Jessica knew time was running out and so she redoubled her efforts. She had fended off a professional assassin earlier in the day. She was a professional killer. Surely a person like her couldn’t die at the hands of an ordinary citizen. Maybe she had done some reprehensible things, but the thought of going out like this offended her at a basic level. So she worked his ribs some more, drilling him with punches calculated to inflict maximum pain. His grimaces showed these were having some effect, but the pressure on her throat didn’t let up one bit. She pushed a thumb into his bicep wound and got the same result.
Terror engulfed her as she realized she was losing the battle and was really about to die. She couldn’t breathe at all, her lungs were straining desperately for air, and her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would explode.
Jessica wanted to scream.
Oh, please, please, please, don’t let this happen! I want to live, please God.
Billy was shaking and fresh blood was leaking from the gashes her nails had raked in his face. His eyes were full of tears. But he was smiling. Of course he was. He was a victim. He had been violated and tortured and now he was having his revenge. And it was sweet, the way revenge always was.
Jessica, knowing she was beaten, stopped hitting him. She waited for unconsciousness and the emptiness of death. It wouldn’t be long now, she knew.
But then there was a loud boom and the center of Billy’s chest exploded outward. A rain of blood hit Jessica’s face. Someone gave Billy a kick in the back and he toppled sideways off of her. She didn’t see who her rescuer was at first because of the blood in her eyes, nor did she care in that first moment, being too busy sucking air into her oxygen-deprived lungs and overcome with joy at getting to live a little longer.
That changed when she wiped the blood away and saw who was standing over her.
She gasped. “You.”
Zelda smiled. “Hello, Jessica.”
21.
There were two bits of good news from Daphne’s point of view. One, she was no longer hanging from the goddamn pulley suspension system. The other was that she was no longer naked. Her own clothes, all icky from being covered in blood and brains, had been discarded, but Vivian had provided a black dress and heels from her own wardrobe. A functionary had been sent to her place—apparently somewhere very nearby—to retrieve the outfit. The fit was a bit snug, but not enough to be uncomfortable.
The bad news was she apparently beginning a lifetime of enslavement..
After being let down from the suspension beam, she was ushered into Vivian’s private office for a one-on-one frank discussion about her future. What it boiled down to was Vivian offering her an opportunity to actually have a future, a rare thing for women in her position. But it would be dependent on several factors, beginning with an admission of the true facts regarding what had happened to Lexus. Vivian made it clear that what was left of Daphne’s future could be measured in minutes if she didn’t believe her this time. So Daphne told the truth. To her immense relief, Vivian seemed satisfied with what she said. It was obvious the woman felt no real sense of loss where Lexus was concerned and had only pretended otherwise to pacify the grief-stricken Horst.
So Daphne was now to serve as Vivian’s new personal slave on a trial basis. The position required obeying Vivian without hesitation in all matters. She would do whatever was required of her without ever complaining, regardless of how degrading or distasteful some of it might seem. Daphne, of course, agreed to these terms.
And so now here she was, waiting to have dinner with Vivian and her oddball friends in a smaller room adjacent to the main dining area. This was the room she’d seen while being dragged through Mama Hunt’s by the big rednecks, the one with the door marked PRIVATE. The smaller dining room’s incongruously upscale atmosphere was at odds with the decidedly more rustic flavor the rest of the establishment exuded. A man in a black suit tickled the ivories of a baby grand piano in a corner of the room. A waiter in a tuxedo flitted from guest to guest, filling and refilling wine flutes from a bottle. Daphne allowed the man to refill her glass multiple times. The booze calmed her nerves somewhat, albeit not nearly enough.
The long hibachi table in the middle of the room was currently being ignored by the guests, but Daphne’s gaze went to it again and again. The table was similar to ones she had seen in Asian restaurants, but it appeared to have been specially modified. Short poles protruded from each corner of the table’s metal center. A manacle was attached to each pole. The purpose of the modifications was obvious—to hold an unwilling victim in place atop the grill. Other implications were equally obvious, but Daphne was trying hard not to think about them.
Right now she was busy pretending to pay attention to the midget, Francois, as he told her in boring detail about his import-export business. This was made easier by his fixation on her boobs, which were accentuated in an admittedly distracting way by the snug dress. Under other circumstances, she might have admonished or teased him about it, but at the moment she didn’t give a shit. Being ogled by a diminutive pervert was the least of her current worries, and if he noticed that she wasn’t really paying attention to him, he didn’t seem to care.
She realized she had again emptied her glass and looked around to signal the waiter for yet another refill, but he had left the room. She frowned at her empty glass and glanced across the room to where Vivian stood talking with the middle-aged couple. The man said something that made Vivian roar with laughter. Though her facial expression didn’t show it, something about that made the man’s wife unhappy. Daphne realized this when she saw the woman give a quick-but-sharp tug on his leash. Vivian either missed this or pretended not to notice. The woman was clearly the dominant partner in a BDSM relationship. And Daphne had a hunch she didn’t much like it when her husband made other women—especially beautiful women like Vivian—laugh. Some kind of dire punishment likely awaited him in the near future.
The couple’s relationship was nothing like the one she had with William, but seeing them together got her to thinking about him. By now he would have called her multiple times with no answer. Because he was in Memphis on business and wouldn’t be back in Nashville until tomorrow, he might be vaguely worried about not being able to reach her. But she had a habit of being difficult to reach on his days out of town. The real worry would come tomorrow, when he returned home to find her car in the garage but no sign of her anywhere.
