Page 97 of Blind Luck

“Honestly? I don’t know. But I do know that my husband was a controlling sack of shit. Are you mad at me?”

“Of course I’m not mad at you. Tell people whatever makes you comfortable. We know the truth, and that’s all that matters.”

CHAPTER 32

ARI

“Alexa asked me to tell you that Ace is Jackson Fuller. She also said she’ll handle him.”

Interesting, but not surprising. The curious part? Why was Chase calling me and not Alexa herself?

“Is Alexa okay?”

The long pause told me everything I needed to know, and my chest tightened.

Finally, Chase whispered, “I had to sedate her. I feel sick myself.”

“What happened?”

“She got access to Jackson Fuller’s computer.”

“Was it child porn?” Oh fuck. “Tell me it wasn’t child porn?”

“It was worse.”

“Worse? What could be worse?”

“How much do you know about red rooms?”

Red rooms? Those dark web livestreams where people were tortured and killed on camera? I’d heard of them, but…

“I thought those were a myth.” Hell. “They’re not a myth?”

“Four seats costing fifty thousand bucks each. Anonymous monsters typing suggestions in the chat box, describing how they want a human to suffer. We watched a girl die last night, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t save her.”

I sat down hard. So hard I missed the couch and landed on the floor with a crash, bringing a coffee mug and a lamp with me.

“Shit.”

“You okay?”

“Did you seriously just ask that?”

Running footsteps sounded, and Erin skidded into the doorway. “You okay? Oh, wow, I’ll grab a cloth.”

I couldn’t tell her about this. Erin didn’t need any more sleepless nights, not when her own life had just changed for the better, or rather, been changed by Rusty. I knew they were sleeping together. The soundproofing in the room they were sharing wasn’t as good as they thought it was. And you know what? I was happy for them. The first twenty-two years of Erin’s life had been an exercise in survival, and if she’d found a glimmer of happiness with a handsome, wealthy hockey player who seemed to be even more of a gentleman than Zach was, she deserved every second of it.

“Sorry,” Chase said.

“Are you certain it was Jackson Fuller?”

“We watched him jerking off on his webcam as the stream played.”

Bile came up. I retched and managed to swallow it back down.

“We’ve all been there,” Chase soothed. “Welcome to the Choir.”

“I’m only Choir-fucking-adjacent, you idiot. You need to tell someone about this. The cops, someone.”

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