Page 50 of Loss Aversion

The screen was dark and fuzzy until the picture came into focus, showing Errol dressed as a boy facing a woman wearing an old-time dress with sequins and feathers, whose back was to the camera. Errol spoke in a weird as shit, tinny high voice as the woman sauntered around him as if eyeing the goods. Errol pulled at the collar buttoned up to his neck as if unsettled.

What the fuck?

Finally, the woman sat on the bed and leaned back with one leg crossed over the other and said with a commanding voice, “Take your clothes off, young man.”

“But,” Errol said nervously. “What about my mother?”

“She doesn’t even know I’m here. Go on. Take off your clothes.”

Lucas hit the pause button. “What the fuck is this?”

“The Blame Game,” Flynn explained.

Lucas looked to Birdie for more than that brief descriptor. She grimaced. “It’s all part of him and Ariana’s…kink.” She added, “Like some 1930s movie set gone twisted and very, very wrong.”

“And you’re…involved in this?”

She remained quiet, looking back at the screen, indicating to Flynn to restart the video.

Errol took his clothes off as the prostitute watched while licking her lacquered lips until he was only wearing a pair of men’s high-waisted underwear with what looked to be button closures.

“You’ve been a bad boy.”

Errol nodded.

“You know what happens to bad boys.”

Lucas watched, train-wreck style, as Errol was ass-up on the bed and the woman began to spank him.

Just as he was about to say he’d seen enough, in the video the door swung open, and Flynn panned his camera toward a huffing and puffing Ariana. Who brought her pudgy be-ringed hand to her forehead, seeing her boy being unduly punished, and rushed to his side.

“Begone, you, you trollop,” she declared with self-righteous indignation and truly atrocious acting skills as Errol began to weep and bury his face in her bosom. Which Lucas found hardly realistic and comical as each breast could smother a small village, let alone a boy of his assumed age.

After a few seconds of some disturbing cuddling and cooing, Lucas stopped the video again. “I can’t watch anymore. That’s just, wrong. How often do they play this…Blame Game?

“Two or three nights a week,” Flynn explained. “But I overheard Mother once say it was getting more and more difficult to find women with any real dramatic acting skills.”

“That’s also disturbing but for different reasons,” Lucas murmured, running his fingers through his hair. “What are you planning to do with the video?” It was rather grainy and in some parts of the clip, the words unintelligible. “As fucked up as it is, it’s not like it’s against the law. Well, except for the procurement of a prostitute.”

“My brother has them sign a contractual agreement for their acting skills and an NDA. Nothing is actually consummated. So you’re correct, it’s not illegal.”

“But it’s reputation damaging,” Birdie interjected. “If it were to get out to the public, it would destroy them. People don’t do business with grown men who dry-hump their mothers. On video.”

“Besides,” Birdie added, “We don’t plan to mass distribute the clip, but to threaten them with it.”

“What are you going to do, Birdie? Tell them that if they don’t stop threatening the lives of your family members, you’re going to release the video to TMZ?” He paused. “And let’s remember, you signed an NDA.”

Birdie’s eyes watered. “The things they said to the news outlets about me were outright lies. This…” she said, pointing to Flynn’s phone. “…is the truth. They humiliated me. Tried to destroy me.”

Flynn added sheepishly, “Ofttimes brought up in a jocular fashion during family dinners.”

Birdie rushed, “There’s got to be something we can do.”

Lucas paused and tilted his head at what Flynn said. “How much of their illegal activities are you aware of?”

“Only those that would be considered he said, she said. Nothing provable in a court of law. The things they did to my father I never knew about until I discovered Tati in a coma. When I woke her up, she told me everything.”

Lucas nodded. “I suggest we hold tight. Wait until Grant finds the diary and hopefully the thumb drive and take it from there.” He sucked in his bottom lip at a frustrated Birdie. “How do you know when you’re to…perform.”

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