Claiming Fifi

by Tara Crescent

  Ah, that explains the FedEx package. “Opening it now,” I tell him. “What’s in it?”

  “A non-disclosure agreement,” he says. “Everyone who enters the club signs one of them.”

  Fair enough. “Okay.”

  “Since your cover story will be that you’re a new member, I’ve also included a copy of Club M’s rules.”

  I wipe my sweaty palms on my skirt. “Rules?”

  “Fairly standard stuff,” he reassures me. “Everyone’s fair game to be approached unless they are wearing a collar, in which case, talk to their dominant first. Never interrupt a scene. Saying ‘no’ is always an option, and if you are uncomfortable at any time, find a monitor. There’ll be plenty of them on the floor.”

  My pulse is racing. I count to five to calm myself down. There’s nothing to worry about. “Adrian Lockhart and Brody Payne said that you’d assigned them to be my mentors.”

  “Yes,” he confirms after a split-second hesitation. “They used to be regulars, and they know everything about the club. They’ll help you navigate the space.”

  “But they don’t know about the blackmail attempt, right? As far as they’re concerned, I’m just a new member?”

  “That’s right.” He pauses. “I’m certain that they’re not involved in this blackmail attempt. Brody and Adrian are above reproach.”

  “Why?” I’m inclined to agree with him, but I’m also enough of a detective to know that at the start of a case, you consider all the options.

  “For one, they haven’t been to the club in two years.”

  That makes me sit up. “Really? Why?”

  “Why do you think, Ms. Clarke? They met Sandra Jackson at Club M. The place holds memories that they’ve avoided facing.”

  I’m gripping the phone so tightly that my fingers are starting to hurt. I ease my grasp. I’ve been so caught up in my own shit that I haven’t even thought about their loss. “What changed now?”

  “Time heals all wounds, Ms. Clarke,” he responds. “Sandy died around the same time you broke up with Raymond Downing. I presume you’re not still hung up over your former dominant, and I have to assume that Payne and Lockhart are ready to re-engage in the community again.”

  I presume you’re not still hung up over your former dominant.

  I don’t know why everyone keeps hinting that I’m frail. I’m not. Just because I’m not interested in talking about that time doesn’t mean I’m not over it. Not everyone needs to blab about their trauma non-stop.

  “Fine. I’ll read the documents and FedEx them back to you. You’ll have them by tomorrow morning.”

  If he’s put off by my abruptness, I can’t tell. “Excellent,” he says. “There’s one more thing. If you’ve looked up our location, you’ll see that we’re quite a distance from the city. The club is part of a rather exclusive resort, and I’ve arranged for a room for you Friday and Saturday night.”

  My heart jumps in my chest. “You want me to spend the night in a sex dungeon?”

  “I want you to spend the night in a very expensive, very upscale hotel room,” he says impatiently. “There’s nothing sinister about it. I’m trying to save you a two-hour drive back to the city in the middle of the night.”

  “Adrian and Brody offered to give me a ride. Will they be spending the night?”

  “They usually do.”

  Suddenly, driving down with the two gorgeous dominants loses its appeal. The idea of being so far away from the city without a car makes me feel all kinds of trapped. “On second thought, I think I’m going to drive myself down.”

  That way, I can always escape if I need to.

  “Very well,” he says. “Please call my office and give them your license plate number before you set out. The grounds are gated, and the guards only allow in guests who are on their list. If you get here at six, I can fill you in on the details of the case before the club starts filling up.”

  Filling up with dominants and submissives, all there to play dangerous games, games that burned me so badly that I never want to play again.

  I dismiss that small, terrified voice. That was a long time ago. You’re fine.

  After he hangs up, I stare blankly at my computer screen. I was twenty-eight when I got involved with Raymond. A grown woman. I thought I was prepared, but I wasn’t. Not at all.

  All through my early twenties, I’d battled my needs, common sense outweighing desire. My parents were cops. I’d seen too many pictures of battered women, heard too many stories of abusive husbands. To voluntarily put myself in a situation where that could happen to me… It had taken a lot of courage to go to one of DC’s underground fetish clubs.

