Captured (Vice, Virtue & Video Book 2)

by Bianca Giovanni

  I walk in the front door of the Sin Cinema office, and I’m greeted by Christie, Rick’s receptionist.

  “Hey, Lola!” She looks surprised to see me, since porn production offices are not my usual hang-outs. “What brings you in today, sweetie?”

  “Well, um, I haven’t been able to get hold of James for a couple days, and I wanted to see if he’s meeting with Rick or something.”

  “Oh, well, unfortunately he isn’t here, and I don’t know that he and Rick are on speaking terms right now,” she admits, looking shy about it.

  “What? Really?” I’m surprised. James and Rick have been business buddies for years. I knew there was tension over the Eva thing, but now they’re not speaking to each other? What the hell is going on?

  Christie is a sweet girl and she knows how close I am with James, so I know I can get her to give me the goods on what went down. She tells me that she overheard James and Rick arguing about a contract and that it had something to do with Eva Satana. She says she’s pretty sure Rick locked James into a deal he didn’t want to do, but it was a lot of money, so Rick basically made him do it.

  Now I’m totally freaked out. I know how much James has been stressing over Eva and her perverse bullshit, and now he’s trapped in a weird contract with her? I have to find him. I have to talk to him about this. Eric said he would help, so maybe if James can give me a copy of his contract, I can figure out a way to think him out of this problem. When we were younger, James was always a brawn and muscles kind of guy when it came to problem solving, but I was the strategic thinker, the one who brought down enemies with my mind. Maybe I can figure out a way to do that now.

  As I’m leaving the office, I see a frail, pasty brunette walking out of a neighboring production office. She’s got on black jeans and a black hoodie with skulls on it zipped all the way up. It’s her. It’s Savannah Slade.

  “Excuse me!” I call out, jogging toward her.

  She looks skittish and nervous as she faces me.

  “Savannah, right?” I ask as calmly as I can. This girl looks like she could crumble at any second, like she’s made out of ash.

  “Yes,” she meekly responds, looking down at the ground.

  “I’m Lola. I’m a friend of James Laird—er, James Langdon,” I say warmly, wondering if she even knew James’s real last name.

  “Oh, yes, he talks about you a lot. Pleased to meet you.” I see her eyes darting around all over the place.

  “Savannah, I need to talk to you about James.”

  “Um, I-I can’t,” she nervously replies.

  “I just need to know what’s going on with him. He’s been going through some serious shit on the shoots, and you’re the only person who can tell me what happened,” I say, my words rushed and rapid.

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about that stuff.”

  “He’s my best friend, and something is seriously wrong with him, and I know it has to do with the videos. Please, Savannah,” I desperately beg, “please just help me figure out what I can do to save him. I have to get him out of this. He doesn’t want to do it, and it’s tearing him up inside.”

  She sighs, and I can see her trying to resist, but being unable to turn away someone so fraught with worry.

  “Listen, can I buy you a cup of coffee?” I ask, pulling my shit together for a brief moment.

  “All right,” she reluctantly replies.

  I need to talk to this girl, need to find out what the fuck is going on, see if she knows anything about Eva and James and this contract bullshit. I’m delighted when she nods her head and follows me to the Starbucks across the street from the offices. She sits down at a table near the back, and I get us two lattes. I watch her as I wait at the counter for them. She’s so jittery that I wonder if she’s on drugs or if she’s just living in constant fear of Eva’s wrath. Neither would surprise me.

  “Here you go,” I say, handing her the drink. Her eyes dart from the coffee to the window and back again. “Are you afraid of something?” I ask as innocently as I can.

  “No, ma’am. I just don’t want Mistress to see you.”

  “Why’s that? And you don’t have to call me ma’am. You can just call me Lola, okay?”

  “All right…Lola,” she says as if she’s testing out the word. “If Mistress sees you, she’ll see how pretty you are, much prettier than your pictures even. She’ll be mad that you’re prettier than her.”

  Jesus! It’s like I’m talking to Gollum over here!

