Page 30 of A Billionaire Rebel

Deklin was in Tahiti with his new girlfriend, Sofi, and I wasn’t about to talk to my dad. I considered going to see Jude and Cynthia, but then I remembered how good it had been to talk to Davin yesterday. Our personalities had always been different enough that we’d never been the natural friends some siblings were, but the differences had always allowed us to get along without butting heads since we’d never competed with each other.

I texted him first, not wanting to drive to his place if he was at the office, or vice versa. To my surprise, he was already home. Since I already had the codes to his security system, he told me to come in on my own because he was heading to the shower after his workout. The fact that he didn’t say that he was busy told me I’d made the right choice of where to go.

I called his name when I came inside just to let him know I was there, but when he didn’t answer, I figured he was still in the shower. He’d moved in here only a couple years ago, and since I’d rarely had a reason to come here, I hadn’t really looked around much. That would keep me occupied while I waited.

This place was huge. Not as massive as Grandad’s house, but at least ten thousand square feet. Why Davin needed all this space when it was just him, and he was barely ever here, I didn’t know. I supposed he could’ve been thinking of starting a family someday, but it would’ve shocked me to hear of it.

He’d never struck me as the kind of man who cared much about that sort of thing. The wife and kid part of family, at least. Maybe he’d learned from Dad that if he wanted to put his entire focus into work, it’d be better not to have anything else requiring his attention.

I wandered through the library, impressed but not surprised by his vast collection. I’d always appreciated literature from an artistic point of view, but I’d never been much of a reader. Deklin read a decent amount, but I often wondered how much of it was because Grandad and Davin liked to read. Growing up, it had been common at family events to see Davin sitting in a corner with a book.

Dad had hated it. If Davin was going to read, Dad wanted it to be the Bible and non-fiction from his select list of approved religious figures, not the murder mysteries and crime thrillers that Davin had always gravitated toward.

Across from the library was Davin’s in-home office, but I just peeked in and moved on rather than taking a closer look. I didn’t know much about the family business, and I didn’t want to risk messing something up.

As I closed his office door and turned, I saw that the hallway didn’t dead-end like I’d originally thought. A small corridor next to the library led me to another door. I was no architect, but I thought the room must’ve been tucked away, maybe a panic room for the original owner. Now intrigued, I opened the door…

And my jaw dropped.

What. The. Fuck.

I was still standing in the doorway half a minute later when Davin appeared behind me.

“You know, Grandad would say to close your mouth or you’ll start catching flies.”

My jaw snapped shut, and I turned, guilt immediately hitting me even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. Davin didn’t sound upset, but he’d always been the type of man who kept his emotions close to the chest.

“Go ahead in.” He jerked his chin toward the room. When I didn’t move, he stepped past me. “Seriously, Damon, it’s okay.”

I followed him, looking around at the small room. Well, relatively small. Compared to the other rooms in this house, it was small. The more I looked at it, though, the more I realized that it was actually a little bigger than Jae’s bedroom.

That was where the comparison ended, though, because nothing else was even close to the room where I’d woken up this morning. Aside from the fact that there was a bed in this room, there were no similarities at all, including the type of bed he had.

Tall posts at each corner with hooks and metal rings at the top. What looked like leather cuffs at each corner. A padded piece of furniture sat at the end of the bed, but it didn’t really look like a bench or any other thing I’d ever seen in a bedroom before.

Then there were the handcuffs and other sorts of restraints laid out on the top of a chest of drawers. The walls were bare, but I had no doubt those drawers held some pretty interesting items.

“Well,” I broke the silence. “This wasn’t what I’d expected when I decided to check out your house while I was waiting for you.”

That got a chuckle. “No, I suppose not.”

“So, you’re into S&M?” I asked. It felt a little weird, asking my brother a question like that, but it was definitely a distraction from everything else.

“That’s one name for it,” he said. “I went to a club with a date on my twenty-first birthday. It just…clicked.” He gestured for me to go with him out of the room. “Want a beer?”

“Sure.” I followed him. “You went to a club here in Houston?”

“I did. It’s not around anymore, but there’s another one I go to now when I need to let off some steam.”

It was funny. While this was technically a whole new side to my brother, the more I thought about it, the more questions he answered, the more it made sense.

And the more I wanted to know.

Seventeen

Jae

Jamie was sittingon the couch when I entered the apartment, and I knew we were about to have the talk that she’d promised me earlier. A part of me had been hoping that she’d still be in with Kevin, and I’d be able to have a night to think about things before she started with her questions.

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