I follow her downstairs, eager to hug my little sisters, but my heart plummets. Standing in the foyer talking to my father is a tall, dark-haired suit. He turns and his piercing blue eyes crucify me.
Brady.
CHAPTER 21: JAYCE
I don’t care that she kicked me out.
I don’t care that I can’t reach her.
Right now, all I care about is finding that bastard and beating him to a strawberry pulp.
My four crappy leads are down to three after talking to Corey.
One, the flower delivery guy. Two, a barista from a coffee shop near her place. Three, a clerk from a bodega. Because I don’t have anything that really describes them, I start with what I do know—the stalker’s phone number.
I put all of the numbers and texts that I snagged from Violet’s old phone into my computer to figure out which ones matter. The most threatening texts that show the stalker is watching her are blocked numbers, but I want to believe that the stalker might have sent her other messages from another phone.
Maybe he hoped she’d reply?
From a few dozen phone numbers, I can tell who’s texting Violet most. I move them to the top of my list.
I look at what each text says. Some are limp-dick come-ons and some are specific—too specific—about exactly what they want to do to Violet. I move those to the top of the pile.
Three numbers stand out. I try reverse lookup for the numbers. There’s a personal trainer in Wilmington, North Carolina and a real estate agent in Taos, New Mexico. The last number has a New York prefix and is for something called “EKH Enterprises.”
I make the call. “Hi. I got a call from this number. I’m wondering if this is a business line?”
“Yes, we are business.” The older woman’s heavily accented voice is Asian, I think.
“Where are you located?” I pause. “Your address?”
“Six and A.”
“You’re in the East Village, right? East Sixth and A Street?” My pulse pounds. That’s on the corner near Violet’s apartment. “What’s the name of your business?”
“Easy Market,” the woman says. “What you need?”
“I’ll come by and get it.”
“We closed.”
I look at the time and it’s ten after eleven. Have I seriously been at this for three hours? The hunch in my shoulders and grit in my eyes confirms it.
“OK, I’ll come by tomorrow. Thanks.” I hang up, sure this woman’s not sending the texts, but maybe an employee? A relative?
I snoop a bit more online and peg two coffee shops within a couple of blocks of Violet’s. I wish I’d asked her which one she lost her bag at, but at least I remember the name of the florist from the card in her bouquet. I look it up, and it’s on the Lower East Side.
Violet might shut me out, but I’ll be damned if she’s shutting me down. Tomorrow, it’ll be my turn to find him. Just like he texted Violet: ready or not, here I come.
***
Pictures of Violet haunt my dreams.
Not memories of the redheaded girl who whispered secrets in this bed. Not the sweet, even wholesome girl who defies every type I thought I had.
No, it’s the pictures of her—bound and wanting, stripped of clothes and raw with emotion on that Sexy Bitches site—that wake me before dawn, drenched in sweat and tangled in my sheets.
I’ve had no rest, no real sleep, just the image of Violet writhing on a couch, her arms pinned above her head by an electrical cord, fear and desire flushing her cheeks until her freckles nearly disappear.
I give in and grab my tablet. Self-loathing washes over me as I find her photos on the website and look.
And look. And look. I imagine it’s me she’s bending to, not this unseen photographer. I imagine I’m the one tying her up, dominating her body as her spirit rises to match mine with lust and intensity.
I thought I could flush the photos from my mind by looking, like a vaccine to inoculate me from their power, but looking only makes it worse. The fire in my chest burns hotter.
I study her curves—the outline of her pale breasts and berry-pink nipples, the crest of her hip and taper of her thigh. The way the cord bites into the skin of her forearms. I imagine the same skin between my teeth, tormented by nips and bites, soothed by strokes from my tongue.
My cock throbs as I stare at the pictures, hating myself for invading her privacy like this. It’s different looking when I’m home alone, rather than soothing her with my touch and trying not to stare at the site on my phone.
Fuck it. I zoom in. Her navel dips and curves slightly at the top. Her sheer panties reveal the outline of her cleft, her thighs parted and beckoning.
She told me it’s called revenge porn, and I don’t know which word makes me feel more disgusting—the fact that I’m looking at porn of a girl I want and actually know, or the fact that this photo, or at least its public disclosure, is intended for revenge.
I can’t wrap my head around why anyone would want revenge against her. She’s too sweet, too fragile. I flip to the next picture and my teeth clench. Her eyes are closed in this one, her red hair cascading over white shoulders flecked with more freckles.
I fist my cock and tug. My finger flicks the tablet to see the third picture, with Violet’s green eyes burning hot, her lips parted. The lines of her ribs are visible, as if her chest is rising with rapid hot breaths, panting.
I’m panting. My balls draw up tight, ready for the release that I know will come in a few more strokes. I close my eyes against this invasion of Violet, but her image is still there in my mind, burned into the back of my eyelids. It morphs from the bound girl in the photo to the girl I know. I see her face turn to me in bed, softened with sleep, and she says my real name. Justin.
Her lips form the word in my mind, lips that could be parted and fixed around my cock the way she teased my finger. Her tongue brushed the rough pad of my finger, and I imagine what it could do to the head of my cock.
I explode.
