by Chloe Cox
Simone.
She looked away. She didn’t need to see the video, even if it wasn’t playing, just stuck on that same still image. She knew what it was.
“I didn’t consent to that,” she said.
“You consented to everything,” Crennel shot back.
“Not to being taped.”
“That’s not what the piece of paper I have says,” he said, holding up what looked like a contract or a release form.
“That’s forged,” Simone said.
And for the third time, Crennel laughed.
“Who’s going to believe a drunk slut like you?” he said. “Your problems are so public, Simone. No one would believe you. No one would care. It would just be another footnote in the sad story of poor troubled little rich girl Simone Delavigne.”
They locked eyes. For a moment, Simone was frozen. Because what he said was true. It was her greatest fear.
And it was also why she had a microphone in her stupid, inappropriate brooch.
“What do you want?” she said finally.
“You know what I want,” he sneered. “I want my problems with Holt Manning’s investigation to go away. And I know you can help. In fact, I know you will help.”
Before she could respond, he pressed another key.
The video started to play. No sound. Simone looked away.
Crennel stood up, a look of triumph on his face, and walked to a cabinet on the other side of the room.
“You’re here,” he said, enjoying himself, “because what’s on that video is not in your past, is it? Because you know that girl on tape is still you. Because you don’t want anyone else to know what a pathetic, drunk slut you are. Such a poor little rich girl. Do you know how much the tabloids would pay for something like this? I do.”
He had his back turned to her, doing something in the cabinet that he had opened, and Simone was glad that he couldn’t see her face. Leave it to your greatest enemies to tell you the hardest truths. He was right. She was afraid of all those things. She was afraid she’d never be able to outrun those demons. She was afraid that no matter how hard she worked, she’d never be free of them.
That might be me, she thought. But that’s not all I am.
She was going to be the kind of person who did the right thing, even if it wasn’t the easy thing.
“I made you something,” Crennel said, finally.
And he turned around with two big glasses of bourbon in his hands and a grin on his face.
Simone hissed audibly. She should have expected this. It was the lowest, dirtiest thing he could do, so of course Crennel did it.
But she didn’t have enough on tape yet. She didn’t have the quid part of quid pro quo.
Play the part.
Simone made her hand shake and her lip quiver as she reached for the glass. The second her fingers wrapped around it, Crennel smiled that triumphant smile.
Slowly, Simone raised the glass to her lips.
And pretended to drink.
“So what do you want from me?” she asked, as she lowered the glass and licked the bourbon off her lips. It tasted like an escape, and like hell, all at once. “What do I need to do to get you to destroy that tape?”
26
“Oh, I’m not going to destroy the tape,” Crennel said. “But it will stay in my personal library if, and only if, the following conditions are met.”
Simone didn’t bother to conceal the hate in her eyes as Crennel paced around, towering above her. That, at least, was also playing the part.
“You will leave Club Volare for Sinsations, and you will make a public statement about the unhealthy environment at Club Volare,” he said, ticking his fingers off. “Then you’ll handle our public relations from there on out so I never have to deal with this kind of unpleasantness ever again. You’ll get to meet lots of powerful people, Simone, though I expect you’ll already know most of them because of Daddy.”
Crennel stopped to glare at her. That made him angry. Then he smiled.
“And you will get a restraining order against Holt Manning on behalf of yourself and this club for, I don’t know, harassment or something—you’ll talk to the lawyers and figure it out.”
This time Simone almost laughed. Crennel was a monster, but he was also amped up on cocaine, talking a mile a minute, and not super realistic. Was he serious? Or was he making this up as he went along?
“But you’ll do that,” he said, turning to sneer at her one more time, “and you’ll do every other fucking thing I tell you to do, or that video goes out to the entire world. Starting with your little lover boy, Holt. Fucking dumb jock. He’s a dumb jock, right? So fucking predictable, Simone, in your little Chanel suit. Why no pictures of lover boy on your phone, you little slut? I was looking forward to that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because after this, nothing he says, nothing you say, will matter. Everyone will know it’s jealousy and no one will believe you.”
Simone stared. He was like a large, evil, coked-up child. It was genuinely weird. Part of her was almost fascinated.
And the rest of her was terrified, because she believed him. And she knew he was right. The world didn’t believe in women like her.
Even Simone didn’t entirely believe in a woman like her. And that was the worst part. Hearing Crennel confirm all her worst fears. That it was all her fault, that she was just irretrievably broken. That she deserved to feel all this shame.
But she was a broken woman who was deeply ashamed of herself and who had this entire twisted conversation on tape.
For the first time since she walked into his office, Simone smiled.
“Do you know how I ended up here, Alan?” she said.
Crennel stopped, confused. This was off-script. Because she wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to whoever was going to listen to this tape.
“I got into this huge fight with my father when he found out I was a member of Club Volare,” Simone went on. “Just…massive. We’ll probably never be ok with each other. He said some things he’s probably never going to take back, and I’m not there yet, but I’ll eventually forgive him.”
