Caged By Them (Descent Into Darkness 1)

Now I wait—and hope he doesn’t grow a spine before tomorrow.

The next day

I barely got any sleep and as soon as the workday started, I stared at the folder where he was supposed to deposit the documents. Two hours went by and my stomach turned into a knot. I was imagining every scenario possible, and they were all going wrong in my head—until something showed up. A single PDF document. Then more—then the floodgates opene

d, and they just started pouring into the folder. It was a small victory, but I wouldn’t know if it was a significant one until I was able to go through the documents. I quickly downloaded them to my computer, Wyatt’s computer, and Reynard’s computer. I didn’t want to risk something happening to them, or a random crash destroying the evidence.

The first few documents were useless—just transfer invoices, paperwork, legal jargon, and other nonsense. Then I found one that was signed—signed by a woman named Hannah Clark. That had to be here. Hannah Ashton—her real name was Hannah Clark. I typed her name into a search engine and didn’t find much. The name was too common. I kept digging—going deeper into the documents while adding more details as I found them. I was almost at the end of my search when I noticed that another PDF document had been added to the folder. I hovered over it and as I did, a text document appeared next to it that said Open Me on it.

What’s this?

I opened the text document and it was just a single line that read — This is what you’re looking for. I expect you to hold up your end of the deal. I opened the PDF document and my eyes nearly bulged out of my head—it was a contract. A contract between Hannah Clark and Josef Weber. It detailed how Josef Weber was going to help her acquire her family’s company, Jackson Investments, and in exchange, she would sign over the holding companies that she owned. It might as well have been a confession. It proved that Josef Weber knew what was going on before he bought the shell companies, but more importantly—it also proved that Hannah was not some confused sister that got taken advantage of. She entered into an agreement with Josef Weber and leveraged what she had against her family as an asset.

But in order to get Jackson Investments, she needed a copy of her father’s will—and Wyatt was the only one who had that.

I felt a chill sweep over me—what if Wyatt’s death wasn’t suicide? I turned back to Wyatt’s computer and pulled up the logs from the day he died. I was looking for a software update—and I found exactly what I was afraid I would. The day Wyatt killed himself, or was murdered, someone put a flash drive into his computer. His computer immediately downloaded the software for the model number. If it was a flash drive, he owned that he normally put into his computer, that wouldn’t have been necessary. That meant there was a good chance someone used his computer the day he killed himself—and I pretty convinced that there was only one thing they were interested in copying—his father’s secret will.

If this turns out to be more than a theory, then they killed him—they killed him to get their hands on that will

But if they killed him to cover this up—and Josef Weber tracks everything like Hank Matthews said—I may have just put myself in danger.

I gathered everything I could and left my apartment. It wouldn’t be easy for Weber to find me, but he had the kind of financial assets that Reynard had—it would only be a matter of time. He might not know that I was directly involved with the Jackson brothers, but he would figure that out once he saw what I stole. I decided to hide out at Reynard’s place—I knew I would be safe there at least and he had security cameras—not that I wanted to be there long enough to need them.

Now I need to find someone that I can trust—someone that can get them out of jail and make sure the right people are behind bars instead.

I wished I could ask Reynard or Mauro, but it was too risky to travel to Chicago—that would put me even closer to Weber and I didn’t want to be separated from the evidence I had. I decided that the best course of action would be to call Abigail. If Reynard and Mauro trusted her, she would probably know who to call. A quick conversation with her put me in touch with a man named Robert Fisk, who was an attorney for the Jackson brothers. I emailed him the evidence—and I waited—waited for good news.

But mostly I was waiting for Reynard and Mauro to walk through the door.

Because I wanted them to put me back in my cage.

And I didn’t want them to ever let me go.

Mauro

Jail was becoming nothing short of fucking awful. I hated being locked up, and I was beginning to hate the fact that I had nobody to talk to except Reynard. I dared to have a little bit of hope when he told me that Lizzy visited, especially when he said she was trying to help, but I wasn’t sure what she could do. She was a nineteen-year-old girl who had never worked a day in her life when she wasn’t stealing money from people. I definitely didn’t think that was going to translate very well into our world. For all I knew, she only came to visit because she wanted to get into his house—maybe she had remorse over not taking the check and just wanted to steal what she could. It wasn’t like either of us was going to be able to use it.

“Heads up.” Reynard motioned to two guys that were entering the area where our meals were served.

“Ugh.” I looked down at my tray. “I’ll be glad when they transfer those two to an actual prison—fucking hate being in here with them.”

“Yeah, but they claim they're innocent.” Reynard chuckled under my breath.

“I’m pretty sure the only innocent people in here are us, and we’re not that fucking innocent either.” I shook my head back and forth. “We’re just not in prison for what we really deserve to be in here for.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Reynard eyed me with a glare.

“You don’t see the irony here?” I lifted my head slowly. “Lizzy? What we did to her? The only thing that’s missing is a beat down from those two thugs and a night we want to forget once the lights go out.”

“She wasn’t very innocent either.” Reynard exhaled sharply. “She may not have done what we accused her of exactly, but if we turned over the evidence we had, she would have been someone’s prison bitch.”

“Yeah.” I scoffed. “Instead she became ours.”

I hated myself for finally letting the beast out—for believing it was okay to just take Lizzy’s body and satisfy my own lust. I had a lot of time to think about that while I was sitting in my cell, listening to Reynard ramble about what he was going to do when he finally got out of jail. I wasn’t so sure we're going to see the outside of those walls for a while—and when we did, it might be because we were headed to one that wasn’t quite as accommodating. The judge over our case wasn’t very fond of white-collar prison resorts, and the assault charge Josef Weber had against us was likely to be land us in the same place as the two hulking maniacs sitting a few tables down—awaiting trial for murder.

If we had just managed to control our temper, we might have been able to wait out the SEC investigation and at least let them put the handcuffs on. We had enough influence in New York to end up serving our sentence somewhere with a golf course—not that I really gave a shit about playing golf. Unfortunately, the assault case had been put on hold because the judge wanted to let the SEC finish kicking our teeth in, and the last call from Fisk indicated that they were discussing a government takeover for Jackson Investments. The investors that we seemingly screwed over were out for blood—and why wouldn’t they be? In their eyes—and in the eyes of the rest of the court of public opinion, we were the scum of the earth.

I certainly felt like it.