  Where I’d met Raymond. At the start, he’d seemed perfect. Good-looking and self-assured, he’d stepped in to help when a guy hitting on me couldn’t seem to understand the meaning of the word ‘no.’

  In the very early days, he’d been charming. The mask had come off quickly, but I’d been too caught up in my own failure to be the type of submissive Raymond wanted that I hadn’t noticed.

  Can I trust Brody and Adrian?

  Deep inside, I know I’m asking the wrong question. It’s not Brody and Adrian I’m afraid of. It’s myself. Raymond Downing taught me one very important lesson. When it comes to dominant men, my instincts cannot be trusted.

  11

  Brody:

  There are dozens of small towns dotted along I-55. Brentville, where I grew up, is one of them, and it’s about as cookie-cutter as you can get. Two motels draw the stray traffic from the highway. There’s a small high school, and the town’s inordinately proud of the local football team.

  I haven’t been back in years.

  If I were flying commercial, it would have taken me all day to get here. Luckily, the private plane is much faster. We touch down at a small airfield an hour away, and the rental car that Nita arranged for me is waiting. I take the keys from the gentleman that drove it down from Memphis. “You’re Judge Payne’s son, aren’t you?” he asks me. “I remember you.” He sticks out his hand. “Jeff Gardner.”

  Great. A local. I shake his hand and do my best to be social, though I’m not in the mood. “Are you a football fan?” There are only two reasons for anyone here to remember me. My father, and the fact that I led the football team to an undefeated season in my senior year of high school.

  “My son Beau played the same time as you.”

  I search my memory. “Beau Gardner?” The big, hulking teenager had been a linebacker. Nice guy. Quiet. Kept to himself. “I remember him. He turned pro, didn’t he?”

  This time, his smile is wide and genuine. “That’s my boy,” he says. “He got recruited by Michigan. Played for two seasons for the Chicago Bears before they cut him.”

  Good for Beau. I’d quickly realized when I got to college that I wasn’t good enough to play at the pro-level. Instead, I got an education. It was a far wiser investment. “What’s he doing now?”

  “Works in a bank.” His smile fades. “Doesn’t come back very often.”

  I’m not surprised. I ran too, picking a college that was far away from home. On the surface, it seemed like a good place to grow up, but underneath, the town was ugly.

  And there’s none uglier than Eugene Payne.

  Still, growing up here was good training for the back-stabbing political games in DC. Thankfully, I don’t have to play them much. Lockhart & Payne does some work for the government, but it’s not a critical part of our business, and I’d like to keep it that way.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say politely.

  He shrugs. “You’re here to see Callie Weis, are you?”

  Word’s getting around. I guess my mother didn’t do too good a job brushing my dad’s latest fuck-up under the table.

  I don’t reply, and he looks unsurprised. “She’s a good kid, Callie,” he says. “Terrible taste in men. Deacon is in and out of trouble all the time, but Callie holds the family together. Now this thing with Willa Mae…” His voice tra
ils off. “It’s a darned shame.”

  My headache is back.

  According to a quick Internet search, Callie Weiss is thirty-five. Same age as me. She works as a housekeeper in the local Motel 8. She’s got four children, and the oldest of them, Willa Mae, is seventeen.

  “I should get going.” I don’t meet the older man’s eyes; how can I? I’m here to buy Callie Weiss’ silence with my money. Bile rises in my stomach, and the throbbing in my temples intensifies.

  “Yeah.” Jeff Gardner doesn’t shake hands with me again. “I guess you should.”

  Traffic is light. It’s a little after one when I pull in front of Callie Weiss’ small ranch-style house. The place looks like it’s seen better days. The vinyl siding is faded and worn, and the roof shingles need replacing.

  A struggling single mother. A father in and out of jail. And of course, a young, pretty daughter. My father is pretty fucking consistent when picking his targets.

