Double Entendre: (City of Steel 2) (The Vault)

by Katherine Rhodes

  Letting out a sigh, I leaned back. The room was filled with people who ran the safe and legal BDSM scene in Pittsburgh. The people here in the living room at Wanderer’s End were good people. Kinky as all fucking get out, but good people.

  “Let’s start with the most important question,” Darien said. “Where the hell is Dee?”

  Everyone turned to Donny, whose brow furrowed even worse. “I haven’t heard from her. I don’t know where she is. I have an emergency number for her and she’s not calling me back. Which makes me think she’s not even getting the messages from the services.”

  “What can we do?” Franz asked. “How can we find her?”

  “The staff at Sybaritus swear she checked out three weeks ago, but there’s no corresponding airline ticket and there’s no way to know what’s going on unless we go there. I’m worried, frankly.”

  Killian leaned forward. “Emmy, if I can borrow the jet, I can get down there and do some looking around. Just some casual inquiries.” He glanced over at Cece. “We can take a weekend and just check in and ask some questions.” His wife nodded.

  “Thank you,” Donny said. “I can get someone to her house.”

  “Not without someone in this room,” Darien said. “No one goes anywhere to ask questions about this without someone else. Sylvie is still in rehab for the nerves in her back. I fear she’s never going to have a completely pain free day again in her life. So, we trust no one at our destinations.”

  Everyone nodded. It was a smart move since two men had already been overpowered, and one had almost died at Wanderer’s End.

  “All right, so Donny will take someone with him to find out what’s going on at Dee’s house,” Darien said.

  “We all need to up the security everywhere,” Franz said. “As tight as we have it, just about everywhere, I suggest we suspend new membership and temporarily revoke all guest passes.”

  Donny, Darien, and Millie—the infamous Mistress Faye from the Vault—all made noise about the suggestion, but Franz held his hand up. “None of us want this. None of us. I am not pleased because it will eat into my profits. But I’m more worried about losing trust and lives. I’ve already had two attacks on my property, and I don’t want more.”

  “You and Master Titus are the only ones who haven’t had incidents with the Northside Sadist,” I said, leaning forward. “Everything has been directed at Sadique and private dungeons.”

  Everyone looked around at each other.

  “Are we saying that this is personal thing?” Emmy asked.

  I cleared my throat. “I think…it’s not a personal thing. It’s a ‘not-get-caught’ thing.” I pointed at Franz. “Your club is popular. Everyone can see. There are spotlights on the outside and you have security inside. A lot of it. You don’t allow me to bring my chain flogger on the premises. You certainly don’t allow hard sadism on site.

  “Master Titus, you require ID to register even if they pay cash. Because of your open floors, there’s nowhere to hide.

  “But everyone else…the security isn’t quite as tight. It’s a little easier to slip someone in, or slip out. And I think that whoever this guy is, they aren’t interested in anything more than beating the shit out of someone.”

  Darien scrubbed a hand down his face. “I hate to say it, but I think we have to find someone on the dark side and see if they’ll talk to us. We need to cover all bases on this and you’re right, Vanity, that this looks like someone who is just out for the joy of assault.”

  I groaned, “You want me to go?”

  “I was thinking maybe you and Titus.” Darien tossed a chin at the large, broad Italian sitting quietly in the corner. He had always intimidated me, and that was something. Even though I enjoy being a sub, I was a forceful personality, and very few things got to me.

  Titus got to me.

  Emmy leaned forward. “Titus is great, but I don’t think they should go at all. Invite them to meet you somewhere.”

  “Piacere Pericoloso is a fortress if I need it to be. We can use the interview lounge for a meeting place.”

  Shaking my head, I glanced around the table one more time. “No, that’s not it. That’s fine, we can meet there. But how do you propose to get anything like an invite to them? You can’t exactly walk around with a bullhorn screaming, ‘come out, deviant community, the safe and sane want to talk to you!’ We have to be a little more subtle than that.”

