Double Entendre: (City of Steel 2) (The Vault)

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Double Entendre: (City of Steel 2) (The Vault) Page 25

by Katherine Rhodes

“Sir,” I whispered in Simon’s ear. “There’s more than just the county cops we can rely on here.” He didn’t turn to look at me but raised an eyebrow. “Let me call in the troops. Darien, Titus, Cece... They have underground contacts and Baron is definitely underground. They—not the county cops, not the Pittsburgh PD—are going to be able to find her before he does awful things. If we skirt that, we have a better chance to find her, fast.”

  The smirk on his face was a relief. “You mean, you want a cop to skirt the cops to find his wife?”

  “Well, not exactly but yes. Exactly.”

  He kissed the top of my head. “You know who you need to call?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Do it. Let’s do it.”

  I pressed a quick kiss to his lips and slipped outside. I heard Polanski yelling for me to come back, but Simon intercepted her. I walked around the corner where I knew no one could see me and there was a blank spot in the cameras we hadn’t fixed yet.

  Paging down, I pressed the ‘dial’ button on the first of the chain.

  There was a grunt on the other end, a fumble of the phone, followed by the distinct sound of it hitting someone in the head. Another grunt, and finally a human voice.

  “Dunham.”

  “Tracey. We need your help. Baron Grand kidnapped Laicy.”

  “Got it,” he said, coming fulling awake. He cleared his throat, and then made some kind of noise. “Hang on. I got a call coming through.”

  He clicked away, and then clicked back a full minute later. “I have news already. Can we use Titus’s place?”

  “I don’t know…I’ll call him. If we can’t I’ll text you a new place.”

  “Good deal. And Vanity?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’ll get her back.”

  God, I hoped so.

  Dialing Titus wasn’t high on my list of things to do while I was shaking from the adrenaline, but I had to. It also wasn’t unreasonably late, and he was usually pretty accommodating.

  “It’s late,” came his greeting.

  “I apologize, sir, but we have a problem.”

  Simon was pacing. I’d already tried twice to get him to sit down, and it wasn’t working. I didn’t exactly want to wait either, but there wasn’t much we could do.

  A car door slammed shut in the front yard and a moment later there was the clatter of controlled footsteps accompanying a set of reluctant steps. The door was pushed open and a body was shoved in the door.

  Tracey followed a moment later, grabbing the other person by the collar and dragging him into the room, throwing him on the floor ahead of him. Paul walked in behind him and shut the door quietly.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Tracey said. “It took me a minute to gather my information.” He kicked the person in the ribs.

  After a gasp, the man on the floor jumped up and we could all see it was Master Oliver.

  “Say hello, Oliver,” Tracey snapped.

  He offered a middle finger instead.

  Tracey punched him in the gut. “I said, say hello, you worthless piece of shit.”

  “Hhhhhi,” Oliver finally hissed out.

  “Better. Mind your manners around my friends.” The giant of a man turned to the rest of the room. “I’d like you all meet Master Oliver. My little brother, the useless piece of shit.”

  “Fuck you, Mama’s boy.” Oliver gasped.

  “Tell them what you told me, little bro. Tell them about your training house.”

  Oliver spat on the rug.

  Titus shot out of his chair and cuffed him on the side of the head. Hard. “What kind of Dom does something as disgusting and uncouth as that, you foul ass?”

  Spinning around, Oliver cocked his hand back to let a fist fly at Titus.

  Simon slid between them and put his hands in his pockets, cool as a cucumber. “Go ahead and swing, Oliver. Go ahead and hit a cop. Give me a reason to unleash my unspeakable anger on your lying goddamn face. Please. Give me an outlet.”

  I moved between them. “Oliver. Please. My girlfriend has been kidnapped. Anything you can tell us will help us find her.”

  This fake-Dom stared at me and sneered. “Did you grow a set, little subbie?”

  Simon was ready to slam both of his fists into this guy’s face. I put my hand up to hold him off for just a moment.

  “Oliver. If you don’t tell me, I can’t promise you won’t be left in a coma. Either by your brother or my boyfriend. Talk.”

