DAMAGED - A Bad Boy Romance (74 page)

“Fucking my security, I see,” Maurice’s voice rang out over the continuous ringing in my ears. “I can see whatever shame was within you is now soundly gone.”

The voice was loud, but at least it wasn’t directed toward me. I had been trained to manage so many things at the hands of captors. However, there was something a bit relieving about knowing that there was a slight break in the pain and process of interrogation.

Maurice, as it turned out, was a cruel man. He had me bound up to an anchor point on the ceiling. My arms and back had been whipped, and he had been slowly deteriorating my sanity by calculated aggressions against my senses. I had been blindfolded, gagged, and exposed to all kinds of variations in temperature. I had been drowned and brought back to life again. He wanted information about how the SEAL team knew about his initial operation. Just because he wanted information, didn’t mean that I was going to give it to him.

“Time for you to hand it over,” he said, once more speaking to the newcomer in the environment.

“Hand what over, you cunt?” the voice replied; it was a familiar voice, someone that I hoped that I would never hear in a place like this; that was the voice that belonged to Piper.

For the first time in my capture, tears fell from my eyes. I could feel them soaking immediately into the black folded cloth which prevented me from seeing her face. I knew I had to keep my calm because to speak out might compromise her safety as well, though she was coming off a bit aggressive for someone in her position.

Didn’t she know what this man was capable of?
I thought, desperately.

Maurice walked over toward her, his shoes tapping down on the concrete like an aristocratic tiger who is about to pounce on his prey.

“The cocaine in your hand,” he said, in a matter of fact tone. “My cocaine. The cocaine which you miserably failed to secure, and then attempted to steal from me… THAT … is what I would like you to hand over!”

He slapped her hard. I heard the sound echo off of the walls, and wished that I could have bitten my lip. My teeth sank into the fabric of my gag instead, threatening to bite straight through the material.

“I figure you had already picked up most of it from Antonia,” Piper replied, showing bravery in her response.

Girl has some sass in her still
. I felt a slight glow of pride.

“Ah yes,” Maurice replied, “Antonio did willingly offer everything that he had in order to make sure that you were apprehended. I thought when your friend here, pulled that little stunt of his that we would miss out on an opportunity to see you, and retrieve the remainder of my shipment, but I’m glad to see that you came through alright.”

“You’re still a sick fuck,” she said, evidently staring at me, though I could only feel her gaze on my body. “You could have just fucking killed him.”

“Why would I kill him?” Maurice said. “Killing things takes all of the fun and value away from them. At the moment, he’s worth much more to me alive. Now I get to see you pine for him. Now I get to watch your pathetic attempts to rescue the helpless American Soldier.”

“Didn’t know he was here,” she replied, and there was a profound lack of interest in her tone.

My heart sank for a bit, and I wasn’t sure if she was putting him on, or if she actually didn’t give a shit about anything that we had gone through. My mind was weak, and I had been through so much, I thought maybe she was resentful for what had happened.

“Frankly, I could give a fuck about him,” she said. “That asshole is the reason my dad is dead. He threw me off of a fucking cliff for God’s sake.”

Maurice laughed at this.

“Oh you think that’s funny?” she replied, turning her ire on him now.

“Just because I think you have poor taste in entertainment doesn’t mean that I want to rescue your little toy.”

“Oh, he’s much more than a toy. I assure you.”

“Your boy Tyler here is a critical key,”  Maurice went on. “He is the single remaining bit of information necessary to mobilize my greatest political achievement yet. All I need is for him to loosen his tongue, but unfortunately, that’s not something he’s willing to do for me yet. Pity.”

“If he’s so critical, then why didn’t you need him before? When you shared your plans with me before, they didn’t have anything to do with the international military.”

“I don’t want anything to do with the international military. Now, what I am interested in is the process by which the international military, specifically the American Government, managed to find out about my deal with the Afghani's. That whole deal was a setup because I had suspected that we had been infiltrated from the inside. Your boyfriend here was just about to tell me who the source was.” 

I heard him walk over toward me, and my body tightened up involuntarily. The man came close to my face and whispered into my ear. I could smell his breath and his sweat to a point where I swear I could identify him out of a line by scent alone.

“Any news on whether or not you’d like to share that information?”

Had I been able to spit at him, or anything else like that, I might have done so. Instead, I simply shook my head from side to side, and then stared straight forward once more, as if to block him out. I heard him pull something out from his pocket, and then I heard a gunshot.

