Killing Time (3 page)

This would be her last day as he’d never punished her for more than five days in a row. He would fetch her first thing the next morning and she would promise to be on her best behavior before he would fuck her long and leisurely. He would allow her to come after five days of orgasm denial and it would be the best fucking feeling on earth.

The chastity belt was starting to get on her nerves as it had a device which had two objects inserted into each hole and she derived absolutely no pleasure from them. It was a mechanism surely designed by that bastard, Marquis de Sade himself, if there ever was one.

She grabbed her iPod, the one small pleasure he did allow her to have in the cage with her, and placed the ear buds inside her ears. She found the music of Thirty Seconds to Mars thrilling—they were her favorite band and Jared Leto was so fucking hot. Her master reminded her of him with his dark hair and crystal blue eyes. They could be siblings as he bore a true resemblance to the sexy rock star. Plus, it seemed like Mr. Leto also wasn’t adverse to a bit of bondage and domination if the uncut video, “Hurricane”, revealed anything about his true personality.

She allowed herself to drift through
This is War
but by the time
A Beautiful Lie
began playing, she awoke again and felt the presence of someone at the cage door. She loved the album; it was her favorite and although her heart began to thump against her chest, she went back and forth between thinking about the album and what this person wanted to do to her.

The leather mask was ripped violently from her eyes and she stared at the blurred tall figure in black leather—or was it that latex material? She didn’t know if the person was a man or a woman as he or she was completely androgynous with their features covered by one of those hideous full-head leather masks. She instinctively knew it wasn’t her master or his brother but other than that, it could have been anyone.

The mystery person reached out and swiped at her neck. Her eyesight blurred suddenly and no matter how hard she rubbed at her eyes, it wouldn’t clear up, however at the swipe, she’d instantly tried to avoid it and banged her head against the cage. Her head hurt but not as much as her neck and what was that warm, sticky wet stuff pouring down to decorate her naked breasts like a layer of scarlet paint?

She glanced down to see blood,
her blood
, and she tried to scream but it wasn’t the ball gag that stopped her this time. Her throat was sliced open, her jugular had been nicked and the blood continued to pour though she tried to hold both hands to her neck in an attempt to stop the flow of the precious life fluid from her body.

Time seemed to slow down and she eventually lay down on the floor while she listened to “Was it a Dream?” as the blood continued to flow from the wound.

There wasn’t a bright light or angels beckoning her to Heaven; she felt extremely lethargic instead and closed her eyes while the fatal slice in her neck burned into her skin with an all-consuming fire. It took her less than ten minutes to die and she felt every agonizing moment of that time period. “Savior” was the final song she heard as the last dying breath escaped from her body before her eyes glazed, open and inert forever.

Part One

Shock & Awe

Chapter One

I HATED THESE PARTIES BUT
in my line of work, they were not only a requirement but a necessity if one wanted to stay relevant and up to date on what was going on in the industry.

Unfortunately, Ray Charles wasn’t blind enough to see what was and wasn’t happening to print media and journalism. We were on our knees in the death throws and nothing could save us. If video had killed the radio star then the Internet had killed the star reporter, full fucking stop.

It was another charity event, hosted by my Cable News World, CNW and I despised almost everyone in the room. We didn’t really give a shit about providing clean water to Africans in some country no one could find on the map. Everyone in that room was hobnobbing because it had come down the pike they were going to lay off five reporters and no one wanted to be one of them.

I loved my job but I couldn’t do it sufficiently at Cable News World. It considered itself “fair” and “honest” but seemed to be chasing Fox News’ coattails and that was never a good thing. Fact checking had gone out of the window and if another news network reported it, it was good enough to end up on CNW, even if it turned out to be a rumor or better yet, untrue.

That wasn’t why I had majored in Journalism and managed to get a double Masters degree in the subject at both Sciences Po, a
grandes écoles
—or the French equivalent of an Ivy League university—in Paris and Columbia University in New York City. It wasn’t the reason why I was one of the most respected and upcoming investigative news reporters after Soledad O’Brien. I always fact checked and I loved stories that took me into dangerous situations à
la Christiane Amanpour.

Of course, I was considered the success of the family while my poor sister, Trésor, definitely caught hell for being a catalogue and runway model. My parents never gave a shit when she graduated from the
Newport News
catalogue
to the much more prestigious
Victoria’s Secret
—to them it was all the same. She was an intelligent young woman who was wasting her life as a clotheshorse. They’d cared even less when she told us about how she had been asked to appear at Paris Fashion Week by
the
Jean Paul Gaultier. It should have been impressive. My mother was American but my father was French and we’d been raised primarily in France though we’d grown up speaking both French and English therefore we both lacked the “sexy” French accent. They could care less. Jean Paul Gaultier, Target—didn’t matter as she was still wasting the opportunity to get a real job instead of acting like a skinny airhead gracing the catwalks or showing off her gorgeous body on the swimsuit issue of
Sports Illustrated
.

