~ ~ Zack ~ ~

I bypassed the shiny black mailbox, slowing down my car so I could take the turn off the country road.

Coasting forward a bit, I stopped and lowered my window at the code box and entered the four-digit number that would grant my passage through the double iron gates.

I was here.

I'd never been here before but I heard whispers about the place.

Shit-dark shit went on here far beyond the realm of kink. To dark even for my blackened soul.

Pulling up to the old dwelling, I cut the engine and stepped out of my car and looked up.

It was an impressive building-more like a mansion. Long drapes covered the rows of French windows and from here it was impossible to see inside.

But I doubted they wanted anyone to see inside.

Heading up to the front door, I glanced down at the mat gracing the doorstep. 'Welcome All' it said.

I smirked maybe it should have said. "Welcome! We're thrilled you're here... but don't get too comfortable, we have a 'killer' sense of hospitality!"

I shook my head and pressed the doorbell.

I was about to press it again when it opened to reveal a man I'd met many years ago. Jagger Knight or JK to me.

"Zack," he greeted in a gruff voice.

Under any circumstances, JK was an impressive man. His eyes were the colour of a shiny penny, hair a darker shade of cinnamon. Our tanned skin and height of six-two were parallel, and really the only similarities we shared appearance-wise.

My hair was black, eyes an unmatched hue of grey. I tended to be clean-shaven, occasionally sporting some stubble whereas JK always had a beard.

For a time we had aligned perfectly in every way that mattered, well, apart from our professions and hobbies.

I enjoyed kink. JK enjoyed kink with a side order of killing. Not that I was one to judge.

"You found me."

I glanced behind me. "It's off the beaten track."

He smirked standing there wearing a plastic coverall which had splashes of what looked like dried blood.

"Come. This way."

Stepping over the threshold. "How's business?" I asked.

There was an elongated pause "Productive."

JK was a man of few words.

Through many rooms and down winding corridors I followed until he stopped in front of an unassuming black wooden door. He tapped in a six-digit number on a keypad and locked clicked. On the other side was a narrow staircase. Right on his heels and halfway down the steps, a smell smacked me in the face, making my eyes water. Bleach. But under the strong layer of bleach something else hid.

JK read my mind. "We try our best to keep the holding area clean," he said, breathing through it with ease. "I barely notice the stench of shit, piss and vomit anymore."

Lucky him. My nose scrunched up and my brows pinched. Maybe if you were here long enough you might get used to it.

At the bottom of the steps, I looked around. Cages or holding cells lined either side of the room. Fourteen in total and each filled with a person. None of them made a sound, their stares were vacant and their postures slumped. Most likely drugged to the eyeballs. But I felt no pity. Every person that ended up here was through their own doing.

Each had sinned.

JK looked over his shoulder, his copper eyes hooked mine. "If you keep holding your breath like that, you'll pass out."

"I'm not holding my breath." I lied. "I'm thinking."

"If that's the result of your deep thoughts, I'd suggest leaving the thinking to someone else. Like a goldfish. They forget in three seconds, and they still manage to look happier than you."

I laughed despite my rising nausea. Asshole. And what was that about me saying he was a man of few words?

"Wow, did you accidentally take the 'verbose' pill today? Or did you finally discover the power button for your vocal cords?"

He chuckled and flipped me the bird before saying, "We're in this room."

I started to follow but my footsteps stopped as a sob filled the room and I looked to see a woman who had a striking resemblance to an actress who had been accused of a hit and run of a ten-year-old boy a few years back. She had been wasted on drugs and alcohol but got off on a technicality.

"Is that-?"

"Yes," he answered before I finished asking.

I followed him into a smaller room. It had white walls, and white floors even the multiple cameras dotted around the room were white.

And in the middle of the room was a reconstructed dental chair (also white) and sitting in it was a man I recognised even though he was dirty and sporting about three days' worth of stubble.

That motherfucker. Abdelkabir Tahiri.

The man who had hurt Sasha to the extent I only fully realised when I saw how she reacted when she thought it was him touching her that night.

My guts twisted in themselves and this time it had nothing to do with the smell.