Prickly heat creeps up my shoulders as my hand finishes what her photographs started. The white stream slicks my belly as my body pulses with heat and hunger.
Fuck. This is not right. I’m just as bad as her stalker, using her pictures without her permission for my own pleasure. I toss the tablet on a pillow and get up to shower the sticky mess away.
She doesn’t want me. I’m an idiot, jacking off to a girl who doesn’t even fucking want me. When she told me to go home—practically threw me out of her apartment—I didn’t believe it at first.
She pushed me away when I could have given her anything—a safe place to stay, a new phone, even new camera equipment. She has nothing but a barely-there roommate. No security. No phone. And the stalker’s still out there.
I know I sound like a million guys when I say I don’t understand women. But even if it means a shitload more trouble, I want to understand Violet.
I step out of the shower, wrap a towel around my waist and start coffee. I hate myself for leaving her alone and want to hate her for pushing me away. But two things she said to me forced me out of her place.
One: Rapunzel.
I don’t know why we got going about that stupid fairy tale, but she said I can’t protect her forever. Like she’s so sure I’ll eventually lose interest and cut her loose.
I drag a razor over my face and watch myself carefully in the mirror. I’m not that guy. Am I? My track record says otherwise. Of course I eventually lose interest in the groupies. No strings means I never have to have “the talk” when I do.
But they’re nothing compared to Violet. The tall girl who moves as gracefully as a deer, who isn’t made-up and blow-dried and wrapped in a push-up bra. Not that I mind those. It’s just that Violet has a subtlety and grace that speaks to me, louder than all of the fake lashes and platform heels that follow our band at every show.
I rinse my face, brush back my still-damp hair with a few strokes and scowl at my shirtless reflection. I’m working on definin
g my shoulders more when I lift, but even pumping doesn’t bring me the peace I felt when I held Violet.
Two: Reporters.
The other reason Violet shut me out is the media. She said a reporter might see me and ruin her life, and I get it. The gossip rags were halfway to ruining Tyler’s reputation when Gavin and Stella turned the tables on the groupie who was telling lies about Tyler.
It could be far worse for Violet. If the paparazzi connect us publicly and learn her name, it’s only a matter of time before they Google Violet Chase and find out more.
Shit. I need to know how much more is out there.
I need to find this bastard before he finds her.
CHAPTER 22: VIOLET
A sharp, predatory smile stretches across Brady’s face and he opens his arms. I lean back on the stairway wall, six steps from the bottom, and cling to the banister for support.
My father smiles up at me, a gleaming smile, a politician’s smile, but unlike Brady’s, his eyes hold true warmth. “Violet, sweetheart! I didn’t know you were coming home!”
Katie swoops past me down the stairs with the save. “She wanted it to be a surprise. Let’s see what Mom needs in the kitchen, Daddy, and give Vi and Brady a minute.”
My father’s eyes flick from me to Brady, aware of our breakup last month but with no inkling of what’s happened since. As far as he knows, it was a mutual parting at the end of my school year, and then I flew off to Europe to take pictures. I haven’t been home since.
Dad nods and follows Katie, leaving me to face Brady alone.
I force my rubbery legs to descend the last few steps but stay wide of Brady’s reach until he finally drops his hands.
“How. Could. You.” My voice is shaking with rage, pain and fear, but I hope all he hears is the rage.
“No need to be dramatic, babe,” he chides me. “We’re all adults here.”
“We’re not anything.”
“Of course. We parted ways amicably. Our relationship had run its course. We’re still very good friends.” He parrots this as if it’s a press release.
“Don’t feed me that garbage. Friends don’t—” I can’t bring myself to even whisper the atrocity he committed. “The pictures. You did it.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Brady shrugs, confirming his guilt simply by knowing what I’m talking about. “I’d never date someone who’d put herself in such a morally compromising position.”
“You put me in that position,” I hiss. “You took advantage of me!”
“Or perhaps I left you when I realized that you didn’t share my traditional values,” he says lightly, as if he’s asking for cream, no sugar, with his tea.
It’s a threat, and it cuts deep. There’s so much I know about him—his kinks, his little pornographic obsessions—that he never hid well when we were dating. I think he wanted me to know, to test me, to see what I’d be willing to tolerate.
He rocks back on his spotless dress shoes. “Have you ever noticed, Vi, that a news story really isn’t a story without a picture?”
I shake my head, my stomach churning as I sense where he’s going with this.
“Call it insurance.” The hiss in the last word slithers over my body. “I’d like to believe you have the good sense to keep private things private. And if you don’t, well, pictures play better than words.”
Brady arches his brow and the message is clear: I might have stories, but he has evidence.
I grasp the newel post at the base of the stairs as it sinks in. If I threaten his moral high ground, he’ll cut me off at the knees with a scandal. Instead of just being seen by lechers trolling porn sites, my pictures could be splashed across papers and regular websites, nipples carefully blurred.
“But my job. Why?” I square my shoulders and face Brady, my wrinkled shorts from the long bus ride in stark contrast to his suit and monogrammed shirt. Even in sandals, I’m nearly eye level with him.
