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“Um, hello. Can I speak to Ariel, please?”
Dylan stepped back from the desk and straightened her stance when Terry pulled the phone away from his face, which twisted into the same reaction Dylan had seen earlier in the day from Billie.
“Someone else answered her phone. They hung up.”
“Exactly, that’s why I’m here.”
Dylan explained everything from start to finish between her and Ari and also what Billie had overheard. Reliving it only increased Dylan’s worry, which had turned into anger by the time all the cards were on the table. “And this is all because of your fucking fluff piece you conned her into researching.”
Despair filled Terry’s eyes until Dylan’s accusations rained down and flipped him into defense mode. “I did nothing of the sort. She took the assignment of her own accord. I’m not to blame here. There’s always a risk in investigative journalism. And how do I know you aren’t pulling my dick here, playing up some wild scheme to shut down the story?”
“I’m about to pull that dick right off and shove it up your ass. Now, what was the fucking story you wanted Ari to uncover? I need answers if I’m gonna figure out where Ari is. Now, dish!” Dylan’s voice hammered the point home.
He hesitated. Obviously, he didn’t want to spill company secrets or an angle to a story he still intended on publishing. It would take more than a threat to convince him to give up the goods.
She sat perched on the edge of this hideous chair with a confession. “Right now, my loyalty is to Ari. Not Adytum. Not the Delacroixes. Just Ari, because I’m in love with that woman and if anything were to happen to her, I might as well die too. I don’t care about whatever is between you and Maxi—”
Terry’s eyes shot up as if he had seen a ghost, and he cut her off. “What do you know about Maxi and me?”
“When I saw you and Ari at the coffee shop, Maxi saw you, too. She said you–”
Again, Terry’s defenses shot out of him faster than a bullet coming out of a barrel. “Raped her? Is that what she said?”
She met his question with silence, which clearly irked him.
His hands slapped the desk, shaking all the contents. “I did no such thing! You wanna know what this is? The story? The angle? Fine, I’ll tell you. She raped me!” His hands trembled in anger as they pressed into the desk. “And before you say that it’s not possible to rape a man, I’ll argue that to my death. We were in college, engaged, and happily in love—so I thought.”
Dylan settled back in the chair, crossed one leg over the other, and listened to his story. One she wasn’t ready to believe.
“Maxi and her friend, Corina, I think her last name was Cove then, now she’s a Delacroix. But anyway, they convinced me to have a threesome. When I got there, they tied me up, saying it was some new kinky shit they wanted to try. I was all for making my fiancée happy, so I let them. They had a video camera set up, wore wigs, and called each other Madame Della and Lady Katrina, something stupid like that. I didn’t think much of it at first. But once my hands and legs were bound, they beat the shit out of me while fucking me. All on camera. When they pulled out a knife and sliced it across my chest, I knew what they had planned.”
The factual veracity of Terry’s story was the furthest thing from her mind at that moment. It was the mention of Corina Cove and Lady Katrina that struck a nerve. When Dylan rubbed her mouth at that moment, Terry must have gotten the impression that she didn’t believe him. Just as she opened her mouth to deluge him with questions, he unbuttoned his shirt. The scars across his chest were undeniable. Some deeper than others. Unless they came from somewhere else and Terry used them as a prop for illusions, his words were factual. Dylan shifted in her seat and let him spill his guts.
“They planned on killing me on film.” Terry closed up his shirt, making himself presentable again. “I freed myself. The next morning, the cops showed up at my house and arrested me for rape. Somewhere in it all, Maxi showed up looking as if she’d lost a boxing match. Mix that with my wounds? I was in jail and lost everything. Family. Job. Deferred adjudication, they called it. Fine. It’s over and I had moved on until I heard she took over Adytum five years ago. Then the rumors started. It came back to me. All the shit they did to me, the extreme games. When the missing persons reports of employees started coming through the wire, I knew it was time to act.”
“What missing persons?” Dylan asked.
Terry opened a drawer, pulled out a file, and dropped it on the desk. He shuffled through a few papers, then extended one to Dylan. Her eyes read over a list of female names, many she remembered. With each letter of each name she read, her mouth grew drier and drier. All the names were women who once worked for Adytum. Ones who quit to be replaced with more obedient women.
“Tell me, head of security, any of the names look familiar?” When Dylan didn’t answer, Terry said, “Family and friends reported these women missing. I guess you don’t make it a habit of socializing with former employees.”
Terry pulled the page from Dylan’s loose grip and tucked it back in the manila folder.
“If these women are missing, why didn’t the cops put two and two together and start an investigation of their own?” Dylan asked.
“The Delacroix family are impenetrable, tangled up in politics and the police force. Unless you have an explanation for their whereabouts, I’m gonna say the Delacroixes are behind it and I’m positive Adytum is part of it as well. So, I needed a way inside.”
“And that’s where Ari comes into play?” Dylan nodded with pressed lips.
“Exactly. I’ve been trying to sneak a member in, which didn’t work. No one wanted to be an employee until now. I didn’t force Ariel to take the job, more like dangling a very expensive carrot in front of her.”
For so long, she ignored the signs. Blinded by money and sex, she trusted those who indulged her vices. The facts staring her in the face shattered the blinders shielding her senses and morals.
“And now she’s on this infamous missing persons list because of your story. If you hadn’t released that article which outed her ... Now I have to find her before it’s too late.”
Exhaustion took over Dylan’s brain as the elevator door opened on the thirtieth floor. She had processed so much information her brain felt as if it was running at a million gigahertz. It did nothing to calm the ticking time bomb ready to detonate her anger. At Maxi. At the Delacroixes. At herself.
Dylan smashed through the double doors leading to Adytum’s offices. Maxi would be there; it was time for their weekly order of alcohol. In front of Maxi’s office door, Dylan inhaled the cool air to blow out her hot fuse.
