Vow of Silence (9 page)

I think I hear humor in his voice—already a disappointment
then. I pull onto the shoulder of the road and bury my face against my arms.
I’m devastated. My hope was so inflated…

“What will you do if I disappoint you?” he asks again, and
this time there is no humor, just darkness.

“I’ll cry with inconsolable disappointment.”

“Oh love, I promise you will cry, but I don’t think it will
be from disappointment. You will scream. You will beg and plead for me to end
the torture of your flesh. You will promise me anything. You may even ask me to
kill you to put you out of your misery.”

A tingle of fear goes up my spine.

My God, the mystery man is absolutely perfect.

“Where should I meet you?”

“I’ll find you, Giselle Marconi.”

I am shocked when the line goes dead after his ominous
promise. He called me by my name.
Fuck.
My real name, not my screen name
or my scene name. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Still sitting on the side of the road, I am trembling with
fear. This guy could be the real deal. A serial killer. Or worse. I’m left
thinking about all my parents’ connections. I think about what Lenka said to
me:
You do not know me, Giselle. Your father does. I would more likely
kidnap you.

What if the man who gave me his business card is like my
father? Like Lenka?

I imagine all the human flesh they have trafficked in my
lifetime and shudder.

“Help me! Please help me!”
A voice screams in my mind
from long ago. I was a child who had seen something I should have never seen…

I was playing a game, hide and seek, going to the one
area of the house that was forbidden. I heard her before I saw her. Wild
sounds, like an injured animal. Frantic.

“Help me, please. Help me.”

I saw her, not realizing what I was seeing. She was
naked, badly bruised. Caged.

I hid behind a stack of cardboard boxes but she’d seen
me. Her English had a rough accent, but I knew what she was saying. “Little
girl! I see you. I know you see me. Help me get out of here!”

The cage was locked. I didn’t know where to find a key.
“I’ll go get help.”

“No! Don’t leave me. Get me out!”

I was so young. No more than five or six.

I’ve heard her panicked pleas in my dreams every night
since.

I’ve seen her death mask, wide eyes, blue lips.

God, I can’t end up like her…but would it be a fit
punishment for not aiding her if I did? Karma comes around.

I was a child.

No! I’ve been consoling myself with that excuse for too
long.

The fact of the matter is, I knew what was happening to that
woman was wrong. I knew she needed help. I knew I was too little to help her
and needed someone bigger. I could have called the emergency number, but would
they have believed a child? Would they have sent someone to rescue her?

My mother found me in the basement frozen in indecision…

“Giselle! You are not supposed to be here! Go to your
room.”

“The woman is hurt, Mama.”

My mother knelt before me and put her hands on my
shoulders gently. “You are too young to understand this, sweetheart, but the
woman wants to be here. She wants to be in that cage. She wants us to hurt
her.”

She was right about one thing—I didn’t understand what she
was saying then. I was so young, too young to know the workings between men and
women. Too young to understand sex, let alone kink.

My mother shook me by the arms. She was so angry. It
hurt.

“Mama!”

I looked around her body and saw the caged woman lying on
her side and I knew she was dying.

“Look at me, Giselle!” My mother shook me again, and I
finally met her gaze. “What happens in this house stays in this house, do you
understand?”

“You’re hurting me, Mama.”

“You never tell anyone what you see or what you hear.
What happens here is no one’s concern but ours.” Her fingers pinched harder
into my upper arms.

“Mama!”

My father was suddenly there, lifting me into his arms,
rescuing me. He admonished my mother. “Marissa! You’re scaring the child.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and held tight as he
climbed the stairs, carrying me from the cool, damp basement out into the
bright sun. We sat in the garden surrounded by my mother’s prized roses.

“Do you understand the importance of what your mother was
saying, Giselle?”

“Mama is very mad.”

“Yes, but she’s also scared. What happened in the
basement to that woman was an accident, but not everyone would see it that way.
The police might think we did something bad.”

I was young, but I knew what he was saying to me.

“I don’t want you and Mama to go to jail.”

He cupped my chin and kissed my lips. “That’s why you
must promise to never mention what happened today.”

“I won’t.”

“Not to anyone. Ever.”

I’d nodded. “What happens in our house stays in our
house, Papa. I understand.”

The sky is dark and littered with stars. I don’t know if
I’ve been sitting on the shoulder for minutes or hours. Wiping my face, I
realize I’ve been crying but I can’t remember what made me cry.

