Somebody’s Perfect

by Kallypso Masters

  Gentry narrowed his eyes at the DA and remained silent until prompted to answer the question by the judge. “No. She was paid in other ways.”

  “Savannah Gentry worked for your company for more than a year, and yet she is not listed on any payroll records for your company?”

  Now he turned his venom on Savannah. Her heart nearly pounded out of her chest at the betrayal she read in his eyes. Sullivan had him cornered.

  “Let’s talk about how you cared for your daughter. The night of her eighteenth birthday, you said you found her in compromising positions with your partner and numerous male business associates.” The DA asked the next two questions, both eliciting a no from Gentry. Were you angry that your partner would betray your trust? Were you mad at those men for taking advantage of your precious daughter? “Was Lyle still your partner or in your employ after that party?”

  “Yes, until his arrest earlier this year.”

  “Until then, you trusted him to care for your daughter when she was in your hotel’s penthouse?”

  “Perhaps wrongly so, in retrospect, but yes.”

  The only thing that Gentry regretted about his handling of her was that Lyle had allowed Damián to take her away from the penthouse for that one perfect day at the beach cave.

  “Did you or Mr. Gibson ever call security or the police on the men in the penthouse with Savannah at the hotel you owned?”

  Gentry spit out, “Of course not. She met with them willingly.”

  “Did you monitor who came and went from that penthouse while she was there with your clients?”

  “I put Lyle Gibson in charge of handling these meetings. He was always close by to keep an eye on things.”

  On her. Never the men. They could do whatever they wished to her, and he wouldn’t intervene.

  “So you gave your partner permission to handle these meetings with your daughter for years. Did you talk with Mr. Gibson on a daily basis?”

  “Every weekday and sometimes weekends.”

  “About business?”

  “Yes.”

  “About Savannah?”

  “Not that often.”

  “You didn’t regularly discuss Savannah’s performance?”

  “That was an HR matter.”

  Savannah had never met anyone from his human resources department in her life.

  “You never told him to use her to further your business dealings?”

  “Of course I did. Her job was to solidify deals with my clients, whom I knew better than Lyle did.”

  “Did you ever give him orders about what he should allow these clients to do to her?”

  “If I thought she had something to offer to ensure the deal would happen, then yes, I discussed with Lyle what talents, er, skills would guarantee success.”

  “Did you ever order Mr. Gibson to use your daughter’s body to cement business dealings with these clients?”

  He glanced toward the jury box before narrowing his eyes on Savannah. “If Savannah chose to use her sexual assets to close deals, that was of her own doing.” A chill crept down her spine.

  “Savannah met with your business clients in the hotel penthouse?”

  “It’s a suite that included a receiving area with a desk and chairs. Much more economical than procuring other office space. My headquarters were filled to capacity.”

  “Did she meet with them willingly?”

  Gentry loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. A sheen of sweat dotted his forehead. The DA was literally making him sweat. This was going much better than Savannah had imagined.

  “She signed a contract with my company agreeing to these responsibilities.”

  “Do you have a copy of this contract?”

  “No. It was destroyed years ago, after she left my employ.”

  “Mr. Gentry, your hotel had the best security money could buy. To keep her safe. To keep her secure. And yet you allowed hotel security to show men—both familiar and unfamiliar to them, including some businessmen visiting from other countries or states—into the secluded penthouse where your daughter had been brought to await them?”

  “I told you. It’s where she conducted business.”

  Savannah swallowed, blinking away the tears at the memory of that scared, lonely girl who’d been so horribly used and abused by her father, Lyle, and the countless stream of men. How had she survived? Truthfully, she almost hadn’t, if not for Damián.

  “Was Savannah ever recorded in the penthouse by surveillance cameras?”

  “Of course. It was added insurance that she wasn’t being forced to do anything she didn’t want to do. No one saw those videos except me.”

  “Do you still have those surveillance videos?”

  His gaze bore into Savannah. “No. They were stolen when my hard drive was taken.”

  Up to this point, the DA hadn’t wanted to bring those into court physically, but would she change her mind now that they had been brought up in testimony? Blood whooshed through her ears at the thought.

  “And you never caused her bodily harm or condoned others to do so to Savannah during that year she worked for you?”

  “Of course not! I loved and cherished my daughter. I provided her with everything she could want or need. A lavish home. Designer clothing. All the food she could eat. I still would if she hadn’t abandoned me to become a slut for that spic she ran off with!”

  Someone on the jury gasped. He’d lost his cool, forgetting the image of a respectable businessman he exuded in his expensive suit. This had to be a plus for when she gave her rebuttal, too. Sullivan was carefully closing the net that would catch the monster in all his lies.

  “Let’s talk about that, sir. You just said she ran off with a spic. By spic, do you mean Damián Orlando, Savannah’s husband? The man who served his country honorably, lost his foot in an explosion in Iraq, and was medically discharged from the Marine Corps? That’s the man you called a spic?”

