Page 93 of Pretty Monsters

"Uh, I came over here to talk to Ted," she stammers. Her face burns bright red, and she looks surreptitiously at Lucien.

Unlike Amber, he doesn't try to hide his interest. I wonder if she's aware how extreme his interests are. If not, she's in for quite the surprise.

Lucien slaps her ass. "Sweetheart, would you mind letting us talk? There's no need to scare you when you know Ted and I won't let anything happen to you."

I raise my eyebrow at him, and he smirks. He likes to joke about me being kinky, at least I prefer to hook up with only one woman at a time. I mean, hooked up with. Past tense. Lucien is less discriminating with numbers of partners or gender, but whatever revs his engine.

"Jen is in my room watching some reality show," Shane tells her.

"Want to come with me, Raven?" she asks.

Raven smiles, but shakes her head. "I better stay and help out. I prefer to have a hand in ensuring my own safety."

"Probably less messed up than whatever you guys need to talk about," she says.

"She's not wrong," Raven comments once Amber is out of the room.

"Everything is fucked," Ted agrees.

"Not everything," I mutter and pull Raven down on my lap in the rickety wooden chair that seems to come standard in shitty motels.

"What kind of surveillance did you put in place at the gym?" I ask Shane.

"There are motion sensors that send an alarm to Ford's and my phone, cameras that record to a cloud DVR as well as a physical hard drive that's in the office. There are also smart fire, smoke, and gas detectors. If we don't enter a code, the system sends a call for emergency services," he details.

"What if the power gets disrupted?"

"Then they all have backup batteries embedded and a signal gets sent from the power box. There's a sensor there too," he replies smugly.

"We need to monitor the trackers and see if they come near the gym, and make sure to check the cameras in case they catch on to the trackers. Even still, I'm not sure it's a good idea to return there," Lucien thinks aloud.

"What do we do in the meantime? Even staying in the cheapest motels we will quickly run out of money. Not to mention the fact that a group as large as ours will draw attention even staying at these kinds of motels," Ted adds.

Ford groans and hits his head against the wall. "I've got football. I know in the grand scheme of things that isn't life and death, but I'll lose my scholarship and chance to transfer and play at a D1 school."

Raven worries her lip, and I know she feels guilty for how knowing us has fucked up their lives. Lucien and I exchange a look. I hate when he's right, but I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong.

"We can't do this on our own," I admit.

Lucien pops a brow and gives me his cocky asshole smirk. "I thought you didn't like my suggestion."

"Would one of you mind filling us in on what you're talking about?" Shane asks.

"You know my father is running for the governor's seat of Illinois, right?" Lucien starts. Shane, Ford, and Ted nod.

"Good, then this will be easier to follow. The current governor is known as incorruptible, something pretty rare in Illinois politics. He started out as an assistant district attorney, where his first case was a felony murder case that had ties to my father. I don't know all the details because I was a toddler, but I've heard bits and pieces and looked it up online. From what I've been able to put together there was a witness who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they were taken out along with the target."

No one speaks. Even I didn't know this story. I only knew that Governor Whitmore had a hard on to find evidence on Damien, but I never really questioned why.

Lucien continues, "As usual, jurors were paid or threatened, and it ended in a hung jury. Evidence disappeared, making a retrial impossible. That put Damien on Whitmore's radar, and he's been working to bring him down ever since. As governor Whitmore pushed through legislation and created a special task force to fight organized crime. Damien hasn't been able to infiltrate the administration or find dirt on the governor. If he can't buy, scare, or threaten the governor then he'll try to get rid of him legally."

"If he's as evil as you say, then why doesn't he just have him killed?" Ford asks.

Lucien shrugs. "You've got me. I don't think the governor has anything on him, or he would have used it to bring him down. I do know his security team consists of men who were former special forces in the military. Perhaps we can give him something on Damien in exchange for his protection."

"What do you have?" Ford asks. He looks at Raven before glaring at me in a silent warning not to suggest what he seems to know I'm going to.

"My testimony," I say.

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