Crennel rolled his eyes and collapsed theatrically into his desk chair, waving his hand.
“Anyway, after that, I relapsed. I’d quit drinking to join the club, but of course it didn’t stick, and after that fight I fell off the wagon—hard. But obviously nothing made me feel better. And then I tried to convince my Dom—Holt—to play with me when I was drunk. And he wouldn’t. In fact, he broke up with me. Because he’s a good man.”
Crennel looked bored, but the mention of Holt got a twitch out of his left eye.
Well, he was going to get a lot more than a twitch.
“So that’s why I came here,” Simone said. “Because I hated myself so much at that moment that I decided I didn’t want a good man. I wanted a bad man. I wanted someone even more hateful than I was. I wanted the worst person, the biggest loser I could find. Someone who could make me feel like I thought I deserved to feel just by being in the same room with me.”
Now Crennel’s eyes were glowing.
“And that,” Simone said, relentlessly, “was you.”
Crennel breathed hard, his body riddled with tension. But Simone wasn’t done.
“I wasn’t actually drunk by the time I came here,” she said, almost casually, like it wasn’t part of making herself suffer. It had been, though. She’d wanted to hurt as much as possible. “I sobered up crying in my car for hours before I came here. Did you know that? I’m certain you didn’t, and that’s what makes you a monster. It was after I left you, Alan, that I drank until I almost died. Because that’s what I thought I deserved.”
Simone stopped, and looked down at the untouched drink, still in her hand. Then she rose from her seat, and deliberately, slowly, placed it on Alan Crennel’s desk.
“You were my rock bottom,” she said. “And that person is part of me, but she’s not all of me. And she’s not in the driver’s seat anymore.”
/> “You stupid bitch,” Crennel hissed. The anger was rising in him, working itself into a froth. “You will do what I say, or everyone gets to see this.”
He pressed another key, and this time the sound came on.
Simone closed her eyes, but she could still hear herself.
She knew she should pretend to give in. She knew she should keep playing the part. She could walk out of here with Crennel convinced that she was his little puppet, and then she could straight to the law, and there would be a raid, and it would all be over.
She just couldn’t make herself say it.
And then, before she could say anything at all, the door behind her opened.
Time slowed down.
Somehow Simone knew who it would be before she turned around. She knew there was only one person who could walking in that door at that moment, while the video of her that she’d tried to pretend hadn’t existed, that she’d tried to pretend wasn’t real, was playing on the giant wall monitor at full volume.
It was Holt.
Everything was in slow motion. She had all this time to look at him, to wonder about him, while the rest of her brain screamed on mute in the background. He had changed before coming to Crennel’s too—no more tux. Now he was all in black, like he could be going to a fetish night.
Except for his face.
He’d heard the video. As soon as he opened the door, he was looking for the source of the sound.
And he saw it.
But then he kept looking. He kept looking around until his eyes found her, and their eyes locked.
He looked…
Simone didn’t understand it. He didn’t look disappointed, or angry, not with her. She didn’t know what she was seeing. Holt had just walked in on her in Crennel’s office, with a drink near her hand, and that video playing on a monitor. He had know way of knowing she was secretly recording everything. He had no way of knowing anything. But he looked…almost relieved.
A moment of softness, in his eyes.
And then the spell was broken.
Simone was frozen, paralyzed—but Holt wasn’t. He walked straight toward the monitor that played the video of Simone, the one she’d avoided looking at this whole time, and calmly, deliberately, ripped it clean off the wall.
“Who the fuck are you?” Crennel shouted, shooting up out of his chair. “And what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Holt ignored him. He was looking at her again.
And Simone found her voice.
“What are you doing here?” she said, softly.
“I’m here to keep a promise,” Holt said.
And he turned to Crennel, whose face was twitching while he sputtered with rage.
“Delete that video,” Holt said. He was calm, but Simone heard the steel underneath it. She’d never seen him like this before.
Crennel didn’t hear the warning. Instead he typed rapidly on his keyboard, snarling.
“Oh, you must be lover boy Holt Manning,” he said. “Do you even know how computers work, you fucking meathead? I can send that video anonymously and destroy all the evidence of where it came from, all with a single keystroke.”
And he held his long finger above the keyboard, as if it was a threat.
Simone held her breath.
Holt moved so quickly she couldn’t process it. One second he was standing in front of the ruined monitor, and the next he’d crossed to where Crennel stood with his finger over the trigger, and then Crennel was being lifted up and over to the wall.
Simone felt the thud as Holt slammed Crennel into the wall and held him there, his hand on the other man’s throat. The keyboard was far out of reach. Crennel sputtered.
Then Holt threw Crennel to the ground with a sharp cracking sound, and said, “Stay down.”
It was definitely an order.
Crennel obeyed it.
