Google Alert: Christian Grey

TMZ, August 31st 2010: Check out the exclusive pictures of Christian Grey‘s romantic Hawaiian getaway with Anastasia Steele last weekend. The pair spent a week in a private beach rental priced at over $13,000 a night!

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I stare down at the screen of my laptop and at the pictures that were taken from Katherine Kavanagh’s and Mia Grey’s social media accounts and plastered all over the internet for the world to see. The first picture is of Anastasia and Mr. Grey sitting at a table together, half of Mia’s face in the frame, and what looks like a Hawaiian feast laid out on the table before them. It’s fairly dark in the picture, and their faces are only illuminated by the torches set around the table, but they’re both smiling broadly at the camera. Clearly genuinely happy.

I scowl at the screen and then click the arrow for the next picture, this time of Anastasia sneaking up behind Mr. Grey, who is sleeping on a lounger next to the pool, with a bucket in her hands while she smiles mischievously at whoever is taking the picture. Next, Anastasia and Mr. Grey are in the ocean together, waist deep in the water, and his arms are wrapped tightly around her. There is a fan of water droplets sparkling in the air around them as Mr. Grey spins her around in the water and she throws her head back in laughter. I focus in on his face, and the look of pure, uninhibited love that he gives her as she loses herself in the joy of the moment makes me want to break something. I jab my finger down on the touchpad of my laptop to move to the last photo, a picture of Mr. Grey and Anastasia walking down the beach, hand in hand, at sunset. Her long dark hair contrasts perfectly against her full length flowy white dress, both of which are blowing gracefully in the wind as they walk. If it weren’t for the fact that Mr. Grey was wearing a pair of dark navy swim trunks and a heathered gray t-shirt, it would look like a wedding photo.

That’s going to come next. I think bitterly to myself, and I close the lid of my laptop.

The apartment around me is small and messy, and I have to share it with two roommates even though there is barely enough space for one. It’s nothing like the giant penthouse apartment Mr. Grey takes Anastasia home to every night. There are no vacations planned for my near future, no fancy cars for me to drive to the publishing house my adoring boyfriend bought for me just so I could be around him for a stupid, pointless internship that didn’t even pay anything. There are no gargantuan diamond rings waiting for me, no ridiculously expensive and elaborate white gowns with cathedral long trains, no aisles to walk down, no handsome billionaires to proudly proclaim, I do. There will be no picket fences, or gray eyed children, or a pair of rocking chairs on a front porch somewhere, groaning slightly as they sway back and forth while Mr. Grey holds tightly to my now wrinkly hand, playing absentmindedly with the wedding band he put there decades before.

I’d pictured these things in my mind over and over again, every night. Obsessed about them, spent countless hours trying to figure out how to make them a reality. But it will never be reality, never my reality. This is the future for Anastasia Steele.

I can’t even think her name without contempt any more. The hatred I feel for her, for the both of them, as they flaunt their perfect lives and their complete devotion to one another has completely consumed me. I’ve done everything I could think to do to take that from them, but the first time, I was rash, angry, and stupid. I acted too quickly and they ruined my plan before it even got started. I’d felt the sting of that loss especially hard, but still, the second time has been a much more difficult pill to swallow.

Elena Lincoln may be a legitimate psychopath, but I’d never been more confident that someone could take Grey and Anastasia down than her. She was smart. She’d planned everything to the last detail and she had everything she needed right in her hands. I’d thought for sure when she called me and asked me to testify, it was going to be the end of Mr. Grey. Anastasia would receive no guilty verdict, and that was a shame, but the pain she would feel in losing him would be vindication enough for me. I still remember the fleeting sense of joy I felt at the idea whenever I pictured them taking him from the courtroom in handcuffs and Anastasia bursting into tears of heartbreak and misery. But that was taken from me too.

I stare down at the outdated copy of the Seattle Times I still have sitting on my desk, proclaiming Mr. Grey innocent of what I’d accused him of and telling the world I’m a liar, their proof in the picture of the text messages I’d stupidly sent to Andrea displayed across the front page. I swallow hard as the bitter taste of my hatred creeps into my mouth, my mind racing for another move, another way I can end the abomination that is their happiness, when my attention is caught by the gentle buzz of my phone on the desk.

I purse my lips together, unsure of whether or not I want to answer the unknown number, but eventually, I pick it up.

“Hello?”

“You disappoint me, Miss Williams,” The cold, unfamiliar male voice answers. “Two golden opportunities to ruin Christian Grey, wasted.”

“Who is this?” I ask, my attention suddenly piqued.

“Do you want to see him suffer?” The voice asks, ignoring my question. “Do you want to see him lose everything dear to him and leave him a shell of the man he once was?”

I swallow. “Yes.”

“Good. Then let’s get started.”

Outtakes

Book 3: A Stronger Shade of Fifty

I’m sitting on the floor of Christian’s closet, a half packed suitcase open behind me, staring hopelessly up at the line of neatly hung clothes over my head. It’s really too bad I can’t take Gail back to Cambridge with me. Everything in here is perfectly coordinated and categorized by garment type, and each category is color coded. It’s the most well put together closet I’ve ever seen and one of the thousands of things I’m going to miss about living in this apartment with Christian.

I sigh and begin folding the t-shirts on the floor in front of me, tossing each one forlornly into the suitcase as I make my way through the pile. I don’t know if it’s being forced to pack yet again, or just my lack of desire to actually leave that’s making this whole process so difficult and lengthy, but I feel like I’ve been doing this for hours. Guilt grips my stomach as I climb off the floor and start sorting through the hangers again. I can lie to myself all I want, but I know exactly why I’m dragging my feet and stretching out this process.

I’m avoiding Christian.

He’s been in a terrible mood since we got back to Seattle this morning, spending most of the day locked up in his office and the rest of his time snapping at me over every little thing or moping around the apartment. I know he doesn’t want me to leave, and I know he’s been dreading this day, probably all summer, but being irritable about it isn’t going to make it so I don’t have to go and he’s ruining our last day together.

I shake my head. I need to stop thinking of this as our last day together. Neither one of us is dying, I’m just going back to school. I’m going to see him all the time and talk to him every day. It’s not going to be like it was before.

I take a deep breath, feeling reassured once again as I reach up and take the sweatshirt I took from my dad’s closet in Montesano off the hanger, fold it, and put it in the suitcase. Staring down at it, I realize that maybe I can make these consolations to myself because I’m used to being separated from the people I love. The only times Christian has ever been without loved ones, he was truly alone. Maybe this is triggering some sort of abandonment thing with him.

“Hey,” Christian’s voice says behind me, and I jump in surprise a little before turning around to face him.

“Hey,” I reply, cautiously.

“Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?” He asks.

“Out?” I repeat. “You mean, you don’t want to stay in?”

He shrugs. “I wanna do whatever you want to do.” His eyes shift down to my suitcase and he frowns, glaring at it like it’s the reason I have to leave. “You’re not finished packing yet?” He asks, his voice sharp again as he looks back up at me.

“It’s harder packing to go back than it was packing to come here,” I say defensively. “I don’t want to leave something here that I’m going to need once I’m back in Cambridge, but I don’t want to have to pack a giant suitcase every time I go back and forth either. I don’t know whether to leave some clothes here or…”

“You should only be taking the things you absolutely need,” He says bluntly. “Everything else needs to stay here, including your clothes. You live here, Anastasia. Cambridge is temporary, this is your home.”

I sigh as I drop the shirt in my hands into the suitcase and take the few steps across the closet to close the distance between us. He doesn’t immediately wrap his arms around me, but after pressing myself tightly into him, he gives in and quickly encloses me in a hug.

“I know this is hard, Christian…” I begin.

“Stop,” He interrupts me, his voice still harsh. I look up at him, feeling a little hurt by his attitude and I think seeing that reflected in my eyes softens him a little because he lets out a long breath and then relaxes a little. “I just…” He says, but then quickly changes direction. “You live here, Anastasia. I just want you to think of this as your home.”

“This is my home,” I agree and he nods, looking a little more reassured.

“Well… I guess you should take whatever you want to take. If you think you’re going to need these clothes in Cambridge, I can buy new clothes for you to keep here.”

“You’re too good to me,” I say, smiling up at him. He leans down and kisses me, slow at first and then more insistently the longer our lips touch.

“Mmm, maybe you’re right,” He tells me. “I don’t want to go out tonight. I want to spend your last night here, alone, together.”

“It’s not my last night,” I tell him, repeating my thoughts from earlier. “I’m leaving tomorrow, but this is still my home, remember? I’ll only be gone nine months and I’ll be home for a week in November, almost a month over December and January, a week in March… Add all that in with the trips we’ll both take back and forth and it’ll be like I never left.”

“You sure you won’t reconsider coming home every weekend?”

I laugh. “I know it’s been awhile since you’ve been to university, but I assure you, my dear Mr. Grey, that the idea of weekly, bi-coastal travel is not only implausible, it’s utterly absurd.”

“Okay there, Harvard,” He says, rolling his eyes. “Why don’t you spend a little less time in here working through your linguistic grandstanding and more time packing. I’ll order some food and we can watch a movie.”

“Sounds perfect,” I tell him. “I’ll be done in thirty minutes tops.”

He kisses me once more before turning around to leave and, once I have something other than sulky Christian to look forward to at the end of all this packing, I find that I’m much faster and efficient at getting it done. It’s only fifteen or so minutes before my suitcase is completely packed and I have everything ready to go. The only thing I’m missing is Christian’s Harvard t-shirt, which I desperately need so that I can sleep in it when I’m not with him. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be in my drawer. I look through Christian’s drawers but it isn’t in there either, although I do find that his panty collection has grown…

I roll my eyes and look through the hangers again, thinking maybe Gail made a mistake and hung it up, but it’s nowhere to be found. A small pang of panic begins to kick in as I start digging through the dirty clothes hamper, but I don’t find it there either. Not that I had expected it to be, the only things in here are the things I took with me to Hawaii and I purposefully didn’t take that shirt with me because I didn’t want it to need to be washed when I was ready to pack it.

When a second look through my drawers again leaves me empty handed, I make my way out of the bedroom and through the apartment, passing Christian emptying cardboard containers of chinese food onto plates as I walk through the kitchen and into the laundry room. Both the washer and dryer are empty so now I’m completely stumped. Where the heck is it?

“Christian?” I ask, coming back out into the kitchen. “Do you know where my Harvard t-shirt is?”

“You mean my Harvard t-shirt?” He asks dryly, and I narrow my eyes at him. I have no time for semantics right now.

“No, my Harvard t-shirt. I’ve claimed it as my own and I’m taking it with me. Have you seen it?”

“Not since you wore it last,” He says, smiling a little, which reminds me that the last time I was wearing it, he was pulling it off of me and throwing it carelessly across the room. So, he’s the reason it’s gone missing. I frown and then stomp back towards the bedroom. Christian calls for me to come back and eat but I can’t do anything now until I find this stupid t-shirt.

Thirty minutes later, I’m still empty handed and thoroughly depressed. It’s not here. Somehow, it’s grown legs and walked away. I’ve torn this entire room apart and I can’t find it anywhere.

“You can take another one of my t-shirts with you, Ana,” Christian tries to reassure me as he finally coaxes me out of the room to eat, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

“It’s not the same,” I tell him. “I’ve worn that shirt almost every night since we’ve been back together. It’s mine and I can’t just replace it with any old t-shirt…”

He wraps his arm around me, rubbing his hand over my shoulder comfortingly, and kissing my hair as I pick up a plate and carry it with me to the dining room table. Once he sits across from me, I take a deep breath and force myself to push aside the disappointment so I’m not the one with the bad attitude that ruins the last few hours we have together for the next couple of weeks.

Once dinner is finished, I let Christian pick a movie while I clean the dishes and throw away the empty containers, but I almost regret that decision when I get out to the living room and find that the movie he’s picked is Bicentennial Man.

“Didn’t we just talk about how I find this to be one of the most boring movies ever made?” I complain as I plop down on the couch next to him.

“You did,” He agrees. “Which is why I picked it. I wouldn’t want you to miss most of a movie you had any interest in watching.”

I smile briefly as he leans over me, pushing me back into the couch as his lips claim mine. My body shifts automatically so I can wrap myself around him and hold him as close to me as possible. His kiss is slow and deep, and I take my time to enjoy the feel of his tongue and his taste. His hands creep beneath my t-shirt and he slowly begins to explore my body. His fingers trace soft circles over my skin and it sends tingles through my entire body, until they move down to my side and I suddenly jerk away from him.

“That tickles,” I say, giggling against his lips and he lets out a small, satisfied sounding moan. Soon, I’m desperate for more than the hot but chaste make out session, so I grab hold of the hem of his t-shirt and quickly begin to yank it up over his head. He moves up onto his hands so that I can undress him and when he lowers himself back down on top of me, his lips travel down my jawline to the curve of my neck.

“You’re so beautiful, Ana.” He whispers in between kisses. “I’m so in love with you.”

“I love you, too,” I moan, tilting my hips up towards his. He moans softly and then pulls my t-shirt over my head, before pushing my breasts together and burying his face into my cleavage to kiss me again.

“Oh, Christian,” I say, feeling my body begin to writhe as I become more and more intoxicated by the feel of him.

“I want you, baby,” He says softly. “I want to be inside of you.”

“Take me,” I whisper back. He groans, and both of his hands grip tightly to each of my breasts, toying with them for a moment before pulling down the cups to expose my nipples to his mouth. I revel in the feeling of his tongue lavishing me for a moment until he pulls away suddenly and begins pulling my leggings and panties off of me.

“Now you,” I whimper, feeling a little cheated that he’s still clothed. He lies down flat over the top of me, holding himself on his elbows and kissing me again as I reach down and undo the buttons of his jeans and slowly pull down the zipper. He groans when I reach inside his pants and grip his erection over his boxers, and then pulls his hips up so I can ease his jeans down.

Once he’s naked, he presses into me again and I can feel his erection pressing against me. I rock my hips back and forth as much as I can, inviting him to cross the threshold, but he doesn’t immediately thrust inside of me. Instead, his hand brushes against my skin once more, from the side of my face all the way down to my outter thigh, and he hooks my leg around him. Once he’s completely ensnared by my arms and legs, he reaches down and grips his erection, guiding it as he slowly eases himself inside of me.

I let out a long, drawn out moan of pleasure as I feel him sink all the way into me and freeze. His tongue invades my mouth again as he holds himself there, deep inside of me for a moment, and then eases back.

“Open your eyes, Ana,” He instructs me. “I want to see you.”

I do as he asks and we stare deeply into eachother’s eyes, moaning softly as we make love. In this moment, feeling as close to him as I possibly can, I can’t believe how lucky I am. This man, this perfect, beautiful man, loves me. That certainty spurs me on, invigorates my entire body, and makes every tiny gesture and movement so much more meaningful and pleasurable.

“Oh… Christian!” I gasp, my fingers gripping tightly to his naked back as I feel the deeply satisfying feeling of pleasure intensify.

“Ana,” He whispers, my name almost a prayer on his lips. “My Ana.”

“Yours,” I agree.

He circles his hips, testing my limits and eliciting a deep carnal moan from me before he pulls back once more and then slams into me.

“Oh, fuck!” I cry as the sudden ferocity radiates throughout my entire body.

“You like that, baby?” He asks.

“Yes,” I reply, my voice entirely too needy.

“Mmmm, then let me hear you.” He groans and he repeats the motion, pulling slowly out of me and allowing me to really feel him before he slams forward again. The dichotomy between his slow withdrawal and hard thrusts has me thrown off balance and soon I begin to build. The warmth is intense, spiraling out from deep inside me and spreading quickly through my limbs, from the tips of my fingers, to the tips of my toes. I moan again as I feel myself begin to tighten, and he lowers his lips to my neck again, just below my ear.

“Not yet, baby,” He says softly. “I want to come with you.”

“Please, Christian.” I reply, pleading. He kisses my neck once more and then pulls back and begins thrusting into me, deep and hard, so that I find myself struggling to hold back my orgasm.

“Christian!” I cry out. “Oh fuck, I’m going to come.”

“Wait, Anastasia,” He says through clenched teeth. “I’m almost there. Wait for me.”

I hold my breath, unsure of what to do to stop the billowing sense of pleasure but that just seems to intensify everything.

“I can’t,” I whimper. “Fuck, Christian…”

“Almost. There,” He pants. I feel him grip the pillow my head is resting on as his tempo becomes slightly harsher and more erratic. “Fuck, Ana. Come for me. Right now, come for me.”

My body detonates at his words and I clench tightly around him again and again as I feel him empty his release into me. His lips crash into mine, muffling my screams of ecstasy as my orgasm consumes me. I’m lost, dazed, and by the time I come down, my whole body is shaking.

“I love watching you come,” Christian whispers, and I let out a low moan because that’s all I can manage. We lay there for a few moments, with him still buried inside of me, panting and reveling in the connection between us. Eventually though, he pulls out of me and I wince slightly as I feel the loss. He shifts me slightly, wrapping me in his arms as he spoons me and we both bask in the euphoric, post-coital bliss.

“I love you, Anastasia,” He whispers, kissing my shoulder.

“I love you, too,” I reply. He squeezes me quickly and then brushes his fingers up and down my forearm as we turn our attention to the movie.

“Christian?”

“Hmm?” He mumbles.

“Can we please watch something else?” I ask and he laughs before picking up the remote and flipping back to the guide.

It’s raining the next morning, a clear sign that summer is over and fall is on the way. I stare gloomily out the window of our bedroom, my mood reflecting the bleak weather as I think about all of the rain that I’m going to miss while I’m 3000 miles away from my home.

“We’re ready to go,” Christian says sulkily as he comes up behind me, places each of his hands on my arms, and kisses me softly on the cheek.

“Okay,” I sigh. I reach down to pick up my purse off the bed, and give the room one last examining look, as though the t-shirt I never found is suddenly going to appear out of nowhere. It doesn’t though so I shamble out of the room and close the door behind me.

The SUV is idling a few feet away from the elevator when we get down to the parking garage and while I expected to see Taylor behind the wheel, I hadn’t expected to see Luke sitting in the front seat. I realize this is a ridiculous oversight on my part since Luke is moving back to Cambridge with me, so of course he’s going to be on the flight, but I hadn’t really thought the actual leaving part much. The reminder that he’ll be there actually brightens my spirits a little bit.

We climb into the back and make our way through the wet streets of downtown until we merge onto the I-5 South and continue on to the airport. Christian’s jet is once again waiting for us on the tarmac and when we get out of the back of the car to board the plane, I’m again surprised when I find Kate by herself.

“Hey, where’s Elliot?” I ask, plopping down in the seat across the aisle from her.

“Oh, he had some things to take care of with the house and his new company,” Kate says, brushing off my comment. “He wanted to come but he’s just got so much to do… We said our goodbyes already.”

I frown, but decide to let it go. In only a few short hours I’m going to be saying my own goodbyes to Christian and once he leaves, I’m not going to want to harp on about how sad it is that he’s gone, so I’m not going to do it to Kate.

It feels like it takes much less time for us to take off than it did when we went to Hawaii, which I suppose is normal when you’re dreading something. Once we’re in the air, Christian picks up a book to read, but Luke seems to want to talk rather than let me do the same.

“Do you like my new hat, Ana?” He asks, slicking his hair back and then slipping a fitted New England Patriots hat over his head.

I glare at him. “Take that garbage off right now.”

“I have to fit in!” He argues, but I shake my head.

“If you’re going to be following me around, you’re not going to be repping the Patriots. I’d literally rather be murdered.”

He laughs and tosses the hat on the seat next to him. “So, where’s your car, Kate? Didn’t you drive it here?”

“My parents are having it shipped to me.” She replies, not looking up from her Cosmo. “I don’t know though… I think I might trade it in once we get there. It’s getting kind of old.”

“We’re going to get to go car shopping. Right, Ana?” Luke asks.

“Mhm,” I mumble, taking a sip out of the bottle of Snapple I brought with me.

“Oh, about that,” Christian interjects. He shifts in his chair so that he can pull his wallet out of his back pocket and take out a credit card to hand to me. I look down at the thick black plastic and slowly trace my fingers over the letters etched into it that spell out my name.

“What is this?” I ask.

“It’s for you to use while you’re at school,” Christian explains. “There’s no limit on it so you can use it to buy your car and then whatever else you need throughout the year.”

I narrow my eyes at him.

“You paid for my school again, didn’t you?” I ask.

“Yep,” He says, seemingly unconcerned as he picks his book back up. I shake my head but lean over and kiss him on the cheek.

“Thank you,” I tell him and he smiles without looking up at me. Luke and Kate spend the next few minutes talking about cars and just as I think I’m about to be able to cuddle into Christian and lose myself in a book, Kate pulls me back in.

“Have you heard anything about your book, Ana?” She asks.

“I got an email from Dr. Ralston a few days ago. He says it’s finished and edited, but he’s not going to be able to meet with me for a couple weeks after the start of the term,” I tell her.

She nods. “Are you going to go through the whole process of query letters and finding an agent, or are you just going to have it published through SIP?”

I shrug. I don’t really want to answer that question in front of Christian because I do actually want to try and get it published outside of SIP, but I don’t know how he’ll feel about that. Part of me feels like having him publish it will take away from the feeling of accomplishment I’ll feel from actually having something published. He’d accept it whether it was good or not, just because I’d written it. Having a publisher that I don’t sleep with accept my work feels more validating.

“What’s happening with SIP anyway?” Kate asks. “I thought Christian bought it for you? Are you going to sell it?”

“No,” He replies. “I’ll just have to hire a different director. It’s still profitable and it’s possible Ana will change her mind after graduation and decide she wants to go back.”

“Who are you going to hire as director then?” Kate asks.

“Jack Hyde,” I respond, but Christian raises an eyebrow at me.

“No, I’m not.” He says.

“You’re not?”

“Of course not. He was there before the merger, when the company was failing. Why would I appoint someone as director when they’ve already clearly demonstrated their ineptitude?”

“I worked with him all summer,” I argue. “I thought he did great.”

“And that’s why I didn’t let him go when we did our first quarterly review,” He says. “But he thrived because he was working under a strong leader. Everything that created the turn around SIP went through was because of you. My hope is that he’ll be the same kind of asset to Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth?” I ask, and he nods.

“Elizabeth Morgan. She’s an outside hire with a strong background in literature, just as you were. I found her at HarperCollins and after a lunch and some email negotiations, she agreed to come on board. She started on Monday.”

“Oh,” I say, frowning a little as I remember promising Jack I’d put in a good word for him. I should have asked about this sooner… I really do think he would have been good.

I’m a little put off by how long the flight feels as I have the realization of how many times I’m actually going to do this over the next nine months. I suppose it will leave me plenty of time to do homework, except that I won’t have any wifi, but by the time we’re making our descent into Boston, I’m so antsy from being seated for so long that I’m bouncing up and down in my seat, unable to keep myself from fidgeting. Christian on the other hand, stares morosely out the window like we’re on our way to a funeral. I frown as I look over at him. Maybe Elliot had it right, and Christian should have stayed behind. In a little more than an hour, he’s just going to be right back on this plane, making the long flight back to Seattle, only this time… he’ll be alone.

“You okay?” I ask him, reaching over to hold his hand.

“Yeah,” He replies, though his tone of voice makes him entirely unconvincing. He sighs and tosses his book on the seat across from us. “Let’s get you home.”

When the plane finally comes to a stop and we’re allowed to de-board, Christian and Luke help put mine and Kate’s luggage in the back of the cars he’s rented to take us back to Cambridge. There are two so that I have something to drive until I can buy a car, and it means that Christian and I get to drive back to Cambridge alone together. He’s quiet almost the whole way, but his hand never leaves mine and every now and then he lifts my hand to his lips.

I look eagerly out the window once we start passing the familiar landmarks near the University but, strangely, as I look at the surroundings that have been my entire life for the past three years, I feel no sense of homecoming. The tops of the red brick buildings over the walls that line Massachusettes Ave, that for so long represented salvation to me, now just feel like… school. The narrow city streets that used to give me a delighted sense of East coast charm now feel cramped and suffocating. In truth, as we pull onto Maple Ave and I see our house coming into view, I start to feel a little homesick for Escala.

“Here we are,” Christian says once he’s pulled up the alley into the parking behind the house. I sit there for a moment, not ready to move, but eventually I’m spurred into action when Kate and Luke pull up beside us and start unloading luggage.

The house is a little musty from being empty over the long summer months and it’s hot. I hurry to the air conditioner to try and cool the place down and then, while Christian takes my bags up to my room, I turn on the water and the gas before climbing up the stairs after him. When I walk through my bedroom door, I find him examining it with a furrowed brow.

“I know, I know. It’s not a penthouse apartment,” I tease him and he rolls his eyes.

“Where’s the bed I bought?” He asks, looking down at the full sized bed I’d put in here shortly after I came back from Savannah the first year we’d moved in here.

“It’s in the guest room,” I reply. “I uh… I didn’t want it in here after, well… you know.”

He takes a deep breath, frowning, and then nods. I can feel a sudden awkwardness in the room and I realize how much this place represents distance between us. This is the place we were never destined to be happy together. I’d done everything I could to remove all traces of him from this room after he’d broken my heart. Just down the stairs is the room where I’d turned my back on him, thinking I was leaving him forever. All of that is behind us now, but somehow… it feels like the sentiment lingers in the walls of this house. Maybe that’s what’s bothering him…

“Hey,” I say, crossing the room and wrapping my arms around him. “You know how much I love you, right?”

He smiles and nods again. “Yeah.”

“I can get a new bed if you want. A bigger bed. My mattress isn’t very good anyway.”

“I kind of like that it’s smaller,” He says. “It just means you’ll be closer to me.”

I laugh and then reach up onto my tiptoes to kiss him, before turning to my bag so I can start unpacking. When I lift the lid to my suitcase though, I find something unexpected.

“What’s this?” I ask, holding up something small and hard wrapped in blue tissue paper. He smiles as I unwrap it and immediately my breath catches in my throat. It’s a tiny bottle of sand. The words written on the tag in Christian’s handwriting read:

Kauai, Hawaii. August 27th 2010

“I don’t know if you could know what this means to me,” I say softly, looking down at the bottle and fighting back tears.

“Not nearly as much as that week meant to me,” He replies. I smile and brush my fingers over the bottle before crossing the room and placing it on the shelf where the old one sat, look at it appreciatively, and then return to my suitcase.

Christian walks around the room for a minute while I unpack, picking up random things and looking at them with mild interest before eventually, he pulls his phone out of his pocket, looks down at the screen, and sighs.

“I’ve got get back to the airport,” He tells me. “I’ve got an early meeting in the morning.”

“Well, thank you for bringing me back to school,” I tell him and he gives me a sad kind of smile.

“Of course,” He says. I shut the lid to my suitcase and start walking towards the door so that I can walk him to the car, but before I get there, he stops me.

“Wait,” He says, and I turn around to look at him. Slowly he begins unbuttoning his shirt and I narrow my eyes at him, wondering if he’s hoping to get in a quickie before he leaves, but once he pulls open his shirt, I see what he’s doing.

“My harvard t-shirt!” I exclaim giddily, and he smiles at me as he reaches back to pull it over his head.

“I figured it would be better if it smelled like me,” He says and when he tosses it over to me, I immediately bring it to my face and inhale the clean, manly smell that is wholly Christian.

“Thank you,” I say, pouting my gratitude at him as I fold the t-shirt and set it gingerly down on the bed. Once he’s put his button down back on, I reach my hand out for his and we walk out of the room and down the stairs together. Luke has brought the rest of mine and Kate’s things in from the car, so Christian offers to drive him over to his new apartment so he can start unpacking himself. Luke nods, accepting his offer with a professional thank you, and then disappears out the back door to give me and Christian one last moment alone.

“Call me when you land in Seattle, okay?” I ask, now holding back tears.

“I will,” He promises. “And, call me in the morning so we can figure out where you’re going to buy your new car. I want to get that taken care of before you start school on Thursday.”

“Okay,” I nod.

“I’ll see you next weekend for your birthday,” He tells me and I nod again as he sweeps me into his arms and kisses me deeply. A long, lingering kiss that leaves me breathless and feeling weak at the knees, and reminds me of what I’m about to let walk out my door.

“I’ll miss you, baby,” He whispers against my lips, and I moan in agreement.

“I’ll miss you too, Christian,” He kisses me once more and then, very reluctantly lets me go. I follow him to the back door and then stand there as I watch him climb into the driver’s seat of one of the rental cars and wave to me before he slowly backs down the alley. A deep sinking feeling takes hold of my stomach as I watch the car turn onto the street and disappear from view.

He’s officially gone.

“Hey,” Kate says, coming up behind me while I sniff and reach up to wipe away a tear. “You’ll see him really soon.”

“I know,” I nod, accepting the hug she pulls me into.

“In a way,” She tells me. “I’m almost a little glad that it’s just the two of us now. No Elliot and no Christian. We started this journey together, just you and me. I’m glad that it’s you that will be here with me as we close it out.”

I smile at her. “Me too, Kate. I couldn’t have done any of this without you. Don’t tell Luke, but you really are my best friend.”

“No promises,” She says with a laugh.

I hug her again, but it’s very brief as we’re interrupted by the shrill ring of the house phone. She gives me a challenging look that makes me roll my eyes.

“I’ll get it,” I say with dramatic over enthusiasm and she laughs as she turns towards the stairs. I cross the kitchen and quickly glance at the caller ID which displays Christian’s name. A small smile creeps into the corner of my lips as I pick up the receiver and hold it to my ear.

“He-llo,” I drawl and I hear his low chuckle in response.

“Just checking,” He says, and I giggle.

“Have a safe flight,” I tell him. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Bye, baby.”

“Goodbye.”

I hang up the phone and look at it longingly for a moment, my teeth sinking into my bottom lip as I take a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come since the last time I stood in this kitchen. As difficult as this summer has been, it’s been the greatest of my life. I have the man of my dreams back, and although he’s controlling and temperamental and extremely overprotective, I love him with every ounce of love I have to give.

As I turn to walk out of the kitchen and take the stairs to my bedroom so I can unpack, I realize, I wouldn’t want him any other way.

Next Chapter

“Sorry, it’s not chocolate,” Luke says as he hands me a brightly colored paper plate with a square slice of vanilla cake sitting on top of it. I look down at the thick rainbow colored icing and smile.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I tell him, “Thank you.” I pick up my fork to take a bite and then turn to the front of the conference room where Jack is pulling everyone’s attention to Boyce Fox. He’s positively beaming, as he should be. His novel has debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and he’s the reason for the celebration this afternoon. He gives a quick, gracious, and surprisingly humble speech, thanking everyone for their hard work, and Jack makes a joke about how we’ve done all the real work, which makes everyone laugh.

“No, but seriously though,” Jack continues, waving for silence again. “The effort I have seen from everyone on this team has been outstanding. I haven’t seen this level of dedication and excellence in a long time, and I think we owe a lot of that to our very own Anastasia Steele.” He gestures to me and, as everyone in the room begins to clap, I feel my face go red. “She’s still only just an undergrad and she’s had one hell of a summer in terms of her personal life, but she was with us in the trenches every step of the way. It was her ideas and her creativity with the e-reader she developed in conjunction with Grey Enterprises Holdings that have really given this small little publishing company a voice in this crazy industry of ours.”

There is applause again and I finally swallow my bite of cake and wave for everyone to stop. “No,” I say, shaking my head a little. “The only one person in this room who deserves your praise is Boyce. The success of this novel falls to his vision, his words, and his genius. Everything else can be attributed to the gargantuan effort of every single person in this room. It really takes a village to get a project like this off the ground and you all have made my job incredibly easy.”

“Humble as ever,” Jack says, winking at me. “But unfortunately, today is her last day here at SIP and we’re all really going to miss her. Aren’t we guys?” There is a murmur of agreement until Claire pipes up.

“Don’t feel too sorry for her though. She’s leaving for Hawaii today with her hot billionaire.” She laughs and I point my fork at her while giving her a knowing smile.

“That is true,” Jack laughs, “Nonetheless, we’re going to miss you, Ana.”

Amidst a murmur of agreement around the room, I nod in agreement and smile at everyone before turning back to Luke so that I can’t hide the tears pricking my eyes at the overzealous praise. I’ve never been great at being the center of attention or the receiver of compliments and commendation, and after everything else that’s happened in the last week, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.

“Don’t do it,” Luke warns me with a teasing smile when he sees me trying to covertly dab the corners of my eyes. I glare at him and consider shoving my cake in his face. Ultimately though, I decide I’d rather not waste it. There is music that starts playing from the other side of the room as the attention is diverted away from me, and as I take a deep breath to compose myself, I hear Jack’s voice again coming from right behind me.

“We really are going to miss you around here,” He says.

“Thank you, Jack,” I tell him, turning around and returning the broad smile he gives me. He opens his arms for a hug and I hesitantly step into him and allow him to wrap his arms around me.

“Has Mr. Grey said anything about who your replacement will be?” He asks me, and I raise an eyebrow at him.

“No…” I tell him, honestly. “But I figured he just didn’t feel the need to tell me since I’ll be gone. He hasn’t said anything to you?”

“No,” Jack shakes his head.

“Well, I’ll talk to him and I’ll put in a good word for you,” I promise. “You’re really a great asset to SIP, Jack.”

“Thank you, Ana. That means a lot,” He hugs me once more. “Good luck at Harvard. We’re all rooting for you.”

“Thank you,” I say smiling again, and then someone across the room catches his attention. He nods at the person and then turns back to me so he can excuse himself.

“Speaking of that hot billionaire and Hawaii,” Luke says. “We’ve got to go if we’re going to be on time. And if you think I’m going to miss taking a private plane to paradise, you’re insane.”

I laugh, then toss my now empty plate into the wastebasket and quietly sneak out of the conference room and back towards my office to grab my purse.

It’s strange in here now. I’ve already taken everything down and brought it home, so there’s very little of me left here and I’m feeling a little melancholy about it. This job has been such a great experience and I’m actually going to miss it. I need to remember to thank Christian again for giving me this chance.

“Ana?” A hesitant voice comes just before I hear a low knock on my door. I turn around and see Bryan standing there, looking awkwardly at me.

“Hey, Bryan,” I greet him as I sling my purse over my shoulder. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to congratulate you on a job well done this summer. When you got the appointment to director of this implementation, I didn’t think you deserved it. Frankly, I thought I was more qualified and better suited for the position on nearly every criteria, but you proved me wrong. I’ve actually learned a lot from you over the summer, not just about business but about how to deal with people, and I just want to say, thank you and great job.”

“Thanks, Bryan,” I say smiling. “I’ve really enjoyed working with you this summer. You’ve been so much help.”

“Thanks, Ana.”

“Sure. Have a good term at USC.”

“And you at Harvard,” He says. “I’ll look you up. I have a feeling a recommendation from you may mean a lot in the coming months.”

“And I’ll only have glowing things to say,” I promise him. I give him a quick hug too as I tell him good-bye and then turn to follow Luke out the back to where my Lincoln is parked.

“Didn’t Grey promise you a new car?” Luke asks once we’re pulling onto the street.

“Yeah, we talked about it but I think he’s just going to wait until I get to Cambridge. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy me a car now when I’m about to leave for nine months. He thinks I need something while I’m at school so I’m probably going to need you to take me car shopping when we get back.”

“Excellent,” He says. “Do they have a Porsche dealership in Cambridge?”

I roll my eyes. “I doubt it, and that’s definitely not happening. I’m sure Christian will be very specific about the car I’m allowed to buy.”

“Yeah, but he’s got a soft spot for fast sports cars too,” Luke argues. I shake my head and exhale with irritation. I can’t imagine Christian being comfortable with me driving anything that focuses on speed over safety. So much in fact that I briefly wonder if he’s going to try and find me one of those cars that the president drives around in, with a reinforced armored frame and bullet proof glass. Either way, there doesn’t seem to be much point in concerning myself with what I’ll end up with so I rest my head against the back of my seat, close my eyes, and imagine crystal blue water, white sand beaches, and the most beautiful man in the world by my side as we lay out on sun loungers sipping cocktails and listening to the gentle roll of the tide.

Only a few short hours.

When we pull into the parking garage under Escala, we find Taylor and Ryan already loading mine and Christian’s luggage into the back of the SUV. Luke pulls up next to them so I can hop out of the back of the Lincoln, and I wave to both of them as I step into the elevator. Hopefully, Taylor and Ryan packing up the car means that Christian is ready to go and once I change clothes, we can be on our way. Unfortunately, once I’m upstairs, the only person I see in the great room is Gail.

“Good afternoon, Ana,” She greets me warmly. “How was your last day?”

“It was great,” I tell her, “Is Christian ready to go?”

“Mr. Grey is in his office,” She says, and I turn my head to look in that direction before thanking her and walking towards the back hallway. His office door is closed and I can hear him talking to someone inside, so I assume he’s on the phone. I still have to change so I make my way back into the bedroom, and exchange the uncomfortably stiff dress and heels I’ve been wearing at work all day for a loose fitting sundress and sandals. Next I take the book I’ve been reading off the nightstand, slip it into the tote bag I packed the night before to take on the flight with me, and then make my way back out to the living room.

