33 Degrees of Separation (Legacy) Read online

  33 Degrees of Separation

  Rain Carrington

  Book Three

  Legacy

  Copyright © 2019 Rain Carrington

  Cover Copyright © Rain Carrington

  All rights reserved

  Warning: This book has scenes of violence, brainwashing, light BDSM and consensual sex between adults. No one under 18.

  For more of my works, visit raincarrington.com

  For Inca <3

  Dear Reader,

  This is an advanced copy that has yet to go through the entire editorial process. I apologize in advance for any and all mistakes that may still be hiding in these pages.

  Thank you,

  Rain

  Chapter One

  In the circle, robed men stood like generations before them. There they conducted meetings that brought together only those of the highest degrees. The old ways and traditions meant something to them. In each set of hands, a bejeweled chalice was held, every one of them unique and adorned with priceless, ancient gems.

  One of the men stepped into the center of the circle, as was the protocol for members who wanted to speak. The flickering of candles on the tables all around the concrete and cinderblock room making his handsome features appear sinister. It didn’t help as there were symbols painted on the walls, symbols of their long faith, not in any god, but in their lineage and legacy.

  Most of the men of the circle were old, living decades in the order to achieve their ranking. The few younger were seen as overly eager by the old men, rushing to power, but they never said this aloud. The order was clear, no infighting. The fight was out there, in the world, where other people lived like animals, cutting and cursing one another. The order, they were above that, civilized to a fault and more powerful than any of the scum who inhabited their world.

  Their world. For hundreds of years, men dressed in the long robes stood in circles, deciding the fates of countries and continents. The world was theirs, and their power could be felt in every corner of it, though none of their faces were known, or their names.

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  The others nodded their heads in sync. One of the older men of the order spoke, and though his voice was low, it echoed through the room. “Is he to be trusted?”

  The man in the center hesitated, but all it did was make the room quiet. The walls didn’t rock, the ceiling didn’t cave, and no one dropped dead. The room was simply quiet as all the thirty to thirty-three-degree members waited for their brother in the order to answer.

  When he did, the voice rang out strong. “He is, or I will sacrifice him and therefore my family’s continuing legacy in our order.”

  The others nodded again, assured he was telling the truth. Many of the original families had died out over the centuries of the order’s reign, but none had yet to be taken out from lack of loyalty and allegiance. The man in the center would not have his be the first to die off with dishonor.

  As he stepped back to stand among the others in the ring, a bell sounded, like the old church bells in the lands where the families had come from, though through speakers instead of an actual bell. Chins raised, casting the flickering shadows on them all, fierce in their beliefs. Another bell rang, and they all raised their chalices to drink.

  “Paucorum bonorum,” the man said, and the others repeated in unison.

  “Paucorum bonorum.”

  The motto of the order, the words they lived by. The good of the few. What they meant was, the good of the few far outweighed the good of the many. There were few that counted in the world, and none more than the order.

  Once the strong wine was rinsing down the throats of the men, the chalices were set at their feet. Ornate athames were brought from the robes and each made a smallish cut on their forearms. For a ceremony that important, they had to give more of themselves than words.

  As the blood from each man dripped to splatter to the floor, their voices rang out again.

  “The blood of our ancestors are in these veins, living forever, ruling all. Power, above all, be ours, though our faces stay shaded from the masses, long may our legacy live!”

  Chapter Two

  Wrinkles in his shirt weren’t a big deal, being he was going to cover it with his jacket, but the tie had a crease right across the middle. Pat Castaldo grimaced at it as he ran a hand over it, then forgot all about it when he heard the moan coming from the mound of blankets on the motel bed.

  “What time is it?”

  The Grindr date had been great. They’d met and were in bed in Pat’s motel room in less than an hour. Not a lot of small talk, nothing much to have to remember, and he was satisfied for the first time in months.

  “Nine. We both overslept.”

  “Nine is oversleeping? Are you an alien?”

  Funnily enough, that wasn’t the first time the huge man been asked that. “No, but I do have to get moving. I’m doing a favor for a friend today. Do you need a ride?”

  He was hot, young, dark haired and blue eyed, and was great at sucking dick. Pat sat on the edge of the bed and grinned at him while Greg reached under the sheet to touch himself. “You don’t have time for one more round?”

  Pat wished he could say yes to that and stay in bed all day with the hot younger man, but he had business. Not his formal business, as a special agent in the bureau, but something important, at least to those who’d asked for the favor.

  Pat had some very good friends who’d started an investigative company in Texas. They’d taken on a case personal to them. The cousin of a cousin or some damn thing had asked for help to find his roommate. The moment his friend, Charlie, and head of the FBI San Antonio field office found out Pat was in Denver, he’d jumped at the chance to use their friendship to save his wife and her colleagues a trip.

  “No time, no, but I’ll be around a couple more days if you want to hook up again.”

  Humming a little, he agreed quickly, “Mmm hmm, that sounds great. When are you going to be done with this favor? I’ll be out of class by five.”

  “Five? That’s perfect, unless I’m in the middle of finding this guy.”

