Embargo (Hot Off The Press) Book 2

by C. T. Sloan

  I look at my boss and can’t help but ask, “Does that mean that I am not fired?”

  Mr. Rex walks up to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Do you want to go?”

  I look into the eyes of this sexy, strong, domineering man. Of course, I don’t want to go. But I am also scared to death of him. With every ounce of strength, I tell the T. Rex, “I want to be with you.”

  “Then you must be loyal and obey my every order.”

  “I will, Mr. Rex.”

  With that, I leave my boss’s office more conflicted than ever. My boss wants to keep me around. And I want nothing more than to remain in the arms of the T. Rex. However, I am really scared of what my boss will do to the poor, unsuspecting editor. I walk to the elevator and use Mr. Rex’s “gold card” to open the doors. There is something so relaxing about having this card in my hand. When my other card was deactivated, I felt like one of my limbs were cut off. I never want to lose access to Mr. Rex ever again!

  I return to the eighty-first floor and walk back to my old desk. When I turn the corner to the executive assistant’s area, I am horrified to find Mr. Skoca there with this “muscle.” I almost turn back and run. However, Mr. Rex has already said that I can stay. What should I be afraid of? I nervously walk to my desk to see the Director of Security hovering over my laptop. Mr. Skoca looks up and has an irritated look on his face as I approach.

  “Miss Bandis,” Mr. Skoca says in a cold and intimidating voice.

  “Good morning, Mr. Skoca.”

  “I have been informed that you are to stay with the firm.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I would never dare question any order from Mr. Rex. And I don’t fully understand what is going on,” the Director of Security says as he looms his tall body over mine. “But I want to make it clear that I have my eyes watching you twenty-four, seven.”

  I swallow hard and look up at this man who doesn’t have any love lost for me. “I understand, Mr. Skoca. Everything that I do is at the direction of Mr. Rex.”

  With that, Mr. Skoca turns on my laptop. “Your laptop is back online,” he growls.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The Director of Security leaves. I do not sit at my desk until I watch him disappear around the corner. When he is gone, I sit down at my chair and just bury my head in my hands. This has been a hell of a morning. And it looks like my day is not even close to being over. I have to contact my editor. I grab my iPhone and head out of the building. Since I am in downtown Dallas, it should be no problem finding a public wi-fi hotspot.

  I walk into a Starbucks and contact my editor via the e-mail address provided for me. Even though Mr. Rex knows my true identity, I still opt to contact my editor, Harold Gregg, outside of the Rex Building. I am going to ask for Harold to meet me. But I want to make sure that he has a fighting chance. I order a vanilla flavored coffee and take a seat by the window, watching to make sure Mr. Skoca - or his muscle - isn’t snooping around on me. I open my phone and type this message to my editor: Harold. It’s Julie. Contact me ASAP.

  I sit there and drink the coffee, hoping that my editor gets back to me as soon as possible. Less than five minutes later, I get a reply.

  What’s up?

  We need to meet tonight. 10PM.

  You have info?

  We need to talk.

  Okay.

  One more thing. Bring a gun.

  Why?!

  Just to be cautious.

  I end the conversation as quick as I started. My head is throbbing. Did I tell my editor to bring a gun?! What the fuck is wrong with me?! I just want to make sure Harold is safe. My head spins as I walk out of the coffee shop. I’m sending Harold into a meeting where the most powerful man in Texas will ambush him. On top of that, Harold is going to be armed. Fuck. This is not good.

  ***

  The rest of the workday does not go well for me. I watch the clock, dreading the hour when Mr. Rex would leave the office and take me down to meet my editor. To make things worse, Mr. Skoca has been shadowing me every time I leave Mr. Rex’s office. The guy is so far up my ass, he might as well have been that purple butt plug in my boss’s office. At 9:00 p.m., we finish our status meeting with the Asia Managing Directors. After everyone leaves Mr. Rex’s office, my boss gathers his things. “Let’s go,” Mr. Rex says as he escorts me out of the office.

  We head to the elevators, escorted by two men. One of the two men speaks into his phone, declaring, “Rex is headed your way.” All four of us get into the elevator. We travel all the way down to the garage where a large Rolls-Royce coupe is waiting for us. One of Mr. Rex’s personal automobiles, I assume. Even though I am dreading this evening, I am now kinda excited that I will be riding in a Rolls-Royce for the first time.

  Mr. Rex opens the door for me. It’s an unexpected and gentlemanly act that really impresses me. I thank him. He walks around the front of the running automobile and gets inside. We speed out of the garage and travel through the near empty downtown Dallas streets. “So where are we headed?” Mr. Rex asks me.

  “We are meeting at the Denny’s near my apartment. It’s on Medical District Drive near the hospital.”

  Mr. Rex hops on I-30 and takes it over to the aforementioned Denny’s location. My heart is starting to pound. I am really hoping that Harold did not bring the gun. He is probably already nervous. And when Mr. Rex pops in to see him, there is no telling what could go down.

  We arrive at Denny’s about fifteen minutes early. Mr. Rex parks his Rolls-Royce in the Denny’s parking lot which, I am sure, is a first in the history of this restaurant’s location. My boss is completely calm. The same can not be said about me. My head is spinning. I watch the analog clock as the time ticks closer to 10:00.

