Page 59 of Merciless Prince
“So we could get this,” I said. I clicked my fingers at Derrick, who was standing on my right. He handed me a phone, and I unlocked it and went into the media gallery. “Wanna see?”
Shay swallowed audibly. “Yes,” she said, soft voice laced with apprehension.
I knelt in front of her, turned the phone screen to face her, and pressed on the top media square. “Here’s a video of you sucking a guy’s cock while a girl eats you out from behind. Nice angle, right?”
One of Shay’s hands flew to her mouth. Her skin had turned ghostly-white, and her whole body was quivering.
I clicked on another square. “Here’s you and another girl finger-fucking each other in front of a crowd.”Click.“Here’s you getting your ass eaten by a guy you just met.”Click.“And here’s you loudly talking about how you love getting fucked by a total stranger whose face you’ve never seen.”
“You went into a lot of detail about this Mystery Man of yours, Shay,” Francesca chimed in, eyes glittering with malicious amusement. “Who knew you were so kinky?”
“We’ve got a ton of photos, too,” Derrick added. He cocked his head, removed his mask, and grinned down at her. “You probably don’t even remember doing half that stuff, do you?”
Shay was swaying on the spot now, chest heaving like she was about to vomit. “That’s not me,” she murmured, looking away from the phone.
“Yes, it is. Very clearly. Thank god for HD cameras, huh?” Derrick said with a chuckle.
“No, I mean… it’s notme.I was drugged.”
“You weren’t fuckingdrugged, you dramatic little bitch. You were clearly told that your drink contained MDMA,” Francesca said, rolling her eyes. “You chose to drink it anyway, so everything you did afterwards was a consequence of that choice.”
Shay shook her head, eyes brimming with tears. “No…”
“Yes. You might not like to admit it, but itisyou in all these shots. Just a different version of you.”
Shay’s shoulders sagged, and she stared into the distance with a flat, vacant expression on her face. “I thought it would be okay,” she murmured. “I thought I was safe.”
“No shit. Like Killian said, that’s exactly why we told you that you passed the initiation stuff,” Francesca said smugly. “So you’d feel like you belonged with us. Like you could let go around us, get high as fuck, and do anything you wanted. Boy, did it pay off.”
She dissolved into snickers along with Derrick and the rest of the Hellfire crew in the clearing. Shay kept staring into the distance, expression drawn and defeated.
“You want to be a famous actress, don’t you, Shay?” I asked her, voice dripping with condescension.
She looked back at me and nodded silently.
“I guess you wouldn’t want these videos and photos to get leaked anywhere, then,” I went on, tapping my chin with my index finger. “No one’s gonna cast an actress who has amateur porn shit all over the internet.”
“It would be even worse if we leaked it allafteryou got your first big break and became a household name,” Derrick interjected. “Imagine that. The album would probably get five hundred million views in a day. Then everyone would know just how much you love to suck cock. They’d know exactly what your pussy and asshole look like, too.” He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “But hey, at least they’re nice and pretty. You’ve got that going for you.”
Shay’s elbows pressed into her sides, like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, voice thick with emotion. “I’ve never done anything to any of you.”
I rose to my full height. “That’s not true, Shay. You threatened us.”
“No.” She vehemently shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You saw us that night in the grotto, and we all know it. You saw what we did.”
“I thought it was just a movie shoot.”
“Part of you did, sure. But another part of you thought it was real,” Francesca said in an acid tone. “You made that very clear to me at our dinner last weekend.”
“I wasn’t going to do anything about it,” Shay replied, looking at the ground.
“Yes, you were,” I said. “See, you don’t realize just how closely we’ve been watching you. I can access your internet history, so I know what you’ve been researching lately. You’ve been trying to find the man from the grotto, haven’t you? So you can see if he’s really dead?”
Shay bit her lip and scrunched up her eyes, as if she were trying her hardest not to cry. “I suspected it, but I didn’t find anything.”
I sneered at her. “It was only a matter of time before you did, and you and I both know that you would’ve gone straight to the cops with the information.”