Looking down I see the business card in my lap where I
dropped it and I remember the man who answered my call. He sounded purely evil,
not in a Hollywood B-movie way, but truly, inherently evil. A cold chill runs
up my spine as I remember what made me freak out.

I’ll find you, Giselle Marconi.

I redial the number on the business card and am surprised
when the same man answers. “How do you know my name?”

“Terrifying, isn’t it?”

I shake uncontrollably, listening hard to every sound that
comes through my earpiece for any clue as to where he is or who he is. “Tell
me!”

He laughs at my panic and I realize I’m turning him on. My
fear is foreplay for him.
God, oh God.
Taillights in my rearview mirror
make me react and I throw my car into gear as I see a vehicle has pulled off
the shoulder behind me. It’s too dark to make out any details except that it is
a truck as I pull back onto the interstate. The truck follows.

“Is that you? Are you behind me?” I accelerate to dangerous
speeds, losing whoever it was. “Are you still there?”

“Oh dear, sweet girl, I’m here. I’m so enjoying your panic.”

“Look, you crazy fuck, leave me alone!”

“It’s too late for that, Giselle. I want you, and I always
take what I want.”

It’s the second time tonight a man has threatened me with
such a promise. I could be talking to Lenka on the phone but I don’t believe I
am. My father said I needed a protector. Did he know something like this was
going to happen?

Streetlights blur together as I press the accelerator down.

“Giselle?”

His voice makes me jerk; I forgot to disconnect.

“I will find you, Giselle.”

The truck reappears behind me, accelerates and comes up
beside me. I look, wanting to see the face of the man threatening me.

“Diego!” I slam on my brakes and whip into a spin that
leaves me sideways on the shoulder. Luckily there is no one on this road except
for me and Diego.

I’m pissed.

I’m fuming.

Shaking, I rummage in my glove compartment for the small-caliber
gun I keep there, and when I jump out of the car I’m waving the gun and
screaming. “What the fuck, Diego? What the fuck?”

He exits the truck with his hands in the air. “Are you all
right?”

“You could have killed us both!”

He starts to come around his truck toward me but I aim the
gun at him, threatening, “Don’t take another step!”

“Please, Gigi. You know me. I only want you to help me find
my Isabella!”

“I can’t, Diego. Ask my father. Ask my mother.”

“Don’t you think I already did? They are playing as dumb as
you. They say they don’t know anything.”

“Ahhhhh!” I scream my frustration into the night sky. “I
can’t help you. Don’t follow me, and leave me the fuck alone!”

I climb back into my car and peel out, not wanting to think
about Isabella.

* * * * *

I lie in bed remembering.

I can almost see her face. I hear her crying.
“Help me!
Please! Help me.”

Memories are like scabs—once you start picking at them
pretty soon blood wells—and when I wipe the tears from my eyes, I expect to see
my fingers stained scarlet. I don’t want to keep thinking about that day when I
was so young…I’ve kept that memory at bay for so long…and now it is all I can
think about. Did that woman leave some lasting impression on my subconscious
that has made me the way I am? Did her death trigger my own death wish? God. I
was a child! I didn’t understand what was happening.

What could I have done to help her?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I do not expect Diego pounding on my door at midnight. I
know who it is because I look through the security peephole. I don’t open the
door to him. “Go away. I don’t know anything.”

“But you can help me find out where my niece is!”

“No, Diego. I can’t.” I put my back against the door, heart
pounding, hands shaking. Under my breath I admit, “They’re too powerful.”

He’s loud and hysterical. I think he’s drunk but I won’t
call the police. I think he knows I won’t. Fortunately after a while he goes
away, but any thoughts I had of sleep before his arrival are now gone and it is
with singular purpose I go into my bedroom. Stripping, I shower quickly but
take time to shave closely, under my arms, my legs, any stubble where once I
had pubic hair. After drying off I cover every inch of my body with a warm,
musk-scented lotion.

My only choice is leather or latex. I’m going clubbing. I
need a partner tonight desperately—not to dance—but to hurt me. A small voice
in my head echoes Rachel.
If the wrong man had met you there, you could have
been the one dead!

This
is
such a bad idea.

