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

by Katherine Rhodes

  He seemed, to a lot of people, to be completely cool, almost emotionless in a lot of cases. He wasn’t. There was depth to him that was found in few men.

  I needed that depth and understanding at that moment. His rescue of me from the hellhole had changed my life. Teaching me that there was nothing wrong with my desires molded me and made me come out of my shell. More than once, he had told me I was the least submissive sub he’d ever had the pleasure of training.

  “So, what brings you here, my dear Vanity? Are the rumors I hear true?”

  I snorted. “About the mess we’re in? Yes.”

  “You managed to snag a Domme who is the ex-wife of your current lover in a bizarre twist of fate, yes?”

  “Almost-ex-wife. And bizarre is being kind,” I mumbled, taking a sip of the scotch and enjoying the rich, amber liquid as it warmed me all the way down to my toes.

  “Let’s step back a little way. You didn’t have to volunteer to go to the Baron, you know that.”

  “Who else was going to go?”

  “Any of us would have gone to talk to him, in your place.”

  I covered my eyes. “You’re trying to make me say that I needed to face it. Well, I did. And I made it out the other side in one piece. So stop. I did what I had to do.”

  “Vanity?”

  I looked up at his tone.

  “What you did was very brave. I’m proud of you.”

  I blushed. “I just hope we get something or anything out of that. I forgot how much of an asshole the Baron is until he was in front of me.”

  “I heard you brought back a stray?”

  I snickered. “Well, she seemed like she needed a flea bath and better bed.”

  “Well done, you and your man.”

  Glancing down, I stared at my toes. “He’s that kind of man. As shockingly alpha as he is, he never shows it off.”

  A smirk appeared on Darien’s face. “He’s the only man who has ever told me to shut up and step back and not gotten punished. He is totally an alpha. But…your stray went to Titus?”

  “Yes, sir, she did. She’ll be fine once he gets through to her. I don’t think she was nearly as bad as I was. She wasn’t there as long as I was.” That had been her saving grace.

  “And is there any news on Dee?”

  “Not that I know of, but Paul was handling the autopsy himself, not his assistant, so we’ll know immediately if he finds anything.”

  Nodding, he sat back in the chair. Swirling the scotch once, he took a sip. “And so, to your problem.”

  My breath escaped slowly, and I drew a new one in just as slowly. “My problem, which is that I’m bisexual and in love with two people who I don’t know if they are willing to share me. I don’t know if I’m willing to be shared.”

  “It’s odd that you’ve fallen for Simon and his ex.” He blinked a few times, staring down into the crystal. “But where do you stand on this?”

  “I’m in love with Simon and I’m in love with Laicy. And I just can’t imagine life without both of them, in whatever form that has to be.”

  The ‘L’ word brought up his usual skeptical grimace. “You’re sure it’s that, and not just lust, or bad Mexican?”

  “Master, I wish I knew why you are so opposed to love.” I plowed forward before he could give me his lecture. “Still and all, yes, I’m sure it wasn’t chimichangas from the other night. It’s too persistent for that.”

  “What are your thoughts on a solution for this? Your detective is a vanilla world man, even if he is trusted and accepted by the community at large.”

  “He’s not as vanilla as you think,” I said. Looking away from the glass of scotch, which was mysteriously disappearing fast. I chuckled. “I heard you were supposed to come over for a scene. Laicy…Cameron and I found the furniture. He spared absolutely no expense when buying that. So, he might be willing to try a few things.”

  “Vanity…Vanessa.”

  Jerking, I stared at him. He had almost never called me by my real name.

  “You need so much more than just willing to try a few things from him. Your desire for masochistic pain must be met. Haven’t you realized this yet? If you don’t fill that part of yourself, you will go half mad and you will lose control of yourself. Get into trouble. Undisciplined and unmet, that’s how you wound up with the Baron.”