I should have ended his miserable life when we rescued her. But I was a man of my word. He however hadn't listened and I'd also been made aware of a handful of more young women he'd held against their will and raped and tortured all under the guise of Kink.

The fucker deserved everything he had coming.

JK walked over to a white table and surveyed its contents picking up a pair of scissors.

I watched on in silence, now fully invested in seeing where JK was going with all of this. Using the scissors he cut off Addi's dirty shirt from his body. I smiled to see the words I'd carved into his chest were still visible.

As JK cut away his pants, Tahiri began to regain lucidity.

"W-what are you doing?" he stuttered, "The fuck is this?" His gruff voice pitched to an irritatingly screech-like sound, arms straining against the leather restraint keeping him in place.

"Panicking will only make this worse," JK stated.

Tahiri spied me and his face hardened. "Am I here because of you and that American slut?"

My hands clenched into fists. "I would advise against speaking."

I looked at JK whose face was now blank when he asked. "How do you want this done? Disposed of?"

"Slowly," I replied matter-of-factly.

"W-what!? You can't kill me..." Those whimpered words slipped through busted lips. The sound was amusing-a little whimsical-and I smiled at him.

"If you believe in any God. I would pray right about now." Not that it would do any good.

JK went back to his table and picked up a scalpel. "We shall start with the eyelids. Wouldn't want him to miss a thing."

My cell began to ring, slicing through our conversation. I withdrew it from my pocket, holding a finger up when I saw the name on the screen.

I'd been waiting for this call. Adrian Sorrance. A man who had the means to acquire information on anyone for a price. "Hello," I turned around and walked out of the room, listening as Adrian filled me in on Ryan's ex-wife, Helena. I'd contacted him as soon as my call with Ryan had ended on Wednesday.

The few minutes it took me to make it outside into the sunlight told me everything. This was about money. But I didn't understand where Sasha's engagement came into play because I was sure it had something to do with it.

Finishing the call, I texted my pilot to tell him I would be there in two hours.

JK joined me outside.

"Tell me it's not over already."

He chuckled. "The fun hasn't even started."

"Sadly I can't stay. I'm expected in the US."

"I can send you a souvenir."

"No. I trust you to make it slow and painful."

JK moved to stand in front of me, the sunlight hugged his broad shoulders and projected a halo around his head making him almost look angelic-almost.

"Are you sure I can't offer you anything?" The price tag for his services started around two hundred grand but JK had said he wanted nothing from me. I would have happily paid whatever he asked. It was money well spent.

"Your ass is tempting," he said without a hint of seriousness.

"You know I don't bottom."

"Now we both know that's not entirely true," he remarked, flashing me a smile that almost made me take a step back.

JK was undeniably handsome, and his smile belied the darkness lurking beneath the surface. And unlike most people, whose eyes revealed their true selves. His merely said, which side of the bed do you prefer?

But he was also correct. I had been fucked, once. By him.

"Maybe in another lifetime."

His smile morphed into something very different... dangerous. "Well, until that time. I hope I can be of use again in this one."

I had a weird feeling that it might be sooner than we both expected.

~ ~

It was just past midnight when I was staring out onto the LA landscape from Ryan's office.

I turned when I heard him come in. "Has anyone offered you a drink?" he asked, coming toward me. He hugged me patting my back firming in a way that straight guys did. "Sorry my meeting should have ended two hours ago."

It wasn't unusual for Ryan to work an eighteen hour day. "Don't stress it. I've not long got here."

He stepped back and I took my first good look at him. It had been several months since I'd last seen him.

He looked fucking rough.

"Drink?" he repeated walking to his desk. He sat down and opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of Macallan.

"No. I'm good." I watched him pour a large measure and take the bottle and glass with him to his large corner sofa.

He knocked back the first glass and then poured another.

"What's going on Ryan?"

I walked over but didn't sit.

"She took to money like fish to water. She soaked up the lifestyle like a sponge."

He was talking about Helena.

"Why has she come back now?" I already knew. Money, that, and she'd got herself mixed up with the wrong kind of people.

"The only reason she would come back," he scoffed. "To bleed me dry," he said, confirming my suspicions after what Adrain had told me.

