Betrayed by Love (10 page)

They took Savannah home to L.A. They broke into the condo she shared with Roman to get her things. Savannah, barely able to walk, had written a note for Roman with hands that shook.

Don’t ever contact me.

Roman found the note when he returned to L.A., only hours behind Savannah. Roman had tried to respect Savannah’s choice, but he loved her too much. He decided to take her home and make love to her until she remembered what they had together. When he’d confronted Wilcox again, demanding to see Savannah, Wilcox said Savannah had run away. Roman hadn’t believed him until he’d been in every room, including the hidden training room. Sure that she’d changed her mind about him he’d run home, expecting to see her. But their home was trashed, most of her clothes and personal items gone, a short note and her paintings all that remained of her.

She’d run from Wilcox, but not home to him. He called and emailed, talked to their friends. He searched for her, desperate to talk to her, to have her back.

Once, just once, he got hold of her. Nine months after she left. She was at her parents’ house in Colorado and she answered the phone.

“Savannah,” he said in relief.

There was a pause, then, “Don’t ever call me again.”

“Wait, whatever it is you need I can be—” Dial tone.

He left L.A. He couldn’t stay there. The golden light of dusk reminded him of her. He moved to Chicago where the light was different, where the cold wind cut through bone. He became harder, stronger. He closed off his heart, stayed away from the scene for years, but then went back, to test himself. There were still elements of it he found arousing to watch, but his desire to participate was gone.

He watched others play and wondered at what might have been. He never forgot her and he never stopped loving her.

She moved away. She stayed with the Stalwoods long enough to heal, then went to her parents in Colorado. She told them she’d broken up with Roman. When pressed, she said he’d cheated on her.

She stopped painting.

She moved to Savannah, the town she was named after but had never lived in. Her grandparents let her turn their barn into a massive art studio. She took up sculpture. When her grandparents died within months of each other, she used the money they left her to turn her studio into a sort of co-op, building a painting studio on the side.

She never dated. Sex was something to be done after a night of heavy drinking, with a man whose name she wouldn’t remember. She wanted nothing to do with the BDSM world but could not stay away. She started by going to clubs, watching. Then, one night, hounded by the memory of her torture, she agreed to play with a male sub. The sub’s Domme offered him to Savannah, saying with a wink that he’d been naughty. She hadn’t realized the other people in the room thought she was a Domme.

She took him, using his leash to draw him to her, and the darkness that lived within her swelled up. In the end, when he was panting with the combination of pain and pleasure—for despite all she’d suffered Savannah wouldn’t give only pain—he’d gone back to his Domme, who’d hugged and kissed him.

It became her obsession, taking other subs close to the dark she’d known. They didn’t know how real their peril was. They came to her already aroused because they expected the experience to be erotic.

A leatherworker who for a time had space in her studios made her the suit. She became anonymous then. She was invited to attend shows at clubs across the country. Between the monthly sessions as a Domme and the ongoing rape counseling, she healed. Her art improved. She became commercially successful.

But she never dealt with the issue of Roman. She hadn’t revealed that part of the story to her counselor. Though she came to understand that what had happened to her wasn’t her fault, she never forgave Roman.

The “why” ate away at her like a cancer. Why would he betray her? What in her was so forgettable, so unlovable, that the man she’d loved with an abiding passion had been willing to give her away as if she were a broken toy?

Current Day

“Peter, just give me her address.”

“What’s going on?”

“I…I know her. From L.A.”

“Whoa, is she the girl you talk about sometimes?”

“I don’t talk about her.”

“Four neat whiskies and you do. The beautiful artist.”

“Something like that. Just give me the address.”

“I emailed it to you. She lives in Savannah.”

Savannah. He’d always teased her about being named for a city she didn’t live in. Her grandparents were there. He would have looked for her there, if he hadn’t first found her in Colorado.

Now he knew where she was, and now he had some answers. She hadn’t gone vanilla, she was a Domme, and a good one. That still didn’t explain why she’d reacted the way she had.

He’d lost five years of his life wondering what happened. It was time for answers.

He boarded a plane the next afternoon.

* * * * *

Savannah picked up her car at the airport and drove home, going too fast. Her phone beeped and she picked it up, reading a text message from Karen.
On our way. Don’t leave.

She’d contacted them, telling them she’d run into Roman. She hadn’t known who else to call.

Back in her studio, she paced the floor. When pacing wasn’t enough, she rolled out a huge piece of butcher’s paper and started to sketch. She drew a woman, larger than life size, her arms and legs distorted and disjointed like a Picasso. Manacles around her wrists, ankles and neck attached to chains.

Roman held the chains. Unlike the woman, he was lifelike. She tested herself, seeing how accurately she could render him after all these years.

He was handing the chain to a gaunt figure in a white dress shirt. She drew Wilcox salivating, his eyes wide with longing. She made him a pathetic, comical creature. When she couldn’t stand looking at the image anymore, she pushed away the paper, tore off another sheet and kept drawing.

* * * * *

He rented a car and tore out of the airport parking lot. He drove fast, anxious to see her as afternoon faded to dusk.

You betrayed me. You murdered me.

Her words haunted him, and the need to understand them ate at him. He finally found the address. It was a beautiful old farmhouse holding court amid acres of cultivated land. He turned left between white gateposts and started up the shrub-lined drive.

He didn’t get far.

A black sedan was stopped on the drive, parked at an angle so he couldn’t get past. Two people leaned against the back. Roman got out of the car.

