“Oh?” Silver took a deep drag from his cigarette. “What were you investigating at a sex club, exactly?”
“Can we turn on the lights, majesty?”
“If the lights go on, I’ll gag you, and you’ll lose any chance atexplaining. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Then continue, pet.” He blew out a puff of smoke. “While I’m still feeling generous enough to listen.”
“I know how you feel about betrayal,” Nuri said. “But I assure you, I had no prior knowledge of what Romeo was up to. If I did, I would never have met with him. The second I realized what he was revealing, I had N.I.M. contact you, didn’t I?”
“Did you?”
“Majesty.”
“What were you investigating, Narek?”
“I—” Oh.
Shit.
He’d betrayed him after all.
“I…may have kept some important details from you about the Ackor Hue case.” In his defense, who could have ever guessed doing so would come back to bite him so royally? “He made claims during our meeting that a third party had sent the recording to him. I wanted to confirm whether this was a lie before informing you, but…”
“It wasn’t a lie, and yet you still didn’t tell me,” Silver surmised.
“I was able to trace the source to the company, but hit a dead end, so I thought, if Ackor wasn’t the one who left the camera in the room, someone else had to have. I went to Club Spade today to request footage of that night in an attempt to identify the person responsible.”
“And the room itself? Why did you need to go there?”
“I wanted to see it. Make sure there were no clues left behind.”
“Is that all?”
Nuri hesitated then licked his lips. “I…was curious.”
He’d wanted to see for himself. Wanted to see the room where Silver took all of his conquests.
The room he’d fantasized about being taken in.
How embarrassing. It was a truth he hadn’t even wanted to admit to himself, yet now was being forced to. While in the nude.
Freezing his ass off.
But that was all a part of it. Silver was doing this to humiliate him. He also knew how much Nuri hated the cold. This was his twisted way of teaching him a lesson, and damned Nuri for somehow finding relief in the fact that at least the two of them didn’t have an audience.
At least he hadn’t ended up bleeding out from three bullet wounds.
“About Brixton?” Silver asked, and the edge to his tone hinted at the darkening of his mood. “Curious to see if he was still as good in bed as you remember?”
“I never slept with Romeo Brixton,” Nuri insisted. “All I remember is one kiss. If he really did fondle me during, I don’t recall, but I know for certain we didn’t have sex that night.”
“Another night then.”
“No.” Nuri shook his head, then gave in and divulged, “Musa O’Moore, Darren Atkins, Lee Lane, Elin Snow, and Fleur Sampson.”
“What?”
