The Sex Tape, page 16
“He’s given them a way around taxes and granted them nonprofit rights, among other things,” Blake added, snapping another photo.
There was also no need to ask who they were. There was only one group that Blake and his buddies had accused my uncles of working with—the mafia.
“We should move on,” I urged, getting uncomfortable with what we’d found and the fact that the guys had taken photos, had hard evidence to show to their Alpha Chi Psi buddies.
Was this all a setup? Was all this being undertaken on the premise of getting me on board when, really, they just wanted to get in here and find evidence? After all, if we were caught, I could say I’d come to visit… a bare-faced lie but I was family, and it wasn’t like Royce’s houses hadn’t been my home throughout my childhood. Explaining the guys would be awkward but doable, and it made their infiltration a damn sight safer for them.
Shoving my distrust aside for the moment, I put the stack of papers I’d been looking at back where I found them and started going through the rest of the room like before, checking light fixtures, feeling along the books in the bookcase for anything suspicious, checking behind paintings.
There was a big safe that had been built into the wall that Lennox had pointed out before we even made it into the room, but there, behind a portrait of the family—my grandparents, my dad, and my uncles—was another safe, one that hadn’t been invoiced from the perplexed look on Len’s face.
“Lennox, can you crack a safe?” I queried.
He looked up, his eyes sparking with curiosity in the dim light. “I love a challenge,” he responded. The first safe, the big one, was the first thing he’d opened. It had been full of paperwork, important documents like birth certificates, marriage licenses, and other things of that nature, but it was this other safe that had all our attention.
Blake and Flynn slowly made their way over to where we were standing, while Lennox hooked his phone up to the safe and tapped away.
How this shit was even possible, I didn’t know. But I half expected Tom Cruise to appear behind us, the Mission Impossible theme blaring wide as, within five minutes, I heard the lock release and the door swing open.
Part of me had been expecting to not be able to get it open, so I was surprised that Lennox had the knowhow—what were they teaching at MIT these days? Sheesh.
So, yeah, I was impressed, yet again, by his smarts, but the rest of my brain that wasn’t oohing and aahing over Len was surprised by the amount of cash and gold bars—yes, fucking gold bars—that were in the safe. This wasn’t the main safe, it was hidden away, but this one was way more important in terms of deciding my uncle’s guilt.
We pulled out two folders, along with a gun and a stack of photos. As I looked through the photos, I saw ones of my mom and dad, happy and smiling. They seemed to age before my eyes, and then suddenly there was a baby in the pictures as well—me. The love that shone from their eyes as they both looked at me made my heart ache and my throat knot with unshed tears.
The last photo was the one that almost had me vomiting though. My parents reaching toward the camera, bloodied and pinned in a car that was obviously totaled as most of the front was wrapped around a tree. The wounds they had both suffered were bleeding profusely, and even I could tell, just from the photo, that there was no way they would have survived without immediate medical attention.
I had always been told that no one found my parents’ wreck until early the next morning, long after they’d died from blood loss and injuries sustained in the crash. This photo proved exactly the opposite.
Seemed as though the guy who’d handled what happened to my parents, had stuck around and taken a few shots as proof for Royce that the job was done.
I had to step away. I couldn’t look at the image anymore, couldn’t see the desperation and confusion in my parents’ eyes.
I let the photo fall from my hands, barely getting the rest into the safe as I stumbled away.
“I need to go,” I said, when I felt a hand on my arm.
“Let’s just check the basement quickly and then we’ll get out of here, I promise,” Lennox assured me, pressing his hand to my arm. The touch was so gentle that I had intuitively known it wasn’t Flynn or Blake.
Though queasy, I nodded, and followed as Lennox led the way to the basement stairs. At the bottom, we found exactly what Royce had always said was there, a gym. There was even a cedar sauna that was installed in one corner. The padlock on it was strange, but I could understand it from a safety perspective if Royce had given a damn about anyone other than himself, that is.
When Flynn unlocked it with the keys we found in my uncle’s bedside table, the feeling of dread came back tenfold.
The door swung open and the rich, comforting scent of cedar filled the air. I stepped in and pushed on each of the walls, not feeling any of them budge. It was only when I heard something click that I paused and looked at the guys.
Blake’s hand was on the controls, and when he turned the temperature dial all the way up, the click happened again. This time I was able to tell which direction it came from. Flynn was right there next to me, pushing on the wall this time. Only it didn’t move.
When we both let up, our arms dropping to our sides, the wood panel gently swung toward us. It was a pull door, not push. Flynn grabbed it before it could swing shut again and held it open for me.
As I stepped through the opening, it was like I’d walked into another world, one that was beyond BDSM, that went beyond the ‘red room of pain,’ one that made ‘kinky’ look normal. It went way past knife play or blood play and into the realm of horror porn.
My stomach was twisting and turning at the sight of the implements hanging on the wall that looked more like something the inquisitors might have used back in the day.