  “Well, that’s nice of you to say,” I reply, trying not to show how strange I find her whole demeanor. “Eva’s seen my pictures?”

  “Yes, ma’am—I mean, yes, Lola. She saw them on James’s Facebook.”

  “Oh, I see.” Good, at least it wasn’t some psycho stalker thing.

  I’m marveling at how obviously broken this poor girl is. She’s practically shaking in her seat, and she seems miserable and crippled by fear. Instinctively, I put my hand on hers and she quickly pulls it away. I’ve heard rumors about how rough things could get on her shoots, and I’m guessing nobody’s ever touched her in a way that wasn’t despicably painful.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologize, feeling bad for invading her space. “I’m not going to hurt you, but I understand if you don’t like to be touched.”

  She looks down at the table like she’s ashamed.

  “Did Eva tell you you’re not allowed to look people in the eye?” I’ve heard about this before, but I’ve never met anyone who actually has to do it. It’s one of those Dominant/submissive things.

  She nods.

  “Well, Eva’s not here right now and you’re welcome to look me in the eye if you want to,” I say, wanting to sound friendly. “I won’t tell on you.”

  Reluctantly, she raises her head up a little and looks at my face. I smile encouragingly at her. In return, the corners of her mouth curl up into a weak smile like she’s forgotten how to do it after all her years of suffering.

  “See? Not so bad, right?” I chuckle.

  “No, not so bad at all,” she says, her eyes looking a little brighter.

  She puts her hand back on the table and inches it closer to mine like she’s trying to see how far she can go and how much kindness she can endure. Slowly, I rest my hand on hers again and look at her for approval. She manages a smile and extends her hand a little more.

  I try not to gasp when I see a big purple bruise on her wrist. There it is, evidence of the violence she’s been forced to submit to. As I look up at her face, I can see that her long hair is hiding another sizable bruise on her neck and that there’s a welt on her cheek, which she’s covered with some foundation. She looks like somebody beat the shit out of her, which is more than likely true.

  My heart aches for this poor, damaged girl, but I don’t want to put her on the spot by jumping right to these horrific injuries.

  “Do you like your latte?” I ask as cheerfully as I can manage.

  She nods and smiles, but a real smile this time. In that moment, she looks youthful and carefree, like she hasn’t suffered unspeakable, deviant trauma at the hands of her “Mistress.”

  “What’s your real name, Savannah? I’d prefer to call you by that instead of your stage name, if that’s okay with you.” Her stage name seems more like a slave name in this case, so I’m hoping to get her to open up a little more by reaching out to the woman behind “Savannah Slade.”

  “Stacey, ma’am—I mean, Lola. Stacey Harris.”

  “Would it be all right with you if I called you Stacey instead of Savannah?” I want her permission because I get the feeling she doesn’t get to make a lot of her own decisions.

  “Yes, Lola.”

  “Stacey, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, but did Eva do this to you?” I ask, pulling up the sleeve of her jacket a little to reveal more of the bruise. Yikes! It’s worse than I thought.

  “No, ma’am—I mean, Lola.” She shakes her head. “Mistress likes to make marks in areas that people
can’t see because she says they’re to remind me not to disobey.”

  I’m doing my best not to cringe. Why would anyone let themselves get into this kind of situation?

  “These are from a video Mistress made me do a few days ago,” she volunteers, her first unprovoked response in our conversation.

  A few days ago? James did a video shoot with her a few days ago. These bruises couldn’t possibly be from him. He would never do this. Still, I have to ask.

  “Stacey…did James do this to you?” I’m mentally crossing my fingers that the answer is no.

  Stacey looks down at the table and nods once solemnly.

  I feel sick. My head hurts, and I feel nauseated. No! This can’t be. Not James! How could he do something like this to this poor, fragile girl—to anyone? What the hell is he turning into?

  “Oh, don’t worry, Lola,” Stacey says, picking up on my appalled expression. “Mistress told him to. He doesn’t want to hurt me, but she said he has to.” She’s trying to lessen the blow, but it’s not like this makes it any better.

