37

Rylee came out of the bathroom smoothing her dress down and pushed past me, not even noticing me as she stumbled past. I could smell the alcohol on her and I grabbed her arm just as the man stumbled out of the bathroom and I lost it.
I let go of her and lunged myself at the man, hitting him in the face. He went down and didn’t even put up a fight as I hit him repeatedly. When he was unconscious I was satisfied and stood up and Rylee just stood there looking at me, swaying on her feet.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her along, through the throng of people on the dance floor and to the outside where Max stood waiting by his car. I strapped her into the front seat of my car and turned towards Max.
“I’ll deal with you tomorrow,” I said and climbed in my car.
I drove home and I couldn’t even look at her as she rested her head against the window. She had her eyes closed and I could smell him all over her. I parked the car and I saw that she was in no condition to walk into the house by herself.
I threw her over my shoulder as she started to giggle and walked inside the house. Rev and Hannah looked at me quizzically as I walked past the living room. I just shook my head as I headed upstairs and dumped Rylee on the sofa.
“I can still smell them all over you,” she said drunkenly.
“Go shower you smell like a cheap whore,” I said to her.
“Fuck you Lucas, you go shower because you smell like a cheap whore,” she replied and laughed again.
I pulled her up by her arm and took her dress off and pushed her into the shower and switched the water on. I got undressed and climbed into the shower with her and stood on the other side under the hot water.
I turned towards Rylee as she just stood there and I pulled her underwear off and threw them on the floor of the shower. I turned away again and started washing my hair. I felt her arms encircle my waist but I grabbed her hand when she started aiming lower.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I said to her and she looked at me frowning.
“I want you to touch me,” she said and pressed herself against me, slurring her words.
“I wouldn’t touch you with a borrowed dick at this stage,” I said and shut the water off. I dried off in the bathroom and pulled pajama bottoms on before climbing into bed. I heard Rylee a few minutes later as she stumbled into something and swore under her breath.
A few minutes later I could tell she was fast asleep and I got up again. I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the way I was feeling now. I went down the hall to my office and stared at the auction webpage. I printed out the photos of the girls on the auction site and started comparing them to the pictures of the missing girls I had compiled.
I had just finished my fourth cup of coffee as the sun rose when my office door opened and Rylee walked in rubbing her eyes. I closed the folder and looked at her as she made herself comfortable on the couch.
“You didn’t come to bed last night,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to share a bed with you after what you did,” I said to her icily.
“After what I did? What about what you did?” she asked pointedly.
“I didn’t do anything I regret,” I said to her.
“Of course you don’t regret it, you can do whatever the fuck you want and get away with it,” she said looking at me angrily.
“So what’s your excuse?” I asked her knowing exactly what she thought I did.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she said, “I had a drink at the bar.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I saw you Rylee, I beat the shit out of the man you came out of the bathroom with!” I yelled at her.
“I guess we’re even then,” she said and I could see in her eyes she had no idea what I was talking about. She didn’t even remember going into that bathroom with him and that just irked me more.
“The only difference is I didn’t fuck anyone else,” I said to her.
“I heard you and Tessa in here and then you ran off after her and brought her and some other whore back here,” she yelled at me.
“Assumptions is the mother of all fuck ups Rylee, what you heard was a video and I brought Tessa and her friend back here for their own safety,” I said to her and pressed play on the video and turned the laptop towards her.
Her eyes widened as she looked at the screen and then her eyes found mine. I hated her in that moment and if it wasn’t for the fact that we were married I would’ve thrown her out on her ass. I was itching to do it anyway but I knew I wouldn’t, no matter what she did, I would look after her.
“Get the fuck out of my office and away from me,” I said and turned the laptop back to face me.
“Lucas…” she said.
“Get the fuck out!” I yelled at her.
She stared at me for a few seconds and then she quietly left my office. I took a couple of deep breaths and when I was calmer I went to my room to get dressed. I needed to check on Nadia and Tessa and see if Nadia were up to answering a few questions.
I got dressed quietly and I didn’t look at Rylee where she was curled up on the sofa looking out of the window. I left the bedroom and I could hear her crying and in that moment it didn’t even bother me. I was still mad as hell at her.
