Chapter 27

SPRINTING WITH EVERY ounce of his strength, he gasped for air, his lungs searing with each breath. But no matter how hard he pushed or how deep he dug, he wasn’t able to stop the wicked-looking blade from pressing against her delicate throat.

“Don’t,” he bellowed as he watched a droplet of her blood become a crimson trickle. Her quivering lips formed the shape of his name, a silent plea for him to save her.

He flung his body forward in a desperate attempt to wrench her away from the clutches of the deranged monster. But it was too late. The once-vibrant light in her eyes faded and went dark.

“No! Not again!” Tristan shouted as he shot up in bed, drenched in a cold sweat.

With the fear and panic of the nightmare still clinging to him, he reached for Piper but found only an empty space. She had gone to bed with him and instantly fell asleep in his arms. Even though the threat was over, Tristan couldn’t find the same peace. A madman had been living practically under their noses and had access to her every day at work. He couldn’t bear to think how badly it might have ended and couldn’t close his eyes. He’d seen three, four, and five a.m. during the interminable night.

When his gaze shifted to the window then the clock, it was 5:50 and still dark. Panic surged through him. Where was she?

“Piper!” he called as he surged from the bed. He lurched suddenly, stubbing his toe on a chair in a random place. “Fucking hell,” he cursed, limping toward the door.

Just then, she emerged from the bathroom wearing only a towel, her skin glistening from the shower, worry etched on her beautiful face. The memory of losing her in his dream was still fresh, the pain of it more real than that of his throbbing toe. He’d known her a little more than a month, and already he couldn’t imagine his life without her in it.

“Are you all right?” Piper asked, drawing near. “I thought I heard shouting.”

Tristan inhaled deeply, trying to shake off the remnants of the nightmare. It was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and hold her close to convince himself she was really there. Instead, he gave her a bullshit excuse for his behavior. “I hit my toe on the chair.”

Fucking coward, he berated himself for not telling her how he truly felt. What if yesterday had turned out differently, and he never had the chance to do so?

“Oh, I moved that. I’m sorry. Should I get some ice?”

“No, it’s fine.” From the corner of his eye, he saw her flinch. The sharpness in his voice caught her off guard as much as him. He forced himself to continue in a more even tone. “Why are you up so early? Did you have trouble sleeping?”

“Not at all. I don’t think I moved all night. My body has gotten used to getting up at the crack of dawn.”

“Are you almost done in the bathroom? There’s a debriefing on the case this morning, and I need to shower.”

“I’ll be out in two shakes. Then I’ll make us coffee for the ride in,” she said, rushing to the bathroom door.

“You’re not required to be there.”

She twisted in the doorway and looked back at him. “But I want to be. I have so many questions. Besides, shooting was canceled for today, so I’m free.”

He hesitated. She’d been through enough.

Piper crossed her arms and, with her chin high, addressed his reservations. “You said being submissive didn’t mean you had to take crap handed to you. Morgan gave me a shit ton of crap last night, culminating a month full of shit. I want to know why. I’m going.”

This from the small-town girl who said oh sugar beets and fiddlesticks ? The dom and the man respected her grit, determination, and right to choose.

“With morning traffic, we need to leave in thirty minutes.”

She smiled, not smugly, just satisfied. “I’ll be ready.”

When the door closed behind her, Tristan sat on the edge of his bed and dropped his head in his hands. Axyl was right. He needed to make her his in every sense of the word or cut her loose. After feeling the warmth of her sunshine, one of those two wasn’t an option. He just had to reconcile himself to the fact.

TALLER THAN MOST WOMEN and many men, Piper had never felt small and delicate, but seated at the large, oval table in the Rossi conference room, surrounded by eight Rossi men who looked like they could play in the NFL, she felt petite.

Detective Lloyd, who she learned moonlighted with Rossi occasionally, led the debriefing together with Christian.

Seated next to Tristan, Christian leaned forward, looked at her on his other side, then sat back again. Thinking he was being quiet, he said, “Morgan is one sick motherfucker. Do you really want her here for this?”

“As she’s told me several times,” he replied. “She’s a big girl, and she insisted.”

