Reckoning Read online

He chuckled at the irony of her last statement. Famous last words. He couldn’t believe how much fun it would be to end this at the right moment. It would be rather poetic in a sense, the way he felt.

  He moved his hand to her hip, holding her down so he could keep control over how he wanted to have his way with her. She tried to protest, which only turned him on more, as she moaned loudly and dug her nails into his lower back. He groaned, grabbing her hands with his, pinning them above her head, glaring down at her, daring her to try to resist again. The evil look in his eyes didn’t deter Tori one bit; she kept her stun gun under one of the pillows to reach for in case the situation turned crazy.

  He slipped his fingers between their sweaty bodies, stroking her clit to change whatever thoughts that were going through her head at the moment. He didn’t want her thinking that she was in imminent danger until it was too late. He noticed her catch her breath as he slammed deep, watching her eyes narrow as she tried to ignore her body’s attempt to tell her that he was bigger than they originally thought. He kept her hands pinned with one of his massive paws, using the other to pull and pinch her nipples, making sure not to ignore either one, taking great delight in watching her squirm.

  He thrust deeper, this time with purpose. This was the crescendo, the climax he wanted to experience before he finally completed his task. At this point, he no longer cared if DNA was found on her anymore; he wanted the authorities to know who did this. In fact, the knowledge that one person in particular knew what he’d done was enough to take his high to heights that he had no idea was possible. He nearly forgot that he needed to release her to grab the knife he’d saved for the final slice.

  Tori was so far gone, she was completely oblivious to what was happening around her. She lost herself in the rhythm, lifting her hips off the ground to match his strokes, reaching out to him to pull him deeper so she could get off one more time. She couldn’t speak; her words were reduced to a series of sighs and screams, her eyes closed as she concentrated on her pending series of deaths that she had no choice but to die, no matter how badly she willed her body to hold out until she was ready.

  Unfortunately, she also wasn’t ready for the blade plunging deep into her chest cavity.

  Her body reacted slowly to the unexpected, and deadly, change of events, still going through the throes of orgasm as the pain/pleasure centers in her brain couldn’t decipher that she was in danger. The slice across her throat was more pronounced; it had her attention, but it was too late.

  She gurgled, struggling to breathe, all while he continued to pound away inside her, the dispassionate look in his eyes proving to be the last thing that she would see before the life drained from her body. The sadistic pleasure he’d gotten, complete with mixing his semen with the blood that stained the sheets, should have sated his thirst to fulfill his quest to avenge his former owner.

  Instead, in his mind, it simply ignited something much more insidious.

  The reckoning was not complete. His nemesis had not suffered enough.

  ELEVEN

  In order for me to figure out if Kraven was who I needed to focus on as a primary person of interest, I needed to find out more about him.

  In the Information Age, that was as easy as performing a few simple keystrokes. Well, for normal people, anyway. In my instance, having a high GCIC clearance was beneficial on levels that the average civilian wouldn’t have a clue about. It allowed me to peek a bit deeper into the things that average people couldn’t see, nor should they have that ability to.

  Ramesses had his sources, too, and together we were able to put together a profile to get a better and more comprehensive look at Mr. Segal. He reached out into areas I didn’t know he had influence in, which was impressive—and equally disturbing. I made a mental note not to get on his bad side and try to disappear; watching him work would have scared even the most ardent conspiracy theorist.

  By the time we were done with the profile, I’d almost wished we hadn’t bothered in the first place.

  How in the hell was a man in his late fifties able to have this type of paper trail, business and criminal, and still have the type of reputation—speckled and sketchy, of course, but it was also polarizing—that still had him recognized as a pillar of the community was beyond my understanding. I flipped through the pages like I should have been building a case on his prior crimes alone, if the statutes hadn’t already run out.

  As it turned out, Mr. Segal had been in trouble with the law off and on since his youth. It wasn’t big-time criminalities like robbery or grand theft auto or anything like that, but it was a series of criminal mischief charges that somehow got reduced from felonies to misdemeanors, with the arrests all but wiped from the perfunctory searches that businesses usually conduct whenever they were looking at a prospective employee. However, a cross-reference of the judges in those particular cases made it disturbingly obvious as to how all of that was accomplished: his father was a State Superior Court judge in his home state of Oregon.

  Back in those days, according to Ramesses’s father, you could get away with a lot if you had the right connections, especially since there were no such things as computers or electronic filing systems back then. It was nothing to have paperwork somehow get misplaced or outright disappear, the proverbial shrug in response to the question of the actual whereabouts of said paperwork. That gave me pause as to what the elder Mr. Segal had covered up for his son.

  Fast-forwarding to his mid-twenties, and Segal had found the kink community in northern California during the late seventies after he relocated after college, where he attended Stanford University and picked up his business degree. He managed to settle into the Oakland/San Francisco area and set up shop, trying to get a couple of businesses off the ground, using his inheritance as seed money. From a kink perspective, he’d managed to create the first of three scene aliases that he went by: Master Invictus.