  Cece and Emmy were trying to hold back a smirk, as was Franz. I gave them a droll look and turned back to Titus.

  “If we can use your place, I can go back to…my former Dom and ask him to visit.”

  Mistress Faye gasped, and Darien shot up in his chair. “Are you insane?”

  “Master Darien, you know I’m not.”

  Cece held up a hand. “Explain?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Master Darien and Mistress Faye pulled me out of the deviant world.” Pulling my arm back into my sleeve, I pulled up the back of my shirt and spun so everyone could see the middle of my back, just below my ribs. “This is Baron Grand’s brand. I was one of his slaves.”

  “Jesus, Vanity,” Emmy said, walking over. “That explains why you always wore a corset.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Emmy ran her longer slender finger over the terrible, puckered scar. “Does it hurt?”

  “No, it just pulls weird once in a while.” Considering what I had been through with the Baron, I was shocked it was really the only scar I had. “Darien found me, when I had to go to the hospital for an infection and detox. I was a training dummy for…” I looked at Emmy. “For Lance.”

  She pulled in a sharp breath. Lance was the one who had brutally beaten her at Club Imperial. It was the reason why everyone on Franz’s staff had to take martial arts, and why there was extensive biometric security and cameras everywhere.

  Emmy glanced over at Franz and Darien as I slipped my arm back in my shirt. “And we want to ask this asshole to help us?”

  “I do not,” Darien snapped.

  “I don’t either.” Franz nodded. “But we absolutely have to figure out what’s going on. And if Baron Grand has clues he can give us, then…” He looked at Titus. “Will you go with her?”

  “No.” I cut off the conversation before it started. “I’m taking Simon.”

  “Simon isn’t in the community.”

  “This isn’t about the community right now. I’m going back to someone who owned me, literally body and soul, and I need a connection to what I am now. Simon is that.” I took a deep breath. “This is dangerous, for anyone who goes. I need Simon for mental and physical support. He knows how to shoot a gun. He’s required by his contract to go to the range three days a week. He’s a cop, but more…I trust him, whether all of you do or not.”

  Emmy and Cece nodded. “I trust him,” they chorused.

  Darien flamed red with anger. “This is madness.”

  Faye sat back and folded her hands. “I feel like the fucking Council of Elves in Rivendell here, but this cannot go on. We’re built on trust and this trust is eroding and she’s right. This has to stop. Vanity has the best chance to get to the Baron and tell us what he knows. We’ll host him at Titus’s house, and we will have security there. We will let him go as long as no one is harmed.” She lifted an eyebrow. “The biggest challenge for you is to face him.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. Everyone was quiet, and I snickered. “I can feel every single alpha vibe in this room. You’re all fighting your instinct to tuck me back behind you and not let this happen. This needs to happen. I need it to happen. Darien gave me the tools to fight the sick addiction the Baron tried to control me with—but I have to do this for every single one of you. To keep you from murdering him, and to get the information we need to keep all the community safe.”

  Cece nodded. “The last thing we need is someone falsely accused of this.”

  Killian snorted, and Franz chuckled. Cece was very much against false accusations, as she had been at the heart of o
ne only recently.

  Darien growled, “Fine. Take Garabaldi with you. Set up a time and date and for the love of God, have backup ready to help you away from this freak.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of less.”

  Faye pointed at Donny. “Find out what’s going on with Dee, Gordon. That she’s missing makes me nervous.”

  Donny nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Simon

  I sighed. “We really have to do this?”

  “I volunteered, Simon.” She grimaced. “Though the closer we get to Baron’s place, the more I regret being noble about this.”

  Patting her thigh, I didn’t get my hand back. She grabbed it and wrapped her hand around my fingers.

  I looked over. “Wanna tell me the whole story?”

  “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “You’re self-deprecating again,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No, I’m stalling. Can I tell you after this? I need my walls to face this fucker. Because he’s going to try and get under my skin. He’s going to make me filthy offers and not revisiting what brought me to him is probably a good idea.”