  “Is that him?” Mr. Rex asks as he points to my shifty-eyed editor walking into the restaurant.

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  We watch as Harold nervously walks to a booth and sits down. Oh fuck. My editor looks paranoid. Now, I am sure he is carrying a weapon. The situation is just getting worse and worse by the second.

  “Alright, it’s your turn,” Mr. Rex says to me. I look at my boss, take a deep breath and open the door. I nervously walk up to the front entrance of the Denny’s. There are not many people inside. It is eerily quiet. Harold and I make instant eye contact. I notice that my editor has his hands tucked inside his jacket.

  “Julie,” my editor spits out with a bit of trepidation in his voice.

  “Hey Harold,” I respond calmly. As I sit down at the other side of the table, I notice that his hands are still in his pockets.

  “Were you followed?” he asks.

  I don’t answer right away. That seems to make my editor more nervous. So I flat out ask him, “Did you bring a gun?”

  “Oh yeah. Look, I know what we are dealing with here. I want to make sure the both of us are okay,” Harold explains in a rushed manner.

  “Alright, listen to me. I should have never told you to bring a gun. I was overreacting to a situation.”

  “What situation?!”

  As I try to explain, I hear front entrance door swing open. I turn around. Mr. Rex swaggers into the restaurant. Now, my boss may not be recognizable. But he is a big, muscular man. The kind of man that intimidates by his sheer size. I look back at Harold and see his eyes open wide at the sight of this six-foot, five-inch man walking towards our table. I reach over and grab my editor by the shoulder and tell him, “Everything is okay. He is not going to harm us.”

  I’m looking at Harold and this man’s face does not look good. He is pale and sweaty. That is not making me feel any more comfortable. I look up and see Mr. Rex standing over the table. He looks down at the editor.

  “Do you know who I am?” Mr. Rex asks.

  Harold shakes his head. Sweat drips down to his double-chin. Little bits of spit puddle on the side of his lips. “No,” Harold squeaks.

  “You certainly have an interest in me,” the T. Rex says. Now it becomes crystal cl
ear for the editor.

  “Trent Rex?” Harold says with a gasp.

  The CEO is Rex Industries sits down next to me. He takes a moment to examine the table in front of him. He looks over at the laminated menus next to the napkin dispenser. My guess is that the richest man in Texas doesn’t spend much time inside of a Denny’s restaurant. The CEO places his big, beefy hands on the table. They are clenched into a fist. Something that is not lost on both myself and the very frightened editor.

  “I have to compliment you. Julie is a very talented and gifted individual and I understand why you would choose her to go undercover into my company,” Mr. Rex announces while I nervously hope and wish that Harold would just move his hands away from his pockets.

  “Thank you,” Harold says as his eyes dart around the restaurant. It is obvious that the scared editor is looking for a way out. Or possibly looking to see if any hitmen are waiting for him.

  “Now let’s talk about you,” Mr. Rex declares.

  “Talk about me?” Harold asks nervously.

  “How many issues did you project to sell with my company’s name on the cover?”

  “I don’t know. It would be a record breaker.”

  “Would you say a million copies?”

  “Maybe. Our previous record was 650,000 copies per issue.”

  “Alright, let’s say one million. Now, how much do you charge for your fine publication?”

  “Um, um, four dollars and ninety-five cents,” Harold mumbles as he begins to hyperventilate.

  “Let’s round up to five million dollars. Your magazine was planning on making five million dollars for an expose on Rex Industries,” Mr. Rex calculates.

  Harold doesn’t answer. He begins to shake his head. The editor doesn’t look good. I lean over and say to Harold, “Listen to me carefully. Everything is going to be fine. You need to remove your hands from your pockets and place them on the table.”

  The editor is not responding. I don’t like the look in his eyes. I turn to my boss and say, “Mr. Rex. He has a gun in his pocket.”

  Mr. Rex turns and looks at Harold. He is completely calm. However, the CEO’s stare car terrify death himself. “Do you have a gun in your pocket, Harold?”

  The editor pulls out a gun and points it right at Mr. Rex. Harold’s hand is shaking as he holds the weapon right at my boss. Mr. Rex doesn’t move an inch as the barrel of a .38 snub-nose magnum is less than a foot from his forehead. “Harold. The police are going to be here in less than five minutes. If I were you, I would calmly get up and walk out of this establishment.”

  “You are the T. Rex. You are the T. Rex,” Harold mumbles as he begins to sway in his seat. Out the corner of my eye, I see the door to the kitchen swing open, a waitress walks out with several plates in her hands. She sees the gun and instantly screams. The waitress drops the plates causing a calamity of noise. Harold flinches. The gun goes off. My body is frozen. Am I shot? I feel around my body for any signs of blood or a wound. Then I look over at Mr. Rex, who hasn’t moved an inch. Between Mr. Rex and myself is a bullet hole embedded in the plastic seat back of the booth.