As I stood, blocking the doorway for anyone else, a small sound drew my attention. I followed my instincts toward it and found three women huddled together in a cage. Each with just enough length of chain to reach the other, but not enough to get out of the cage itself. They were filthy and the single toilet in their cage was the only raised surface from the floor. Their eyes watched us, but they stayed as silent as possible.
“Do you speak English?” It seemed a stupid question, but hell, they could have been American or Russian for all I knew. When they just stared at me blankly, I wasn’t sure what to do. “None of us are here to hurt you,” I whispered, the words shaking as I took in the state of them.
As soon as the guys heard my voice, they came rushing in, which only terrified the women.
“They mean you no harm. They’re not like Royce,” I entreated, trying Russian to see if they understood me, and splaying my palms on either side of me to show I wasn’t a threat.
“Are you new girl?” one of the women whispered.
I shook my head and they visibly relaxed.
“What the fuck is going on here?” a voice yelled from behind me, startling the girls into screaming. But me? I just felt annoyed.
Goddammit.
Winston was here.
❖
Briar
“Did you know about this?” I asked, turning to face him without showing my surprise that he followed me, or tracked me somehow.
The sneaky shit. He’d known I was awake the whole time.
“Of course not,” he ground out, rearing back as he took in what we were staring at.
“Okay, then help me get them out,” I insisted, as I grabbed the keys from Blake’s hand.
“Did you tell him we were coming here?” Blake hissed at me, his grip on the keys like steel.
“No, of course not. I told you I didn’t want to involve him in this shit, and I meant it.” I yanked the keys from his hand and began trying them on the lock that secured the cage. None of them worked.
“Do you know where the key is?” I gentled my voice, waving the keys I was holding in front of me. Each of the women shook their heads in turn.
“You can’t seriously be thinking about letting them out?” Winston snarled from behind me.
“Why the hell wouldn’t I? I’m not leaving them here in this filth,” I snapped back at him.
“If you let them go, then Royce will know you were here, and even I can’t save you from his vengeance then.”
“So I’m just supposed to live with the knowledge that they’re here and do nothing about it?”
“Don’t leave us,” one of the women whimpered, her hands clinging to the bars so tightly, her knuckles bled white—even through the filth covering her.
That Royce had done this to them, used them in this state… he was more than just a monster. He was a fucking demon.
Winston’s fingers cupped my shoulders, and though he usually gave me comfort, in this, there was no comfort.
“We leave them, for now. We get evidence, give the police a reason to search Royce’s house, then there is even more shit sticking to him and more reasons for him to go down.”
“And in the meantime, they have to suffer!” I hissed.
“Unfortunately, yes. Unless we can keep Royce away from home,” Winston suggested, as he glanced at the other three men for backup.
Great, now they were going to work together against me.
Like I wasn’t already outnumbered by them.
“He’s right, Briar. We can’t do anything right now. This all has to be done above board if you want this shit to stick to him. Even then, it might not if we get the wrong judge. We’ll keep Royce away from home until we have a case we can take to the police.”
“Polizia?” one of the women asked, and I nodded. The idea seemed to relax her.
“We need to get out of here,” Blake urged uneasily, and I knew that even though he’d been prepared for what we were going to find, actually coming face to face with three victims of Royce’s torture went so far beyond anything we could have anticipated.
Knowing and seeing were two very different things.
They grabbed at my hands, tugging me forward even though every part of me couldn’t bear to leave the women in their cage.
My tears were stupid. I didn’t deserve them, they did. They were the ones who were suffering, who were caged like animals by a man who had let power go to his head, who thought he was untouchable.
But he wasn’t.
Fuck, he wasn’t, and I’d do what I had to, whatever I must, to make sure that the power structure that supported my uncle’s evil ways crashed and burned around him.
In the face of their torment, of their treatment at my blood’s hands? I’d make them all wish that the Gildermann name was nothing.
“I’ll be back soon with the police, I promise.”
The third women, the one who hadn’t said anything, looked at me as though she didn’t believe a single word I’d said. I couldn’t blame her, for all I knew, Royce had been playing mind games with them as well as torturing and raping them.
The idea of my uncle, the one who’d mostly raised me after my parents died, being capable of this was sickening on a level I couldn’t quite fathom just yet. But boy, making him pay? I was totally on board with that.
“Briar, you’re with me,” Winston rasped. “The rest of you go home.”
“Not a chance. We’re coming back to Briar’s place and we’re all going to have a chat,” Blake argued, holding his hand up so his pinky ring winked in the dim light.
Though they’d been shocked at the news Winston was ACP, I didn’t think my bodyguard-cum-lover was as surprised. “Fine, but don’t expect tea and cookies,” was all he said, as he began pulling me toward the door and away from the nightmares hidden within the luxury of a cedar sauna.
If I managed to scrub this barbarism from my mind, and only needed five years of therapy, I’d consider myself lucky.
But seeing those filthy faces staring at me as I was dragged away… I knew they’d haunt me for the rest of my life.
Just as they should.
My blood had done this to them. My flesh and blood.
God, no wonder I wanted to puke.