Christian still hasn’t come out of his office, so I decide to let him know that I’m ready to go, hoping to push him a little, but when I head back down the hallway and open the door, I find that he isn’t alone. He’s sitting on the edge of his desk, his hands folded in his lap as he looks down at a girl with long brown hair seated in the chair facing away from me.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say quickly, trying to back out of the room.

“Ana,” He calls to me, so I hesitate for a moment until he waves me into the room.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were in here with anyone,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’re never an interruption,” He tells me. “We’re just finishing up. Ana, this is Caitlyn Draper.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I say, holding out my hand, but she doesn’t take it. Instead she just looks up at me awkwardly and blushes.

“I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, Mrs. Grey.”

“Oh…” I say, shaking my head slightly. I’m about to correct her, but it sort of feels unnecessary, especially since Christian doesn’t say anything, so instead I just smile down at her. “You’re perfectly fine, I haven’t been waiting at all.”

“All the same, we do need to be going,” Christian says. Immediately, Caitlyn jumps out of her seat but Christian reaches into the small plastic stand on his desk that contains his business cards and holds one out for her. “If I can ever do anything else for you, Miss Draper, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.”

“Thank you, sir,” She says, gratefully, as she takes the card. “I’ll uh… I’ll just see myself out.”

Christian nods and once the girl has left the room and closed the door behind her, he wraps his arms around me.

“Mrs. Grey, huh?” He says, clearly pleased by the idea. I let out a small breathy laugh and kiss him softly on the lips.

“Is that the last one?” I ask and he nods.

“She wants to go to veterinary school,” He tells me. “That’s one of the more ambitious ones I’ve heard.”

“And you’re going to pay for it?”

He nods again. “If that’s what she wants to do.”

I frown but don’t argue the point. Despite getting everything we wanted with the trial, Christian still hasn’t been able to shake the guilt he feels over what those girls working in the club went through. He’s met with each of them individually, apologized to each of them for what they were forced to endure, and then offered them financial help in whatever they wanted to do to get them out of the lifestyle. A few weren’t interested, and he was okay with that in the end as long as that’s really what they wanted, but he’s paying for all kinds of technical and vocational schools for a few of the others. He’s also arranged for therapists to meet with any of the girls who feel like they need it, but so far, only two or three of the twenty have taken him up on that.

“Are you ready to go?” He asks me and I take a deep breath and nod.

“Unbelievably ready.”

“Then let’s go,” His hand reaches down for mine as he leads me out of his office and back out towards the great room. As I collect my things from the sofa, we both say goodbye to Gail and wish her a safe trip to Portland since she’s taking advantage of our week away to visit her sister. She returns the wish for safe travels to us, and I turn to wave goodbye to her as I follow Christian into the elevator.

When we get to the airport, we’re greeted by the sleek jet with the GREY logo on the tail, ready to go on the tarmac. Ryan, the only member of Christian’s security team who won’t be joining us on the trip, pulls up next to the staircase leading into the fuselage and as I step out of the back of the SUV, I notice Elliot pacing back and forth.

Initially, Christian had planned for this trip to be just for the two of us, but when he told me we’d be missing Elliot’s birthday, we decided that it would be nice to bring the family along. He’s found a compound on the beach in Kauai to rent where we’ll all have separate accommodations, so even though we’ll have plenty of opportunity to socialize and do things as a family, we’ll have our privacy too.

“‘Bout time you got here,” Elliot grumbles impatiently. “You said two o’clock.”

I look down at my phone and roll my eyes. “It’s 2:07 Elliot, relax.”

“Punctuality is important, Anastasia,” He argues. “Time waits for no man.”

“I’m not a man,” I spit back at him and he narrows his eyes at me as I swing my tote over my shoulder and begin climbing up the stairs into the plane.

It’s bigger than it looks from the outside. Carrick, Grace, Mia, and Kate are already seated in the wide, leather seats, but there’s still plenty of room. While the captain does his final pre-flight safety checks, Christian shows me around the plane, reminding me that I’ll be spending a lot of time here once the fall semester begins and I start flying back and forth from Cambridge to Seattle what he assumes will be every weekend. I want to argue that last part, but right before a family vacation doesn’t seem to be the appropriate time to start that fight.

“There are blankets in here if you get cold,” He says, opening a cabinet to show me a stockpile of thin cotton blankets, “And books and magazines over here if you get bored and need something to do.”

He leads me back further into the plane and points out the bathroom before showing me a small bedroom in the back that is largely taken up by a perfectly made bed.

“In case I get tired?” I ask, looking up at him innocently.

“In case I decide to fly back with you,” He replies, raising a suggestive eyebrow. I roll my eyes and then playfully slap him across the chest before maneuvering around him to rejoin the rest of the Greys.

We take a seat across from Mia as the plane begins to move, and a woman with platinum blonde hair and striking blue eyes comes up beside us.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Grey?” She asks. But Christian, who has already pulled out a book to read for the fight, shakes his head.

“We’re fine, thank you,” He tells her, not looking up, and she nods before disappearing towards the front of the plane.

“Who was that?” I ask him.

“Natalia,” He replies. “She’s part of the staff. She’ll be the one taking care of you when you fly home to be with me. There’s a full kitchen and a bar so if you ever need anything, she can get it for you.”

“And she’s the one who waits on you when you go on business trips and stuff?” I ask.

“Yes,” He nods, but when he looks up at me and sees my expression, he frowns. “Do you have a problem with that?”

I frown. “No. I mean… Does she have to be so leggy?”

“What do you mean?” He asks and I roll my eyes.

“I mean, you couldn’t find a flight attendant who didn’t also moonlight as a supermodel?”

He laughs and reaches down to pick up my hand so he can press my fingers into my lips. “There’s no need to be jealous, Anastasia,” He reassures me. “I don’t have eyes for anyone but you.”

I let out an exasperated huff but decide to let it go as I reach for my own book and settle in for the long flight.

The sun is setting by the time we start to descend over the clear turquoise water and lush green landscape surrounding Lihue airport. When we’re let off the plane, we’re met by a line of woman in identical floral wrap dresses, each holding purple orchid leis over their arms.

“Welcome to Kauai, Mr. Grey,” The woman closest to us greets Christian. She reaches up to place the circlet of fragrant flowers over his head and although he doesn’t seem over pleased by the adornment, he doesn’t say anything about it. The rest of the women step forward, placing a lei around each of our necks in turn before we’re escorted through the airport to two large SUVs waiting to take us to our beach rental. Christian thanks the women who greeted us and then climbs into the SUV after me. Once the door closes, he immediately removes the orchids from around his neck and tosses them over Mia’s head. She giggles and turns to bury her nose in the flowers.

The road that takes us to our compound is flanked on either side by tall, overgrown trees that make it feel as though we’re driving through a tunnel, but once we make it to our rental, we’re met with an unbelievably gorgeous ocean view. Kate’s arms reach up and around me from the seat behind us as she lets out a small excited squeal. I laugh, and rest my hand over her wrists, wishing I could turn around and hug her back. For the first time in a long time, I’m able to relish in the feeling of not having anything to worry about, and can look forward to a blissful, relaxing week with the people I love.

Once we’re stopped, Luke and Taylor begin unloading everyone’s bags as we walk up the manicured trails towards the individual bungalows scattered throughout the property. Everything here is so beautiful: the oceanfront views, the palm trees gently swaying in the breeze overhead, even the lawn, which is peppered with small gardens overflowing with exotic plants and flowers. Christian leads me to the largest bungalow near the back of the compound, and I’m intrigued by the curious and yet somehow fantastic dichotomy of the shabby, beachy exterior of the little cottage compared to the ultra modern interior. It’s chic and cozy, and most importantly, it has a gigantic bed in the center of the room, which is surrounded by billowy mosquito netting hanging from the long post in each of the four corners, and I immediately think about how perfect they are for restraints…

“What do you think?” Christian asks, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist as Taylor and Luke set our bags by the door and quickly hurry back outside.

“I was just thinking about the possibilities these bedposts present,” I say slyly, turning in his arms and pressing into him.

“Mmm,” He hums. “I have a few ideas myself…” He leans down, kissing me deeply. His tongue invades my mouth, moving firmly but languidly against mine as we lose ourselves in the kiss.

“Baby, we’ve got to go meet my family for dinner,” He whispers, the regret clear in his voice as he pulls away from the kiss.

“Okay…” I say, pouting. I reach down for my suitcase, plopping it down on the chair for something I can change into but as I pull my dress over my head, I hear Christian groan.

“Oh, fuck dinner,” He says, and suddenly I’m swept up into his arms and his lips are on mine again. He pushes me back towards the bed, roughly yanking back the mosquito bedding and practically throwing me as he lifts me onto the bed. His fingers move with quick dexterity as he unbuttons the fly of his jeans and then reaches back to the collar of his t-shirt and yanks it over his head. I hook my thumbs under the band of my panties, pulling them quickly over my hips and legs, but the moment I toss them aside and place my legs down on the bed, Christian is on me, wrenching my legs apart as he lowers his mouth to me.

“Oh fuck!” I gasp at the unexpected yet wholly welcome contact. His tongue swirls around my clitoris just long enough for him to heighten my arousal and then he moves up, kissing every inch of my skin from my navel to my neck.

When he gets to my collar bones, I fist my hands into his hair and yank him up so that I can kiss him again. Our teeth clink together as we dive into one another, but we’re so lost in this sudden desperate need that neither of us care. I feel his fingers reach back for the clasp in my bra, but he’s having difficulty reaching it with me on my back, so I reach up and shove against his chest, pushing him off of me so that he rolls onto the bed next to me and then quickly climb on top of him, straddling his waist. I lean down over him, pushing my breasts into his chest as he reaches up from my bra clasp again and I take his mouth once more. There is a small thought in the back of my brain that wonders if I should show a little restraint instead of just shamelessly throwing myself at him like this, but I’m so desperate for his touch right now, I just don’t care.

“Fuck, Ana,” He whispers. “God, this is so hot. Show me how much you want me baby.”

I moan into his lips, kissing him deeply one last time before suddenly pulling away and sitting up straight. Slowly, I begin rocking my hips back and forth over his erection, coating him with my arousal as I move. He groans, thrusting his hips upward as I continue to move against him.

“You like that, baby?” I ask him, looking down at him through hooded eyes and very purposefully sinking my teeth into my bottom lip.

“Yes. Oh fuck, yes,” He says. His fingers move to my hips as I continue to gyrate around and around. I lift my hands up into my hair, gently pulling it off my neck to give him the best view of my breasts, and his eyes darken.

“Okay, enough of the preamble,” He says, and his hands grip more tightly onto my hips as he lifts me just enough that he can slide his erection into me. I groan as I sink down onto him, feeling him fill me to the brim.

“Ride me, baby,” He says, huskily. I give him a mischievous smile and then lift myself up a few inches before sinking back down. I’m slow at first, reveling in the feeling of him, but the more I move, the more I need the friction and the hard pounding rhythm that never fails to bring me right to the edge, so I increase my pace. My thighs begin to burn, but I ignore it. I want this. I need this.

His hands reach up to cup each one of my breasts, my nipples peaking through his index and middle fingers, and when he pushes them together, pinching my nipples tightly between his fingers, I let out a small, deeply satisfied yelp and begin grinding down on him.

I’m unprepared for how amazing it feels, having him fully buried inside of me while I move my hips around and back and forth. I don’t often just get to feel him inside of me, filling me completely, without him disappearing almost instantly as pulls out and plunges in again, and it’s so rewarding. Soon, the familiar sensation of heat begins billowing out from deep inside me and my body starts to tremble.

“Oh fuck, Christian!” I groan. “I’m going to come.”

“Good,” He growls. His hands move away from my breasts and back down to my hips as he holds me in place and begins thrusting up into me. I’m panting as I feel myself inching closer and closer to release. Almost there….

“Lean back,” He says, and the second I follow his command, he hits that place inside of me that electrifies my entire body and I unravel.

“Fuck, Christian! Oh fuck!” I scream, hardly able to hold myself upright as my orgasm rips through me. He doesn’t stop his relentless pace as he continues to thrust into me. When at last I feel coherent again, I look down at his beautiful face and the pure pleasure reflected there, and it brings a new, carnal need out of me.

“Come for me, Christian,” I beg him. “Please, come for me. I want to feel you come inside of me.”

“Oh god, Ana,” He growls, his face screwing up slightly as I know he’s just about there. I start moving again, pushing back down on him, meeting him thrust for thrust and soon he groans.

“Fuck, here it comes, baby,” He warns me and after one last, deep thrust, he stills and I feel the slight rippling sensation of his release pouring into me.

I move around him, grinding over him as I wait for him to come all the way back down to earth with me and once he does, he immediately sits up, still buried inside of me, holding me against him as he begins to kiss my breasts. I twist my fingers through his hair, encouraging his mouth on me, until he tilts his head up towards mine and we kiss again.

“Should we still go to dinner?” I ask, after several minutes of being lost in him and his mouth against mine.

“I suppose,” He says. “You’ll need your energy if we’re going to test these bed posts.”

I laugh, and then climb off of him to retrieve my dress again. He grins widely at me as he watches me get dressed and when I’m finished, he takes my hand with his and then slowly lifts my fingers to his lips.

“I love you so much, Ana,” He tells me. “I can’t wait to spend this week with you.”

“Me either,” I reply, and I lean up on my tip toes once more, before we head for the door, walking hand and hand as we make our way down to towards the beach to meet his family.

Next Chapter

My chest feels empty sitting in the back seat of the SUV outside of the King County Correctional Facility. It’s been hours since I heard the loud, definite thud of the judge’s gavel fall against the bench and watched as the bailiff came forward, put Christian in handcuffs, and took him away. A lot of things happened very quickly after that. Kate came with me as Taylor whisked me away into the back seat of the SUV so we could meet Elliot at the bank to withdraw cash to pay Christian’s bail. She tried to get me to stop and eat something, knowing it was going to take Christian hours to be processed before he was released, but my appetite is non-existent. Instead, I asked her to stay with Elliot and then Taylor and I drove straight to the jail where Christian had been taken. Now, I’m waiting just inside the gate, far enough away from the street where, thankfully, the photographers waiting to get the first shot of Christian walking out of jail, can’t see me through the tinted glass of the SUV.

The waiting is the hardest part right now. I’ve prepared myself for this exact scenario, had a plan in place for what I was going to do, but this hours of not being able to do anything was never a part of my plan, and I think having things to do was the only thing getting me through this.

It shouldn’t have been this way. None of it should have been this way. As I stare at the doors to the jail that haven’t opened even once since I’ve been sitting here, I almost have to squint through the bright rays of sunlight beaming down through the empty space in front of me. The small digital screen in the dash tells me that it’s a beautiful 81 degrees outside right now, the perfect day to be walking along the waterfront or maybe even spending the afternoon on Alki beach. There’s a pre-season game for the Seahawks at Qwest tomorrow that Christian and I could have gone to, and maybe on Sunday we could have gone up to Rainier National Park and rode mountain bikes on some of the trails, like Elliot talked about all last winter. All in all, this weekend had all the makings of being an amazing way to wind down the summer, but instead I’m in the backseat of a car, not knowing what even the next few hours hold for me, let alone the last few weeks until term starts. Not that that matters now anyway.

I’ve already made the call to Harvard to inform the admissions office I won’t be returning for the fall semester. Kate fought me hard on that one. She pleaded with me for probably forty-five minutes, yelled at me, even threatened to write to Ray… but there’s no way I can go back to Cambridge and leave Christian to go through this alone. Any minute he and Carrick are going to come out those doors and we’re going to be facing one the toughest legal battles we’ve ever had to go through.

The memory of Carrick’s face in the foyer of Christian’s apartment in Escala flashes across my mind. The look of defeat, completely devoid of any hope.

“Miss Steele,” Taylor says, calling my attention from the driver’s seat. “They’re coming up the walk now.”

I turn my head sharply back towards the doors and see Christian and Carrick quickly walking towards the SUV. Carrick seems to be attempting to shield Christian from the blinding flashing coming from behind me, but I’m not sure how successful he’s being, so I preemptively turn off my phone to avoid the inevitable Google Alerts that will follow. Christian looks pale, a little gaunt even, like he’s just seen a ghost or something. He looks intently at the SUV, narrowing his eyes as if he’s trying to see through the dark glass, and I know he’s looking for me.

I’m here, Christian.

I take a deep gasping breath as I’m jolted awake from my nightmare, still haunted by the look on Christian’s face as he left the jail with his father. My heart is racing and my breathing is rapid and shallow, but relief washes over me as I realize that the second day of the trial hasn’t happened, and Christian hasn’t been charged with anything yet. It was a dream, but in just a few short hours, it most likely will be reality.

I turn to wake Christian, wanting desperately to feel his arms around me and to tell him again just how much I love him, but he isn’t in the bed next to me. A frown crosses my lips as I look over to the bathroom door, thinking perhaps he’s gotten up to take a shower, but the light is off. There aren’t any noises coming from the apartment either. I look up at the ceiling thinking perhaps he’s in the gym, or maybe in his office trying to take care of some last minute things before we have to leave. Either way, I need to get up and get ready to go.

I take my cell phone off the charger on the nightstand and when I glance down at it, I feel a rush of panic. It’s 8:15 and I’m already supposed to be at the courthouse.

“Shit!” I hiss as I throw back the comforter and run into the bathroom. I don’t have time for a full shower so I throw my hair up into a messy bun on top of my head and slip into the cascading water before it’s had time to warm up, just to rinse off. Once I’m done, I apply the bare minimum make up I can get away with, spray my hair with hairspray to tame any flyaways, and then race into the closet to get dressed for court. The whole process takes only eight minutes, but I’m so late that I don’t have any time to slow down. Why didn’t Christian wake me up?

“Christian?” I call as I hurry into the living room, throwing my bag over my shoulder. He doesn’t answer. I look back towards the kitchen, but it’s empty. There isn’t any music or noise from the treadmill coming down the stairs, but it’s so late, I know he can’t be working out. I turn around to check his office, but he isn’t there either. Did he… leave without me?

Taylor is waiting for me when I get back into the living room, looking expectantly at me. “Are you ready, Miss Steele?” He asks.

“Yeah, did Christian leave already?” I ask him, but he frowns.

“Mr. Grey? He’s not with you?”

“No.”

Taylor looks down at his watch and I watch the muscle in his jaw tighten. “We have to leave now or you’re not going to be able to get in the courtroom,” He says. “I’m sure Mr. Grey is already down there.” There is a hint of irritation in his voice that I recognize from the days when I used to ditch Prescott. Clearly, Taylor doesn’t approve of Christian being out on his own, but I suppose I understand him needing some time to himself to sort through this thoughts. I just wish I hadn’t lost this last morning with him…

“Well, let’s get down there then,” I say and Taylor steps aside so I can lead the way to the elevator.

Once we get to the garage, we make our way up the ramp to where the cars are parked, and I notice that my Lincoln is gone. I furrow my brow as I wonder why Christian would take my car instead of the Bugatti or his Mercedes. That concern is pushed aside though as I climb into the back of the SUV, and Taylor quickly navigates his way out into the tightly packed early morning traffic.

Carrick is waiting on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse again, pacing furiously back and forth as he waits. It’s 8:45 and I was prepared to have to run inside, so it’s weird that he’s still out here waiting for me.

Once the SUV comes to a stop, Carrick looks over at the car with obvious irritation but his face goes blank with confusion when I step out of the car and close the door behind me.

“Where’s Christian?” He asks, looking around to the other side of the SUV as though he’s expecting someone to be walking around. When Taylor pulls away though, Carrick’s eyes widen and he turns a more stern look back on me. “Where is Christian, Anastasia?”

“Isn’t he here?” I ask, and Carrick shakes his head.

“If he was here, why would I be out here?” He demands, but as I stand there gaping back at him, struggling to find the words to respond, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone. I watch him as he holds the phone up to his ear and then almost immediately yanks it away again. “His phone is off,” He says angrily.

I bite down into my lip as I reach into my purse for my own cell phone and scroll through my recent calls for Christian’s name, but just as Carrick said, it doesn’t even ring before I hear the robotic, “You have reached the voicemail box of…“

“Did Taylor say anything?” Carrick asks me as I pull the phone away from my ear dejectedly, but I shake my head.

“He didn’t know he was gone either. He’d already left by the time I woke up. I just thought he needed some alone time before…” I pause, my thoughts now racing through the consequences of his absence. “What happens if he doesn’t show up?”

“Well, since he’s already testified, the judge isn’t likely to dismiss… He’ll most likely allow Elena to present the evidence she has, but depending on the what the judge decides… I might not be able to cross examine her.”

“So we’ll lose?” I clarify, and Carrick nods.

“I can’t see any way we wouldn’t, and if charges end up being brought against Christian, which is what we expect, the court will issue a warrant for his arrest.”

I shoot a nervous look down the street, hoping to see my Lincoln coming towards us, but the streets are only filled with the typical morning traffic jam.

“Come on,” Carrick says, after another minute or so. “Let’s get inside and see if we can stall.”

He hooks his fingers around my arm and leads me inside, which is good because my eyes are trained on the road behind us rather than where we’re going. Once we’re in the building, he releases me and we hurry up the corridor towards the courtroom we were in yesterday. To my surprise, we see Elena’s lawyer pacing back and forth in front of the doors hissing angrily into her cell phone.

“Just get here,” She snaps. She hangs up the phone and takes a deep breath before turning around towards Carrick and I.”

“Grey,” She says, a little surprised, but that shock quickly wears off and is replaced with a smug smirk. “You know, the entire time I was a prosecutor, I’d wanted to go up against you in court? In fact, you moving to general practice was the thing that made me finally make the leap to defense. I thought you were the best. They told me you were a shark in the courtroom, but it seems to me you’re nothing more than… chum.”

“Not everyone is so adept at fabricating narratives and manipulating evidence to tell lies, Novik,” Carrick replies. “That’s not the way I practice. I don’t win on deceit.”

“Oh please,” She says, rolling her eyes. “You’ve lost your nerve. You used to be a force to be reckoned with but ever since you’ve lost your firm, you haven’t been the same. Your blood’s in the water, Grey. And me? I am a shark.”

She struts past us into the courtroom, but Carrick doesn’t seem to be affected much by her arrogant attitude. He simply glances over his shoulder one last time, looking towards the main doors, and then ushers me inside after her.

“Where’s Christian?” Elliot asks once we’ve walked up the aisle to where Christian’s entire family has already taken their seats.

“He’s not here,” Carrick replies tersely, and Elliot frowns and then looks up towards Elena’s lawyer.

“Elena’s not here either,” Elliot tells us and we both look up to the front of the courtroom to the empty seat next to Anne Novik.

“Fuck,” Carrick hisses. His hands ball into fist as he takes a long, shaky breath. “He’s with her. He’s going to do it again…”

“No,” I shake my head, unwilling to believe that Christian would ever even consider what Elena proposed, but Carrick ignores me and turns to scan the courtroom.

“Where’s Ros?” He asks.

Kate shakes her head. “She didn’t come.”

“Find out where she is,” He says and I nod, reach into my purse for my phone again, and dial the number for Christian’s office.

“Christian Grey’s office, Olivia Blandino speaking. How may I direct your call?” Christian’s new receptionist answers.

“Olivia, this is Anastasia Steele. Can I speak with Ros Bailey, please?”

“Oh, Miss Steele! I’m sorry, Miss Bailey isn’t in the office this morning. Can I take a message for you?”

“No, is… uh, is Christian there?” I ask, hopefully.

“No, ma’am. He’s been out all week.”

“What about Andrea?”

“Yeah, Andrea’s here. Hold one second please,” She says, and I listen to her muffled voice for a second until Andrea’s voice comes through the speaker.

“Hi, Ana. What can I do for you?” She asks.

“Do you know where Ros is?” I ask.

“No. Mr. Grey sent her somewhere on his plane early this morning, I think around 5 AM, but I wasn’t sent an itinerary.”

I can almost feel all the blood draining out of my face as I look up at Carrick and slowly shake my head. “Thank you, Andrea.”

“Sure thing, Ana. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”

“I will. Bye.” I hang up the phone and put it away without making eye contact with Christian’s father. “He put her on a plane this morning.” I say quietly and all I hear in response is his sharp inhale.

“He’s hiding her because he’s going to take the fucking deal. God damn it! I can’t believe he’d do something like this,” Carrick says incredulously. “I really thought he’d changed.”

“Something like what?” Elliot asks. “What deal?”

“Elena’s deal,” Carrick says and as Elliot’s mouth pops open, I step forward.

“So don’t let him,” I say emphatically. “He’s scared and he’s trapped. I was ready to take the deal too until I found out what it was and I’m not even the one facing prison. But if you fight for him, if you go into this with everything you have and you make this court see that Elena is guilty, then he doesn’t have to take the deal. Just fight for him, Carrick. Please don’t give up on him.”

He looks down at me with an emotion I can’t quite get a read on but before he can answer the bailiff calls the court to attention and asks for everyone to rise for Judge Ramsdell. Carrick hurries forward through the gate and whispers something into Stephanie’s ear while we all file into the benches and stare apprehensively at the judge, who looks between the two empty tables in front of him, perplexed.

“Counselors, where are your clients?” He asks, and Elena’s lawyer steadily rises out of her seat.

“There’s an accident on the I-5, your honor. Traffic has been almost completely shut down, but my client is on her way here. She should be here any min-“

Her words are drowned out by the loud creak of the doors to the courtroom opening behind us, and we all turn to look in the direction of the sound. Christian is standing at the back of the courtroom, holding open the door while Elena strolls past him and I immediately feel an unwelcome surge of deja vu that has my stomach seized up in knots. Please don’t do this, Christian.

“Good of you to join us,” The judge says, tapping his fingers on the bench as Christian and Elena walk up the aisle and through the gate towards their respective sides of the courtroom. He doesn’t look at me as he passes and it brings up the dry ache in my throat that I’ve so far managed to repel.

This is part of the deal. A small, condescending voice says in the back of my mind. He has to leave you now.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Carrick hisses as Christian takes his seat but he just shakes his head as he pushes his chair into the table.

“I’m taking care of things,” He says flatly, and I can see the fire ignite behind Carrick’s eyes.

“Please tell me you didn’t make a deal wi-” Carrick pleads, but he’s cut off by the judge asking for Elena’s lawyer to call her first witness.

Elena’s lawyer stands and calls someone named Madeleine Moreau to the stand. I turn and watch one of the brown haired girls seated in the benches across the aisle from us stand and make her way through the bar and towards the bailiff. Once she’s sworn in and takes the stand, Elena’s lawyer identifies her as the girl from the security video she’d entered into evidence the day before. It’s a short testimony as the only thing Elena’s lawyer asks of her is to confirm that the meeting she had with Christian in his office was sexual in nature, which she does. Once Elena’s lawyer is finished she thanks Madeleine for her testimony and we anxiously turn our attention to Carrick as he rises out of his seat to begin his cross examination.

“Good morning, Miss Moreau,” Carrick says as he walks towards the bench. “Can you tell me how long you’ve worked for Mrs. Lincoln?”

“About eight months,” She replies.

“And how often do you work?”

“Three or four nights a week.

“Do you see any other clients besides Mr. Grey outside of the club?” Carrick asks and the girl shakes her head.

“No, he’s a special client.”

“Special?” Carrick asks.

“Yes, Mrs. Lincoln said he couldn’t go to the club because he’s a high profile businessman. His presence would attract attention so girls had to be brought to him.”

“But he is a client?” Carrick clarifies. “Not an owner.”

The girl pauses. “Uh… Well, no. He’s… I mean, Mrs. Lincoln said that he was the owner, I just think of him as a client.”

“Right,” Carrick says nodding. “Because your job isn’t to know about the business side or how the club works. Your job is to satisfy the customers.”

“Yes,” She says.

“And Mr. Grey is one of your customers?”

“Yes,” She repeats.

“So, just so I’m absolutely clear here, you have had sexual relations with Mr. Christian Grey?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In his office.”

“Where in his office?”

“Uh…” She stammers, looking a little uncomfortable as she glances over towards Elena. “On his desk.”

“How?”

“Excuse me?”

“How did you have sex?” Carrick repeats and Elena’s lawyer gets to her feet.

“Objection, your honor. Surely the witness shouldn’t be forced to answer such deeply personal questions that have no relevance to the outcome of this trial whatsoever,” She says.

“I’m sorry, are these not the same kind of questions Anastasia Steele was asked yesterday?” Carrick interjects. “I could have the court reporter read Ms. Steele’s testimony back to you if you’ve forgotten, Ms. Novik. I thought you agreed that Mr. Grey’s specific sexual preferences were in fact relevant to this case?”

“Overruled,” The judge agrees, motioning for Elena’s lawyer to sit down. Carrick nods and turns back to the girl on the stand, looking at her expectantly.

“Um…” She stutters again. “He bent me over his desk.”

“And was Mrs. Lincoln in the room with you the whole time?” Carrick continues, throwing questions at her so quickly after she’s answered the previous question, I wonder how she has time to gather her thoughts to answer them.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“In case things got out of control.”

“Is that standard practice? Having Mrs. Lincoln in the room with you.”

“No.”

“Then why was she there that day in his office with you?” He asks and the girl stammers once more as she tries to answer the question.

“Uh… I don’t…” She says, struggling again, so Carrick continues with more rapid fire questions.

“I’m sorry, I’m just having trouble understanding the purpose of Mrs. Lincoln’s presence, or her role in the club at all if Mr. Grey was the one running things.”

“She mostly dealt with the girls.”

“What do you mean dealt with?”

“She looked out for us and made sure none of the clients pushed us too far or broke any limits, and she punished the girls who weren’t doing their jobs.”

“Punished?” How?”

“Uh… I don’t know. Um, she would…” The girls eyes flit over to Elena again as she’s clearly getting a little discombobulated by Carrick’s line of questioning.

“Did she ever punish you?” Carrick asks.

“No.”

“But she would have had you not pleased Mr. Grey?”

“Yes.”

“So why didn’t she punish you when you didn’t have sex with him in his office?”

“Because she didn’t really expect him to agree to have sex with…” The girl begins but her hand flies up to her mouth as she realizes too late, what she has admitted. “I mean… She.. we… I-“

“You’ve never had sex with Mr. Grey have you, Miss Moreau?”

“I-I..” She stutters again.

“Please remember you’re under oath,” Carrick reminds her and her face falls.

“No,” She says at last. “I was supposed to. That’s why Mrs. Lincoln brought me there, but when we got into his office, he said no. He just left me by the door and talked to Mrs. Lincoln about some girl who wasn’t answering his phone calls.”

“So he never asked for you to be brought to his office?” She asks, and the girl shrugs.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, he seemed surprised and a little angry when he saw me.”

“Thank you, Miss Moreau,” Carrick says and he turns to the judge. “I have no further questions, your honor.”

The judge dismissed the girl and she climbs off the stand as Carrick walks back towards Christian and Stephanie. The judge turns towards Elena and her lawyer, but the two of them continue to whisper quietly to one another until the judge finally insists that Novik call her next witness.

Novik gets out of her seat and swallows hard, like she’s having a little difficulty taking the blow of losing her first material witness, but once she’s calmed herself, she looks up at the judge and continues in a clear, confident voice.

“The defense would like to call Leila Williams to the stand, your honor,” She says.

A door opens off the side of the courtroom and I inhale sharply as I turn and watch Leila walk into the courtroom. It’s still a shock to see her, despite the fact that I’d already considered her testifying against Christian as a possibility. But, after Carrick exposed Madeleine, I don’t know what Leila can say that will be more damaging to Christian’s case, so her appearance doesn’t immediately cause me to panic. I do know she is willing to lie though, and I’m a little unsettled by the purely vindictive smile she shoots at both Christian and I as she approaches the bench and raises her right hand for the bailiff.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god?” The bailiff asks.

“I do,” Leila says in a clear, ringing voice, and she climbs up onto the witness stand and looks directly at Elena’s lawyer.

“Miss Williams, what is your relationship to Mr. Grey?” She asks.

“I was his secretary for 11 months,” She says.

“But you’re not anymore?”

“No, I was let go earlier this summer.”

“Let go? You were fired?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you fired, Miss Williams?”

“Because I raised some ethical issues about Mr. Grey having sex in his office during business hours.”

“So you have personally witnessed Mr. Grey actually having sex in his office during GEH’s hours of operation?”

“Yes,” She nods. “Well… we heard it. He’s not exactly subtle.”

“I see,” Elena’s lawyer says. She pauses for a moment and then turns back towards her table. “Miss Williams, you were involved in a sexual harassment lawsuit with Mr. Grey earlier in the summer immediately following your termination, correct?”

“Yes.”

“But that was thrown out when the media got hold of some text messages between Mr. Grey’s assistant and yourself stating your claims against Mr. Grey weren’t entirely truthful, correct?”

“Yes,” Leila nods, and she hangs her head in shame for a minute. “I went about that the entirely wrong way. Originally I had intended to sue for sexual harassment for being subjected to Mr. Grey’s inappropriate behavior day after day and then wrongful termination, but I didn’t have any way to prove how bad it was. Everyone who works in his office has to sign an NDA and they’re all so terrified of him and of getting fired… I wouldn’t be able to get anyone to back me up.”

“I see,” Elena’s lawyer says. “Your honor, I’d like to submit item 1-G into evidence, the text messages between Leila Williams and Mr. Grey’s assistant, Andrea Parker. Please pay special attention to the highlighted messages where Miss Parker expresses fear over losing her job if she were to say anything about how unfairly she was treated by Mr. Grey.”

She hands the evidence to the judge and then turns back to Leila. “Miss Williams, if you were worried that no one in Mr. Grey’s office would verify your truthful stories about Mr. Grey, why is it that you chose to lie?”

“Because I’d hoped that if I came forward, it would give the girls who were forced into sexual encounters in his office the courage to come forward themselves. It was supposed to be about them. I didn’t realize at the time that he was paying for them to keep quiet.”

“Objection your honor,” Carrick says. “Speculation.”

“Sustained, will the court reporter please strike Miss William’s last statement from the record?” The judge asks, and then he nods for Elena’s lawyer to continue.

“Miss Williams, when these girls came into Mr. Grey’s office, did it ever occur to you that they had perhaps been in a relationship with Mr. Grey?”

“No, actually Mrs. Lincoln had informed us that the girls were there for an interview. And I guess, maybe they were now that we know what their real jobs were.”

“So you didn’t know about the club or about the services these girls provided?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t know about the club, but the girls…” She hesitates and then changes direction. “Mr. Grey very rarely meets with people in his office. The only staff he interviews directly are those on the executive team. Lower level employees are interviewed exclusively by HR or the supervisors of the department they are applying to. I never even interviewed with Mr. Grey, and I was his personal receptionist.”

“So the interviews seemed suspicious to you?”

“Yes, and so I looked up a few of the girls names, trying to figure who they were and what they could be interviewing for, and that’s when I found out that they were…” She blushes as her words cut off.

“Prostitutes?” Elena’s lawyer infers and Leila nods.

“Specialized prostitutes, they practice BDSM.”

“And how many of these girls did you witness being brought into Mr. Grey’s office?”

“I don’t know, ten maybe.”

“So why did it take so long for you to come forward if you knew what was going on?”

Leila looks down at her hands before she answers. “I was like everyone else at first,” She says. “I was intimidated by the NDA I’d signed and… I didn’t want to be fired. Eventually though, I couldn’t keep quiet anymore and Mr. Grey made an example out of me. He may not have had sex with that last girl, but there were plenty others. I’ve heard him myself.”

“Thank you, Miss Williams,” Elena’s lawyer says. “I have no further questions.”

“Miss Williams,” Carrick says, getting out of his seat before the judge even invites him to begin his cross examination. “Will you please describe the events that led to you being fired for the court?”

“It’s like I said, I said something about Mr. Grey’s inappropriate behavior and I was fired.”

“Could you be a little more specific?” Carrick asks. “What was the inappropriate behavior you witnessed?”

“He was having sex in his office.”

“With who?”

“Uh…” Her eyes flash to Elena and she frowns. “Well, that specific time it was Anastasia Steele, but…”

“His girlfriend?” Carrick interrupts her.

“We didn’t know that she was his girlfriend at the time. She was just his intern. We’d thought he’d exerted his authority over her to force her into allowing him to perform sexual acts on her,” Leila replies defensively. “Just like he did with the other girls.”

“But that didn’t end up being the case because Mr. Grey and Anastasia Steele were, in fact, in a relationship at the time, weren’t they?”

“I-I guess so.”

“And…” Carrick’s brow furrows with confusion. “How is it that you knew what was happening in Mr. Grey’s office that afternoon anyway? There is quite a bit of distance between your desk and Mr. Grey’s office, isn’t there? A long hallway, several offices… How is it that you heard what was going on in his office over the noise of a typical office when your desk is so far removed?”