His lip curls and I see those white teeth again. “I thought you should see what a well-placed message can do. To you or to someone you love.”
The subtext points directly to my father. It’s one thing for a potential U.S. congressman to have a wild child, yet another for him to routinely hold her up as a model of family values and righteous upbringing, a product of public school, church youth groups, and a stable heterosexual marriage.
“Get out,” I growl. “Get out of my parents’ house now.”
Brady tuts. “That’s not playing nice, babe.”
Katie blows through the door from the kitchen back into the foyer. “Bad time?” She looks from me to Brady and back at me, and some psychic sister thing actually works between us. “Brady, are you being mean to Violet after she came all the way to visit us?”
“Of course not, Katie.” Brady’s voice is smooth and rich, the oily hiss gone. “What makes you say that?”
“Well, Violet looks like she wants to puke all over you. And you’re her ex-boyfriend. And you two have been whispering out here so I can’t hear a thing from the kitchen.” Katie frowns at him and then crosses to the front door, opening it. “I want to hang out with my sister, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to hang out with you. Go home and bug Dad at his office tomorrow.”
Brady opens his mouth to protest and then snaps it shut. “It’s good that we had this talk, Violet.” He edges toward the door, an expression like he’s caught a whiff of sewer. “I’m glad we have an understanding.”
“See ya, loser!” Katie calls as Brady crosses our front walk to his car. She slams the door and I smother her with a hug.
“You were magnificent,” I tell her, giggling at first. But my wound-up crazy feelings start spiraling, bubbling up like a geyser, and the giggles turn to gasps, then sobs. When the waterworks come on, Katie grabs my arm and propels me upstairs to our room.
“Shit. What did I say?”
I give her a sharp look for cursing.
“Sue me. He’s a jerk. You broke up with him—way too late, if you ask me—but he still acts like he can come around here anytime, like he’s one of us.”
I nod. When we were dating, and particularly when we were in public, Brady did act like one of our family. Now I wonder how much of that was for show or simply to curry favor with my father.
“Also, he’s being super-creepy. He’s way too nice, telling me he likes my hair and stuff. It’s gross. I so don’t want your sloppy seconds.”
Katie makes a face like Brady is a used Kleenex and laughter conquers my tears.
CHAPTER 23: JAYCE
I sip a cup of coffee and watch the Easy Market’s opening routine across the street. So far this morning there’s been a steady stream of traffic through its doors.
Behind the counter, I spot the graying, Asian woman whom I think I talked to last night. A younger Asian man is stocking shelves, and a white guy’s out front setting up boxes of fruit, racks of magazines and buckets of flowers.
I cross the street and confront him. “Hey, you got a minute?”
“What do you want?” The thirty-something man squints at me, his slender face pinched and grouchy. I think he needs my coffee more than I do.
“Curious if you’ve seen this girl before.” I show him my phone, where a zoomed-in version of one of Violet’s revenge porn images shows just her face and her blazing hair. I cropped her naked body out of the picture.
Recognition flickers on his face but he drops his gaze, picks up another bucket of flowers and shakes his head. “Nope.”
“You sure? Because she lives around here.” I point diagonally across the street. “I’m pretty sure you’d notice a hot chick like that. Unless you don’t like girls.”
He takes my bait and straightens. “You saying I don’t like girls? Of course I notice her.”
“You recognize her.”
“I—” he realizes I’ve caught his lie. “What are you, a cop?”
I decide against impersonating a public safety officer. For now. “No, just a friend of hers. You see
her around, don’t you?”
“Yeah, she’s in here couple times a week. Nice girl, polite. Hot, if you’re a leg man.”
“Are you?”
“I’m a boob man.” He gestures to a magazine rack. “You want some of the second-shelf stuff?” I realize he’s pointing me to the porn.
“No. But I think you’ve seen that girl.” I use my height to get in his face. “Online.”
He curses and goes back to arranging the flower buckets. Stargazer lilies catch my eye.
“You sent her a message, didn’t you?” He still won’t look at me. “Look, I saw the number for this store on her phone. I know you sent her a text.”
“You know nothing.”
“I know stalking is a crime.”
“Stalking?” he cackles. “I don’t have time for that shit. I was just paying her a compliment. I didn’t think she’d be a porno girl.”
“That’s the thing. She isn’t.” My jaw ticks and my shoulders are tense, ready to spring on him the minute he admits it. I’m begging this man to tell me more, something that I could channel into fist-pounding rage.
“You’ve got nothing on me. I sent her some texts. So what? She’s the one spreading her legs. I’m just kickin’ back and enjoyin’ it.”
I kick the flower bucket in front of him, spraying water and lilies across the sidewalk. He lets loose a string of filth and I take off, angry at myself for letting him get to me like that.
When I slow down a few blocks later, cold sweat prickles my back. I’m a fucking moron. If he is the stalker—and I still don’t know the truth—will he retaliate against Violet?
***
I march back to my condo and make more coffee. Violet’s apparently unplugged my brain because I’m acting like a Neanderthal instead of using what I’ve got.
A handful of platinum cards. Access to pretty much anything. Influence in the right places. A concierge service, car service, doorman. Everything at my beck and call.
Revenge Bound Page 10
