But he had a bigger problem — what to do with her? He couldn’t risk calling the hospital but she plainly needed medical attention. He fished his cell from his pocket and texted Laird: Code Red, dungeon 5.
While he waited for Laird, he took the time to really look at the woman. She’d called herself Josie, but he didn’t believe that was her name. No one at Malvagio operated under their true identities. “What were you hoping to find, little dove?” he asked in a low, curious tone. Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths and a faint wince marred her forehead as if it hurt to breathe, even in sleep. His gaze dropped to her breasts, two perfectly generous handfuls with soft, dusky nipples fairly begged for a man’s mouth to suckle and tease and he wasn’t above enjoying the view even if the circumstances weren’t ideal. One might berate him for feasting his gaze on a woman who was clearly at a disadvantage but he never claimed to be a gentleman nor did he claim to play by the rules.
Laird appeared and frowned when he saw Vince holding the unconscious girl. “I see you found our little stowaway…” but his mildly amused expression changed when he realized the situation. His brow furrowed as the import hit him as quickly as it’d hit Vince. “What the hell happened here?” he asked, pulling his shirt from his own shoulders and laying it across her exposed body, openly wincing at the damage to her lovely body.
“I don’t know. I found her in the suspension rig, beaten until she lost consciousness. Look familiar?” he asked darkly, knowing Laird would know what he was asking. Laird swallowed and nodded.
“What are we going to do with her? The last one we took to the hospital ignited a firestorm of questions that we barely got away without fully answering. This little chick could bring down our entire operation,” he said, agitated. “Who the hell would do this?”
“I don’t know but we’d better find out or else we’re fucked. In the meantime, I can take her to my penthouse and have a doctor tend to her. Help me get her to the car,” Vince instructed and Laird snapped into action. It was relatively easy to travel the dark halls of the dungeon without attracting attention and with Laird’s help, they gently placed the girl into the awaiting Towncar idling behind the club’s private back entrance. He climbed in beside the girl and leaned out to give terse instructions to Laird. “Get the security footage immediately. I want to know who went into Dungeon 5 tonight. Someone is using Malvagio as a cover to do fucked up things and I’m not about to let some jackwad take us down like this. You find something, you call me, no matter the hour. Got it?”
Laird jerked a short nod and closed the door.
“Penthouse,” he said to the driver and immediately called a doctor they kept on call for odd emergencies. With a club like Malvagio, it was wise to have a doctor on hand who could step in with medical expertise if the play got out of hand. Although rare because Vince screened all potential members, on occasion people have become injured through play that took things a step too far. Usually, when that happened, the member was barred from the club forever because Vince wasn’t anyone’s babysitter, nor did he relish the idea of policing members who weren’t smart enough to do their homework before embarking on potentially dangerous play. One member — Preacher — had ignored a safe word and had nearly caned his sub to death. “Who did you run afoul, my little dove?” he asked quietly, his stare traveling up her body, resting on each raised welt or bruise, and a growing sense of outrage followed. He didn’t know if the rage was centered on the fact that she’d been so brutalized or that it’d been done in his club.
A grim smile followed. Likely because it was done in his club. Vince was no hero and he didn’t pretend to be. The girl had been stupid to come to his club without a sponsor, clearly standing out like a sore thumb among the jaded and debauched of his membership. Her blonde hair spilled across the black leather like fine yellow silk and he wondered if it were as soft as it appeared. He looked away. She reminded him too much of another blonde he’d once known — Isabel.
He squeezed his eyeballs with his thumb and forefinger, staving off the pounding headache that came from too much liquor and not enough sleep, and made a concentrated effort to empty his mind of anything but the moment at hand. He had a clear set of priorities: Get the girl to the penthouse and medical attention; find the fucker who’d dared to pull this kind of shit, not once, but twice.
Six months ago, another girl had been brutalized in his club. He’d chalked it up to inexperience and had buried the investigation. Once the excitement had died down, it’d been business as usual.
The agitation of his thoughts made it impossible to think straight but one thing was clear, someone was using Malvagio to do bad things.
Very bad things.
And if there was one thing he didn’t abide — it was being used.
By anyone.
#
A parade of pain stomped through Emma’s head and made her teeth ache as she clenched them against the agony. Everything hurt. If it were possible, she was fairly certain the tips of her hair were screeching in time with the symphony of pain throughout her entire body. What had happened? Her thoughts were fuzzy but the taste of terror remained. Beaten – she’d been beaten! There’d been laughter, deep, rumbling laughter with each savage blow as she screamed and wept, finally begging for it to stop. How was it possible that she was alive? Or was she? Perhaps she was dead. No, if she were dead, would she be in this much pain? Surely, she’d done enough good in her life to merit a trip to the pain-free zone where angels floated around on clouds of marshmallows?
Squiggly lint trails wiggled across her blurred vision and she couldn’t focus on anything for longer than a heartbeat. The low murmur of voices, speaking in hushed tones that fairly screamed with concern over her smashed body didn’t fill her with confidence that she was going to make it of this scrape alive.
