Byron-4 (7 page)

Devin was a very good attorney. He and his wife Ronnie were having their first child any day now and the first baby girl in the family in a long time. Devin worked in the Grant building and helped out when any of them needed legal representation.

Jamie, the baby of the family, was also a teacher at Ohio State and had just been offered his tenureship. He had also just been made head of his department, taking over Spencer’s position when he had left. Jamie also worked a great deal with the mentally handicapped and whenever he could, he got his brothers involved as well.

Byron was an artist. He had started out as an oil painter and now changed his medium over to clay. He had learned to throw on a wheel while in college and hadn’t done anything with it until ten years ago when he decided to try painting on pottery pots. His work now graced the homes of some of the most famous people; the President had several pieces and there was rumor that the Queen herself had a piece or two lying around the castle. He also owned several businesses that he kept very close tabs on. One of which was a bondage club.

The opening of the club, “Tightly Bound,” nine years ago had started out as a way for him and a couple other Doms he knew to get together and have some down time without anyone knowing who they were. It had worked out very well, both financially and sexually, for the men. Then about three years ago, his partners had decided to move on and had let Byron buy them out. He now had three others across the United States and visited them all at least three times a year.

“Tightly Bound” in Ohio was equipped with an office and his own play room.

When he would come by to play, there was never any question of him finding a playmate for the night; it was finding just one. Byron, a sexual Dom, had built up his collection of toys over the years and had even had several pieces of hardware made and modified for his own personal use. And like most Doms, he gave his Subs a list to fill out of what they wanted and how much playtime they needed.

There had never been a time when he had gone too far with a Sub and when they said their safe word, everything stopped and the Sub went home. They were not banned from his place like most clubs, but if after three times they had to call a stop, they were asked not to return for an entire year. Most of them usually never returned, but those that did come back with a better handle on their needs usually worked out well.

Tonight, he sent an email to his manager and told him to notify Byron if anyone by the name of Taylor Bennett called or emailed requesting an invitation. Byron knew that Taylor was a true Sub or she wouldn’t have obeyed him the night of the dance. He also hoped that she would need to find another place to visit soon and he wanted to know when she did.

The clubs he owned didn’t just allow anyone to walk in off the streets. An invitation needed to be requested from the club, or someone already a member would issue them one. An extensive background check and a blood test were required before admittance was granted to keep out the drug addicts and criminals. Byron hoped that Taylor wouldn’t go back to the one where she had been hurt, assuming, of course, that is what had happened, and would try and find another place soon. He just hoped she waited until he was back in the States before she ventured into his place.

~CHAPTER 7~

Taylor pulled the thumb drive out of her computer and dated it. She was alone in the office again and didn’t expect anyone to come in for the rest of the day. She was glad; she hurt in more places than she thought she had names for.

She had been back to work for a week now. And as it was Friday, she had two days off she could rest up for another week. Taylor wondered if she would be able to get rested enough in just two days, but knew that she had little to no choice. She needed the money.

The thing with the insurance companies bothered her every time she put a credit into the ledger. The Freedoms had emailed her on Monday that they wanted her to take over the accounting part of the business fully. They offered her an extra fifty bucks a payday and she eagerly accepted.

Jason had taken her to the bank that afternoon and had given her access to the company checking account and made sure that she could sign checks to pay the bills.

The incident with the power being shut off had pissed them off and when she pointed out the unsigned checks on his desk, he blustered for two hours.

“From now on, you make sure the power stays on. I can’t very well bring a client here to help him with his needs if I can’t offer them a decent cup of coffee now, can I?” Taylor shook her head no, thinking that not having any lights should have been more of a problem, but said nothing.

Dropping the thumb drive into her bag, she thought about the safety deposit box she had opened yesterday to keep the drives. There were only three in there now—one on Thanksgiving Day and the Thursday and Friday after her hospital stay, but with the five she had made this week, she was getting nervous.

At first, she was going to only copy the files onto a drive every other day and use three drives to do it. But she realized that there were major changes to the company accounts every day, large deposits and bigger withdrawals that she decided to make a copy of daily. On the third day, Friday, she was about to reuse the original drive when she noticed that it was time stamped and dated. Thinking that might be a good thing to have, she went to the store and purchased as many thumb drives as she could afford.

She smiled when she thought how she had gone all over Columbus one day, buying two here, another one there so that no one would get suspicious about why she was buying them up. She had no idea why she thought that was necessary, but had also kept the receipts to prove that she had paid for them and the date and time that she had done it. It was silly, she knew, but it had filled an entire otherwise boring evening for her.

She squirmed in her chair. She was getting achy again. She tried not to think about how much she needed to go to a club, but it seemed the more she tried not to think about it, the more she did. She had tried making herself come, but that hadn’t worked.

It had only made her more frustrated. Closing her eyes, she thought about Jamie’s voice again to cool off.

She hadn’t heard from him since that night. He had never called her to see if she was all right and she couldn’t bring herself to call him. She thought he had made it perfectly clear that he no longer wanted anything to do with her. Taylor understood.

She didn’t like it, but she understood. There had been a message from Byron Grant, but she never returned his call and had deliberately deleted his number from the incoming call list.

She was putting in the last of the credits when she noticed something different. Her name. Someone had changed the name on the accounts she was working with to hers.

Taylor looked at the amount going out of the account and then the name of the person authorizing the withdrawal and got dizzy.

Almost seven hundred thousand dollars had been removed from one of the insurance accounts and into an account with her name on it. Opening the account and pulling up the ledger from the bank, she could see where she, or at least someone saying they were her, had been doing this for over a year. With shaky hands, she called the bank.