  “You’re the bitch she wants,” he snapped.

  I swallowed hard. “Excuse you?”

  “You’re the bitch Dee wants. She wants your ass at my house.” He flipped his shoulder to get my hand off his arm. “She busted into my private house, my business, with four other guys, and your little fuck toy, and threw me out. Physically tossed me out of my own goddamned house!”

  “Did she tell you anything?” Titus asked.

  “To call you all and let you know that all she wants is her toy back.” His finger stuck in my face. “You. So you better go there and give her what she wants.”

  Oliver’s hand whipped out and grabbed my collar. Tracey punched him right in the head and knocked him over, then moved to stand over him.

  “You had better stop acting like you’re a fucking alpha, Oliver. You’re not. You’re a controlling, manipulative piece of shit. There’s nothing properly Dom about you. So, quit pretending you run a house.”

  “How the fuck do you know anything—”

  He grabbed his brother’s collar. “Look. Around. Every single person in this room is a real alpha and a real Dom. They are disgusted by you. They don’t want anything to do with you. We had to contact Baron Grand before you spoke up to help. You’re an insult to this community.”

  Oliver ripped his clothes out of Tracey’s fist. “I’m an insult to you, you mean.”

  “You’re a fucking idiot, that’s what you are.” Tracey stepped back and glanced at me, then Simon, then Paul. “Do what you want with him.”

  “All we want with him is the location of his house, and the codes or keys to get in,” Titus said, lifting an eyebrow. “Someone like this isn’t worth our time to worry about.”

  “Let him just be,” Cece agreed. She looked at Simon. “You can always go after him as accessory after the fact.”

  Simon gave a short nod.

  Oliver hauled himself to his feet. “No accessory after. She burst into my house and threw me out.”

  “And wouldn’t have been able to do that if you were part of the community properly,” Titus snapped. “She chose your house because you don’t belong. Because no one knows where you live, who you train, who you are. If you were part of the community, you would have had that protection.”

  Oliver sneered, but didn’t make any more comments or sudden moves. He stared at me and Simon for a long moment, then spat out an address. “She burst in and kicked me and most of the trainees there out. I sent them to the Vault and asked Mistress Faye to just charge me. Dee kept me, specifically, to find you two and deliver the message that she wants her pain toy back.”

  “I was never her toy,” I said. The personal pronouns were so mixed up right now. I saw the Baron kidnap Laicy, but now Oliver was calling him ‘her’ and I didn’t know what to think.

  “I’m just delivering the message. She’s messed up in the head.” He tapped his temple. “I knew that years ago when she came in. Bad news.”

  “You still trained her.”

  Oliver turned and looked at his brother. “Yeah. Money was money, and she wasn’t staying on my property. She never hurt anyone more than they allowed.”

  I grabbed his arm. “How good is she with implements?”

  He was quiet, then answered, “Very. Very, very. She can peel a grape with a whip.”

  “Shit, that’s gotta be her,” Simon mumbled.

  Oliver shifted on his feet. “Can I go? Check on my people at the Vault?”

  “Go,” Tracey said.

  “I’ll call Mistress Faye to
make sure you did check on them,” Titus called. Oliver turned all the way around, gave Titus a bras d’honneur, ended it with a middle finger, and spun back to walk out of the house.

  “Lovely gentleman,” Titus said, raising an eyebrow. “Well-versed in international insults.”

  “Yes, well, there’s a reason why no one knew I had a brother until now,” Tracey said. “He’s really good at insulting people and degrading them.”

  “The address he gave is in the city,” Simon said, slicing into the conversation.

  “You’re not on this, Simon,” I whispered.

  “I have to be.”

  “Simon, please, please…I want her back as much as you do. But your head is not in the right place. Mine isn’t either. If we do anything stupid, she’s going to be hurt. Let me work with Lys on this. We’ll get her back.”

  “You…”

  Nodding, I looked over at Titus, Tracey, and Paul. Darien, Cece, and Killian were just beyond them, lurking in a doorway. “I don’t know who she is, but if getting me there gets us closer to getting Laicy back, let me do it.” I gnawed on my cheek and forced the words. “If she wants to torture someone, let it be me. I can’t let her suffer where I can stand up to this.”

