Maybe just my saviour for the pay day.
I started when the door sounded, my breaths ragged as Rebecca came rushing back into the room with her arms across her chest. I could just about make out her features as she came and sat beside me on the mattress. There was a path of tears down her cheeks that were too fresh to have been from the broadcast.
“I wish I still smoked,” she spluttered, and managed a smile. “This stuff is so fucking hard, every single time. It’s not even just for the cameras. Some of them want so much off screen too, like I’m just a cheap slut to have their way with, whatever they want. Assholes.”
I didn’t have an answer, just did my best to give her a smile of solidarity and reached out to squeeze her hand.
“What did the boss man say to you earlier when he came calling? Where did he take you?” she prompted, and I felt embarrassed at the thought of telling her I’d been watching her through her performance with the three guys for the cameras. Still, what choice did I have but honesty in this space? I looked through the window at the fading sunset as I admitted I’d been able to see her.
“Which bits?” she asked. “You saw me with the security guys?”
I could feel her eyes burning as I recounted the spectacle and told her she did a great job. Because she did. She did do a great job, giving herself over to an idiot’s instructions, no matter how painful they were. That she seemed to enjoy it. Seemed to want it. Seemed to be genuinely begging for more, even when things were so rough.
“Some of it is genuine. For real. I think I’m still messed up from the first sixty days,” she told me when I finished. “Most of the time I try to tell myself I’m not, but he did it to me. Mr Perfect. He messed me up for good, I think. In the moment now I’m not really sure if I do want this stuff or not. My body does. My body always seems to want what it’s given.” She groaned. “It’s fucked up. All of it’s definitely fucked up.”
“You really think the first sixty days messed you up for good?” I said, and she nodded with a weirdly bright smile on her face.
“I guess it’s because Mr Perfect knows how to play your body so well. Because he’s hot as hell, even when he’s dishing out the punishment. Because he knows he’s god of everything for those sixty days and uses it as well as anyone could possibly use it. I mean he knows his shit. Guess he’s been doing it long enough to know how best to do the job.”
I didn’t want to add that he knows how to play your mind just as well, too. Because that’s what Mr Sinister was trying to tell me earlier. That Brandon Grant plays minds, bodies and souls to match. That he plays everything. That you want him more than your rational brain will ever allow, and it’s just as well you don’t end up in a position where you have to test out how genuine he is, because he’ll destroy you. Destroy you and walk away. Destroy you and laugh. Destroy you and alienate you from everything you ever thought you wanted.
And worse.
Potentially so much worse if you hang around to find out.
“What are you thinking?” Rebecca pushed, and I realised my face must have been speaking volumes.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure what I think about anything anymore.”
“This is still about him? Mr Perfect?” she asked, and I shrugged.
“I don’t know. I thought I wanted so much…”
“And I told you you’d be better forgetting about him altogether and getting the job done in this place. We do what’s wanted, take the pay day and start new on the outside world. Hell, we even get therapy from some posh therapy people and forget the whole lot of it, hey?”
As if I ever could forget the whole lot of it. Even now, after all the vile stuff I’d heard about the man I craved with every scrap of me, I knew I’d never be able to forget him.
I felt a fresh shiver of nerves up my spine. Mr Sinister had told me so much in such a brief little burst. He’d told me Brandon Grant was a guy who ruined and wrecked people. Who used people for pay days and let them go in enough of a state that they never truly recovered.
And worse.
He told me so much worse. Enough to try to convince me I’d had a lucky escape in this new location, but I wasn’t feeling it. Even now I wasn’t feeling it.
I guess it was my soul. My instincts. My gut.