  “Who else? Savannah is under his control.” Gentry pointed toward Savannah; everyone’s focus shifted to her. “He has some kind of unhealthy power over her. Why else would she go running to his shabby dump in Colorado a year ago to shack up with him? You see how grotesquely pregnant she is with his latest brat. Yeah, he knocked her up and left her with the first bastard kid when he kidnapped her from my hotel. No wonder she had to marry him this time.”

  Savannah didn’t flinch at his ugly accusations. You will get to have your say next. She rubbed her wedding band over and over, hoping to find some sense of calm. Thank God Damián wasn’t here. She doubted he would care about the racial slur so much as being accused of abandoning her when he had actually tried to contact her after that day at the beach only to have Gentry intercept his notes.

  “You never laid hands on her in anger? You never touched her sexually? You never raped her?”

  “I spoiled my daughter, gave her everything she wanted. She loved me and showered me with affection in return.”

  “By sharing her bed with you?”

  Gentry leaned menacingly in Sullivan’s direction as if he wanted to come off the witness stand and strangle her. “Savannah and I shared a beautiful and special relationship that you couldn’t possibly understand.” His demeanor as a successful businessman in his expensive Italian suit was slowly being whittled away—and she hadn’t even given her rebuttal yet.

  Sullivan let those words hang in the air for a pregnant pause before saying, “No further questions, Your Honor.” The DA took her seat. It would be Savannah’s turn next, well, unless the defense asked any questions. Sullivan didn’t expect Abbott to do so, and he didn’t. Gentry’s admissions had left him little room for damage control. Abbott would just want to uphold his reputation and ethics at this stage.

  Savannah’s heart jumped into her throat as Gentry stepped down, never taking his creepy, penetrating gaze off her as he walked to his seat at the defense table.

  All too quickly, the judge asked Sullivan if she wished to call any rebutta
l witnesses. She stood and said, “The People call Savannah Orlando to the stand.”

  Savannah walked forward to take her seat on the stand. Having already been sworn in, she was merely reminded of her oath, rather than having to take it over. With a sense of false bravado, she held her head higher, avoiding any glances toward Gentry’s table.

  Would she succeed in swaying the opinions of the jurors who might believe Gentry’s narrative of lies from yesterday? She certainly hoped so.

  Once seated, the DA wasted no time. “Mrs. Orlando, how would you characterize your father’s relationship toward you?”

  Finally, her chance to negate the lies he’d recently spun, as well as the charade that he’d perpetrated since she was eight.

  “Evil. Abusive. Controlling.”

  “Please cite examples for why you see him that way.”

  “From the age of eight—the night I found him choking my mother on their bed—until I turned eighteen, he sexually molested or raped me almost daily.”

  A jury member gasped.

  Oh, sweetheart, you haven’t heard the half of it.

  “Objection,” said Mr. Abbott. “Permission to approach the bench, Your Honor.”

  Savannah overheard some of what the DA said about the defendant having opened the door with his narrative. She’d told Savannah earlier to expect this objection to be overruled, because Gentry had portrayed himself as being an exemplary father—until the point where he’d driven a tank through the door. By telling her side of the story in her rebuttal, she would finish tearing down the walls.

  “Objection overruled.” As predicted.

  The attorneys returned to their places, and the DA continued. “We’ve heard your testimony under oath about what you witnessed happening to your mother that July night. I know this is difficult, Mrs. Orlando, but can you describe to the court what happened later that evening?”

  “Yes.” She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “I’d hidden under my bed for hours. Then my father came into my bedroom and…touched me in places he shouldn’t have.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “He touched my breasts and genitalia. Put his finger inside my…vagina.” She almost said pussy but didn’t think the jury would approve of her using such a vulgar term, even if her Dom preferred the term in private.

  “Did he rape you?”

  “No. Not that night, anyway.”

  “When was the first time you were raped by your father?”

  Savannah wished she could call him the defendant, too, but didn’t want to sanitize the fact that her own father did these things to his eight-year-old daughter. “A few months after Maman disappeared. I was eight.” She clasped her hands together, her thumb stroking her wedding band as she tried to ground herself without going back to that night emotionally. She failed miserably, overwhelmed by images of his hands on her young body, of him forcing his huge penis inside her, of her relentless screams echoing through the room and hours of sobbing long after he’d left her.

  Don’t get sucked into the emotions of the past.

  Damián’s post-hypnotic suggestion helped calm her. She’d been much more exposed and vulnerable the night at the club on his Alive Day than she was here, albeit that night she’d been among friends, unlike today. She didn’t even have Damián and Adam here for support today.

  She also hadn’t had Gentry’s angry gaze boring into her like she did now.

  Thankfully, Damián’s words helped her recenter herself. As always, he’d known just what to do to prepare her for this ordeal, even if it hadn’t gone as they’d planned. Savannah took a cleansing breath.

  The DA asked the bailiff to republish the photo Gentry had introduced earlier and bring it to Savannah while she told the clerk the exhibit number for the record. Savannah needed no reminder. It was the “Cinderella Savannah” photo from her eighteenth birthday party standing next to the arrogant, beaming Gentry. Only this time, she noticed she was holding the rolled-up contract like a scroll or a diploma.