"And I'm thinking she wants you to bail her out of whatever shit she's got herself into?"

He looked sombre. "She wants it all. Everything."

I pulled my head back confused. "What. Is she on fucking drugs?" That fucking cheek of the woman. "She deserves nothing."

"Technically, she still owns half of it."

They had started his company up together. "What!? Why wasn't this sorted in the divorce?"

"We're not divorced."

Fuck me.

"Tell her to go fuck herself." I couldn't understand why he hadn't already.

He rubbed a hand across his forehead. "She's threatened to tell Sasha..." he stopped

"Tell Sasha what?"

He went dead silent scraping his hand across his square jaw. "Tell her that I'm not her biological father."

Jesus. "Fuck, Ryan. How long have you known?"

"The day she was born I turned up at the hospital to find her and some guy arguing. Turned out she was blackmailing him so she wouldn't tell his wife or the world what a piece of shit he was."

"Who? Who was the guy?"

"Peter Townley."

"The fucking senator?"

Fuck. He was the lowest of the low. Made JK look an upstanding citizen in comparison.

"Why have you never told Sasha?"

He put the glass on the table then rested his forearms on his spread thighs, his head dipping a little. "She may not be my flesh and blood but she's mine. My daughter."

He lifted his head and his eyes were filled with absolution. "From the moment I saw her, held her, I knew. She's my daughter, no matter what. I've raised her, loved her, watched her grow. Blood doesn't change that. She's everything to me, and I won't let anyone, especially that manipulative bitch, upset her. Destroy what she and I have."

Ryan was a good man. He'd pulled me out of some stupid shit in the past, and my dad before me. Ryan fixed things. He was good at fixing things.

So this surprised me.

"How does this tie into the engagement? Because you can't tell me Sasha's in love with some guy." Whoever the fuck he was.

"Jarrod Collins. The guy. He made me an offer a year back to buy me out because of my ties with certain families." He was talking about the Mafia. Ryan fixed things for a family on the West Coast and two more families in Europe. "He's young and wants to buy himself a seat at the big-boys table." Ryan huffed. "Kid hasn't a fucking clue and I did him a favour saying no."

"I'm still not following."

"He and Helena made a deal. He gets the company and Sasha for the right price of course." He clenched his jaw. "Apparently, he's in love with her."

What the fuck!?

He couldn't fucking have her. She was mine. "Tell me you're not onboard with this bullshit?"

"What. Fuck no." He shook his head. "If it comes to it. I'll speak with one of the families and get it sorted."

That wasn't good. You didn't want to owe any family a favour. It meant they owned you. But then it clicked; the reason he had asked me here.

"What do you need from me?"

"I think you know."

"You know what you are asking of me?"

"I do."

It seemed I would be seeing JK sooner than expected. But this would need to be handled differently. It would need to look like an accident or suicide.

Ryan couldn't fix this. He would be the first person they questioned. The Fed already took an interest in him because of his affiliations and business dealings.

"You know I would fix this..." He looked guilty. "But it's still her mother," he said the word mother like it burned his tongue. "Even though she's had fuck-all to do with her all these years."

"I'll do it, but I want something from you."

"Anything. What?"

Anything? He might reconsider when he knew what I wanted. "I want your blessing."

Looking confused he asked. "Blessing for what?" He placed his empty glass on the table.

"When Sasha was in London. She stayed with me. She was my submissive."

I didn't need to spell anything out. Ryan was a Dom. A Daddy-Dom.

Ryan's face went a shade of red which was new to me. The veins in his neck bulged.

"Did you and her?" Ryan's voice was a low growl, dangerous and trembled with barely restrained rage.

"Yes. I slept with her."

Before I could react, Ryan launched himself off the sofa, a primal roar tore from his throat as he barrelled into me, almost knocking us over. I barely had time to brace myself before his fists started flying.

The first punch connected with my nose, a sickening crunch echoing in the room as blood spurted out. My head snapped back, but Ryan didn't pause. His left hook followed swiftly, a fierce swing aimed at my face.

