“You really are a sadist.” I marveled at him. I hadn’t realized there were true sociopathic sadists out there. Maybe I did get a thrill of causing pain to masochists, but never more than they wanted, and never without their consent. This guy wasn’t really about the pain.
He was about control. And Vanity had slipped through his. Once he had Vanity, he would want to go after Lila whether he wanted to admit that or not.
“I am a genie. A granter of wishes. Vanity wished to be in pain. I could do that for her. I still could.” He turned and stared at me. “Addiction comes in all forms, Cameron. Some of us need drugs, like the owner of this place. Some of us need alcohol, like your brother. Some of us need food, some of us are kleptomaniacs, and some of us need pain. I am her dealer and I will have her back in the fold.”
I stared at him. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you need her back? Why are going you through all this for her?”
“It’s not just her. It’s this whole fucking community. It’s Mistress Dee, it’s my parents, it’s the system that locked me away for thirteen years. It’s the everything.”
“Mistress Dee is dead.”
“I know.” He nodded. “I killed her and left her there. I took her life and made it mine. Then your nosy assed husband and my little pain toy had to ruin that. I finally had what I wanted, and that bitch had to ruin it.”
How the hell had this male killed Mistress Dee when Simon had told us the DNA of the murderer was female?
Holy shit.
I actually stumbled back into the mantle to hold myself up as everything fell into place. I pointed at him. “You…you’re—”
The door slammed open and one of his gun toting buddies strolled in. “Boss, we have an issue.”
He walked over to me to look in the mirror, pulling on the pink wig. He smeared away some of his eyeliner and straightened his earrings. “Dee Merriville, at your service.” He saluted me and headed out the door with the goon with the gun.
A sharp pain made me grab my neck.
My hand wrapped around a dart just a moment before I dropped to the ground.
No one had ever been to Oliver’s before. We didn’t know anything about the place, so Tracey, Brigyd, and Simon insisted in sitting in a car just around the corner.
Tracey had some kind of camera he set up on the corner of the building to watch the front of the house.
Lys rolled us around the corner a few minutes later and parked in front on the street. I looked over at her. “No heroics. Don’t endanger her. You can all come and raid the compound later. Let’s just get the pregnant woman out of there, okay?”
Before I could pop my door, Lys grabbed my arm. “Listen to me, Vanessa. It’s killing Simon not to be here. I watched him change in front of my eyes the day he came in and the three of you had started to sort your shit. You are half his heart, and don’t you forget that. The other half is in that house. He will be crushed beyond repair if anything happens to either of you.
“Do not do anything stupid, or heroic yourself. I’m the cop. I have the gun. If there is an opportunity to stop her, I’m taking it.”
She was right. I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have any kind of weapon. I wished I did.
“Lys…”
“I know, girl. I know. There’s a reason I’m a cop, too.”
“If you can find a whip, I’m pretty good with them.”
She nodded. “I’ll keep my eyes open. But you do the same. We’re going in there to get both of you back out.”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
Glancing at the clock—4:20 a.m.—I popped the door open. Laicy had been in his clutches too long. Her clutches. I didn’t understand what was going on with this. Was this Baron? Was this Dee Merriville? Were they working together?
We walked up to the door, and Lys rang the doorbell. A moment later the door swung open and one of the guys who had pistol whipped Roger was standing just inside. He didn’t say anything, but gave us the once-over, then stepped out of the way, jerking his head to motion us inside.
There was another man with a gun there and they both shoved the weapons into our lower back and pushed us into the living room.
A once-again wigless Baron sat on the couch, with a bottle of cheap Remy and a low-ball glass with whiskey rocks.
If only he knew how stupid he looked trying to pull off the class act Dom bullshit.
“Well, well. My little Vanity has come back.”
“I have not. I’m here because you kidnapped my girlfriend from our office. You wanted to exchange me for her, so let’s do that. She’s the reason I’m here, not you.”
He tsked. “My little pet. You think I’m just going to switch you out? No, no. You see, your Cameron now finds herself in a bit of a…tangle.”
My stomach plunged to the floor, and Lys gasped quietly next to me. I stared at this giant piece of shit and took a moment to compose myself. “Where is she? What have you done?”
Standing, he moved across the room to the hall, and to the doors that were closed there. Pulling them open, he grinned, bowed, and motioned us inside.
It was a nightmare.
Laicy was in a complicated and poorly done shibari tree. Her legs were bent uncomfortably, and her head was pointing down. There were ropes where none should be, and things were pulling and pinching on her. No one had been in the room, which mean no one was monitoring her. She was either passed out or asleep, with tear stains on her face.
The Baron circled the mess on the frame. “My apprentice rigged her in. A good job, I thought.” He trailed his finger over the ropes on her arm.
I swallowed and stayed in control. I saw Lys give me a short, strong nod in approval.
“This is shit,” I stated. “Some of the worst, most dangerous rigging I’ve ever seen.”
He snapped around and stared at me. “What would you know?”
“I’m the nawashi at Sadique. I know about ropes. And this is terrible.”
Before Lys or I could move, he snatched the whip off the wall and cracked it across her back. I held in as much as I could as Laicy’s eyes popped open with her mouth, but no sound came out.