Searing pain shot through my thigh. The bullet had not hit my bone and instead had simply passed through the muscle on the outside of my thigh. I could feel the bullet’s passage like a torch, cutting through my leg.

“You really are a cold bitch aren’t you?” I heard him ask through the pain.

Apparently she had kept her nerve.

“If you don’t care about him, then I can’t help but wonder if you’re really here to take revenge on me for killing your father.”

“Like I said, I blame that fucker, not you,” she replied.

I heard her walking forward toward him.

“Give me the gun, and I’ll shoot him myself,” she said, her tone dead even and void of any sort of compassion.

She was so cold that I thought she might actually do it.

That might be a relief
, I thought to myself, feeling the ache in my thigh going strong, though it simply was one more signal within my nervous system. One more signal amongst the many others that were sounding off all over my body. Each signal relatively fresh, and all at the hand of Maurice and his men.

“I like to see a little fire in you,” he replied, “But as I mentioned before, this ‘fucker’, as you put it, owes me an apology, as well as some information. Until he is willing to help me out, then I don’t think you’ll have the pleasure of finishing him off.”

“Whatever, Maurice. Play your games, if that’s what gets you off. I came here to drop off what I had and make amends with you. I’m not in any position to bother with your methodology.”

“No shit. No, you’re not in much of a position to do anything at all. As for your desire to make amends — I’m afraid that you might just be too late to do that.”

“Fuck off, too late,” she replied. “I’m here, you sent me on a fucking errand. I fulfilled your errand after you made my life hell, and now you’re going to tell me that I can’t work for you any longer?”

There was a pause, as a pregnant silence filled the air.

“I owe you nothing,” Maurice said. “In fact, I would say that you owe me since I was forced to utilize my personal resources in order to track you down. How about I take that out of your hide?”

“You know you don’t have to bother asking me, Maurice,” she said in that sultry tone. “Remember the last time, in the alleyway? What makes you think I would come all this way, fuck your dispirit guards, and not save my best for you?”

“From what I saw,” he replied bitterly, “You already gave them everything that you have to offer.”

“That’s because you suffer from a lack of imagination and a lack of faith. I can give you power, prestige, and will; all things that you desire, and nothing that I have given any of your men. Not to mention the fact that I continue to give you my loyalty.”

“That’s yet to be proven,” he replied.

“Well how’s this for loyalty?” she asked, her question punctuated by the sound of a zipper being undone.

“You really are a filthy little whore aren’t you?”

I could hear her already beginning to suck his cock. The wet sounds of her lips on his skin answered his question well enough, but to affirm his statement more completely, she vocalized agreement through humming. When she was done with her resounding, “Mmmm Hmm….” she popped his cock out of her mouth and replied.

“You have no idea. I have a little something in mind for you. Let’s make this something between you, me and fuck head over there.”

He laughed, maniacally in return, and then I heard someone walk over toward me. Piper ripped my blindfold off, and then slapped me viciously. Still stunned, I watched her bare ass walk back toward Maurice, who stood there, waiting proudly with his cock erect.

“You three, give us some space,” Maurice announced to the guards who stood near them. “We have all of the audience we need,”

This time, when he grinned, I could see it with my own eyes.

“You want to fuck my throat?” she asked him. “You want to fuck my throat while that fuck head over there watches?”

She laughed, and pulled her hand along her tits once more. “You think he’ll get hard, wishing he was you?”

“I don’t fucking care if he gets hard,” he replied. “Open up.”

I watched while he grabbed the back of her head and shoved his cock forward down her throat. Her lips were open, and she was angled so I could watch her drool and lick at the base of his cock. He cleared her hair away from her face so I could see how much of his cock was shoved down her throat. I watched as she gagged, and spat on the floor.

He wiped saliva from the head of his cock on her eyes, and it mixed with the moisture on her face. With eager lips, she reached forward at the base of his cock and began to suck on his balls. This lasted for a minute, before he grabbed her by the head once more, and then pushed himself inside of her once more.

Shaking his cock over her face, he came on her forehead. Then, with his cock still hard, he pushed himself inside of her mouth once more. She pulled on him, and managed to fit not only his entire shaft down her throat, but both of his balls in her mouth. The dull sounds of sloppy sex filled my ears. I was both hard, and burning with a sad form of desire.