  The chair tried to swallow me, I leaned back and down so far. “I do know that. I do. And in the past two weeks, I haven’t had a scene with either of them. It’s been a very rough few weeks.”

  Scratching his chin in thought, Darien was quiet. He sipped his drink one more time before speaking. “I don’t want you to lose your sense of control, Vanity. Do you feel that you need a scene?”

  “Oh, ha. Yes, but that’s just asking for trouble, Master. Bringing you into this mess is just not a good idea.”

  He pointed at me with the glass in his hand. “Don’t you dare let this go too long. I know you need this, and you need to let either or both of them know this is something that helps you.”

  “Yes, Master, I know. I am just at a point that…well, I have two people I want to spend my life with and I don’t know how to navigate this decision.”

  He smirked and stared at the amber liquid, lifting it to his lips. “Why choose?”

  I just stared at him, probably for nearly a full minute, not saying a thing. My brain finally caught up. “What?”

  “Why choose?” His eyebrow quirked up. “Think about it for a moment, my pet. Simon and Laicy were married. They didn’t get divorced because they didn’t love each other, but because they didn’t talk. He’s confided that in me over the past year. He still loves her. What you need to find out is if she still loves him.”

  “A three-way relationship?” My brain was absolutely blown by this idea. I’d been in a ménage-a-trois before—well, more than one—but to have a permanent relationship like that? “How would that work?”

  “That’s up to you.” Darien tipped his head. “The three of you. No one can tell you how to keep your relationship. But you have a unique situation, my dear Vanity. Very unique. I would advise you to consider this and talk to both of them.”

  I sipped my own scotch thoughtfully. “Laicy already admitted she still had feelings for Simon.” I paused. “They had sex.”

  “Who?”

  “Simon and Laicy, about two weeks ago. They both feel terrible about it, but they did both enjoy it even if they won’t admit it.”

  “Now that is interesting,” he mumbled. “I wouldn’t have put it on Simon Garabaldi to have relations outside of a current relationship.”

  “I’m not sure he did,” I answered. “They haven’t signed the divorce papers yet.”

  “Oh. Really.”

  I could see Darien processing all that. I was still processing it. I was upset and at the same time, I wasn’t. I mean, I was having sex with him and Laicy, and while it wasn’t his modus operandi, that didn’t mean he was necessarily completely out of his lane at this point. I would have given him permission to have a poly relationship in a heartbeat. But he didn’t ask. But they both admitted it was a mistake. But they weren’t really sorry. But…

  I was in love with them.

  “Can a three-way really work?”

  He chuckled. “Cece and Killian have a couple they share with. There’s four of them in that relationship, even if they don’t all live together. Three would be far easier.”

  Cece. I chuckled. Kinkiest bitch this side of the Mississippi. And of course, Killian was on board with that.

  “I don’t want to hide…”

  “Fuck the masses. Do what you all need to do.” Darien shrugged. “Vanity. You need to find your happy place, the balance between your darkness and the light the rest of us see. I know you don’t want to turn Simon into a Dom, but what if you had a wonderful Alpha and a marvelous Domme to complete you? A happy home. A bed to share. A place to settle, to find everything you need.”

  “Coming from the world’s most dedic
ated bachelor-player on the planet,” I said with no malice.

  He didn’t answer. There was something there, something he didn’t want people to know—it was the most he had ever let me in. But I didn’t press. That was his to deal with.

  Mine was to deal with my lovers. Bedmates. Significant others. A pair of people I loved and could think about sharing a life with.

  I sipped the scotch.

  Simon

  I could hear the snap of fancy shoes on the linoleum of the floor, approaching the door. Glancing at the clock, it was nearly six at night, and I wondered where those shoes were heading. Lys was also curious and turned in her chair.

  Paul Wainwright appeared in the door of the office area, and I had my answer.

  “Doctor?”

  “Detective,” he bit out the word. “You have a major problem.”

  “What?”