  Nodding, I pressed a kiss to her knuckles again. “You got it. Just as long as I get the story.”

  “I promise,” I said. “I just need my walls right now.”

  The trip to the Baron Grand’s hideout, as Vanessa called it, was two hours. He was in a small town in West Virginia called Pine Hills, and hid up in the hills north of the town.

  “They’re sycophants,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  “They’re sycophants, all of his slaves and pets and Doms and Masters. They hang on his words. He comes into Pittsburgh twice a month to pick up new recruits, people who fall through the cracks, who don’t know how to work with their unacceptable sexual desires. He has his people trolling the clubs and bars and porno theaters for people who like things that aren’t mainstream. Sometimes he catches them, sometimes they get away.”

  “He collects sexual outliers?”

  “Yes, like toys.”

  “Why?”

  “The hell of it. No, that’s not true. He likes power. And to him, power is having command over the mind and body of another person. Or a whole group of people. And in his compound, anything goes. There is no safe, sane, and consensual. He delights in torture, in doling out pain.”

  “And no one stops him?”

  “They either don’t know there are other ways to live because he’s brought them in before the BDSM community can find them, or they feel exactly the same way he does—they want to hurt things, or they wish to be hurt.”

  Taking my hand back, I navigated through some tight hills and corners. “And we’re going to see him why?”

  She swallowed. “If someone has escaped his orbit but is still acting the part of his follower, he’s going to be pissed and very likely to rat the attacker out. If he’s got a loyalty issue, he’ll still point us in the right direction.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t like this. We’re playing off a psycho’s ego to catch another psycho.”

  “I have no other ideas, and neither did anyone else.”

  “And you sat in on the Council of Nine?”

  “Well, it was more like fifteen, but yes. And before you complain, I tried to bring you. They wouldn’t hear it, so I was your proxy.”

  Trying to hide a smirk, I glanced over at her. “I just cannot imagine all that Dom in the air. How did it not manage to rip a hole in the space time continuum?”

  There was a little chuckle from her. “I was wondering the same thing, really.”

  “Didn’t Franz want to choke someone out?”

  “Most likely the target for that wasn’t there. He and Mistress Dee have never seen eye to eye, and she’s missing. Darien and Titus are the dangerous ones.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met Titus.”

  “Oh, you will. Master Titus isn’t one to be fucked around with. If you think Darien and Franz are alpha? Titus is downright frightening. He’s the quiet, silent type who spent eight years in the Marines and has training no one knows about. He’s a niche Dom, but he’s right about his house being the safest and most fortress like. We’ll be safe there if the Baron wants to come.”

  The house Baron Grand lived in appeared to be a one-floor affair at the top of a mountain, covered by trees so people couldn’t see it from overhead. He really did more than value his privacy, he took it from the prying eyes.

  Stepping out of the car, we found the air had a cold snap to it, and there was a hint of snow. I grabbed Vanessa’s hand and she hesitated on the walk to the door.

  “You good?” I asked, pulling her into my side.

  “Not even close. I want to puke and run and never come back. Don’t let me fall under his spell, Simon.”

  “I won’t,” I promised. I had a secret weapon at the ready, and I would use that if I was afraid she was going to get sucked into his world again. My gorgeous doll wasn’t going to be sucked back into that horrible world.

  I let her take the lead. It was important she felt she was in charge, from the get-go. She had admitted she wished she hadn’t said anything, but now it was too late. It was never too late, but I felt like, deep down, she wanted to face this. Finally.

  The door was solid wood, but on the right-hand side was a Ring—one of those fancy video doorbells that had become popular. They were very helpful in a lot of my cases now.

  This one lit up a moment after she pressed it.

  “Is that you, my little Nessa?”

  I growled at the screen and stopped it a moment after it escaped my throat. I’d been hanging around too many damn alphas lately.

