“Shit.”
Sven looked over his shoulder to find Geoffrey sitting on the edge of the bed, his phone in his hand. “What’s wrong?”
“I totally forgot to plug in my phone last night. The battery is completely dead.”
“Where’s your charging cable?”
“There’s one on my desk.”
“I’ll grab it on my way to the kitchen.”
“Thanks,” Geoffrey said, flashing him a wide grin before scurrying off to the bathroom.
As soon as Sven could bring himself to stop watching Geoffrey’s ass, he cursed himself. He hadn’t plugged in his phone either. Last place he’d even seen it had been the kitchen counter. If he missed an important call from work about Geoffrey’s case, he’d never forgive himself. He needed to focus on his job while Geoffrey was still in danger. When this bastard was finally caught, he could lose himself in daydreams about Geoffrey’s blue eyes and the sweetness of his smile.
Pausing in the office, he grabbed the charging cable but the cord scattered some of the papers. As he reached to put them back as they were, his eye snagged on the name of a local children’s foundation that helped kids who had been abused. Sven was familiar with the group because it had been one of the beneficiaries of Lucas Vallois’s Christmas gala in December. He had worked it along with all the other available Ward Security employees. While it had not been a great night, Sven had enjoyed seeing Geoffrey in his tuxedo.
Now he found himself staring at an effusive note from the director of the charity, thanking Geoffrey for his donation of $500,000 and promising to keep the donation anonymous. Sven hesitated, wanting to march straight into the bathroom and kiss Geoffrey, tell him that he was appreciated for his amazing generosity. But he put the papers back as they were and continued to the kitchen with the cable. Smart, sexy, funny, and generous…oh yeah, he was fucking screwed. He was sinking fast for Geoffrey and there was little to stop him.
He picked up his own phone as he walked to the coffeemaker, but stopped after a couple of steps as he spotted the flurry of texts that had already poured in from Quinn and Gidget over the past hour. Something had blown up in the early morning hours. Something about a video. The texts didn’t make much sense. What wasn’t pure cursing from Quinn was pure gibberish from Gidget about the video being scrubbed of tags and other useful markers.
Using Geoffrey’s cable, Sven plugged his phone in before the battery gave out and then pulled up a social media app. There was no need to do any searches for Geoffrey’s account or any of Geoffrey’s friends’ accounts. The video in question immediately popped up at the top of his feed because the damn thing already had more than ten thousand views and hundreds of comments.
Dread filled Sven’s stomach, turning the joy he’d felt just minutes ago into a lead weight. He pushed play on the screen and a second later Geoffrey’s slurred voice cut through the silence of the house.
“No. Please. Don’t. I just wanna sleep,” Geoffrey pleaded on the video. Those soft, pained words cut through Sven, leaving behind a massive swell of rage. His hands tightened on the phone until the plastic creaked under his fingers in protest. He was watching a video taken by Geoffrey’s stalker.
Geoffrey lay in his bed naked except for a pair of loose silk boxers. His eyes were barely open as if he was fighting to stay awake. A hand reached into the view of the video, but the person had manipulated the image so that the hand was pixelated so badly there were no identifying marks. He couldn’t even guess the skin color or gender.
The hand touched Geoffrey’s stomach, dragging fingers down his skin. Sven wanted to smash his phone against the wall, but he forced himself to watch as Geoffrey ineffectively swatted at the hand, trying to get the person to stop touching him.
“No. Leave me alone,” he said, the words running together so that it was barely understandable, but the “no” was damn clear. So was Geoffrey’s growing distress.
“What the fuck is that?” Geoffrey demanded.
Sven’s head snapped up to find Geoffrey standing in the middle of the living room, his face incredibly pale and every muscle in his body painfully stiff.
His heart screamed to shut down the video, break all the phones and computers in the house. He never wanted Geoffrey to see this, to know that he’d been exposed in such an ugly, vulnerable moment to the world. But he had to.
“The stalker hacked your social media account and posted a video…a video of you…from that night.”
As the Geoffrey on the video said “no” again, Geoffrey lurched into motion, entering the kitchen. Sven reluctantly set his phone on the island and stepped back so that Geoffrey could approach. His hands shook as he picked up the phone and watched. Sven carefully placed his hands on Geoffrey’s shoulders and gently squeezed, trying to reassure him that he was not alone.