  Eyeing him, Greg teased, “And here I thought I wore you out.”

  Reaching over and grabbing the back of his neck, Pat drew him close and bit his lip, playfully. “You did. I’m not looking for ass. I’m looking for a guy who is missing.” Pat thought if it and asked him, “You said you were at Clarren University.”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “The guy who’s missing, he’s in Clarren. Ian Andrews III.”

  After an exaggerated roll of his eyes, Greg commented, “I know of him. Everyone does. One dorm and three other buildings are named after his family. Probably the only way he got in.”

  Pat didn’t like to judge someone before meeting them, but knowing his family was that rich, it could predict why he was missing. It could be a kidnapping for ransom, then he’d have to call his superiors and get a negotiation team to head there and take over the case. “Is it just the fact he could have bought his way in that made that sneer when I said his name or something else?”

  “I don’t know him, if that’s what you’re asking, and haven’t heard much about him. He runs with a few people that I share acquaintances with, is all. I can make a few calls and find out some things if you’d like. I doubt it’ll be all that great as far as deep information goes, though.”

  He stole a kiss, taking his time with it, brushing his tongue over Greg’s, sucking his tongue then sighing at the kiss ended. “Damn, you’re sexy.”

  “Yeah, right back at you, big man. And I mean that in every sense. When you took off your shirt…Jesus, you blew me away.”

  Pa
t had always been big, but so had many of the men in his family. They owned pizza parlors and delis in New York and New Jersey and let themselves get bigger still, but in all the worst ways. Pat was determined from the time he was young to work his bulk into muscles instead of letting himself simply gain weight. It had been a hard road, as his body didn’t want to cooperate, and whenever he was home, his mother fed him enough pasta to feed an army.

  Big, dark hair and Italian through and through, that was Pat. Or how his family bragged on him, anyway. He’d made it out of New York, all the way to DC, so part of that, for him was to keep his bulking body in shape.

  “I like to keep fit,” was the answer he gave, the simple answer.

  “Fit? That must take a lot of work. I can’t gain weight to have more muscle than these pathetic things,” he quipped as he flexed his thin arm.

  He was lean and slight of build, but he was beautiful and great in bed. Working to become a lawyer, he was at the top of his class, so he had brains too. Exactly the kind of man he wanted in his life, but Pat wasn’t fooling himself. He knew this was a short fling while he was in Denver. They led very different lives and were separated by two thousand miles.

  His search for a partner wouldn’t be completed easily. His career and lifestyle weren’t easy for any man. Loneliness was a part of his life he was getting used to.

  After another long kiss, Greg got out of the bed and quickly dressed, promising, “I’ll call you tonight, at least to give you anything I might find out about Andrews. I may not know him, but I hope he’s okay.”

  “Me too.”

  His first stop was to Ian’s apartment. He’d called Ian’s roommate, Denny Glover, and he asked to meet there so he could look through Ian’s things for clues as to where he might be.

  Denny was good looking, dark skinned, not overly tall, but built nicely. Eyes puffed from lack of sleep, he had worry lines on his forehead that deepened the moment Pat came through the door. “The FBI? Do they really think it’s that bad?”

  The inside of the apartment was beautiful. The building wasn’t in a great part of town and the stairs and lobby he had to use to get to the apartment were less than spectacular. Inside their place, however, there was solid oak furniture and real leather couches in the living room, along with silver frames lining the mantel with pictures of Denny, and a handsome young man that Pat assumed to be Ian.

  As they sat on the comfortable sofa, he explained, “I’m not here in an official capacity. The men your cousin called to look for your friend are friends of mine. The woman, Stacy, is married to an agent and my former partner, Charlie DeSoto. He knew I was here, in Denver, so he asked me to start the search.”

  Seeming relieved, Denny nodded and sighed, “Okay. Jesus, that scared me. I thought it could be a kidnapping at first, because he’s got money, you know.”

  “Is that a possibility?”

  “There’s no note and there hasn’t been a call, that I know of. That could be going through his father, though, and they wouldn’t tell me anything. It took my calling five times to get to talk to anyone except the maid as it was.”

  Pat found that interesting. “They don’t like you?”

  “I’m a black man at school on scholarship. What do you think?”

  Like he’d been punched, he felt the question hit him in the gut. “Oh. I didn’t realize they were like that. Did they ever express that verbally? To Ian?”

  “Not that I know of, but he wouldn’t have told me. He doesn’t talk to his parents all that much. They’re not around a lot. His dad is always traveling for business, mother is going on vacations with her friends. It’s a damn cliché and he hated that, but it was his life.”

  He’d rarely felt pity for the filthy rich, but his heart went to Ian in that moment. “Would he run off to get their attention or punish them?”

  “No!” Denny glared at him, and Pat understood why. Where Denny’s mind went right to something untoward happening to his friend, someone was coming in and thinking it might be Ian who’d disappeared himself.

  “Okay, okay, I get it. I can see by the way you’re ready to jump out of your skin that you’re afraid for him. I have friends, and I’d feel the same way. I must ask these questions, though. I have to cover all the bases so I can find him. Wouldn’t you rather know he was pulling something to get attention or punish someone than something bad happening to him?”