  “Hello, Baron. Can we come in?”

  “Whatever are you doing here, my little pet?”

  “I’m not talking to you through the doorbell, Baron. Either open the door or tell us to leave.”

  “You are no fun, Vanessa.”

  The door buzzed, clicked, and popped open. Vanessa pushed it all the way open and walked into the foyer.

  I was not prepared.

  The foyer led straight into a living room, where there were more than just floor-to-ceiling windows, there was a whole wall of glass that overlooked a valley and the hills beyond. It was a curtain wall and went three stories down to the ground. Angled back at the bottom, it had been designed to let in the light, and never reflect it. It couldn’t be seen from the sky on a casual glance.

  But more than just the architecture of the place, were the occupants.

  Silhouetted in the bright daylight were four people in ropes. Not good rope either, like Cece tied. These were twisted and mangled and knotted and there looked to be nothing pleasurable about the pain they were in.

  There was a woman tied to a bench, her head hanging back off the edge, her mouth stuffed full of some dick who was relentlessly pistoning in deep in her throat. Tears were streaming down her face and I heard choking noises.

  From somewhere else on the floor I heard the crack of a whip and a hoarse cry of pain. There was a permeating stink of semen and shit in the air.

  Vanessa made a bee line through the living room, not even looking at what was going on. She walked to a massive staircase that led down a floor and I was desperate to keep up with her.

  This was so not my bag. Not even close.

  Ignoring more perversions surrounding us, she walked through another room like the one above. I fixed my eyes on the back of her head and just followed. There was so much wrong in here I couldn’t even begin to process it.

  Finally, she took a left and headed through another hall to what looked like a study with utterly out of place, rich, dark wood furniture and the curtain wall of windows.

  A broad-shouldered, dark-haired man stood behind a strange looking framework that seemed to be rocking forward and back. He turned his head and smiled at her.

  It was pure snake oil.

  “Vanessa. My pet. Come in.”

  I was directly b
ehind her as she walked closer.

  The framework was a swing, and there was a woman bound to it, in a leather zentai, holes in the face only to breathe, and zipper that was open between her legs where Baron was slamming his dick into her.

  A shudder went through Vanessa and I put my hands on her shoulders to steady her.

  “Oh, you must remember this, my dear. I had you here so many times.”

  She hauled in a breath. “Finish up, Baron. I’m not here to enjoy your freak show.”

  “Oh, but you loved my freak show, Vanessa.”

  “Vanity,” she snapped. “Don’t ever use my real name. You don’t have permission.”

  Watching the both of us like a hawk, he leaned forward and wrapped a hand around a latex covered breast and squeezed hard. There was a muffled scream from behind the mask, and Baron’s hand was quick to slap the other breast.

  “Shut up, Melody. Silence. Break it again and worse happens.”

  Was he pleasuring her or torturing her? I didn’t know, immediately understanding what Vanessa had meant by anything goes. As long as Baron was either unaware or sanctioning it, nothing was off-limits.

  “Finish up, Baron. We need to talk.”

  He squinted and turned back to the woman. He drove himself in and out of her at a terrible angle and punishing rhythm while we waited. It wasn’t terribly long before he climaxed and withdrew, spilling himself all over her sex. He let out a grunt of satisfaction, then leaned forward smacked each breast hard.

  “You’ll stay there, bitch, until I release you. You may piss to clean yourself off.” He grabbed a towel on the frame, wiped his dick off and threw the towel under her. Tucking everything back in his pants, he motioned us out of the room and down the hall as the faint smell of urine wafted after us.

  This place was a hell hole.

  Down the hall was a smaller room that resembled an office. It had a desk and two chairs facing it, as well as some filing cabinets and a woman hanging from the ceiling by what had to be hooks in her back.

  The Baron pointed up. “That could be you, my dear. You could be my daily decoration in here. Think of all the wonderful pleasure I could ring from your pain.”