Page 53 of The Boss' Pet

The car slides up outside the Embassy, and I am brought back to cool reality as Marcus opens his door. The air has a chill in it, too much for my scantily clad frame. I need a coat or a stole or something, but the only fur on my body is connected to a plug in my ass—and there’s no chance of being able to wrap that around me in a way that will warm me up.

Marcus opens my door for me and offers his hand. He acts like such a gentleman. You could truly forget that he is a ruthless kidnapper and probably a murderer.

I smile up into his face out of reflex, not because I am pleased about any of this. The motion of getting out of the car makes the plug really move about inside me and gives me an unfortunate pulse of sensation. My ass is starting to get used to being filled, and that means that the feeling of the plug moving isn’t entirely unpleasant. I don’t want to get turned on right now. I need to be able to think.

He leads me into the main foyer of the Embassy, where the other rich and impossibly corrupt people he calls both friend and enemy are milling around. There are plenty of young women being degraded here. I see two of them bound together and being used as a tabletop. They are entirely nude and covered in sushi. Fish and rice and little pieces of seaweed cover strategic portions of their bodies, at least until the ravenous male members pick them off.

There is a look in the eyes of the kept women here. A sort of glaze. I wonder if they are content and happy, or if they are simply in some state of deep dissociation, doing what they have to do. It is hard to tell the public expression of submission from one of reluctant subjugation.

As Marcus and I enter, the patrons of the Embassy all turn to look at us. One after another, they swerve and rotate, and their gazes roam over us. I feel very exposed, very observed. The glittering eyes of these creatures are devouring me, and I am afraid there will be nothing left once they are done with me.

I press closer to Marcus, but he does not allow it. He moves away and nudges me just a little bit away from him. Just enough to put me thoroughly on display.

Something is happening. I can feel it in the air. There is anticipation where there should be nothing but mild interest at best. They have cleared a space in the middle of the floor, I notice. And Marcus is guiding me into that space.

“My little pet is a very smart girl,” he announces. “And like all smart things, she is trouble.”

My stomach starts to do flips. I look at him askance, wondering what the hell is going on. He looks back, and I see something in his gaze that wasn’t there before. A coolness, perhaps even a bitterness. Or is it vengeance? Whatever it is, it makes my blood freeze in my veins.

“Charlie,” he says, using my name in a way that makes me feel immediately exposed. I know all these people could probably find my name without too much trouble. They probably already know exactly who I am. But the fact that he just used my name as if they all have some access to it, that freaks me out. It’s the little things, in every situation, I am discovering.

“Yeah?”

I hear a snort of amusement from somewhere in the crowd. Most of these people probably demand to be called Master or whatever, but I guess Marcus hasn’t trained me that well. He’s blindsiding me, and I am not going to play along. My gut is twisting with nerves. All I want to do is bolt for the door, but I am certain that would only precipitate an attack of some kind. I am prey, and I am cornered.

“Charlie tried to turn me into Libraryleaks yesterday,” he says.

An absolute roar of laughter goes up around the room. My vision is a blur of open mouths and toothy grins flashing white between crimson red lips. The merriment goes on for such a long time that I have to imagine this is news to the assembled people—which means he got them all to come here for some secret drama. These people actively feed on the crises Marcus seems adept at generating in their midst.

There is silence finally, in which people seem to want to see how I am going to react. I haven’t said or done anything yet. I suppose I’m frozen.

I look around, and then I look at Marcus. Fuck this guy. Fuck everything about him. He could have handled this privately. But he wants to make a spectacle out of me. If it’s a show he wants, it’s a show he’s going to get.

“You deserve to be caught,” I say. “You deserve everything that is coming to you. So do your Embassy friends.”

I have nothing left but defiance, and I intend to lean into it hard. As I speak, fresh merriment breaks out in little spates across the crowd. Nobody here is concerned about the consequences of the revelations I have uncovered. There is a certain indulgent tone to their mockery, as if I am just a small, stupid thing who has done a small, stupid thing.

Marcus speaks to me in slow, patient, dangerous tones. “I have some very, very bad news for you, pet. The server you sent all that data you stole? That is owned by a friend of ours. A man who is in this very room.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I say. “Libraryleaks is everywhere, and the consequences for people like you are real. Didn’t you hear about what happened in the aftermath of the Pendleton Papers?”

Marcus shrugs. “A few middle-managers lost their jobs, and a few paid shills went to prison. But you’re right, Libraryleaks certainly caused some problems back in the day. However, pet, they are no longer a threat.”

“Independent journalism will always be a threat.”

Marcus’ expression, which had held a certain dark bitterness up until this moment, has now settled into a you sweet summer child sort of disbelief. I might as well be telling him about the unicorn I intend to buy just as soon as I get my pocket money. He leans down, putting his hands on his thighs as he speaks to me in slow, clear tones that would be patronizing if I had not just spent all that time demonstrating my own naivety.

“There are no independent publishers anymore. There is no such thing as an investigative journalist. There are just honeypots, where people like me, catch people like you—Carebear.”

The sense of horror I feel as he says those words and uses my Libraryleaks login handle feels like a yawning chasm opening up in the very pit of my stomach. My mind races, wondering how this could be possible. I hunted him down. I set all of this in motion. So how on Earth could he be turning this on me now?

If this is a trap—which it must be—then this must have been a trap from the very fucking beginning. Before I thought I got the idea to make contact with Marcus Waterstone, he had to know who I was already. There’s no other way that this could all have worked.

“How?”

“How what, pet?”

“How did you pick me, before you knew me?”

---