“It came over the speaker in the phone,” Leila says, sourly. “They had accidentally hit the intercom button on the phone which pages the reception desk. It was pretty clear what they were doing.”

“Then how is it you know Mr. Grey had sexual relations with the other girls who were in his office?” Carrick asks, his tone more demanding now.

“Because I heard it,” Leila says.

“No,” Carrick shakes his head. “You just said that the only reason you heard the encounter that occurred between Mr. Grey and Miss Steele was because they accidentally paged the front desk and you heard everything over the intercom on your desk phone. Are you expecting this court to believe that Mr. Grey had “accidentally” hit that intercom button every time one of the girls Mrs. Lincoln had brought to him came to his office?”

“Well no… but.”

“You only ever heard the encounter between Mr. Grey and Miss Steele. Isn’t that right, Miss Williams?”

“I-I..” She stutters, but Carrick’s line of questioning continues very quickly.

“The truth is you have no idea what went on behind the closed doors of Mr. Grey’s office whenever Mrs. Lincoln brought those girls in to see him. For all you know, they could have been there for an interview.”

“No, they’re prostitutes!” Leila argues.

“You’re a secretary right?”

“So?”

“So, do you answer people’s phones everywhere you go? Take minutes and write down everything everyone around you says in your personal life? Do you get coffee for every person you encounter?”

“Well, no but…”

“No, you don’t,” Carrick interrupts her. “Because your career choice doesn’t dictate your actions in every situation. In this case, you’ve simply made an assumption based on research no one asked you to do, which I may add is an extraordinary violation of privacy and an abuse of the access you have to that security check in list which in itself is a fireable offense, and prejudice and jealousy you felt after you witness an encounter between Mr. Grey and Miss Steele. Isn’t that right, Miss Williams?”

Leila stares back at him, red in the face, but unwilling to answer, so Carrick pushes her again.

“You have no idea what went on in his office with the exception of what you heard between Mr. Grey and Miss Steele. Isn’t that right, Miss Williams?”

“I don’t know,” She says at last, a hint of anger beneath her voice, and Carrick turns to the judge.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

The judge tells Leila she can get off the stand, which she does reluctantly, and I’m grateful when she exits out the side door she entered through rather than take a seat in the gallery with the rest of us. Again, Novik looks shaken a little by having yet another witness dismissed without doing anything to help her case, but whatever Elena says to her seems to ease her concern because the uncertainty is quickly removed from her expression as she gets out of her seat.

“Your honor, at this time I’d like to invite Mrs. Elena Lincoln to the stand,” She says, as she looks down to flip through some of the papers in the folder open on the table in front of her, and Elena slowly rises and walks up to the witness stand. I roll my eyes as I listen to her swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and even hear a sarcastic snort come out of Elliot as she turns and climbs onto the witness stand and turns to look expectantly at her lawyer.

“Mrs. Lincoln, how long have you worked for Mr. Grey?” Novik begins.

“A little over a year. About 14 months,” Elena replies.

“And how is it that you came to work for Mr. Grey?”

“I owned a salon in South Seattle, and it wasn’t doing very well. Mr. Grey bought it from me, moved me into a new locations and restructured the business model to accommodate growth… and then he came to me with an idea.”

“An idea?”

“He told me about an idea he had to open an underground BDSM club. Most of the clubs in the city that revolve around the lifestyle are mostly retail or social in nature, a place for people to meet others in the lifestyle, to buy props and instruments, or for Submissives and Dominants to be connected with one another, but they don’t provide any real service. Mr. Grey wanted to create a place where people would come to practice BDSM. He was specifically interested in creating an environment where people who wanted to be Dominants could work with experienced Submissives and have experts around so they could learn how to fulfill that role properly before really venturing out into the community. Undoubtedly because he was interested in becoming a Dominant himself.”

“And what did you think of that idea?”

“I honestly didn’t really know what it had to do with me,” She says.

“Did he tell you?”

“Yes. He told me that he bought the salons from me to serve as a front and a way to circulate the profits from the club into his company without raising concern. He told me that salons are so difficult to gauge in terms of profitability, increased revenue output would be less suspicious going through the salons than any other division of his company. He never really publicized the connection between Esclava and GEH as a way of trying to keep it low profile and prevent any red flags from popping up. He was too high profile to have anything to do with the clubs in person, so he had me running the day to day operations while he controlled the business side behind the scenes.”

“And you agreed to have your salon operate in this capacity?”

“I didn’t really have a choice,” Elena says. “He bought my business, my only livelihood, and he only wanted it for this one purpose. If I didn’t cooperate he’d shut it down and I’d be left with nothing. Besides, I’d… I guess, overvalued my friendship with Christian. I’d shared intimate details of my life with him that I wouldn’t share with anyone else and he made it clear that if I refused to help him, that those details wouldn’t stay private any longer.”

“He blackmailed you,” Novik infers and Elena nods.

“Essentially. I guess I didn’t realize it at the time, he’s very charismatic and has a way of wording things to make it sound like he’s trying to help or that he’s on your side, but yes. I guess he did.”

“Did you ever express your reservations to Mr. Grey during the course of your business relationship?”

“Several times. The way the club operated was definitely outside the norm of a typical BDSM relationship where two people are matched on several levels of compatibility, desire, and consent. Generally, a BDSM relationship is a mutually beneficial relationship in which two people can explore their sexual desires safely and with someone who has similar interests, but there is a connection and a bond that develops. In the case of the club, a man would come in, pick a woman he found aesthetically pleasing, pay for her, do as he pleased with her, and then he’d leave. It wasn’t a relationship, it was prostitution.”

“So why didn’t you report him?”

“Like I said, everything I had was tied up into this business and Mr. Grey had threatened to expose personal details of my life and sexual preferences if I didn’t agree to help him. He has a lot of power and I wasn’t sure that reporting him would result in anything, and after some of the things I’d witnessed working in the club, I felt the need to stay so that I could protect the girls. I didn’t know what kind of person would be brought in to replace me and some of the policies Mr. Grey had attempted to enact over my tenure suggested he cared very little for their welfare.”

“Such as?”

“Once client preferences became more well-rounded and better known, girls weren’t allowed to include certain acts involving those preferences in their limits. The policies put in place to handle dominant men who broke the rules or pushed a girl past her limits were severely relaxed, almost non-existent. And the screening process for girls hired to work in the club were extremely inadequate, specifically when it came to age verification. When he’d asked me to bring in his little sister, she was only 16 years old.”

“I’m sorry,” Novik says, stopping Elena with a note of surprise. “Mr. Grey asked you to employ his little sister?”

“He thought he’d be able to control her better and she’d learn a better sense of discipline if she came to work in the club. She’d gotten into trouble a few times over the summer and he knew she was trying to find ways to rebel against her parents. It turned out he was right. When he sent me to the restaurant she worked at to speak with her, I’d only half-heartedly suggested she come work for me, and she accepted without hesitation. I don’t think he’d intended for her to be there forever, I think it was more of a scare tactic, but he’d asked for her to come all the same.”

“Did Mr. Grey ever visit the club?” Novik asks.

“Only the one time that you saw on the video yesterday. He knew going down there was a bad idea. He didn’t want to be seen there in case the location of the club ever leaked. If he wanted to see one of the girls, he’d ask to have them brought to him. Discreetly. Sometimes he wouldn’t be pleased with the choice of girls I brought to him and he wouldn’t do anything with them. Sometimes, he’d have a girl brought back several times.”

“I see,” Novik says, and she turns back to the table to retrieve several documents from her desk.

Most of the rest of Elena’s testimony is spent going over financials as Elena traces every dollar GEH invested in the clubs through Esclava and gives a long detailed account of Christian’s supposed involvement in the entire financial process. It’s obvious she’s put a lot of thought and preparation into her testimony and if I didn’t know 100% that she was lying out of her teeth, I think even I might have hesitant feelings about Christian’s involvement.

Surprisingly though, Christian remains fairly stoic during her entire testimony. I’m having a hard time gauging him. Clearly, he hasn’t worked out a deal with Elena because Ros’s name hasn’t been brought up once and Elena has been very specific about it being Christian who opened the club. But, if they haven’t worked out a deal, it means that unless Carrick pulls some kind of miracle in his examination of Elena, we’re going to lose. Even after Madeleine and Leila’s testimony. Our worst fears are about to be realized and he seems as though he couldn’t care less. Is that because he has that much faith in his father? Or has he simply come to terms with what’s going to happen?

Just before the end of Elena’s testimony, Christian jumps a little in his seat and reaches into his pocket to remove his iPhone. He glances at it for only a second before stowing it away again and leaning into whisper something to his father.

“Just trust me,” He says, as he pulls away and Carrick takes a deep breath and nods.

“That’s all the questions I have, your honor.” Elena’s lawyer finishes at last. The judge nods and then turns to Carrick.

“Your witness, Counselor,” He says.

“Your Honor, we’d like to request a ten minute recess,” Carrick says as he rises from his chair and the judge nods again.

“Granted,” The gavel slams down on the bench and Christian immediately shoots out of his chair and bolts up the aisle. I look after him and then back at Carrick in shock.

“Where is he going?” I ask but Carrick shrugs.

“I have no idea,” He says, and then Stephanie diverts Carrick’s attention back to her so they can prepare for Elena’s cross examination.

“So… that was bad right?” Elliot says quietly, leaning in so that only we can hear. “I mean, I even found myself wondering-“

“She’s lying, Elliot,” I say firmly.

“No, I know that. But… the judge doesn’t.”

I take a deep breath and turn nervously back towards the doors and stare at them while I say a silent prayer over and over again. After only a minute or so, Christian returns, walking back into the courtroom with all the confidence of a world class CEO. And to my surprise, he isn’t alone.

“Luke?” I whisper under my breath as I watch my best friend take the first available seat in the back of the courtroom. His eyes scan the benches in front of him but before we make eye contact, I’m distracted by Christian walking through the gate and leaning down towards his father. I can’t hear what they’re saying to one another but Christian hands him something and Carrick’s eyes widen with shock.

“Go get her, Dad,” Christian says as he takes his seat and for a brief moment I feel something close to hope rise inside of me. What is that?

“Order! Order!” The judge calls from the stand as he bangs his gavel against the bench to silence the surprisingly loud rumble of the people in the courtroom. “Mr. Grey, are you ready to question the witness?”

“Yes, your honor,” Carrick says as he slips whatever it is that Christian handed him into his pocket and walks briskly towards the witness stand.

“Mrs. Lincoln, you claim that Mr. Grey instructed you to open this club and operate it in his place under threat of blackmail, correct?” He begins.

“That is correct.”

“And the personal information Mr. Grey had to reveal about you that would have such devastating consequences on your life that it caused you to go against your moral conscience, he’s the only person who could reveal this information about you?”

“Yes,” She says.

“And is the information you’re talking about is your involvement in the BDSM community?”

“Previous involvement,” She says, “Personally at least. I gave all of that up many years ago, outside of my responsibilities in the club.”

“So nobody else, in this entire world knows about your past with BDSM? Not even an ex-Dominant, or an ex-submissive, or perhaps, your ex-husband?”

“Okay… there are some people who knew,” Elena says, “But they had never threatened to expose my lifestyle choices to the world.”

“What about the people who came into your club every night? Weren’t you concerned that they would reveal something about your presence in the club? You claim Mr. Grey had the foresight to be concerned enough that he made sure he was never seen there. You didn’t have the same concerns as he did?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” She says, but Carrick narrows his eyes.

“I’m sorry, maybe I’m not understanding the logic here but it seems to me that you were risking having your lifestyle exposed by operating this business and meeting with customers face to face in order to prevent your lifestyle being exposed?” Carrick asks.

“The clients at my club signed non-disclosure agreements,” She says.

“Your club?” Carrick repeats, and she inhales sharply through her nose.

“I’m sorry, I misspoke. What I mean to say is the club in which I operated for Mr. Grey,” Elena corrects herself quickly.

“I don’t think you misspoke,” Carrick says. “I think you purposely tanked your salon business knowing Mr. Grey would reach out to help you as a friend, and once he had possession, you flipped the switch on your BDSM club to make it look like Grey Enterprises Holdings had once again created a miraculous turn around while you made your fortune and provided yourself a place to practice BDSM sex in an illegal underground BDSM club.”

“That’s absolutely not what happened,” Elena says emphatically. “That club is wholly owned and operated by Grey Enterprises Holdings and its sole proprietor, Christian Trevelyan-Grey. I’m nothing more than middle management.”

Carrick stares at her for a long beat and then nods his head. “Well, then…”

I watch him reach into his pocket and walk slowly over the projector on the other side of the courtroom.

“Your honor, I’d like to submit item 6-A into evidence, please,” He says, and upon the judge’s approval he plugs a small USB into the port on the side of the projector and flips in on. I gasp as suddenly the image of the interior of Elena’s bar flashes on the screen and I immediately recognize Isaac standing behind the bar. Seconds later, I walk through the door.”

“What is this?” Elena asks very suddenly, sitting up straighter in her chair. “Where did you get this?”

But Carrick ignores her and simply lets the footage roll. We all watch and listen as I ask Isaac to get Elena for me and he exits the room through the same door Elena walks through a few moments later. Elena flashes a warning look at her lawyer whose eyes are darting back and forth as she tries to think of something to stop the recording from playing.

“Objection, your honor,” She says after a minute. “There is no way we can even be certain that is my client represented in the video.”

And Carrick rolls his eyes as not only is it clear as day that it’s Elena sitting next to me on the barstool drinking gin, but immediately after she finishes speaking I address her by name.

“I think it’s pretty clear your client is depicted in the video footage, Miss Novik. Your objection is overruled,” The judge says sternly and he turns his attention back to the screen. I feel an overwhelming sense of excitement creep up inside me as I listen through Elena’s childhood story, knowing what’s to come. Elliot looks over at me with shock and I realize he doesn’t know about the recording. I reach over and take his hand and nod reassuringly and we both turn back to face the projection screen.

“Blackmail, Mrs. Lincoln?” Carrick asks quietly as Elena starts giving me her demands, and he clicks his tongue disapprovingly.

“That doesn’t… That’s taken out of context,” She stutters, but the judge quickly silences her so that he doesn’t miss any of the evidence.

‘She has nothing to do with any of this,’ I argue on the screen as she reveals her plans to divert the blame onto Ros.

‘Neither does Christian. But Ros… well, she had me audited.’

Grace gasps, her hand flying up to her mouth and Elliot squeezes my hands so tightly it’s painful, and a wide, victorious smile spreads across his lips. I look up at Christian, but he isn’t celebrating like Elliot, he doesn’t even look relieved. He simply continues to stare at at the projector.

The video footage rolls for a few more minutes until I dart out of the bar and Elena disappears through the office door once again. Carrick reaches out to power down the projector and turns to face Elena.

“Would you like to change your testimony, Mrs. Lincoln? Or would you like to add perjury to the list of crimes you’ve committed?”

“That evidence can’t be valid,” Elena says, and for the first time there is a slight edge of panic in her voice. “It’s stolen footage. That’s private property, I didn’t give my permission for that footage to be used, I want it off the record.”

I turn to Elena’s lawyer, suddenly panicked, but she simply shakes her head and rests her forehead in her hand looking extremely defeated.

“But… I thought you didn’t own the business?” Carrick asks. “You’ve testified, under oath, to this court that Mr. Christian Grey owns that establishment, in which case that video footage belongs to him. Unless, you’re admitting that you’ve lied and you are in fact the owner and sole operator of the property located at 710 Rainier Ave. In which case, I will be happy to strike the evidence from the record for you.”

“I-I…” Elena stutters.

“I’ve heard enough,” The judge says sternly. “Never in my 10 years serving on this bench have I seen such audacity, Mrs. Lincoln. Your utter lack of respect for both the law and the process of justice is sickening.” He picks up his gavel. “This court finds in favor of Mr. Christian Grey and awards him the state maximum penalty of $5,000 for fraud and misallocation of company assets. Furthermore, this court charges Elena Lincoln with twenty one counts of prostitution, one count of underage sex trafficking, and class-two felony money laundering. Bailiff, please take the witness into custody.”

The gavel slams down on the bench and Grace and Kate both let out squeals of celebration while Christian finally lets his emotions break through his stone facade and he leaps out of his seat, jumps the bar between us, pulls me into his arms, and kisses me, hard, on the lips. I’m so overcome with emotion and actually shocked at the way this unfolded, I feel disoriented. It’s hard to return the same level of intensity Christian pours into me as tears of joy and relief begin pouring down my cheeks and I struggle to keep the smile off my face so that I can kiss him back.

“I love you,” He says, “I’m never going to leave you.”

I let out a laugh of pure joy and the sound is deeply cathartic as I realize this is now a promise he can make to me, and I feel unrelenting happiness at the idea. “I don’t ever want you to,” I tell him. “I love you so much, Christian.”

He kisses me again and it’s easier this time for me to return his passion, but we’re quickly pulled away again by the celebration of his family. I turn to the front of the courtroom and watch as Elena is put into handcuffs and read her rights. There is a small vindictive part of me wants to take out my phone to take a picture.

“Christian, I can’t believe it. Oh thank God! Thank God!” Grace cries as she wraps him in a hug and begins sobbing into his jacket. Carrick turns around and walks through the bar towards us and I immediately weave past Mia and Kate to wrap my arms around his middle.

“Thank you for not giving up on him,” I say gratefully, as I hug him tightly.

“No, thank you for reminding me of what I’d almost forgotten,” Carrick says. “He’s my son, and nothing he could do could ever change that. There is no giving up.”

Christian passes his mother to Elliot and turns around to hug his dad. “Thanks, Dad,” He says, and Carrick squeezes him tightly and then claps him on the back.

“Of course, but you know… you didn’t have to put me through so much of the dramatics. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know if we’d get it. We were having trouble breaking through the encryption to the recorded footage, I’d only just got it before you examined Elena.”

“How did you get it?” Carrick asks, and Christian turns his head and nods behind us.

“Luke.”

I turn and see Luke standing in the aisle, looking at all a little awkwardly. “Luke?” I ask and he nods.

“In the flesh, if you’d believe it.” He replies and a broad smile crosses my face as I maneuver around Carrick to wrap him in a hug.

“I can’t believe… I mean, you… you helped. You saved Christian.”

“Of course I did, Annie. I couldn’t let you lose your guy,” He says and I feel my eyes well with tears as I hug him again.

“So…” Elliot says, as Christian reaches out for me again. “Why were you with Elena before the trial then? If you weren’t making a deal with her…”

“Well, we were parked outside the bar when Luke was trying to hack through the encryption on the security footage. I had brought Ana’s car hoping it would make me less noticeable but it didn’t work. Elena saw me this morning when she started to leave and so I got out of the car as quickly as I could to prevent her from seeing Luke. I didn’t know what else to say to her to explain why I was there, so I asked her if we could talk and she agreed. We went to the courthouse together and I listened to the same deal she proposed to Ana and then told her I couldn’t agree to that. She argued with me some more and so I told her to forget about it and we went into the courthouse.”

“But what about Ros?” I ask.

“What about Ros?” He replies, sounding confused.

“Andrea said you put her on a plane this morning. We thought you were hiding her because you’d made the deal with Elena.”

His eyebrows remained furrowed for a minute until recognition suddenly dawns on his face. “Oh,” He says, as though he’s just remembered something. “No, her sister went into labor this morning. She asked to take the jet back to San Francisco and I made the arrangements for her to fly out as early as possible.”

“Oh,” I say, the relief amplified as all the pieces fall into place.

“We need to get you a new car,” He tells me. “I didn’t think about it before, but the red draws a lot of attention. In fact, that might be part of the reason the paparazzi have been following you everywhere this summer. You stand out too much.”

“Not a Lincoln though, right?” I ask him and he laughs.

“No, definitely not a Lincoln.”

“Alright, let’s get out of here,” Carrick suggests, nudging us out of the aisle a little and I look around and find that most the courtroom has completely emptied out.

“Yeah, let’s get some food,” Elliot says.

“Let’s go to my place,” Christian offers. “I’ll call Gail and have her prepare a lunch for everyone.”

There isn’t any argument so I pull myself into Christian’s side, still needing to be as close to him as possible, and we walk up the aisle and out of the courthouse towards the car, leading the way back to Escala.

Gail has champagne waiting for us when we get back to Christian’s apartment and as she passes the flutes around to each member of Christian’s family, she finds herself being swept into a series of over jubilated hugs, which she gracefully accepts. Christian asks her, Taylor, and even Luke to take glass and then he takes my hand and raises his flute into the air.

“To Luke,” He says. “You saved my company, my livelihood, and you gave me a future with the woman I love. I’ll forever be in your debt.”

“It was really nothing, Mr. Grey, I’m happy to help. You don’t have to…”

“Please, Luke,” Christian implores him and Luke’s mouth closes into a thin line as he looks uncomfortably around the circle to everyone’s eyes on him. I nod encouragingly and he takes a bracing breath and then raises his flute into the air.

“To me,” He says awkwardly and there’s a small echo of laughter as everyone takes a sip.

“And… to my Dad,” Christian says. “You went into a losing battle with me and even though you tried to talk me out of it, you never said no. Thank you for fighting with me.”

“I’ll always fight for you, son.” Carrick says, clapping his hand on Christian’s shoulder. Grace raises her glass into the air and again, we drink.

“And, most importantly,” Christian says. “To Anastasia, for never giving up on me, for remaining by my side, and for being willing to do whatever was necessary to protect me. What you did for me last night not only gave us what we needed to win this case and finally put this whole Elena thing to rest once and for all, but the love that I saw in what you did gave me the courage to really fight. I’ve shouldered a lot of the burden of what almost happened to Mia. I felt responsible and so I just stopped caring what happened to me. But you made me feel… you gave me a reason to fight, Ana. Thank you for making me feel worthy.”

I smile up at him and lean in to press my lips into his, whispering I love you every time our lips part for even just the briefest second.

“To Anastasia,” Carrick says, after a cough and an exaggerated awkward look over at us.

“To Anastasia,” Christian repeats, and he raises his drink and tips the glass against his lips.

“Okay, enough with the toasting,” Elliot says, making a show of draining his glass. “I’m starving, let’s eat.”

“Good, I can skip you,” Christian laughs and Elliot reaches out to shove him as we make our way back towards the kitchen.

After lunch, we sit around the couch with the family having the first light conversation we’ve had in what feels like months. Kate’s last day at Kavanagh Media was Wednesday and she got a glowing letter of recommendation to add to her resume which prompts Elliot’s snide comments on the kind of recommendation letter Christian will write for me.

“She’s done an exceptional job this summer. I have nothing but commendation and praise for Anastasia,” Christian says and Elliot’s smile broadens.

“I bet you do,” He says, the innuendo clear in his voice and Grace hits him with one of the pillows on the couch.

“Okay, okay,” Carrick says. “I think we’ve imposed on Christian and Ana long enough. Why don’t we give them a little time to be alone?”

He gets off the couch and Grace follows after him, moving across the space between her seat and Christian’s so she can wrap him in one last hug before she leaves.

“Call me tomorrow,” She says and he promises he will. We follow everyone towards the elevator, saying our goodbyes until the doors close and they’re gone. Christian leans over and kisses my hair.

“Let’s go get in bed and stay there for the rest of the day,” He whispers and I laugh as I look up at him.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do, Mr. Grey.”

He smiles down at me and presses his lips into mine one last time as he takes my hand in his and leads me back into the great room where Taylor and Luke are helping Mrs. Jones clean up the last of the lunch dishes from the dining room table.

“Luke,” Christian says, and he looks up and walks over to us.

“Mr. Grey?” He asks.

“I uh… Anastasia has had Taylor as her personal CPO over the past few weeks, but I think I’m ready to take him back. I can’t very well leave her without someone to watch over her so if you’d like the job… it’s yours.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Christian nods and Luke smiles.

“It’d be an honor, sir.”

“Good, then we’ll see you Monday,” Christian says.

“Yes, sir,” Luke turns to me. “See you later, Ana.”

“Bye, Luke,” I smile at him, but as he turns back towards the dining room to help Taylor carry the empty lunch dishes to the kitchen, Christian stops him again.

“Luke,” He says, and Luke turns back around to face us. “Don’t let me fire you again.”

“No, sir,” He says with a laugh, and Christian tugs on my hand to lead me back towards our bedroom.

“You know, I wish we could have done more this summer,” Christian says, a little regretfully, almost echoing the thoughts I vaguely remember from my dream this morning as he begins undoing the buttons on his shirt.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s your last summer break. After graduation, summers will mean something entirely different. I hate that you wasted most of it on this fucking trial.”

“Well we still have thirteen days left,” I shrug.

“Let me take you somewhere,” He implores me, and I give him a weary look.

“You’re not going to surprise me with anything like you did in New York, are you?” I ask and he laughs.

“No. Any surprises I have for you from here on out will be only good, I promise.”

“Okay,” I agree. I turn around so he can unzip my dress for me, and once I slip it over my shoulders, we climb into bed together.

Next Chapter

It’s hard to push aside the nerves I feel as I stand outside Elena’s bar. I’m only going to get one shot at this, one shot to do something I don’t even really want to do but now have to if I’m going to hold on to the man that I love. I take a deep breath, pulling the outside air deep into my diaphragm and imagining it pushing away the fear and the stress inside of me so that I can focus on what needs to be done. Once I’m centered, I reach out for the front door and pull it open.

I recognize the room from the video feed I watched on Luke’s laptop. It’s empty, the same as it was before, except for the half naked man standing behind the bar. Isaac.

“We’re closed,” He says, barely looking up at me as he pours a steady stream of gin into the tumbler on the bar in front of him.

“I know…” I hesitate. “I’m not here for… I’m here to see Elena Lincoln.”

He looks up at me with slightly more interest, his face scrunched up slightly as he examines me, until recognition dawns on his face.

“Oh right,” He says, nodding. “You’re Mr. Grey’s submissive.”

“No, I-” I begin, but he shakes his head and cuts me off.

“I’m sorry, I mean girlfriend,” He corrects himself. “Wait here, I’ll go get her.” I nod gratefully as he steps out from behind the bar, and then immediately turn my gaze away from him with embarrassment. He wasn’t half naked behind the bar…

I wait for a few minutes, silently examining the walls that are the reason for the complete and utter mess my life has become, until I hear a door creak and Elena, dressed only in a short silk robe, appears in the doorway to the back office.

“Anastasia,” She greets me, her voice full of suspicion, and I take a deep breath.

“I take it you’ve returned the basement to it’s former glory?” I ask, taking her attire and Isaac’s lack of attire to mean they’d been doing more than preparing for tomorrow’s trial downstairs.

“Waste not, want not,” She replies impassively. I nod and shift my purse higher up on my shoulder.

“Christian’s not… ” I take a breath. “He’s not going to come talk to you.”

She stares at me blankly for a second and then shakes her head incredulously. “He’s going to make me do this to him,” She says, more to herself than to me. “He’s actually going to make me do this to him.”

I don’t say anything to her, I just stare and wait, letting her make the first move. If I’m going to do this with her, I’m going to have to let her know that she has the power here. It’s the only way she’ll trust me.

After taking a moment to think about the consequences of Christian’s absence, she lets out a short breath through her nose, pushes off the door frame, and shuffles towards the bar.

“I’m going to have a drink,” She says, picking up the bottle that Isaac left and pouring more of the alcohol into the tumbler on the bar. “Would you like a drink, Anastasia?”

“Would I like a drink?” I repeat, almost finding humor in the question. “Yes, I would like several drinks. I would like to drink until I’m incapable of forming coherent thought just so that I can stop thinking about all of this for a few hours. But would I like a drink from you? No. Because despite everything that’s happening, I haven’t developed a death wish yet.”

She gives me a half smile. “You’re in my bar, Anastasia. People know I’m here and I assume people know you’re here. Or, if they don’t, that they will soon, so poisoning you would be careless and I would hope that after all of this time the one thing you would know about me is that I’m never careless.”

I stare at her for a moment, and then walk towards the bar and pull out one of the stools to sit on. “Tequila, please.”

Elena turns around to the shelves filled with alcohol behind her, pulls down the bottle of Patron, and then takes a clean tumbler off the rack to pour me a drink. I place my purse on the stool next to me, and take the glass she offers me. She saunters around the bar, dragging the bottle of Bombay Sapphire over the hardwood surface as she goes, and takes a seat.

We sit there in silence for a while, slowly draining each of our glasses. Once the alcohol is gone, I push my tumbler away, but Elena reaches for the bottle again.

“You have to testify tomorrow, Elena,” I say flatly. “You’re not worried about getting too drunk?”

“No,” She says as she pours another few fingers of gin into her glass. “Drinking is something I’ve had to become very good at. Believe it or not, it’s not easy being this heartless all the time.”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “That can’t be remorse?”

“No. It isn’t,” She says, and she drinks again. I sigh, pour myself more tequila and try to decide how to move forward from here.

“I really hate you,” I say bluntly and she turns to look at me with surprise at my honest admission. “Like, really, really hate you, in a way that I’ve never hated anyone before. When Christian and I weren’t together anymore, I thought about you a lot. More than I care to admit. I used to imagine horrible things happening to you. Getting hit by a bus, contracting some horrible, painful disease… I even started liking slasher films because I liked to imagine you as the victims being brutally murdered.”

She laughs and then takes another long drink from her glass. “Well, take a good hard look sweetheart. I’m your future. I’m who you’re going to be in 30 years.”

“No,” I reply firmly. “I’m nothing like you.”

“Not now,” She agrees. “But you will be. You’re ambitious, you’re well educated, you have potential… Christian will slowly take all of that away from you until you don’t even recognize yourself anymore, and then you’ll be me.”

I shake my head. “What are you talking about? Christian isn’t like that. He’s supportive and encouraging. He knows each and every one of my dreams and he wants to help make them all come true.”

“Mhmm,” She mumbles disinterestedly as she takes another drink. “And how long do you think that will last?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re an author, right? You’re trying to publish a book?” She asks, and I nod. “How do you think he’ll react when he needs his doting wife at his side for some event that has implications on his business, but you’re across the country on a book tour? Or when the chauvinistic men that will make up the social circles you run in start taunting him and emasculating him for needing his wife to bring in income? He’ll be the star, Anastasia. He’ll always be the star, and you will be expected to make your world revolve around him. Your identity will become him.”

“He’s not like that,” I argue, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t?” She asks, turning to me with a humorless smile. “Did you know that I have a master’s degree from Princeton?”

“No.”

“Of course you didn’t. No one does, because no one cares. I’ve spent my entire life, or at least the productive years of it, being Mrs. Andrew Lincoln. My husband was a timber giant and I was his trophy wife. That’s my identity. That’s who he made me.”

“Really? So, is that how you got to Christian?” I ask, my voice more accusatory now. “I know it was more than just the sex. The grip you had on him involved some deep psychological shit, so is that how you got to him? Some sad story about how your life of privilege and luxury kept you from fulfilling your dreams?”

“No,” She shakes her head. I watch her drain her glass and begin to fill the tumbler again. After a long, uncomfortable silence, she continues. “I got to Christian because I empathized with him. Grace was very well meaning, very kind, very loving, but she could never understand Christian. She’s never been hungry or had to go without. She’s never had someone put their hands on her when she didn’t want them to. She’s never had someone she really loved ripped away from this earth and been left completely and utterly alone.”

“And you have?” I ask.

She takes another big gulp of the clear liquid from her glass and nods. “You know, I’m not from Seattle. I’m a southern girl, born and raised in Greenwood, South Carolina. My daddy was a moonshiner and when I was about 9 years old, he got busted. Instead of going quietly when the police came, he got into a firefight, killed three police officers, and went prison for, well… I don’t think he ever got out. He left my mama with three daughters to raise on her own and she never even graduated from high school.”

“She used to have to work 14 to 18 hours a day while I cared for my little sisters. She was gone all the time, but she still didn’t make enough money to keep food on the table for all of us. When she wasn’t working, she was out… trying to find a man to help her support her kids, but the kind of men you find in bars late at night who are willing to go home with a woman who has no prospects and three young kids… those aren’t the kind of men who are of any use.”

Her eyes darken.

“But that’s exactly the type of man Boone was. He moved into my house about a year after Daddy went away, and he was a useless piece of shit. He didn’t work, he didn’t help around the house… he was just another mouth to feed. I think mama justified it by thinking at least someone was at home to take care of her kids, but…” She shakes her head. “You leave a man alone too long while you’re working so many late hours, and he starts to get lonely.”

I swallow and turn to look at her, but she just picks up the bottle of tequila and pours me another glass. Once I take a drink, she continues. “I was eleven the first time he crawled into my bed. When he was finished he told me if I ever said anything to mama, he’d go to one of my sisters next. Ava was only nine and Lottie was six. I was the oldest, it was my job to protect them, and so I didn’t say anything.”

“As I grew older and my body matured, it got worse. Boone wasn’t satisfied just putting himself inside me anymore, he started hurting me. He would hit me, pull my hair, put his fingers around my throat… But I took it because I was afraid that if I didn’t, it would happen to Ava too. She was developing faster than she should have for her age and…” Elena shakes her head. “But she got sick. We didn’t have money for doctors and mama thought it was just the flu so she asked me to care for her. I put her to bed, made her drink water… but it wasn’t a flu. It was bacterial meningitis and she was dead within two days. All it would have taken to save her was one doctor’s appointment and some antibiotics, but we couldn’t give that to her. We couldn’t even afford to bury her and so she was cremated. I remember everything about the day we spread her ashes in perfect detail. What the perfume my mama was wearing smelled like, what color dress Lottie wore… And I remember realizing that money was the most important thing in the world. I made a plan that day, that I would study really hard and get good grades in school so that I could go to a good college and get a good job. Then I could have Lottie come live with me and I could keep her fed, and warm, and safe from anyone who wanted to hurt her.”

She stops and begins circling her finger around the rim of her glass.

“And then you went to Princeton?” I ask, urging her to continue. She nods.

“It was hard to leave. I was scared to leave Lottie alone with Boone, but I had to. I moved to New Jersey, got an apartment with three other girls, and got two jobs to pay for school, and bills, and food. I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be. Anytime I wasn’t in class, I was working. I honestly don’t know how my mama did it all those years. I had to stay up almost all night, every night, to do homework, and it was exhausting. By the end of my first semester, it was hard to remember why I was putting myself through it… and then Lottie would call and tell me she didn’t have dinner again that night, and I would remember.”

“It was nine days before Christmas when I got a call from the Greenwood County Sheriff that made everything fall apart. Apparently Boone had found his way to Lottie afterall, but unlike me, she told mama and mama threw him out. He came back in the middle of the night, drunk, and carrying a loaded revolver. He tied my mama up and made her watch him rape my little sister before he killed them both and then shot himself. Once they were gone, I was alone. I had no one else in the world, and I gave up. I was going to drop out of school and move away as far as I could… But then I met Margot.”

“She went to school with me and she seemed to have everything. She lived in a nice apartment by herself, she had a new car, and she had designer clothes. I thought she just came from a rich family, but she told me that wasn’t the case at all. She told me that men would give you anything you could ever want and all you had to do in return was please them sexually and do the things they asked you to do. She gave me a card with a number to call on it, and three weeks later, I was paired with my very first dominant.”

“BDSM was very different in the 70s, much more taboo, much more secretive, and therefore, much more dangerous. My first dominant was particularly brutal, but I didn’t care. I’d endured the things he’d done to me countless times before, but now, I had an apartment, and he paid for my tuition. He turned my life around, gave me purpose again, and I learned a lot of things from him, but I think the most important thing was that you should never love people. Love makes you weak and vulnerable and has the ability to destroy you. Once I accepted that, I was liberated. I flourished. I made my way from Dominant to Dominant until I had a master’s degree from an Ivy League school and was ready to start a career and leave the BDSM lifestyle. But that’s when I faced a new reality.”

“The thing about BDSM is that it draws people who desire power, and people who desire power generally seek it in life as much as they do in the bedroom. After graduation, I moved to D.C. thinking I was going to change the world, but one of the men who I’d been a submissive to was a Senator, and he didn’t like the idea of an ex-submissive climbing the steps of the hill every morning and possibly revealing his secret. I was blackballed, and that happened everywhere I went. I’d literally fucked my way out of any real job prospects. I couldn’t get anything, anywhere, no matter what I tried. And so I got a job as flight attendant just so I could support myself.”

“They put me on the transcontinental route between New York and Seattle, and that’s when I met Andrew. He travelled a lot for business and we got to know each other. One night, just before he got off the plane, he asked me out on a date. Then another, and another, until eventually he asked me to marry him.”

“I didn’t love him, but he was wealthy and he was nice to me in a way that no man had ever been nice to me before. Still, the real draw was that he lived in Seattle and no one knew me on the west coast. It would finally be a clean slate, a way for me to start over. So I agreed. I moved to Seattle and we married within a few weeks. Once our honeymoon was over and we’d settled into our new life together, I told him that I wanted to start working. But to say that he was unsupportive would be an understatement.”