Ignoring them talking about her like she wasn’t there, she asked Keiran the most crucial question, “How is Axyl?”

“Stubborn fool lost a lot of blood. They’re transfusing him now. Although they have his condition listed as serious, his doctors expect him to make a full recovery.”

“Thank goodness,” she whispered, relief washing over her. “He saved my life.” Her gaze scanned the table. Every man seated around it had a hand in keeping her alive. “I wouldn’t be here if not for all of you. I can’t thank you enough.”

“You shouldn’t have been in a position where you needed saving,” Tristan grumbled angrily. “What did we overlook?” he demanded of the others.

“No one would have guessed it was Perry without him showing his hand first.” Christian cleared his throat and then revealed what they had uncovered. “You know about the hundreds of pictures papering his walls. He had a tripod in his upstairs bedroom with a clear line of sight into your courtyard and Piper’s front door.”

He hesitated, his gaze shifting between her and Detective Lloyd. Her stomach roiled uneasily, convinced she hadn’t heard the worst of it. Piper reached under the table for Tristan’s hand, comforted when his fingers tightened around hers.

“This part is even more disturbing,” the detective said, taking over the narrative. “We found monitors connected to a live feed and traced it to a camera hidden in the ceiling vent above your bed. He could operate it remotely, change the angle, zoom in and out, and record, which he did. He had hundreds of hours of video.”

Piper sat frozen, trying to process what she was hearing. Morgan would have seen her undressing, watched her sleep, and listened to her private conversations with Josie and her family, and... Dear heaven. He would have seen her with Tristan.

People joined the club with the expectation of seeing and being seen. Everything that happened was consensual. This was the complete opposite. The break-in had left her feeling violated. But this intrusion upon her private time with Tristan, knowing Morgan had watched and listened, doing heaven knew what while he did, was far worse.

“I’ve been replaying our conversation and the notes he wrote over and over in my mind. Vile, filthy, contemptuous things—slut, whore, Jezebel. This was more than an obsession with me. He seemed angry at women.” Piper felt an odd sense of detachment while she reasoned it out, as if in a dream, a coping mechanism, so she didn’t completely lose it, no doubt. “I can’t fathom how he worked for Hunter so long, masking his contempt while completely deranged.”

Tristan gripped her hand more firmly but couldn’t keep it from shaking.

“You’re right about his anger at women,” Christian agreed. “And the more we uncover his past, the more we understand how much so.”

“Explain,” Tristan demanded.

“Born Morton Frick, he changed his name when he came to Hollywood to make it big—

”

“No wonder,” someone commented.

When the murmurs of agreement subsided, Christian continued. “He grew up in small-town, USA, in a place called Leon, Iowa.”

Again, Piper gasped.

Tristan’s head whipped toward her. “You’ve heard of it?”

“It’s not far from where I was born and raised. Less than thirty miles.”

“And about seventy miles from Des Moines,” Lloyd added for reference. “I called the Decatur County sheriff, who filled me in on young Morton and his family. He was raised in a strict household. His mother was a homemaker, and his father a preacher.”

“This sounds eerily familiar,” Piper whispered.

“Too much so,” Tristan agreed, gripping her hand tighter.

“Perry’s father passed away when he was only fourteen. His mother went off the deep end a little. She never had a job outside the home, and they struggled financially, trying to make it on Morgan’s social security survivors’ benefits. His mother made his clothes and cut his hair, trying to make ends meet, and it showed. The kids weren’t kind.”

“You mean he was bullied,” Keiran clarified.

“Mercilessly, according to the sheriff. He had few friends outside of the drama club, which he did on the sly because Mom thought TV and movies were the work of the devil and anyone in Hollywood was morally corrupt and going to hell. But she found out, stormed into the auditorium in the middle of a performance, and dragged him off stage. Everyone in town was talking about it for weeks. It made the bullying worse, as you can imagine. Morton hung around until graduation then, in defiance of his mother, took off for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood anyway.”

Amused by his colleague’s turn of phrase, Christian repeated, a chuckle in his voice, “Glitz and glamour?”