If I was the exotic one with my dark wavy hair, olive skin and green-gray eyes, Trésor was every waking man’s fantasy. Tall and lithe, she had the most beautiful skin the color of ripe peaches with just enough cream, pale green eyes and chestnut hair she could blonde out or darken and she would still be drop dead beautiful.

I tried not to think about her much because it wouldn’t grace me with a phone call from her. In fact, I saw more of my sister on the covers of and in various magazines than I did in person.

Grayson Compston, my fiancé, sat beside me and smiled as I met his gaze.

“Jesus, Aurélie, you have got to snap out of it. Every time I bring you to one of these, your eyes glaze over. It’s not
that
bad, is it?”

He was sweet and good-looking if not a bit arrogant. Six-foot-one, one hundred and ninety pounds with the body of Adonis and the face of a gorgeous empty-headed celebrity he was picture perfect. Honey blond hair, clear ice blue eyes that could hold so much warmth but most of the time remained either neutral or cold.

Grayson was also the son of Eldridge Compston, owner of CNW and a host of popular magazines sold at newsstands across the country and world. One of the only WASP families in the media market, they belonged to all the right country clubs, knew every ex-President and were hard core Republicans though their family was more of the fiscally conservative type who wanted low taxes and didn’t give a shit about ideology. I’d had some very fun debates with Grayson’s father and found the man charming if not abrasive.

I patted his hand as he was one who did not care for public acts of affection. “I’m sorry, dear. I was just thinking about my . . . sister.”

Grayson’s blue eyes changed from annoyed to his idea of sympathy. His eyebrows drew together and his mouth whitened as he pressed his lips together. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to say anything because I knew you would bring it up . . . when the timing was right of course.”

I raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

He attempted a genuine look of compassion now and all that did was manage to piss me off. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what, Gray?” I inquired in a slightly cool tone.

“It’s on CNW now. Beautiful supermodel found in the home of BDSM club owner, Rory Krieger. He’s relatively low profile and no one knows much about him but apparently he owns one of the most exclusive clubs here in New York.”

My heart thudded in my chest and I tried to control my breathing. “So, what? Are we talking like a
Fifty Shades
type of thing? What is he? The Christian Grey of the BDSM community?”

Grayson’s annoyance returned with a vengeance. “You and I both know those books weren’t a fair representation of the BDSM community. Look, I didn’t want to tell you but Jay and Kaysa are into that kind of
thing
.”

Jason was Gray’s older brother and Kaysa was his beautiful, icy Swedish-German wife. “What do you mean when you say they are into that kind of thing?”

“Listen, Kaysa was an extreme submissive and in a relationship with someone else when he fell in love with her. They have this strange slave-master relationship where they act all vanilla and in love in public but in private, it gets really bizarre. She sits at his fucking feet when they have dinner, bare-assed—as in not a stitch on and all their servants know and act like nothing is going on. You know that gold ropy choker-chain she wears? That isn’t decoration—it’s a fucking dog collar around her neck and when they go to Club X-Tasy, he adds a leash and makes her walk around the club naked attached to said leash. So, no, we aren’t talking about a
Fifty
fucking
Shades
thing and I would think you would have more class than to make jokes about your own sister’s fucking death!”

The champagne flute in my hand slipped and dropped to the floor where it shattered. I suddenly heard the rush of blood to my ears and the beating of my own heart. I stood and looked around but too many people were staring at me and they tossed me strange looks as if I had lost it. They all knew and yet I didn’t?

Did my parents’ know about the death of their youngest daughter?

Grayson said it was all over the news.

I tried to keep it together but I felt like a rubber band stretched too tightly and any moment I would snap and have a real nervous breakdown along with an anxiety attack for good measure. Oh yeah, I was going to lose it any moment.

My feet seemed to carry me outside and I stood outside the awning of Daniel,
the
it-place for some of the best French food this side of France. I’d promised Grayson I would quit but I had never been happier to have an emergency Camel Crush in my handbag. I lit up and took and deep inhale before exhaling and allowing the nicotine to flow through my veins.

I wanted to taste something but I couldn’t detect the flavor of the cigarette or smell the carcinogenic smoke. My whole body felt numb. It had to be a mistake. My sister couldn’t be dead and why the hell was her death on CNW before we—the family—had been notified?

I immediately pulled out my smart phone and voice dialed my parents’ home. They lived in France and there was a six-hour time difference. I was waking them up at the ungodly hour of three in the morning.

Never the less, my mother answered the phone, “Aurélie? What’s wrong?”

“How did you know it was me?” My voice sounded thick with saliva and unshed tears.

“Well, you’re the only one we know with a two-one-two number who actually calls us. Trésor has so many different mobiles; the numbers never seem to be the same. One moment, she is calling from Germany, the next Los Angeles, and the next time from somewhere in Paris. We don’t know what she has involved herself in but it’s likely to get her killed,” my mother explained with a failed parent’s resignation.

They thought they were the reason why she behaved in the manner she did. Or
had
since she was dead and would never be able to tell us anything about her lifestyle.