Jail was becoming nothing short of fucking awful. I hated being locked up, and I was beginning to hate the fact that I had nobody to talk to except Reynard. I dared to have a little bit of hope when he told me that Lizzy visited, especially when he said she was trying to help, but I wasn’t sure what she could do. She was a nineteen-year-old girl who had never worked a day in her life when she wasn’t stealing money from people. I definitely didn’t think that was going to translate very well into our world. For all I knew, she only came to visit because she wanted to get into his house—maybe she had remorse over not taking the check and just wanted to steal what she could. It wasn’t like either of us was going to be able to use it.

“Heads up.” Reynard motioned to two guys that were entering the area where our meals were served.

“Ugh.” I looked down at my tray. “I’ll be glad when they transfer those two to an actual prison—fucking hate being in here with them.”

“Yeah, but they claim they're innocent.” Reynard chuckled under my breath.

“I’m pretty sure the only innocent people in here are us, and we’re not that fucking innocent either.” I shook my head back and forth. “We’re just not in prison for what we really deserve to be in here for.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Reynard eyed me with a glare.

“You don’t see the irony here?” I lifted my head slowly. “Lizzy? What we did to her? The only thing that’s missing is a beat down from those two thugs and a night we want to forget once the lights go out.”

“She wasn’t very innocent either.” Reynard exhaled sharply. “She may not have done what we accused her of exactly, but if we turned over the evidence we had, she would have been someone’s prison bitch.”

“Yeah.” I scoffed. “Instead she became ours.”

I hated myself for finally letting the beast out—for believing it was okay to just take Lizzy’s body and satisfy my own lust. I had a lot of time to think about that while I was sitting in my cell, listening to Reynard ramble about what he was going to do when he finally got out of jail. I wasn’t so sure we're going to see the outside of those walls for a while—and when we did, it might be because we were headed to one that wasn’t quite as accommodating. The judge over our case wasn’t very fond of white-collar prison resorts, and the assault charge Josef Weber had against us was likely to be land us in the same place as the two hulking maniacs sitting a few tables down—awaiting trial for murder.

If we had just managed to control our temper, we might have been able to wait out the SEC investigation and at least let them put the handcuffs on. We had enough influence in New York to end up serving our sentence somewhere with a golf course—not that I really gave a shit about playing golf. Unfortunately, the assault case had been put on hold because the judge wanted to let the SEC finish kicking our teeth in, and the last call from Fisk indicated that they were discussing a government takeover for Jackson Investments. The investors that we seemingly screwed over were out for blood—and why wouldn’t they be? In their eyes—and in the eyes of the rest of the court of public opinion, we were the scum of the earth.

I certainly felt like it.

But it wasn’t because of what happened at Jackson Investments.

It was because of the woman we locked up. We stuck her in a cage and used her for our own fantasies—that was one thing I would spend my life regretting…

Lizzy was naturally submissive and that was her downfall for a man like Reynard. He twisted her in the darkness, drove her to madness, and then let pain be the only relief she was allowed. He enjoyed that sort of thing, and truthfully, I let myself enjoy it too. I loved having her across my knee, begging for more punishment—and the part that ate me up most of all was how much I did enjoy it. It gave me a freedom that no submissive woman had given me before her, yet I knew that it was wrapped in a blanket of guilt and lies. She might have deserved to be locked up, but we didn’t deserve to be her jailers.

And she still came crawling back for more—even with us locked in here, she couldn’t stay away.

“You’re not going back in your cell.” The guard slammed the door on Reynard’s cell and turned to me. “You’ve got a visitor—your lawyer, Mr. Fisk.”

“Great, more bad news,” I growled under my breath and sighed.

If Fisk had made a trip to Chicago, it was bad news that he needed to deliver in person. We were retaining a local firm that he had been communicating with for our criminal case, so most of them came to deliver the mundane shit. He only made a trip when it was about Jackson Investments, and those visits were never good. I followed the guard to the visitor’s area and was surprised to see a smile on Fisk’s face—the first one I had seen since everything went to absolute shit. I walked over cautiously, wondering if the man had just lost his mind in the midst of everything that happened and the eventual downfall of his biggest client.

“I’ve got—great news.” His smile got even bigger if that was possible.

“We’re getting out of here?” My reply was sarcastic because I didn’t think there was a chance in hell of that happening.

“You are!” He nodded quickly. “And tomorrow we start putting Jackson Investments back together again.”