“You see, Andrew already believed I had a job. I was his wife. I needed to tend to his home and play hostess at all of his parties. And, I was expected to keep myself looking perfect. Going to the spas and salons and the gym, it all took time. There wouldn’t ever be time for me to work. So, being Mrs. Lincoln became my entire life and it was maddening. Instead of solving the city budget crises or managing infrastructure improvement projects like I’d been training to do, I was picking china patterns and floral arrangements for causes that weren’t even real.”

“Then I met Grace. She had everything. She had a career that meant something, that really gave her purpose. Her husband adored her, not for what he wanted her to be but for who she was. She had Elliot, who was the happiest little boy you could ever imagine… and Christian. Oh, Christian. He was four when I first met him but you wouldn’t think that from looking at him. He’d been malnourished his whole life so he looked like a big two year old or a small three year old more than a boy closer to five. He used to run to me when Andrew and I came to visit. He’d hold his tiny little hands out, silently asking me to hold him, and then he’d cling to me the entire time I was there, never speaking, just running his hands through my hair. I adored him. He was perfect…” She pauses, staring into space almost longingly, before her face falls and she looks back down at her drink. “Until he hit puberty, and he started acting out.”

“Grace didn’t know what to do with him. Elliot had been perfect, a little rambunctious maybe and he had a way with the girls, but he’d never been in trouble. She tried everything, but she couldn’t get through to Christian, so I told her to send him to me. I gave him structure, I gave him purpose, and I gave him the best advice I had to give: Never love anyone, because love makes you weak.”

“You mean you fucked him into submission until he didn’t have the will to act out anymore,” I say bitterly and she smirks and takes another drink.

“It worked. He got his shit together, he started to focus, and eventually, he got into Harvard. I had him on the right path until… well, until you. I tried everything I could to save him from you, from what you would turn him into, but he wasn’t strong enough to resist the temptation. Love always feels good at first, until it doesn’t anymore… He would have been better off without you. If he would have just stayed with me, he’d have everything he could ever want and he would have never suffered. He’d be master of his own universe and he’d have me at his side, guiding him and making sure nothing could ever get in his way.”

I swallow and look up from my empty glass to look at her. “Do you love him?” I ask, and she raises an eyebrow at me. “I’ve… thought about this a lot and it never really made sense to me why you would hang onto someone like you’ve hung onto Christian, or be so willing to destroy so many lives to keep him from walking away from you unless… unless you were in love with him.”

“No,” She says, shaking her head. “I’m not in love with him, Anastasia. Haven’t you paid attention at all? I don’t love people.“

“Then why won’t you let him go?” I ask.

“Because Christian is a resource. He has money and influence that I could never get on my own. He’s the most powerful man in Seattle and I control him. What do you call the person who controls the most powerful man in Seattle?”

“The most powerful woman in Seattle?” I guess and she nods.

“Exactly.”

“But if you do this, if you pin this BDSM club on him and he’s arrested and he goes to prison, all of that power is gone. You lose too, Elena.”

“Which is why he was supposed to come and talk to me tonight,” She says bitterly.

“Well, he’s not coming,” I tell her. “You went too far with Mia and he will watch everything around him burn to the ground if that’s what it takes to get back at you for what you did to her. Carrick warned him again and again not go after you but he wouldn’t listen. He was single minded and now he’s going to lose everything…”

“Weak,” She repeats, and she drains her glass again.

“I can’t lose him,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t… It’ll kill me. I love him. He’s the love of my life, he’s my future, he’s.. a part of me. A part I can’t exist without. I belong with him. We belong together. I can’t lose him.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Elena sighs.

“I’m not being dramatic, you don’t…”

“Yes, you are,” She interrupts me. “You will be fine without Christian Grey, Anastasia. Days will pass, the world will keep turning, even when you don’t want it to. Your father will come home, you’ll graduate from school, you’ll publish your book… Your life will go on and you will be fine. You don’t want to lose him, but don’t want to and I can’t are very different concepts.”

I shake my head. “You said you don’t love people so maybe you don’t understand. But you have to be able to understand self-preservation, right? The last time I lost Christian, it nearly killed me and if I lose him now… it will. I. Can’t. Lose. Him,” I say emphatically.

She raises an eyebrow at me, contemplating for a moment, before turning back to her drink. “I’m sorry. This isn’t the kind of deal I could work out with you, Anastasia. I need to speak with Christian.”

“Try me,” I tell her.

She shakes her head again. “You’re too innocent. You’re not willing to do the things that are necessary to get what you want. Christian I can convince to do almost anything, but you… your emotions and your feelings about right and wrong stop you from doing whatever you need to do to get what you want.”

“You’re not grasping this, Elena,” I tell her. “This isn’t an option for me anymore. I don’t care what it is you’re planning, saving him is what is most important to me now. I came down here to meet with you. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I’m on the verge of having everything I care about in the world taken away from me, and the man I love is about to have his life ruined for something he didn’t do. There is literally nothing I wouldn’t do to stop that from happening.”

Elena takes a deep breath, looking at me very critically for a moment before she finally nods.

“Fine, but I have some demands first,” She says and I nod.

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

“You can’t give me these things, only Christian can, so write this down,” She instructs me and I reach into my purse for the small note pad and pen and look at her expectantly.

“I want my club back and since he’s blown open the lid on what I’ve built here, I’m going to need money to start over again.”

“How much?”

“Oh…” She purses her lips as she ponders. “Ten million.”

“Ten million?” I nearly choke. “You’re insane. There’s no way it takes ten million dollars to open a club.”

She gives me a look that makes it clear that her demands are non-negotiable. I shake my head and write ten million dollars down on my notepad.

“And since he’s closed down the salons, he needs to set up a shell company with accounts tied to the Cayman Islands for me to dump revenue into.”

“I don’t know what that is,” I admit.

“Don’t worry, he will. Just write it down,” I do, and she continues. “Starting tomorrow, he will take my phone calls and he will meet with me when I ask for him to. If I ever need a favor, he will not hesitate to give me what I need, and if his mother ever has me taken off the list somewhere ever again, he will remedy that immediately.”

I take a deep breath as I force my hand to write the words, even though it feels like I’m signing away my soul, or maybe Christian’s, as I do.

“Anything else?” I ask blankly.

“Yes,” She says, nodding slightly and looking at me through slightly narrowed eyes. “I want him to leave you.”

“What?” I ask.

“He doesn’t make good decisions when you’re involved,” She says. “You get into his head too easily and it makes things really fucking difficult for me.”

“No,” I say firmly and she shrugs, picks up the mostly empty bottle of gin off the bar, and gets out of her seat.

“Forget it then.”

“He’ll never agree to that!” I argue. “I can convince him to give you these other things, but not that.”

“Fine,” She says, nodding in agreement. “Then you’ll leave him. I don’t care how it happens, just as long as you’re out of the picture.”

I stare at her with disbelief, feeling like she’s punched me in the gut. “If I leave him again… it’ll destroy him.”

“I’ll put him back together,” She whispers. I look down at the notepad in front of me, fighting the emptiness that takes hold of my gut from just considering this as an option.

“I can’t do that…” I say quietly.

“Then he can love you from prison,” She says. “But remember, you have to be married to get conjugal visits.”

She turns around and begins walking towards the back office again. I take a deep breath, trying to bury the hurt deep inside of me where it can be ignored until I’m alone, and then call to stop her again.

“Wait,” I say, and she turns around.

“Yes?”

“Okay,” I agree. “I’ll leave him.”

“No phone calls, no visits, no contact at all. Like you don’t exist,” She clarifies. I nod and she smiles. “Then we have a deal. I expect the money transfer no later than 8:30 tomorrow morning. Once I have it, I’ll let him off the hook.” She turns around once again towards her office without saying another word.

“Elena!” I yell, jumping out of my seat. “You haven’t told me the actual plan.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll take care of it,” She says.

“No,” I shake my head. “No way, if you want me to get these things for you, if you expect me to break his heart for this, I need to know what you’re going to do. I won’t do anything until I do.”

“I’m going to put it on Ros,” She says casually, and my mouth falls open.

“That’s your plan?” I ask. “Ros? She has nothing to do with any of this…”

“Neither does Christian. But Ros… well, she had me audited,” Elena replies flatly and I gape at her incredulously.

“So? She was doing her job… and clearly she had reason to be concerned since you actually were laundering money.”

“Haven’t you learned yet, Anastasia? I don’t let people get in my way, and when they try, I cut them down. When Christian tried to break his contract with me, I destroyed his relationship with you. When Carrick tried to expose my lifestyle and have me put in prison for fucking his son, I ripped his family apart. When Andrew and I divorced and he left me with nothing, I made Christian take his company.”

I freeze, taking a minute to fully realize what she’s just said. “You, what?”

She frowns, looking lost in thought for a moment. “I had to be more patient for that one than I was prepared for, but we got there in the end. Actually, Elliot was a big help in moving that along. I don’t know if I would have been able to convince Christian to pull the trigger on expanding into timber so quickly if it hadn’t been for the exorbitant amount of money Elliot was asking for the new building.”

“No, Christian said Lincoln Timber had nothing to do with you…”

“Of course he did,” She coos, speaking to me as though I’m a child. “Jesus, you really don’t know him at all do you? The best way to get Christian to do what you want is to make him believe it’s his idea. All I had to do was wait for the right opening, make sure the right data fell into his hands, and then let him know I had an in. He’s not incompetent. He took it from there and now Andrew’s legacy has a Grey logo stamped over the front of it. My logo.“

“You’re unbelievable,” I say bitterly. “I just don’t understand how you can live with yourself. How can you do this to people over and over again and not feel even the slightest bit of remorse?”

“It’s really not difficult, Ana. Don’t you remember what I told you? People make you weak. Loving people makes you weak. If you just let go of the idea of needing someone else, or protecting someone else, or caring about someone else, there’s no limit to what you can do.”

“Not everyone is like that, Elena. Not everyone can use a friend, or a family member, or a lover like a chess piece waiting be sacrificed just so you can take one step further. Having family, and friends, and someone to love and share your future with, that’s what life is all about. You might not understand that, but Christian does, and he’s not going to let Ros take the fall for this to save himself.”

“Then you’ve made him weaker than I thought,” She sneers. “You know, he used to have so much potential. I used to think he could be great. He was going to be unstoppable, but you… you ruined him. He could have…”

“He could have what, Elena?” I snap back, feeling anger rising inside of me. “He could have molested children? He could have forced young women into sex slavery? He could have run an illegal BDSM sex club that had he not lied about and tried to pin on someone else, he’d go to prison for? That’s power to you?”

“It’s served me well,” She says, “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

I grimace and look back down at the notepad in front of me as I feel the hot sting of tears in my eyes, but for once they’re not because of a crushing sense of defeat, or the empty feeling of complete and utter loss, but fiery anger.

“It looks like cavalry is here,” Elena says, and I look up at her, but she’s staring out the front window. A pair of headlights pull up in front of the bar and I sigh, knowing that my time is up. Elena must realize that too because she smiles and turns her body like she’s going to head into her office again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Ana,” She says. “Or maybe not. Maybe Christian will hear my plan and make the right choice. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s surprised me.”

I glare at her but quickly gather my things and push away from the bar. Christian is already out of the car by the time I get outside and the second he sees me, he bolts across the sidewalk and grabs onto my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length so he can examine me.

“Are you okay?” He asks, his voice shaking. “What did she do to you?”

“Nothing,” I assure him and a brief flash of relief crosses his face before quickly morphing into anger.

“Why are you here, Anastasia? Are you crazy? Do you even realize what she could have…?”

“I got it,” I interrupt him and he leans back to look at me with confusion.

“What do you mean, you got it?” He asks.

I slip my purse off my shoulder, reach into the front pocket for my cell phone, and immediately touch the round red icon on the screen to stop the recording.

“She admitted everything. Not just that the club was hers and that you had nothing to do with it, but also her plans to blackmail you now that she’d made you look guilty.”

He looks down at my phone, his eyes widening with shock before he looks back up at me and then to the door of the bar.

“Get in the car,” He says quickly, opening the door and ushering me inside. He instructs Taylor to drive straight for Carrick’s office and then takes my phone from me, playing the recording as we make our way back uptown.

Once we’re inside Carrick’s office, Christian places my phone on the desk between him and his father, and I pace the back of the room as I listen to the recording for the second time. Carrick’s brow is furrowed as he stares down at the phone, listening to my conversation with Elena, and I feel a small bit of irritation that he isn’t taking notes.

“There!” Christian says triumphantly, point down at my phone. “There, she admits it. She admits everything. I’m off the hook.”

Carrick sighs, leans over his desk, and reaches out to stop the recording. “She admits it, but you’re not off the hook, Christian. I can’t use this…”

“What?” He asks, and I stop pacing to stare at him with disbelief. “What do you mean you can’t use this?”

“The state of Washington is a two party consent state. Audio recordings of a person’s voice are inadmissible as evidence unless the person being recorded knows they are being recorded and gives consent. Remember this afternoon when Novik asked you if you wanted her to play back the conversation you had with Elena on your birthday? Why do you think she asked you instead of just playing it? You didn’t know Elena was recording you so she needed your permission to submit the recording as evidence. You didn’t give it to her, so she never played it. It’s like when you call a bank or a customer service line and you get that recording that tells you the call is being monitored before they connect you with a representative. Staying on the line after being informed the call is being recorded is consent.”

“But… That doesn’t make any sense,” Christian argues. “What about the recording of me going into the club? I didn’t approve that but she submitted that into evidence.”

“Video footage is different. There are too many variables that go into audio recordings. There is no way for the court to be absolutely certain that is Elena’s voice in this recording. The sound could be manipulated, the recording device could distort the playback, hell you may have just found someone who sounds like her or hired a voice actor… The point is, it’s inadmissible as evidence.”

I feel a deep sinking feeling in my gut. It was all for nothing. My last ditch effort was wasted because of a stupid loophole in the law that is now going to let a criminal go free while an innocent man will face charges for a crime he didn’t commit.

Christian slumps back into his chair, looking defeated once again as the false hope I’d given him slowly drains away. “Have you heard from anyone on my team?” He asks.

“Barney called about twenty minutes before you got here,” Carrick replies. “They haven’t found anything yet, but they’re still looking.”

“So… we really don’t have anything. We’re going to go in there tomorrow just as unprepared as we were today?”

“Maybe not,” Carrick says and he turns to me. “Ana, will you email me a copy of this recording? I can.. I don’t know, maybe use some of the things she says to try and trip her up in my examination tomorrow.”

“Of course,” I agree and I reach over to pick up my phone and immediately press my finger into the email icon.

“We should…” He continues, but he hesitates as though he doesn’t want to say whatever it is that he has to. “We should talk about what you should expect if the worst should happen tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Christian nods.

“If the judge believes the evidence Elena’s lawyer has submitted against you proves culpability and mens rea, which seems likely at this point, your lawsuit will be dismissed, the court will bring criminal charges against you, and you will be detained. While you are in custody, you are not to say anything to anyone without me being present. We’ll post bail to get you out of there and we’ll start work on your defense. All the evidence submitted against you in this trial will be resubmitted in the criminal case as well as anything else the DA comes up with. Anything about you online or in the media will be fair game, and your public perception isn’t great. Especially not after the Leila Williams case…”

“That case was dropped though,” Christian argues, but Carrick shakes his head.

“But there was no not-guilty. This type of criminal trial is going to mean a jury and a jury is much easier to sway on circumstantial evidence and appearance than a judge is. Jury members are selected specifically because they have no knowledge of how the law actually works. That security footage of the submissives who worked for Elena leaving your office or of you going to the bar are going to be even more difficult to overcome in a jury situation.”

“So, I’m fucked?” Christian asks. Carrick takes a deep breath.

“It doesn’t look good,” He says, and Christian hangs his head.

“If this goes badly, I’m not going back to school,” I interject. “I’m not going to move back across the country and not know what’s going on.”

Christian shakes his head. “You’re not going to give up Harvard for this trial, I won’t allow that.”

“I’m not asking you,” I argue.

“He’s right, Ana,” Carrick interjects. “You won’t be able to change anything by being here…”

“I’m not leaving him to go through this alone,” I say, making sure my words come out very clearly. “If he is arrested tomorrow, I’m going to call Harvard and withdraw myself for the fall semester.”

Christian gives me a pained look, but neither he or his father argue with me any further.

“I’m sorry, son,” Carrick says after a few seconds of silence. “I know you got your hopes up with this recording but…”

“It’s fine,” Christian snaps as he gets out of the chair and picks up his suit jacket. “You didn’t write the law. It’s not your fault. We need to get home, we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Carrick nods and I try and keep the look of helplessness off my face as Christian reaches for my hand and leads me out of his father’s office. Before the door closes behind us, I hear Carrick let out a defeated sounding sigh and then the sound of him typing on his laptop once again.

Christian is quiet most of the way home, but he holds tightly to my hand and every few minutes he lifts my fingers to his lips and places soft kisses against each one of my knuckles. I want to look at him, not at the shops and offices we pass as we make our way through downtown back towards Escala, but it’s too painful to see him like this. Now that I realize I blew my shot, I’m worried once again that I’m spending my last few hours with him, and this isn’t how I want to think of him when he’s not around anymore.

“In the recording…” He says hesitantly, drawing my attention to him. “You agreed to leave me.”

“I needed to know her plan,” I explain. “She wouldn’t have told me if I didn’t agree…”

“And if her plan wasn’t Ros?” He asks. “If it had been more reasonable and you thought that I might have made a deal with her?”

“If it would have saved you…” I say, my voice starting to shake as I look at the pain in his eyes.

“It wouldn’t have been saving me if it meant I would lose you, Anastasia,” He says. “Life without you is not freedom. Life without you is worse than any prison could ever be.”

My lips purse together as I look back at him, and then I reach down to unbuckle my seatbelt so that I can crawl into his lap. I think that normally, this is not something he would approve of but in this moment, he accepts me willingly and holds me tightly against him until we come to a stop in the parking garage under Escala.

When we get upstairs, Taylor asks to be dismissed for the rest of the night so he can assist the other security staff members in their search for something to use against Elena. Christian agrees, and once we’re alone, he leads me back to our bedroom.

“Have a seat,” He instructs me, and I do as he asks, settling down on the edge of the bed and looking up at him expectantly. He closes the door behind us and then sits next to me, taking my hands into his and looking into my eyes very purposefully.

“There is an offshore account with $65 million dollars in it,” He tells me. “It can’t be traced back to me so if my assets are seized, that money won’t be touched. I’ve arranged for $100,000 out of that account to be transferred to you on the first day of each month until it’s been emptied. If you change your bank account at all, you need to contact this person so he can adjust the transfer.”

He hands me a business card with the name Charles Gresham written on it, and I briefly look down at it, but I only just barely have time to read the name before he continues.

“There is a safety deposit box at Seattle Federal, it’s in Taylor’s name so you’ll have to have him take you, but there’s $5 million dollars inside of it. Once you graduate, you can use that money to pay off your student loans, buy a house… anything else you need. Okay?”

“Christian, I-” I begin, but he stops me from arguing by thrusting the key to the safety deposit box into my hand.

“Ros has assured me that should we find a way to transfer GEH into her name, you’ll still have a job at SIP after you graduate. And, if you need anything else, or if you ever get into trouble, you can call Elliot and he’ll help you. He’s promised me that he’ll look out for you when I-” His voice cuts off. “When I can’t anymore.”

A tear rolls down my cheek and I fiddle with the key in my hand, unable to answer him. But when he places his hand under my chin and forces me to look up at him, I nod.

“And… and…” He takes a deep breath to prepare himself for whatever it is he’s going to say next. “If you meet someone else…”

“No,” I cut him off, my voice breaking as I shake my head and yank my hands out of his grip. “No, I can’t…”

“Ana, I don’t want you to sacrifice any happiness for me. If I can’t be there… Well, I just want you to be happy.”

The dam bursts and I put my face into my hands as I can no longer hold back the tears. “I’m so sorry, Christian,” I sob. “I screwed up tonight. I had one chance and I wasted it. I should have researched better, I should have figured out how to get a video instead of a stupid voice recording. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Hey,” He says, wrapping me in his arms and rubbing his hand over my back comfortingly. “It’s not your fault. I should have fought harder for you, for us. I should have never let it get this far. I should have never bought that salon, I should have never trusted her… I should have turned away from her years ago. The second I had you, I should have walked away from her forever. I’ve made so many mistakes, I wish I could take it all back.”

I look up at him but before I can say anything, his lips take mine. He pours everything into this kiss, like he’s trying to release what should have been a lifetime of love into this once precious point of contact. I succumb and open my lips for his insistent tongue, which caresses mine with a passionate kind of tenderness that actually makes me forget for just a minute that we’re on a train hurdling at breakneck speed for the edge of cliff that is getting closer and closer with each passing second.

“Get into bed with me,” He whispers against my lips, but I pull away, blink up at him through my still wet eyelashes, and frown.

“I don’t think I can make love right now, Christian,” I admit in a weak voice. “I’m crying and I feel like..”

“I just want to hold you,” He assures me.

“Okay,” I agree. He stands and then takes my hands to help me off the bed. While he pulls down the comforter, I go into the closet to strip out of the clothes I’ve been wearing since early this morning, and reach into the clothes hamper to find the unwashed t-shirt Christian wore after he got home from his father’s office last night. It smells like him and right now, all I want in the world is to be surrounded by as much of him as I can, so I slip it over my head and then head back into the room.

Christian is already in bed so I crawl in beside him, almost half-laying on him as I try to snuggle into him as closely as I can. He wraps his arms tightly around me and rests his head on mine.

“I feel like I failed you, Christian,” I say again, “I’m never going to get over that.”

“It’s not your fault, Anastasia,” He tells me. “None of this is your fault.”

His lips press into my hair and we lay there in the darkness for what feels like a long time. We have an early morning and I know that we should sleep, but sleeping feels like losing time with him, so I fight it for as long as possible. Eventually though, the late hour and the events of the day catch up to me and I lose the battle. My eyelids droop and I slowly drift away.

Next Chapter

I move very slowly the morning of the trial. It’s hard to concentrate on anything and as I go through my purse for the third time to make sure I have everything, I realize half-way though that I haven’t actually been paying attention to the things I’ve been shuffling through. My head falls as I lean over the table, placing my palms against the cool, flat surface and try to force down the impending sense of nausea that’s been getting progressively worse all morning. Today has come much too quickly. I’m not ready for it. But, as I look up at my reflection in the mirror, I have to admit to myself that there’s no way that I could ever be ready for today.

“Christian!” I call in the direction of the great room, trying to keep my voice from shaking. I wait several seconds for his response but there’s no answer, and when I look around the corner, I don’t see him in the kitchen where I expected him to be.

“Christian?” I ask again, and I set my bag back on the table as I walk briskly towards our bedroom. I can see part of his outline through the open doorway of the closet, so I cross the room and peek my head inside.

“Hey,” I say gently, and he looks up at me in surprise. There’s a kind of distance behind his eyes that tells me he’s lost in thought. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” He nods, “I’m just… this is so stupid, it’s like I suddenly can’t remember how to tie a tie.”

“Here,” I step forward and take the ends of his tie in my hands and carefully begin to wrap them around each other, glad, for once, for my brief but passionate Avril Lavigne phase in middle school. “This is a good color on you,” I tell him, once I pull the knot into place against his collar.

“You can always trust a man in blue, right?” He says with a weak smile. I do my best to return it, but my bottom lip begins to tremble and it makes it impossible. I take a sharp breath as the dry ache of impending tears begins burning in my throat, but before I can fully break down, Christian quickly presses his lips into mine.

“Don’t, baby,” He says in between his sweet, tender kisses.

“You don’t have to do this,” I plead with him. “Mia understands, she doesn’t want this either. You don’t have to go through with this.”

He takes a deep breath and gives me a pained look. “Yes, I do. I didn’t think I had to do it last time and look what’s happened. She’s never going to stop, Ana, she’s never going to change. I let her get away with this last time and this is what she did. Someone else’s sister, or brother, or daughter, or son is going to be next unless I do what I have to do. I don’t have a choice.”

“You’re somebody’s son, Christian. You’re somebody’s brother. You’re somebody’s everything. If you do this, it’s not going to go the way you want it to, and then she does win because she finally gets what she’s worked so hard to do all these years. Whatever happens to her in this trial is also going to happen to you. Please, Christian… I can’t lose you again.”

“Ana…” He says, pulling me into him and holding me tightly against his chest. He massages the roots of my hair comfortingly as I do my best not to cry into his shirt and leave wet marks all over him. “My dad’s a fighter. He’s the best there is… He’ll take care of me.”

He still has hope.

All week, I’ve felt like I’m two seconds away from having a complete breakdown. I’ve spent every second of free time I’ve had with him. At night, I’ve laid awake as long as possible watching him sleep, trying to memorize the feeling of him against me and his arms around me. When we made love, I stared into his eyes for as long as possible, studying him, so that I would always remember the way he looked at me during our most intimate moments.

He hasn’t had the same kind of reaction. Sure, he hasn’t complained about my need to be around him all the time, or my desire to constantly crawl in his lap and just kiss him until we’re both breathless. But he doesn’t seem to have the same desperate need that I do and I see now that it’s because he’s not living like we have a doomsday clock hanging over our heads, slowly ticking away the last seconds we have together. He still has hope and I don’t know what to do with it. If I thought that I could change his mind about going through with this, I’d tell him the confession Carrick made to me. I’d tell him that we’re facing the impossible. I’d tell him just how much the very idea of this trial has been slowly destroying me because I know it’s going to rip us apart and the only way to prevent that is to put a stop to all of this. But I’m not sure that I can. And maybe, if he still hopes, he’ll go into that courtroom today and find a way to work a miracle.

“We’re going to be late,” He says quietly as he releases me to pick up his cufflinks from where they rest on top of the drawer that holds his ties. I nod and turn back towards the living room to, once again, try to go through my bag and make sure I haven’t forgotten anything I’m going to need.

It’s pandemonium outside as we make our way out of the parking garage from underneath Escala. The group of photographers standing along the sidewalk, snapping pictures as closely to the darkly tinted glass as they can get, rivals the crowd from the night the news about the first trial broke. Taylor, though, is much more skilled at navigating his way through the hoard than I was, and after a few honks and jolting stops where he was forced to slam on his breaks, we’re able to get past the mob and turn onto 5th street towards the King Country Courthouse.

Carrick is waiting for us on the curb once we have finally fought our way through the morning rush hour traffic and arrived at our destination. We step out of the back seat of the SUV into a blinding barrage of camera flashes, but Carrick skillfully deflects all the questions being thrown at us until we’re safely inside the building. It’s a little dark inside and the air conditioner is on a little too high, which makes the hallways feel cold and sterile despite how beautiful the interior of this very old building really is.

Christian takes a deep breath and then reaches down to take my hand in his as we walk down the long marble floored hallway towards the open doors of the courtroom. It’s already very full inside, but only a few faces stand out to me. Ros is sitting in the row directly behind where Christian will sit on the other side of the bar, and Grace, Mia, Kate, and Elliot are all seated next to her. Gail is in the 3rd row from the front and Andrea is a few seats down from her. The left side of the courtroom is filled with people I don’t know, but I have a sickening feeling about the row of girls sitting in the middle pew because of their nearly identical dark brown hair. Elena is up front, already seated next to her very sharply dressed lawyer who is talking to her very seriously. I have to swallow the disgusting taste that creeps into my mouth at seeing her sitting there, looking relaxed and confident, when I know what she’s about to do.

“Can I take Ana with me?” Christian asks quietly as we approach the bar, but Carrick shakes his head.

“She needs to stay on this side of the bar,” He replies.

“She can have my seat,” Ros offers, quickly getting up from her place on the bench. “She’ll be right behind you.”

“No,” Grace interjects. “Please, I’d like to have you with me, Ana.”

I nod and then look up at Christian. “I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere.”

He leans down and kisses me once more, the first hint of strain I’ve felt in his lips finally apparent and it wounds me. When he pulls away from me, I wrap my arms around him and squeeze him as tightly as I can. When I have to let him go, I stand there and watch him walk through the wooden gate before taking my seat between Grace and Kate. We sit there anxiously, hardly aware of the low babbling of conversation around us, until the the loud creak of a door opening fills the chamber and the bailiff at the front of the courtroom calls everyone’s attention.

“All rise for the honorable Judge Palmer Ramsdell,” The bailiff says, and we do. This judge is much younger than I remember the judge of the last trial being. His hair is thick and dark, his eyes heavily lidded but made less severe by the fact that they are a warm, chocolate brown color. My first impression of him is that he looks trustworthy, and it’s a comforting feeling that I desperately cling on to. Once we’re allowed to sit again, the judge calls for opening statements from both Carrick and Elena’s lawyer and then Carrick is allowed to call his first witness.

He stands from his seat, looking surprisingly calm as he gathers his notes and faces the judge. “Your honor, the plaintiff would like to call Amelia Grey to the stand.”

Mia slowly gets out of her seat and I feel my first pang of shock. There has been a lot of argument about whether or not Mia was going to testify. Carrick has been on the fence about putting her on the stand because she’s underage. She’s been so upset about everything to do with the trial, he’s not sure what she’s going to do once she gets up there, and making this case about underage girls being forced into prostitution is going to increase the severity of whatever sentence is eventually handed down when this goes to criminal trial, which Carrick fully expects to also be handed down to Christian. Unfortunately, she’s also the only real witness we have that has any information on the club from while it was still in operation, so her testimony is key to any chance we have at winning this thing. I guess Carrick has decided that’s what’s most important but the potential consequences of putting her on the stand have me tied up with dread more than I have been all morning.

I watch her walk through the gate nervously, but before she makes it past the table where Christian and Stephanie are still seated, Christian reaches out and takes her hand to stop her.

“Lying on that stand is the single biggest regret of my life,” He tells her quickly. “Please, don’t repeat my mistakes.”

She looks back at him and takes a breath, but no emotion registers on her face. Instead she squeezes his hand and then turns to take the witness stand.

“Good Morning, Amelia,” Carrick says gently after she’s been sworn in and taken her seat. “Would you mind stating your name for the court reporter?”

“Mia… I mean, Amelia Trevelyan-Grey,” She stutters, and her cheeks flush. She looks nervous.

“Thank you,” Carrick replies, smiling. “I can go with Mia if it makes you more comfortable.” She nods and Carrick continues. “Mia, how old are you?”

“Sixteen,” She says.

“So, you’re still in school?”

“It’s summer vacation right now but, yes. I’m starting my Junior year of High School in a couple of weeks.”

“And how is school?” He asks. “Are you a good student?”

“Yes,” She nods. “I’m in an advanced curriculum program and I have a 4.0 from Bellevue Christian High School. It’s the best private school in the greater Seattle area.”

“And what do you do in your spare time?” He asks.

“I volunteer a lot. Last year I organized a coat drive for underprivileged kids to stay warm during the winter, and I’ve been a part of a lot of marine conservation efforts with EarthShare Washington. I also play the Cello and compete in debate and my school’s academic decathlon. But, mostly, I dance. I was selected to join Seattle Ballet Company at the beginning of the summer.”

Mia’s testimony is long. Carrick has her recount every single detail that she can recall about her time in the club from her day to day schedule, to the clientele, to the girls who worked there. She is able to recount things in such detail that, even though I’ve heard almost all of this before, it still makes me feel sick.

He asks a lot of questions about Elena, what she did around the club, how often she was there, and what it was like working under her. It’s not a great picture, and once she starts talking about what happened the night I found her in the side alley, I chance a look at Christian and see him silently shredding a tissue in anger under the table as he listens to the things his sister has to say.

By the end of her testimony, Carrick has done a masterful job painting the picture of Mia as a bright young woman who Elena held hostage with lies about an NDA, and then lured into a false sense of security only to later attempt to force her into underage, non-consensual BDSM sex.

“If I ever find out who that fucker is…” Elliot growls under his breath as Mia starts to break down on the stand. Kate reaches over and grips onto his hand and I feel a slight flash of jealousy that I can’t offer the same comfort to Christian. He’s sitting at the table on the other side of the bar, out of reach, going through this alone. And, after an entire summer protecting him and fighting for him, it feels wrong, against all of my instincts, not to be at his side.

“Thank you, Mia,” Carrick says once he’s finally finished, and he turns to the judge. “I have no further questions, your honor.”

He nods and then faces Elena’s Lawyer. “Your witness, counselor.”

The woman sitting next to Elena gets out of her seat, smiling broadly as she picks up a legal pad and then very confidently walks towards the stand, the sound from her high heels echoing around the courtroom as they clack against the stone floor.

“Good morning, Miss Grey,” Elena’s lawyer says, but Mia gives her an annoyed look.

“Trevelyan-Grey,” She corrects her.

“I’m sorry,” the lawyer responds with a smile. “May I also call you Mia?”

“That’s my name,” Mia replies flatly. “But my last name is Trevelyan-Grey.”

“I apologize,” She says again, and then she opens the folder in her hand and continues. “Mia, you’re a girl with means, are you not?”

“Excuse me?”

“You have money,” Elena’s lawyer clarifies. “You come from a rich family?”

“I guess.”

“So… forgive me, but it seems odd that you would be working at all. Why does a girl who has a trust fund worth millions of dollars waiting for her, and whose brother is Christian Grey, one of the richest men in the country, need a part time job?”

“My mom wanted me to do something to fill my free time,” She says.

“Really? Because we just heard all about the volunteer work you do, debate, academic decathlon, ballet… You seem to be a fairly busy girl to me.”

“It was summer vacation,” Mia says. “My schedule was much more open.”

“Your parents didn’t think you deserved a break?”

“They wanted to keep me out of trouble.”

“Trouble? Why would they think you’d get yourself into trouble?” Elena’s lawyer asks. “Your father seems to believe you’re an extremely responsible, bright, well meaning young woman.”

“I’m a teenager,” Mia responds. “They’re always worried I’m going to get into trouble. Isn’t every parent like that?”

“Not without cause,” She says, and then she steps closer to the witness stand. “Mia, why was your family so desperately looking for you on the night of July 5th?”

“Because I snuck out of the house to go work at Mrs. Lincoln’s club.”

“But they didn’t know where you were going, correct?”

“Hence why they were looking for me,” Mia retorts and Elena’s lawyer gives her a tight smile.

“You live in Bellevue, right?” She asks.

“Yes.”

“Your friends live in Bellevue, your school is in Bellevue, even your ballet studio is in Bellevue, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mia replies, more uncertain now.

“Tell me then, Mia. If your entire life is in Bellevue and your family didn’t know about your involvement with the establishment located at 710 Rainier Ave, why then was Anastasia Steele, Jason Taylor, and Lucas Sawyer looking for you in Beacon Hill?”

“Fuck,” Carrick hisses under his breath, and I briefly look over to him and see him whispering something to Stephanie, who begins furiously scribbling down notes, before I look back up to Mia.

“Uh… I don’t know,” Mia hesitates. “My brother lives in Seattle. Everyone knows he and I have a close bond. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that I would run away from home and go to him.”

“But Miss Steele lives with your brother, doesn’t she? If she thought you’d run to Mr. Grey, why would she leave her apartment? Furthermore, if that was in the realm of possibility, as you say, why then did Mr. Grey go to Bellevue?”

“Objection, your honor,” Carrick says, leaping to his feet. “Surely Miss Trevelyan-Grey cannot be asked to give testimony as to the reasoning of another individual. Any answer she gives to this question will be purely speculation.”

“Your honor, I have reason to believe that the witness knows exactly why there was a party looking for her down in Beacon Hill rather than in her hometown,” Elena’s lawyer interjects.

“Overruled,” The judge says, “Please answer the question, Miss Trevelyan-Grey.”

“What was the question?” Mia asks, shaking her head as though she’s trying to orient herself.

“Why were Anastasia Steele, Jason Taylor, and Lucas Sawyer looking for you down in Beacon Hill on the night of July 5th?”

Mia looks up at Christian, her face pained as she wars with the decision over to heed his warning or do the thing she’s threatened to do since day one. I stare at her anxiously as I watch her make the decision whether to lie or tell the truth, but when she takes a deep breath and hangs her head, I know which decision she’s made. “They thought I was buying drugs,” She admits.

“So, you have a history of a drug problem?”

“No,” Mia says, quickly shaking her head but Elena’s lawyer simply turns back towards the table to pick up another file.

“Mia, what is the name of your ballet company?”

“Seattle Ballet Company…”

“The same Seattle Ballet Company who had no less than 13 of its dancers arrested for drug use on the night of May 21st at a party in the university district?”

“I wasn’t arrested,” Mia says defensively.

“But you were at that party, weren’t you?”

“Y-yes… but I-I didn’t…”

“I’d like to enter item 1-A into evidence for the court,” Elena’s lawyer says, and she pulls a few pieces of thick, glossy paper from her folder and places it on the bench for the judge. “These are photographs taken on the night of May 21st and posted to the Facebook accounts of Anita Bryant and Alexander Woods, both dancers for the Seattle Ballet Company. The first image depicts sixteen year old Amelia Grey drinking from a bottle of Grey Goose Vodka. In the second image, just barely visible in the top right corner, she is holding what appears to be a water pipe used for smoking marijuana. And, in the background of the third image, she is… I’m sorry, Miss Trevelyan-Grey, could you clarify what that white powder is? It’s a little unclear from the photograph.”