I twisted, trying to avoid the full blow, but his fist still caught me, landing a hit near my eye. Pain radiated through my skull, and I felt the bruise already forming under the skin.

Ryan was relentless, his rage driving him forward, each punch fuelled by betrayal and protectiveness for his daughter.

I didn't fight back. I let him get a few good hits welcoming the pain and the taste of blood in my mouth. I'd hurt Sasha and if I was looking for absolution-redemption for my past mistakes—this was the start.

"How could you?" Ryan's voice was raw, each word punctuated with another swing. "She's my daughter you piece of shit! My fucking daughter!"

The next punch came in, and I caught his wrist, twisting and flipping us around to press him against the wall with his arm now halfway up his back. I held him there as his face twisted to lie flat on the wall. I leaned in close, my breath heavy. "I'm not sorry." My voice was steady despite the chaos. "I think I love her."

He stopped moving, becoming stiff as his anger mingled with shock. "You what?" he spat.

"I think I love her, Ryan," I repeated, pressing into him.

"Get the fuck off me," he snarled.

I let go and pushed off him. Two steps back I straightened my jacket before swiping the blood from my nose. "I'll take that drink now."

Ryan flipped around and stomped past me slamming into my shoulder on the way by. He swiped his glass from the table and poured himself another large one and then tossed the bottle to me. I caught it, letting the weight of the situation sink in. I also remembered he kept a gun in desk drawer and this could still end up with me with a bullet through my skull.

Ryan glared at me whilst I drank straight from the bottle.

"You think you love her? Are you even capable of love, Zack?" He demanded, his voice sharp, like a shard of glass, as he tightened his grip on the glass until it shattered in his hand, the fragments slicing into his skin and drawing blood.

I winced, not at the sight of blood, no. It was the emotions riding over his face-shock, disgust, and a shit-load of defiance as he stared back at me

But I understood how it looked to him. Ryan was one of the few people who knew the shit-show of my childhood. When my parents divorced, my mother got custody. Hating my father, I spent two years in a living hell with a mentally unstable woman.

If she hadn't tried to kill us both by driving her car into a river, no one would ever have known the abuse I suffered.

She died that day, and I was seven at the time.

"Look," Ryan continued, his tone slightly softer but still intense. "I know how hard it was with your mother, and then your father... he was a good man but couldn't show love." He heaved a sigh. "You'll never be able to give Sasha what she needs. She deserves love, Zack. Fuck. She deserves everything."

He was right about my father. What he lacked in affection he made up for in teaching me how to look after myself, both physically mentally and emotionally.

His motto was... 'Guard your heart fiercely son, for it beats for you alone. Protect it, because it takes a second to break and a lifetime to fix.'

In hindsight, I had internalised this advice, shutting off a part of myself, and creating barriers even within the kink lifestyle where I indulged but held back from emotions.

Looking back, it was also clear I had confused love with infatuation in my past relationships with Tabitha and Nathaniel.

However, what I felt for Sasha... and Ellis was different, I would go as far as to say, profound... for me, anyway.

I took a deep breath, I wouldn't argue with anything he said. It was true. "I get that. I do. But I'm selfish where Sasha is concerned." And Ellis too. "I want her in my life, Ryan."

I was confessing all this in the hope that I had something to salvage. Sasha might not forgive me, even knowing the truth.

Ryan's eyes drilled into mine, still sceptical. "I won't let you hurt her, Zack." Ryan looked at his hand and plucked out a shard of glass. "However, she's an adult. I won't ever take her choices away from her, despite what she thinks of me right now."

"I know," I said, nodding.

Ryan shook his head, still visibly upset. "I can't get my head around it...You, her."

"I understand your doubts," I said firmly. "But give me a few days, and I'll handle the Helena problem. It'll be my way of proving I'm serious."

And even if Sasha told me to go fuck myself, then at least I'd done one thing to protect her. Ryan was her father. She didn't need to know any different.

And if that made me an even bigger cunt, then so be it.

Ryan nodded once, a silent agreement passing between us, even as the tension was still strung tight as a noose.

~ ~

A/N: Just a heads up. I will not post on Wednesday, I'm trying to finish up my other story so it will be later in week. Most likely the weekend.