Defiance (New Adult Romance) (Isaac & Maya) (13 page)

“Do you want me to act nervous while we walk upstairs?” I joke.

“No, that would be suspicious. Just stay behind me.”

She cracks me up the whole way, checking around corners with her compact mirror and giving hand signals like they do in cop shows. But she’s serious when she makes me wait in the hall and clears the apartment. On her way out, she grins at me and asks what time I need to be at school in the morning.

I shake my head when I take my first step into my new home. Isaac went
way
overboard, I can’t believe I’m going to live here. My eyes lock onto the back wall at the floor to ceiling window that opens up onto a balcony.

“Pretty sweet, huh?” Isaac startles me.

I whip around to see him sitting on the same couch from my old home with the happiest cat in the world purring loudly on his lap. “Yeah, he’s definitely pretty sweet,” I reply. “How did you get here so fast?”

“I’m sneaky as fuck.” He shrugs.

“You really are,” I laugh, biting back tears as Junior realizes I’m here and scampers over to me, rubbing my legs before I scoop her up and bury my face in her fur. “Hi,” I whisper, squeezing her way harder than she wants me to. “I haven’t seen her in almost a month. I was worried she’d forget me.”

“It’s a good thing you’re unforgettable, then.” Isaac strides toward me, kissing my forehead as he hugs me with the cat between us. That part doesn’t last long, the unruly feline yowls as she twists out of my arms and gives me the opportunity to fall into his. “Do you like your new place?” he asks uncertainly.

“I do. Thanks for keeping the old furniture.”

“I tried to make it as close to your old apartment as I could,” he explains, picking me up. “But I couldn’t resist upgrading your bedroom a little bit.”

“Is that a king bed?”

“Do you even have to ask?” He flops down on the bed with me on top of him.

“Does this mean you want to christen it?”

“We’ll get to that part,” he murmurs, his lips pressing against mine before they start to travel around my face in gentle kisses. “It’s too blank in here at the moment, it doesn’t feel like you. I brought all your posters, but I wanted you to put them up yourself.”

“There’s a lot more wall space to fill up.”

“Then we’ll buy you more.”

“Will you pick out some of the decorations? I want it to be our room, not just mine.”

“Alright,” he whispers, his lips parting and eyes widening as his expression grows childlike and hopeful. “If that’s what you want.”

He is
so
fucking adorable. Right when I decide that wall decorating can wait because bed christening seems a lot more critical, AJ purrs her way into our room with her favorite squeaky mouse in her mouth and jumps on the bed. My ridiculously cute and sweet boyfriend is so happy to see her and even happier to watch me decorate, so I guess sex will wait. It’s better if it does anyway because Isaac feels like a normal person in moments like these. That’s the best foreplay of all.

18

Isaac

I haven’t been this antsy since the night I first met Maya, but that was a fun, exciting type of anticipation, not the deer in the headlights dread I’m experiencing now. I kissed her harder and longer than I usually do this morning before she left for to school, but not as much as I wanted to. It still made her nervous. I joked and told her that it was about seeing that girlfriend-poaching assclown Sam, but she saw right through it. I hope it doesn’t shake her concentration today.

“Remember, just let me do most of the talking,” my lawyer reminds me as we drive toward the Department of Homeland Security office. “If you’ve left out any important information, now’s the time to tell me.”

“I don’t think I have.”

Glory spots us as soon as we pull in the parking garage, the smile on her face dropping away when two people exit my car instead of one. “Who the hell is this, Isaac?” she says, trotting up to us with one of her own lawyers following behind her.

“Glory, I—”

“Nigel Roland, Isaac’s attorney,” he interjects. I guess I should get used to that, but it still pisses me off.

“You got your own lawyer?” Glory asks me, obviously more than a little offended.

“Yeah, about that… apparently, I’ve had my own attorney since I was fourteen. Mom set it up before she…” I trail off. “He contacted me right after my eighteenth birthday.”

“What? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Stop talking, Isaac,” Nigel orders. This is going to get old really fucking fast.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Glory says. “Isaac, I know you’re pissed off at me, but—”

“Pissed off?” I glare at her. “That doesn’t quite cover it anymore, Glor. Maya told me the
whole
story.”

Her eyes narrow. “That was a long time ago and it has nothing to do with us.” Did she seriously just say that? “I meant with this.”

“No, you meant with us.”

“Isaac, I’m not… I won’t… Look, we don’t have time for this right now. My attorneys can represent us both. They know a lot more about this case than he does.”

“Yeah, but mine knows a lot more about me, including quite a bit that you don’t.”

“Isaac!” the suit chastises me. Can your lawyer legally quit in the middle of something like this if you tell him to fuck off? I better not chance it.

