The Gigolo (9 page)

‘No,’ she whispered as she took in the shameful tableau. ‘No,’ she said again as she stared at her own flushed face, mouth stretched wide in the throes of a scream as William held the belt above his head ready to thrash her again. ‘No! No! No!’ she cried. She could hardly deny it was her. Her cheeks were flushed, her pupils dilated and her breasts hanging below her as her restraints forced her to lean forwards, and the ring – William’s ring that she loved so much – was clearly visible between her spread legs.

‘No!
This can’t be happening. Turn it off.’

No one moved or said a word for what seemed an
eternity and then Granger piped up:

‘So, did you have a good weekend
, Kara?’ The pair of them collapsed in a fit of hysterical, raucous laughter like naughty school boys.

Kara felt sick.
She swallowed back the bitter tasting bile that had appeared in her throat.

‘How did you get this?’ She couldn’t bear the thou
ght that William had set her up – that he was not a property developer at all but an undercover reporter looking for a salacious front page story. It was unthinkable. There had to be another explanation.

‘I bought it,’ Granger said.

‘Who from?’ She was still holding out hope that a sleazy newspaper was somehow involved.

‘Your man whore
of course.’ Granger pointed at the screen and Kara looked up just as William raised his belt to strike her. Kara closed her eyes and looked away but the sound of her scream filled the room and echoed in her head.

‘Oh! Don’t tell me you actually thought he wanted you?’ Luke taunted. ‘I had to pay him to
take you to bed.’

Kara
felt as if she was sinking in quick sand. It was constricting her breathing. Her head was throbbing. She needed to get out of here. She looked towards the door but Granger was ahead of her. He got up from his chair and turned the key in the lock.

The bastard
had her well and truly stitched up and he knew it. All she could do now was front it out. If it was money they were after she’d pay whatever it took to get out of this mess before anyone else found out. She couldn’t let Jack find out – or her parents. The shame would kill them if this ever became public? Kara shivered as if someone had just walked over her grave. She tried to engage her business head. She needed to close this thing down. She needed to contain the problem and make a damage limitation plan. She had to treat it like any other problem that presented itself, or risk losing her mind as well as her job and her reputation in one fell swoop.

‘How much do you want?’
She tried to keep her voice both calm and assertive. She couldn’t let them know how scared she really was. She swallowed back the tears that threatened to give her away. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

‘Let’s start with a flash of your
ringed cunt.’ Granger grinned.

Kara
instinctively backed away from him.

‘Come on darling, lift your skirt and give us
a peek at that ring. You can’t really deny it, can you?’ He closed in on her. Kara backed up against the wall, her cheeks burning with rage and humiliation.

‘You evil little
pervert,’ she hissed through clenched teeth. ‘You shitless fucking wanker! Do you really think you can get away with this?’
So much for staying calm.

‘
Uh, yes, I do, actually and I think you should apologise to me, as well – that’s what I think. What do you think, Tom?’ Granger turned to Tom.

‘I
don’t know, Luke. I…I’m not sure about this.’ Halfpenny was backing out. Kara began to hope that she could get out of this.

‘
Fuck you, lightweight. I haven’t finished with her yet. You’ll just have to watch.’

Kara looked at Tom, appealing with her eyes, trying to prick his conscience. He looked away.

‘Come on, bitch. I want to watch you peel off your knickers and bend over the table for me.’

‘Never!’ Kara spat back. She would rather be raped than do what he asked
voluntarily but she was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. She was hoping that Tom Halfpenny would come to her rescue if Granger went too far.

‘Something
tells me the boss won’t think quite so highly of his pretty little blue eyed, can-do-no-wrong figurehead when he finds out what she does with her weekends off.’ Granger closed in on her. ‘And you can wave goodbye to your Woman of the Year award…unless they’ve introduced a special category for pornography,’ he snorted, pleased with his own joke.

‘It’s a pity you didn’t put as much effort into making money
for the company as you did on planning this pathetic little escapade,’ Kara bit back. She couldn’t show her fear. She wasn’t prepared to walk away from the career she’d sacrificed so much for. She’d clawed her way to the top and clung on by her fingertips, resisting Jack Finnegan’s continuous advances in her bid to get here under her own merit and now she was here she wasn’t about to let it go without a fight but even she knew that the only way to shut Granger up was to offer him money.

‘I’m prepared to offer you
five hundred thousand. That’s my best offer. And obviously, for that amount I’d expect all the copies you’ve made of this and for both of you to leave the company.’

‘Wait! I don’t want to lose my job. Let her go, Luke.’

‘He’s gonna take you down with him,’ Kara spoke to Tom. He was the weak link.

‘You really are a cool fucking customer, aren’t you,’
Luke Granger spat. ‘Did you really think you’d get away with it that easily?’

‘Take it or leave it.’ She fold
ed her arms across her chest in an act of defiance, indicating that she was done with negotiating.

‘Oh,
I’ll take your money – but I wanna see you sucking on my cock, first.’

‘Is that such a wise idea? Aren’t you afraid I might bite it off?’

Granger was getting riled. He wasn’t as clever as he liked to think and it was obvious he hadn’t expected Kara to fight back quite so fiercely.

‘
Do it or I’ll take my belt to you.’ Granger started to unbuckle the belt from his trousers. Kara looked at Tom. He was no help. She was on her own.