  “Sure…sure, but…”

  “I know. I’ll try to be gentler, but time is crucial. The longer someone is missing the less likely it is that we’ll find them.”

  “Alive, you mean.”

  Denny’s voice was rough, like he’d been crying or screaming, and Pat figured he probably had been. To think his friend might not be found alive, that was never easy to hear. “Yes, Denny. I don’t want to scare you more, believe me, but I also want you to know all the facts. This is not my field of expertise, but I have worked with a few of the teams that work with hostage negotiation and kidnappings. I know the statistics and the problems associated with these situations. I want to find him, that’s my only priority right now.”

  As his eyes welled with tears, Denny whispered, “I get that. I do.”

  Pat reached out for him, setting his hand over Denny’s much smaller one. “I’ve lost and almost lost friends. I know what you’re feeling. It’s overwhelming, and it consumes your mind, but anything you can tell me and show me, even something small, could help.”

  “I’ll tell you anything you need to know.”

  Pat took out his phone and set up the notes app. He missed good old pen and paper, but he was constantly losing pens or having them run out of ink. His boss had finally convinced him to use his phone.

  “Does Ian have a girlfriend?”

  Denny’s eyes cut away as he confessed, “No, and he wouldn’t.”

  Pat understood then. “He’s gay.”

  “Yeah. I never cared, you know. My cousin is, I’ve had good friends all my life who were, but he didn’t go around telling people. In fact, I don’t think his parents know, so don’t tell them unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “I wouldn’t out him unless it was. Okay, then, does he have a boyfriend?”

  Shaking his head, Denny started slowly, trying to be careful of his words. Pat could tell he felt like he was betraying his friend. “No, uh, he played around a lot. He wanted one, don’t get me wrong, but he had types, and no one fit them completely. He was…different. He’d go to these bars that weren’t normal.”

  “Not normal?”

  As he looked Pat in the eye, he squirmed. “Did you ever hear of that book all the women were reading? 50 Shades of Grey?”

  It all came crashing to him then. “He was into the leather lifestyle? BDSM?”

  “I guess. I didn’t pry on that, you know? I’m not into that stuff, and mix that with all the dick, and we kept the sex talk to a minimum around here. I’d see them, though, leaving in the mornings sometimes. All dressed crazy, leather pants and army boots. Ian would have bruises now and then, but he’d smile when I asked him about them. I was always worried he was going to get himself hurt.”

  After typing that into the phone, he asked, “Do you know any of their names? The men he’d bring home?”

  “No, I didn’t ask, and they didn’t offer. I wish now I had.” His eyes got huge as he leaned in. “You don’t think one of those guys…?”

  “I don’t know anything at this point. If Ian was responsible in his relationships with these men, that shouldn’t be an issue, but some men misuse the lifestyle to abuse others.”

  “I know he bought a shitload of condoms all the time. When Cara, that’s my girlfriend, when she’d come over and I was out, he’d always have plenty to give me. He was also on pRep. He talked to me about that when I was worried about him sleeping around so much.”

  “If he was responsible with his health, there is no reason to think he wouldn’t be with his safety. It’s an avenue to explore, of course, but I need more.”


  “Sure, sure,” Denny said, relaxing some. “I’ll, uh, go there, to those clubs, ask around.”

  “No, you won’t. That’s my job. Besides, I know my way around those places, so it would be easier for me.”

  Denny side-eyed him over that but didn’t say anything.

  “His parents. Now, you told your cousin and my friends in the agency you spoke with that you reached out to his parents, or tried to, and they dismissed your concerns. You said they didn’t have a close relationship though?”

  Huffing out a quick breath, Denny rolled his eyes. “Close? Not even a little. They barely spoke and it wasn’t because they were angry at each other. It was just the way they were. His dad would call once a week to check on his grades, ask him some stuff, but other than giving him money, they had no real relationship. His mother either. They weren’t around a lot, I guess. Ian told me neither of them had ever spent much time with him, even as a little kid. He had nannies, went to boarding schools, all that. To go here, in state, was a problem for them. They wanted him in Harvard or in England or something. Ian wanted to be here.”

  Before Pat could ask anything else, Denny added something that didn’t make sense. “Come to think of it, though, that wasn’t the case recently. Ian was like really surprised one day when his father called and asked him to meet for dinner. That didn’t happen a lot, but he didn’t think a lot about it. Then, about an hour after he left that evening, he called to tell me he was going with his father on a trip and he’d be back in a few days.

  “Ian was pissed about having to go, and it being sprung on him last second. And, being it was so close to finals. He wasn’t stupid or anything, but school didn’t just come easily to him. He had to study, a lot. They were gone three days. Ian didn’t call me once, which was weird. There’s never a day that goes by, not on vacations or in summer when we go home that we don’t speak.”

  The closeness of these friends was illuminating as to why Denny was so worried. Denny was probably the first person in Ian’s life that cared for him despite his money and that wasn’t related to him. “How was he when he came back?”