  “Please tell the court if this is you in the photo and what the occasion was.”

  “Yes, that’s me. I was with my father at my eighteenth birthday party, which was held at his hotel in La Jolla. We’re in the ballroom overlooking the ocean.” Peace and tranquility was just outside the windows of that room, only she was subjected to unspeakable acts within.

  “You’re smiling in the photo. Why is that?”

  “Because moments before I had signed the contract I’m holding in which my father told me he was freeing me from him sexually.” Another gasp from someone in the room broke into her thoughts.

  “And did the rape and abuse stop?”

  “Father did stop raping me, yes. But the contract wasn’t as he’d described it to me when I signed. I learned later that very night, in fact, that he’d merely intended to turn me over to his business associates to let them use my body for everything they desired short of sexual penetration, in exchange for them giving my father more advantageous business deals. Later, when I was informed about what I’d signed, I realized I’d been duped.”

  “No one told you that such a contract could not have been upheld in any court of law in the state of California and probably anywhere else? That you didn’t have to honor it?”

  “No. Not until much later, after I gained my freedom, did I realize that.” Would the jury penalize her for her naïveté and ignorance? “Please keep in mind I had just turned eighteen. And the decade before that had been spent having everything about my life controlled by this man. I knew nothing about what a normal father-daughter relationship looked like, much less what was or wasn’t legal. I only knew what my father told me and what he did to me if I didn’t obey.”

  “Who else signed the contract?”

  “Only my father. He signed right after me.” She didn’t want to remember what ensued afterward, the first night in which she’d been abused by his business acquaintances.

  “Not Lyle Gibson?”

  “No. Only my father. But Mr. Gibson was there that night. He became my handler and made sure I kept up my contractual promises for the next year.”

  After the hypnosis session last night, she could now say with certainty that he hadn’t signed because she’d pictured the contract perfectly. She wished the DA’s office had been able to find that signed contract on the damned hard drive, instead of an unsigned copy. Perhaps the signed one no longer existed. Surely Gentry wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep such evidence around all these years. After all, it wasn’t for anyone’s eyes but hers and Gentry’s. He’d simply needed to convince a broken, terrified Savannah that he owned her—body, mind, and soul. And he succeeded—until Damián Orlando came along in the restaurant that day.

  The DA nodded, glancing at her legal pad. “Please tell the court what happened after the contract had been signed—after this photo was taken.”

  “My father made me dance with him to celebrate.” She shuddered, remembering how closely he’d held her. “A short time later, I went outside for some air, and that’s when I learned that the contract wouldn’t grant me my freedom in any way. Instead, it indentured me as my father’s property to be used and abused by anyone he chose to allow access to me.” She paused and, for the first time today, forced herself to look closely at the man who had done this to her. “That was the first night my father let other men use my body for sexual purposes.”

  “These men used you in what way?”

  She swallowed down bile as the images from her hypnotic regression threatened to overwhelm her again.

  Breathe.

  Stay in the moment.

  Feel, but don’t get sucked into the past.

  She touched the warm metal of her collar, and released some of her tension. “They drugged me and tied me down on one of the tables in the ballroom.” Remembering the night at the Masters at Arms Club when she’d freaked out in the massage chair, everything suddenly became clear. The white of the dress and the semen. Being restrained while l
ying down must have been a trigger because of the reclining tilt of the chair. She’d flashed back to the night of her eighteenth birthday. As if this had ever been about giving her a special party or to release her from him.

  “Mrs. Orlando?” the DA prompted.

  Blinking back to the present, she continued. “Several men, including my father and one of the witnesses who testified for the defense earlier, took turns ejaculating on me and on that beautiful dress.”

  The defendant. He was never a father to me.

  Last night, with Michelle’s help, she’d remembered more about that party and now knew what had happened to the beautiful gown after the men had ripped the bodice and covered her breasts and the skirt with their semen. Gentry had made her wear it home, although he’d covered her breasts in his suitcoat so that the hotel staff wouldn’t suspect what had happened that night on the premises. The moment she was alone at home, she’d ripped the rest of it to shreds, never wanting to see it again. Had Gentry retrieved it and kept it as some disgustingly twisted trophy? Did he have someone clean the gauzy skirt and cut the diamonds off? She couldn’t picture him throwing away that much money.

  “What other acts were done to you that night? Take your time, Mrs. Orlando.”

  Savannah knew the DA was trying to help her set the record straight, and no one wanted to spell out what monstrous things Gentry had done to her, but Savannah also wanted this to be over.

  Reminding herself she still had a story to tell, she composed herself.

  I will not be beaten.

  Chapter Thirty

  Savannah described what she recalled, most of it only coming back as a result of last night’s session. After fifteen or twenty minutes, the DA seemed satisfied that they’d gone into enough detail.

  “Were any consequences laid out for what would happen to you if you failed to sign the contract?”

  She shuddered. This she’d remembered all along, without the benefit of hypnosis. “My father told me that he would sell me to a street pimp in San Francisco.” She almost laughed at thinking this was her greatest fear at the age of eighteen. So naive.