‘Touch me with that and I won’t give you a penny. I’d rather
scupper my own ship than let you take over the helm.’ She was bluffing. She’d do anything to keep this thing contained in this room but Granger didn’t know that.

‘
I don’t believe you,’ Granger said. ‘Now show us your cunt…you cunt.’ He laughed at his own crude joke and made a grab for her skirt. Kara backed away but he grabbed her arm. Kara struggled and kicked out as Granger held her against the wall and pushed her skirt up around her waist.

He was
going to rape her! Panic clouded her vision. She had to get out of here.

She kicked out at Granger
as hard as she could and caught him full and square between the legs. He collapsed to the floor clutching his crotch.

‘You bitch!’ he wheezed through clenched teeth.

Kara ran to the door but the key was missing. Granger was struggling to his feet. If she didn’t think of something quick she was lost.

Kara turned her back on him and
started banging on the door.

‘HELLO!’ Someone knocked
from the other side. Kara let out a sigh of relief and tidied her clothes.

‘If you don’t open the door
everyone’s going to know what you’re up to and then your chance to extort money out of me will be lost,’ Kara warned with far more confidence than she felt.

Granger
was holding his crotch, his face still contorted with pain but he pulled the key out of his pocket and threw it at her.

‘I’ll get you for this,’ he wheezed.

Kara took a deep breath and opened the door.
A couple of her team were standing outside.

‘What happened?’

‘The door was jammed,’ she said. ‘Oh, and the meeting’s cancelled this morning,’ Kara announced without further explanation and walked away.

The
journey back to her office took forever. Everyone suddenly seemed to have something they wanted to ask her. She did her best to remain polite and in control but inside she was slowly dying.

Once
her office door was in sight Kara made a run for it, locked it behind her and promptly threw up in the toilet.

She had never cancelled a meeting before
. There would be gossip, but most people already knew that Luke Granger was living on borrowed time. Hopefully they’d just assume that she’d been bawling him out. It wouldn’t further Granger’s cause to advertise his intentions. The more people knew about this the less it would be worth to him. She figured he’d be back sooner rather than later and that ultimately she’d have to pay up to keep him quiet but the longer she could stall him the more chance she had of finding another way out of this. Although in her heart she knew this was never really going to go away. She’d have to wear it like a dirty pair of underwear for the rest of her life, always scared that someone would discover her secret and tell it to the world. She wasn’t sure she could live that way.

Kara splashed her face with cold water and then filled a glass.
She still felt sick. She sipped on it slowly. The water tasted foul and warm but as she drank her eyes rested on the CCTV cameras set high on the wall in her office.

‘Fuck!’ she cursed,
sure that her heart had actually stopped beating for a moment. The camera in her office was controlled by a switch under her desk and usually remained off but it wasn’t this one she was worried about...the one in the conference room was on a constant loop. Everything that had just taken place in that room would have been captured on CCTV! She had to delete it before someone else discovered what had happened in there.

Kara emerged from her office and
walked up the hall to the camera room. She knocked and opened the door. No one was there. Thank God! She didn’t know what she would have done if George had already been sat here watching the cameras. Kara breathed a sigh of relief.

When she looked at the bank of cameras she could see George talking
to the receptionist downstairs in the foyer. Kara kept one eye on him while she searched for the conference room camera.

When she
located the right one Kara noted that some of her team were still hanging around in the doorway. She searched the faces for Granger and Halfpenny but neither of them was there. Kara assumed they’d be looking for her and that meant she didn’t have much time. She flicked through some of the cameras searching for them but couldn’t find either of the shifty little bastards. She couldn’t waste any more time. Kara glanced back to the foyer camera. George had gone! She looked at the main lift camera. He was in there. She had to work quickly or he’d catch her here.

Kara
needed to delete the footage right back to before the cleaners arrived on Friday afternoon. She watched the clock in the top right hand corner of the screen counting back through her ordeal rather than at her nightmare playing out in reverse on the little screen.

The lift opened. George stepped out.

Kara held her breath and tried to think of a reason for being here but George turned left towards the kitchen. He was going to make himself a cup of tea before he settled down in front of the cameras.

Kara let out her breath and looked back at the camera she was rewinding. It had reached seven o’clock
on Friday evening – just a couple more hours. She wished she could rewind her life this easily. But when she thought about deleting her weekend she felt a physical pain, as if someone was turning a knife in her heart. She couldn’t believe that William could have set her up. There had to be another explanation for how Granger had got hold of a tape of William and her.

When she reached the right time
Kara turned the camera off and headed back to her office. Now it would look as if a cleaner had accidently turned it off rather than someone trying to hide the footage it contained.

Kara returned to her office.

‘Are you ok, Kara?’ Julie asked as she rushed past her secretary’s desk again.

‘Fine
!’ Kara snapped. ‘Sorry – just busy,’ she added and attempted a smile.

Julie returned to her typing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jack Finnegan was bored. Success had left him redundant and somewhere over the last decade he’d gained a bald head and a pot belly but lost the hunger that had once heated the blood running through his hardened veins. He needed a new hobby – something that money couldn’t buy – but for now he’d been reduced to watching his own personal bank of security cameras in the hope of catching a glimpse of stocking from one of the girls in the typing pool, or better still, Kara Kavanagh bent over her desk with her panties around her ankles getting shafted by Roger the mail boy…as if that was likely! She was just too damned straight to get involved in any office shenanigans.