She’d always considered herself plucky — determined to a fault. Right about now, she was feeling naïve and pretty stupid.
What’d been her plan once she got into that infernal club? Waltz up to the owner and get him to confess his sins somehow? One look from his intense stare and she’d felt stripped to her bones. Of course, it hadn’t helped that she’d been wearing that ridiculous sparkly get up that all the hostesses wore in that little sin cesspool. How was it that she could remember all those details but she couldn’t focus her vision to save her life? Perhaps her brain was damaged. She vaguely remembered taking a hit or two to her noggin. But she mostly remembered the searing, unending agony of being tortured within an inch of her life.
Yeah…that she remembered just fine.
And she’d like to forget that.
Please.
But her brain seemed stuck in a loop, playing the events over and over so she could soak in her own misery and compound it with mortification. He’d hung her like a slab of beef and snipped the clothes from her body. But even as horrifying as that’d been, there’d been more and it took a full moment for her traumatized brain to pull the memory from the locked box it’d been shoved into. She shied away from the knowledge but once known, it couldn’t be hidden again. An inhuman sound escaped her. He’d jammed his fingers inside her, ripping and tearing and laughing as she screamed. Emma felt the burn of tears leaking from her eyes and her shoulders shook with the force of the knowledge that she’d not only been beaten but violated as well. “No,” she uttered with a hoarse, dry whisper that sounded as if it came from the dusty vocal cords of a coma patient. “No. Noooooooo….”
Fear and rage crashed against one another in a bid for control and she shook uncontrollably. She felt hands against her skin and she struggled against the foreign touch. The low voices escalated as she fought them harder until she screeched against the shocking prick of something sharp jabbing her vein. No! No! The incessant throb echoing through her body receded to a dull ache and soon the grasp she had on consciousness went slack and she tumbled into a blissful nothingness.
Her last thought burned with hatred.
Vince Buchanan…ba
stard.
-3-
“What the hell happened?” Nolan’s sharp question was tinged with horror. “And you say this isn’t the first time? What the hell, Vince? What else have you been keeping from me?”
Vince glared at his twin for the accusation in his tone. “Hey, don’t go all judgmental on me. You’re the one who’s been too busy with your own life to mess around with club details. There was an incident and I handled it. Plain and simple. How was I supposed to know that it was going to happen again?”
“I don’t understand,” Nolan said, beginning to pace. Their older brother Dillon sat in the chair opposite them, nursing a scotch and brooding. Vince had already downed two already but it wasn’t helping. “Who would fucking do this? Every person on the membership has been personally vetted to avoid shit like this. We have to find out who is behind this before the cops get wind of it.”
“I can take care of the cops,” Vince shot back. “How do you think it went away the first time?”
“You can’t keep paying off detectives to look the other way. Eventually, that puts your ass in a sling and by proxy the family,” Dillon warned, his face a mask of control. The only indication he was pissed was the subtle tensing of his jaw. “Maybe it’s time to shut down this little playground of yours until you can figure out who’s been shitting in your sandbox.”
“Screw that,” Vince shot back with a growl. “No one’s forcing our hand. We’re fucking Buchanans. We run this town. No one is going to tell us how to run our operations.”
“It’s too hot,” Dillon disagreed, looking to Nolan for back up. “Maybe it’s time to let the authorities in on this. We could have a bigger problem than bad PR for the club and the family name. What if this sick bastard is a true sociopath? We don’t have the necessary skillset to take down something like that.”
“Says you,” Vince retorted coolly. “I have a gun. Maybe I’ll just shoot the sick freak and drop his body down a mineshaft.”
“Come on,” Nolan exploded, exasperated. “What the hell are you talking about? Killing people? That’s not our thing and never has been. I agree with Dillon, we need to talk to the cops. Let them handle this shit.”
“Do you realize what will happen if cops start sniffing around the club? They’ll do more than shut it down,” Vince argued hotly. “They’d likely arrest us all on a myriad of lovely charges not to mention we’ll likely get sued by every over-privileged pervert on our roster for having their identities revealed in public documents. We promise — no, we guarantee anonymity to our members — if we lose that, we lose more than our reputations, we lose everything.”
As outwardly calm as Dillon was, Nolan was his opposite, fairly vibrating with agitation. “Vince, I have a family. A wife and daughter. I can’t have this kind of scandal.” He gestured to Dillon. “And what about Penny and the baby? They’re going to get dragged down by this, too, if word gets out.”
“Don’t you think I’ve figured that out,” Vince said. “Why do you think I had her brought here and not the hospital? Hospitals have a mandatory reporting system. They would’ve taken one look at her injuries and the next call would have been to the cops.”
“On the surface, it’s good thinking but what are you going to do with her after she’s healed? You can’t keep her indefinitely and you can’t keep her from going to the authorities herself.”
