Page 64 of Disgrace

“I know. Sam told me.” I wipe my mouth dry on the back of my hand.

“Good, I just wanted to get that straight, because you looked at me just now like you wanted to kill me.” He raises a questioning brow.

“No,” I chuckle. “Not kill, maybe maim…a little.”

“Oh, that’s all right then.” He lets out a stilted laugh.

“I never thought I was the jealous type, but being with her has brought out this whole other side.” I shake my head lightly. “Just takes some getting used to you know. You’ve been her best friend a long time, you clearly love her, and I guess she feels the same.”

“Damn right she does but she doesn’t loveloveme. She loves you and that, my friend, I never thought would happen. So count yourselfverylucky.” His tone is light but drops and lends the weight of seriousness to his comment.

“I do.” I meet his silent stare.

“Good…then we are on the same side…no need to maim.” He pauses for my reply.

“No need to maim.” I take another, much needed pull of my ice cold beer. “She said you saved her.”

“Hmm… she has a penchant for the dramatic so she would say that. It was more a case of right place, right time.” He takes his full plate and walks around the kitchen island to sit beside me, his forehead furrowed in thought. “She had a pretty low opinion of herself, but at best, I stopped her from making a stupid mistake.”

“And helped her make a different one.” My tone is low, and I say the words through an ever-tightening jaw.

“Ha!” He drops his fork and turns to face me. “Okay, Jason, spit it out.”

“She became a Domme because of you, becauseyouneeded that. You didn’t think she could be something else?” I snap.

“I’m going to let the attitude slide because I know you are strung out,andI will answer your accusations because you seem to know jack shit about the girl you claim to love.” I stand abruptly sending my stool crashing to the floor. He remains seated but has straightened and is meeting my hostile glare with his own narrowed stare. “She could be anything she wanted to be. I made her go to University, but shechoseto study law. I gave her a roof over her head, but shechoseto buy this place, and I asked her to help a friend out, but shechoseto become a Domme. Because, and if you don’t know this you are dumber than…fuck, Jason!” I am instantly at his throat, my hand tight around his neck. He struggles but continues to choke out what he wants to say. “Damn it, Jason, you can’t make Samdoanything she doesn’t want to do.” He stands, making me step back and pushes my hands free from his neck. Leaning around me he bends down to pick up the stool. He pushes me lightly to sit.

All my anger has seeped shamefully out of my body, misdirected as it was. “You really think you canmakeher submit to you?” He raises a brow, but I don’t answer the bloody obvious. “She doesn’t even submit because she loves you; she submits because shewantsto. No one can make her do anything she doesn’t want to do, period.” He puffs out a frustrated breath.

“Richard did.” We both fall silent with that unpleasant thought. Leon swallows loudly.

“Richard is an abusive arsehole, and abusers don’t tend to follow the safe, sane and consensual code.” He flops back down on his stool and pushes his half eaten meal away. “She’s not the same person he knew; she’s not fifteen anymore. She is much stronger now.” He looks at me, his expression grave. “But she has always made her own choices. She thinks I saved her back then, but it was the other way round.” He smiles crookedly, and I get that twinge again. She shares so much history with this man, a man I can’t even hate because he cares as much as I do. Well, almost as much. “She never needed to be saved.”

“She does now.” Apparently, I do have to state the bloody obvious. “I’m going to find her, Leon.” I stand and walk away. “Thanks for the meal and I’m sor—”

“De nada.” He waves off my gratitude but adds with a solemn tone that makes my chest bleed. “She’s counting on it, Jason.”

I prise my eyes open at the first rumble of the vibration of my phone on the bedside table. My hand automatically reaches for it and flips it open even if I can’t focus on the screen to recognise who’s calling me in the middle of the night. It might be her.

“Sam?” I croak, my voice thick from sleep and exhaustion.

“Um, no Jason, it’s Patrick. You said to call if I had anything new. I have something new.” I sit up and drag my hand down my face to try and wake up. I look up to see Leon stagger against the doorframe. I furrow my brows.

“Light sleeper. I heard the vibration.” He shuffles into the room, and I nod for him the sit on the bed. He wraps his arms around his waist feeling the early morning chill in the room because I sleep with the window wide open.

“Okay Patrick, I’m awake what have you got?” Leon motions for me to share and I flip to speakerphone.

“Your code was activated by deletion. It wasn’t sent by the standard route, but we got it. We tried to bounce a signal straight back, but whatever sent it must have been destroyed because there was nothing to receive what we sent.” The line goes quiet while I take this in. It’s not good. It’s good that Sam has tried to contact me, that means she’s alive at least, but if we couldn’t keep a signal, I don’t know what that means.

“Destroyed, what does that mean exactly? Can we trace where the code was sent from or not?” I hear Leon suck in a breath while we both wait for Patrick’s response.

“We did but it’s moving and we can’t get a lock on it. Which means at the speed it is travelling it will be out of our range in thirty minutes.”

“Fuck, where is it now?”

“Off the cost of Florida but in International waters.”

“Send me all you have now.” I cut the call and dial my brother.

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