Lloyd turned his notes toward him. “That’s a direct quote from Sherriff Walmsley.”

“Just checking,” Christian replied with a smirk.

“Can we get back to the case?” Tristan interjected, clearly displeased with the unnecessary commentary.

“Right, sorry. I talked to Hunter Ainsley and several others on the project,” he continued, serious again. “They all described him as quiet and reserved, although a little odd, but they were all shocked by his actions.”

“It sounds like the quote you always hear from neighbors on the six o’clock news. It’s always the quiet ones ,” Piper observed. “I want to know why he picked me!”

“Remember how I said you might have just caught his eye?” Tristan gently reminded her. “You were outside his window every day, and then you walked into his work life and became his obsession.”

“Tristan is right on target. You were the opportunity,” Lloyd explained. “Knowing his history, Perry’s motive is fairly easy to figure out. Acting wasn’t working out for him, but he stayed in the business, clinging to the hope he’d one day catch a break. Watching others succeed where he couldn’t, sparked envy and resentment. Not to mention the internal struggle with the values instilled in him during his upbringing. His fragile psyche reached its breaking point.”

“Enter Piper,” Christian concluded. “A small-town preacher’s kid like him who achieved instant success.”

“It wasn’t instant. I got plenty of rejections,” Piper said, wanting to set the record straight.

“That may be true, but Perry saw it differently,” Tristan interjected. “Think about his comments about your clothing.”

“And my whorish ways,” she murmured, shutting her eyes. Seeing her and Tristan kissing on the front porch and in bed together escalated things.

“None of this is your fault.” He squeezed her fingers, trying to make her see that. “You just had the misfortune of entering his sphere.”

“Watching you on set in romantic scenes he didn’t approve of led him to think it was up to him to punish your behavior, fulfilling his twisted sense of justice,” Detective Lloyd concluded.

While the team processed the revelations, the room fell silent. Piper clung to Tristan’s hand, the only thing keeping her grounded, as she tried to make sense of the madness she had narrowly escaped.

On edge, with her nerves completely frazzled, a cell phone buzzing on the wood tabletop made her jump.

“Sorry, I thought I had that turned off.” Lloyd picked it up and checked his message. “Here’s some good news though. Perry’s arraignment was first thing this morning. The judge denied bond and ordered a mental health evaluation. His trial won’t be for months. You can breathe easy, Piper.”

“Thank god for that. She’s been through enough trauma,” Tristan declared, sounding as bone-weary as she felt.

Piper tugged on his hand, waiting for his gaze to meet hers before asking, “Would you take me home now?”

“Certainly.”

“Thank you. I have an urgent need for another shower,” she confessed, her voice laced with desperation. “Although I doubt there is enough hot water and soap in the world to make me feel clean.”

When she stood up, he rose too, gallantly pulling out her chair.

“I’m going to stop by the ladies’ room first.”

“Are you all right?”

“No. But I will be.” Honest, not by any stretch sunny, but determined, her words hung in the air as she walked out.

“SHE’S TOUGH,” KEIRAN observed as they watched Piper pause in front of the conference room windows. They had one-way glass, which looked like a row of mirrors on her side. She raised a trembling hand to her forehead and took a deep breath before continuing down the hall.

“Most women, and a lot of men, would be a wreck after going through what she has,” Eric remarked.

“Not Piper. No matter what life throws at her, she soldiers on.” Tristan was proud of her strength and composure but worried she might crack under the strain. He could feel the gaze of the others on him, but only Christian spoke up. “It has finally happened. A submissive is tying the rope master in knots.”

“Am I that obvious?” he asked in his first public acknowledgment that he felt something for Piper.

“Yes,” they answered him in unison.

“The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

He met Eric’s discerning gaze but didn’t reply. It was between him and Piper.

“I’m taking the rest of the day,” he told his boss out of courtesy. Piper was his priority today, regardless of his answer.

“Take all the time you need,” Keiran assured him as he suspected he would. He’d been through something similar with Esme not long ago.

Piper reappeared at the door.

“Ready?” he asked as he joined her.

She nodded, her nails digging into his flesh, the only outward sign she was dangerously close to crashing.