To see her shoving her shoving him greedily inside of her mouth was intense, but to have her watch me while she did it was a whole other level pain. She was so eager for him, and he was so hard for her.

“You’ve always given me more throat to fuck than any of the other girls,” Maurice said, rubbing the head of his cock on her face.

She sucked him off again, and pulled at the head of his cock with her lips, spitting and smiling at me as she did. It was clear to me that he was enjoying this little power play as well, though his enjoyment would only last for another minute or two.

In ecstasy, he managed to cum a second time, shooting his entire load on her open mouth. She panted in front of him, fucking his cock with her hands until he had to forcibly push himself away from her from the sensitivity of it all. Watching that whole exchange was probably the worst part of the torture.

“God, Piper,” Maurice said, wiping the sweat from his brow while Piper wiped the cum from her lips. “You sure know how to work a man. That might have been the best head I’ve gotten out of you yet.”

“More where that came from,” she replied, laughing and grinning, her eyes staring at him, as though she were completely entranced by him.

More than all of the torture that I had faced from this man, the torture of seeing her wipe his cum from her lips, and then smile like that afterward — that was by far the worst of it. I’d take getting shot in the thigh again any day of the week.

And then it happened…

The resolution to everything I had just witnessed came so suddenly that I almost missed it in my reverie of pity. While Maurice was exhausted and Piper was holding his cock, she leaned in to kiss him on the lips, grabbed his weapon, and in one swift motion, placed it to his chest and pulled the trigger.

Maurice fell to the floor, and without saying goodbye, she unloaded the remainder of the clip into his body. I watched, speechless as she killed him without warning or mercy. The final shot rang out in my ears, only to be followed by a loud, commanding voice.

“Drop your weapons and put your hands up!” the voice said.

… And then it was over.

The police came just after I delivered the final killing blow to Maurice.

Standing there, I felt like I was an angel of final deliverance. Judgement day was at hand, and I my hand had been the vehicle of delivery. There are few words to describe how that feels, and so I will simply reserve two for you, and allow the mind to fill in the blanks surrounding them.

The first word is Terror.

Not terror in the sense that most people consider. When most people consider terror, what they are thinking about is having a man stalk you, torture your friends, and kill your father; these sorts of things are the standard for terror. The sort of terror I felt was the knowledge that within our skin, we are all incredibly fragile beings, where only a single decision is strong enough to terminate that line of continuity.

The second word is Fear.

You might think that the two words are the same, or even similar, but I can assure you that they head towards very different pools of the mind. While terror describes the awareness of our intense fragility, Fear is an anticipatory force which redefines identity.

Now, I knew what it was like to kill someone. For sure, I had been given enough practice. I had fired warning shots off at Maurice’s man, and I had been there to assault the windshield of that car that had been tailing us. The first one was a case of nerves, and the second was more of a tactical maneuver, in which I had been conned into playing my part.

Fear, in the case I describe here, is the knowledge that I, in full awareness, had chosen to ignore the edict, “thou shalt not kill,” and that given that decision, was now aware of every step along the way which would be necessary should I ever decide to do so again. Fear was the knowledge that the difference between Maurice and myself was not so vast, no matter how much I might like it to be.

With Maurice dead, I dropped the handgun to the ground. I heard it clang on the concrete floor, and my eyes glazed over with definitive silence. I watched while Maurice’s blood seeped out of his body onto the concrete below my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the officer’s setting Tyler free.

I felt them push me into the nearest wall and hold me there. As I was still naked, there was nothing for them to search. I held no weapon. I was as nude as nature made me. I didn’t get a chance to see Tyler on the way out of the bunker, and to be honest, I’m glad that didn’t happen. I was ashamed, though I couldn’t be clear exactly why. I didn’t want to be bothered with the details of that shame until I had more time to think, and so for the ride in the police car, and on the ferry back to Rome, I sat — deaf and mute to the world.

“What city are we in?” I asked, my mouth wet from the shittiest tasting espresso I had experienced in a long time.

“You’re back in Venice,” the man at the other side of the table replied. “Are you in shock?”

I shook my head, slowly, but with a definitive assertion of body language.

“Definitely not,” I replied. “Long trip.”

“With a lot to think about,” he said, not missing a beat.

I said nothing.