“What? How?” I blinked in confusion, wondering if it was just an illusion cooked up by prison madness.

“Your girlfriend—please tell me she’s your girlfriend and not Reynard’s. He doesn’t deserve a sweet girl like her.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “She took down Josef Weber.”

“Hold on.” I pulled away. “What girl?”

“Lizzy!” His face twisted into a look of confusion. “Mauro, you act like you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

“I—I don’t.” I blinked with even more confusion registered. “How did she do that?”

“Let’s talk about that when we get on the plane. The release paperwork is coming through right now and I even managed to get a favor called in—they’re not going to make the arrest until you’re out, so we can watch the whole thing live while we get the fuck out of Chicago.” He patted me on the shoulder again. “It’s over. It’s time to go home.”

My head was filled with confusion as the guard took me back to my cell. If what Fisk said was true, it was the last time I was walking down that hallway before I was headed out the front door. I didn’t even say anything to Reynard when I got back. I was just simply stunned with silence. I sat down in my cell and tried to process it. How in the world did Lizzy, of all people, manage to take down Josef Weber? Why would she? What would drive her to help us after all she had been through at our hands—the punishment—the time in the cage—we were so cruel to her. We didn’t deserve her help, much less her kindness.

“Are you going to tell me what the visit was about, or is it that fucking bad?” Reynard sat up and looked over at me.

“It—was good news.” I finally allowed myself to smile. “We’re going home.”

I told Reynard what Fisk had told me—but he had as many questions as I had. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait very long. It felt like waking up from a dream when we were released, and the door swung open. I wanted to kiss the ground—hell, I wanted to hug the ground. Fisk ushered us into a limousine and gave us a few more details. Lizzy had managed to somehow get her hands on a contract between Josef Weber and our sister—her real name was Hannah Clark. The police were still looking, but since they had enough evidence to charge her, they were sure she would be in custody soon. The main event was about to begin though—the one that I didn’t want to miss. Fisk sat his laptop up once the plane was in the air and we leaned forward to watch the screen.

“Holy shit.” Reynard grinned. “Josef Weber is handcuffs—that’s a beautiful fucking sight.”

“Yes, it is.” I nodded. “Wait, did they say something about murder?”

“I didn’t want to mention that until the plane was in the air—because I knew what the two of you would do.” Fisk exhaled sharply. “There’s a very good chance Josef Weber or your sister was responsible for Wyatt’s death—the authorities have reason to believe it wasn’t a suicide.”

“That son of a bitch. Land the fucking plane!” I jumped up from my seat.

“Mauro—don’t.” Fisk grabbed my arm.

“Either he’s putting a bullet in Weber, or I am.” Reynard grabbed Fisk’s arm and ripped it away from me.

“Hold on.” Fisk was terrified, but he tried to maintain a calm demeanor. “Think about this for a second. You just got out of jail. Do you really want to end up back there for murder—you might be justified, but that doesn’t mean they won’t lock your ass back up.”

“Fuck.” I shook my head angrily. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“He’ll get his.” Reynard’s jaw tightened. “Probably better if we don’t put a bullet in his skull—I want him to suffer before he dies.”

Fisk filled us in on the rest of the details on the flight to New York. Lizzy had managed to use her skills—the very ones that put her in the cage, to begin with—to ensnare a high ranking Vice President at Weber Acquisitions. He didn’t know all of the details, but I was pretty sure I could fill in the blanks after reading enough of her chat logs. She managed to get her hands on a contract between Weber and Hannah—one that implicated them in the scheme.

Hannah might have started as an innocent girl that Wyatt paid off, but she was fully complicit in Weber’s plan. She traded him her shell companies, so he would have leverage against us and he promised her Jackson Investments in return. He was really just after our clients, which probably wouldn’t have stayed with us after the scandal anyway. Hannah would have been a rich woman once it was all said and done regardless. With Wyatt out of the way, she would have stood to inherit a larger share once she was able to stake her claim. We would have been stuck footing that bill too since it would have looked like we were a party to Wyatt’s deception.

Everything they did was calculated—so calculated that I would have been impressed if it wasn’t my company they were after. If what Lizzy found was accurate, they killed Wyatt to get their hands on the will, and they waited patiently for us to react—they knew we would—we played right into their hands.

One thing was for certain.

Lizzy might have saved us.

But she had been a very bad girl in the process.