“I-I..” Mia stutters, shooting a panicked look towards Carrick, but he just looks down at the pad in front of him and starts writing notes because there isn’t anything he can do to help her.

“Mia, if you were at this party on May 21st and you we’re consuming recreational drugs the same as the other 13 people who were arrested on that night, why did you walk free?”

Mia takes a breath. “Christian came to get me.”

“Because your brother takes care of you right? That’s a personal thing to him?”

“I suppose…”

“After you were found with drugs at this party, he was the one who suggested you got a job to fill your time and keep you out of trouble, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but it was my mom’s decision.”

“Still, you ended up working in a place with connections to Grey Enterprises Holdings, the company your very protective brother is CEO and Sole Proprietor of. Is it possible, Miss Trevelyan-Grey, that it wasn’t a coincidence that you ended up there? That you ended up there specifically so that your brother could use people on his payroll to keep an eye on you and make sure you stayed out of trouble?”

“No, he didn’t know anything about that place. Elena was the one who asked me to come work there. I was specifically told not to talk to him about the club…”

“That’s right!” Elena’s lawyer says, as though she’s just remembered something. “You were given an NDA.”

“Which Elena lied about and told me was binding even though I was only sixteen.”

Elena’s lawyer smiles and then turns back to the table behind her again. “Since Mr. Grey was so kind as to provide the court with a copy of Miss Trevelyan-Grey’s NDA, I won’t submit it again, but I would like to present item 1-B into evidence, a copy of the standard NDA given to each person employed by GEH. Should the court wish to examine these documents, they would find that they are identical down to the punctuation.”

“Objection!” Carrick cries, again. “Your honor there are countless reasons those documents could be identical that have nothing to do with my client. Perhaps Mrs. Lincoln hired the same lawyer to draft them, or even simply made copies of the non-disclosure agreement she was asked to sign as an executive of Grey Enterprises Holdings herself.”

“Or this NDA came directly from Mr. Grey…” Elena’s lawyer adds, but the judge shakes his head and hands the document back to her.

“The counselor’s objection is sustained. Item 1-B will be stricken from the record.”

“Mia, can you describe for me one more time the duties you performed under your employment?” Elena’s lawyer asks, not missing a beat after her evidence was refuted by the judge. Mia does, going over the same things she’d said to Carrick only minutes ago, and to both Christian and I the night we all found out.

“But you had no involvement in financials, strategy meetings, or operations?”

“No.”

“And without being a part of the actual business side of the club, you’re comfortable testifying that Mr. Grey had no involvement in the club whatsoever?”

“Yes,” Mia says, definitely. “He didn’t know about it.”

Elena’s lawyer frowns. “Did he offer you a job at GEH?”

“Yes, he said that I could work as an interoffice courier if I wanted to, but I didn’t. I was mad at him and I didn’t want to work for him.”

“How did he take that?”

“Uh… I don’t know. He wasn’t very happy, I guess. But he got over it.”

“So when he approached you directly with a job offer, you refused him because you were angry with him?”

“Yes, that’s what I just said,” Mia retorts.

“When you started working as a waitress, did Mr. Grey know which restaurant you worked in?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” Elena’s lawyer nods, and then turns back for the table to lay her notepad down, looking as though she’s mulling something over. “Mia, would you say your brother is a man of influence?” She asks, not turning back to look at her.

“What do you mean?” Mia asks.

“Your brother. Would you describe him as a man of power or great influence, specifically over those whom he employs?”

“I mean, if he’s their boss I would guess that he has influence over them, yes.”

“And Mrs. Lincoln works for Mr. Grey, doesn’t she?”

Mia’s face falters. “Uh…”

“If Mr. Grey wasn’t happy, as you say, about your employment at an establishment where he had no way to keep an eye on you, isn’t it possible that he used his influence over one of his employees, whom he knew you trusted and whom he knew he could persuade to keep an eye on you, to meet with you in private to offer you a position that he could maintain a certain degree of control over?”

“No, he wouldn’t do that,” Mia argues, but Elena’s lawyer raises an eyebrow at her.

“You’re sure?” She ask, but Mia hesitates.

“No, I-I mean, yes. I’m sure. He wouldn’t do that to me, he would want to protect me from all of that. That’s what he does… He didn’t know about it,” There is a long moment of pause as Elena’s lawyer lets Mia stew in the uncertainty she’s stirred up with this new accusation.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Mia repeats again, but she looks up at Christian, an almost pleading look in her eyes and adds, “Right?”

I feel my heart sink as a small smirk plays in the corner of Elena’s lawyer’s lips.

“You don’t sound so certain…”

“I-I…” Mia stutters, but Elena’s lawyer cuts her off.

“Thank you, Mia,” She says. “You can get down now.”

Mia seems to flounder there for a moment, like she isn’t sure what just happened, and when she finally shuffles off the stand, she looks dazed. I bite nervously down on my lip as I look at Carrick who is squeezing the pen in his hand so hard, I’m afraid it might break in half. Christian, on the other hand, looks as though he’s in pain. I can tell by the way he stares at Mia as she shambles through the gate to retake her seat next to Elliot, that he wants to go to her, to hold her and promise her that her instincts were right and he would never betray her that way. But he can’t, the same way I can’t go to him, and so his hands shoot up and scrub angrily against the roots of his hair as the judge invites Carrick to call his next witness.

The next three hours are filled with testimonies from practically everyone who knows Christian. Ros gets on the stand to discuss the audit that was done on the salons and his professional relationship with Elena Lincoln. Elena’s lawyer unravels any good that does when she gets both Ros and later Andrea to admit that the majority of the meetings Christian had with Elena took place outside of GEH where no one else could be privy to their conversations. I know that’s because Christian only reached out to speak to Elena when he was struggling with something emotionally, and those meetings were held outside the office because he didn’t want to have a moment of weakness in front of his staff… Unfortunately, neither Ros or Andrea know that.

Taylor and I are next, and Carrick has us recount the night we found Mia with a few other questions peppered in that attempt to illustrate Christian had no knowledge of the club. Elena’s lawyer seems fairly unconcerned with our testimony as she mostly asks Taylor questions about what it is like working for Mr. Grey and me what our relationship, including our sex life, is like.

I feel a slight sting of humiliation when Elena’s lawyer finally lets me off the stand. Carrick had done what he could to try and prevent me from having to answer any of her very pointed questions which included things like, “Has he ever hit you or restrained you while you were having sex?”, but, due to the nature of the case, the judge deems Christian’s sexual preferences relevant and so Carrick’s objections were overruled. When I walk through the bar and take my place next to Grace, I feel as though I can’t even look at her.

“You may call your next witness,” The judge says to Carrick and he slowly gets out of his chair.

“I’d like to call Christian Grey to the stand,” He says and Christian takes a deep breath, exhaling very slowly, as he gets up to make his way to the stand. I make eye contact with him as he approaches the bailiff and he gives me an uncertain, almost regretful look that twists my stomach into knots before he faces the bailiff and raises his right hand.

“Do you swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god?” The bailiff asks.

“I do,” He says, and the bailiff motions for him to have a seat.

“Mr. Grey, can you tell me when you found out about the club run by Elena Lincoln?” Carrick begins.

“About a month and a half ago…” Christian responds. “Beginning of July.”

“And how did you find out about it?” Carrick asks.

“My sister told me. She worked there and she had been…” He swallows, like he’s having a hard time saying the word. “She had been assaulted that night.”

“The same assault she told us about earlier?” Carrick asks and Christian nods. “How did you react when you found out?”

“I was pissed off,” Christian says bluntly. “I wanted to go down there and burn that building to the ground.”

“But instead…?” Carrick presses him.

“I called the police,” Christian says. “But by the time they got down there, Elena had the building cleared out. I had enough though, to know what had been there. I’d seen the proof of what was in that basement and the money that had been laundered through my company. I filed suit the next day.”

“I see,” Carrick says, and he picks up another folder and reads from it as he paces back and forth across the floor. “The money that was laundered, that all went through the salon Mrs. Lincoln manages, correct.”

“Yes.”

“Your company mostly deals in fiber optics, information technology, and telecommunications… how is it that you got involved in Escala.”

“It was a favor,” Christian says. “Elena was a… friend. She owned the one location and it was failing. I had the ability to help her but I told her that if I was going to save her business, she needed to give me control. She sold the salon to me and once I had implemented new policies and did some re-branding, I put her in charge. When we turned a profit again, I basically handed it back over to her. She joined my executive team and I got monthly updates and quarterly reports on the status of the business. It was very hands off for me.”

“It was successful though?” Carrick asks.

“Obviously, she was laundering money from an illegal prostitution ring.”

“Can we strike that from the record, your honor?” Elena’s lawyer asks, jumping to her feet. “The claimant has provided no proof as to my client’s involvement in the money laundering. As far as this court is concerned, Mr. Grey’s statement is speculation.”

“So stricken,” The judge nods. “Please continue, counselor.”

“Mr. Grey, do you know how much money was laundered through the salons each month?” Carrick asks.

“No, not definitively. Between the two Seattle locations, the salon brought in just over $160,000 in revenue for the month of June and our best estimate based on the records from the salon is that 30% of that came from the club.”

“So… just about $50,000?”

“Correct.”

“Have you done market surveys to determine the average revenue intake for salons that offer similar services to Esclava?”

“Of course I have.”

“And how does Esclava compare to those other salons?”

“We… uh, Esclava operates at about 18%-24% higher in revenue intake than it’s closest competitors.”

“And that didn’t strike you as odd?” Carrick asks.

“That’s what I do,” Christian says, “I make failing business profitable again, help them thrive and rise to the top of their industry. It’s why GEH is one of the fastest growing companies in the United States.”

“So the high profit margin was not an indicator to you that anything suspicious was going on with Esclava?”

“No, I didn’t think so. I trusted the people I put in charge. My Chief Operations Officer, Ros Bailey, took over Esclava at the beginning of the summer and had an audit done. The accountants didn’t find anything that raised concerns.”

“Really?”

“There was a high number of cash transactions, but the books were flawless. Mrs. Lincoln’s paper trail was good. The records we were able to pull on transactions made between the club and Esclava proved that quite the effort had gone into covering this up. There were fake sign in sheets, guest cards that had been filled out for people who don’t exist, tens of thousands of dollars in falsified transactions. She even disposed of product to match the volume of business she claimed to be doing so her ordering habits wouldn’t be called into question.”

“Again, your honor, the witness is speculating, not providing concrete proof for the court,” Elena’s lawyer interjects.

“She signed the fucking forms,” Christian snaps back at her. “I’m not speculating about anything.”

“I’d like to enter item 4-A into evidence, your honor,” Carrick says, calmly slipping a thick stack of papers bound together with a binder clip from the folder in his hands. “These are the records of the transactions between Kink and Esclava. Item 4-B shows the forged client records Mr. Grey mentioned, and 4-C contains the purchase orders and expense reports signed by Mrs. Lincoln.”

The judge looks through the documents for a long minute, and then pushes them aside to look at Elena’s lawyer. “Mr. Grey’s testimony will stay on the record. Counselor, you may continue your questioning.”

“Mr. Grey, you said before that you’d found out about the salons from your sister, Amelia Grey, who has worked in the club for the past few months.”

“Yes,” Christian responds.

“Are you close with your sister, Mr. Grey?”

“Yes,” Christian nods. “She’s one of the people I care most about in the entire world.”

“But you didn’t know that she was working in a BDSM club over the summer?”

“How could I? I didn’t know it existed,” Christian says, and when Carrick turns back to look at him, he sighs and starts over. “No, I didn’t know. She told me she was working at a restaurant.”

“And you took her word for that?”

“For the most part,” Christian says. “I didn’t have any reason not to believe her.”

“For the most part?” Carrick asks.

“When she first told me she got the job, I called the manager of the restaurant to verify, and once I was sure she had secured employment there, I left it alone.”

“So, it sounds like you didn’t trust her,” Carrick adds.

“Not implicitly, no,” Christian responds. “After she’d been caught with drugs at the beginning of the summer, I thought it was best to double check. She’s a good kid, I know that, and I thought having a job so that she didn’t have as much time to hang around her friends would help her stay on the right course. I was afraid they were bad influences on her. Once she got a job, I backed off. Well until…”

“Until?” Carrick presses him.

“Mia had been difficult this summer, especially towards me and my mother. We were resolving some family issues and they affected her a lot. She was lashing out. We planned a kind of mini vacation over the Fourth of July weekend and when I arrived and found out that Mia hadn’t come, I called the restaurant she worked at to speak with her. They said she didn’t work there anymore, and we all panicked so I flew home to pick her up and bring her back to my family. But, when we got back, she wouldn’t tell us what she’d been up to. We thought it was drugs. She snuck out of the house a few days later, which is why Anastasia and my security team were out looking for her when they found her with Mrs. Lincoln.”

Carrick nods, then walks back to his table to take a USB drive out of his briefcase. “Your honor, I’d like to introduce item 5-A into evidence.”

He walks over to a projector set up near the witness stand and plugs the USB into the port. When the machine hums to life, a video begins playing and I immediately recognize myself running across the street towards a scene that has haunted me for weeks.

‘Get your hands off of her, you evil, vile bitch!’ I scream at Elena in the video as I storm angrily into the alleyway. The camera shakes a little as Taylor runs behind me, and then the view is slightly obscured once his arms wrap around me.

“This is video taken from a body cam Jason Taylor was wearing the night Amelia Grey was discovered outside of the club,” Carrick says, and as everyone turns their attention back to the projection, I look at Christian. He tenses as he stares at the footage that I don’t think he’s seen before, and when the video cuts off with us getting into the car, he begins shaking again, the way he did that night when he found out what had happened.

“Do you recognize any of the surroundings in the video, Mr. Grey?” Carrick asks.

“No,” Christian shakes his head.

“Can you identify any of the people in the video?”

“Yes. That’s Anastasia Steele, Amelia Grey, Lucas Sawyer, and Elena Lincoln. The voice off screen belongs to Jason Taylor.”

“And it was just after this that Amelia Grey told you about what she’d really been doing all summer and what was hidden in the basement of that bar.”

“I believe so,” Christian says.

“Thank you, Mr. Grey,” Carrick says. “That’s all the questions I have for you.”

Carrick turns and walks back to take the seat next to Stephanie as the judge looks over to Elena’s lawyer. “Your witness, counselor,” He says and she gets out of her seat and again, walks very purposefully towards the bench.

“Mr. Grey, have you ever been a part of the BDSM lifestyle?” Elena’s lawyer begins.

Christian takes a deep bracing breath as this is clearly a question he doesn’t want to answer. “Yes, a few years ago.”

“For how long?’

“About four years.”

“But you’re no longer in the lifestyle?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I fell in love. I met my girlfriend and she wasn’t involved in the lifestyle and had no interest in it, so I left it behind me. I moved on.”

“Your girlfriend, Anastasia Steele?”

“Yes.”

“You broke up with her for a while, didn’t you?”

He swallows. “Yes, but we’re back together now and have been for several months.”

“And while you were separated for those two years, did you ever consider going back to the BDSM lifestyle?”

“No.”

“And to clarify once more, your sexual relationship with Anastasia Steele does not involve BDSM?”

“No,” Christian repeats, agitated now. “It doesn’t.”

“Hmm,” Elena’s lawyer hums, as though she’s confused. She turns around and reaches into an accordion file to remove a few sheets of glossy paper. “I’d like to enter item 1-B into evidence for the court.”

She places the papers on the bench and as the judge flips through them, Christian turns to glance at them as well. When he sees what’s in the judge’s hand however, he freezes.

“These are photographs taken on June 8th by TMZ. They depict Anastasia Steele leaving a BDSM themed sex shop. If your sexual relationship isn’t of a BDSM nature, why is it that Miss Steele was photographed at this store?”

“Uh…” Christian stutters, clearly trying to come up with a plausible explanation since we both know that I actually had gone to that shop to look at BDSM equipment. “That store is not exclusively tailored to the BDSM community. They cater to all sexual tastes and preferences.”

“Right,” Elena’s lawyer nods and she slips another sheet of paper out of the folder in her hands. “Your honor, I’d like to submit item 1-C into evidence. These are purchase orders for the establishment located at 710 Rainier Ave. Please note that the equipment purchased came from the same store that is pictured in evidence item 1-B.”

“Also notice those purchase orders are signed by Elena Lincoln,” Christian says.

“The woman you clearly trust your business to,” Elena’s lawyer adds and Christian rolls his eyes.

“I trusted her with a salon that she started,” Christian snaps. “She’s the one involved in the BDSM community, she’s been a Dominatrix for years. It’s her club.”

“Mr. Grey, you own your company right?” Elena’s lawyer asks. “You’re the sole proprietor and fiduciary?”

“Yes.”

“And when you need something for your company, say a laptop or a new set of business cards, do you fill out a purchase order, or do you buy what you need?”

“I-I…” He stutters. “I would buy it but…”

“You would buy it,” Elena’s lawyer repeats. “You would buy it because as owner and primary fiduciary, filling out a purchase order would essentially be redundantly asking yourself for money, isn’t that correct, Mr. Grey?”

“Well, yes…”

“So why then would Elena Lincoln need to fill out a purchase order to buy items for a club that she owned?”

“I don’t know, maybe she just wasn’t thinking clearly. She’s not very good at business.” Christian argues.

“Exactly. She isn’t. The only business she ever owned failed until, by your own admission, you took control and turned it around. Yet the club in question is somehow successful enough to pump tens of thousands of dollars into your company each month.”

Christian stutters for a moment, and Elena’s lawyer jumps in again.

“Mrs. Lincoln had to fill out a purchase order to buy the items needed for the club because she needed approval from you. Didn’t she, Mr. Grey.”

“Objection your honor,” Carrick says. “A purchase order signed by Mrs. Lincoln in no way implicates my client’s knowledge of the club or involvement in its financials. To suggest otherwise is entirely fallacious.”

“I’d like to submit item 2-C into evidence, your honor,” Elena’s lawyer says quickly. She pulls out a small stack of papers from her folder and places them on the bench. “These are reimbursement records from GEH to Esclava salons. Please note that the highlighted dates and reimbursement amounts for the miscellaneous expenses perfectly match the purchase orders from the sex shop in evidence item 1-C.”

“Those reimbursements are for salon expenses,” Christian says defensively. “Esclava is a business, it incurs expenses.”

“Such as?” Elena’s lawyer presses him.

“Product, furniture, supplies, magazine subscriptions…” Christian lists, but Elena’s lawyer cuts him off.

“The majority of those are numerated expenses on the reimbursement record, Mr. Grey. Do you expect this court to believe that Esclava salons incurred over $5,000 in magazine subscription charges for the month of June?”

“Of course not,” Christian begins but she stops him again.

“Because that’s not what it’s for, is it, Mr. Grey?” She says. “Those miscellaneous expenses are approved by you and intended for the club located under the establishment at 710 Rainier Ave.”

“No,” Christian says firmly, but Elena’s lawyer moves on.

“Let’s backtrack a little, Mr. Grey,” She says, walking back to her table and setting down her file before picking up another one. “I’d like to readdress your claim that the relationship you share with Anastasia Steele is in no way connected with BDSM.”

“I’ve already said that it isn’t.”

“Your honor, I’d like to submit item 1-D into evidence for the court,” She says, and even I feel a wave of exasperation as I watch her pull out another small stack of papers. “These are phone records for Elena Lincoln. Please note the highlighted call at 10:15 PM on June 18th of this year.” She takes out a second copy of the phone records and hands them to Christian. “Mr. Grey, is that your number on the highlighted line?”

“Yes,” Christian says tersely.

“And could you tell the court what that phone call was about?”

Christian grits his teeth again, but doesn’t answer. However, Elena’s lawyer seems undeterred by his reticence. “I have a recording of the call, if you’d like for me to play it for you, Mr. Grey.”

“I-I…” He stutters, and my eyes widen as I realize what that call was about. Christian’s eyes shoot to Carrick, but Elena’s lawyer presses him again.

“Should I play the call, Mr. Grey?”

“No…” Christian begins, but he’s cut off once again.

“Then please tell the court what the phone call that occurred between you and Mrs. Lincoln on the night of June 18th was regarding,” Christian doesn’t answer right away so Elena’s lawyer jumps in again. “I’d be happy to have Mrs. Lincoln explain the phone call to the court when she’s on the stand, Mr. Grey, but you’ll miss your opportunity to give us your own account. If you’d like to leave it up to her…”

“Fine,” He says, shaking his head. “It was my birthday, my girlfriend and I were trying some new things and we… I encountered a problem. I contacted Elena because she was an experienced Domme.”

“No…” Grace whispers under her breath, and I have to look away when she turns her head sharply in my direction.

“To be clear, you called her because you encountered a problem while practicing BDSM sex with your girlfriend on the night of June 18th.”

“Yes,” He says, quietly.

“So you haven’t lost your interest in the BDSM lifestyle?”

“It was something I tried with my girlfriend,” He says defensively. “My girlfriend and I share an exciting and wonderfully fulfilling sexual relationship that in general is unrelated to BDSM. This was a one time occurrence.”

“Right,” Elena’s lawyer says. She returns to her table and pulls a USB out of her accordion file and carries it over to the same projector Carrick used.

“Jesus Christ,” Christian says, shaking his head and scrubbing his hands over his face. Elena’s lawyer gives him a tight smile.

“Your honor, I’d like to submit item 1-E into evidence. Security footage from the executive suite at GEH on April 8th of this year. Mr. Grey’s suite.”

The footage we’d watched on Taylor’s computer of Elena entering Christian’s office with the brown haired submissive in toe, flashes on the screen. We watch it in its entirety, remaining silent through the long 10 minutes until Elena and the girl return into the shot of the camera. When the footage cuts out, the courtroom is silent.

“Mr. Grey, do you know the name of the woman in the video accompanying Mrs. Lincoln into your office?”

“No,” He says quietly.

“I’d like to submit item 2-E and 3-E into evidence, Your Honor,” Elena’s lawyer says, and again, she places papers on the bench. “2-E is a copy of the security sign in sheet from Mr. Grey’s office on April 8th. The name Rebecca Davis is highlighted and her sign-in matches the date and time stamp on the security footage. Item 3-E is Rebecca Davis’s employment records at Kink, the BDSM club in the underground rooms of the establishment located at 710 Rainier Ave.” She turns back to Christian. “She’s a sexual submissive who works in an establishment you claim to know nothing about but that launders tens of thousands of dollars into your company and seems to cater to your sexual desires. And she spent ten minutes alone with you in your office. How do you explain that, Mr. Grey?”

“She came with Elena,” Christian says, and to my surprise, his tone is even. I knew this was coming and it still feels like it’s hit me with the force of a wrecking ball. He doesn’t seem to feel the same sense of defeat that I feel rising inside this courtroom like a poisonous gas. “Elena was my friend, my closest friend. I confided in her, we spent time together, we talked…” He pauses. “I took my break up with Anastasia hard and she was trying to help me move on. She said I needed get back out there so she tried to introduce me to some girls. I politely refused. I had no idea where that girl came from, and Elena never told me. There was no reason for me to believe that she was a part of an underground prostitution ring that was laundering money into my company. For the millionth time today, I did not know about the existence of that club in any regard.”

“Really, Mr. Grey?” Elena’s lawyer says, “I have one more piece of evidence I’d like to present, your honor.”

She turns around and reaches back into her accordion file to pull out a second USB drive. “I present to the court, item 1-F. Security footage taken from the front entrance of the establishment located at 710 Rainier Ave on December 31st 2009.”

She plugs the USB drive into the projector and we all sit a little straighter as we turn to watch the footage roll. For the first few seconds, we see nothing but a fairly empty street with the occasional set of headlights speeding past. Eventually though, a black town car pulls up alongside the curb and when the back door opens, Christian steps out onto the sidewalk.

I gasp, my hand involuntarily shooting up to cover my mouth as I watch him look up at the bar and then back down at his phone. He shakes his head slightly and then walks forward, opens the door, and then disappears inside.

Grace’s hand clamps down around mine, squeezing tightly, but my immediate reaction is to turn to Carrick. He’s staring at the projector, mouth agape in shock, and as I watch the realization dawn on him, and his body seemingly begins to deflate as the weight of the crushing blow finally hits him, I feel a sudden wave of nausea.

“You didn’t know about the club, Mr. Grey?” Elena’s lawyer asks, a slight ring of victory in her tone.

Christian doesn’t answer. His eyes dart back and forth as though he’s trying to remember something, and after a long minute or so of silence, he looks up at Elena and the confusion in his expression melts away and is replaced by anger.

“You set me up,” He whispers, incredulously. “You told me you picked that place because it was an out of the way dive bar and no one would recognize me there.”

“Mr. Grey…” Elena’s lawyer says, but this time, Christian is the one to cut her off.

“No, I was there because New Year’s is always a hard time for me. It was our… and we were broken up… and Elena didn’t want me to be alone. She asked me to meet her for a drink and I agreed. She picked the bar, she sent me the address, she asked me to meet her there. I called a town car because I’d already been drinking. I don’t remember most of that night, except that I had a drink with her, several drinks with her, and then I went home. I didn’t even know where the bar was… But, it was just a bar.”

“Just a bar that moonlights as an underground BDSM club,” Elena’s lawyer says, her voice harder now. “A lifestyle that you spent four years being a part of and have admitted to the court that you find arousing.”

“No,” Christian shakes his head. “I didn’t know…”

“Mr. Grey, do you actually expect this court to believe that you had no knowledge of an illegal business pumping tens of thousands of dollars of profit into your company each month, profits that you used to benefit your entire company as a whole, when those profits came from a salon chain that up until a year and a half ago was on the verge of bankruptcy?”

“I didn’t know,” Christian repeats.

“You admitted yourself that those salons operated at an extremely high profit margin, even compared to your closest competitors in your area. None of that rang any warning bells for you?”

“No, I’ve already said that,” Christian snaps, clearly getting angrier the more Elena’s lawyer pushes him. “I had those salons audited and the audit came back clean.”

“No, you didn’t have those salons audited,” Elena’s lawyer argues. “Your COO did. But you made sure that you were in the room, that you were involved in every step of the process so that you would have control over how that audit went, didn’t you, Mr. Grey?”

“Of course I was there, Esclava was a division of my company. I make it my business to know everything about my company.”

“You were making sure that your secret wasn’t uncovered,” She accuses him.

“No.”

“Kink is your business isn’t it, Mr. Grey?” Elena’s lawyer asks, practically yelling now. “You opened this club to bolster the profits of your company while also satisfying your own sexual perversions.”

“No, that’s not…”

“You used Mrs. Lincoln’s connections in the BDSM community to find submissives that fit your tastes and then you used your position of authority over her to force her to operate this illegal business for you. You had her hand deliver the girls you took an interest in to your office, you forced these girls into prostitution, including your sister, so that you could feel power over them all because you couldn’t get over your break up with Anastasia Steele and domination has become an obsession for you. Isn’t that right, Mr. Grey?”

“Carrick,” Stephanie hisses, elbowing him in the side. “Do something.” But Carrick still looks as though he’s working through the shock as he watches the scene unfolding in front of him. Christian seems a little too flustered, maybe too angry to answer, so Elena’s lawyer continues on her tirade.

“And when you and Anastasia Steele got back together, and she had caught you and found out what you’d done, you threw your most loyal employee under the bus and tried to pin it on her, didn’t you?”

“I-I…” Christian stutters.

“Didn’t you, Mr. Grey?” Elena’s lawyer shouts, but Stephanie leaps to her feet.

“Objection your honor, Counsel is badgering the witness. Mr. Grey cannot be expected to provide accurate and truthful testimony under Ms. Novik’s hostile line of questioning.”

“Sustained,” the judge nods. “Please remember yourself, counselor.”

Elena’s lawyer backs away from the stand, straightening her suit jacket as she turns to look at the judge.

“I have no further questions, your honor,” She says, and she turns and walks confidently back to the table where she takes the seat next to a very satisfied looking Elena Lincoln.

“Wait, I-I…” Christian says, but the judge turns and raises a hand to silence him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Grey, your testimony has been concluded. Please step down.”

Christian’s face is blank as he turns to look at his father but Carrick is a mirror of his son right now. I can see it in his face. He doesn’t know what to do, there isn’t a step forward from here.

“Counselor,” The judge prods him when Christian finally takes his seat on the other side of Stephanie. “You may call your next witness.”

He sits up a little straighter, quickly sorting through his papers, clearly scrambling for something to move onto, but there isn’t anything. We’ve presented everything we have…

“Mr. Grey, do you have any further witnesses to call or evidence to present?” The judge asks, but after another second’s pause, Carrick lets out a defeated breath and shakes his head.

“No, your honor.”

“Then we will adjourn for the day,” The judge says. “The defense will call its first witness when we reconvene tomorrow morning at 9 AM.” He slams his gavel down on the stand and the bailiff once again calls for everyone to rise. Once the judge has exited, the courtroom is filled with the loud drone of people talking and moving as they begin to file out. Christian is through the gate very quickly, and as soon as he’s within reach, I wrap my arms around him.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“I didn’t know, Ana. I swear to you,” He says, pleading, and as I look up into his steel colored eyes and see the sincerity reflected there, I nod.

“I believe you, Christian,” I tell him.

His arms wrap around me again as he pulls me tightly into his chest, and I feel his lips press into my hair as I listen to the sound of his heart beating furiously in his chest.

“Let’s get home,” Carrick says, sounding a little shaken up. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Christian nods and we make our way through the gap between the benches and the bar towards the main aisle. When we get there though, Elena and her lawyer are just stepping through the gate.

“It’s not too late, Christian. It doesn’t have to be this way,” Elena hisses very quickly. “Meet me for a drink tonight and we can discuss how to get you out of this mess.”

“Fuck you, Elena,” Christian says angrily, but Elena simply gives him a tight lipped smile.

“When you change your mind, you’ll know where to find me. You’ve been there before.” She shoots a cold look at Carrick before turning and following after her lawyer and we all stand and watch her leave with a mixture of disbelief and overwhelming fear.

“How could you not tell me you’d been there before?” Carrick yells once we’re back at Escala. He’s pacing across the great room floor, his hands running through his hair and leaving it in the same chaotic mess Christian’s is in.

“I didn’t know that I had,” Christian says. “I’d only been there the one time and I was already a little drunk. I didn’t even remember that night until I saw that video. How was I supposed to know that that was the bar she owned? I didn’t even know she owned a bar!”

“Do you understand how fucked we are, Christian? How fucked you are? The best we had for this trial was Mia, and Novik made her look like a spoiled drug addict who didn’t know what she was talking about, and you… ” He shakes his head. “You look guilty, Christian.”

“But I’m not… nothing they have proves I knew anything. It doesn’t look good, I’ll admit that but they don’t have proof…”

“We don’t have proof. The money went through your company, Christian. Don’t you understand what that means? Why would someone launder money into another person’s business? What does Elena get out of that?”

“A place to practice BDSM,” Christian says. “A way to feel power over other people… Besides, we only know about the money she tried to make legitimate. We don’t know how much money she’d siphoned off to the side. And, I might own Esclava, but she runs it. The more money the salon makes, the more money she makes. There are plenty of reasons for her to do what she did…”

“But none that we can prove, and they did an excellent job of making you look responsible, Christian. The justice system isn’t perfect, this is going to come down to the decision of that one man sitting on the bench. Appearances are often just as important as facts in a legal proceeding and you appear to be guilty. All Novik has to do is put Elena on the stand tomorrow and let her tell some sad sob story about how you threatened her livelihood or to expose her predilection to BDSM to the world if she didn’t help you. You have power over her and it’s going to be the thing that lets her go free.”

“What do you mean go free?” Christian asks.

“Elena is not going to be arrested for this, Christian. You are,” Carrick says and Christian’s eyes widen.

“But, you said… both of us.”

“That was before. We’re not in the before anymore.”

“But I’m innocent,” Christian argues. “I didn’t know anything about that club. I did the right thing. I called the police the moment I found out about it, I shut it down, I gave testimony knowing that I could face repercussions… I did the right thing. There has to be something we can do.”

“I don’t have a way to clear your name, Christian,” Carrick shakes his head. “I warned you this could happen. I told you we shouldn’t have gone to trial.”

Christian stares back at his father blankly, looking utterly and completely shocked. He really had hoped, and now Carrick has taken that hope away.

“What am I looking at?” Christian asks, the first real note of defeat apparent in his voice.

“Money laundering, Prostitution, and underage sex trafficking?” Carrick muses. “25 to life. I can probably swing you parole after five years, but you’re going to lose your company, all of your assets…”

“Is there a way we can transfer control of GEH to Ros?” He asks.

“Maybe,” Carrick shrugs, “I’ll try.”

Christian nods and then is quiet for another long moment. “Well, you all wanted me to face consequences for what I did two years ago. I guess that’s what this is… This really is my fault.”

“No,” Carrick shakes his head again, and when he looks up there are tears in his eyes. “Christian, I’m so sorry. I should have never shut you out the way I did. You needed my help and I turned my back on you because I was angry. You went to her because I drove you to her. Again. This is my fault. I’m so, so sorry…”

“Stop,” I say, looking between the two of them in disgust. “Stop talking like we’ve already lost. This is not how this is going to end. There has to be something we can do…”

“Ana, we’ve done…”

“Taylor!” I yell, and then turn towards the foyer to wait for him to appear.

“Yes, Miss Steele?” He asks.

“Get Luke and Welch on the phone. Tell them to start digging for anything that can connect Elena to the club and proves that she, and only she, owns it. Tell them not to stop until they find something.”

“Yes, Miss Steele,” Taylor says, but by the time he turns back to his office, I’ve rounded back on Carrick.

“Elena’s going to testify tomorrow, and you’re going to get to cross examine her. Christian looks guilty because Elena’s lawyer made him look guilty, now it’s your turn to do the same to Elena.”

“Ana, she’s obviously been preparing for this for months, years maybe. I doubt I’m going to be able to…”

“Just do your fucking job, Carrick!” I yell at him and he looks at me surprised for a moment, but surprisingly, instead of retaliating, he gets up and nods.

“I’ll… be at my office if you find anything,” He says, and I nod. Christian doesn’t move until we’re alone again and once we are, he gets off the couch and wraps me in his arms again.

“Ana,” He whispers. “I love you…”

“Don’t!” I snap. “Don’t you dare say good-bye to me.”

“You heard my dad, Ana…” He says. “What am I supposed to do?”

I step back, removing his arms around me so that we’re no longer touching and then look very purposefully into his eyes as I try to fight back the tears that begin to well at the prospect of what I’m about to say.

“Call her,” I tell him, and he raises an eyebrow at me.

“What?”

“Elena. Call her, meet with her, talk to her. She says she has an out… take it.”

“Ana…” Christian says very carefully. “You know that whatever she has planned is going to hurt someone, someone that I love. I can’t hurt someone else just to protect myself. I did that once and it nearly ruined my life, and the lives of everyone around me, including you. I won’t do that again.”

“I can’t you lose you, Christian. Please,” I beg, but he just looks back at me with a pained expression before wrapping me in his arms again.

“I’m going to take care of you, Ana,” He promises. “I’ll find a way.”

The dam bursts and I let out a long, choking sob into his pristine white shirt. He holds me for a few minutes, letting me cry and trying to find a way to comfort me without telling me it’s going to be okay. Because we both know, at this point, that it won’t be.

“Give me an hour,” He says at last. “I need to make some phone calls to make sure everything is in order before…” His voice cuts off as he’s seemingly unwilling to say the words out loud, and it causes me to break down all over again.

“One hour,” He promises. “And then the rest of the night will just be you and me, okay?”

“I need some time,” I tell him. “I need to process…”

“What do you mean?” He asks.

“I need to get out of this apartment. I need to get out of here.”

“Ana… There’s press outside.”

“I’ll just, I’ll go downstairs to my old apartment. I’ll wait there for you to finish whatever you’re going to do. Just let me know when you’re done.”

“You’re sure?” He asks.

“Please.”

I can tell he wants to argue, but he doesn’t. He just nods his head and leans down to kiss me. A long, lingering kiss filled with the weight of all of the words hanging between us that neither of us can bring ourselves to say.

“I love you,” He whispers when he pulls away.

“I love you, too,” I tell him. His arms untangle from around my waist again and I watch as he slowly makes his way across the great room. Once I hear the door to his office close, I head into the foyer, step into the elevator, and press the button for the 14th floor.

There isn’t much left in my old apartment, mostly things Christian had bought to furnish and decorate the place, but there are a few clothes still hanging in my closet and box in the back that is filled with a few of my personal keepsakes and a wad of $20 bills. I take the cash and then make my way out of the apartment and back towards the elevators. My car is under surveillance via a camera feed that goes directly into Taylor’s office, so rather than push the button for the garage, I head down to the lobby and then out to the street so that I can hail a cab. With one last look up at towards the top floor, I take a deep breath and climb into the back seat.

“Where can I take you Miss?” The taxi driver asks.