“Alright Piper,” the man continued, “We’re going to be asking you a few questions. Anything you say can be held against you, and or used to prosecute any parties concerned. Do you consent to answer these questions?”

I nodded and took another drink of coffee.

“I do.”

“Good. I’d like to start off with the subject of Maurice Benoit's death.”

They asked me about how I killed Maurice, and I told them that I shot him.

“Twelve times,” the man replied, tapping a set of papers on the table. “Usually, we don’t see numbers like that in homicides. It tends to indicate that there is an unrestricted amount of passion present within the assailant.”

“Never been accused of being bland, though. Never quite been accused of being an assailant either.”

The conversation went on and the man tried to extract more information from me about my relationship to Maurice, but I had nothing more to say about the matter. The fact was I had shot him, and they all knew that. As far as I was aware, they could interpret that information any way they liked.

“We also have information that your father was recently killed,” he continued. “Do you consider this to be a related attack?”

“You know what they say about assumptions, commissioner.”

“Very well.”

He paused to write down some notes on a pad of paper on the desk, and then raised his head up to continue.

“You were at the scene of the crime naked, and evidence indicates that bodily fluids besides the blood of the victim were also present,” the man said. “Did you have a long-standing relationship with Maurice?”

“We have fucked before, if that’s what you are asking.”

“Were those relations consensual?”

“I’m not sure that’s relevant.”

“Well,” he said, quickly. “It is relevant if we are trying to build a motive for why we have a corpse on our hands.”

“You’re free to build whatever you like,” I said, truly not caring whether not I was free or hung at the end of this interview.

“A lot of drugs were located on the scene, and some of them were within a bag which had your fingerprints.”

“I used the drugs to gain access to the compound. I used to work for Maurice, and then saw the error of my ways.”

Now it was the interrogators turn to pause.

He blinked, as though he had not expected such a forthright answer, and then shuffled the papers in front of him, in order to move onto the next question.

“And last question for the day,” the man continued. “The phone you used to dial 911 was routed through a ghost proxy. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head and stared straight at the man.

“Well, let me explain,” he continued. “A ghost proxy is a method by which one number can be utilized to store data from a phone conversation, while remaining undisclosed. That number can then forward that information in real time — in this case, to 911 emergency services.”

“I found a phone in the bag, and I used it to call the police,” I replied easily. “Not sure why that is a relevant question. I have no idea how to set-up a ghost proxy.”

“Very well, Piper. We’ll be taking a closer look into the matter. That will be all.”

Without spending much time in police custody, I was released and freed of all charges. The police marked my case down as one of self-defense and pardoned my involvement with the drugs and with Maurice due to my being instrumental in bringing him to justice.

Frank too, was pardoned, though apparently, his pardon came from an international intervention, coupled with the condemning evidence collected through Angela’s Ghost Proxy.

In truth, she was the single most critical factor within the entire experience, and yet she was the most unresolved.

The police had apparently been working tirelessly in order to track down the source of the Ghost Proxy, but there was very little to be accomplished in that area. She had done her job well enough to stay free. With that much heat on her, I didn’t want to risk going to see her, though I wanted to more than anything else in the world.

I spent the next several weeks sitting alone in my home, packing things away, and sleeping. I was in a very deep depression, and I knew I needed a change in my life. As it turned out, my dad had a bit of money set aside for me. I was also given the proceeds for punitive damages from Maurice’s estate as compensation for sexual assault. The terms weren’t exactly accurate, but I wasn’t going to bother them over details.

“Thank you,” was my only response.

When Tyler finally showed up, I was just getting ready to evacuate the town. I had cash, and no more problems leaving the country, so I was ready to get lost. I had even considered the possibilities of stopping by Angela’s place on my way out, just to take a chance on seeing her one last time before I left.

I was afraid, for a moment that Tyler was going to berate me. Call me a whore, or do some other unmerited shaming. I had told myself time and time again, “We do what we have to do,” but I think my feelings stemmed from the fact that I was unhappy about giving myself to Maurice, more than anything else. I was actually more fine with killing him than I would have thought.

“You were brave,” was all he said, after a long and uncomfortable pause.

“You think so?”

He nodded, solemnly.

“Yep, I think that much is apparent, you did great work, and as a result of your efforts, this place is better off,” he said, gesturing to all of Venice with a simple gesture of his arm.

He walked toward me then, and we kissed. The contact was simple, and even somewhat clumsy, but it was sincere.