“I’m going to explain something to you, Crennel,” Holt said, while he opened and closed his fists like he was itching to use them. “Someone like you might not understand this, but I’ve lived my life according to rules, and I’m just now figuring out that the rules don’t always work. They’re not always enough. They don’t cover the gray areas. That didn’t used to make sense to me, so I’m new to this. But I am certain of one thing: there are limits. And if you ever even think about hurting Simone Delavigne again, if you even so much as say her name out loud, there will be no more rules for me. No more right, no more wrong. You’ll think you died at the hands of a goddamn demon, but I promise you, it will be me who sends you straight to hell. So you think real hard. You think about if you want to deal with me after you’ve hurt the only woman who stands between you and hell. Is that understood?”
Crennel, still on his back, blinked. Then he nodded, his eyes still casting about wildly.
“Now,” Holt said, and his voice was still that even, calm, authoritative voice. It was hypnotizing. “I’m calling in a raid, because I can see cocaine on your desk, and I saw plenty more downstairs. And I know we’re going to find enough here to put you away for a long, long time. So you decide, right now, if you want to live and take your chances in prison, or if you want to die here and now and throw yourself on the mercy of whatever god will have you.”
Crennel stared at him.
“Now,” Holt said, and this time he used his Dom voice. “Make your choice.”
Silently, Crennel put his wrists together, and offered them to Holt.
Simone watched in stupefied silence as Holt handcuffed the man who’d been responsible for so much pain. For so much of her self-loathing. For so much fear.
She was so stunned, it wasn’t until Holt came over to her that she even moved. She stood up, and in less than a second his hand was on her face, his eyes searching hers.
“I have to call this in,” he said. “And I have to go to work. But I need to know if you’re ok.”
His touch brought warmth and life to her body. She could feel it spreading from her cheek to her brain, her chest, her heart. Was she ok?
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am now.”
And then he turned away, his face immediately cold, withdrawn. It jarred her. So it wasn’t until Holt was already on the phone that she remembered: she had everything on tape.
Including Holt’s threat.
27
Holt rolled his neck and checked his watch. It was after midnight. And he was getting impatient.
“Are we done here?” he said. Technically it was a question, but his tone was more of a statement.
Rich Carlinson, who was sitting in on the friendly interrogation where Holt had given his statement, looked to the NOPD detective who’d drawn the case. It was some guy named Forker, and he didn’t look happy about anything he’d heard.
That wasn’t Holt’s problem. But he was going to make damn sure it was someone’s problem. He didn’t like this detective. Just as well: Holt had been right, and this single raid had yielded enough evidence to put Crennel away. Which meant there wasn’t much for the NOPD to do, and it would get kicked to the prosecutors almost immediately.
Still. Holt made a note to tell Spencer Cole, the first person he’d called from Crennel’s, about Forker. Cole was on loan from the FBI while the city worked on some cross-jurisdictional cases, and his old friend would want to know whether he was working with anyone dirty. And Holt couldn’t tell him now, because Cole was in some other interrogation room, taking Simone’s statement.
Simone.
Holt had made Cole promise on the phone. No one else would talk to Simone. She’d get someone who was on her side all the way.
Letting her walk away with detectives without him by her side had been the hardest thing Holt had ever done. Reining in his heart and using his damn head at the actual scene had been the second hardest.
He couldn’t get the look on her face when he’d walked in out of his mind. He couldn’t get the sound of that tape out of his mind. He couldn’t get the look in her eyes after, when he’d held her cheek, ou
t his mind.
All he’d wanted to do was be her Dom in that moment. And he couldn’t. Not if he wanted to put Crennel away. His personal involvement was already going to be a potential problem for the prosecution, so he’d had to do everything by the book, and he had to do it right away. He couldn’t pause to take care of his sub while Crennel was handcuffed. He couldn’t take her away from there and burn the place down.
And the fact that he had wanted to was what made him realize he was a risk to the case. And he wasn’t going to risk Crennel walking free to terrorize Simone again. So he’d been the better man she made him into. He’d done it for her.
And it was taking too damn long. He could feel it on his skin, like a burning fever. He needed to see her. He needed to hold her. He needed to feel her body in his arms and know she was safe.
He fucking needed her.
“Mr. Manning?” Forker said. “Are you going deaf, or are we boring you?”
“I’ve given you my full statement,” Holt said, evenly. “We’ve gone over it twice. We’re done.”
Carlinson stood up, nodding. “I have to agree with Holt, here,” he said, and subtly pulled rank. “Of course, Detective Forker, you can always come by the US Attorney’s office if you have any more questions. I’m sure Mr. Manning will accommodate you if you call ahead.”
Holt smiled. Carlinson could be very polite about sticking it to people.
Holt stood up, stretched, rolled his neck one more time, and shifted his focus entirely. The case was over for now. Out of his hands. The other men might as well not be in the room. He didn’t even look at them as he left.
He cared about only one thing.
Simone.
He knew the layout of this district station, having worked with them before. He went straight down the hall to the bullpen, and then went looking for which interrogation rooms had the doors closed. He didn’t have to bother.
Gavin Colson was standing guard at only one of them.
Holt felt a measure of relief. Simone had called Gavin. That meant she was talking, at least a little bit. It meant she wasn’t hiding entirely anymore.