“Beacon Hill,” I respond. “710 Rainier Avenue.”

Next Chapter

Annie,

I got a care package from your friend Elliot’s family yesterday. His mom (that’s who Grace is, right?) sent a ton of baked goods that have made me a very popular man. We missed a shipment last week and our food situation is not the most appetizing right now, mostly MREs, so being able to pass out muffins and cookies to the guys has really lifted the morale. Be sure to thank her for me, okay?

Katie also put in a letter catching me up on her life, and I really appreciated that. She’s always been such a good friend to you, and I think I’m going to send her a letter to let her know that I’m proud of the woman she’s grown into. I don’t have an address for her, but I can send it to you, right? Are you living with her this summer?

I’ve never met Elliot, but I’m looking forward to doing just that. He seems like a guy I could get along with. He sent me all the details of what’s happened with the ‘Hawks this off season. Why didn’t you tell me we got a new coach?! I mean, Pete Carroll did amazing things at USC but he wasn’t great when he was in the NFL. Can’t be worse than Jim Mora though. 4-12 last season? I still haven’t lived that down with the guys over here… Especially since four of the guys in my squad are Saints fans. It’s been rough… haha. Do me a favor, if you see Hasselbeck while you’re in Seattle, give him a pep-talk for me, okay?

I hope your internship is going well. I was almost floored when you told me all about it on the phone last month, I can’t believe how well you’re doing for yourself. I’ve been bragging about you a little bit (okay, a lot), and I think some of the other guys are a little jealous about how well my daughter is doing. Especially since McCurdy just got a letter from his wife saying his eighteen year old daughter is pregnant so she’s not going to school in the fall. I’m so glad you never got mixed up in anything like that. I worried about it, being from a small town, but you had a level head on your shoulders and focused on getting into Harvard and then dedicated yourself to being the best you can be. You really make me proud, Annie. I’m still holding out hope that I’m going to get back to the States in time to see you accept your degree, although I’m not sure you’ll want me there. Would you get embarrassed by seeing your old man cry in public?

Anyway, I wrote to tell you that things are getting a little rough over here. It was looking like it was dying down and we might even get sent home before our tour was finished, but then some new group came up on our radar with some kind of new insurgency. They’ve started attacking American soldiers and some of the infrastructure we’ve put in place here, so I’m not sure we’re going anywhere. Not for a while at least. They’re still underground, but they seem to have a network with another country that I can’t really tell you about, but it means that I’m heading out of Baghdad and going to a more remote area for the next few months where we won’t really have access to the mail system. I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to write you again, or if I’ll get any of your letters, so if I don’t talk to you for a while, I don’t want you to worry.

I love you, and I miss you, and I can’t wait to get home and wrap my arms around you again. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell you enough how proud I am of you, Annie. I think about you every day, and you never fail to put a smile on my face.

Love you,

Dad

I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to pull myself together. I’m supposed to be getting ready for Mia’s opening night at Seattle Center, but the stress from work and all this legal trouble, and now the feeling of regret I have over reading my Dad’s letter is bubbling uncontrollably out of my eyes. I’ve been so busy and distracted over the past few weeks, I’ve only written one letter to my dad and I only responded to the questions he asked, assured him I was doing fine, and attached a few pictures. I thought I had so much more time to write to him about all of the things I want to tell him, and to figure out a way to say all the things I’m not sure I want to tell him, but apparently, that’s not the case.

I look up at my reflection and try to blink away my tears. I’m already running late and I’m not really close to being ready. I need to focus and get through tonight. I can deal with this later…

I shake my head as I reach for the makeup I’ve already spread out over the counter and get started on my face. Compartmentalization is my entire life right now.

I lean over the counter and start dabbing concealer under my eyes, trying to hide the puffiness left over from crying, but am distracted by a knock on the door behind me. I look up and see Taylor’s reflection in the mirror.

“Oh,” I say, surprised, and then quickly look down to make sure my robe is still fully closed since I don’t think Christian would appreciate Taylor getting a view of me naked in the bathroom. Thankfully, it is. “Is Christian home yet?” I ask him.

“Not yet, Miss Steele. Ryan called and said he’s still in a meeting with Miss Bailey, but they should be home soon.”

“Okay,” I nod, actually feeling a little relieved. At least I won’t be the reason we’re late…

“You have a visitor, Miss Steele,” Taylor says and I furrow my brow and turn around.

“A visitor? Who?’

“Luke. He’s waiting in the foyer.”

I bite down on my lip as I decide what to do. I haven’t seen Luke since that night we caught Elena, and I don’t really want to turn him away without at least saying hi and apologizing for being so distant, but I don’t have time to sit down and have a real talk with him.

“Okay, give me two minutes to get dressed and then send him in here,” I tell him. He nods and turns around as I set the concealer back down on the counter and hurry out of the bathroom for our closet. The dress Christian’s personal shopper had sent over this morning is hanging on the door in the closet and, because I haven’t seen it yet, I nervously pull open the zipper on the bag to peak inside. It looks fairly basic, no intricate designs or excessive bling. Just soft, black fabric.

I pull the dress off the hanger and hastily slip it over my head. The slit on the dress goes pretty high up my thigh and the thin halter neckline leaves little to the imagination, but the classic tailoring is elegant and the neckline covers all of my cleavage so I don’t feel overly exposed.

I reach up, trying to connect the clasp around the back of my neck to secure the dress, but I can’t figure it out. My fingers fumble clumsily with the complicated closure, getting nowhere, when there is a knock on the door behind me.

“Need some help?” Luke asks.

“Thanks,” I reply. He crosses the room, takes the straps from me, and easily fixes them together. I turn around and smile at him gratefully.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” I say, motioning for him to follow me back into the bathroom. He sits on the counter as I slide my robe back on to protect my dress while I finish my makeup.

“It’s cool. I’ve been following all the press you and Grey have been dealing with, I can’t imagine that’s been easy. How are you holding up?”

I take a deep breath and lower my foundation brush as tears prick in my eyes again. Unfortunately I can’t hold back the wave of emotion that hits me, so rather than answer him, I cover my mouth to muffle my broken sob.

“Shit, Ana…” Luke says guiltily. “I didn’t mean… I mean, I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it. I wasn’t trying to make you cry.”

“No, it’s not you,” I say, taking a deep breath to steady myself. “I’m sorry. I got a letter from my dad today and it’s made me all emotional.”

“He’s okay, right?”

“Right now, but he says they’re moving him to a more remote area. He’s not going to be able to write me for… I don’t even know how long.”

“Have you told him about Grey yet?” He asks.

“No,” I say, feeling the wash of shame again. “I’ve been trying. I started a letter that I’ve probably re-written eight different times, but it’s still in my desk at work. There’s just so much to say and I want it to be perfect, to be able to explain everything the right way… Then all this business with the trial started and-“

My voice chokes off and Luke reaches out and places his hand over mine. “What’s going on, Ana?”

“I’m scared, Luke,” I whisper.

“Why?” He asks. I shake my head and start with the makeup again.

“I’ve just had this bad feeling about the trial and I can’t shake it. I think Christian’s going to go to prison, and I can’t do anything about it.”

“And you don’t want to tell your dad about him if he’s going to be in jail when he comes home?” Luke infers. I take a breath and shake my head.

“That’s not something my dad would ever look past or understand. He’s a military man, he’s kind of black and white when it comes to the rule of law.”

“So… why is he doing it then?” Luke asks. “Grey, I mean. He’s the one who filed suit, right? He could drop it. I mean… he’s only connected to the club through the salons, isn’t he? Why doesn’t he just close them down? She can’t launder money without the salons, I’m sure she’ll get caught eventually.”

“He’s doing it because of Mia,” I croak, as I try to fight back tears again. “Elena crossed a line, Luke. I don’t know if he’d be able to let it go if she hadn’t gotten Mia involved… maybe he could have just closed the salons and we could have moved on, but she did, and now he’s willing to go to prison if that’s what it takes to get revenge for what she did to his little sister.” I look up as I feel a tear roll down my cheek. “He’s not thinking about himself, he’s not thinking about his company… he’s only thinking about Mia and I’m scared I’m going to lose him.”

“Hey…” Luke says, jumping off the counter and taking me into his arms. “It’s gonna be okay, Ana. His dad’s a lawyer, right? I’m sure they’ll figure something out.”

“I don’t know,” I say shaking my head. “I’ve lost a lot of my ability to hope when it comes to Elena Lincoln.”

“Well, whatever happens… you’ll always have me, and Kate, and Elliot. You’re not alone, Ana.”

“He’s the love of my life, Luke. Losing him last time nearly destroyed me. I can’t do it again, not like this. I want him. I want a wedding and I want kids… I want a life with him. He’s finally come around and seen Elena for what she is, and we’ve moved on. This is the part where we’re supposed to get our happy ending. He had nothing to do with this, he didn’t know it was happening. He shouldn’t have to pay for it. He loves me, and I love him, but I’m going to lose my future with Christian because of her, and it’s not fair.”

“Ana… I-” Luke begins, but he stops as I really begin to cry, and reaches out for some more tissues. I take them gratefully and then turn back for the mirror, trying to salvage my make up the best I can.

“You really don’t think it’s going to go well?” Luke asks and I shrug.

“I just really don’t know, but nothing good ever happens when she’s involved,” I tell him.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe I could…”

“Ana?” I look up in the mirror and see Christian standing in the bathroom door. Luke turns abruptly, looking as though he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t, and then gives me an uneasy glance.

“I’ll… call you later. Okay, Ana?” He says.

“Sure,” I nod. “See you later, Luke.”

Christian steps aside to let Luke out of the bathroom, and once he’s gone, he turns back to me and frowns.

“What’s wrong?” He asks.

“Nothing,” I reply, shaking my head. “It’s just stress…”

“Baby…” He says, and he closes the door behind him and takes my hand, pulling me into him. “I know this is hard, but I’m doing everything I can. I promise you, I’m not going to give up without a fight. I won’t let her win.”

“I know,” I nod. I want to talk to him about how scared I am to lose him, but worrying about me and what all of this is doing to me, isn’t what’s best for him right now. We made this decision together, he’s moving forward and I need to be part of his support system. Knowing how terrified I am will only hurt him more and make this harder on him than it already is.

“I’m going to take a shower,” He says, kissing my hair. “Will you be ready to leave in twenty minutes?”

“Yes,” I nod. He releases me so that I can turn back for the mirror and he can make his way to the shower.

There are cameras lining the walkway up to the main entry again when we pull up in front of Seattle Center half an hour later. Christian steps out of the back of the Maybach first and then turns to reach down for my hand to help me out of the car. I take a deep breath and then smile as we walk up the walkway towards the main entrance. There is a woman standing at the end of the carpet and, once we’re about halfway up the walk, she smiles and then holds her hand up in a gesture for us to stop. Christian takes a deep breath, puts his hand on my waist so that he can pull me into his side, and then turns to face the flashing lights. I do my best to keep my smile as I turn to face each of the shouts that echo around us, but I’ve had to become so numb tonight, I’m not certain what my face is doing right now.

We stand there for only a second before Christian takes my hand again and leads me up the stairs towards the main entrance. The inside is architecturally beautiful, slightly industrial looking glass and steel. The red, carpeted floors are packed with people in eveningwear milling about and several of them turn to Christian with looks of delighted surprise as we make our way towards the theater entrance. He introduces me to several people, some with names I recognize, others I don’t. Each brief conversation focuses on business or offers for games of golf. Christian is polite, graciously accepting their invitations, but he inevitably pushes me away from each new person very quickly.

We find the rest of his family huddled together near the temporary bar serving champagne near the entrance and Grace smiles broadly once she spots us and immediately waves us over to them.

“How’s Mia doing?” Christian asks, accepting the glass of champagne the waiter hands him, and nodding politely in gratitude, before turning back to his mother.

“Cool as a cucumber,” She says proudly. “She’s been working so hard this week. I think it’s been really good for her to get her mind off everything.”

“Good,” Christian nods. He takes a sip of his drink while Kate proudly displays the sapphire and diamond bracelet Elliot bought for her to celebrate having their offer accepted on a new house.

“I uh… I found out who Elena has representing her.” Carrick says, sounding uneasy as I suppose he isn’t sure this is the best place to discuss trial business.

“Who?” Christian asks.

“Anne Novik,” He grimaces. “She’s good. She used to be the lead prosecutor for the state of Washington before she became a defense attorney. My old partner went against her once and she made him look like some hack from legal aide.”

Christian nods and takes another long drink of his champagne. I reach out for his hand, trying to look reassuring, as we hear a loud voice echo through the hall behind us.

“Grace!” A woman with umber colored hair calls. She waves animatedly as she walks towards us. “Oh dear, it’s simply been too long.”

Grace smiles and accepts her hug and the kiss on the cheek the woman gives her, then steps back to glance over her outfit.

“What a beautiful dress, Constance,” She says, and the woman waves off the compliment but looks extremely pleased with herself.

“This old thing, I’ve had it forever,” She replies dismissively. “And, hello again, Carrick. It’s good to see you.”

“You as well,” Carrick replies politely, but he gives a sideways look to Elliot that says he has no idea who this woman is.

“These are my children,” Grace says, gesturing the Christian and Elliot. “Their sister Mia is performing in tonight’s show, but this is Elliot and Christian. Boys, this is Constance Sinclair, she’s on the board of the Seattle Arts Commission with me.”

“Pleasure,” Constance says, nodding disinterestedly at Elliot before turning to Christian. “But of course I know who you are, Mr. Grey. We met at the gallery opening for Aivakovsky last spring, remember?”

“Of course,” Christian smiles, reaching out to shake her hand.

“I didn’t realize Grace was your mother,” She smiles. “I’d have asked her to get you on board with a number of projects the Arts Commission has been trying to get off the ground for months now.”

“Perhaps that’s why I kept her a secret,” Christian winks, and Constance let’s out a false laugh before turning back to Grace.

“You have a lovely family, dear. I hope we can all get together at the club sometime and maybe discuss some…”

“Oh my god,” I gasp, interrupting Ms. Sinclair as I see a flash of very unwelcome blonde hair over Carrick’s shoulder.

“What?” Christian asks, looking down at me with concern, and I nod subtly in the other direction.

“Elena is here,” I say quietly. I feel Elliot tense next to me immediately as he catches sight of her too, but when he turns to hand his glass of champagne to Kate so he can turn and begin walking towards her, Carrick reaches out to stop him.

“Don’t make a scene,” He says carefully. Elliot takes a deep breath to calm himself but I can see a tremble rock through him as he forces himself to stay put.

“I’m sorry, what…?” Constance says, looking puzzled as she glances at each of the Grey men, who all have noticeably changed their postures to reflect their tension.

“Come with me, Constance,” Grace says. She manages to smile as she reaches out to wrap her arm over Ms. Sinclair’s shoulder, but her voice is tight with barely controlled anger. It’s in that moment I have to wonder if Grace is removing Constance from her family, or removing herself from Elena.

“Let’s go inside,” Elliot hisses, but Christian shakes his head.

“No, I don’t want her anywhere Mia. We need to have someone remove her,” He says sharply.

“And how are you going to do that?” Kate asks.

“I’m Christian Grey,” He says flatly and, as Kate rolls her eyes, I glance up again and see that Elena has definitely noticed us standing here.

“She’s coming over here,” I whisper quickly. Christian turns to look at her again and then takes a deep, bracing breath as he wraps his hand around mine and subtly places himself mostly in front of me.

“Hello,” Elena says, smiling sweetly when she finally approaches us. “Don’t you all just look like quite the perfect family tonight.”

“What are you doing here, Elena?” Carrick asks, his voice tight and she lets out a soft laugh and shakes her head like he’s missing something obvious.

“It’s little Mia’s opening night. She’s told me all summer about how hard she’s worked on this show, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. She is my god daughter after all…”

Elliot yanks his hand out of Kate’s and takes a step forward, but Carrick moves quickly into his path, blocking his way. Elena laughs again and then turns to Christian.

“I want to talk to you,” She says, the first note of seriousness to her tone. Christian shakes his head.

“You can go to hell.”

“Christian,” She pouts. “This is all getting very messy and I know that’s not what you want. Just give me 10 minutes. We can work all of this out.”

“I’m not interested in working things out with you, Elena,” Christian says darkly. “The only thing I’m interested in is seeing you go to prison for what you’ve done to my little sister.”

“You’re not going to get that, Christian,” Elena replies, speaking to him now as if he were a child. “Trust me, this, what I’m trying to do right now, is about you, not me. I’m trying to protect you. I don’t want this to turn out badly for you, but it will unless you drop this foolish lawsuit and we all forget any of this nonsense happened.”

“That’s not going to happen,” He says and she sighs.

“This is your last chance, Christian. Please don’t make me hurt you.”

“Excuse me, Ma’am,” Someone says behind me, and I turn around to see a burly looking security guard looking sternly down at Elena. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

“For what reason?” Elena snaps.

“It seems your ticket to tonight’s performance is no longer valid. I’m here to escort you off the premises.”

Elena’s mouth pops open with mortified shock, but she quickly regains her composure and gives each of us an indignant, slightly haughty look before gripping onto the long skirt of her gown and storming angrily away. Before she’s out of earshot though, she turns back to Christian one last time.

“You’ve done this to yourself,” She says viciously, and then she turns again and disappears into the crowd of people now making their way into the theater. We stand there for a few minutes, looking at each other with confusion as we all wonder what just happened.

“Shall we find our seats?” Grace asks, slipping her arm through Carrick’s when she rejoins us again.

“Did you…?” Elliot asks, and Grace smiles at him.

“I’m on the board,” She says simply, and then she steps back, tugging gently on Carrick’s arm to lead him back into the theater.

“Ready?” Christian asks, holding his arm out for me. I smile and nod, then clasp my fingers around the inside of his elbow as we follow after his parents. Before we step onto the balcony level though, I shoot one more nervous glance towards the main entrance, like I expect Elena to be standing there, staring through the glass at us like the grim reaper.

Not very long after we take our seats, the lights dim and the music begins to rise from the orchestra pit in front of the stage. Christian hands me a program and while the first fluttering of lights appear on the stage, I quickly glance down at the green font that looks as though it’s made of vines and spells out the words, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The cast list is on the inside cover and I quickly find Mia’s name.

 

Peaseblossom (fairy) ……………………………………………. Amelia Trevelyan-Grey

 

“There she is,” Christian whispers. I look up as Mia dances towards center stage. Her costume is stunning, different shades of pinks, greens, blues, and white tangled together in the the graceful cloud of her billowy skirt. Her hair is rolled up into a tight bun, but adorned with soft white flowers. Her makeup is fantastical with glitter and long swirling lines around her eyes that drip down her face. And, when she stands on the very tips of her toes and spins, the delicate fairy wings on her back seem to flutter.

I smile as I follow her around the stage with my eyes. It’s very hard to pay attention to the story or the music, I’m so enraptured by her dancing. About half way through the second act, when Mia briefly takes center stage to perform a jump and an elaborate spin, I chance a glance at Christian, who is fully engrossed in the show. He’s smiling absentmindedly down at the stage, his eyes alight with wonder as he watches his sister spin again and then hold her leg high into the air where she holds it for a long time in an impressive show of strength and balance. Once she seamlessly eases into the background again, he glances down at me with a look of such pride that I can’t help but beam back up at him.

“That was amazing!” Kate says, when we step back out into the main foyer after the ballet ends. “Did you see that leap Mia did in the second act? You should have put that girl in gymnastics, Grace.”

“She was wonderful, wasn’t she?” Grace replies. There is a smudge of mascara in the crook of her eye from wiping away tears.

“Definitely Juilliard material,” Elliot says pointedly towards his father.

“Christian!” Mia’s excited voice rings through the crowd and we all turn to see her bounding up towards us, sending small showers of glitter onto the red carpet with each bouncing step. Christian turns and holds his arms open for her and she hugs him tightly. “You’re here! I wasn’t sure you would come.”

“Of course I’m here,” He says, “It’s your opening night, where else would I be?” She grins up at him for a moment and then turns to her mother, who immediately begins to shower her with praise.

“We should do something to celebrate such a successful opening night,” Carrick suggests, “What do you think?”

“Yes!” Mia says, “We absolutely should.”

“Have you eaten, dear?” Grace asks. “Perhaps we can take you out to dinner?”

“Oooh, at that place on the water with the lobster bisque that I like?” She replies.

“Where ever you want to go,” Grace says.

“Uh… are you sure we should go out and eat in public?” Elliot asks nervously. “I mean, with the paparazzi following Christian everywhere…”

“It’s Mia’s night,” Christian says, “You should go where she wants to go. Anastasia and I can head home…”

“No!” Mia exclaims. “I want everyone there. It won’t be any fun without you and Ana.”

“Why don’t we bring everyone back to Escala?” I ask, looking up at Christian. “It’s closer than Bellevue and we could make something to eat at home.”

“Is that okay with you?” Christian asks Mia and she nods.

Grace and Carrick hang back to wait for Mia while she changes out of her costume, and Christian leads me out towards the front where Taylor has brought the car around. Kate and Elliot have to wait for the valet, so Christian and I get home with a few minutes to ourselves. I think he has a different idea than I do about what that means because when I head into the kitchen and begin pulling things out of the cabinets and cupboards to begin making a late dinner for everyone, he looks severely disappointed.

“I can have Gail do this,” He says, coming up behind me, placing his hands on my hips, and kissing my neck.

“That’s okay, I don’t mind,” I reply.

“I do though. You look a little uncomfortable in this dress… why don’t we go find something more suitable for you to change into. In the bedroom. Right now.”

I laugh. “Because, as coy as you’re being Mr. Grey, I can decipher your code and we don’t have time for any shenanigans before Elliot and Kate get here.”

“I can be quick,” He smiles. “Just give me a minute and thirty seconds.”

“A minute thirty, huh?” I giggle. “I don’t know if that’s something to be proud of…”

“Au contraire, mon amour,” He says. “The ability to get you off in that amount of time is most definitely a point of pride for me. I’ve considered putting it on my resume.”

“Christian Grey: Businessman. French speaker. Sex god,” I say, decisively and he laughs.

“Alors laisse moi te ramener à notre chambre te montrer à tel point je suis un dieu du sexe.”

“Ooh, that is kind of hot…” I moan, and then turn so that I can kiss him. As he brushes his tongue across my bottom lip though, I hear the ping of the elevator echo through the foyer and great room, and then Elliot’s voice comes soon after.

“Christian? Ana?”

“In here,” I call, smirking at Christian as he frowns and then untangles his arms from around my waist. I turn back to the counter to start chopping vegetables for the salad I’m making. Kate offers her help, so Christian has to step aside to let her. He pours a glass of wine for Kate and I, places the bottle in a bucket of ice for when his mother gets here, and then takes two beers out of the fridge for him and Elliot.

“How bad do you think I could beat you in a game of Call of Duty right now?” Elliot asks.

“Probably pretty bad,” Christian says, and Elliot grins.

“Only one way to find out.”

I look over my shoulder, and Christian rolls his eyes and shakes his head dejectedly as he reluctantly follows Elliot out of the kitchen towards the game room. Kate and I spend a few minutes alone together and she tells me all about the beautiful new house that Elliot has purchased for them while I pull some cold chicken out of the fridge and begin to slice it.

“Where is the house at?” I ask her and she takes a deep breath, frowning slightly.

“Down the street from his parents,” She says. I bite down on my lip to try and hide my smile, but she sees it anyway. “He just likes being close to his family, Ana. I can understand that. In fact, I love that about him. It’s how I know he’s going to be a great dad one day.”

I have to chew on the inside of my cheek at those words. Elliot has said he doesn’t want kids. I wonder how serious he is about that. Kate seems to want them…

“Hello?” Grace calls from the great room, and Kate sets her knife down to wave them over and pour her a glass of wine. I dump the chicken onto the bed of greens in the salad bowl and then toss everything together with Gail’s homemade caesar dressing.

“Mia, will you go get the boys?” I ask, as I carry the bowl to the table. She nods and disappears while Kate and Grace bring out plates for everyone.

“I’m just saying it’s embarrassing, Christian,” Elliot says as they come back into the great room. “You really need to practice. We share the same name, I can’t be associated with someone who is that awful at killing nazi zombies.”

“I think my time is better spent focusing on more productive hobbies, Elliot,” Christian says. “You can have xbox, I’ll keep flying helicopters.”

“You can fly helicopters in Grand Theft Auto,” Elliot says. “Maybe we should try that instead of Modern Warfare.”

“Enough, Elliot,” Grace chides him. “Tonight is about Mia.”

We all take our seats around the table, taking turns showering compliments and congratulations over Mia, which she clearly loves. She makes us each recount our favorite parts of the ballet, quizzing us as though to make sure we really were paying close attention. I ask her about the small dance solo she had in the middle of the second act and she goes on and on about how difficult it is and how she had originally been cast as Moth, but the dancer who they had cast as Peaseblossom couldn’t hold on point long enough so she was re-cast.

“It’s such great exposure,” Mia says. “We aren’t allowed to record the actual performance because of copyright laws, but someone recorded just my solo in rehearsal the other day and I think I’m going to send it in as part of my application to Juilliard. It really is a difficult number, and I happen to be amazing at it.”

“I’ll say you are,” Christian praises her and she lights up again.

“Uh, excuse me, Mr. Grey,” Taylor interrupts us, and Christian turns to look back at him, clearly a little irritated by the interruption.

“What is it?” He asks, and Taylor glances over the table like he’s unsure he wants to say whatever it is he has to say in front of everyone.

“Sir, I was just alerted by the front desk that you had a package delivery that needed a signature. I sent Ryan down to get it and… he was served with a subpoena.”

“A subpoena?” Christian repeats.

“For what?” Carrick asks, setting down his fork and zeroing in on Taylor.

“It’s from Mrs. Lincoln’s lawyer. She’s asking for documents and some security footage from GEH,” Taylor says.

“What kind of documents?” Carrick asks.

“The security sign-in records for the executive suite,” He replies, reaching out to hand the subpoena to Carrick. “There are several dates listed.”

“Do these dates mean anything to you?” Carrick asks, turning the paper so Christian can see. He leans over, reading each line carefully and I get a look at the paper, but there are only dates and times listed. No additional information.

“October 21st 2009, November 17th 2009, February 12th 2010, March 22nd, April 8th…” Christian reads aloud. “No, I don’t recall anything particularly memorable happening on those dates. Not with GEH anyway.”

“Do you have access to the GEH server from here?” Carrick asks, turning to Taylor, and he nods. “Show me then.”

Both Christian and Carrick get out of their seats, and after exchanging a brief look, both Elliot and I get up to follow after them to Taylor’s office. Taylor sits at his desk and pulls open the Grey icon from his desktop that I recognize from my own computer at work. He logs into the Intranet, but when he gets to the next screen, his interface looks very different from mine. He has to enter about four different passwords, but eventually a small box comes up that he can enter the date and times from the subpoena into, and security footage begins rolling.

It’s silent because the footage is from before Christian’s security overhaul, and it must be from last winter because both Andrea and Leila are seated behind the desk wearing sweaters and scarves. Andrea picks up a file from her desk, gets up, and carries it out of the shot and all we have is Leila answering phones for about 30 seconds.

“What is this?” Christian asks, but just as the words come out of his mouth, the glass doors open and Elena walks into the lobby with a pretty, young, brunette girl following closely behind her. Leila smiles at both of them, and then places a clipboard on the counter for the brunette girl to sign in. She then takes her ID, carries it off to the photocopy room, and, once she returns, puts the copy of her ID into the guest access binder. Leila hands the girl a guest badge and directs them to the hallway down to Christian’s office. Once Elena and the girl disappear from sight, Carrick turns incredulous eyes on Christian.

“What is that?” Carrick asks angrily, but Christian is still staring, unbelieving, down at the footage on the monitor. His mouth slightly agape.

“That… I-I-” He stutters, and then he takes a breath and turns to look at his father. “Dad, I didn’t touch any of those girls. I didn’t ask to have them brought to me. She was trying to help me move on from Anastasia… she thought if she introduced me to a submissive, that I would… but I didn’t. I swear to you, I didn’t. Ever. I never touched any of them.”

Taylor fast forwards through the footage about ten minutes until we see Elena and the girl walking back down the hallway.

“Ten minutes?” Carrick asks, his voice an accusation now. “That’s an awful long time to have someone in your office for nothing to have happened.”

“We talked…” Christian replies, defensively. “Elena, I mean. She was the only person I had to talk to then, but the girls… Elena made each of them kneel by the door and she left them there while she came and sat across from me at my desk. We talked for a few minutes, but the girl never moved away from the door. Elena offered her to me, I said no, and they left. Look at her!” He points to the girl in the footage. “She doesn’t have a single hair out of place. Does that look like a girl who was just fucked to you?”

Carrick inhales sharply and then look back down at the subpoena in his hand. “These dates, are we going to see the same thing on each one of them?”

Christian diverts his eyes. “Probably.”

“How many girls did she bring to you?” Carrick asks.

“I don’t know. Five, maybe a few more. But I swear Dad, I never touched a single one of them.”

“Did you know about the club, Christian?” Carrick asks, and now his voice is deadly serious. Christian looks back up at his father with shock.

“Of course I didn’t know! Elena is in the lifestyle, actively in the lifestyle. She’s had two different submissives over the past two years and I’ve met both of them. I just thought she’d met those girls through regular channels. She said she thought they might be a good match for me since they all kind of looked like Anastasia…” I cringe at those words and he mashes his lips together in regret at having said them. When he continues again, his voice is tight with anger. “There are at least four different BDSM clubs in this city, and a few of the people in the lifestyle hold parties to introduce potential submissives to dominants. I thought that’s where those girls had come from. I had no way to know she was pulling them out of the pool of girls she had working for her in an illegal, underground prostitution ring. I never. Touched. Any of them.”

“This is pretty damning, Christian,” Carrick says in a low voice. “All she has to do is show that the girls on the security sign in sheet are girls that had worked for her in the club and… I don’t know how we’re going to get you out of that.”

“We put them on the stand,” Christian argues. “We have them sworn in and then make them admit to the judge that we have never had any sexual relationship.”

“And if they lie?” Carrick asks and when Christian’s lips push together in a tight line, Carrick shakes his head. “I won’t put them on the stand. I need… I need some time to figure out what to do.This isn’t good, Christian. If you want to…” He pauses and swallows. “If you want to back out, now is the time to do it.”

“No, I’m not letting her get away with this again, Dad. Mia deserves better than that,” Christian says firmly.

“You understand what I’m telling you, don’t you?” Carrick asks. “This implicates you Christian. If criminal charges are brought at the end of this trial, this evidence could mean that they’re brought against you. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get you out of this. We have no proof that you were in no way involved, and this seems to be a pretty clear indicator that you were. As your legal counsel, I am advising you that if we go to trial with the evidence stacked against you, there is an almost certain chance that you will be arrested and a criminal trial would mean prison.”

“Will she go too?” Christian asks. Carrick takes a deep breath.

“I can probably convince the judge she was a co-conspirator, yes, but…”

“But nothing. That’s all I care about. Do what you can for me, but I understand the consequences. There is no way that I am letting her walk away from this, Dad. I don’t care if that means I have consequences to face too.”

“I don’t agree with that,” Elliot says, shaking his head.

“You’d rather watch the woman who almost had our little sister raped walk free?” Christian asks him incredulously.

“Of course not, but this isn’t the only way… “

“Well, I’m open to suggestions,” Christian says.

“I work in construction,” Elliot says simply and when both Christian and Carrick give him a questioning look he continues. “You’ve got some pretty scary guys on your team, Christian. Maybe Elena just disappears. Maybe there’s no trial because there’s no one to have a trial against.”

“What are you saying, Elliot?” Christian asks.

“I’m saying that Elena always viewed herself as part of the foundation of GEH. I can make that a reality.”

“No, no, no,” Carrick says, reaching up and covering his ears. “I’m not hearing this.”

“Sir, I could…” Taylor chimes in. “I could make it quick and I wouldn’t leave a trail.”

Christian looks at him for a moment, pondering, and I see Elliot nodding out of the corner of my eye. Carrick’s jaw is tight as he starts to walk away, but when Christian looks down at me he shakes his head.

“That’s not who I am,” He says. “We still have a little over a week before the trial. We’ll figure something out. Dad, you have all of my resources at your disposal. Just tell me what you need from me, and it’s yours.”

“Okay,” Carrick nods, but he still looks dejected. “I’m going to call Stephanie and have her meet me in the office. I’ll probably be there most of the time over the next week and a half while we try to figure this out. Taylor, send me everything you send to Elena’s lawyer, no matter how little it might seem. Christian, I want detailed accounts of every single interaction you’ve had with these submissive girls, and I want them notarized. Have them to me by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay,” Christian agrees. Carrick nods and turns to leave, and while Christian begins issuing rapid fire instructions to Taylor, I follow Carrick to the door to catch him before he steps onto the elevator.

“Carrick!” I call, and he turns somber eyes on me. “Give it to me straight,” I tell him. “I need to be prepared for what’s going to happen so just tell me the truth, okay?”

“He’s not going to get out of it,” Carrick says. “If I don’t put Mia on the stand and prove there were underage girls in the club… Then in a criminal trial, I might be able to get him five years. There’s no way he walks away from this, not with that footage. It’s the nail in the coffin, Ana. He’s not going to get out of this.”

My eyes well with tears and I let out a shaky breath as the elevator pings and Carrick turns to step onto it. He gives me a sad, helpless looking smile and then reaches out for the button to the garage. The doors close, and he disappears. Leaving me alone, feeling like I’m drowning.

Next Chapter

Google Alert: Christian Grey

New York Times, July 20th 2010: Trial Date Set for Grey Enterprises Holdings Prostitution Ring Scandal. SEATTLE, WA: A trial date has been set for Christian Grey, who is suing subordinate executive Elena Lincoln, the former director of Esclava Salons (A subsidiary of Grey Enterprises Holdings), for fraud and misusing company resources to fund an illegal sex trafficking ring. The two will square off in front of the honorable Judge Palmer Ramsdell on August 19th.

---

“I don’t know how it happened, Ana,” Jack says, sounding nearly panicked over the phone.

I lean backwards and glance through the small window in the door to the deposition room Christian’s waiting in with his father, trying to gauge his mood. He looks nervous, and quite frankly, I can’t blame him. Both he and Carrick pulled strings to get a speedy trial date and now everything seems to be moving too quickly. All the media attention surrounding us and GEH since the story of the upcoming trial broke has been a little overwhelming, and the details that have been leaked to the media haven’t boded well for Christian. It ended up being a mistake waiting so long to call the police that first night because in the two hours from when I left Elena and when the police arrived at the bar, she’d had the entire place cleaned out. Carrick told us not to worry, that Taylor had more than enough proof of the club’s existence, but the lack of evidence found by the police meant that she was not arrested. Because of this, no criminal charges were brought against her which Carrick is attempting to get around by filing a civil lawsuit against her, hoping the trial will end with the truth coming out and the judge bringing criminal charges against her himself. It’s risky, and it’s going to leave Christian open and vulnerable because of his connection to the club through Esclava, but he was adamant that we move forward.

Still, it’s made this whole ordeal more complicated and stressful for him, especially on days like today.

I need to get back in there…

“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head distractedly as I turn my attention back to my phone conversation with Jack. “Tell me one more time what happened.”

“We just got the shipment in of Boyce Fox’s book, and something went wrong at the press. Every single R is printed backwards. We’ve gone through 300 different books on 12 different pallets and they’re all the same. These were supposed to immediately go out for shipment. The release date is Monday, we don’t have time to have them re-printed.”

“Okay, hold on,” I say, and I pull the phone away from my ear as I pace quickly back and forth in front of the door. I see Christian look up at me, his brow furrowed as he’s clearly wondering what’s taking so long. I briefly consider asking him what he thinks we should do, he is the CEO after all… but this is what he hired me for, and an opportunity for me to prove that hiring me was the right decision for SIP and not just his personal life.

“Okay,” I begin, pulling the phone back up to my ear. “Get a hold of Barney, we’ll launch the app early and spin it as a special release of Boyce Fox’s book. Have the press do a re-print and tell them we are not paying for their mistake, if they have a problem with that give them my number. We’ll do a hard copy release a week late as a way of encouraging downloads from the app. In the meantime, book Fox on the Today show and a few of the late night talk shows so he can promote the app release. I’d rather get him on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report over someone like Jimmy Kimmel so we can play up the intellectualism of the book. Besides, that’ll open the market to Millennials.”

“Okay,” Jack replies, and I hear him scribbling something down on paper in the background. “And what do we do about the 100,000 copies that are defective?”

“Have Fox sign 100 of them for us to sell at auction as a limited edition release. We can donate another 10,000 to be added into care packages for deployed soldiers through operation We Are Here and the rest can go to education programs in 3rd world countries.”

“Should I have that publicized?” Jack asks, and I bite down on my lip.

“Ummmm… no. I don’t want GEH to get a bunch of humanitarian press and then have it leaked that we donated defective books.”

“Okay, I’ll get in touch with Barney and keep you updated when I know more.”