  Simon, and a few others, gasped. “No! Jesus, Vanessa!”

  “Let me go. I know you’ll be able to get me out. Let me get her away from them.” I kissed his cheek. “She’s pregnant, Simon. You can’t lose her or that baby.”

  “I can’t lose you either,” he whispered. “This relationship isn’t a joke to me, Vanessa. I love you. I love her. I can’t lose you any more than I can lose her.”

  “I can’t either. So let me do this.”

  “Detective,” Darien said, stepping into the light of the room. “Let her. She knows what she’s doing. And I assure you, she will go exactly nowhere with her. She’s stronger than you think. If your wife is pregnant, let Vanity save your family.”

  He swallowed hard, and his eyes skimmed over my face. A heartbeat later, he slammed his mouth over mine and kissed me hard. “Get her back. For both of us.” Glancing at Darien and Tracey, he nodded. “What’s the plan?”

  Laicy

  It was only that I had been learning to control my emotions for the last year that I didn’t freak out and slam myself into the walls of my prison.

  I was beyond fucking terrified.

  The cold gun on the back of my neck, the yank on my arms as the goons tied me up. The hard thump into the back of the van. I barely managed to spin and hit my hip at the last second instead of slamming face first into the floor.

  Bounced and rolled around in the back of the panel van, the asses drove like utter maniacs away from Sadique and away from safety. I didn’t know where we were going, but I managed to spin myself sitting with my back against the panel.

  The guy who had grabbed me was sitting in the passenger side. He was twirling a pink wig on his finger and smiling. He turned in the chair and stared back at me. His assessment made me feel filthy.

  “Hm. Too bad Vanity wasn’t with you. I wouldn’t even need you.” He cocked his head. “Do you like pain, bitch? Like to be whipped? I’d be willing to switch up…”

  “Fuck off, Amadeus.”

  He stood, walked to me in the moving vehicle, and punched me in the face. “Don’t you even think I wouldn’t kill you.”

  The pain was unreal. I was sure he broke my orbital bone. The tears were instant, and I couldn’t help the sob. I tried to compartmentalize the pain, but it was everywhere, and racing around my head in a splitting migraine.

  “Useless,” he said and sat back in his seat. “I want Vanity back. She would have appreciated that punch.”

  The van took the next corner very fast, and I was tossed back against the wall. A whimper escaped me. How was I going to be able to heal from this properly? I was pregnant—there were dozens of tests and medicines I couldn’t have now.

  I had to keep my mouth shut and not piss this guy off. I couldn’t risk more damage that couldn’t be repaired. The idea of being submissive to his commands made the bile rise in my throat.

  We didn’t drive long. Maybe long enough to get into the city, and that was it. The van pulled to a stop and the passenger pulled his wig on. He did a damn good impersonation of a female. It wasn’t over the top, or unbelievable. There was just enough makeup and it was possible to believe he had dyed his hair pink.

  The back doors were pulled open and one of the men stood there with their gun trained on me. There was a massive scuffle somewhere beyond my view, with screaming and a few shots fired here and there. I could see people running down the street, barely dressed or fully naked, and they all disappeared around a corner, quickly.

  After a shout from the house, the guy guarding me yanked me out of the back of the van and shoved me toward the house. When we reached the porch, he grabbed my hair and jerked my head back under the porch light.

  I couldn’t see much, but I heard the Wig Man speak. “Get a good look, you scum. Her name is Laicy Garabaldi. I want Vanity in exchange for her.”

  “You’re calling me a scum? When you were using Lila for a fucking toilet?”

  “That’s right, I was. I was fucking her and using her for a toilet. That’s what you do. You use them. Humiliation is a kink, you ass.”

  “She told you no.”

  “Oh, they always say no.”

  “Not with their safe word they don’t, you ass.”

  He must’ve moved closer to the other person and I heard the sound of someone getting hit. “I am the Master of the house and I can make them do anything I want. Now, you make sure you use the proper pronouns. Call me him to anyone, I will remove your balls with a dull, rusty knife.”