He was about to ask them if this was Savannah’s house when a shock of recognition went through him.

“Karen? Robert?” It took him a minute to identify the Stalwoods. Robert had gained some weight, Karen’s hair was going gray, but he couldn’t mistake his former friends. He’d contacted them asking if they’d seen Savannah after that weekend, but they said they hadn’t. Less than six months later, they left L.A. when Karen was transferred to Richmond.

“Roman,” Robert said coolly. Karen glared at him. He looked at the house, barely visible through the tall trees. He’d never felt as though he really understood what had happened that weekend, but after seeing Savannah—and after her reaction to seeing him—he’d gotten the feeling that there was far more going on than he knew. The appearance of these two confirmed it.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“What are you doing here?” Robert returned.

The ball of dread that had been slowly forming in Roman’s stomach solidified. “You never lost contact with her,” he said, putting the pieces together. “Are you the ones who taught her to be a Dominatrix?”

They didn’t reply. Karen looked away, her face drawn in lines of grief.

Roman took a deep breath and asked the question he needed the answer to. “What happened five years ago?”

Robert nodded, as if that’s what he’d been waiting for. “I don’t think anyone but Wilcox knows for sure.”

Bile rose in Roman’s throat at the name. “Wilcox and Savannah.” He’d been manipulated into letting Wilcox train Savannah. If he’d been smarter and stronger, he would have said no, even if it meant she didn’t reach her full potential as a sub.

“No,” Karen said. There was something in her voice that drew him back from his self-recriminations. “I suspect neither of you really knows what happened.”

“What are you talking about? What doesn’t Savannah know?”

Robert and Karen looked at each other, then at him. “We thought about showing her, after.” Robert shrugged helplessly. “But she was so broken.”

“Showing her?”

Robert plucked a bag from the trunk of the car. “Wilcox filmed everything that went on in that room.” He opened the bag, pulled out a laptop.

“How did you know? Were you…?” Roman still couldn’t understand how they were involved.

“No.” Karen shook her head. “We were down the hall and happened to look in an open door and see a room we’d never seen. There was a big window in the wall, and on the other side of the window…” Karen pressed her lips together.

Robert took over the story. “We saw Savannah. She was…screaming, bruised, bleeding. Wilcox was,” Robert swallowed. “Wilcox was torturing her. We didn’t realize it at first—you know sometimes BDSM play looks bad, when it is actually pleasurable. It wasn’t until Wilcox left the room and we got a good look at Savannah—and saw she was still sobbing—that we realized what was going on. We snuck in and got her out.”

“I saw a computer,” Karen added. “I realized he was using it to control some hidden cameras and audio equipment. I took the external drive and corrupted the hard drive. That’s where we got the video, the video of what he did to Savannah.”

“We started to watch it once, but…” Robert looked at Karen. “It was too much. What he did to her.”

“She was… He was hurting her? You mean he was training her.” Roman leaned back against the car, his legs week. What they were saying was all wrong.

“You should watch. See for yourself.”

They handed Roman the laptop and headphones. He slipped the headphones over his ears and hit play.

Roman watched himself lead Savannah into the inner room, both her hands clinging to one of his. She was so beautiful. He watched as his five-years-younger self strapped Savannah down, saw the smile she tried to hide. He watched himself kiss her goodbye. If he’d known then it was the final one he would have lingered.

He left the room. Wilcox stepped forward, bringing the vibrator into play. Its humming was faint, but then Savannah moaned his name. He missed that sound. She moaned his name again and he frowned. Why was she calling out to him? He was gone.

It was then he realized.

She didn’t know. The blindfold was still on and she didn’t know it was Wilcox.

“No,” he whispered, sickening realization spilling over him.

He heard her moaning for her Master to pleasure her. Words Wilcox had played back, words Roman thought were addressed to Wilcox had been meant for him.

He watched fear fill her when the blindfold was removed, heard her cry out for him, begging him to save her.

His heart, which he’d thought long broken, shattered. There was the woman he loved, crying out for him, begging him to rescue her—from a situation he’d forced her into.

He watched, made himself watch, what was done to her. When Wilcox cut her with the cane, Roman sank to his knees in the dust, cradling the laptop.

He understood the full extent of the deception when he heard her condemning Wilcox, calling him a perverted freak. Again, they were words Roman had heard, thinking they were meant for him. Wilcox must have used the computer to key up only the parts he wanted Roman to hear, then played them back as if they were live.

Let me go, you pathetic son of a bitch.

He watched her fight, even though there was no hope of escaping.

When Wilcox left her, her body twitching in pain, he knew what would follow. He knew he was about to be played for a fool. Wilcox had wanted Savannah, and he’d done everything to get her.

He watched, tears on his face, as Wilcox reentered the room and held up a small recorder. He heard himself say, “Keep her.”

Savannah’s grief was terrible to behold. She’d gone there with him, wanting nothing from the weekend but willing to indulge him. She’d found pleasure and become an enthusiastic participant, and in reward he’d turned her over to a sadistic monster.

He watched as Wilcox beat her, tortured her. He watched the fight leave her, her screams fading into little gasps of pain. It went on and on. When he wasn’t physically tormenting her, Wilcox was telling her that Roman had chosen another over her, and that she was now Wilcox’s slave.

“You should fast forward,” Karen said softly, “it goes on for hours.”

Roman wanted to watch each second, as if he could find a moment when he could jump through the screen back in time and save her. When he didn’t move, Karen knelt beside him and fast forwarded the video, stopping periodically to let him see and hear what his beloved was going through.