“Who the fuck are you? I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but I’m not divulging any information regarding my clients.”
“I think you’ll want to make an exception for me, Lorelei.”
“What—what did you call me?!”
“Lorelei. Lorelei Madsen is your real name, isn’t it? But maybe you’d like me to stick to Lola?”
“Go fuck yourself, you sick—”
“I have your client list, Lola,” Lex interrupts her. “The names of every single man who has paid for your services since you started this business three years ago. And if you want it to remain under wraps, you will have to be more cooperative than this.” Jesus fucking Christ, I can barely recognize this man. He’s scary good at bluffing.
“You’re lying,” she tries, sounding desperate.
Off the top of his head, Lex begins enumerating some names we saw among her clients. “Graham Whitlock, Sebastian Hargreave, Oliver Cavanaugh, Miles Tho—”
“What the fuck?!” she interrupts him. “How did you get those?”
“You need better security for your inbox. I also spotted four senators in there, an ex-Vice-President, and many names from the Fortune 500. You’ve been a busy woman, Lorelei Madsen.”
“You—you can’t do this! You’ll ruin my life, my reputation. These men… they’ll come after me!”
“All you have to do is tell me what I want to know. I will delete the list as soon as I know what Norman Becker did to you.”
There’s a long silence, but at least she doesn’t hang up. We can practically hear her mind running through her options, trying to figure out what to do.
“How can I know this isn’t a test? That he didn’t put you up to this? I signed an NDA, and if he knows I—”
“I know about the NDA. He’ll never know you spoke to me. I’ll make sure of it.”
“How do I know if I can trust you?”
“I suppose there’s no way for you to know. It’s for you to decide who can harm you the most between Becker and me. Though I get the feeling he already did some harm.”
She takes a moment to think, and we hear her take a long and trembling breath. “You promise all of this will stay between us?”
“I do. No one else will hear about this.”
She takes a few more seconds to decide whether she should trust him, and eventually gives in. “He heard about me through one of his friends, and I warned him I don’t always sleep with my clients, that if he wanted a sure thing, he’d better look elsewhere. We agreed to meet at a lounge bar near his place. He was charming, so when he offered to double my payment to follow him home and have sex, I agreed. He brought me to his penthouse, then to his bedroom, and told me to undress. He said he wanted to be rough with me, but that I could opt out at any point by using his safe word,chrysalis. He’d pay me my ten thousand dollars even if I did. But if I didn’t use the safe word at all, he’d give me a hundred grand.”
My jaw drops, shocked by her words. What the actual fuck is wrong with this man? He’s a hardcore sadist? A Temu version of Christian Grey? Lex and I exchange a conflicted look before he asks, “Did you accept his offer?”
“I did. I’ve been with men who like it rough, so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad. Especially for that price. All I had to do was clench my teeth and take it. In the end, I lost money on this, since I had to cancel three weeks of clients. Might need a full month to recuperate, actually. My clients don’t like to be reminded that they share me with others. Seeing the marks another man has left ruins the fantasy.”
I grimace, sorry she had to go through all that. I knew Becker was a dangerous asshole, but this is sick. Maybe Lorelei will be our way out of this nightmare, after all.
“Ask her for details,” I sign to Lex.
Lex complies, his voice softer. “Can you tell me what he did to you?”
“Why? Are you a sick fuck like him? Does that get you off?”
“Not in the slightest, no.”
She’s silent for a moment, probably reluctant to give details and relive that evening.
“You have my client list, so I don’t really have a choice, do I?” she eventually says, irritated. “He tied my wrists and ankles to the bed, so I was spread on my stomach. Then he took out an arsenal of crops, whips, flogs, and paddles. You know that experiment with the frog in the heating water? I was the frog, and the pain was the boiling water. That asshole started slowly, and then he increased the pain one hit at a time. By the time I was ready to use the safe word, I felt like all that pain would have been for nothing. So I endured it. There was no way I wouldn’t get my hundred thousand dollars after all that.”
She takes a breath, as if the pain and trauma she experienced are resurfacing at once. “If you want my two cents on this, he enjoyed the fact that I wasn’t into it. He could have found a masochist who’d actually love that, and for a fraction of the price he was paying. But he picked me because it isn’t my thing. I also think his goal was to make me use the safe word. I was never meant to win his sick game.”
