Shadows in the Dark (Dark Lotus #1)

1. Adrian

After exiting my bedroom, I immediately noticed the darkening of the great room. Just a half hour earlier, the sun had been in the process of setting, but it had still been bright enough to light up the large, open room in my penthouse. That had since changed while I had showered because nightfall set in, encasing the room and exterior of the skyscraper in relative darkness.

Don’t be afraid of the shadows for it is where our demons come to play.

The words echoed in my head, as they were ones I had spoken often over the last several years. I much preferred the darkness and the secrecy it provided.

I had barely eaten at all today which was a rarity. A creature of particularity, I normally adhered to a certain schedule, and very little ever affected it. I hadn’t altered mine today, but I lacked the desire to do much of anything including eat. My mind had been running a million miles a second, and none of my normal relaxation tactics had worked thus far.

“It figures,” I muttered out loud to myself.

After shaking my head, I knew I needed to remedy that soon. Since I maintained control of everything in my world, the lights in this penthouse were no exception. I took a few steps to my left, then slapped the rectangular switch, quickly illuminating the wide open space in light once more. Now, the view I was accustomed to seeing came back into focus, only the buildings and bridges in the distance looked like glittering stars on a canvas of black. There was no moon to speak of this evening, but it didn’t bother me at all.

Nothing truly bothered me anymore. Everything in my life was planned out, so there were very little surprises to be found. I hated them, and as such, it was the main reason I kept tight control on every aspect of it, as I had since that one fateful night. I didn’t like to think about it. Reminiscing wouldn’t change the outcome.

It simply was what it was. I was no longer seventeen anymore. Age had crept up on me like it did everyone else, but it didn’t affect the paranoia, or even the rein I kept on everything since I’d been a youthful boy running along the shorelines in Mykonos with my twin at my side.

“Adrian, you need to be inside with your Pappouli,” my father would often yell down at me from the balcony of the palatial beachside estate.

“Leave him, Cyril,” my mother would say. “Let him be a boy.”

Despite her urging, my father always won. If it hadn’t been regarding how I spent my spare time away from my studies, it was always something else. I was forced to dress in certain attire... eat certain foods... carry myself in public a specific way...

I used to find it exhausting, but looking back and knowing now what I didn’t back then, it was oddly comforting which was why I still allowed my mind to be controlled, even if only by myself this time. Something akin to shame would enter my head whenever I thought of my family, but I would quickly shut those thoughts down, then push them away.

Doubt is the thief of joy.

I supposed I had always known that. Only back then, I’d had it all backward. What I thought were stolen moments of joy were exactly that – stolen. My father controlled me with an iron fist, insistent on making me a mirror image of himself. He did everything he could to prepare me to take over the family business, which I eventually ended up rejecting, anyway. I’d left Greece with nothing more than a plan and the hefty sum of money I had inherited upon becoming a man. I settled in America where I’d enrolled at an Ivy League school in Connecticut, before moving to San Francisco upon graduation from Yale University.

The family shipping business had never interested me, but the world of technology did, so I’d cashed in some investments and started up my own company which was now ranked in Forbes’s top 100 digital companies, year in and year out.

I had been in California for just over a decade, and the minuscule wealth I arrived with had more than quadrupled in all of that time. It allowed me to stay out of Greece and to obtain the many things I had accumulated over the years. They were all material, though. Items of no real importance when it all came down to it. Still, I was used to living with certain amenities, and my career afforded me every opportunity to possess those much-needed things.

“You need a woman. A family.”

Again, I shook my mother’s words out of my head. Eleni Benedict had been after me for years to provide her with grandchildren. I used to think it was the grief talking for her, especially since she cried regularly, but there were things I refused to do for anyone, including her. Besides, I had neither the time nor patience for children. I had women in my life, though. Many, actually. I just always kept them at arm’s length where it was safe enough for us all.