“Thank you, Jack,” I tell him, and then hang up the phone and head back into the small office Carrick is using as an examination room.

“Is everything okay?” Christian asks as I take the seat next to him.

“Oh, yeah… Just a little mix up at SIP, but I think I’ve got it figured out. Nothing to worry about.”

He nods and then turns to his father. “What’s taking so long?”

“Relax, son,” Carrick says. “He’s only a few minutes late and notaries are not well known for being on time.”

“Well, I’m not well known for waiting,” Christian says bitterly. “Why do we have to have a notary anyway? You didn’t use one the last time we did this.”

“Yeah, and I seem to remember I wasn’t under oath being a part of your testimony,” Carrick replies pointedly. The muscle in Christian’s jaw tightens as he diverts his eyes away from his father, so I reach out and take his hand under the table and squeeze it reassuringly.

There is a knock on the door and a girl with pale blonde hair and a freckled complexion sticks her head inside.

“Mr. Grey,” She says to Carrick. “The notary and the court reporter have arrived.”

“Thank you,” Carrick says, and he gets out of his seat and hurries out the door after her. Christian and I wait alone in the room for a few minutes, glancing at each other awkwardly every few seconds as we sit there in silence. When Carrick returns, he’s flanked by a girl with dark brown hair that almost perfectly matches her eyes, a man in a suit, which looks entirely too hot for late July, and a woman carrying a leather satchel over her pinstriped blouse.

“Christian, this is Stephanie,” Carrick says gesturing to the dark haired girl. “She’s a junior associate here, but one of our very best. She’ll be conducting your interview today.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Grey,” Stephanie says, reaching out to take Christian’s hand, but he ignores her and turns his eyes back to his father.

“You’re not doing the interview?” He asks.

“No,” Carrick shakes his head. “I’m trying to learn from past mistakes. I want you to be honest and straightforward with the statement you give today. Having someone else take your testimony might give you more freedom to do that, take the pressure off.”

“Oh,” Christian says, frowning, but after taking a moment to think, he nods in agreement. I look back to Carrick, who seems to relax a little as Christian accepts his reasoning without argument. Carrick smiles at Stephanie and pulls out a chair for her to sit.

I’ve felt a lot of trepidation over the past few weeks at the uneasy sense of deja vu this whole thing has given me, but Carrick’s approach to the situation today has finally made me feel like this time, it’s different. He’s not leaving anything up to chance. He’s going to fight for his son, and I know that he’s going to fight harder than he’s fought for any client he’s had before, but this time, he won’t take anything for granted or let his relationship with Christian cloud his judgement.

“Alright, let’s get started,” Stephanie says, as she pulls her files and notebook out of her bag. She nods to the notary who then turns to Christian and asks him to stand.

“Will you please state your name for the court reporter?” He asks, nodding to the woman sitting at the end of the table, who is now tapping her fingers rhythmically against the keys of a laptop.

“Christian Trevelyan-Grey,” He says.

“And do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under pains and penalty of perjury?” The notary asks. Christian takes a deep, bracing breath and nods.

“I do,” He says, and the notary nods for him to take a seat.

“Great, let’s get to it then,” Stephanie says brightly. “I have to say, Mr. Grey, that I have followed your career with some interest. Ever since I was a law student at Berkeley.”

Christian narrows his eyes at her. “And… how long ago was that exactly?”

“Oh, I graduated in 2009. I externed at this lawfirm the previous summer and was hired me right out of law school,” She says with a smile, but that answer doesn’t seem to instill much confidence in Christian.

“I see…” He says uneasily.

“Don’t worry, I’m familiar with your legal history with Mrs. Lincoln. Your father has briefed me on the suit back in 2008 that the two of you were involved in, and I’ve reviewed everything Mr. Taylor has sent to us concerning this case. I even assisted your father on the countersuit you filed earlier this summer against Leila Williams, so I kind of know the ends and outs of everthing you’ve been through, legally.  It always seems to be sex related for you, doesn’t it?”

Christian doesn’t say anything, but raises a disapproving eyebrow in response to her question. I take his hand again as Stephanie glances back down at her notes. I think she’s trying to break the ice or build a report with him to make him more comfortable with her, she just doesn’t know Christian well enough to know that this isn’t the way to do that. But, at least she seems to pick up on that, because she’s more serious from that point on, asking very pointed questions that I hadn’t even considered might be relevant, including his previous experience with BDSM.

It’s uncomfortable, for both us, especially after Christian’s revelations a few weeks ago. I can see that Christian doesn’t want to answer the questions Stephanie asks, but he does. It’s a good thing that Carrick had the foresight to bring someone else in because I don’t know if he’d be this open talking to his father, especially since they’ve only just gotten their relationship back on track. When Stephanie’s line of questioning continues on to Christian’s current relationship with BDSM, his tone changes from reluctant to irritated. But as I listen, really listen, to Stephanie’s questions, I think I get the intent…

“You think she’s going to try to turn this around on Christian, don’t you?” I ask, and she turns to me, and smiles.

“I’m sorry, Miss Steele. I know that you’re here for moral support but this is examination is for Mr. Grey, and Mr. Grey only. As he’s the only person under oath at the moment, I’m going to need you to remain silent for the remainder of the examination.”

“Is she?” Christian asks, and Stephanie takes a deep breath.

“We’re covering all of our bases, Mr. Grey. It is possible that, given your history and your position of authority over Mrs. Lincoln, there could be an implication as to your involvement with this business.”

“I didn’t know about it,” Christian says firmly.

“I know that,” Stephanie agrees. “And that’s why I need you to be as open and honest with me as possible, so that I can prove that to a judge.”

I glance worriedly at Christian as he shakes his head back and forth angrily, waiting for him to respond, but he simply entwines his fingers more tightly with mine, turns back to Stephanie, and nods for her to continue.

The interview takes hours and it’s late by the time we’re finally able to leave Christian’s office. The notary and the court reporter both look annoyed at having been kept working so late, but Stephanie seems pleased with the end results of the examination.

“Thank you, Mr. Grey,” She says, reaching out to shake his hand, and, this time, he takes her hand with his. “I appreciate your time.”

“Let me know if there’s anything else I can do,” Christian says. Stephanie promises that she will, but once the notary and the reporter step out of the room, she closes the door and then walks to a camera on the wall I hadn’t noticed before, and flicks a switch that turns off the red recording light.

“I have some concerns,” She says, motioning for us to have a seat again. “A lot of this decision could come down to appearances, and if Mrs. Lincoln attempts a countersuit, it could be possible that your home and office will be searched for evidence as to your involvement with the salon business. As a precaution, I would advise that if there are any signs in your residence that you currently practice BDSM in any form, you remove those signs immediately.”

“Understood,” He nods.

“Good,” Stephanie says, smiling again. “Then, I’ll be in touch with you in the next few days. In the meantime, try to stay out of trouble, but don’t feel like you have to hide away. You have a presence in the media and it might be help your case if the public sees you in a more normal light. As in a normal relationship unrelated to BDSM.”

She looks at me and I nod.

“Great,” She smiles. “Have a wonderful evening.”

She shakes Christian’s hand once more, then mine, and we leave the examination room feeling a little uneasy. As we head down to Carrick’s office to say good bye, I have to shake off the uncomfortable feeling of violation I’m left with knowing that there are intimate details of my sex life with Christian written down in court documents. I know they’re trying to prove that he’s a normal man, in a normal relationship, with normal sexual desires to try and mitigate the concerns his past with BDSM might raise with his connection to the club, but it’s strange knowing that there will be a dossier that describes the kind of sex I have with my boyfriend on file for years…

“Are you hungry?” Christian asks as we step into the elevator that leads to the underground parking garage.

“A little,” I say, only now realizing that it’s been almost 8 hours since I’ve eaten anything.

“Good,” Christian nods. “After all of this today, I’d really like to take you on a date and just forget about things for a while. I think we could use some time alone.”

I smile up at him. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

The Veyron is waiting for us in the garage and as I step inside, I realize that it’s starting to feel strange not having security around. Taylor hasn’t left my side in weeks, but once he dropped me off at Carrick’s office this afternoon, Christian told him he wouldn’t be needed for the rest of the day. I half expect him to call Taylor once we’re out of the garage to have him meet us wherever it is he’s taking me, but he doesn’t. It really is just the two of us tonight.

We end up in the Pike Market district, and to my surprise Christian simply pulls to the side of the road and parks against the curb on a well-lit, busy part of Pike St. It’s weird because I have trouble picturing Christian choosing a place to eat that doesn’t have a valet, let alone one that doesn’t even have its own private parking, so I look up and down the street with interest, trying to decipher where he’s taking me. Taxi Dogs is only a few buildings down, and for a moment, I wonder if that’s his plan. But, as he takes my hand and leads me down the street, he walks past it.

“Where are we going?” I ask, as we round the corner onto Virginia, but he just smiles and then pulls me down an alley on the right. “Oh, by date, you meant you wanted to murder me,” I tease him and he laughs.

“Not tonight, Miss Steele. This is one of my best suits,” He replies. I giggle at his good humor as he leads me to a cinderblock building about halfway down the alley that is painted a uniform dark gray, except for the front door, which is a bright, baby pink. From the outside, it’s definitely not the kind of place I’d imagine Christian regularly frequents, but I realize I’m probably wrong about that when I see the inside.

The restaurant is small, and very intimate. There are a few tables scattered around in a haphazard fashion, but everything about the restaurant itself is beautiful. There are clean white linens on all of the tables, a huge, elaborate vase sitting on a pillar in the middle of the dining room floor that is overflowing with flowers, and the entire space is flooded with soft, warm light from the long tapers resting on every table. It’s a little crowded, which I don’t think is normally Christian’s style, especially since he said he wanted to be alone, but I suppose there’s a unique kind of anonymity when you’re lost in a large crowd.

“Do you have a reservation?” The hostess asks, without looking up from her clipboard, as we step up to her podium.

“No, I don’t. I hope that won’t be a problem,” Christian says, and the hostess looks up with a smug kind of arrogance on her face. But that immediately melts away when she sees him.

“Oh my god, you’re Christian Grey,” She gasps, and he smiles down at her. That carefree, beautiful smile that quite possibly makes him the most handsome man in the world, and she instantly melts.

Poor girl, she didn’t stand a chance.

“Let me get a table for you, Mr. Grey,” She says, and she picks up two menus, turns to say something into the microphone hanging from the wire wrapped around her ear, and then faces us again with a broad, toothy smile. “Right this way, please.”

We follow her into the restaurant towards an empty table, ignoring the pointed stares as we pass each of the other seated guests. Christian pulls out my chair for me and I smile as I settle down and take the menu the hostess offers me. It’s then, as I glance down at the loopy script that almost makes the menu a little difficult to read, that I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye, and look up to see a woman dangling above the dining area, wrapped in the aerial silk used in acrobatic shows. She’s very graceful as she lifts her body and wraps the silk around her so that she can hang upside down, but it’s hard for me to pay attention to her movement because the only thing I can seem to focus on is the fact that she’s dressed only in a pair of satin panties. As she curls her legs around the silk and falls further backwards, her exposed breasts are pushed out, on display for the entire restaurant.

I look back down at Christian, my mouth actually open with unexpected shock, but he seems to be paying little attention to the mostly naked woman dancing only a few feet away from our table.

“Do you like octopus?” He asks casually as he flips the menu in his hands.

“Uh…” I stutter, but, again, my attention is diverted when I see another woman on the other side of the restaurant contorting her naked body around a wide hoop dangling from the ceiling. When I don’t answer him, he looks up and then furrows his brow.

“What’s wrong?” He asks.

“There are boobs,” I tell him, nodding towards the girl spinning around the aerial silk next to us, and he glances up and then lets out a low, breathy laugh.

“Yes, there are,” He agrees. “The Pink Door is a burlesque themed restaurant, but they have some of the best pasta in the city. I know how much you like Italian food.”

“Right,” I reply as some of the shock fades away. I nod and smile at him, just as the waitress approaches our table, beaming down at Christian like he’s a basket of newborn puppies or something.

“Welcome to The Pink Door, Mr. Grey,” She greets him. “Are you ready to order?”

“I think so,” Christian says, turning his attention from me back to the menu. “I think we’ll start off with a bottle of the 2006 Batar Chardonnay, and I’ll have the scallops for my entrée.”

He looks up expectantly at me and I realize I haven’t even really looked much at the menu. I glance down and pick the first thing I see. “Uh… Linguini Alle Vongole, please,” I tell her.

“Excellent choice,” She says, reaching down for our menus. “I’ll get your wine right out.”

“And some oysters, to start off with,” Christian tells her. She nods and then turns to leave, but Christian stops her. “Excuse me.”

“I’m sorry, can I get you something else?” She asks.

“No, can we have the dancer moved, please?” He asks, looking up at the woman on the aerial silk.

“Oh…” The waitress says awkwardly, “Uh, of course. Let me just get someone to take down the silks.”

“Thank you,” He says. She nods and leaves.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I say, feeling slightly embarrassed. “It doesn’t bother me, I was just a little surprised that’s all.”

“It distracts you though,” He says, reaching out and taking my hand with his. “And I want all of your attention.”

I smile as he rubs his thumb affectionately over the backs of my fingers, and then take a sip of water from my glass.

“Are you feeling okay after the examination?” I ask him. “It was more intense than I thought it was going to be.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” He says, sitting up a little straighter and I frown.

“So you’re worried?” I infer, but he shakes his head.

“I said I don’t want to talk about it. Look, I’m not trying to shut you out or keep everything in, I just want one night that’s about you and me.” He says, and it takes me a little off guard. “I miss you, Ana. I feel like I’ve barely spent any time with you these last two weeks.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask him, my voice filled with concern at the slightly somber tone in his voice. “We haven’t been apart even one night since you got back from New York before your birthday. We’ve made love every night this week. In fact… I’m still a little sore.”

I give him a small smirk which makes him laugh a little, and then he picks up my hand and gently presses his lips to each of the knuckles on my fingers.

“I know,” He agrees. “And I do like you sore… but we’ve both been working late, and I’ve spend a lot of nights in my office with my father. We haven’t had dinner together in almost four days. I miss just sitting down and talking to you.”

“Okay,” I nod. “Then let’s talk.”

The waitress appears again, sets a plate full of oysters between us, and pours us each a glass of wine before setting the bottle on the table and leaving again. Christian reaches out for an oyster and tips it into his mouth, and as I watch the way his mouth moves when he swallows it, my mind immediately summons images of other ways I’ve seen his mouth move…

“You haven’t talked to me much about your life before you came to Seattle this summer,” Christian says. “And I feel like I’ve missed a lot. Tell me about school. I mean, something must have been keeping you busy since you seemed to never be home…”

I look up at him nervously for a second but there isn’t bitterness or resentment in his voice. Instead, his eyes are alight with humor and his lips are curled upwards into a teasing smirk, and as shocking as it is to see him acting so casual at the mention of our time apart, it’s relieving too.

“Well, I hate to tell you this, but I’m writer so my life isn’t very exciting. Most of my free time is spent staring at a blank page on my laptop,” I say sardonically.

“Do you mean to tell me that you were actually home every time I called you?” He asks, faking shock, and when I laugh, he shakes his head. “I can’t believe Elliot would lie to me. Kate I can understand, but Elliot?”

“He’s a shady guy.” I say with a laugh and Christian smiles.

“It’s a good thing he’ll be here for me to keep an eye on then,” He says and I frown a little at the reminder. The waitress returns and sets our plates in front of us, asking if we need anything else, but Christian tells her we’re fine.

“What’s the matter, Ana?” He asks.

“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head and smiling again. “I just hadn’t really thought about Elliot not coming back with us next semester. I mean, I knew he wasn’t, but I hadn’t really thought about him not being there, you know? I’m gonna miss him. A lot of my favorite memories from Harvard involve Elliot.”

“Like what?” Christian asks.

“Well…” I pause, trying to decide which one to share and when I think of the perfect example, I can’t hold back my smile.

“Okay, so he built this shed in the back, by the alley where we park, and it has one of those rolling garage doors that you have to pull open and closed by hand.”

“Yeah, I think I saw that,” Christian says, as he starts to eat. “Just off the kitchen?”

“Yeah,” I nod. “Well, there’s this stray cat that Kate kind of takes care of and feeds every now and then, so Elliot keeps the shed door open a few inches so that cat get in and out when it rains or is really cold. Well, last winter, we didn’t see the cat for a while so Kate went to look through the window to see if she could see it in the shed and sure enough, she was in there next to the lawn mower and she had a litter of newborn kittens. It was November and freezing out so Kate wanted to bring the kittens into house, but we couldn’t get the garage door open because it was frozen shut.”

“Did Elliot break it down?” Christian asks, rolling his eyes.

“No,” I laugh, “That would have been better. Kate decided she was going to try and get under the door, which, keep in mind, is only open enough for a cat to get through. So, she took off her coat and tried to shimmy under the door, but her bra strap got caught on the lip of the door. I told her to come back out but she was bound and determined so she asked me to help her undo her bra so she could keep going, and it worked until she scooted forward enough to where the door hit her ass.”

“Please tell me you didn’t try to crawl under a garage door, Anastasia,” Christian says disapprovingly as he tries to infer the direction of the story, but I laugh again and shake my head.

“Oh no, I’m not that stupid,” I tell him. “Well, she decided at that point that she wasn’t going to get through, so she tried to crawl back out so we could wait for Elliot to get home, but her boobs wouldn’t squish down when she came back the other way, so she couldn’t get back out. She was stuck, and since it seemed like it was mostly just her jeans that were getting caught on the door, I had to take them off of her so she could get inside.”

“So you stripped her down to her underwear, outside, in the middle of November?” Christian asks, but again, I shake my head.

“Nope, her underwear was getting caught on the door so I took those too,” I laugh. “So, Kate is naked from the waist down, cursing and panicking as she tries to pull herself into the shed while I’m laughing so hard I’m trying not to pee my pants. Then Elliot pulls into the alley and sees his girlfriend’s vagina on display for the entire world while she’s screaming bloody murder.”

Christian chuckles. “I’m surprised no one called the cops.”

“They did!” I laugh. “Apparently someone drove by and thought we were breaking in, so about 30 seconds after Elliot got there, three police cruisers pull into the alley behind him and they start screaming at us to get away from the shed. Elliot and I were trying to explain that we live there and that Kate is just an idiot, but they didn’t really believe us, so Elliot started panicking and pleading with the officer. He was told to go sit on the curb but he looked back and he was like, ‘But officer, my girlfriend’s vagina is going to freeze off’.”

I start laughing uncontrollably again and it must be contagious because Christian joins in too. The easy humor on his face makes him look so young and beautiful, and I realize, in that moment, how long it’s been since I’ve seen him this way. Maybe since… when? Montesano? His birthday? I can’t remember and that’s not a good thing. I remember what he said to me when we sat down, about how we haven’t really had time to just be together and enjoy each other’s company without the weight of the world bearing down on us. I think it’s inevitable that everywhere Christian and I go, drama will be sure to follow, so it’s important that we make time for this. I need to make the effort to slow down, take a break, and enjoy him and all of the good parts of our relationship.

I smile and pick up my fork to enjoy my dinner while we have one of the most real, intimate conversations we’ve had in I don’t even know how long. When we’re finished and he’s paid the tab, he reaches out for my hand to lead me back out into the alley. As we walk along the side of the street towards the Veyron, I lean my head against his shoulder, feeling perfectly content and wishing this evening would never end. It’s been perfect.

“Can I drive?” I ask him when we finally get to the car and he looks down and raises an eyebrow at me.

“No,” He says firmly, and I pull away from his shoulder to give him an exasperated look.

“Why not? You let everyone else drive your car.” I pout.

“True,” He agrees. “But the difference between you and say, Elliot, is that you’re a terrible driver.”

“I am not!” I say, outraged, but he just looks at me pointedly. “I am not a terrible driver. I have never been in an accident.”

“You also never owned a car until two months ago…” He says, but when I mash my lips together in indignation, he sighs and then very reluctantly hands over his keys. I take them out of his hand and then march very purposefully over to the driver’s side.

“Do not ding my car, Anastasia,” He warns me as I open the car door. “Or I will be fucking pissed.”

“Just get in the car, Christian,” I say, rolling my eyes, and then I slip into the roomy, cool leather seat. I can feel how tense Christian is sitting next to me, but I ignore him as I slide the key into the ignition. Unfortunately though, when I turn it… nothing happens. I turn a slightly embarrassed look on Christian, but he takes a deep, calming breath and then presses the button on the console between us, and the engine roars to life.

“Thank you,” I say, and then I shift the car into drive and carefully pull away from the curb.

It’s actually a little scary once I get out onto the street since a ferry has just docked and released a ton of cars into the mix of normal evening traffic. We seem to be moving only an inch at a time as we sit in the bumper to bumper gridlock, and it makes me extremely nervous. Everything around me is fraught with peril as each of the cars idling merely inches away from me at all times present me with countless opportunities to scratch Christian’s precious car.

When we stop again, I glance over at him, expecting to find him riddled with stress, but actually, he looks surprisingly relaxed. He’s leaning against his door, staring at me very intently.

“What?” I ask him.

“Isn’t that skirt a little short?” He asks, and I look down to see that the black pencil skirt I picked out to wear to work this morning is bunched up pretty far up my thighs. Enough so that the lace tops of my stockings are showing.

“It’s just because your seat is lower than my legs,” I tell him, but as I reach down to pull my skirt back into place, his hand clasps around my leg to stop me. I inhale sharply as I feel his fingers graze against my inner thigh, gently tracing the line where my stockings meet exposed skin. I feel the gentle tingle his touch leaves in my skin creeping up my leg towards the apex of my thighs and have to suppress another gasp.

“What are you doing?” I ask him, and a mischievous smile plays across his lips as he looks up at me.

“We’re not moving,” He says. “Just keep your eyes on the road, Anastasia.”

His hand begins to move up my thigh, skimming tantalizingly over my skin. I bite down on my lip and ease the car forward another few feet as I feel his fingers slip beneath my panties.

“Mmm,” Christian moans. “Does driving a sports car turn you on, baby?”

“No,” I breathe. “You turn me on.”

He lets out a sexy, breathy laugh and then begins to move his fingers, teasing me, playing with me, even briefly dipping a finger inside of me as I continue to inch the car up Virginia Street the few blocks we have left until we’re at Escala.

“Oh baby,” He whispers. “You’re so wet… It’s all over your legs.”

“Well then stop…” I whine, trying to squirm away from his fingers. I move my legs, attempting to clamp my thighs around his hand so he can’t move it anymore, but he just pushes into me harder, deeper, and I let out a strangled kind of cry.

“Do not close your legs on me, Anastasia,” He says darkly. “This is mine, remember? And I like you wet like this. I want to touch you. And, when we get home, I’m going to taste you, and then I’m going to fuck you on the first available surface in our apartment.” He moans slightly at the thought and starts to move his fingers again. “Perhaps I’ll start in the elevator, and then really take you on the table in the foyer. I could bend you over it and then rip open this little skirt of yours… Then your blouse, and then your panties. I want you spread out and on display for me so that I can see how wet you are for me before put my cock inside of you and make you come so hard that you scream for me.”

A shiver runs through me as his words feel like they have a direct line to my libido. I can feel heat pooling deep inside of me as his fingers move in and out of me. We cross over 3rd avenue, and I feel the quivering between my thighs begin. Oh fuck…

“One more block, Anastasia,” Christian says, his warm, sultry voice stoking the pleasure building inside of me. “Do you think you can hold off?”

“I-I…”

“Or maybe I should let you come,” He says. “That’s a visual I’d love to hang onto every time I got into this car. You, falling apart in the driver’s seat because of my fingers inside of you. Fuck, Anastasia, just saying those words makes me hard.”

“Stop,” I whimper, because I know that I’m not going to be able to hold off much longer. But his fingers don’t still.

“Are you sure?”

The car in front of me takes a left on 4th, leaving the intersection open for me to jet across towards the entrance of the parking garage under Escala, but I quickly realize that I’m not going to be able to get into the garage.

“Stop, Christian!” I say, trying to force my legs closed again. He gives me a quizzical look before his attention is caught by a sudden flash and he turns to look at the source of light coming from a few feet ahead of the car.

“Fuck,” He hisses, and his hand withdraws from inside of me, smoothly pulling my panties back into place and pulling my skirt down in what feels like one fluid motion. The street is filled with photographers crowding around the entrance to the garage and blocking my way. It’s hard to see through the blinding flashes that fill the darkness as the paparazzi swarm the Veyron, and I have to slam on the brakes so that I don’t hit anyone.

“What do I do?” I ask, and Christian quickly looks behind us at the cars angrily honking to get past, and then at the entrance of the parking garage which we have no hope of making it to.

“Circle the block,” He says. “Stop at the front of the building and I’ll have Taylor come down for the car. Ryan can get us in through the main entrance.”

I nod and then ease the car forward again while Christian presses the button on the dash for the Bluetooth so that he can call Taylor. It’s easier to get around the block than it was to get up Virginia St, but once we pull up along the curb in front of Escala, the mob of paparazzi surrounds us again.

I’m startled when my door opens, but then am relieved when I look up and see Taylor standing over me, holding his hand out for mine. I slip the keys into his hand as he helps me out of the car and blocks me from the reporters creeping in on us until Christian gets around the car to grab ahold of me. There is an uncomfortable sense of claustrophobia as the cameras close in around us and Ryan has to actually push his way forward to create a path towards the front door. The paparazzi are shouting questions at us, but there are so many and they’re all so loud and garbled with the clicking sounds of the cameras that I can’t distinguish what they’re asking. It’s terrifying having all of these strange men bearing down on us, in a near frenzy, as they try to get their pictures. I try to step up onto the curb after Christian, but something hard knocks into the back of my head and I screech with pain.

“What the fuck?” Christian roars, as his hand closes over my hair where I’ve been hit. He tries to pass me off to Ryan so he can turn around and confront whoever it was that just hit me, but before he can, we get to the front door and Ryan, along with a few of the Escala staff, hurriedly pull us inside and close the doors behind us.

“Are you okay?” Christian asks urgently, and I reach up to the sore spot on the back of my head, and nod.

“Yeah… What is all that about?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Christian says, and he turns expectant eyes on Ryan.

“You haven’t heard?” Ryan asks. Christian shakes his head, but is distracted from saying anything else by his phone vibrating in his suit jacket. It’s his father, so he steps aside to take the call while Ryan leads me quickly over to the elevator. As we wait for it to get back to the ground floor, I quickly pull out my phone to try and figure out what’s going on.

Google Alert: Christian Grey

The Seattle Times, July 20th 2010: Grey vs. Lincoln, Round Two? Court records leaked today by an anonymous source reveal that the pending August 20th trial date for Seattle business magnate Christian Grey and GEH executive Elena Lincoln, is not the first time the two have squared off in the courtroom. Though the details of the previous trial have been sealed, enough information was made available to show that Mr. Grey and Mrs. Lincoln were involved in a criminal case on May 14th 2008 in Middlesex County, Boston, Massachusetts…

There are more, dozens more, from what looks like every major news outlet in the country. I stare down at the screen on my phone in horror, feeling the blood drain from my face. I’m too shocked to register anything else but the words glaring up at me from the screen of my iPhone until I hear the ping that announces the elevator’s arrival. When I look up, I see Christian is standing next to me, staring down at me with an almost defeated looking expression.

“How did this happen?” I ask him and he shakes his head.

“I don’t know. Thankfully, the only things the media have been able to dig up are our names on the case and the trial date. My father told me he worked with the prosecutor’s office in Massachusetts to make sure those records were sealed so that’s all they should get, but just knowing we have a legal history doesn’t look good for me.”

I feel a wave of dread cross over me as the doors to the elevator slide open, and Christian gently pushes me inside.

“Wait here,” He says to Ryan as he steps into the elevator behind me. He glances over his shoulder at the lights still flashing through the windows and then turns to press the button for the penthouse. I bite down on my lip as I’m once again filled with nervous energy, but when the doors close and we’re alone again, I’m suddenly engulfed by Christian. He pushes me back into the wall of the elevator, and it’s like he’s everywhere at once. His mouth is on mine and his hands are running hungrily over my body, tangling in my hair… it’s disorienting.

“Wait,” I protest, but he doesn’t stop. His hand reaches up under my leg and pulls it up over his hip so that he can press himself into me and I can feel his erection, firm and ready against my thigh.

“Christian, what are you…” I try again, but he interrupts me.

“Just… one night, Ana,” He whispers. “I just want one night where I can pretend like the whole fucking world isn’t crumbling around us and I can just be with you. I can’t do anything about this until tomorrow morning, so just take this one night to be with me. Let me lose myself in you.”

I have a flashback to dinner, seeing him finally looking carefree and happy, and the revelation I had about making an effort to put aside whatever external things were going on in our lives so that we could focus on us, and our love for each other. This is where we were headed only a few minutes ago, maybe it is better that we continue with the evening that we’d intended to have rather than sit around all night riddled with stress and anxiety. Maybe right now, since there’s nothing else we can do, it’s better just to forget.

He kisses me again, tentatively this time as though he’s waiting for permission, and I succumb. My hands reach up into his hair and he lets out a low growl as his fingers begin work on my blouse. My breathing is heavy when his lips pull away from mine and begin to move down my neck into my now exposed cleavage. He gently nips the side of my breast, and I moan, bowing my back so that I press my breasts into him.

The doors open and he pulls me quickly out of the elevator and into the entrance hall. His purpose is very clear: the table he’d talked about in the car on our way home.

“Christian,” I say, my voice breathy as his lips make contact with my neck again. “Ryan and Taylor will be up here soon…”

He looks over his shoulder at the elevator doors closing behind us and then shakes his head with annoyance before scooping me up into his arms and carrying me off to our bedroom. He releases me once we’re inside so that he can close the door and I immediately begin tugging at my clothes.

“Stop,” He warns me. “I want to do that.”

I bite down on my lip, and the grey in his eyes glints as he leans down to claim my lips with his again. He pushes me backwards towards the bed as he peels my blouse over my shoulders and discards it without care onto the floor. My bra is next, and once it’s gone, he pushes me back onto the bed so that he can begin to undo his belt and fly, but his fingers stop as his eyes rake hungrily over me.

“God damn, your body is beautiful, Ana,” He says, and I sit up and move his hands out of the way so that I can work on his pants.

“I want to see yours,” I tell him. He pulls his jacket off, removes his tie and cufflinks, and begins to unfasten the buttons on his shirt as I reach into his pants to release his erection. His breath hisses between his teeth as I envelop him with my mouth. Once his shirt is gone, he twists his fingers into my hair, encouraging me, and his mouth drops open.

“That’s it, baby,” He says, flexing his hips and pushing himself deeper into my mouth. He gazes down at me intently, watching my every move. I glance up at him, reveling in every tiny movement of his lips and his eyebrows that tell me how much he’s enjoying the feeling of my lips wrapped around him. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, losing himself to the hedonistic pleasure, and it drives me on. Knowing what I’m doing to him, knowing how much he loves this, makes me feel wanted, sexy, and so, so powerful.

“Fuuuuck,” He breathes, as his fingers clench against the roots of my hair. I tighten my lips around him, swirling my tongue over the head of his erection every time I pull him to the front of my mouth. Before long, he tries to step back, but I stop him. My hand wraps around the base of his erection and begins working in synchronized opposition with my mouth.

“Ana, wait…” He pants. “Fuck, I’m going to come.”

I suck harder to express my satisfaction with the idea, but as I pull back on him again, he growls and then reaches down to grab onto me and yank me to my feet.

“I don’t want to come in your mouth, Anastasia,” He chides me, his eyes dark with salacious need. “I had planned for you to come in mine, but I think we’re past that now.”

Abruptly, he turns me so that my back is pressed to his chest, and while his lips and tongue move along the curve of my neck, he blindly yanks open the zipper on the back of my skirt and then tugs on it so that it falls to the ground.

“On the bed,” He commands me. “On your hands and knees.”

I do as he asks, and then let out a small yelp of shock when he pushes down on my upper back so that I fall flat with my breasts pressing into the mattress. He grabs onto my hips, pulling them into the air, and then his hand comes down hard on my ass.

“Oh fuck…” I groan into the sheets and I hear his low moan of approval.

“You look so sexy like this, Anastasia. I can’t wait to be inside of you.”

His fingers wrap around the band of my panties and he gently pulls them down over my behind and about halfway down my legs, but, surprisingly, he doesn’t take them all the way off. He stands between my calves, hanging halfway off the bed, and nudges my legs as far apart as they will go while still being confined by my panties around my thighs.

“You’re so wet,” He says approvingly. I hear the jingle of his belt hitting the floor as he lets his pants fall to the ground and then steps out of them. He removes his shoes and socks and then comes to stand me behind me. I gasp with anticipation as I feel his erection brush over my entrance.

“Ask me for it,” He says, and I whimper. “I want to hear you ask me to fuck you, Anastasia.”

“Please,” I reply, my voice entirely too high and shaky. “Take me, Christian.”

“What?” He asks, and his hand smacks me hard on the ass again. Clearly, my choice of words were not what he was looking for.

“Fuck me, Christian,” I plead. “Fuck me.”

“Good girl,” He says, and he thrusts forward, impaling me in one swift motion. I let out a long, throaty moan as I feel him pull back and then thrust forward again, filling me, stretching me, electrifying me with pleasure that only he knows how to give me. I bask in the sound of his grunts as he picks up the rhythm. It’s exquisite, surrendering myself to him, losing myself and all coherent thought in the steady metronomic pace of him diving in and out of me. He spanks me again, sending a jolt of pleasure down my quivering legs and I cry out.

“Say my name, Ana,” He commands me.

“Christian!”

“Again!”

“Christian! Oh fuck, Christian! Christian! Christian!” His name continues to bubble through my lips in time with each of his thrusts, almost as if I can’t hold it back.

“You’re mine, Anastasia,” He growls.

“Yes, yours!” I reply and then I feel his hand move away from my ass and hear him begin to suck on his finger. When I feel his hand again, his now wet finger begins circling the entrance of my ass, slowly at first and then adding more and more pressure. When his thumb sinks inside of me, I let out a harsh, gratified breath, and push back into him.

“I want to claim your ass tonight, Anastasia,” He says, “You’re going to come on my cock and then I’m going to fuck your ass.”

His words ignite the heat between my legs and I surrender to the feral need building inside of me. He pulls his thumb out of me, wets his index finger with my arousal, and then eases it inside of me. Another one joins the first soon after, preparing me for him, and I find myself alight with excitement at the anticipation.

I want this, I want him. Every part of him. Everywhere.

The thought of him invading me there, where he never has before, while his fingers and his erection move in synchronization with one another, makes everything inside of me tighten, and the quivering begins to build. He pushes himself as far into me as he can go, swirling around and then rocking me back and forth. I squeeze around him, pushing myself further towards the edge, dragging him along with me, and he lets out a low, primal growl and thrusts into me hard again. Another finger slides into me, stretching me further than he has before and I feel him slam against my cervix as he possesses me entirely. The feeling of being so full with him causes me to unravel, and I fall into the warm depths of my orgasm, losing myself in the pulsing pleasure. His pace slows, but doesn’t cease as he takes me with long, purposeful strokes, reveling in my orgasm while also prolonging it.

“That’s it baby. Oh, fuck,” He whispers. He twists his fingers around inside of me as I come down from my orgasm, not removing them until I’m completely spent and melting into the bed.

“I’m not finished with you yet,” He says as he pulls out of me, and I take a deep breath to ready myself for more.

He steps back and retrieves some of the items we purchased together online from their place under the bed. “I’ll be getting rid of most of this tomorrow,” He tells me. “So, we better make good use of it tonight.”

I bite down on my lip as my mind runs through the inventory of what’s down there and I worry what it that is he has planned. A small rush of trepidation runs through me as I feel him climb back onto the bed, enough that I jump a little when I feel him touch me.

“Relax, baby,” He says, his voice gentle and soothing. “This is going to be good.”

I take a deep breath and nod, trying fall back into my post orgasmic bliss, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world when I’m also listening to the sound of mystery objects being placed on the bedside table.

“Here,” He says. “Let me help you.”

He rolls me onto my back and kisses me. His lips are soft, gentle, and move against mine in a slow, entrancing way that pushes a lot of the anxiety away. He moans softly as he pulls his lips away and moves them over my jaw and down past my collar bones. His hands gently massage my breasts, but his mouth continues down. I feel his tongue drag over the line down the center of my stomach to my belly button, where he leaves a soft kiss before shifting his body so he can settle in between my legs while he removes my panties.

“Is this for me?” He asks as he drags a finger over my opening, collecting my arousal. I hum an affirmation and he reaches his finger up, placing it against my lips. I pucker them against his finger tip, kissing it softly, and then he pulls it back and takes it into his mouth.

“Delectable,” He murmurs and then he lowers his lips to my clitoris.