“Like I said, it’s really complicated,” I tell her as we all load into the elevator for a very uncomfortable ride up.

“What the hell did you tell him?” she growls.

Well, this is awkward. They’re both staring at me. “Uh… I decline to answer that,” I reply, making Nigel grin and Glory seethe.

The moment I see the hungry look in the lead investigator’s eyes, I know that I’m fucked. So does Glory, glancing nervously as she bullies her way into the seat next to the one I’m instructed to sit in at a very long, very intimidating conference room table. There’s a camera pointed right at my face. I fucking hate video cameras with the screen on the side that flips out like this, they make me nauseous.

My lawyer pats me on the back as Gloria finds my hand under the table and gives it a little squeeze. Obviously, I look as nervous as I am. I can’t force myself to let her hand go right away, even though I feel incredibly guilty about holding it. Isolating her would be really fucking stupid and that’s what I’ll blame it on, even though I know that’s not the reason.

“Nigel Roland, representing Isaac Kavanagh. I’d like to state for the record that my client is not being charged with anything at this time and is voluntarily cooperating with this investigation.”

“State
your
full legal name,” Dan, the lead investigator, tells me, completely ignoring him.

“Isa—” My mouth is so dry I can barely speak. “Isaac Kavanagh. I do not have a middle name.”

“We know. We know
all
about you, Isaac,” he snickers.

That probably isn’t good. Smirking, Dan tosses a file folder on the table in front of me and waits. Nigel grabs it before I do, inhaling sharply when he opens it. I don’t even want to look, but Glory sure as hell does, leaning across me and cursing before she turns and starts muttering something to her lawyers about them having someone on the inside.

“Why don’t you take a look and see for yourself?” Dan tosses another picture at me. “That’s the money shot right there.”

Wincing, I glance downwards quickly, but it really isn’t that bad. It’s a photo of me fucking another woman, so I instantly feel like a piece of shit and a cheater, but judging by my haircut this is at least three years old. My hands are around her neck and there are tears running down her temples, but she’s loving it. Actually, I’m almost positive that her mouth is open because she’s having an orgasm, though perhaps a normal person would assume she’s screaming for a different reason. The worst and possibly the most incriminating thing about this picture is the look on my face. Pure lust and satisfaction, I must have had a great fucking time that night. If Maya ever sees this shit… God, she’ll never be able to unsee it and she’ll probably think of it every time she sees this face on me when I’m on top of her. Fuck.

But who the hell took it? The relatively mild, extremely consensual nature of ‘the money shot’ probably means that these assholes don’t have any pictures of what I’m really capable off. Well, what I used to be capable of. I could never do that shit now, not after Maya. I don’t normally fuck in public, so why am I enjoying myself? I stare at the picture again, not at myself, but in the background. It’s blurry, but it looks like everybody’s fucking someone and nobody’s watching. It’s the open dungeon in my old house, it has to be. That’s the only place I’ve ever let loose like this with other people around.

I grab the folder from Nigel and start flipping through the rest of the evidence. This is all bullshit. Most of the time I’m just formally standing guard over my father’s harem, looking on while others do the dirty work. There’s a few where I’m spanking some of the girls and a shot of me whipping one of my dad’s girls with a cane while he watches, but there’s no blood. I barely look human in that picture, I’m totally blank. Glory becomes visibly jealous and I almost tell her not to torture herself, but fuck that. She deserves it.

Unless these Homeland Security guys are holding back, whoever they have on the inside isn’t very deep. I bet they have some good stuff on the guys who got off on rough play with their toys in front of a crowd, but Dad never asked me to go very far with that shit in public, not that I wanted to. I detest being watched. The last set of pictures stands out to me. It’s just me leading a girl by the hand and disappearing into a private room. She’s one of my father’s favorites, well, she was for a little while anyway. That night is really fuzzy. I know I didn’t fuck her, I just presented her to one of his friends. A few of them, maybe, I don’t remember. I don’t know where Viliya came from, but I have pretty good idea at this point and I know where she ended up. With me and Sloane. I leave that pic on top and slide the file back toward my lawyer, hoping he’ll catch my drift. The most innocent looking picture is the problem.

“Explain your behavior in the first picture.”

I glance toward Nigel and he nods, so I say, “Melissa has a fetish for breath control. I’m helping her push her limits safely.”

“Safely,” Dan scoffs. “That’s an interesting choice of words.”

“It’s an accurate choice of words. This behavior is completely consensual.”

“You certainly appear to be enjoying yourself in that picture.”

“That is not a question,” Nigel interjects.

“And this technically isn’t
a deposition,” Dan says. “Do you enjoy choking women, Isaac?”