I desired very little, but the thrill of the catch was one of the rare things that I did. Hunting prey, then bending them to my will took finesse, time, and often luck, but when it happened, there was nothing better in life than those few precious moments of complete release and total abandon. The only problem was that as soon as my climax was over, the world I knew returned to its axis, and I was once again alone as I preferred to be.

“I believe I’m falling for you,” a woman’s voice said as it penetrated my thoughts.

“Then you’re more naive than I thought.”

Love was an illusion, and the most foolish one of all. I’d watched so many over the years believe themselves to love me, but they couldn’t because you couldn’t love something that didn’t exist. Someone that didn’t exist.

Day after day. Night after night. I stayed in my concrete castle in the sky never allowing anyone entry into my personal space. Outside of the staff I employed to take care of my penthouse, no one else had ever stepped foot inside of here. It’d always been that way, and would remain so. I wasn’t completely alone though, because in those moments of climax at Lotus, that tightly woven thread of self-control would break, unleashing a part of me I often kept hidden.

BDSM! Bondage. Domination. Sadism. Masochism .

They were all a part of me. Lotus was not your typical type of sex club. It was a place that only the most powerful men in San Francisco society even knew anything about. There was no official membership to be purchased or acquired as the club was invitation only, and only men like me possessed the ability to extend an invite.

Extend seemed innocent, but I knew it was much too mild a term for what actually happened there. We would lure those masochists to us via chatrooms on a secret server, and when I found one who piqued my interest enough, I would eventually extend her an invite. Once I had her exactly where I’d wanted her, only a safe word would end the oftentimes cruelly erotic things I would afflict upon the female.

“How can you say that after what we’ve just done together?”

The question had been asked several ways over the years, including more recently when a dark-haired temptress had caught more than the stinging blow from one of my single tail whips. She had managed to catch feelings for me. Or, rather she had made herself believe that she had, when it was impossible.

She trusted me. She liked our conversations. She craved receiving pain as much I craved delivering it. She would always come for me so hard, and so beautifully that in those few stolen moments between us, I would actually consider the emotion, only to discard it seconds later when my common sense returned.

I needed to return to Lotus soon, and maybe I would even look up the foolish twit again. I certainly wouldn’t mind reminding her that I was the very monster she should fear. The club would have to wait for another night, however, because I had a great deal of work to finish this evening.

As I moved toward the office, my stomach rumbled. It was reminding me of my earlier plan. My personal chef had the night off, so on my way home, I had stopped to pick up a San Francisco staple. The white box was on the kitchen counter, so I retrieved it, then carried it over to the small dining table in the corner of the massive room.

The space was completely encased with glass which provided me with sweeping panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean, Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, as well as the city skyline from my castle hundreds of feet in the sky. The only thing better than the view was the meal I was about to consume. Even though it had been on the counter while I had showered, the packaging had kept the clam chowder hot. I removed the sides of the box, then inhaled the warm steam lifting from the soup inside the sourdough bread bowl.

I made sure to grab a spoon when I picked up the box, so there was little left to do but eat. I cleared my throat, then spoke crisply to the virtual assistant that Benedict Technologies had created. It was still in the beta testing stages, but if all went well, it would be ready to market in the next six months to a year.

“Zeus, turn on the television.”

Seconds later, the large screen television to the right of me powered on. It was programmed to automatically open up on my preferred news channel, so there was no need to channel surf. I had named the assistant after the ancient God in Greek mythology. Like him, it would see and could do all.

“And in local news, a woman identified as Blair Carter has been found dead...”

The spoon I had been holding slipped from my fingers. The name was familiar, but undaunted to an extent, I picked the utensil back up, then dipped it into the creamy chowder. Life. Death. Everyone lived, even if only via stolen moments like me. But sometimes, they lived fully and openly like the woman the anchor had just mentioned. Everyone died, too. That thought was as comforting as my meal, and I tuned out the rest of the story and continued to eat.