It doesn’t stop me from going out the door and to the
closest club. It’s dark and seedy, the kink scene players who come here are
hard-core.
Yes, yes, this is what I need.
A beefy security guard with a
skin-clinging t-shirt stretched to its max around his biceps grants me
entrance. I march in, trying to appear cocky and confident but am denied a
head-turning entrance by sheer numbers. Couples, both gay and straight, huddle in
small groups, some dancing, some doing impromptu scenes.

I head toward the bar, hoping to find a single willing to hook
up.

As luck would have it there is no one.

Pissed off, I consider crashing a twosome and offering to be
their third. I scan the room looking for potentials…

“Giselle.”

His voice.
My breath stills in my chest as I forget
how to breathe. I don’t turn to look at him. Not yet. I can’t look yet. I don’t
want to be disappointed if he is short and too chubby, or bald and weaselly. I
want him to be tall and dark, sporting an air of danger. I want him to live up
to his dark promises. I want him to live up to his eerily terrifying voice.

“I told you I’d find you.”

“Yes, you did.” I stifle a giggle, feeling like a silly
schoolgirl owl-eyed because the quarterback spoke to me. Taking a deep breath,
I turn—and my throat closes on the scream that almost escapes. He’s every bit
as terrifying as his voice.
Thank you, God.
I try to swallow back my
fear and lose, my pussy twitching with excitement. “N-now w-what?”

George

Lin and I went to dinner and the opera this evening, and I
honestly enjoyed our time together more than I have a single other evening out
with a woman in a very long time. Knowing just how vanilla she is, I’ve teased
her gently all evening.

When you are at the gynecologist’s office and the doctor
lubes you up with his latex-covered fingers, do you find yourself getting
excited?

Of course, she denied it and maybe she’s never thought of an
exam as erotic in the least, but she shifted nervously again and again in her
chair, leaving me to believe our conversation was turning her on.

“I want to show you that pain can be pleasurable.”

“I’m not made that way.”

“Surely someone along the line has tweaked your nipples a
little too hard and you had a jolt go up your spine that could only be
described at pure, raw need.”

She turns her face away, blushing, but she doesn’t deny it.

Tonight I will make love to her—no whips, no paddles, no
pain involved—and I want it that way, because I’m finding enjoyment in the
vanilla intimacy we share. Maybe our normalcy is merely a novelty, but I
cherish each second and don’t try to overanalyze it. I know at some point it
will not be enough. Hopefully by then she will come to me and share her masochistic
fantasies. There’s too much curiosity in the glances she gives me for that not
to be the case.

“Will you be able to love me if I never embrace your kinky
ways, George?”

I give her a long look but say nothing.

“I am troubled by what happened at the club,” she admits.

“That was hardly even kinky.”

“I
know
. That’s a problem, isn’t it? What if I never
want you to spank me or flog me or…or…I don’t even know what is more terrible
than that.”

I do. All night I’ve imagined her bound by straps on my
shiny steel examination table. I imagine her shivering against the cold metal.
I imagine how sweet her screams will sound as I give her a first taste of pain.

Arriving home, I unbuckle my seat belt and kiss her gently.
“Would you rather I took you home?”

“No. I love your house. The upstairs is so serene, so
beautiful.”

“So unlike the danger lurking in my basement?” I scoff.

She caresses my cheek and I catch her hand to plant a kiss
in her palm.

“It is like you are two very separate men, George. I know
you don’t see it, but as we drove to the club I noticed you changing before my
very eyes. I do not think I like the man you are at the club. You frighten me.”

I meet her gaze, trying to understand what she is saying.

“Doctor Psycho is emotionally detached from everything and
everyone. I do not ever want you to be emotionally detached from me.”

“How could you ever think I would be emotionally detached
from you?” I smile at her before exiting the car. I walk around and open her
door for her.

She climbs out and faces me. “Even though you love me, you
could hurt me? You could leave me black and blue? Welted?”

I can imagine my mark on her all too easily. What does she
want me to say?

There isn’t anything to say. I can’t convince her beyond
what she knows. BDSM has to be experienced to be understood. I nuzzle her neck.
“I won’t force you into anything.”

“I wouldn’t love you if you did.”

I kiss her, open-mouthed, enjoying the duel of our tongues.
I run my hands from her hips to her nape, loving the warm softness of her bare
back, the dress she wore being open. “Did I tell you how beautiful you are
tonight?”