  He’d managed to make a name for himself, and that’s not exactly a good thing. It wasn’t completely a bad thing, but there was a pattern that was established that had the entire community up in arms. However, he’d managed to develop enough connections that he’d done right by to serve as his trumpeters and insulated “yes people,” making him even more of a polarizing figure, both in business and in kink. He still turned into a shrewd businessman, but by the time he’d left the area, he’d had several accusations of false imprisonment and a few charges of unsavory business practices that left a few investors broke and destitute.

  Needless to say, there were a few people that did what they could to find him and ruin his reputation, wherever he managed to land. In fact, there were some that nearly made it their primary task to find out where he surfaced, if for no other reason than to get the word out about the things he did in California.

  While there was a gap in his kink history for about ten years until he resurfaced in Houston, his business profile had managed to expand quite a bit, branching out into real estate via flipping houses and other investments. He’d amassed a fortune thanks to those business interests, eventually settling out of court with his former business partners in the Bay area. The diligent effort managed to work after all, at least from a business perspective; kink-wise, he’d become a ghost of sorts, as no one knew who he was when he moved to Houston.

  Segal might have had the last laugh, though. The settlement came with cease-and-desist defamation letters that kept them from speaking his name or discussing their connection to him to anyone. Smart move, but there was a loophole around that particular document, especially when matter of criminal justice were concerned.

  He managed to keep quiet in Houston for a couple of years, going by the scene name of Master Tiernan, but his old habits in the Bay began to show themselves in time. Several women had begun to surface, each with a story of false imprisonment and being duped out of their money while investing in his newly created entertainment company. He’d leveraged this venture against his more legitimate businesses to create a sense of credibility.
The entertainment company, which was supposed to be an independent film endeavor, didn’t exist, and he used it to lure different women to engage in scenes that he would purportedly send to Silicon Valley for production and hopefully pitch to the larger porn studios.

  Wearing out his welcome in Houston, he cut his losses and fled the city and the kink scene in the same manner as he’d done in California. He hadn’t left Texas completely empty-handed, though; he now had a blushing bride, known in the local community as a switch by the name of solara. She changed her name at his direction, becoming a Domina by the name of Mistress Lohyna.

  Their next destination landed them here in Atlanta, but that happened after an odyssey through the Mediterranean, including a two-year stint in Italy in an effort to have memories fade and grievances forgotten. It was interesting to have to go through InterPol to see what he’d been up to out there, but the interesting thing was that there was no hints of wrongdoings that occurred while he and Lohyna were in Italy. My guess was that he needed to make sure Lohyna was well insulated from whatever it was that he had planned for when they would return to the States.

  Of course, these were simply observations, nothing more, but my observations were rarely too far off the mark. Like I said, I was damn good at what I did.

  They were pretty quiet for the first few years, as Segal came back from Europe with a new outlook on things, and a new scene name: Master Kraven. Of course, old habits died hard, only this time, Kraven’s desires—with his wife now in the mix—evolved into possessing multiple submissives to “share” with Lohyna, not unlike a couple whom he’d met while getting acclimated to the city. Although Lohyna was the elder in chronological years when it came to Neferterri, she’d found herself wanting to emulate the well-respected Lady of Kemet-Ka.

  Before long, they were balancing their play scenes with different submissives with a new wrinkle: becoming BDSM class facilitators and presenters throughout the East Coast and the Midwest; ironically the areas of the country where they didn’t incur a bad reputation.

  The new strategy would have worked, except Kraven got greedy, and the pattern repeated itself in time. Before they knew it, they’d become as polarizing of figures within the Atlanta community as Kraven had been in his other two locales. There was no gray area with them; they were either hated or loved. The pressure became so intense and public opinion was so jaded that Lohyna was forced to see her husband for what his reputation was. All those years in Houston and the things he was accused of here in Atlanta, it became more and more difficult to withstand the onslaught, no matter what the excuses and explanations her husband could come up with to stem the accusations.

  Between his penchant for women of color and his unscrupulous dealings that made him wealthy that she could no longer tolerate, she filed for separation about a year ago, intent on distancing herself from him and hoping to forge her own path, devoid of drama and controversy. Before long, she managed to live a reclusive lifestyle, only coming out for events and engagements that were near and dear to her. If the mood struck, she would have select people come to her home for lavish private parties to satisfy her bouts of cabin fever.

  She probably would have been able to continue living like that, if it weren’t for her own desires for submissives of color, regardless of gender. It would be impossible to be a hermit and still be able to attract and assume dominion over anyone.

  Ramesses had found out that they had been unknowingly sharing a rather new and relatively unknown submissive who went by the name of diamante. While she went by that name publicly, Kraven changed her name to heaven; that was a name only he called her, although he was unaware of her public name, since she was extremely private about any pictures getting out into the social media platforms. It was that duality that Kendyl Ashton created that got her caught up and in her current predicament.

  “I’ll be damned.” Ramesses shook his head as we poured over the information. If someone didn’t know where to look or what to look for, they would completely miss the trail. He almost felt the need to admonish himself for being so sloppy. “I would have never done business with this nut if I’d known all of this.”