Tessa was in the kitchen and I smelled bacon so I went to the kitchen first and sat down at the counter of the kitchen. Tessa smiled when she saw me and handed me a cup of coffee. I took it gratefully although I should probably cut back on coffee for the day.
“How is she?” I asked her.
“She’ll be okay I think, it’ll take some time but she likes Tina and she even agreed to come down for breakfast,” Tessa said.
“That’s really good, I was wondering if she was up to answering some questions,” I said to her.
“I’ll ask her when she comes down and tell her that you stopped by, for some reason she feels safe with you,” Tessa said.
“Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something else. There’s an auction site that’s going live in six days and we’re working on something to see how we can help the girls that are being sold. I want you to stay here permanently and help us to get these girls back to their families,” I said.
“Really? Me?” she asked.
“I watched you with Nadia yesterday, I think you’d be perfect for it. They’ll need assurances that we’re not going to hurt them, someone they can talk to and someone to sort of look after them until they leave here again,” I said.
“Wow Lucas, I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“Say you’ll do it, I know you want to,” I said and smiled.
“I do. I mean yes,” she said with a laugh.
“Great, I’ll have Rev come by and discuss the details with you about pay and so forth. Oh and I wanted to ask you to also maybe go shopping for Nadia, I noticed that she didn’t have much with her,” I said.
“She grabbed one bag when she left so that’ll be great,” she said and took my credit card I offered her.
“You’ve really changed a lot you know,” I said and she smiled shyly.
“So have you,” she said, “but I’m glad we can be friends again and work together.”
“Maybe try asking her who the people in the video are, the location of where she took that video and so forth, record her, that way she doesn’t have to talk to us, it might be easier on her,” I said and Tessa nodded.
“Do you think the video is related to the website?” she asked me.
“I think so because JD’s voice is on that video, he’s obviously the guy wearing the mask and JD told me about the auction site,” I said to her.
“Never in my life would I have thought that JD could be part of something like this,” she said.
“It’s no secret that I hate the McIntyre’s, but even this shocks me,” I said truthfully.
I finished my coffee and left the guest house, giving Tessa free reign over everything that needed to be done for Nadia and any other girls we might bring there. She promised to let me know the details of her conversation with Nadia and to keep me up to date with everything.
Jasper’s car pulled into the driveway as I stood on the steps and I walked forward to greet him. I was just thinking of how I would rope him into this with me because I knew I couldn’t do this alone. It was a fucked up situation to be caught in.
“Hey,” I said as he climbed out of his car.
“Hey yourself, thought I’d check in before heading home since you never arranged to meet,” Jasper said.
“Yeah sorry about that, things got a bit hectic here, come on in and I’ll tell you all about it,” I said.
He followed me to my office and I rang Martha for some more coffee. He pointedly told me that I looked like shit and then proceeded to tell me how his Friday night and Saturday went. I could only shake my head and laugh at his antics.
“So what’s really going on?” he asked me once Martha left.
“This is huge Jasper and it’s fucked up, like seriously over the top fucked up,” I said to him as I opened the file on my laptop.
I turned the laptop around and played the video for him. I saw the same emotions in his eyes as I did when Rev watched it for the first time. I told him about Nadia and Tessa and how we needed to do something and then I told him how I knew about the auction site.
“This is beyond fucked up Lucas,” he said as he sat back in his chair.
“This is what I’ve found so far. These girls all went missing within the last six months and these are the pictures of them I got from the auction site, they were sold last month,” I said to him and handed him the folder.
“So why don’t we just buy them all,” he said.
“That keeps them in business, I’ve thought of that, we need to do something else to make it harder for these guys to continue their operation,” I said to him.
“We need to also prove the McIntyre lair’s involvement, this is sick Lucas,” he said to me.
“I know but our first objective has to be to save these girls from being sold. The buyers range from twisted humans to vampires and wolves,” I said to him.
“We need to find out if any of these girls are dragonkin and if our people are involved in this shit and how the fuck Joseph McIntyre got involved in all this. I’m pretty sure some of those girls are dragonkin, that’s why they’re so young,” Jasper said and that thought hadn’t occurred to me.
“Could be but the real bitch in this whole operation is who to trust, who knows if other Sires are involved in this, perhaps even selling these girls to Joseph for a profit,” I said.
“I say we trust no one then, find a way to get these girls out,” he said.