The train of thought caused some pangs of guilt. He always assumed her elusiveness when he was gone was because she was out shopping or hanging out with gal pals and didn’t want to be bothered. More often than not, however, she had spent those days with Adam, her ostensibly platonic friend. She would’ve eventually fucked Adam, though she never would’ve left William for him. William made far more sense as a life partner. He was great-looking and was on his way to being very rich. She had liked Adam in a different way. He was smart and funny. Ideally, she would have married William and kept Adam around as her man on the side, the one she went to when she wanted to get away from her regular life. Which she objectively realized was kind of shitty of her, but she wanted what she wanted.
Her expression turned sour as she again stared at the bottom of the empty glass. Well, that’s one problem solved anyway. Adam’s dead and I’ll never see William again.
She blinked in surprise and looked up when she heard her name called from across the room. Vivian was looking right at her with a bent forefinger. The middle-aged couple was looking at her, too, with friendly little smiles that didn’t make them one iota less creepy. Daphne smiled and glanced at Francois. “I’m being summoned.”
The waiter returned as they crossed the room and Daphne flagged him down for an emergency refill. Once her glass was full, Vivian took her by an elbow and gently turned her so she was facing the middle-aged couple.
Daphne sensed a smug superiority behind their smiles. They were very conscious of being in the presence of a person who had been hanging like a slab of meat waiting to be butchered a short while ago. Except for the leash and collar, they seemed like the sort of people accustomed to looking down on people of lesser stature. And as far as they were concerned, that was exactly what she was. It was quite the reversal of fortune, considering many had accused her of being a snob in the past.
“Daphne, I’d like to introduce you to Barbara and Ambrose Prescott. I’ve offered to let them borrow you for a night while they’re in town.”
Daphne did a good job of suppressing any visible reaction to this comment, but she felt suddenly queasy. Vivian appeared not to notice her discomfort, but the way the corners of Barbara Prescott’s mouth curved sharply suggested she had sensed it. The smile had an unmistakably cruel and predatory quality.
“Borrow?”
Vivian nodded and now there was a hint of that same predatory glint in her eyes, too, a look that said, I own you now and don’t you forget it. “You’ll be theirs to do with as they wish. I’m sure you’ll make it a memorable night for my friends.”
Daphne took a big sip of wine. “I’ll do my best.”
“Anything less would disappoint me greatly.”
“I won’t let you down.”
Barbara Prescott’s expression shifted subtly, somehow conveying even more smugness than before, which hadn’t seemed possible. She tilted her head back so that she was almost literally looking down her nose at Daphne. “We shall make the evening memorable for her, of that I can assure you.”
Before anyone could say anything to that, the door to the dining room opened and Klaus and Horst, again attired in the garb of their profession, entered, dragging Kate in with them. She was nude and Daphne couldn’t help wincing at the sight of the ugly bruises covering most of her torso. Though the butchers had to hold her up, she appeared to be conscious. There was a burlap bag over her head, which was lolling to one side..
The men maneuvered her over to the hibachi table. They hefted her up and set her down on the grill in the center of the table, which was wide enough and long enough to accommodate the average-sized human body as well as most plus-sized ones. Kate made a sound of groggy alarm when she felt her ass touch cool metal. The grill had not yet been turned on.
She was made to lie flat on the grill. Once she was prone, the butchers stretched her wrists and ankles out, securing them to the poles at the grill’s corners with the manacles. Kate became more animated at that point, turning her head side to side and jerking against her bonds. Daphne tried to imagine what must be going through her mind. Even without being able to see anything, the situation had to strike her as exceedingly odd based on what she could hear alone. The pianist had shifted from classical to mellow jazz. There was a loud pop as the waiter took the cork from another bottle of wine. A low buzz of conversation had resumed. Daphne was sure of just one thing—whatever Kate was imagining, the reality was worse.
At a signal from Klaus, the dinner guests gathered around the table. Daphne had no choice but to join them. An ache had flared in her head and her heart was beating so fast it was making her dizzy. Her stomach sent a few danger signals of its own, fluttering in a way that portended nothing good. All in all, she felt like she was on the verge of passing out.
Perhaps sensing her distress, Vivian sidled up next to her and slipped an arm around her waist. She put her mouth close to whisper in Daphne’s ear. “Toughen up, doll. This is your life now. Get used to it or that could be you one day.”
Daphne swallowed a lump in her throat and managed a terse nod. “I’ll be okay.”
“Good. I have high hopes for you. You’re really the loveliest thing to pass through these doors in a very long time. Please me, and you’ll live like a queen here.”
Sure, Daphne thought. Like a queen. I’ll be degraded and passed around like a piece of meat between you and your pervert friends. But other than that, just like a queen, you bet.
Vivian cleared her throat and raised her voice. “We’re ready, Klaus.”
The butcher moved to the head of the table and waved the dinner guests closer. Once they had gotten right up to the edge of the table, he ripped the burlap bag from Kate’s head. Most of the woman’s long dark curls had been cut away. The ragged ends of her shorn locks suggested a knife had been used rather than scissors. After a moment of gazing up in confusion at the people arrayed around her, Kate lifted her head and gasped when she realized what the metal surface beneath her actually was. She cried out in terror and jerked harder against her restraints, but she was bound tightly and her range of motion was close to nil. When she accepted the hopelessness of tearing herself loose, she jerked her head hard to the left and directed a glare at Daphne.
“You goddamn lying bitch. This should be you down here.” Her eyes flicked to Vivian. “Please don’t let this happen. Don’t you want to know the truth?”