“Once or twice.” She rubs her face against my cheek. “Did I
mention that I am wearing a garter belt and stockings but no panties?”

I run my hands back down, cupping her ass to pull her nearer
before sliding my hand beneath her skirt to test the truth of her words—not
that I doubt her—because I can’t resist.

I run my hand up her thigh, feeling where the strap attaches
to the hosiery, feeling where the skin is bare above. I close my eyes, loving
how her bare bottom molds perfectly in my palm. “You should have revealed this
naughty secret earlier in the evening, love.”

She pushes against my chest with her palms. “So that you
could tease me in the dark theater all evening? I don’t think so!”

“You know me well, Lin. I would have brought you to orgasm
in your seat.”

“No, no, no.”

Laughing, we hold hands as we approach the front door.

“I am so hot for you, George. I don’t know if I can wait
until we are inside.”

I chuckle, imagining myself throwing her onto the front lawn
and mating with her like a wild animal. I jerk her to me. “Oh, really?”

Our mouths collide in a rough kiss.

“I need you! You made me crazy tonight, talking about such
naughty things.”

“Which part of our conversation has you this excited?”

“All of it.” She kisses me breathlessly. “Thinking about you
touching me in public!”

I am very close to pushing her down in the grass when a car
drives by and brings me to my senses. Wrapped in each other’s arms, still
kissing, we manage to stumble to the door. She grabs my cock through my slacks
as I push the key into its hole.

“Do you want me as badly as I want you?”

“God, yes, Lin. I’ve been thinking about you naked all
night. I’ve been thinking about everything I want to do to you.”

She chuckles against my mouth. “Maybe you could pinch my
nipples a little too hard to see if I would like that?”

“Maybe I could introduce you to nipple clamps?” I push her
through the threshold into the dark foyer.

The house phone rings and startles us both. It is a loud,
jarring sound in the otherwise silent house, and it has been my experience that
phones ringing at very early hours rarely signal good news. I pull away from
her embrace and she pouts.

I fumble for the light switch and, finding it, the overhead
chandelier comes on. It is very bright and I am left squinting. “I’m sorry, I
should—”

“Of course.” Lin turns her back to me, studying a painting
that hangs in the foyer a little too intently. She tries to make it seem as if
she won’t listen to my phone call, leaving me feeling I should have asked her
if she wanted to wait in the living room.

“Hello?” I answer the phone tersely. Lin looks over her
shoulder at me in a definite come-hither look. Coy, shy, but she is so damn
sexy.

“George? Thank God, I’ve been trying to reach you for
hours.”

Phillip?

I never expected to hear the voice of a colleague from my
past, Dr. Phillip Moyer, currently Chief of Staff at San Francisco General
Hospital. Hearing his voice, I drop my keys onto a small table and lean my forehead
into the rough texture of the stucco wall just to feel something solid, pushing
hard enough to register pain.
I am awake, this is not a dream.
My heart
collides with my sternum as it tries to leap from my chest and fails.

For a moment, I forget Lin. An antique mahogany table topped
with an outrageously extravagant flower arrangement blocks our view of each
other but does not prevent her from grasping the fact that I am having a
moment.

“George?” Her voice holds concern.

I compose myself quickly and take the call into my office,
hoping she will make herself at home, doubting she will even as I hope it, and
knowing there isn’t a damn thing I can do about her comfort because Phillip’s
call has me too distracted to do anything but concentrate on remembering to
breathe.

A long, silent, awkward pause fills the dead airspace.
Hearing my name a second time through the receiver spurs me to answer, feigning
gladness, “Phillip! What a surprise!”

We haven’t spoken since he, at the request of the Medical
Board, asked me to resign from the hospital, step down from my teaching duties
at the University of California School of Medicine Psychiatric Department and
immediately remove myself from my private practice. Before that nightmare day
we’d been best friends, played tennis together on our off days and generally
kept each other sane. Our friendship died in less than a fraction of a second
that day, leaving me to create a new life in the slightly less sane but
infinitely more appealing fantasy world of Lewd Larry’s BDSM Nightclub, staying
even after I was cleared of any wrongdoing. My new job as a professional
Dominant was actually more fulfilling to me on a personal level—mentally,
physically and spiritually—than my practice and all of the professional
positions combined had ever been. In my opinion, my work at the club does more
for the overall mental health of those I play with than I ever accomplished
behind my desk.

