Page 53 of Devil's Riches

Nate nodded slowly. “That’s useful.”

“Yeah, it made it a lot easier. Anyway, after that, we were invited to an interview.”

“How long did it take for that to happen?”

Ben paused. “Hm. Not long. Two or three days after we lodged the application, maybe?”

“What happened at the interview?”

“They asked us a bunch of general questions about ourselves. Then they asked more specific questions about what we hoped to gain from membership there.”

“What did you say?”

“I just said I wanted to party with people who were on the same level as me. I know it sounds pretentious as fuck, but that’s the sort of stuff they want to hear.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“After that, they wanted to run some tests on us to make sure we were healthy. A nurse came in and took some blood samples from us, and then we were taken to a lounge to wait for the results. That part was cool because we got free drinks. Anything we wanted.”

“What happened after that?

“Someone came in and told us that our results were clean, which meant we’d progressed to the final stage.” Ben paused and cleared his throat. “That’s when we finally left. It got too weird.”

Nate’s forehead creased. “How?”

“They told us that people who aren’t directly invited to join the club have to earn their entry. At first we thought they were just asking for a bribe on top of the membership fee, but that’s not what they wanted at all.” He paused to clear his throat. “They said the ‘lower’ members who get in via application need to be trusted amongst all the elite members, and to do that, they have to perform a certain task.”

“What is it?”

“We were taken into a room and presented with a group of men and women. They were all hot. We were told they were dancers from one of the nightclubs,” he said. “Anyway, we were told we had two choices. I could have sex with one of the women while my girlfriend had sex with one of the men, or we could have a threesome with our choice of a man or woman. Either way, it would be filmed and kept by the club.”

Nate’s eyes narrowed. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yup. By the way, I had to sign an NDA after all of this, so you can’t say you heard any of it from me, okay?”

“Got it. Did they ever explain why they wanted you to make a sex tape?”

“Yeah. They said it’s for the club to ensure the silence and compliance of the lower-ranked members. Like, if one of them ever decided to gossip about an elite member they hooked up with one night, the club would immediately release their sex tape to the public to discredit and humiliate them as punishment,” Ben explained. “Obviously, no one wants a tape like that out on the internet for everyone to see, so it discourages them from gossiping and spreading stuff around.”

Nate rubbed his jaw. “So it’s blackmail, essentially, to make sure you keep your mouth shut about everything you see, hear, and do while you’re there.”

“Exactly. I think it’s also a way to see how sexually open and willing you are to participate in every aspect of the club,” Ben said. “The owners want to know that there’s a chance that the younger, newer members will actually hook up with the elite members instead of just going there every weekend to hang out and drink at the bars.”

“The elite members don’t have to do any of that application stuff, do they?” Nate asked. “They just get invited by the owners, right?”

“Yep. There’s no application process for them, and if they just want to drink or have dinner at the club, or go there to watch a movie, then that’s fine. It’s just a big entertainment center to them. But if they want to do sexual stuff in those particular parts of the club, then obviously they want their privacy to be respected, and part of that means making sure the other members can be trusted. The members who don’t have as much to lose, that is, in terms of social status.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah, in a really fucked up way.” Ben grunted and went on. “Anyway, I said no. My girlfriend did too. Neither of us were keen on the club having sex tapes of us in their permanent records.”

“Understandable.”

“You said your last name is Lockwood, right? As in those Lockwoods from Arcadia Bay?”

“Yes.”

“Just wait until you’re twenty-five. A guy like you will definitely get an invite from the owners. Then you won’t have to go through any of the weird application bullshit.”

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