“Ohhh…” I moan as his mouth begins its slow, sensual assault. His tongue swirls around my clitoris, carefully tracing purposefully circles again and again until I feel the heat beginning to build. My back bows off the bed again, instinctively pushing me further into his mouth, but, instead of pushing into me deeper, he pulls away.

“Christian,” I protest. He leans down to kiss my clitoris once more.

“I know, baby,” He says, and then a shiver courses through me as I feel him push his lips together and blow over my center. I whimper and squirm under the sensation, trying to find his mouth once more, but it isn’t his mouth I feel when he makes contact with me again, it’s his fingers. They follow the same pattern he made with his tongue, circling around and around, while his other hand pushes my legs further apart. I relax back into my pillow, closing my eyes so that the only sensation I’m aware of is the movement of his fingers, but that quickly changes when I feel his tongue again. Moving down… there.

“Christian!” I gasp, trying to sit up and pull away from him, but his hands clamp down over my hips, holding me in place.

“Relax, Ana,” He says gently. “Try it. You might like it.”

I bite down on my lip as I stare into the deep, gray depths of his eyes burning with dark, carnal need, and resign. This is new to me, foreign, so I have no choice but to trust him and let him take the lead. I lie back down onto the pillow and open my legs for him again. His fingers start to move, and then, once again, he lowers his mouth to me and his tongue traces slow, sensual circles around my most forbidden erogenous zone.

A low moan escapes me as I realize that he was right. I do like it. It feels… Oh it feels. It’s as good as his fingers were earlier, better even, and as I succumb to the feeling, I feel the quiver return.

“Oh god, Christian!” I gasp, and he lets out a low, very pleased sound as he continues to work his tongue in time with his fingers. I start to build again, higher and higher to the very edge of release, and when his fingers close around my clitoris and pull, I detonate.

“That’s it, baby,” He encourages me, continuing to massage me as I sail through my orgasm, and when I come down, he runs his tongue over me one last time before sitting up and reaching over the bedside table again.

“Roll onto your side,” He instructs me. I take a breath to center myself and do as he asks, rolling so that I’m facing away from him. There is a series of strange noises behind me and then he’s next to me again. I take comfort in the warmth I feel from his chest pressing against my back as he spoons me, and feel my body relax. I can do this.

“Lift your leg,” He tells me, and when I do, he moves his leg in between mine, separating them so that my leg rests over his. His hand moves down to my behind again, and I feel something wet. He’s lubricating me with his fingers.

“You ready?” He asks and I nod. I listen as he squeezes more lubricant into his hand and then coats his erection with it before moving down to the entrance of my ass.

“We’re going to go real slow, baby,” He says. “If it’s too much, tell me, and I’ll stop.”

“Okay,” I agree. He leans over and kisses me gently on the shoulder and I begin to feel pressure from behind. I whimper as the head of his erection slides into me.

“Is that okay?” He asks, pausing, and I take a moment to adjust before I nod and he begins to inch forward again. I find that if I curl my legs up towards my chest a little, it’s easier to accommodate him and he doesn’t have to wait as long for me to get used to him each time he stops.

“Oh fuck, Ana,” He whispers, his lips pressed to my ear as he holds me close against him. “You’re so tight.”

At last, he pushes fully inside of me, exhaling a shaky, pleasure filled gasp, and then stopping again.

“So, so tight,” He says again. “Tell me when I can move.” I move around him myself as I attempt to adjust to his size, grinding back into him until the sensation of him inside of me isn’t just comfortable, it actually feels… good.

“Okay,” I tell him and slowly, he eases back. I can feel every inch of him inside of me, stretching me in a taboo kind of way that makes me feel libidinous and wanton. I moan loudly when he pushes forward again and he groans.

“Do you like that, baby?” He asks.

“Yes,” I whisper back.

“It’s so good,” He hisses through his clenched teeth. My eyes scrunch together as I lose myself in the sensation, in his rhythm, in the feeling and connection of being so close to him, even this way. I can hear his ragged breathing, ladened with his ecstasy as he moves in and out of me. Knowing the pleasure he’s receiving from my body heightens my arousal until I’m panting with need and pushing back against him to garner every ounce of indulgent bliss from him that I can.

He shifts behind me as, I think, he reaches for something on the nightstand again, and when he turns back to me, I hear a clicking sound and then the low hum of something vibrating. He reaches down in between my legs and I feel something textured and rubbery on the tip of his finger gently buzz against my clitoris. A moan escapes from deep inside of me and I feel my body begin to tremble as the vibrations rock through each one of my pleasure receptors, and lush, carnal heat begins building inside of me, burning hotter and brighter with each passing second. The quickening begins and Christian lets out a rough, harsh groan.

“Fuck, I’m gonna come,” He pants, and he picks up his rhythm. My fingers grip into the sheets as I hold back my cries of ecstasy. The outside world begins to melt away, leaving only me, and him, and the relentless, mind boggling feeling of him pushing, pushing, pushing… it’s exquisite. I feel a rush of elation experiencing this with him, surrendering this last part of my body to him as he claims me for his own. There is joy in the sentiment, as well as wild, libidinous satisfaction. He is the only one who can take me to this dark, sensual place while also showing me a world filled with warm, blinding light made of pure love and happiness. He’s the only person I would want with me, guiding me, as I venture forward into this new frontier.

“I love you, Christian,” I cry out, the words falling unbidden from my lips, and I let go, finding sweet, glorious release as I come around him. He moans a garbled version of my name and then stills, pouring himself inside of me as he holds me flush against him and buries his face into the curve of my neck.

We lie there, panting together as we come down from the extraordinary high. His arms twist around me, holding me tightly, possessively, as his lips brush against the skin on my shoulder.

“You are a siren, Anastasia,” He whispers. “I’m completely bewitched by you. I’m never going to get enough of you. I never want to let you go.”

“Don’t,” I whisper, and then turn my head so that my lips can find his. I’m exhausted, sated, and completely wrung out. My head feels heavy and my mind begins to swim with the promise of sleep. When he pulls away from me, looking down at me with complete and utter awe and devotion, he smiles.

“You’re wrecked, aren’t you?” He asks.

“A little,” I reply.

“Then sleep, baby.”

I moan gratefully and turn around so that he’s spooning me again as I begin to drift. I’m only vaguely aware of his lips pressing into my hair and his fingers gently caressing the skin on my arm, and as the blackness of sleep begins to overtake my consciousness, I hear him whisper something, but the words are lost in the haze of approaching dreams.

Next Chapter

“Get your hands off of her, you evil, vile bitch!” I scream as I cross the street into the alley, and both Elena and Mia turn to look in my direction. They both stare at me, frozen, but Elena’s hand doesn’t move away from Mia’s arm. I lunge at her, intent on slowly tearing her limb from limb, but I’m halted very suddenly in mid air by Taylor’s arm wrapping around my middle and pulling me back so that he can hold me firmly against him, keeping me away from her. Elena’s eyes widen with shock as she realizes it’s me. Her mouth falls open and several incoherent sounds bubble out of her. While Taylor subdues my anemic attempts against his hold, my eyes shift to Mia. Her cheeks are red and wet, her eyes are puffy from the tears still leaking down her face.

“Let me go!” I protest, but Taylor’s grip doesn’t slacken.

“Miss Steele, calm down. Please,” He says, and the subtle note of pleading beneath his tone breaks through the blinding fury, which has colored my vision red, just enough that I’m able to regain control of myself and remember our situation.

“Anastasia,” Elena says, clearly shocked and definitely not pleased to see me standing outside of her bar. “What are you doing here?”

I want to scream at her. I want to tell her what I know and promise her complete and utter destruction. I want to vividly and graphically describe to her all the things that I know Christian will do to her when he finds out what she’s doing. But thankfully, a small, rational part of my brain holds me back. I don’t know what our next move is from here, but whatever it is, I know it’s better if Elena doesn’t know we’re onto her for as long as possible. I don’t want to ruin everything just for an unnecessary throw-down with the bitch troll, no matter how satisfying it may be. Besides, right now, the priority needs to be to get Mia out of here as quickly as possible, and to get Elena’s hands off of her.

“We’re looking for, Mia,” I reply, coldly. “Now. Let. Her. Go.” Each of my words is a hard staccato as I glare into her cold, blue eyes.

Her jaw tightens at the implied threat in my voice, but she does as I ask. Her hand falls to her side and, once she’s free, Mia immediately runs to me. Taylor’s arms unwind from around my middle so that I can hold onto Mia and pull her quickly away from Elena. There is an unexpected movement in the darkness next to me, and when I turn towards it, I see Luke standing there, ready to grab onto both of us and bolt. As Mia melts into my arms, clinging onto me as though her life depended on it, both Luke and Taylor step forward to place themselves between us and Elena, and her gaze ices over as she stares at me between their broad shoulders.

“Anastasia, I can explain,” She says quickly. “I was just driving by and I saw…”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I snap, interrupting her. “Fuck off, Elena.”

I tighten my grip on Mia, pulling her up so that she’s supporting her own weight and we turn back towards Taylor’s car parked on the other side of the street. Elena calls out to me again, a note of panic in her voice as we walk away from her, but I ignore it. She’s going to be onto us now. She probably assumes Mia will tell us everything we already know, so I need to get back to Christian as quickly as possible, and I need to get the shaking girl in my arms back to the safety of her home.

“M-my car,” Mia protests.

“Don’t worry, we’ll come back for it, Miss Grey,” Taylor says. “You shouldn’t drive right now.”

“You’re staying with me,” I tell her as I open the back door of Taylor’s car. Once she’s inside, I climb in after her and she buries her face into me once more. I hug her tightly, rubbing my hand over her back soothingly as Taylor gets into the driver’s seat, and once he’s closed his door behind him, he makes eye contact with me in the rearview mirror.

“Should I call Mr. Grey and have him meet us at Escala, Miss Steele?” He asks.

“No,” I shake my head. “Let’s take her home. Christian is there and she needs to be surrounded by family right now.”

He nods and pulls away from the curb. I see Luke’s headlights cutting through the empty darkness down the street, and then turn to follow us, which makes me feel better. I don’t expect Elena to come after us, but until I’m back in Christian’s sight, I want as much security around as possible.

“Ana, it wasn’t.. It wasn’t…” Mia begins stuttering through her tears. “I’m not doing drugs.”

“I know,” I assure her. “We know what that bar really is.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” I nod. “Mia, what were you thinking? How did this happen?”

She looks at me, eyes glistening, until her face crinkles and she devolves into tears once more. I try to get her to answer me as we merge onto the I-90 East towards Bellevue, but whatever has happened tonight has her really rattled. She can’t get more than a few words out at a time so I decide the best thing I can do is to just hold her and try to comfort her and calm her down enough so that when we do get home, she can explain what happened to Christian and her parents.

“You ready?” I ask her gently once we stop outside of the Grey’s house, but she shakes her head.

“They’re going to kill me, Ana,” She says. “What if they kick me out? What if they turn me away like they did to Christian? I’m not like him. I don’t have a big company to get me through. I don’t have anywhere to go…”

“Mia, of course you do,” I assure her. “You have me and Christian, and you have Elliot. We would never leave you on your own, but your parents aren’t going to turn you away. I promise you. We all love you, and we’re all here for you. No matter what.”

She takes a deep breath and then nods, so I wrap my hand around hers and we climb out of the back seat of the car. She’s trembling slightly as we make our way up the walk, but it’s nothing compared the violent shudder that rakes over her when we get inside and hear the hurricane that is Christian Grey roar from the other room.

“Mia!” He yells, as he storms into the entrance hall. “Where the fuck have you b-” His voice cut off when he gets a look at Mia, and when she sees him, she instantly starts crying again. Christian closes the distance between us in only three or four long strides, and then pulls Mia into him, holding her tightly into his chest as she once again loses her ability to remain upright and crumples in his arms. He sinks down to the floor, cradling his nearly hysteric little sister, and then looks up to me with a mixture of confusion and pain. I stare back at him, unsure of what to say. It’s in this moment that I realize, as damning the evidence we have against Elena is, once he knows, it’s going to gut him.

Suddenly, I don’t want to be the one who has to tell him. I want to protect him, and reassure him, but there’s nothing I can say that can make this okay. I take a deep breath and brace myself for the pain that’s about to come.

“Mia, what’s the matter? What happened?” He asks, and she lets out two, loud sobs.

“Wh-where’s Mom an-n-d Dad?” She cries.

“They’re out driving through the streets looking for you,” Christian says. “Elliot and Kate have been stopping by each of your friends’ houses… Talk to me. What’s going on?”

He looks up at me again, expecting me to answer, because he probably knows that his sister can’t right now, but before I start, I turn to Taylor.

“Call the Greys and have them come back here,” I ask him, and he nods and then disappears back out the front door.

“What’s going on, Ana?” Christian asks again. I take a deep breath and then sit down on the floor next to him.

“There’s something you need to know…” I begin hesitantly, and his face morphs from confusion to trepidation.

“What?” He asks, as though he actually doesn’t really want to know the answer.

“Remember when I told you that Luke was looking into Elena?”

“Yes…”

“Well, tonight, he found something. Taylor and I met him down in Beacon Hill and we found out that Elena has been running an underground BDSM club where men come and pay her to have sex with submissives that work for her.”

“It’s more than just that…” Mia interrupts me and as I turn to look at her, her hand flies up to her mouth and her eyes widen with panic.

“What do you mean?” Christian asks, but she shakes her head.

“Nothing. I can’t say anymore,” Mia says, and Christian turns to look at me, his brow furrowed, but I shrug and shake my head to tell him that I don’t know what she’s talking about either.

“Mia, I’m your brother and I love you. You can tell me anything,” Christian assures her. “I won’t be angry with you, I promise.”

“No, I can’t tell you,” She says. “I signed an NDA.”

“What do you mean you signed an NDA? Who gave you an NDA?” He asks.

“Elena Lincoln…” She answers weakly and all of the color drains out of his face.

“What did she do to you?” He asks, all the strength from his voice gone, but Mia just continues to cry into his t-shirt.

“I can’t tell you,” She says. Christian grabs onto her arms and pulls her back so he can look into her eyes.

“You can tell me, Mia. You’re sixteen years old, a minor, which means you can’t enter into a legal contract with anyone. Even if our parents signed, you couldn’t be held to an NDA. She can’t do anything to you if you tell me, so tell me. You have to tell me.”

“What?” Mia asks, clearly confused now. “But… but she told me that if I said anything, I could go to jail and she would sue my parents.”

“Of course she told you that,” Christian says angrily. “But she lied. Trust me, Mia. I deal with non-disclosure agreements every day. I know the rules, and I know the limitations. A sixteen year old cannot sign a legal contract. So, tell me what she did.”

Mia’s face scrunches together, not with tortured sorrow this time, but with anger. Her eyes dart back and forth as she processes what Christian has just said. I watch her mouth snap closed, her lips pressing together in a tight line, and when she does look up at Christian again, there is new determination behind her eyes.

“Ana’s right,” She says firmly. “Well, mostly right. She owns a club where dominants come and pay to have sex with submissives, but there’s more to it than that. There are also a few dominants who work there, two men and one woman, who perform services for people who want to be submissive. They teach people too, people who want to learn about the lifestyle.”

“I don’t understand. How do you know this? Why would she tell you any of this?” Christian asks, but Mia shakes her head.

“She didn’t. I’ve seen it. I work there,” She admits and immediately, Christian’s jaw tenses.

“What do you mean, you work there?” He asks, and I can’t tell if it’s anger or fear that is making his voice shake.

“At the beginning of the summer, Mom made me get a job. I was mad about it at first, but after I thought about it, I realized that if I worked, I might be able to save enough money to go to Juilliard without Dad paying my way. So, I got a job waiting tables at a restaurant, and it was fine, but it didn’t take me long to work out the math and realize that there was no way for me to get even close to the amount of money I would need. Even just for my first year’s tuition. I was only making $7 an hour and tips… Then, about a week after I started working there, Elena came in.”

“Into the restaurant?” I clarify, and Mia nods.

“She asked me what I was doing there and I told her. I told her that my Dad wouldn’t pay for any other school but Harvard and she was… understanding. She was nice to me. She agreed with me that I’d never make enough money waiting tables and then told me to come over to her house after I got off that night and she would see what she could do to help me. She gave money to Christian, I thought she would just give me money too… but she didn’t.”

“What did she do?” Christian asks, and his voice is so weak, it sounds like an echo.

“Well, first, she told me that she missed me. She said she missed all of us and she wished that she could find a way to have a relationship with our parents again so she could see Elliot and I, as well as you. She talked to me a lot about how unfair our parents were and how it was clear that they didn’t support their children. She told me all the ways they tried to hold you back, and that now they were doing the same to me. She said she wanted to see me achieve my dreams, and that she could help me accomplish that, the way she’d helped you accomplish yours… And then she asked if I could keep a secret. I told her that I could and then she told me she ran a business where I could make a lot of money in a really short amount of time. I knew about the salons, I thought that she meant the salons… but when she gave me the address for where she wanted me to meet her the next day, it wasn’t a salon. It was a bar.”

Christian looks at me, and I nod, but we both quickly turn our attention back to Mia as she continues.

“She took me into an office and, after I signed the NDA, she explained to me what BDSM was and how it had helped her and how it had helped you. Then she told me about the club in basement and how many girls it had helped who worked there. She said it could help me too. Not just to help me pay for Juilliard, but it could make me a better dancer by showing me how to control my body. She said it would strengthen me, help my endurance, my flexibility, and my tolerance for pain.”

“Mia…” Christian says, his voice fearful as he braces himself for what Mia is about to tell him, but she shakes her head.

“I told her no,” She says. “I told her that I… I’m still a virgin and that’s not how I wanted to… well, you know. I didn’t want to do it.”

I see Christian visibly relax as it seems Mia has eased his worst fear, but I saw her in the alley tonight, I heard what Elena said to her. I know there’s more…

“She told me she’d find me something else to do, that I wouldn’t have to have sex with anyone, but that if I helped out, she’d pay me $500 a week. She said she just wanted to help me. I agreed, and she told me to come back the next day. I’ve been working there ever since.”

Okay… now I’m the one confused. “What do you mean by working?” I ask.

“I was hostess mostly. When the men came in, I would take their coats and drink order and then I’d take them in to see Elena so that she could explain the rules of the club and introduce them to the girls. I’d go to the store to get things for the girls since they couldn’t leave during business hours. I’d clean the rooms when they were… uh, finished. It wasn’t a great job, but Elena paid me every week and I was saving a lot of money for school. Then, a few weeks after I started, a guy came in and saw me, and he started asking about me. He liked me, and he wanted me. At first, Elena was on my side. She told him I wasn’t an option, but about two weeks ago, she started pressuring me to do it. She told me that I could make more money. I’d start at $2000 a week, instead of $500, but I told her I wasn’t interested. She said the guy was a very important customer, that it was important for us to make him happy, but I told her I wouldn’t do it. Then Elena started getting mad at me. She would yell at me and call me ungrateful. Every time I would come into work, she would call me into her office to ask if I’d come to my senses yet, but I always said no.”

Her voice starts to break again as tears well in her eyes, but she quickly brushes them aside and continues.

“When I came in tonight, I was late because I had to sneak out. She was already mad at me for missing work last weekend when you came and took me to the yacht and, obviously, because I wasn’t doing what she wanted me to do. I half expected her to fire me, but instead, when I got in, she just told me to go clean the back room. I went back there, and… he was there waiting for me. He had rope in his hands and the second I got through the door, he grabbed me. There’s this bed in the room. It’s flat and it has a leather mattress, like a long couch cushion, and there’s a frame built around it with these big, gold rings for the rope. That’s where he was taking me, but I fought him. He kept telling me to submit, over and over again. He just kept saying, “Submit to me, Amelia”, but I wouldn’t. When we got to the bed, I put my feet against the frame and shoved back into him, twisted in his arms so I could break free from his hold. It took me a minute, but when I was able to turn around in his arms so that I was facing him, I bit him, and he let me go. I ran, and he tried to grab me again, but I got out. Elena saw me and she came after me, but I got outside and that’s when Ana found me.”

She reaches down for the hem along the loose collar of her tank top, which I only now realize looks stretched out as though someone has been tugging on it violently. Her hands move over the fabric in the same way a girl in a horror movie would once she looks down and realizes she’s drenched in blood. It’s like she’s afraid to touch herself.

“I can still smell his cologne on me,” She whimpers.

Christian’s entire body is shaking with anger as Mia starts to cry again. He wraps his arms around her, squeezing her tightly and telling her over and over again that she’s safe now, and that he won’t let anyone hurt her.

“I’m sorry, Mia,” He whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

She pulls away, hurriedly dashing the tears out of her eyes and tries to regain her composure. Once her sobbing has stopped, Christian gently brushes his hand across her face to release the strands of hair caught in the wetness on her cheeks, and the way he looks at her is so… conflicted.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” He asks, and she looks at him confused. “If you wanted money for school this badly, why did you go to Elena instead of me?”

“I tried,” She sniffs. “I told you I wanted to go but that Dad wanted me to go to Harvard so he wouldn’t pay for it, and you said you thought Harvard would be good for me.”

“I did think Harvard would be good for you, I still do. But if your dream is Juilliard, I’ll pay for you to go to Juilliard, Mia. I wouldn’t deny you anything. I want for you whatever it is that will make you happy.”

“You do?” She asks, “You’ll… you’ll give me the money?”

“Of course, I will,” He whispers and she throws her arms around his neck and starts crying again, thanking him over and over again. He hugs her tightly, trying to calm her, and then looks up at me expectantly.

“What were you doing down there? Why didn’t you come straight here once Sawyer called you?”

“We needed evidence. Luke said everything he had as proof could disappear, so we went down there so Taylor could get inside and find something concrete.” I tell him. “I was in the car down the street with Luke, while he hacked into Elena’s security system so that we could keep Taylor from being seen.”

“And what did Taylor find?” Christian asks.

“A lot,” I tell him. “This is why her salons are so profitable, Christian. She’s been laundering the profits of this illegal underground prostitution ring through Esclava. Taylor found hundreds of transactions between the BDSM club and the salons on her computer. He downloaded everything, he got video of the interior of the club… We have proof. We can send her to prison.”

He looks down at Mia, who, right now, looks small and fragile in his arms. Her eyes are swollen from all the crying and her cheeks are bright red and stained by the tracks from her tears. She looks so broken and the look of pain and anger behind Christian’s eyes as he stares down at his baby sister, the knowledge of what almost happened to her working through his mind, is heartbreaking.

I jump slightly at the sound of the door opening behind me and then Grace’s anguish filled cry fills the hall around us as her shoes clack against the stone floor.

“Mia!” She shrieks, holding her arms out for her daughter. “Oh thank god, you’re alright.”

Christian lifts her so that his mother can pull her into her lap and, as he peels himself off the floor, I can see his body trembling with rage.

“Where was she? Carrick asks, coming up behind me and putting his hand on my shoulder.

“She was with Elena,” Christian replies in a cold, flat voice that is almost a little scary. I can feel Carrick’s body seize next to me, and Grace’s mouth pops open with shock, her arms instinctively tightening around Mia, as she turns to look at us.

“What?” She asks, her voice raising an octave. “What do you mean she was with Elena?”

“I mean, that she’s been…” Christian begins, but he stops when the door opens again and Elliot bursts through, looking slightly panicked as his eyes scan the room. That fear melts away though, once his eyes fall on Grace and Mia on the floor, and he rushes forward to hug his sister.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” He asks, though the anger in his voice is overpowered by the profound sense of relief. “You scared us half to death.”

Mia sniffs, but she hardly acknowledges Elliot as he yanks her off the ground and into his arms. Instead, her almost fearful gaze remains fixed on her father, who is still staring expectantly at Christian.

“What?” Elliot asks, the relief giving way to dread. “What’s happened? What did you take?”

“It’s not drugs,” Christian says at last. “Mia hasn’t gotten mixed up in drugs, she’s gotten mixed up with Elena. She’s spent the summer working in an underground BDSM club that Elena is operating illegally and laundering the profits through Esclava to cover it up. Elena’s been trying to get her into submissive work.”

The room is silent when he finishes speaking and Christian’s hand balls into a fist again as he tries to hold back the anger visibly rippling through him. Grace and Carrick turn back to Mia, who then takes a deep breath and recounts the story again.

“Two,” Carrick breathes when she’s finished, his voice so weak it sounds almost ghostly. He looks as though he’s going to be sick. “Two of my children, and I didn’t…”

“I’m going to kill her,” Christian says. “This is beyond… I’m going to fucking kill her.”

“I’ll go with you,” Elliot says, with more anger than I’ve ever heard from him before, but as he and Christian start to make their way across the entrance hall, Kate steps in their way, holding her hands out in front of her and bracing herself like she expects them to try and barrel through her.

“Stop,” She says, firmly. “What are you going to do? Go down there and beat her up? All you’re going to accomplish is getting yourselves thrown in jail for assault while those poor girls who didn’t have Taylor and Ana show up to rescue them tonight remain stuck where they are.”

“It’ll be hard to keep her business going when she’s dead,” Elliot spits viciously. “She tried to help a man force my sixteen year old sister to have bondage sex with him tonight, Kate. What the fuck else am I supposed to do?”

“Well, for starters, has anyone called the police?” She asks, and everyone turns their gaze to me.

“No,” I shake my head. “Once I saw Mia… I didn’t think about it. All I could think about was getting her away as quickly as possible, and getting the evidence we had back to Christian.”

“What evidence did you get?” Carrick asks.

“Uh… Taylor said he downloaded her entire book of business off her computer, so he got proof of the money laundering and the connection to Escala. He was wearing a body cam when he went in so he has video of everything he saw inside, but I don’t know exactly what that was.”

“So we call the police, right?” Kate asks, but Carrick holds up a hand to silence her, his eyes darting back and forth as though he’s trying to work though something complicated in his mind.

“Carrick?” Grace pushes him.

“Give me a second,” He says, quickly. “I need to think.”

“About what?” Elliot asks, a disgusted note in his tone. “What could there possibly be to think about? We have proof of what she’s doing, Christian still owns Esclava so he has access to whatever shady dealings she’s been doing through the salons, let’s take this bitch down.”

“Elliot, that’s the problem. Christian owns Esclava,” Carrick says, and when everyone looks at him with confusion, he takes a breath and continues. “Look, nobody here wants justice for what that monster has done to my children more than I do, but in this case, justice for Mia will mean consequences for Christian. Serious, legal consequences.”

“What do you mean?” Grace asks.

“She’s laundering money from an illegal prostitution ring into a business that Christian owns, and the profits from that business are funneled directly into GEH. He’s the responsible fiduciary for Esclava, and it’s his name on everything. Not Elena’s. I’ve seen the financial records from the salons, I’ve been looking at nothing else for days trying to prepare for this sale… Just a few weeks ago, Christian used cash reserves from the salons to do an overhaul of his security system, which means that illegal funds have now touched and benefited every department in his company.”

“So what does that mean?” I ask.

“It could mean a lot of things. But GEH is a fast growing company that made a lot of money very quickly. It’s going to call his entire business model into question and he’s going to face inquires from the state as well the Federal Trade Commission, the IRS… maybe even the FBI.”

“Okay,” Christian says, staring into the open space in front of him and nodding slightly as he works through what his father has said. “So, what would I be looking at as a result of those investigations?”

“It depends on whether or not they want to make an example out of you. For a company of your size and revenue margin, I’d say best case scenario, if their investigations don’t find cause to shut you down entirely, you’re only on the hook for a few million dollars in fines. Depending of course how much money has actually gone through Esclava.”

“That’s best case scenario?” Kate gasps, and Carrick nods.

“And what’s the worst case scenario?” Christian asks.

“The judge finds reason to believe that Christian knew about the club and did so willingly and consciously aid the crime and attempt to cover it up. You’ll be facing money laundering, tax evasion, conspiracy, and sex trafficking. If that is the case, you’ll lose your company, have all of your personal assets seized, and you’ll go to prison for anywhere from ten to… twenty five years.”

“But he’s innocent,” I argue, “He had no idea…”

“Can you prove that?” Carrick asks, and I feel my back stiffen as I hear the confrontation in his tone.

“What do you mean? You don’t actually think he had anything to do with this do you?” I spit back at him.

“No, I don’t. But can you prove beyond a doubt, or give me some kind of concrete evidence that I could present to a judge that Christian knew absolutely nothing about an illegal operation pumping possibly tens of thousands of dollars into his company?”

“I-I..” I stutter, but I don’t know what to say to that. How do you prove someone didn’t know something? A lie detector? I don’t actually think those are admissible in court because they’re so easy to beat.

The room is silent as we all contemplate the implication of what Carrick has told us, trying to find some magical solution… but it’s just not that simple.

“I don’t care what the consequences are,” Christian says, breaking the silence at last. “She’s not getting away with this. Not this time, not again.”

“Are you sure about that?” Carrick asks, raising an eyebrow at his son.

“What do you mean, am I sure? Of course I’m sure.”

“Christian, you’re angry right now. You’re focused on Elena and getting back at her, and I understand that. But what happens when you get a little separation from what has happened and you really get a chance to consider what is at stake? What about Ros?”

“Ros?” Christian asks, like he doesn’t understand the word. “Ros isn’t the fiduciary, I am. I’m sole proprietor and I make this decision, not her.”

“No, she doesn’t have a say, but she’s one of your closest friends, and one of the few people who has remained by your side and never left. She may not be sole proprietor, but GEH is her baby, just like it’s yours, and her entire livelihood. Just like it’s Elliot’s livelihood, and now Ana’s. Are you willing to let them lose it? If this goes badly, and you lose everything, you will be leaving Ana with nothing. There won’t be a skyrise apartment for her to live in while you’re in prison, no money to support her, and she’ll forever be connected to you and this case, which means she could have trouble finding a job. Are you prepared to deal with that?”

Christian’s mouth pops open as though he’s going to protest, but no words come out. He looks down at me, brow furrowed, and a look of tortured uncertainty is set firmly in his eyes. I reach out for his hand, and grip it tightly before turning back to Carrick.

“But what you’re talking about isn’t likely, right?” I ask. “It’s a worst case scenario. You’re the best lawyer money can buy. Surely you can handle this, Carrick.”

“Maybe,” He says. “Maybe not. Honestly, if I was presented this case, and it wasn’t one of my children, I would want to be arguing for the other side. If I was on the other side… I would consider it a lock. If it wasn’t Christian… I don’t even know if I would take it.”

“This isn’t about me,” Christian says, jaw tight. “This is about Mia. This is about doing right by Mia.”

“Do you think justice for Mia is watching her brother carted off to prison for a crime he didn’t commit?” Carrick asks. “To have her family torn apart once again by the conniving, evil schemes of Elena Lincoln?”

“No!” Mia cries. “No, I won’t let that happen. I’ll lie. I’ll say whatever I have to, I don’t care. I’m not going to let Christian go to jail for my mistake. He had nothing to do with this.”

“Nobody wants that,” Elliot says.

“Wait. So, what are we saying here?” I ask. “We can’t do anything? Elena just goes free?”

Carrick puts his hands out in front of him conciliatory. “I’m just saying that whatever decision we make, we should make as a family. If we go forward with this, I need to know that this is what you really want, Christian, and that you’re prepared to face the sentence that may be handed down to you.”

Everyone turns to Christian, waiting for his answer, but he’s staring off into space again, lost in thought.

“I need a minute,” He says, and Carrick nods and then reaches down to help Grace and Mia off the floor so he can lead her and the rest of his family into the back room. I follow after them, but stop when Christian calls my name. He takes my hand and walks with me into the formal living room off the right of the hall where I watched him and Mia playing music over the first Thanksgiving we spent together. That feels like a lifetime ago…

He pulls me down onto the couch, not speaking for several, long moments as he gathers his thoughts.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask him, and he takes a deep breath.

“You,” He says.

“Christian, I shouldn’t be a concern right now. I’ll be fine, this is about you…”

“That’s not what I mean… ” He says, and he turns to me, looking as though someone is about to take him to be executed. “Ana… I wasn’t just going to call you.”

I raise an eyebrow at him, not understanding. “What do you mean?”

“When I was calling you everyday, back in Cambridge, that wasn’t my plan. I was going to do more. I was going to show up at your door and beg your forgiveness. I was going to whisk you away to anywhere in the world you wanted to go and show you again how much I love you and how much I need you. I was going to fight for you. I just wanted to cross the billion dollar mark first. When I came for you, I wanted to be able to prove my worth. I wanted to show you that I could give you anything and everything you could ever desire. That I could give you the world… That’s what a billion dollars meant to me, but instead, this is what it’s gotten me. My sister, Ana… My sixteen year old sister.”

He puts his face in his hands and I wrap my arm over him, pulling him into me. “Christian, this isn’t your fault-“

“I let Elena go,” He disagrees. “She’s walking the streets, because I allowed her to. This business that she’s running is a direct result of my decision. It’s entirely my fault.”

“No, you had no way of knowing that this would happen. You even audited those salons, remember? Even your financial experts didn’t find anything. You did what you did two years ago, but that doesn’t absolve her of the responsibility for what she’s done. This is her fault, Christian.”

“No,” He shakes his head. “Don’t make excuses for me, Ana. This is my fault. And, the real poetic justice is that after everything I’ve been through, after everything I’ve put you through and my family through… I could lose everything I’ve worked for. And I don’t even care. I might even deserve it. I don’t care what happens to me, but if I do lose everything and I go to prison, I leave you with nothing. If that happens, what was the point in any of this?”

“Christian…” I say, feeling my throat thicken as tears well up inside of me at the sight of him so riddled with pain and guilt.

“Ana, I can’t let her get away with this,” He interrupts me. “I can’t let her walk away again. Not after what she’s done to me, to us, to my family, to those innocent girls she has working for her. I can’t let her win again, just to protect myself. I won’t be able to live with myself.”

I swallow the rapidly growing lump in my throat and try to blink back the tears that are welling in my eyes. “Okay,” I say quietly, nodding as if it will somehow strengthen my resolve. “Then we fight it.”

“And if it doesn’t go our way?” He asks.

“It will,” I assure him. “It has to. There is a balance in the world, Christian. Some kind of divine force that allows good to conquer evil and for truth to overcome lies. I believe that, and whether it’s God, or Karma, or a giant flying spaghetti monster, it allows what is right to win over what is wrong, and Elena is wrong. You’re innocent, Christian, and no matter what happens, we’ll find a way to prove that.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Anastasia. I can’t live through that again.”

“You won’t, Christian. I’m not going anywhere. I love you, and that’s never going to change. You are the love of my life, Christian Grey, and if this is what you want, then I’ll be by your side the whole way. You, me, your family… we’re going to figure this out. We’ll protect you, and we’ll help you fight. We’ll do whatever it takes.”

He looks up to me, his gray eyes searching mine, until he takes a deep breath and then nods. He leans over and kisses me gently, his lips lingering for only a second until he pulls away and rests his forehead against mine. His fingers reach down to tangle together with mine and we get up off the couch and walk side by side to join his family in the other room.

They’re all sitting on the sectional in the family room. There are shouts echoing back and forth across the room as they all argue amongst themselves, except for Grace, who sits silently on the sofa with Mia still wrapped in her arms as she gently rocks her back and forth. The raucous noise dies almost instantly though when Kate sees Christian and I enter the room and she directs everyone’s attention to us.

“We’re going to turn her in,” Christian says, and to my surprise, Elliot stands up and shakes his head.

“No,” He says. “No, this is not how we make it right. Dad’s right. Christian going to jail for a crime he didn’t commit is not justice for Mia. There has to be another way.”

“What way?” Kate asks.

“He could just close down the salons,” Carrick suggests. “Don’t sell them, just close the doors and take away her ability to legitimize the money coming into the clubs. It’s very probable that the IRS will catch onto her eventually…”

“Probably? Are we okay with probably?” Kate asks. “And what about the other girls that work there? No one cares about what happens to them in the meantime? This is about more than just, Mia. This is about Elena facing the consequences for everyone she’s hurt. Going to the police and taking her to court is the only way she doesn’t win.”

“We’ll find a different way,” Elliot snaps. “I’ll go over there and take care of her myself if that’s what it takes, but I will not let her rip my family apart again!”

“Why don’t we take a vote?” Carrick suggests. “Find out where everyone stands and try to come to a consensus.”

“No!” Christian says, his voice firm and commanding so that everyone falls silent and turns to face him. “There is no discussion, there is no vote. I’m am going to go into the other room, and I am going to call the police. I’ll file suit first thing in the morning. Dad, you can represent me, or I can find someone else, but either way, I’m not letting her get away with this. I’m not going to wait for the possibility that the IRS might catch her after god only knows how many more years, I am going to ensure that she has to pay for what she’s done, and soon. I’m going to be the one to bring her down, for what she did to me, for what she did to Mia, and for what she’s still doing to every single one of those girls still there. I will fight this with everything I have in me, but to do that, I need your help. All of you.”

We all turn to Carrick, waiting for his reaction because we know that his support is key for the rest of the family. He stares back at Christian, mulling the decision over in his mind until he takes a deep bracing breath, gets up off the couch, and nods.

“Okay then. Call the police. Let’s get started.”

Next Chapter