8.5 years earlier:

“Truth, dare, double dare, or promise to repeat?”

“Double dare,” I answered her and leaned over and ran my nose from her chin, along her jawline, to the spot behind her ear.

She giggled and squirmed away, pink tinting her cheeks.

“I double dare you to…” she looked around and then whispered, “k**s someone you have a crush on.”

We were sitting under a tree outside our high school, skipping science class, a ways away from the building on the far side of the thick trunk of a big weeping willow. No one would see us unless they were close. I was looking forward to trying to get to second base with my lab partner. I was pretty smitten with her, like Charlie Brown and his little girl with the red hair.

“On a dare, yeah, but a double dare? A k**s is way too tame for a double dare,” I told her, “Can’t you do better than that?”

“Depends where that k**s is,” answered a female voice coming from the other side of the tree trunk.

As soon as I saw the source of that voice the redheaded girl in the grass beside me no longer existed. No other girl in the world existed but the tall brunette with the leather jacket and huge t**s smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke into rings. She was the only girl for me for the next 6 years. And what she did to me ruined me for the following three.

Debbie was a rocker chick. Her style consisted of heavy black eye make-up, tight jeans, f**k-me heels, plenty of leather and body-hugging spandex, long nails — talons, really.

That day we met was her first day at my high school and she and I were inseparable throughout the rest of it. She was wild, she had an insatiable s*x drive, she was crazy about me, and the family I was from didn’t bother her a bit. In fact, she thought it was a thrill that my family appeared to toe the line between good and evil. She loved to suck my c**k, had no s****l inhibitions whatsoever, and she kept me on my toes. She wasn’t my first lay, I was a pretty busy 16 year old when I met her, but she changed the game for me. Back then I thought she was it for me.

On her 20th birthday I gave her an engagement ring. It was logical. We had a great time together. In hindsight there were things missing, things she didn’t give me, but I was young and in love with her spirit and the s*x was incredible.

We split when we were 22, four months before the wedding when I caught her on her knees giving head to the goof hired to DJ our wedding reception.

When I walked into her place in the middle of the afternoon unannounced and found Debbie on her knees, I saw black. I got a lock on my rage with her but the guy whose d**k was in her mouth wasn’t so lucky because he took the brunt. I hospitalized the guy, broken jaw among his injuries, and then I destroyed his life.

I had his and his father’s classic car that they rebuilt together crunched at a scrap yard and then returned to his driveway, got him fired from his day job, had all his DJ equipment destroyed, trashed his place, and then took steps that wound up bankrupting his father’s business. You could say when I got pissed it meant blowback.

A few times in the first year after Deb and I split I f****d with the guy just because. I didn’t want him to think it was over. I wanted him to keep lookin’ over his shoulder. Based on the s**t I pulled he was probably still looking over his shoulder three years later.

I wasn’t proud of what I did to the guy’s father. All I saw was black. He knew she was mine. He knew who I was. He had a pretty good clue who my family was. He was a fuckin’ moron for crossing me.

She saw the error of her ways, so she said, but she no longer existed to me. She yelled, she slapped me, she threw things, then she begged and pleaded, tried to use s*x to get me back, stalked me for weeks, sneaking into my bed, showing up where she knew I’d be. She no longer existed to me; just white noise. Women in general became white noise, unless I had to have a minor and shallow conversation with them in order to get laid. I had no trouble replaceing hook-ups.

Present time:

I was cold for a long time. The next few years I got my rocks off in nightclub bathrooms and alleys or motel rooms and sometimes my place with nameless, faceless chicks. I was always focused, driven, but during the Man w***e Years I was focused and driven with a big chip on my shoulder and no desire to trust a female.

Then one day at one of our discrete, monthly meetings, uncle says that he’s arranged for my older brother to get hitched. Yeah, it sounds prehistoric but my brother wasn’t gonna do things the traditional way and Azriel getting married was a piece of the puzzle in whatever sinister plot uncle had cookin’ so uncle said he had to get creative because to him he couldn’t hand the business over unless my brother showed he had settled down. A wife and preferably a wife with a bun in the oven said that to my uncle and his business associates. He wanted Azriel hitched so that he could move on and do other things while Azriel took over as president of the company with me as VP.

But that had been Uncle’s plan.

I was glad that fucker was gone.

Debbie really wasn’t the maternal type and I guess I hadn’t really thought that through when I proposed because I wanted kids. After we split I found out she had an abortion and never told me. It shook me. If I’d married her, maybe she’d never have given me kids. Maybe she would’ve kept aborting them. Or maybe she’d have had kids but maybe I’d be raising kids that weren’t even mine.

I was Drake Clarke, respected in my field of work. I was a member of an influential family with ties to organized crime but the appearance of loose ties and not a small amount of mystery so I was revered and feared. But I wanted the traditional sort of family that the Clarkes were not. I wanted someone I could have a real connection with.

I’d seen a little of what I’d wanted with my grandparents, my maternal grandparents. My ma grew up in a stable and loving home and when I spent time with her for two weeks every summer I saw that. She picked the wrong man to have kids with and that choice had far-reaching impact. I didn’t wanna make that same mistake.

Anyway, too bad I fell for a non-traditional girl. After I caught her it came to light that she’d cheated plenty. She was wild, willing to try anything in the bedroom, always bringing new ideas of ways to get us off. After we split I knew why. She’d been doing more than her fair share of wild oat sowing.

I wanted a woman who was spirited, beautiful, who loved to f**k, and who wanted a family as a means of getting more out of life, not out of settling. I wanted a woman who had substance. I didn’t want the Barbie dolls my uncle had around, didn’t want a shell of a woman like my Ma was turned into out of the fear she lived with because of my father.