“Oh yes, Ms. Bennett. I meant to call you. When the Freedoms gave you the access to the business accounts, that one wasn’t put on the list for some reason. I figured it out yesterday and added it to your access. I was going to call you, but I completely forgot.

Is there a problem with the account? I actually thought it was odd that you didn’t already have access, but then realized that you probably didn’t think you could link your account with theirs. I also have the account number to the other account as well. If you have a pen, I can give you that now.”

Taylor wrote down the numbers and repeated them back to her twice. After assuring her that it was fine and that Taylor wasn’t upset, the lady told Taylor how to access that account as well.

“I’ve not been here long, but I think that’s an overseas account, right? The reason I ask is that my husband and I are thinking of opening up one of those Swiss accounts to put our IRA money into. I guess the taxes are much lower and there are no penalties for taking it out. Do you know much about them?”

“No, it’s...it’s, ahhhh...I had to search for the information online, and most of it made no sense to me, but I thought, what the heck, what can it hurt right?” Taylor was babbling and she closed her eyes to what she was saying.

She sounded like a ninny and needed to get off the phone before she said something really stupid like, “by the way, I think this money is being laundered through your bank and the men I work for are doing it.” Hanging up with the banker, she started to open the account and remembered something she had seen on the TV once. This person who owned a Swiss bank account had been notified when someone accidentally opened their account and had been murdered for it. Taylor decided that she was never watching another movie again unless there were copious amount of talking animals or it was a cartoon. She also decided she was in way over her head.

On the bus ride back to the Y, she tried to convince herself that she would just stop making copies of the books and simply go about her business. She wasn’t sure what she would do, or even if she could do about the accounts in her name, though. By the time she got off the bus in front of the bank, she was no closer to figuring it out than she had before.

She put all but one of the drives in the drawer. She didn’t know why she had kept today’s drive out. But by the time she was back on the bus for the last leg of her journey, it was too late to return and put it in there as well. When she got to her room, she decided she needed someone to answer a few questions and went to the common room to use that computer. It had the Internet, which her laptop didn’t when here. But she was stressed and antsy, and this time, thinking about Jamie didn’t work.

Before she knew it, she was on the business yellow pages looking for another club.

Just because she was looking didn’t mean she was going to go, she thought. And thinking that made her feel marginally better. Doing a search brought up two names.

“The Flogger” was the one she had gone to and been hurt, so she mentally crossed that off her list. The only other one was “Tightly Bound.” The full page ad said that they catered to a private atmosphere and that they had a long and impressive list of clients.

Taylor snorted. That could mean they have three people on their list and no one else.

She had tried to get a membership before, but they had a long waiting list. But she filled out the online application again. She got an immediate email back asking her to verify that she had sent a request in. She hovered over the “yes” tab for several seconds before she finally clicked it. Closing down the site for this search, she opened another, looking for someone to give her free advice. Twenty minutes later, halfway around the world, Byron got an email too.

That evening Taylor was sick with worry. The movie The Firm was on the television in the common room and, like an idiot, she had stayed up to watch it. At ten-thirty she was pacing the room and biting her nails. That was when she noticed the evening copy of the Columbus Dispatch.

Devin and Veronica Grant had given birth that morning—a baby girl. They were the lawyers in the Grant family. Ronnie had been really nice to her and she was the one who had given her the daisies in the hospital. She worried her thumb nail a little more then decided to call her. She knew it was late, but Taylor so didn’t want to catch anyone else there when she called. Of course this would only work if she could get through to her, Taylor thought.

Surprisingly, the nurse asked her to hold on and the phone rang once more then Ronnie answered. Taylor almost hung up. Ronnie had been laughing at something when she had answered the phone, Taylor was sure, and didn’t want to spoil that for her. But she was getting desperate.

“Mrs. Grant. It’s Taylor Bennett. Please don’t say anything. I just need to ask you a question and I promise I won’t bother you again.”

“It’s lovely to hear from you again. I’ve been...Devin, honey, why don’t you go get me a cola. I’ve not had one in nine months and I want one in the worst way.” Taylor heard someone mumble something and then Ronnie’s clear laughter again. “Yes. I have my lover on the phone and I want to talk sexy to him—go away.” Several mores seconds passed and then Ronnie was back. “All right, Taylor. Where the hell are you?

I’ve been trying to find you for over a week. My family has been worried sick over you.

Are you all right?”

Taylor burst into tears. Not because the woman yelled at her, because she had—no.

it was because she was the first person who had asked her that since she had been out of the hospital. It took her a full five minutes of crying before she felt under control enough to talk again.

“I’m sorry. It’s been...I’ve been so stressed out and I just don’t know what to do.

I...please, Mrs. Grant, please don’t say anything to anyone that I called. I can imagine what they think of me. I mean what with Jamie and all. I just needed some advice.”

“First of all, don’t call me Mrs. Grant. I’m Ronnie. And what do you mean about Jamie? Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

Taylor didn’t know what she meant so she launched into what she needed. She wasn’t sure how far he would have to go for a cola, but was sure that Devin would be back shortly. It took her three tries, but she finally got it all out.

“I just need to know where I can go to look and see if I’m overreacting. I’ve been nervous for a few weeks that I’ll get caught looking these things up, and not sure that if it is legal, then what the Fre...my boss will do if he finds out what I’ve done.” Taylor didn’t want to give away her firm’s name. It wasn’t that she didn’t want them to get into trouble so much as that she wanted to cover her own butt. Nor did she mention the copies or the thumb drives. She felt guilty enough.

“Sweetie, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. Take a deep breath and then start over, slowly. What is it you think is illegal? And just so you know, generally, if it feels illegal, it usually is.”