  I’m reminded of the Milgram experiment in which psychologist Stanley Milgram tested how far participants would go to obey an authority figure who was ordering them to administer electric shocks to another volunteer. I like to think James is a freethinker who would refuse to hurt someone just because some bitch producer told him to, but I’m starting to feel like that assumption is wrong. Oh, James! How could you?

  “It might be naïve of me to ask, but why do you do what Eva says?” Stacey has it even worse than James because Eva practically owns her. Maybe she can shed some light on it.

  “Mistress takes care of me,” she murmurs like the mantra has been beaten into her. “She says that, if it weren’t for her, I’d be dead right now.”

  The extent of her brainwashing is staggering.

  “Stacey, do you mind if I ask how old you are?” Maybe that’s an explanation. She behaves like an adolescent, but she looks road-worn like an older woman.

  “I’m twenty-three.”

  Only twenty-three. Just like me. But not like me at all. She’s seen and done things that I’ve only heard about on the Internet. She’s so battered and abused, so damaged and broken, and she’s only twenty-three.

  “I’m twenty-three, too.” I do my best to hide how troubling I find all of this. I don’t want her to think I’m judging her. I don’t want to make her feel bad. In fact, I have the overwhelming urge to save her. “Oh, Stacey,” I say sympathetically, “I’m so sorry that this happened to you! I’m so sorry that James hurt you and that Eva has you both doing these things.”

  “James was right.” She smiles after a beat. “You are like an angel.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. “James said I was like an angel?”

  “Uh-huh. He told me one time that you’re the most beautiful girl he knows, and you make people feel better like you’re his angel or something.”

  I’m touched. I don’t know when James and Stacey sat down to have this conversation, but Stacey has no reason to lie to me, so I assume it’s legit.

  “That was very nice of him,” I reply, my throat tightening as I try not to cry. James says I make him feel better. Maybe I could help him and this broken girl in front of me in one fell swoop.

  “Mistress says James is in love with you,” she adds. Her frozen exterior is melting away, and she seems to be coming to life. “But Mistress doesn’t like that James loves you. She says love is for the weak. It makes her mad because it means that he holds you higher than her. She’s supposed to be the top, the most important one, but she can’t be more important than you with him and she hates it.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “She says he’d better shape up or else.”

  James loves me? James is in love with me? This might be an awful way of finding that out, but it does give my heart a joyful little surge.

  “What do you mean by ‘or else’?” I ask, halting my amazement at this supernova revelation.

  “Mistress can be cruel, Lola,” Stacey says in a hushed voice as she leans in toward me. “She knows people. She likes doing bad things to people who make her mad, and she’s real mad that James won’t do what she says sometimes. She says she has to teach him and that she’s gonna train him to follow orders.”

  There’s an undercurrent of fear running through her words. Now I’m starting to get scared. What exactly will Eva do if James crosses her? What is she capable of? What kind of people does she know that would make both Stacey and my strong, usually resilient friend shake in their boots?

  Stacey eyes my oatmeal cookie and licks her lips subconsciously. She’s rail thin, and I’m wondering if “Mistress” starves her in addition to beating the shit out of her and forcing her to have sex with people on film.

  “Here, you want it?” I say, sliding the cookie over to her.

  “Really?” She beams like I’ve just given her a Christmas present.

  “Yeah, sure. It’s all yours.” I nod warmly at her.

  “Oh, thank you, Lola! Mistress doesn’t let me have sweets, and I was bad, so I haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday.”

  So Eva does starve her. Jesus! Is there no length this woman won’t go to?

  As I sit here watching her savor the cookie like it’s filet mignon, I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her she’s nobody’s slave and that she has to run far away from Eva, but I’m worried that consequences would only be worse for her if Eva ever found her.