  “He hid his tracks pretty well, Sir.” I continued to run through the paperwork, coming up on some extremely well-hidden information that I didn’t think anyone—including his wife—would have ever had the thought to uncover. This new revelation was too wild to believe, and I couldn’t believe that Kraven would have been so sloppy to have this come to light. “Now I see how he was able to get away with so much bullshit.”

  “What have you turned up?”

  “Kraven isn’t Kraven.”

  “Wait a minute, what did you just say?”

  I rubbed my eyes to read the information. I had to be sure I wasn’t seeing things. “Kraven changed his facial features; not once, but twice.”

  Ramesses paused for a moment to let that tidbit sink in. Without warning, he slammed his hand against the desktop. “So, that’s how he was able to get away with everything so far. No one would have thought to dig this deep, nor would they have had the resources. As long as he didn’t raise too many red flags, there would have been no need to.”

  “Well, there would have been no need to. He disappeared for years before reinserting himself into a new community. Think about it; he’d amassed his fortune before he got to Houston, cashing out and paying off the business partners he had in Cali,” I pointed out. “Lohyna might not even know who she was dealing with, but she wouldn’t have cared anyway; as long as he didn’t cross her, why would she care about some unfounded claims in her eyes?”

  I understood his irritation; Ramesses was careful, bordering on the paranoid, when it came to his business dealings. Allowing a wild card like Segal could prove problematic, especially since his history had proven that he had the propensity to employ a “scorched earth” policy before relocating. “Maybe she might be willing to talk? We could flip her against her husband?”

  “Perhaps we could; Lohyna has been an admirer of yours for a while now.” He gave me a curious look, which had me on the defensive quickly. He read my body language, putting his hand up to try to calm me down. “She’s not on that cougar kick, partner; she has taken notice of how you have been with your girls, and considering how her estranged husband acted before she left him, you might be able to get something out of her with very little trouble.”

  Hearing that perspective settled me down a bit. It was nice to be considered attractive when the women were your age or younger, but it was quite another when the women were knocking on sixty, even if Lohyna could put women in their thirties to shame.

  “Okay, I’ll check her out, see if she might have something we can use against Kraven.” I tapped fists with him as I headed out the door. “She might be the angle we need to sort a few things out.”

  To say Mistress Lohyna was a free spirit was an understatement.

  I had to wonder if I was in the right place when I pulled up to her house in the Virginia Highlands neighborhood. It was a polar opposite of her old life with Kraven; I suspected that was done on purpose, considering she was entitled to half of his fortune once the divorce was finalized. She almost had me convinced she was a gypsy, and once she opened the door to let me in, her stature and appearance did nothing to dispel those suspicions.

  She was as exotic as her scene name suggested; there was Creole in her features, and she was in extremely great shape. It wasn’t enough to change my mind, of course, but she looked damn good.

  “So, Dominic, to what do I owe the unexpected pleasure?” Lohyna offered me a seat out in her back porch area. The cool breeze was a welcome feeling; considering the heat we had been dealing with the past few weeks, it felt like the proper backdrop for the type of conversation we were about to engage in. She gave me an inquisitive look, trying to figure out why I was there. “When Ramesses called to let me know You were coming, I didn’t know what to think.”

  “My Lady, I wish this were a more pleasant visit, but
I have questions to ask about—”

  “My sorry excuse for a soon-to-be ex-husband.” It looked like her easy-breezy attitude had nearly come to a screeching halt at the mere mention of his name. “Let Me guess, there’s something else that Neal’s done within the community? What did He do this time?”

  “Yes, my Lady, there is something that He’s been connected to, I’m afraid.” There was no sugarcoating this scenario. She had to be told, if for nothing else, so she could prepare for the detectives who might come calling. “His name has come up as a person of interest in the disappearance and possible death of a submissive He was involved with. My Lady, I need to know: were You with Him in any capacity a couple of days ago, around ten o’clock?”

  Lohyna sat there a moment, trying to recall from that particular day. The more time she spent recalling that day, the more uncomfortable I became. She was trying to figure out what she wanted to conveniently forget. “I spent time with the ladies of BFD Atlanta, involved in a pretty interesting demo and discussion until sometime after eleven. Before that, I had dinner with a lovely girl who I might be taking an interest in pursuing. I think You’ll like her, Dominic; she’s a lot like Your girl, Niki.”

  I froze instantly; from the pictures that I’d seen of Kendyl, the one thing that struck me was the fact that she looked like one of Niki’s younger cousins. The coincidence couldn’t be more startling. It also couldn’t be more heartbreaking, either; what were the chances that two Dominants of opposite gender who have no contact with each other are involved with the same submissive?

  My next question felt like I was chewing on nails as I tried to form the words. “My Lady, would the girl in question go by the name of diamante?”

  Her eyes widened. She had no idea I would have been able to figure out who she was talking about based on her veiled description alone. The conclusion she drew nearly knocked her out of her chair. “My God…that son of a bitch. What did He do, Dominic? What did He do?”