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The room also had a writing desk with a plush purple chair in front of it. A black binder sat on the desk next to an old-fashioned rotary phone. She hadn’t seen one of those since she was a child at her grandmother’s house.
“It’s decorative.” He pointed to a gray box on the wall. “We recently extended our intercom system to all suites. We have a few phones with outside lines, but you can understand why those are not for your use. If you need something, use the intercom. The rules of how you are to comport yourself while here are in the binder. Read and follow them. Are you hungry?”
Shewashungry. She hadn’t realized they were going to be driving so long or arrive so late. Maybe she should have made dinner at a normal time, but she’d been too nervous to eat until her fate was decided.
“The kitchen closed half an hour ago, but I’ll send something up.”
“T-thank you.”
Lindsay took both of her hands into his again. “You are going to be fine, Mina. I promise we will handle you with care, and I’ll find you someone who won’t hurt you.”
He pulled a silver bracelet from his pocket. “Have you ever been under house arrest?” He tried to make it sound like a joke.
Mina shook her head.
“I won’t lock you in your room, but you have to stay on the grounds—for obvious reasons.”
He may as well have gone ahead and said, “You’ve seen too much already to be set free.” But he simply locked the metal band around her wrist.
“It’ll zap you if you go outside the property lines, so keep that in mind if you venture outside. If it beeps, you are to stop whatever you’re doing and come to my office on the first floor. Someone can guide you to it. I need to go meet with Brian now.”
Lindsay left her, and she sat on the edge of the bed. She prayed she wouldn’t have to interact with Brian. He was exactly the kind of man she’d been trying to escape.
* * *
Brian impatiently paced Lindsay’s office, distracted by thoughts of the new girl. She’d been so exotic. Dark olive skin and silky raven hair that went halfway down her back. Her eyes were a luminous green, which made them seem to glow against the dark palette of her skin—like a cat staring out at him from the shadows.
She was scared of him. Smart girl. Everyone was scared of him. If he were being completely honest, sometimes he scared himself.
Brian considered himself a monster with a purpose. His job at the house was to mete out the more sadistic punishments that the other trainers didn’t have the stomach for—and especially to train the girls who were at the extreme level of masochistic and too much for the others to handle. At the end of the day most of the trainers were lightweights living out their soft-core porn fantasies for a healthy paycheck.
He got all the grunt work, but he wasn’t complaining. It fed the dark, swirling shadow that crawled underneath his skin demanding blood and retribution. If he went too long without feeding it, his skin started to burn and itch. And he’d get headaches. The shrink said it was all psychosomatic. All in his head. No, only the headaches were in his head. The other issues were more all encompassing.
Each trainer was a type of tool in the grand scheme of their ambitious enterprise. Brian was a blunt force instrument designed to do damage, create fear, and keep every girl obedient on threat of being sent to him. He was the enforcer. With him there, the house only needed one.
When he was hurting someone, his own demons stopped tormenting him briefly. The images and flashbacks from his youth short-circuited, and the loop stopped playing for those few moments while he made memories that would give his victim flashbacks of her own. It was an ugly form of transference, but it let him sleep at night, however unsoundly.
Before they’d started this unusual and very illegal business venture, Lindsay had tried to put him on medication. But the drugs just made him foggy on top of everything else. Acting out his sadism on living flesh was the only drug that worked.
In fact, one might say that the house revolved in some sense around Brian. He was the seed that had sprouted into this deliciously wicked idea. To the casual observer, Anton ran the show, with Lindsay and Gabe right behind him in the pecking order. Most of the myriad trainers in the house deferred to them. But the three of them, plus Brian, were all partners—equal now that they’d all invested into the business. Brian was a silent partner. He’d gone along with the outward ruse of being a mereemployeefor optics.
God forbid the people they do business with think the sadist in the dungeon was an equal partner. By definition weren’t they all sociopaths to be doing this? Brian was the only one who was honest about it. The others wanted to believe they were good.
And what of the buyers? No one was a spotless lamb, here. No sense pretending about it.
He was startled when Lindsay entered the office—all business. Brian began to speak, but the doctor raised a hand and picked up the phone from his desk.
“Could you prepare some food for our newest guest? She’s in the south tower. Yes, thank you.”
Lindsay disconnected the call and settled in the high-backed leather chair. “What is it, Brian?”
“Who’s the new girl?” His attempt at nonchalance was weak. The last time he showed an interest in a new girl Anton had forbidden him from going near her. Too much eagerness would just start a fight he didn’t want to deal with.
“The new girl is Mina. She won’t be your concern. You will not be training her.”
Brian slumped in a chair on the other side of the desk. “Is that right? Is this a new trend? The house protecting everyone from me? First Vivian, now Mina? Is she Michael’s, too?”
Michael had gone to college with most of them and had been asked to join their endeavor but considered the whole business distasteful. That is until he suspected his wife had a touch of the kink and wanted them to train her for his pleasure. Well, all of them except for Brian who’d been banned from the fun and games.
