Page 82 of Kings of Lust
‘It’s not the fucking Pentagon. Yeah. We can pull it off. Ifyoucan,’ Ferris said, leaving the room.
‘Why did you offer to go with him. What happened?’ I was trying to put some light on things and who better than Brax to tell me what’s what.
‘His father used to be an engineer. Software and artificial intelligence. That and some business skills made him rich. Ferris used to work from time to time with him in the garage and he hasn’t been there since his father died. Andwejust sent him into his past.’
‘Maybe we should check and see if he’s alright.’ Despite everything he did, I still cared for him. And I couldn’t have one of his breakdowns be on me.
‘Even if he isn’t. There’s not much we can do. He needs to fix this from the inside. We did everything we can do from here.’ Brax seemed tired of trying to fix him. So he just stopped. Maybe that’s what I should have done too. Try and live with who he was now and accepted that the Ferris I want either didn’t exist in the first place or was forever lost.
‘I have to go. Do you want me to drop you somewhere?’ Brax asked, picking up his phone and cigs from the table and heading towards the exit.
‘I’m fine. I still have the limo.’ I watched him leave, then found my own way to the apartment.
Nat and Seb were waiting for me, eager to spend all the time we could together. I just needed to put my happy mask on and ignore the lost night.
Much easier said than done!
Seb was a little under the weather. Nothing that I hadn’t seen before, but knowing that he was having even the slightest discomfort got to me like nothing else.
We were just preparing to have dinner when my phone lit up with Brax’s name on the screen.
‘The Pleasure Room,’ he spoke sending a cold chill down my spine. ‘The governor sometimes takes contracts from there. The ones willing to put in theextra work, of course.’
Just hearing of the place was transposing me right back to the time that the door first opened for me. A door to a new life.
‘Do you fucking hear me, Bea?’ Brax was getting annoyed, making me realize that I hadn’t said anything in return.
‘Yes... Yes, I can hear you.’ My voice much quieter than the loud thoughts running through my mind.
‘Do you want me to go with you and speak to Vanya?’ He asked noticing my stuttering.
‘No. It’s fine. I’ll deal with it.’ I was already rehearsing a speech about what I was going to tell her.
‘Ok. She’s expecting you now.’
‘She’s what!?’
‘Didn’t you say we’re in a rush? Well, I called her and sped things up.’
I guess my speech had to be ready a lot sooner than I thought.
‘I’ll go get changed,’ I answered, hearing him hanging up one second later. Suddenly I wasn’t sleepy anymore. I was so wide awake that I could feel the acid raindrops in the fields across the city.
Things were falling into place so easily that I felt it was too good to be true. And I feared that part.Thetoo good to be truealways bit me on my ass! I’d learned that the hard way, like a lesson repeating itself over and over again.
The ride there was as if in a daze. I just drifted away, suffocated by my thoughts and dreading the burden that was to follow.
I don’t even know how I ended up in her chair, looking straight into her inquisitive eyes while casually trying to sip from a coffee mug. Likecasuallycould still be a word in my vocabulary at a time like this.
‘It must be important for Brax to call me personally and set up an appointment for you. You’ve come a long way. I’m impressed,’ Vanya spoke while twisting a pen between her fingers.
I just wasn’t sure what impressed her. The fact that I’m sleeping with Brax or Ferris. Or both?
Still, there should have been something that could really get her impressed. And that was Ferris’s message that appeared on my phone’s screen.
Tell Vanya I’ll paywhateverit takes to get you in.
‘So, what can I help you with?’ Vanya lit a long cigarette and raised herself from her desk to walk to the window. She was stressed, probably anticipating the severity of the problem.