“Only if they do,” I reply, trying not to glance at Gloria.

“Do you consider yourself a rapist, Isaac?” the investigator accuses me.

“No, I do not.” I try to say it confidently, but it comes out a whisper. I suppose I used to walk a pretty fine line.

“Most rapists don’t.”

“Stop trying to rattle my client and ask him a relevant question or we are leaving,” Nigel says.

“Fair enough.” Dan pulls out another copy of that picture of me and my father’s doll. “Did you rape
her?
” He taps the image of Viliya.

“No.”

“Oh, I forgot. You wouldn’t see it that way, let me rephrase. Did you have sex with her?”

Yes.
But Nigel told me not to admit that right away. “In this picture, I am leading one of my father’s submissives into a room where he and his friends are waiting. I do not remember their names. I left before sexual activity of any kind ensued.”

“That’s convenient.”

“That’s what happened,” I reply.

“No, you conveniently didn’t answer my question.”

“My client is here to assist with the investigation of his father, not incriminate himself,” Nigel answers as I hesitate, staring at the picture. Where did they get these?

Diego. It’s Diego, it has to be. I vaguely remember talking to him after this, right before I OD’d that night. He’s the one that took me to the hospital and helped convince me to taper off, helped me see that cracking was what my dad wanted to happen. He’s the one that Glory told me was helping Sloane after I left and he was there in the dungeon the night I was choking Melissa, watching like he always does. That’s his kink. And it’s the perfect kink for a fucking spy because his hands don’t get dirty. Holy fucking shit. I remember that night now, hazily because I was mixing K-pins with Oxy back then, but I must have fucked five or six girls at least. Why would he only take pictures of this one? I did a lot worse to
Tracy, if I recall.

“Where are the rest of them?” I ask quietly.

“The rest of what?”

“The pictures.”

“Isaac, they ask the questions, you answer them,” Nigel reminds me.

“But they aren’t being upfront with all the evidence they have. They’re trying to trick me.”

“And what exactly would we trick you into revealing?” Dan laughs.

“I need a moment alone with my client.”

“Is he cooperating or not?”

“I want to,” I
insist.

“Then answer my question,” Dan says, tapping that picture of
Viliya. “Did you have sex with this woman?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” I reply trying to stay calm.

“We did. She refuses to answer any questions about you. Your friend Sloane was more than happy to answer for her, however.”

“Did she witness any sexual acts between my client and this woman?” Nigel asks.

“No. But she provided us with evidence that proves your client had Viliya holed up in a hotel room for about three weeks before he was ready to sell her to another Dom.”

“I have never,
ever
sold a human being,” I snarl, clenching my fists. “Ever.” How the fuck could Sloane do this to me?

“You gave her to a man
named Phillip Donovan,” Dan retorts, pulling out a picture of him, “in exchange for one hundred thousand dollars and he is willing to testify to that fact.”

“You must mean that he’s willing to perjure himself or however you fucking say it because Phil gave me a hundred grand to build a sex playroom in his new penthouse like six months after that.”

“Isaac!” Nigel exclaims as a satisfied smile crosses the face of the man interrogating me.

“What? It’s true,” I say. “Viliya liked him, she wanted to be with him. He didn’t fucking buy her because she wasn’t for sale.”

“A hundred grand for a playroom, huh? Something that probably cost less than twenty in materials. I don’t suppose you pay taxes on this clearly legitimate business.”

“That is between my client and the IRS.”

“Lucky for you,” Dan tells me, “we can’t compromise our investigation by informing them at this point. Perhaps we can include it in our immunity agreement, if you’re willing to
truly
cooperate.”

“Look, obviously you guys are leaning on Phil pretty hard and he’s feeding you some bullshit about buying her to keep her safe, but he didn’t,” I repeat. “It was just the playroom. Rich guys like to overpay for things. It’s a status symbol.”

“Is that what you sell, Isaac? Status symbols? Is that where you got all your money?” Dan laughs. I don’t answer. “Do all the playrooms you build come with a sex slave?”

“Of course not. None of them do.
Sloane is the one who introduced them anyway, she’s the one that knew they’d be compatible. I barely even know Phil.”

“
Stop talking, Isaac!” Nigel insists as Glory elbows me in the ribs. “My client has only ever engaged in recreational sexual activity, money is never exchanged.”

“Bullshit,” Dan re
plies. “He gets paid to train women to be sexual servants.”

Prove it, asshole.
“Do you have any evidence to support this claim?” Nigel asks.

“The informant who took these pictures is also willing to testify of Isaac’s primary role in his father’s operation, which, along with the photographs, would enable us to bring him up on prostitution of himself and pandering of others. In
addition to—”