Right?”
“Suppose,” mumbled a few of them.
Standing from my chair, I announced, “Everyone should get to bed. I don’t know how the heck we can open tomorrow night with only fifteen of you, but by god we’ll try, right?”
Amber nodded, and then the rest did too.
“You could all learn a thing or two from Cleo. She’s the best and I should know.”
Some shrugged, some kept their heads down.
“Now, anything else before I go up?”
“Yes,” Amber said, “Roman Cornish–”
“Ah yes, don’t worry, I’ll deal with him in the morning.”
“He might be gay, but it’s still against the rules. You’re not even meant to be here.”
“Thanks for the history lesson, but things will have to change around here. Sooner rather than later.”
UPSTAIRS in the attic room, I found Ciara madly scribbling away in her notebook. Though moonlight poured over her through one of the skylights, I chastised, “You should switch a lamp on.”
“I just got up here, sort of incensed. I guess writing helps me calm down, you know?”
“I understand but let’s just get into bed, eh?” It was eleven o’clock at night and I was tired, and feeling sad.
Under the sheets together, she rested her cheek on my bare chest.
“None of them like me, do they?”
I laughed a little. “Ever seen how men react to the alpha male in the room?”
“Nope.”
“They cower and after they’re done cowering, they lob insults around.”
“So…?”
“Well, when women meet the alpha female, they do the same. Just in a much more subtle way.”
“You’re talking absolute nonsense.”
“I am not.”
She lifted up onto me to look down into my eyes. “I didn’t give you a treat for rubbing me so well earlier, not to mention my sparkly nails.”
Admiring my handiwork on her fingers, she smiled at the remembrance of it all.
“Y
ou looking happy is my treat, Ciara.”
“Maybe I want to give you a treat. Maybe you earned it, so now I really, really want to reward you… hopefully then, you’ll massage me deeper next time.”
Chuckling, I playfully swotted her ass. “Whatever you say.”
She dove beneath the sheets, her tongue trailing down towards my growing erection.
Her nipple stroking my cock on her way down, I groaned from my bowels.
“God, now that you mention it, I could really do with a blowjob. I could always do with one.”
Laughing sadistically, she bit my stomach before silencing me altogether, her warm mouth sinking down over me so that all my cares floated away – for a few moments at least.
Twelve
WAKING, I FOUND MY ARMS wrapped around the gorgeous curves of my lady love. Still breathing deeply in her sleep, I recognised it must be early. I ordinarily woke early and she, late. Squinting at the skylights above which Ciara never liked to pull the blinds on – stating she loved to see the stars – I saw rain clouds and I saw doom. Pernox had doomed me to an uncertain fate the day I signed on the dotted line, agreeing to take on the business in name only, leaving everything important in the hands of the manageress, Shay, whom Lord Barlow had trusted. I’d stayed true to Barlow’s express wish that she be allowed control of the everyday running of Pernox for as long as it was profitable. I’d also soon found out it was important to play ignorant as to the spa’s true purpose – and I wasn’t to interfere in the running of things above or beneath ground – whatsoever. I was putting my name to the spa as a means of keeping the mansion in the family (at least that’s what I’d believed at the time). The membership fees were waived for me and I got to make a little profit from a pleasurable trade. As the years wore on, I’d realised Barlow trusted Shay because he’d saved her from whatever nasty life she had before Pernox and she was utterly loyal because he’d rescued her – obviously. I’d also realised over time – women could be persuaded to break the rules with gentle coaxing. Not that I felt proud of what’d happened between Shay and me. I really didn’t.
Over time she’d revealed to me that Barlow had used Pernox to trade state secrets – and that’s where his money had really come from. Also, secrets were what got him sent to jail. While I couldn’t deny I was no better than him, jail wasn’t for me… so I took what he used to do to another level. After Daltrey passed, I began bugging Pernox with some sophisticated hardware Shay didn’t even know was there. She never knew I visited after hours to replace dead bugs and check the ones I’d installed were still hidden well away. When she and I were seeing each other all those years ago, I once saw the key that locked the door to the tunnels and from memory, I had it copied and surprisingly, it fit.
The Fix (Nightlong Series Book 2) Page 11