  “What if I like that?”

  “You won’t.” There was a grunt. “All I want is Vanity. I don’t care about this bitch, or Lila or anything else. I want my little torture whore, and that’s all.”

  With a jerk, the guy pulled me into the house and threw me into what looked like a sitting room. Or what should have been a sitting room.

  “Stay,” he barked, as if I were a dog, and slammed the glass doors closed. I could see out, but I couldn’t get out. There was a mirror over the fireplace and I walked to it to see what the damages were.

  The eye was black and blue and swollen, and a long, shallow cut covered the right side of my face in blood. There was no way to tell if the bone was broken except for the pain. And there was a lot of that.

  I wouldn’t be able to take more than Tylenol. I wouldn’t have cared, I wanted everything perfect for the baby, but these shitheads decided to kidnap me.

  I sighed and found a couch.

  Except it wasn’t a couch, not really. It was hard and uncomfortable, and a moment later I realized it was a spanking bench. Moving parts of the couch around, it was easy to assemble into the bench. I went around to all of the furniture and realized it was all sex furniture. There wasn’t a place to sit that wasn’t the floor.

  So, I took that option. I didn’t know how long I was going to be here. I didn’t know what they wanted from me. Or what was going to happen.

  I heard some yelling, and some shots from elsewhere on the block. I was sure that someone would call the cops on that. Guns weren’t all that common inside the city.

  This sucked, beyond belief. Donny had been knocked unconscious, and Roger got pistol whipped. I had been only a few minutes from closing up my work and heading up to the table where Vanity and Simon were waiting for me.

  All I wanted to do was join them for the night. A drink, a chat, and eventually head home.

  God, I was terrified. Just absolutely scared stiff.

  I put a hand on my stomach where the baby was and just took comfort that I wasn’t really alone in that moment.

  About an hour later, and me desperately trying not to freak out, the doors opened and the guy who had grabbed me at the club walked in. He closed the doors behind himself.

  “Hello, my dear. I’m sorry
we got off to such a difficult start. May I make it up to you with a drink?”

  “No.”

  He expected that answer because he had nothing in his hands that could be used to hold liquid. Even if he had, I wouldn’t have trusted him.

  Her.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Well, my friends call me Baron Grand.”

  “So what do I call you?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, I like you. Baron is fine.”

  “What’s with the get-up? The wig, the dress—you pull it off like you know what you’re doing. Cross-dresser? Queer? Pre-op trans?”

  “Oh, nothing so innocent, my dear Cameron. Nothing nearly so innocent. You see, I run a training house that’s been around for thirty years. I’m sure your lovers would call it a den of iniquity. They don’t appreciate what I do there. What we’ve been doing there.”

  “Thirty…” I looked him up and down. “How is that possible? You can’t be thirty-five.”

  “Thirty-two to be exact.” He grinned and circled around the room. “You didn’t take advantage of the seats available in here.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. You know these aren’t couches and chairs.”

  The chuckle he let out this time was cruel and knowing. “I would have expected that you know how to use them, and how to adapt them. After all, Vanity has been an adoring little subbie to both of us.”

  “You used her as a literal whipping post.”

  He shrugged. “She loves it. She’s addicted to pain. Do you think I would have done that if she didn’t?”

  “Yes.”

  He grimaced, more angry than disappointed. “All of the people who come to that house want to be there. They all want to be abused and beaten and injured and humiliated. Do you think I would take in anyone who didn’t want the pain and agony in their life? Do you think I would take someone as weak as you in there? Because everyone who comes to my house wants what I give them. Even if they call their safe word, they aren’t really asking me to stop. They are asking me for more.”

  Wow. This guy was playing God with his subs. He walked to the window and clasped his hands behind his back. “They are all there for pain, humiliation, injury. Your little sub is an addict. She loves pain. She loved being whipped. I know that her favorite toys aren’t even allowed in the door at Imperial. I don’t know why she bothers when she could be with me, delighting her pain.”

 

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