She was in pain beyond sound at this point. Laicy didn’t like pain. She was sensual. And having a whip across her back was up there pretty high on the pain scale. One of my favorites, and seeing it rip across her back made me want to choke Baron out.
“What are you doing?” Lys growled, jerking herself back from rushing him like I wanted to do.
“My pet next to you likes pain, and what better way to cause her pain than to hurt someone she loves?”
“Psycho,” I bit out.
He marched around the frame and wrapped his hand around my jaw, pulling me around Laicy. He jerked my face around to see her back.
It was raw. She’d been hit repeatedly with a bullwhip, and there were open wounds, bleeding down to the carpet. He shoved me even closer.
“What do you think of the rigging now? Everything I want to whip and injure is right here for me to access. Eventually I’ll get tired of her back and move to her front and do exactly the same to her breasts, her stomach, her pussy. You cannot stop me. I will extract the toll you owe me from her.”
“You can’t,” I breathed. “You can’t. Please. I came here to take her place. Rig me up and do what you want with me, but let her down, let her go.”
“No.”
There was a set of arms around me in the next instant and I was too shocked to fight back. Lys turned to run, but there was someone in her way. She spun to run away from them, but after a yelp, she fell forward, and I could see a dart in her right buttock.
“What are you doing?” I screamed as Lys hit the floor.
“I’m going to give you more pain than you can ever dream of,” Baron said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to feel every nerve in your body on fire. You want—”
I spat in his face to stop him from talking.
He punche
d me in the jaw. I laughed at him. It wasn’t a strong punch at all, and all it did was sting. He slapped me hard, and I just lifted an eyebrow.
“You’re a fucking psychopath,” I stated.
This time, he cackled. “I know, and I don’t care.”
“You…know?”
“How do you think my idiot sister managed to get me locked away in Maine for thirteen years? I am a literal sociopath. People don’t know the difference. So, I just go with psycho.”
He nodded at the person who had their arms around me and I was dragged over to a spanking bench. Forcing me down to sit onto the riser, I had one hand yanked out on each side and tied wide-open.
For fun, the Baron cracked the whip on Laicy again, who let out another strangled cry. I could feel the tears in my eyes. That pain was indescribable to others—she didn’t know how to go into subspace from it.
“Why are you doing this?” I choked out, staring into Laicy’s wide, unfocused eyes. “What made you…”
“I fucking enjoy it,” he growled, shoving his face into mine. “My sister introduced me to this world on accident and I love it. I love everything about sadism. It’s so much more fun than robbery and larceny. I get to see pain, right up front.”
He raised his hand and slapped me hard across my breast. I cringed, but didn’t really react to it.
“Baron?” the other guy in the door asked. “The cop?”
“I don’t want her. She’s useless. Throw her out the front door. I won’t be held for the murder of a police officer.”
The guy slung his gun up over his shoulder and grabbed Lys’s feet. He dragged her out of the room, closing the doors.
“Alone at last, my pet.” He still had the whip in his hand and dragged the handle down the side of my face. “As soon as I get bored with her, I’ll come and tend to you.”
“Let me cut her down. Please, Baron. Let me cut her down. She has nothing to do with you or me or any of this.”
“She’s your lover, isn’t she? That’s all I need.”
“Let her go, please.”
He walked back over and dragged his hand over her back, and lifted it up, coated in her blood. “I learned a lot in that prison in Maine. That my condition focuses on satisfaction, whatever we have to do to feel satisfied. I quite literally don’t care what you feel. I don’t even think that I can imagine it. I understand that what I’m doing can be wrong, is wrong, but that doesn’t stop me. That’s what makes me a sociopath and not psychopath. The DSM doesn’t use the terms anymore. I have a ASPD and BPD, and I have homicidal tendencies.” He wiped his hand on the towel that hung near the frame.
“And maybe you’re right. Maybe after I’m done with you, I’ll want to retrieve Lila and pull her back into my clutches. I’m impulsive and reckless. Sex is a transaction for me. I like being in control.”
Walking around the frame, he grabbed Laicy’s breast and squeezed it so hard I saw tears in her eyes again. They flickered with pain and she tried so hard not to cry out, but a strangled gasp escaped.
“I also learned that this sense of delight, of satisfaction from the release of oxytocin. Since hearing people beg and cry makes me feel powerful, that’s what I need to hear to feel satisfaction. Screaming, crying, begging. Things that keep my oxytocin up.”
He cocked his head and stared at me. Absently, he pulled hard on the ropes of the frame, and Laicy let out a thin cry.
“Asking you why you do this won’t mean a thing.” I shook my head.
“Not a thing because there’s no reason behind it. None except getting what I want. I’ve always gotten what I want. My mother called me histrionic. The doctors did too. A maniac, hysterical. But I controlled that family. They were under my thumb because I have no empathy.” Baron squatted in front of me. “Do you know how nice it is not give a shit about anything or anyone? I can do what I want, where I want, when I want without consequence. I used to think I had to care, but I’m not right in the head. So I don’t.”
