Chapter 104 Gavin0

Chapter 104 Gavin0
“I told you not to bother screaming.” Howard sounded vaguely chiding, as if I truly was a misbehaving child. He turned towards Gavin. “She’s been playing detective. Snooping around my business... our business.”
“I see. And this is what? You getting in some fun before you kill her?”
I wanted to keep yelling obscenities and insults at him, but the nonchalant way he was talking was making it hard for me to breathe. I’d known about his betrayal, but to see it in his face like this was so much worse.
“I promised that if she was good, I wouldn’t kill her,” Howard said. He gave Gavin a sideways glance, as if measuring him for something. “I, or I should say, we have a client who could make good use of a naughty girl. He knows a thing or two about taming disobedient women.”
“A client? Are we talking about ‘The Caretaker’?”
Howard looked surprised. “You know about him?”
What were they talking about?
Gavin answered Howard’s question without looking at either of us. “I saw him mentioned in some papers a few weeks back and figured it must be the handle for your top client. I never found his real name though, or where he’s located.” Now he looked up at Howard. “If I’m sticking my neck out to help you here, don’t you think it’s fair you let me in on who he is and where you’re sending her? I don’t want to risk her coming back one day.”
I felt sick. My body slumped down on the bed. He hadn’t just been playing me. He was willing to let Howard sell me. Gavin really hadn’t felt anything for me. Tears burned against my eyelids.
Howard furrowed his brow, but nodded. “Fair enough. His name is Abdulla Mahaj, one of the richest people in Saudi Arabia. He’s more like a partner than a client, but you’ll learn more about that as you take on more responsibilities.” Howard glanced at me. “Shall we get started?”
Gavin didn’t move or speak. I saw some emotion playing through his eyes, but couldn’t identify what it was.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” Howard started to turn towards me, the flesh-colored toy in his hand.
Gavin moved then, faster than I’d seen him move before. His hand went around Howard’s throat and he threw the smaller man across the room. I stared, open-mouthed, as Gavin crossed to Howard in just a few long strides and put his hand on Howard’s neck again. He picked Howard up and shoved him back against the wall, raising him high enough that Howard was on his toes.
What the hell was happening?
“Finally!” Gavin’s face was inches from Howard’s and he was practically spitting the words into the other man’s face. “You have no fucking idea how long I’ve waited to get that name, your precious Saudi connection, and I think you know why.”
The pieces fell together in my shocked brain even as Gavin confirmed them.
“He was the driver who killed my fiancée, and he was driving your Bentley.”
Howard’s eyes widened and his mouth opened and closed, as if he wanted to say something, but Gavin wasn’t letting him.
“For years I’d been looking for the car that killed her, but found nothing. I already knew it couldn’t have been you since you had a rock-solid alibi at the time of the ‘accident’. You were giving a business presentation in Manhattan that day and at least a hundred people saw you. It wasn’t until you approached me about opening the club together that I stumbled on something that changed everything.” He smiled, but not a nice smile. “That’s right. I checked you out. With all those barely legal women you dated, I knew you were a sick bastard, and I wanted to find out just how sick before getting into more business with you. Using the exact same software you helped me finance when we first met, I hacked into your computer. I went through some of your old emails, and imagine my surprise when I found an email from just before the accident confirming a meeting with your mysterious Saudi... and you offering him the use of one of your Bentleys for his stay. I dug deeper, and there it was, right in front of me: an email from him thanking you for the ‘clean up’. It didn’t take much deduction to figure out he was the driver who’d killed Camille, and you’d helped with the cover-up.”
I’d been right. Sort of. Howard had been involved with Camille’s death. I just hadn’t realized that Gavin had known already.
“The problem was, I’d gotten the information under less than legal circumstances, and the emails were vague enough that I knew that by themselves, they wouldn’t be enough evidence. I needed more, but I couldn’t find much else.” Gavin continued, “I knew I had to gain your trust and get the name of your Saudi guy. Unfortunately, you were good enough to keep your sex-trafficking business with Abdulla under wraps. I had no idea what you were really doing, what you were using me to do, finding women with your ‘desired personality traits’.”
My stomach twisted as I realized what his words meant. He hadn’t known the truth. He wasn’t a part of selling these girls. Then it hit me. Howard had known I was in his office from moment one. What he’d said about Gavin grooming me had been a lie. Gavin might have been using Howard’s attraction to me to get closer to Howard, but he hadn’t been grooming me for Howard’s twisted enterprise.
His voice was thick with disgust and contempt. “I’d thought you were a horny old bastard who liked them barely legal, but when Carrie couldn’t find any information about some of the girls, I got suspicious. A couple days ago, I did some more digging into your files, and this time, I struck gold.”