  He slapped a folder on my desk. “That body was not Danielle Nash.”

  “How the hell is that possible?”

  Lys snatched the folder and flopped it open. “I don’t see a problem,” she said, after flipping through a few pages. “Everything looks exactly like we expected. All the evidence matches…”

  “Yes, everything in the house matched the evidence from the body, absolutely. Everything can be matched. Except, the DNA isn’t that of Danielle Nash.”

  Lys wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t get it…”

  “An imposter…” I hissed.

  “Not just an imposter. Someone who stole the real Danielle’s whole life. A long time ago.” Paul flipped quickly through the file he had put down and pulled something out, tapping it. “These are dental records. They match the body we found. They’re from twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty years…” I mumbled.

  Lys flipped open her laptop again and started typing. “Did the DNA get a hit?”

  “Yes.” He pulled a paper out of the back of the folder. “Denise Nash, from Colorado.”

  Lys was tapping away. I grabbed the folder and started looking through it more slowly. “Explain to me what’s going on here while she looks this up.”

  “Everything was matching up. We were able to get all the evidence to link back to Mistress Dee. Her dentist keeps meticulous records, and she was meticulous about going. Hair shafts, all lined up. The DNA from the hairbrush and the hair from her head matched. We could get every last thing in that house back to that body.

  “The instant I ran the DNA through CODIS, I got hit for someone who wasn’t Danielle. It came up as Denise Nash. I had Dovadsky run the tests to double-check me, and then I had him run them again. They came back the same as the original.”

  Lys ran over to the printer and grabbed her printout. She handed one to me. “Danielle Nash has no known priors. She’s got a few parking tickets, and some simple stuff like that, but nothing major.”

  She held out the other much thicker one. “Denise Nash. Wanted for a slew of charges, including manslaughter.”

  “What?” I gasped. I pulled out my phone and dialed Donny Stilton. “This is insane.”

  The three of us leaned over the paperwork as the phone rang. It went to voicemail, and I left a quick message for him, then texted the same number a moment after that.

  “Are Cece and Killian back yet?” Paul asked. “I know you all sent them on a mission down to the Caribbean to check out her last know location.”

  “I didn’t send them, but Vanity said they were going down to check it out. She went to deliver the message to the Baron as result of that meeting,” I said.

  “Can you use Cece and Kay?” Paul asked, pulling out his phone.

  “Please,” I answered.

  The phone rang twice and Cece answered, “Hey, Paul, what’s up?”

  “Big issues. Are you back from your mission to the Caribbean?”

  “Oh, yeah. We got back last week. We talked to Darien and Millie—”

  “We need you down at the station as soon as you can, if you don’t mind,” I cut in. “We have questions, and I need to chat with you and Killian.”

  “Detective? Uh…sure. We can do that. Killian’s in surgery right now. Can it just be me?”

  I nodded and realized she couldn’t see me. “Yeah, you’ll have the same information as your husband, so head down if you can. And do you know where Donny is? We could use him here if possible.”

  “I’d call Sadique,” she said. “He’s been running it since Dee disappeared, and I’m assuming it’s his baby now. I can call my dad if you can’t get in touch with him.”

  “Let’s see if he calls me back,” I answered. “Just come on down and we’ll chat.”

  She confirmed she was on the way, and Paul hung up. We were all quiet a moment, but Lys started pulling out some of the records out of her pile. “I see some stuff here, Garabaldi. There’s a timeline of escalation in crimes.”

  Leaning over the desk, we all started looking at what she had laid out, and the timeline was perfectly clear there. From petty crimes right up to and including manslaughter.

  It all stopped twenty-one years ago.

  “Well. Isn’t that interesting,” Paul mumbled, tapping on the last date.”

  Lys tapped the papers. “Denise is free and clear until twenty years ago, when there were a few petty crimes registered, and then disappeared completely.”

  “What the heck is going on here?” I mumbled.

