Alpha (6 page)

“You’re very private, then.”
 

He actually laughed. “Oh, Kyrie. You have no idea how private I am.”

“Why?” The question came out of my mouth before I could stop it.

Again the long, thoughtful silence. “The only reason I’m answering your questions is to put you at ease. Normally, I wouldn’t respond to such interrogatory conversational gambits.” He sighed. “I do not trust, Kyrie. Not anyone. Not ever. I do not rely on anyone. I do not allow anyone past my walls. And by walls, I mean the literal walls of my home, and the metaphorical walls around my heart and my life.”

“You’ve been hurt.” Again the words fell from my lips before I could stop them.

“Haven’t we all?”
 

“Yeah, I guess so.” I took a long sip of my drink. “I still don’t understand what you want from me. Why we’re playing this game.”

“All I want from you, Kyrie, is
you
.”

“Then why…like this?” I gestured to the blindfold, and then away, meaning the way I was picked up. “Why the checks? Why the hired goon saying he was ‘collecting’ me? Why the blindfold and the…the mysteriousness? Why? If you wanted me, why not simply arrange to meet me?”

“Would you have come?” I heard leather creak, and his voice sounded nominally closer, as if he’d leaned forward. “If I’d arranged so that we ‘accidentally’” —I heard the quotes around the word— “met, would you have believed me? What would I have said? ‘Oh, hello, Kyrie, I’m the guy who’s been sending you the checks.’ I think not. And if I’d arranged a meeting and gotten to know you under what would be considered normal circumstances, and then eventually revealed that I was the one who’d sent the checks, would you not have been upset that I’d kept the truth from you? That knowledge would’ve tainted whatever relationship we’d established up to that point. Am I wrong?”

I sighed. “I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“I am a very honest man, Kyrie. Perhaps you’ve noticed that. I will say the exact truth. I wish all my interactions to be truthful. This way, the truth has been established from the outset.”

“Okay, I get that. But why the secrecy, then?”

“As I said, I am a private man, Kyrie. Few people meet me in person. You are, as a matter of fact, one of only four people who have ever been past those doors. Harris, whom you met; my housekeeper, Eliza; and Robert, the second-in-command of my business affairs. And now you. I am not ready to reveal myself to you, for my own privacy and sense of security. And also…” He trailed off, as if considering carefully his next words. “Also…I am keeping a secret from you, Kyrie. A very deep, very dark secret. One that affects us both, and one that will change the very fabric of our relationship. And I am not ready to reveal
that
to you, either. When I tell you this secret of mine, you will very likely walk away, and I will have to let you. Seeing as I’ve just gotten you here, I’m not ready for that to happen. I’m telling you this much now so you’re aware that I’m keeping something from you.”

“But you won’t tell me what it is?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m afraid to, Kyrie. Because I’ve been waiting a very long time to bring you into my life, and now that I have you, I’m jealous of the time I get to spend with you.”

Something in that statement unnerved me. But what, though? Oh, yeah. “Clearly I’ve never met you. But yet you say you’ve been planning for this for a long time. Which means you’ve been stalking me?”

He sighed. “Essentially, yes. Watching. Waiting. Protecting.”

“Protecting?”

“Yes, Kyrie. Protecting. I’ve kept an eye on you. How do you think I knew to send the check when I did?” I heard him shift, a pause, and then the sound of an object being set upon a table. A few moments later, a door opened somewhere, and footsteps approached us. “Harris.”

“Hello, Harris,” I said.

“Good evening, Miss St. Claire.”

“Harris here has been the eye I’ve kept on you. His primary instruction was to watch, unobserved, and never, ever make any contact, or allow you to ever
feel
watched. Did he succeed in that?”

I thought long and hard. “Yes, I suppose so. There have been a few times where I had a vague sense of being watched, but mostly, no.”

“I have a file on you, several flash drives full of photographs. And let me reassure you that you’ve never been photographed in any way that would violate your privacy. There are no nude or revealing photographs, no shots of you in private with any of your boyfriends or…liaisons…over the years. Just enough to inform, to know.”

“To know
what
? And why?”

“To know you. To be sure that you’re okay, safe, provided for.”

“But I wasn’t provided for. I wasn’t safe.”
 

“Yes, you were. You never starved. You were never in any direct danger. I only interfered when I felt there were no options left. And there were a couple of times Harris acted to keep you safe, although you may not be aware that anything even happened. He is, after all, very good at his job.” He paused, and then continued. “Harris?”

