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“Whatever I want,” he repeats. “AnythingI want.”
“Right.” I sit forward, propping my elbows on my knees, and I tilt my head. “You think hunting me like an animal is going to fix your dick?”
His smile doesn’t falter. “Even if it doesn’t, it’s still going to be a hell of a lot of fun.”
“And this proposition of yours, I can take it or leave it?”
He shrugs. “You can take it or leave it. But if you leave it, know that I have a file on you the size of an encyclopaedia. I have you down on assault, battery, blackmail, false identity, fraud and racketeering. I have copies of your passports, the false ones and, now, the real one. You can turn down my proposition, at which point I will be sending all the information I hold to the police and to every one of your victims. I will also, of course, be personally prosecuting you for drugging and assaulting me, and I will, separately, file a lawsuit on behalf of CHOKE. If you decide to put up a legal fight, I will buy away every lawyer who would ever consider helping you. You’ll find yourself buried before you ever step into court. And so, in conclusion, my answer to your question is yes, Lynch. You can take it or leave it.”
Fuck. My gut crawls like it’s full of insects, and the nausea rising through me probably has little to do with the pain. Looks like I’m going to be taking the deal, doesn’t it? I suppose nothing’s stopping me from agreeing to his fucked-up deal and then making a quick exit stage left as soon as I can.
Luca, watching me with those pallid grey eyes, gives me a slow, hideous smile.
“I wouldhatefor you to feel pressured to make a rash decision,” he drawls. “So you might wish to take a look at this before you agree to anything.” He takes an envelope from the table, where it had been lying inconspicuously on top of a pile of big history books.
I take the envelope and unceremoniously pull out the sheaf of papers within, scanning the pages. Small, cramped paragraphs, numbers, signature lines.
A contract.
I look up. “What the fuck is this?”
“This, Lynch, is what marks the difference between an amateur like you and a professional like me. You see, blackmail is a fine art, and you’ve been scribbling with crayons.” He gestures at the contract with a lazy fanning of his fingers. “What you have in front of you is a contract youwillsign. It’s the equivalent of a legal collar around your neck—gag and blindfold included. This contract will ensure you don’t tell anyone about anything that passes between us during the duration of the contract; it’ll ensure that you can’t make me liable for anything that goes wrong, and, most importantly, it’ll ensure that you can’t just eschew our deal and run off like you so love to do.”
This man is actually a psycho. I knew he had psychopathictendencies, but he’s an actual honest-to-goodness certified psycho. I toss the contract across the table. It slides across the glass surface and lands in a messy pile of paper at Luca’s feet.
“I’m not signing this shit.”
He lifts his eyebrows in an expression of exaggerated shock. “You’redecliningmy proposition?”
“I’m not declining your proposition. I’m telling you to shove it up your ass.”
“How vulgar,” he murmurs. “You’re going to take your chances with the British judicial system and all the men who would love nothing more than to make you pay for humiliating them?”
I mean, I’m fucked regardless. I feel it right in the pit of my stomach.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” I tell him.
“Looks like you’ll be finding out soon enough.” He sits back, checks his nails, glances back up at me. “And nothing will persuade you to sign?”
“Youcertainly won’t.”
“No? How about this?”
He pulls something out of his pocket, holds it up. My hand flies to my own pocket—of course, I’m no longer wearing my jeans. I feel suddenly very cold and very calm, the deadly stillness of an animal realising its neck is between the jaws of its hunter.
Luca holds my little black notebook by a corner, and in his hand, it looks so very small and insignificant. He taps it against the pink bow of his mouth, and the thought of his smirk touching my notebook makes me want to rip his spine out through his eyeballs.
“Really, Lynch?” he murmurs in a tone of wonder. “You’re not even going to pretend you don’t care?”
I shake my head. He picks up the contract without looking at it, places it on the glass table and slides it over back to me. Then he takes the plain black biro I always keep folded into the pages of my notebook—my own fucking pen—and he places it across the contract.
“Come on,” he says. “We both know you’re going to sign it. You’re going to be my pretend girlfriend and my terrified little fox, and you’re going to let me hunt you and do whatever I want to you. Just get it over and done with, Lynch.”
Propping my pen between my teeth, I grab the contract and flick through it. It’s airtight; there’s nothing he’s missed. It mentions staying at his, the girlfriend thing, the hunts, even the safe return of my black notebook upon signing the contract.
There’s non-disclosure terms in there as well, legal waivers. Everything is mired in legalese; I don’t even know where a goodlawyer would start if they tried unpicking the terms I’m about to sign.
Satan himself couldn’t have come up with something like this.