  “It honestly looks like there’s a sibling rivalry that went off the charts,” Paul said.

  “Completely stole her sister’s identity?” Lys suggested. “But then, where is the real Danielle? Or Denise? Or…what the hell?”

  “Well, if the person on the bed was known to us as Danielle, that means there’s the real Danielle out there. And Denise was just murdered,” Paul explained.

  “I’m curious, and now we can’t talk to Mistress Dee to find out,” I said. “Which means we need more on the real Danielle.”

  Lys dropped into her chair again. “Let me keep poking around the databases here. There might be more that I can find about either Danielle or Denise.”

  “If they’re siblings, they’re going to have similar home address history for years, and probably have socials pretty close to each other,” I said.

  “You’re assuming they didn’t move,” Lys said, picking at the keys.

  “I’m doing more assuming than just that,” I explained.

  “You think they were twins?” Paul asked.

  “I think if they weren’t, they were born within a year of each other. Possible in the same year. January-December kind of thing,” I answered.

  “Medical records…” Paul mumbled.

  “You have access to those, Doctor Wainwright,” I said. “We can’t touch them without HIPAA access. Until we have confirmation that the person on that bed is either Danielle or Denise, those records aren’t easily accessible.”

  Paul cocked his head. “I deal with the dead. I can’t get them. That’s not my license.”

  I grinned. “But.”

  “Killian deals with the living.” We chorused the words.

  “Nice.” I nodded. “We’ll get him to do a database search for both of them. So, Lys, we need both of those socials.”

  “Easily done,” she said.

  “Find anything else interesting in your report?” I asked.

  “Not really. It’s all standard stuff, but my conclusion is that she died as a result of a violent caning. There is evidence that the spinal cord was exposed, and the major artery going to the right kidney was caught and sliced. She would have bled out.”

  Lys coughed. “That would have been painful.”

  Paul glanced over at her. “Excruciating pain. I’m sorry to say that she died knowing that she was going to die, and in pain, and the face of her murderer the last one she saw.”

  Swallowing hard, she shook her head. “You don’t pull punches.”

  Shaking his head slowly, Paul straightened. “No, Sergeant. You asked the wrong questions. You don’
t want to know anything but the facts of the last few minutes because your mind will extrapolate the rest on its own. Reading the report, you would have known exactly what I just told you.”

  “Lessons, Sergeant,” I said, not looking up from the report. “I learned the hard way too. Everyone does.”

  “Wait until we get a really bad homicide,” Paul said, lifting an eyebrow.

  Lys’s brows hit her hairline. “Bad? Liquified human isn’t bad?”

  “Eh. It’s about a six on the ten scale of gross.” Paul tipped his hand back and forth.

  “It’s about an eight for the rest of humanity,” I said. “This is the man who challenged a surgeon to a bone saw contest. He doesn’t think the same way as the rest of us.”

  “No, he does not,” came a new voice from the side.

  We all looked up and found Cece standing there.

  “Did you run here?” I asked.

  “Nah,” she said, sitting down next to my desk. “Just a light jog. I was only just up the street when you called, so I hurried along.”

  “Well, I appreciate that.” I looked around and there were too many people around for this conversation, even at nearly six-thirty at night. “Let’s go into one of the interview rooms.”

  Cece froze, and I grimaced. “Sorry. Sorry. We can use the captain’s office.”

  “Thank you,” Cece said. We headed over to the room with windows and closed the door. Cece took one of the chairs. “I wouldn’t have been able to handle that interrogation room.”

  “I get it,” I said. “Still too soon.”

  She nodded, and Lys saw that it wasn’t time to ask questions.

  “So, tell us about the resort,” I prompted.

  Paul grinned. “Did you like it?”

  Her answer was instant. “No. Not even close. It was possibly one of the most filthy and awful experience of our lives.”

  “What resort?” Lys asked.

  “Sybaritus,” Cece answered.