Harris spoke. “Miss St. Claire. Do you remember St. Patrick’s Day two years ago? You and your friend Layla went out drinking. You two drank from noon to well past two in the morning. You were both extremely intoxicated.”

I blink behind the blindfold, thinking back. “Yes. I remember.”

“You were wearing a lime-green T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Layla was wearing a…well, I suppose one could call it a dress. It was…rather short.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his description. Layla’s dress had barely covered her ass, and if she moved wrong, the bottom of her ass did actually show beneath the hemline. Then the fact that he knew exactly what we were wearing that night sank in, and I started shaking. “You were…there?”

“I was always there, Miss St. Claire. Out of sight, but there. You and Layla were too drunk to even walk straight that night, but there were no cabs, and the bus didn’t go where you needed to go. So you ended up walking—and I use the term ‘walking’ very loosely—all the way home. Seventeen blocks. At two in the morning, in downtown Detroit.”

I shuddered as I remembered that night. We had been living together then, in a shitty-ass apartment downtown. We rarely ventured outside past dark and never, ever, alone. That night, though, we did. And we’d thought, the next day, that it was a miracle we’d made it home alive. Now I was starting to think it was less a miracle than Harris’s unseen protection.
 

“That was an insanely bad decision on our part,” I said. “We woke up the next day amazed that we’d made it home intact.”

“You shouldn’t have,”
he
said. “You almost didn’t.”

“What?” I took a sip of Scotch, for courage. “What do you mean?”

Harris answered. “Layla was so drunk you basically carried her the whole way. She couldn’t stand up, couldn’t walk, couldn’t even speak. You weren’t much better off, but you managed somehow. I’ll never know how you did it. You actually puked a few times, while you were dragging your blacked-out friend.” Harris’s voice was bemused. “You remember anything from that walk home? Any sense of danger? Anyone who might have proved to be a threat?”

I thought hard. That walk home was a blur in my mind. I remembered very little, just a few random thoughts: how heavy Layla had been, how tired I was, how drunk, how badly I wanted to be home. I remembered trying not to think how much farther we had to go, focusing on one sidewalk square at a time, ignoring the ache in my legs and in my back. It was as Harris had said; I had essentially carried Layla home. “I have a vague recollection of…three men. At a street corner. They were shouting at us, I think. In some other language. Spanish, maybe? I think…I think they followed us for a while. I remember…I remember trying to walk faster, but Layla was so heavy, all but unconscious.”

“Yes. Those three. They did follow you, in fact. For three blocks. And they were indeed shouting at you in Spanish. The things they said…it’s good you don’t speak Spanish. They were saying vile things to you. I won’t repeat them, but it was disgusting.”

“Would they have hurt us?” I had to ask.

“Oh, yes. They fully intended to rape and kill you both.” Harris’s voice went cold, hard. “That’s what they were saying. Telling you exactly what they intended to do. Their plan was to follow you home, wait till you got your front door open, and then push you both in. Rape you, kill you, and leave you in your own apartment. No one would have ever known what happened, and they would never have been caught. There were no cameras in your building. No one knew you’d left the bar — no one was expecting you. It would have been days before anyone found your bodies.”

I felt sick then. “They…how—what stopped them?”

Harris didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was arctic and dark. “Me. Once I realized their intentions, I…confronted them.” He hesitated again.
 

“By ‘confront’ I assume you mean you…fought them?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I couldn’t help asking.

He
answered. “Harris doesn’t ‘fight.’”

“Then what?” I asked.

Harris cleared his throat. “They were scum. I do not take lives lightly, but I enjoyed ending those three. I did the human race a favor when I slit their filthy fucking throats.”

A wave of dizziness washed over me. “You—you killed them?”

“Quickly, and easily. Don’t feel any guilt for their lives, Miss St. Claire. They intended to take turns raping you two for hours. They were evil, sadistic creatures with not even a speck of humanity in them. I showed them the mercy of quick deaths.”

“But you…you killed them. For me.”

“Yes. I did. And I would do so again.”

“Then there was also the matter of a potential mugger, just this past month,”
he
said. “Harris made sure the mugger never reached his intended point of ambush. That particular individual was merely…persuaded, shall we say, to give up a life of crime.”

“Indeed,” Harris said. “I can be rather persuasive.”

I had a hard time breathing suddenly. “What—what else did you do on my behalf?”

