Infamous by Nicole Camden Read Free Book Online Page A

Max, naked and tied to a chair. He didn’t look vulnerable; instead, the image reminded Carl of the story of Prometheus chained to a rock, his liver eaten out each day by an eagle. Not vulnerable, but tormented and hopeful . . . Max would have sold it months ago if Carl could bear to part with it. The truth was, he’d always loved his stepbrother, and John as well. The three of them had been friends for so long, three boys without fathers, raised by Max’s uncle and Mandy.
    Carl pressed a hand to his heart. He was destined to live a life of unrequited love for his two best friends, but unrequited love suited him, he decided, at least for the moment, at least until he found real love, which was much less dramatic but probably more satisfying.
    â€œHang the Montenegros in here,” he told the boys, waving a hand at the wall space he’d allocated to the artist, who’d yet to come and visit him, despite his repeated requests.
    They did as he directed while he checked his new phone. His missing keys worried him, though he knew John would change the locks when he arrived for the night—it felt like a stretch that what had happened to him the previous night was linked to Lille, but if it was . . . why would someone bother to drug him and take his phone and keys? Did they just want information? Were they planning to break in? It seemed unlikely that any thief interested in breaking into the Fetish Box would go to the trouble of stealing keys, and his apartment had a doorman and an alarm, so keys wouldn’t help that much there. Still, the story she’d told about her father worried him. Someone connected to the Russian mob—she’d said he was the son of a Russian mobster—would surely have found her by now, unless she’d been mistaken all those years ago. She’d run away so young; it was possible she’d just misunderstood, wasn’t it?
    Carl had a feeling that something else had made Lille afraid and wary of people. No one reacted that dramatically to the threat of someone she’d never met unless she had reason to be afraid, to know what it was like to be hurt—one of her mother’s other boyfriends, maybe? Carl wasn’t certain, nor did he believe that digging up everything from the past was the only way to move forward. After all, he knew very well what had happened to him at the hands of one of his mother’s boyfriends, and knowing about it didn’t help one bit.
    He shrugged his shoulders, uncomfortable even thinking about it, and texted Kim Chan instead: “Make sure you get Max and Lille together on film tonight.”
    She texted back “Duh,” which made him laugh. No one would guess that she was from an upper-middle-class family in Houston, or that she’d run away at sixteen and had turned eighteen only a few weeks ago. He’d met her when he’d been volunteering at the local soup kitchen in Miami. She’d been in line for food but had also been filming with an expensive digital camera. As far as he could tell, it was the only possession of any value she had to her name.
    â€œLove you, too, sweetie,” he texted back.
    She didn’t respond, but he hadn’t really expected her to.
    He put the phone in his pocket and patted it absently, thinking about this morning. It had been a long time since he’d blacked out so totally that he woke up not knowing where he was or what had happened. He was usually more careful, or maybe just lucky.
    He wasn’t sure, but after what had happened to Mary, he didn’t want to take stupid chances. If there was a connection between what had happened to him and the phone call Lille had received about her father, he wanted to know it. He intended to go back to the Box this evening and hopefully convince her to talk about her father with John and Mary before they went over to the pub. If she didn’t want to talk about it, he’d tell John