Evolution is here.
1
Flynn
There came a time in a person’s life where the blinders were pulled free, and he or she was made aware of the harsh realities in this world.
That had happened to me at thirteen. I’d walked in on my dad boning his secretary, and ever since, my relationship with him had been difficult to say the least.
For Briar?
That was today, and though my feelings for her were all over the place, I almost wished that we’d been wrong.
We had a purpose. Whether or not my father was the one we answered to, that purpose was there. A rock-solid reminder that scum like the Gildermanns couldn’t be allowed into the White House.
We’d known about Royce and his brother’s proclivities. Knew he’d been dealing with the mafia for a long time, and yet, seeing it in the flesh had taken me aback. So, what Briar’s reaction was, I couldn’t say. I just knew I felt sick to my stomach.
“I wish we didn’t have to show her that,” Lennox muttered heavily, his head thudding against the headrest as Blake took off.
I hated being in a car I wasn’t driving, but this was Blake’s ride so it wasn’t like I could wrestle him for the steering wheel. But throw in these weird thoughts that were rolling through my head, I wished for something simple to focus on. Something that didn’t revolve around Briar Gildermann and her fucking family.
“She would never have agreed to help us otherwise,” Blake replied, but his tone was grim, stoic. And I understood why, because he was right.
One-hundred-percent correct.
I blew out a breath. “You know Blake isn’t wrong, Lennox.”
“I do, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.” He gritted his teeth. “Leaving those women behind… I don’t like it.”
I reached over and patted his shoulder. “I know, man. You think we’re happy about it?”
Lennox shook his head, but he carried on staring down at his screen, closing up the holes he’d breached in Royce Gildermann’s security systems.
I wasn’t sure how he did what he did, but I knew we could always rely on him, and for that, I was grateful. Lennox was one of those guys who was too quiet for his own good. He liked silence, enjoyed studying, and would never leave his apartment were it not for Blake or me.
I loved the guy like a brother, and that was why I knew he was hurting, no matter how stony his expression was.
Thinking about those filthy faces, those skinny bodies, I whispered, “How does he do it? They stank.” I felt like a bastard for even saying that out loud, and the look Blake shot me in the rearview mirror said he agreed with my self-assessment.
“Does it matter?” he grated out.
“No, but I just—” I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”
“Maybe it isn’t about sex, just torture,” Lennox supplied grimly.
“I doubt it. Fat bastard like Royce… Only his wife would put up with him considering she’s so under his thumb, which means he’d have to pay whoever he fucks. Plus, the clue is in the title. Sex slave. Still, I mean, it’s just weird. To chain them up like dogs and then fuck them? Dude is weirder than I thought.”
Blake shook his head. “Your brain is a weird place, Flynn. That’s the entire part of the situation that disturbs you? The fact they’re dirty when he tortures them?”
I scowled at him. “No. You know what I’m saying.”
Blake just grunted, but I flipped him the bird even though I wasn’t altogether sure if he’d see it in the pitch-black of the car. I mean, I held it up high, and made sure it was visible in the passing lights of another car, but Blake didn’t tell me to fuck off, so I wasn’t sure if my bird had hit its mark.
Because I was apparently too dumb to speak with, Lennox and Blake talked about security patches and shit that bored me senseless. Blake understood that crap, but me? I didn’t do technical.
My father had raised me to understand the importance of journalism, but more than anything, he’d taught me that the person who owned the paper could write any headline he wanted.
My connections were going to come in very handy when Briar decided what her next move was. Truth was, I didn’t think I could go to the same extents as we had at the beginning of term. I already felt like a complete and utter shit for writing the copy for the website, and I knew Lennox felt like a fuck for updating the damn thing on the regular.
The sickest thing of all?
It had been so easy.
Far too easy to completely destroy her world, and it filled me with loathing for how quickly the queen of the castle had been dethroned and scorned.
It truly was like Cersei.
Except I hoped Briar wouldn’t have to walk through Gildermann Academy butt naked.
I mean, I’d pay to see that but in a private viewing.
“What do you think’s going on with that dude Winston? He knew who we were.”
“Of course he did. He’s her driver and guard. He’s paid to know who we are,” Lennox muttered absentmindedly, and it was testament to the fact that his brain was evidently thinking on something else that he made such a stupid comment.
“I didn’t mean our identities. I mean that we’re ACP,” I muttered with an eye roll.
Lennox frowned, peered over the dash as he contemplated it, and then shrugged. “Does it matter? Evidently his handler told him about us.”
“I doubt it. You know how closemouthed the ranks can be.” I rubbed my chin as I thought about it. On this long ass drive back to Briar’s apartment, with the conversation nonexistent thanks to what we’d seen in that basement, my thoughts were really my only company.
And, to be honest, that was the last thing I needed.
I didn’t need to see those women’s small faces in my mind’s eye, didn’t need to think of Briar’s horror, nor did I need to reflect on the shitty website that we’d made to destroy Briar’s rep. Those three things were bound to put me in a bad mood.