“I’ll pay her off,” Vince answered with a shrug. “Everyone has a price. I’ll find hers and get her to sign a legally binding contract that keeps her quiet.”
Nolan groaned. “Shannon’s not going to like this.”
“So don’t tell her,” Vince said, disgusted at how quickly his brother had become pussy-whipped by his new wife. He slid his gaze over to Dillon. “And that goes for Penny, too. Besides, Penny is about to pop and doesn’t need the stress.”
“Don’t tell me what my wife needs,” Dillon warned and the two shared an electrically charged look that snapped with danger. At one time — seemed like an eternity ago — Dillon hadn’t been the only Buchanan between his wife’s lovely thighs but they weren’t allowed to talk about that now that Dillon had staked his claim permanently.
“Chill, Dillon,” Nolan said, rubbing at his forehead. “The last thing we need is you two jackasses posturing and whipping out your dicks to see whose is bigger. We need a solution — and fast.”
“No comparison. Mine is bigger,” Dillon answered with a shrug. Vince glared, temporarily distracted by the urge to indeed, whip his cock out and show up his older brother but he tamped it down forcibly. Now was not the time. “How bad is the girl’s injuries?” he asked, returning to the issue without a blink.
“The doc said she’s pretty badly bruised, including a bruised kidney, but no broken bones, which was something of a miracle given how hard she was beaten.” Vince stopped, before revealing the doctor had said that she also suffered a few superficial vaginal lacerations that suggested forceful penetration, likely digital. He didn’t know why he held back. Perhaps not with Dillon, but with his twin, Vince had always shared everything. Maybe it was some latent sense of chivalry or the fact that he felt mildly protective of the girl, but either way, he kept the most damaging information private. “She has a black eye and a busted lip but the doc said all her injuries will heal with time.”
“Thank God.” Nolan heaved a sigh of relief but he still looked as panicked as a time traveler who’d just been told they’d been given free passage on the Titanic. “You going to keep her here?”
“Yeah, I figured that was best.”
Dillon agreed. “If you’re determined to go the route you’re on, it’s best to keep the situation, and her, contained. I have a few guys I can put on this who will keep a low profile. Maybe if we giftwrap this fucker to the police they won’t have cause to look too deeply into the case.”
“I don’t like this. Maybe Dillon is right and we should think about shutting down the club. I haven’t told Shannon about the club yet and I’m not looking forward to that conversation.”
Vince stiffened. “And why is that?”
“Because I’m not that guy anymore who revels in the kind of thing that happens at Malvagio and I think it’s time to distance myself from it.”
Vince stared, unable to believe the words falling from his twin’s mouth. They’d built Malvagio together. Now he was acting as if it were diseased. “Well, if that’s the way you feel, then I guess it doesn’t matter how I handle things, then.”
“Of course it matters,” Nolan answered irritably, completely missing the point of the rebuff. “I don’t want anything to come back to bite Shannon or Aubrey and a place like Malvagio isn’t something you keep around when you have a lot to lose.”
“Go home to your little family,” Vince couldn’t help but sneer. “Don’t worry your precious brain about it.”
“What’s your problem?” Nolan asked, offended. “Until you know what it’s like to fear losing the very thing that makes life worth living…don’t fucking diss me.”
Vince shook his head, not interested in having this conversation when he knew it was pointless. He looked to Dillon. “What about you?” he asked. “Is it too hot in the kitchen for you, too.”
“Don’t be a dick. I already told you I’d put some of my men on this. I have just as much to lose as Nolan. Everyone in this family needs this put to rest. Whether you keep the club or not is immaterial to the immediate dilemma. Let’s focus on the most pressing threat — finding out who did this and why. Okay?”
Vince nodded, reluctantly slanting his gaze at his twin. “And you?”
Nolan chewed his bottom lip, caught between a rock and a hard place but Vince didn’t care. He’d never known his twin to be such a pussy and it killed him to see Nolan so neutered. If this was the consequence of wedded bliss, people could keep that shit to themselves. He’d rather remain who he was — a debauched, licentious and unapologetic aficionado of pretty female flesh — because there was only one person on this planet who’d had
the power to change him.
And she was dead.
“I don’t care who we have to pay off, make disappear, or otherwise ruin…I’m not giving up the club,” he said with finality. “Got it?” Vince stared down his brothers, almost daring them to fight him on this. His blood burned with the need for something he couldn’t quite define and at the moment, all he had was his brothers to knock skulls with. But when neither presented an argument, he considered the conversation over and grabbed his leather jacket. “I’m out of here,” he growled, eager to get back to the penthouse. He wanted to be there when the broken little dove awoke. He had some questions…and one way or another, he was going to get answers.
Neither Dillon nor Nolan tried to stop Vince as he slammed from the house. Their brother had been percolating at a frenzied clip for a while now and neither knew what to do about it. An intervention of some sort had been tossed around but eventually discarded because they all knew that kind of tactic would blow up in their faces in grand fashion.