  On top of the human wreckage munching a cookie right in front of me, I still have the problem of my best friend and his ties to that vile woman. From the looks of it, he could be in a lot more trouble than I’d initially thought. And now Stacey tells me that he’s in love with me, just to throw another wrench into things! The thought that James loves me makes me simultaneously elated and terrified. No matter how much I try to deny it, I know that I love him too, but I’m worried that he’s being pulled into the dark side, and I’m not sure if I can pull him back out.

  Chapter 12

  James

  I’VE BEEN WALLOWING IN MISERY for three days now, just staying in bed and occasionally crying. I haven’t answered any of Lola’s calls or texts, and the only communication I’ve had with her was a brief reply to a frantic Facebook message she sent me. “Are you still alive?” was what she asked. I just wrote back “yes.”

  Honestly, I don’t know how to face her. I’m so ashamed at what I did to Savannah, so disgusted that I have to do it several more times, and even more horrified that I’ve been seriously considering deflowering my best friend to get out of this mess.

  I’ve been so freaked out over the last few days. Lola used to pop into my head during a scene every now and then, but lately it seems like she’s the only thing I can think about when I come. I’ve been replaying the other night in my mind constantly. She was just so perfect and so beautiful in that moment right after her little body shook with pleasure. When I was up on her bed looking at her, I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to be with her, to make love to her—not fuck her like I’d do with other girls.

  Eva’s right. I do love Lola, and the thought of any other guy being with her puts my heart through a fuckin’ meat grinder. I do want to be her first, and I’m starting to realize that I’ve always wanted it. I’ve been subconsciously cock-blocking her for years. I used to scare off dudes who flirted with her in high school. The whole time, I was intimidating any guys who wanted to get near her because I wanted her and I didn’t want anyone else to have her. Even Eric, who seems like a decent dude and who likes her a lot, doesn’t deserve the honor of being with her. And you do? After what you did to Savannah, you think you deserve Lola? It’s true. I don’t deserve her either, no matter how much I love her. After what I’ve done, I don’t deserve to even know someone as good and pure and kind as her.

  This is the weirdest emotion I’ve ever felt. For the first time in my life, I feel an intense connection to a girl—to anyone. It’s more than wanting to have sex with her, and it’
s confusing. I’ve been with countless girls, but never been in love with any of them. I thought they were hot, they thought I was hot, we fucked, the end. Right now, I don’t even want to have sex with Lola; I just want to hold her, to be around her, to see her smile and hear her laugh. I’ve never needed love before in my life, just a good time, but I need her to love me because I’m so fuckin’ crazy in love with her.

  I have to see her. I have to tell her how I feel and see if she feels any shred of love for me too. If she could love me, I could feel like a complete person again. I could try to put this shit behind me and get back to my old self.

  It’s time to come out of hiding and find her. I go into the bathroom and look at myself. My eyes are red, my hair’s all messed up, and I’m scruffy. I look like a fuckin’ homeless guy. I take a shower, hoping to wash the emotional grime off myself. When I get out, I shave off my depression stubble and put on some jeans and a T-shirt.

  I practice what I want to say as I stand outside Lola’s door. I knock. No answer. I knock again. Still no answer. Maybe she’s pissed at me for getting all weird after I went down on her that night. We haven’t talked much since then, and I’m sure she thinks something went wrong and I didn’t like it—but of course, I did. I really, really did. I take out my spare key and unlock the door. I’m coming in, whether she wants to talk to me or not.

  The place is empty. She’s not home, even though she should have gotten off work a few hours ago. She’s probably on a date with Eric, and that thought puts a lump in my throat.

  I go through the house and think about happier times I’ve had with her in these rooms. When I get to the kitchen, I see that there are pictures of her and Eric on the fridge. There’s a shot from the time they went sailing on his brother’s boat, the time they hiked Runyon Canyon, pictures of him kissing her cheek and wrapping his arms around her. Eric can offer her something I never can: a normal life. A life that doesn’t include ropes, whips, and a fucked-up producer who is most likely a total psychopath. He’s better for her. This thought is super grim, and I can’t be in here another second.