He
answered. “Only one other matter required intervention. The last gentleman you dated. Steven Higgins.”

“Steven? What did you do to Steven?”

“The Steven you knew, and the real Steven…they were not the same person.”
He
paused, and I heard the tone of his voice shift to address Harris. “You may go. Thank you.”

“Good night, sir. Miss. St. Claire.” I heard Harris’s footsteps recede, and the front door close.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I dated Steven for six months. He was really great.”

“Steven Higgins is a vile, vulgar, abusive animal with disgusting predilections.” His voice was thick with contempt.

“Wh—what do you mean?”

“He is a predator, and the worst kind of abuser. He hides his true self well, hides it until he’s sure his prey is too deeply ensnared and too weak to get away.”

“I—I don’t understand. Steven never laid a finger on me. Not—not
that
way, at least. He was never anything less than a perfect gentleman.”

“As I said, he is predator. A hunter. He spent six months with you, assessing you, drawing you in, making you think he was kind and innocent and…vanilla. He was a BDSM dominant, Kyrie. Although those who practice BDSM would take great offense to labeling a monster like Steven as a dom. What Steven enjoyed was not BDSM, but merely torture. I have photographic evidence, police reports. I’ve put the file in your bedroom for you to look over later, as I realize my word won’t be enough to convince you of the veracity of my claims.” He sighed. “I couldn’t let Steven get his hands on you, Kyrie. He breaks women. Ruins them. Destroys them. I suspect he’s responsible for at least one death, and I further suspect his taste for blood and inflicting pain will only grow.”

“Taste for blood? He’s…
killed
people?”
 

“Yes. I don’t have hard proof as to the latter claim, but considering the way his victims are left when he’s done with them, I find it hard to believe he’s never gone as far as killing someone, if only by accident.”

I swallow hard. “I don’t—I don’t understand. What is it he likes?”

“It starts innocently enough. Rough sex. A few slaps here and there, under the guise of spanking. But it grows worse as time goes on. It is much like the way a lobster is boiled, really. The water grows hotter and hotter, and the poor creature never even realizes what’s happening until it’s too late. The girls he chooses as prey grow fond of Steven, of his nice-guy act. They enjoy sex with him, initially. They don’t mind his propensity for a few rough moments. They tolerate the increasing violence of his attentions. And then he moves to bondage. Ties them up. Binds them to the bed. Has his way with them. Again, it seems innocent enough, if you like such things. He establishes a safe-word, follows all the correct protocols for those who engage in the world of rough sex. But eventually the safe-word has no effect. He won’t stop. His slaps turn to punches. His gentle whipping loses its gentility. His rough sex turns to violence. It becomes rape. Torture. Beatings that last for hours, leaving his victim bloody and helpless, and then he rapes them to his satisfaction, which is its own torture. I have firsthand reports from his victims for you to read.”

I feel myself shaking all over. “I—are you for real?”

“Yes, I am. As I said, I know you won’t trust my word, so when I take you to your room, you will have an opportunity to peruse the file I had Harris put together.”

“What did you do to Steven?”

“I merely had Harris convince him that it would be in his best interests to vanish from your life. Permanently.”

“You didn’t have him killed?”

“No. He hadn’t done anything to you, so I couldn’t justify it. I would have liked to, however. He is a filthy, vile creature. I did report him to the authorities, however, so hopefully he will be stopped before he hurts anyone else.”

I thought back to my time dating Steven. I wasn’t one to jump right into the sack with a guy I was dating, so we didn’t sleep together until we’d been dating for nearly two months. He’d never pushed, simply waited patiently until I indicated I was ready. He was unfailingly polite, always a gentleman, paying for meals and opening doors, buying me flowers, taking me on some of the most romantic dates I’d ever been on. When we finally did sleep together, it was…nice. Fairly plain, actually. Not spectacular, but not bad. Just average. He seemed to like missionary sex, at the beginning. And then, after a month of sleeping together, we started trying other positions. And…yes, he did spank me a few times. Not hard, but it startled me, coming out of nowhere. I hadn’t minded it, actually. I’d felt weird about not minding it, and had spent a drunken night talking with Layla and wondering if I was a freak and just didn’t know it. She’d assured me that not losing my shit over one little smack on the ass didn’t make me a freak. From then on, things with Steven heated up a bit. It had seemed at the time as if he was merely turning up the heat, as if we were discovering things together. That’s how it had felt to me.