I wanted someone real, spunky, loving, interesting. After Deb f****d me over I closed my heart off. I didn’t see anyone around me who seemed real enough for me to let them in. Maybe I just never gave anyone else a chance.

***

I found out that uncle had procured a wife for me. She was almost 23, was a redhead like I’d jokingly requested in memory of my science lab partner who maybe would’ve had a better outcome for me than Deb. This girl was American, and she’d been in captivity for 2 years, trained to be the perfect slave. Part of the deal was that if I wanted, she’d be put in a 30 to 60 day program to take her from slave material to wife material, some value-added transition service the resort that had offered for those who wanted their “possessions” to function flawlessly outside of the bedroom. I got the news via an associate of uncle’s, a lawyer I hadn’t met more than three or four times.

“Drake?” he asked when I answered my secure cell line. It was 6:30 in the fuckin’ morning.

“That’s me. Whoever this is, it’s 6:30 in the fuckin’ morning so this better be good.”

“Stan, Tom’s lawyer in Thailand. I’m at the airport, on my way to you. I need a meet. I’m arriving tomorrow night, your time. Where can we meet?”

“We can’t discuss whatever this is about on the phone when you get here?”

“Absolutely not.”

“It can’t wait until day after tomorrow?”

“If need be but I’d prefer to speak to you sooner if possible.”

“You headin’ here for any other reason?”

“No.”

“Email your flight details to my receptionist. We’ll pick you up.” I gave him the email address.

I had no clue what this was about. Stan and my uncle had a friendship that went back decades. I had s**t to do, I was busy, but this sounded like something that needed my attention. Yet another axe about to fall, I could just feel it. But I had no idea how big that axe was until Stan arrived and spilled the beans about my birthday gift.

** ** **

At 9:30 the next night, Dex, a buddy and someone who worked for us doing security and other errands, brought Stan to my place. My place was a condo downtown, had been for the past few weeks, just a five minute walk from the Clarke Enterprises office.

I told him to wait out front and to drive Stan back to his hotel afterwards. I poured Stan a drink and invited him to sit.

“I’m a busy man. I know you are as well. You spent almost a whole day on a plane to come here unannounced for something clearly pretty important. Lay it on me.”

“Your apartment, when was the last time it was swept?”

He was talking about surveillance devices.

“It’s clean,” I told him.

“Guaranteed?” he prodded.

I raised a brow at him, “You don’t know me real well, Stan, but if I say it’s clean, it’s clean. I do not talk out of my a*s.”

“Apologies. There are a few matters we need to discuss about business ventures of Tom’s overseas that he had me help him with. I’ll need some direction in a few areas from you and your brother. On top of that and most pressing, your uncle, rest his soul, my sincere condolences, he bought something for you before he died and paid me handsomely to arrange it. He said it was a birthday gift. Happy belated. The gift is something less than above board so I need to be cautious. Very cautious.”

I gave the guy the once over. He was a tall, thin, gray-haired, and 60ish with a receding hairline and a ruddy complexion. He looked totally respectable. He was anything but. He had handled some shady-as-f**k s**t in Thailand and that part of the world for my uncle. I didn’t know all of what they got up to but we were replaceing out that uncle had a lot goin’ on that he’d never briefed my brother or me about. He had a small import/export business and it was mostly a front for a lot of imports and exports that weren’t exactly legit and he dabbled in some not-so-legal areas in several countries, too.

“I don’t know how knowledgeable you are about a certain private resort your uncle profited and partook from.” He said this cautiously.

“Unfortunately, Stan, it seems that me and my brother were not nearly as knowledgeable as we should have been.”

“How can I reach your brother, by the way? I called his home but the number forwards to your office.”

“He’s on his honeymoon. You can speak to me about anything outstanding regarding my uncle’s affairs. Do you need something related to Azriel directly?”

“No, I can deal with you.”

“So, that pressing reason you’re here?”

“Right.” He sipped his drink, “We’ll deal with the matter that impacts you the most first. Your, erm, birthday gift. Your uncle was rather involved with a certain secret exclusive club that involves entertaining men with females, or males if they prefer. Trained entertainment.” He held up air quotes at the word entertainment, “I’m not sure if you’re aware of the association.”

“Trained females?”

“Let’s call a spade a spade, Drake. I’ll stop beating around the bush.”

“Please do.” Like I’ve got all f*****g night to play guessing games.

“Your uncle was part owner in a resort, an extremely exclusive resort. That resort has human assets on site for erm… entertainment, but occasionally pairs men or sometimes women who want trained slaves… to take off-site. Pairs them with the type of slave they desire. Your uncle partook. He decided to have one of those assets transferred to you before he died. He told me when he arranged it that it was to be a surprise birthday gift for you and that you’d marry her. That transaction is nearly ready. It just needs a few details from you for that order to be completed. This was a big deal for the resort to do. It was only due to Tom’s perceived value to this organization that he was able to acquire this specific asset for you. Perhaps you or your brother should speak to your uncle’s business partners at this club in order to determine the best way to move forward with the partnership in Tom’s absence.”

“My uncle arranged a slave for me for my birthday?”

“Yes.”

“My uncle arranged for me to be given a slave? To keep. To marry.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t want it.” I shot up to my feet. The conversation I’d had with him about the mail order bride came over me then. No fuckin’ way. I knew that he knew people who profited from human trafficking. I knew nothing about a resort, knew he did a little business linked with that trade, but did not know he was a partner.

To order a slave for me when I’d joked about wanting a mail order bride? My uncle had been getting increasingly irrational in the months before he died. How in a million years could he think I’d been cool with this?

“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as declining the gift.”

“I don’t fuckin’ want it.” I started to pace.

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