  The door opens before I can knock, and a young boy stares at me. He can’t be older than seven. He’s holding a pop-tart in his hand, and he’s got jam streaked across his face. “Who are you?”

  “Grady Scott Weiss, get back here.” A harried-looking blonde woman bustles up, and when she sees me, her body tenses. “Brody Payne, I assume.” Her lips tighten. “You look like your father.”

  Yet another reason to stay away from the entire state of Mississippi. “May I come in?”

  She nods curtly and puts her hand on her son’s head. “Grady, you run along and keep an eye on the twins.”

  “Why don’t you ask Willa Mae to do it?” the kid demands.

  “I don’t want to hear any backtalk from you, young man. Leave your sister alone and watch the twins. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The boy shoots me a curious look and wanders away.

  Callie Weiss leads me to the kitchen and waves to the table. “You want a cup of coffee or something?”

  She looks exhausted. God, I am such an asshole. Why am I enabling my father’s bad behavior? “I’m good.” I sit down, my fingers playing with the crayons scattered over the faded, stained surface.

  She nods and pulls up a chair across from me. “Willa Mae was so excited about being chosen for the internship,” she says. “She’s bright, you know. I wanted her to do better with her life than this.” Her lips twist. “I thought she could even go to college.”

  I’ve learned the salient details. Willa Mae Weiss’ high school set up an internship program with the 4th Circuit Court. Willa Mae was assigned to Judge Payne’s office. And of course, my father couldn’t keep his hands away from the young girl.

  “Now she just stays in her room,” Callie continues. “She doesn’t want to go out with her friends. She doesn’t want to go to school. She locks herself in there all day, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

  “You want to get her help.”

  “We don’t want to make any trouble,” she says wearily. “Already, Mrs. Payne talked to Mrs. Chaney at the motel. If I lose this job…” She bites her lower lip and drops her gaze.

  Fiona had bitten her lip the same way yesterday. I’d wanted to kiss that swollen lower lip and suck it into my mouth. But that lunch seems so far away now. Back home in Mississippi, I might as well be on a different planet.

  “I can write you a check,” I say quietly. “If that’s what you want.”

  She laughs bitterly. “You think that any of this is about what I want? Your father exposed himself to my little girl and forced her to suck his cock. You think I wanted that? She used to be a straight-A student, and now she won’t go to school. The other girls are calling her a whore. You think that was on my Christmas list?”

  Fuck.

  Callie Weiss is right. This isn’t about what she wants. This is about survival, plain and simple. She’s got four kids, and she needs to put food on the table. My father knows it, which is why he picked Willa Mae as his target, and my mother knows it too, which is why I’m here. A hundred grand? I could offer fifty, even twenty-five and she’ll take it because she has no other fucking choice.

  I can’t meet her eyes. I pull my check book out of my briefcase and start writing. One hundred thousand dollars. She watches me, her eyes round, her mouth falling open. When I push it across the table, her fingers toy with the edges of the check, as if she can’t quite believe it’s real. “What do I need to sign?” she asks. “My pa said I’d have to sign a non-disclosure form.”

  I don’t answer her right away. “Did you ever think about filing charges?”

  “I’m a mother, Mr. Payne,” she says tightly. “Of course I thought about filing charges. But the police chief, Tommy Green, he plays golf every Sunday with your papa. Your mama and Mary Lou Chaney are thick as thieves. I don’t have a shot in this town.”

  She’s right. If Callie Weiss ever wore rose-colored glasses about the way the world works, they’re gone now. She has no illusions left, none at all. She’s poor, and my father is powerful, and that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

  Fight back, Callie. Don’t let him get away with it. “The money is a gift, not a settlement.”

  She looks up, confusion in her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  “There is no non-disclosure agreement. You aren’t waiving your right to press charges against Eugene Payne. This check has nothing to do with my parents.” I remove a business card from my wallet and hand it to her. “Dixie Ketcham is a lawyer in Jackson. She’ll represent you.”