  Harold’s eyes open wide as though he had suddenly realized the gravity of what he has done. He looks at his hand and drops the gun on the table. The editor runs out of the restaurant. Mr. Rex and I look down at the gun. My boss calmly gets up from the booth. I am shaking so bad that my body is simply frozen in place. The waitress is terrified. She has no idea what is going on. My boss reaches into his pocket and pulls out the biggest wad of cash I have ever seen in my life. He hands it to the waitress and tells her, “You didn’t see anything. Your back was turned at the time.”

  The waitress looks at stack of bills - all hundreds, fifties and twenties. A roll of cash as big as Mr. Rex’s fists. She says to Mr. Rex, “I didn’t see anything. My back was turned at the time.”

  My boss looks at her and gives the waitress a very kind, reassuring smile. “Have a good evening. And don’t be afraid to spread you new found wealth with the rest of the staff.”

  Mr. Rex grabs me and pulls my shaking body from the booth. He drags me out of the diner. We walk to my boss’s Rolls-Royce as we hear police sirens approaching. I am so fucking scared right now. My worst run-in with the law involved a little pot smoking back in Austin. Mr. Rex puts me in to his half-a-million dollar car. We spend out of the Denny’s and head towards the highway. As the police draw near, Mr. Rex carefully pulls his car over and turns off the headlights. After the police cruisers pass, my boss calmly turns on his headlights, pulls back onto the road and speeds onto the highway.

  After we make it out of the area, I begin to calm down a bit. I’m just glad that we didn’t get stopped by the police. I’m glad that no one got hurt. Right when I feel my heart rate getting back to normal, we speed back onto the highway and head towards the CEO’s estate north of Dallas. I want to say something to my boss in order to break the silence. But I am just too scared to say anything. I can tell that the T. Rex is thinking. I just hope that any of his thoughts don’t involve any anger towards me.

  We make it back to the estate, which looks even more impressive by car. The front of the mansion is an imposing fortress of stone and marble. Mr. Rex is met by a security team who valet the car. My boss escorts me into the house. He spanks my ass and tells me that, “You are in big trouble.” Now, I don’t know if I should be sexually turned on or just scared. It is very hard to read the T. Rex.

  My boss escorts me to an elevator next to his stairs. After my boss presses a button, I am shocked to find that we are going down. I look up at my boss, wanting to ask where we are going. However, I know better. If Mr. Rex wants me to know something, then he would tell me. The elevator doors open to a cavelike hallway. The walls are made of stone and it appears that this underground area is designed to survive World War Three. “I had this estate constructed with security and survivability in mind,” my boss explains. “We are fifty feet below the surface. The secured underground area runs four levels deep.” We walk down a hallway and stop in front of a steel door. My boss places his palm against a control panel. The doors open to a room with a simple bed, with a steel surface, and several lockers.

  “Is this your underground bedroom?” I ask.

  “This room can serve multiple purposes. It can be used for surgery. It can be used for interrogation.”

  I look down at that bed and realize that it is not designed for sleeping. It suddenly occurs to me that there are chains and shackles on each corner of the bed. Before I can process the entire situation, I feel my body get lifted off of the ground. Mr. Rex places me on the bed. He rips off all of my clothes. My naked flesh feels the cool sensation of the metal bed on my back, my legs and my butt. I feel my wrists and ankles become shackled down onto the metal slab.

  I look up at the cement ceiling. There is a single harsh light pounding down on my eyes. I feel like I’m about to be tortured or operated on. Mr. Rex leans over and looks me in the eye. I can feel him playing with my nipples. He rubs my pussy. All right, so things aren’t that bad. I begin to get comfortable. Just as my boss’s hand settles into a night groove, I feel it hand come right up to my neck.

  “How did you know that editor had a gun?”

  What can I say? If I tell my boss that I told Harold to bring a weapon, the T. Rex will certainly blow his top. However, I am too afraid to dare lie to my boss. “I told him to bring a gun,” I confess.

  Mr. Rex is not happy. “Why would you do that?” my boss demands to know.

  “I didn’t know what you were going to do,” I squeal as Mr. Rex closes the oxygen coming to my brain.

  “You didn’t know what I was going to do? Did you think I was going to kill him?”

  “I had no idea what you had planned?”

  Mr. Rex lets go of his grip. I breathe in as much oxygen as my lungs could take. I can hear my boss opening a metal locker door behind me. I can’t look back from this restrained position so my imagination runs wild. When my boss appears in front
of me, I see him holding some sort of large black metal wand. Oh fuck. What is that thing? It is at least a foot long. There is no place on my body for that thing to go.

  “You are probably wondering what I am holding in my hand?” Mr. Rex says with a bit of a sly smile across his face.

  “Yes, I am wondering that exact same thing,” I say softly.

  “Here, I’ll show you,” Mr. Rex says as he approaches me with the wand. My heartbeat begins to accelerate. I want to scream. Mr. Rex can be sadistic but I don’t think he would try to hurt me in any permanent way. My boss waves the wand over my body. He slowly lowers it. I watch the tip of the wand, just wondering what Mr. Rex has in store for me. My boss waves the tip of the black wand, right over my hard right nipple. He taps my nipple, I feel an electric shock run through my body. “Ah!” I moan out as my back arches.