“George, I need you to come to the hospital.”

I peek out of my office to see Lin still standing just inside
the door where I left her. Winking, I cover the mouthpiece and whisper, “This
is going to take a minute.” Then point toward the living room. “Make yourself
at home.”

I watch her only long enough to take a step toward the
living room to assure me she is doing so. I then close my office door to
guarantee myself complete privacy.

“You’re calling me at 2 a.m. to ask me to come to the
hospital?”

“Yes, it’s about Giselle Marconi.”

Gigi?
My heart skips a beat upon hearing the name of
the adolescent who in essence was responsible for destroying my career, even
though I took full responsibility then and, on reflection, would do no less
now.

Running my hand through my hair, I try to think of a single
reason Phillip would be asking me to do this and honestly can’t come up with a
plausible excuse. “I’m sorry, Phillip. I’m not available for consults for
anyone, but especially not for Gigi. I haven’t seen or heard from her in a very
long time, and it is best for everyone concerned to keep it that way. The legal
suit was put to bed, my name cleared and I have no interest in emotionally or
professionally being dragged through the muck again.”

I pace angrily, waiting for his response, which seems a long
moment coming. The silence is deafening. I am ready to hang up on him when he
says, “She is in surgery now but she isn’t expected to live through the night,
George.”

“What?” I sit hard, lucky there was a chair close at hand. I
don’t want to believe what I’m hearing, because despite our history, I still
care about the girl I met over a decade ago. I close my eyes, seeing the jaded
face of the sixteen-year-old I once counseled, not in a professional capacity,
but as a friend. The fact she was a minor and I had no parental consent for our
almost daily conversations was only the tip of the iceberg when the shit hit
the fan. Add in accusations of bondage and dominance… Let’s just say my life
took a turn in the crapper. She later recanted her tale, but my reputation
crashed and burned along with so many professional friendships.

“She was admitted to the ER unconscious with laryngotracheal
injuries about three hours ago. We found documentation in her wallet requesting
that in case of an emergency you be called. It explicatively states the only
person to be notified in event of a medical emergency is Dr. George
Kirkpatrick, MD. I’ve been ringing your phone almost nonstop.”

I’m not surprised that she didn’t want to bother her parents
with her medical concerns. From the little I did know about them, they had
nothing to do with her, preferring to hire nannies, tutors and chauffeurs to
see to her needs. Her parents hadn’t even attended the trial. “It has to be an
old request. She probably hasn’t changed out anything in her wallet in years.”

“It’s an advanced health care directive notarized as of a
few days ago.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Her instructions are very clear, specifying that only you
have the authority to make decisions regarding her health care and her parents
are to be notified only in the instance of death. Right now, she is in surgery
and everything possible is being done to keep her alive. Extensive repairs will
have to be made to her trachea and pharynx.”

I nod, wanting to ask, not wanting to ask, how long she went
without breathing? Phillip anticipates my questions, answering before I ask.
“She had an emergency trach when she hit the door. Whoever tossed her out onto
the curb at the ER took time to insert a breathing tube. The time she spent
without sufficient oxygen is indeterminable.”

I close my eyes, allowing the information to sink in. If it
is determined she is brain dead there is a very real possibility he may want me
to discontinue life support.

“Call her parents, Phillip. I have no right to make the
necessary decisions.”

“If that’s what you want, knowing her wishes. Once you told
me you loved this girl—”

“Phillip! Stop!”

“No, George. Once we were best friends, and I should have
stepped in when I first realized that something was going on in your life that
wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t, and I’ve regretted that for a decade. I’ve
questioned a million times over what was said from both sides at that hearing.
I’ve replayed every moment in my head of every scene inside and outside that
courtroom. That trial didn’t just change your life. Everything I believed in was
challenged. My life was affected as much as yours because of a young girl’s
accusation.”

He pauses to take a breath and by all rights I should hang
up on him because I do not want to hear his condemnations, the time is past for
judgment, but I don’t hang up and he starts talking again. “I know you. I know
the kind of man you are. Worse, I know me, and I’m not so certain I would have
reacted differently had I been in your shoes. Do you understand what I’m
saying?”

His admission floors me.

“You saw a broken human spirit and you wanted to give her
hope. If that is criminal we could only hope all of humanity could be
sentenced.”

I let him talk because I’m speechless.