  There’s so much more that I want to say. I want to tell her that her daughter isn’t the first and she won’t be the last. I want to beg her to press charges, remind her that Eugene Payne needs to face the consequences of his actions.

  But I’ve seen too many of these women, and they never fight back.

  I can’t blame Callie Weiss. She has to do what’s best for Willa Mae, what’s best for her family. And God knows that if she tries to press charges, my parents will drag that poor girl through the mud.

  “Why are you doing this?” she whispers. “Why are you helping us, Mr. Payne?”

  Because I’m not my father. I take a deep breath and rise to my feet. I have to get out of here, get back to DC before I’m consumed entirely by the past. “Dix is expecting your call.”

  12

  Fiona:

  Before I know it, it’s Thursday evening. At half-past seven, my eyes are blurry from staring at the computer all day, and my neck is sore. My skirt is rumpled, and my hair looks like a rat’s nest.

  Raymond had specific instructions for the way I was to present myself. Adrian had said nothing. He’d just given me an enigmatic look and told me to drop by their offices at eight.

  Ever since I saw them in the lobby on Tuesday, I’ve been trying to pretend I’m not nervous. Now that it’s almost time to meet them, I finally admit the truth. I’m not as calm as I’d like to be. My insides are twisted into a knot, part need and part anxiety.

  Bondage and punishment, restraint and desire.

  I run a comb through my hair. I rummage through my desk drawers until I find a tube of lipstick. It’s fire-engine red. I bought it a month ago on a whim after Samara had given me a lecture about falling into a rut, but I’d never been bold enough to wear it.

  Then again, I’m about to walk into the office of two dominants. Compared to that, red lipstick is easy.

  I glance at my reflection in the small mirror that hangs on the back of my door. My skin is too pale, and I have far too many freckles, but my eyes are bright, shining with anticipation. My mind might have a thousand reservations about what I’m doing, but my body doesn’t.

  Stupid body.

  You’re delaying, Fiona.

  It’s late. Mrs. Morales is long gone, though she’s left her current knitting project on her desk, some kind of lurid orange concoction that I desperately hope isn’t going to become a baby sweater because no baby deserves this neon horror. I turn off the lights and lock up, then head down the passageway toward
the elevators.

  Lockhart & Payne have taken over the top two floors of the building. I make my way to their reception. There’s no one there, and the clear glass doors are locked, but there’s an intercom to the side with a note instructing after-hours visitors to dial 0 for help.

  With trembling fingers, I press the button.

  “Hello, Fiona.” Adrian’s voice almost makes me jump. Of course. Any other day, I’d have noticed the security cameras in the area. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  “Okay.” Time seems to stretch out. In the ninety seconds it takes him to make his way to the reception area, my emotions swing wildly between Stay and Go, like a pendulum on crack. No surprise there—I’ve been trying to make this decision all afternoon. Even as I dealt with new client inquiries, answered emails and bitched out the telephone company for over-billing me, my subconscious had gnawed at this decision.

  Except now, I’ve run out of time. Adrian is here.

  He opens the glass doors, the expression on his face unreadable. “Do you know how long you stood staring at that button?” he asks, gesturing to the intercom.

  Wordlessly, I shake my head.

  “Five minutes.” He’s taken off his jacket and tie, and his top button is undone, his shirt sleeves rolled up. “I’m not Raymond Downing,” he says, each syllable clearly enunciated. “I don’t want your obedience.”

  I can’t meet his eyes. “What do you want?” I whisper.

  “If you’re interested,” he says, his voice low and even, “We’ll negotiate terms. We’ll discuss limits and set boundaries. But before any of that can happen, I need something from you, Fiona.”

  I wait in perfect stillness for him to continue, my throat dry, my eyes downcast. “Obedience is easy,” he murmurs. “What we will demand of you is your willing, enthusiastic submission.” His eyes rest on my red lips. “In or out?”

  Willing, enthusiastic submission.

  So easy, yet so difficult.

  Stay or go. In or out.

  Raymond took three months from me. I’m not going to let him take the rest of my life. I’m not afraid.