Standing, he walked back over to the frame. “Mm, I’m monologuing now, aren’t I?” He pulled a rope and Laicy screamed again.
I wanted to throw up.
“Well, since I’m already monologuing with the idea to kill both of you in the next few days, shall we get it all out in the open? How my sister and my mother would try to shame me into doing things, shame me into going to school, wearing the right clothes? Cute little dresses and bobby socks. Barrettes and Mary Janes. Pig tails and poplin. The day I got caught stealing cigarettes I gave them my sister’s name.
“I stole her social security number. I assumed her life before she could even get one. It was awesome because I didn’t have to answer for anything I did. We looked so much alike the cops could believe she was the guilty one. That she robbed stores and sold drugs. That she shot the taxi driver. That she was the one driving the car that killed our mother.”
He was standing over me now and ran a hand down my outstretched arm. “Once our mother was dead, we moved to Maine. I guess that sister dear thought she could escape me, but it was so easy to blame everything on Denise while my name stayed perfectly clean.”
Holy shit. “You’re…Danielle? But...”
How was this even possible?
Tossing his head back, he let out a raucous laugh. “Just figuring this out?” He yanked his skirt up and pulled out his dick. “It’s real. You know it’s real. I drilled this into your pussy many times. And you begged for it, yelled for me to stop. I never did because I didn’t care. I still don’t.”
Letting go of himself, he didn’t bother to pull the skirt back down. “It was a sloppy mistake that I got caught at a convenience store that had a very good camera and Dee had a visible bandage on her head from where I had cracked her in the skull. She had me committed to that damn mental prison. I couldn’t get out. There was no way that I could.”
He bent down, palming himself and starting to stroke his cock. “She got smart, my big sister. I was proud of her for this—she stole my identity. Swapped us out, one hundred percent and got me committed and got away from me. And left me in that jail.
“I rotted there for thirteen long years. Thirteen miserable years. The things I had to do. The people I had to fuck. Still, I learned a lot in that time. And I ran a long con, a very long con.”
“You know I don’t care about this, right? I just want you to let Laicy go.”
He stood, wrapping a hand around his dick and pulling on it. He stared at me, then spun around and cracked the whip out, cutting Laicy across the chest.
She screamed, and I did throw up.
Baron jumped back. Then, he was jerked back and slammed into the wall next to the bench.
Staring at him, I saw red blooming on the side of the pale pink dress he was wearing. He stared at it too and put a hand on the spreading stain.
“Ouch…”
He looked over at the door, and I whipped my head around. Lys was standing there, holding her gun out, and her arm tight against her body.
“I should put one in your brain,” she managed, her voice laced with pain.
He slid down the wall, breathing hard, his eyes darting around. “Not supposed to happen…I’m in control.”
Lys moved to stand over him. “Not anymore, asshole.”
Her fist shot out and slammed into his temple.
Baron slumped over, out cold.
I opened my eyes and saw the only two things I needed in the world: Vanity and Simon.
“Hey, babe.” Simon smiled.
“Hello, love,” Vanity whispered.
My hand fluttered, but I couldn’t really get it to move. Simon slipped his hand into mine and held on. Vanity’s hand landed on my abdomen and there were tears in her eyes.
“Baby’s fine. The doc said you have an exceptionally healthy looking little bean in there.”
I managed to squeeze Simon’s hand as Vanity leaned in and kissed my forehead.
Everything would be fine.
I slipped back into sleep.
Vanity
Tucking myself close to Laicy, I left my hand on her little tummy that had really started to show. She didn’t seem to mind my touch, or Simon’s, but I giggled remembering the idiot at the store the other day who had dared to touch her.
I was pretty sure his dick had shriveled up and fallen off.
Simon was sitting on her other side, leaning forward on the bench, paying rapt attention to the proceedings that were going on.
Around us, were all the people who had been nothing but amazing and supportive in the past five months as Laicy recovered from the torture the Baron had inflicted on her in those five hours. I spotted our boss, Donny, his husband Roger. Tracey was seated with us behind the table. Killian and Cece were there, as was Darien, Titus, and even Lila. Nick was sitting in the back—he loved watching his wife take a bite out of crime’s ass.
Glancing at the prosecution’s table, Nick’s wife Morgan was chatting with Lys and Paul. Paul had testified earlier as witness for the prosecution, since he was the coroner who could identify the marks on Laicy’s back.
The images had been brutal but necessary. She had shivered seeing them, but didn’t react as bad as I had feared. Laicy had healed well, and she was just as awesomely resilient as anyone could hope.
The bailiff stood up and called the court to order and our feet. A moment later the judge had us sit down and I tucked back into Laicy.
“Counselor, are you ready to call your witness?”
“Yes, your honor,” Morgan said. “I’d like to call Detective Jupiter Stathopolis.”
Lys cringed and walked back out and around the table to the witness box, stopping to let the bailiff swear her in. She sat and Morgan stood.
“State your name for the record, please.”
“Jupiter Stathopolis, detective, Pittsburgh Police.”
“Thank you. Do you recognize the defendant?”
“Currently, Denis Merriville, also known as the Baron Grand.”
Double Entendre: (City of Steel 2) (The Vault) Page 26