Page 14 of Natural-Born Cullers

“In part it’s what I needed to discuss with you,” said Cal. “I’m looking at taking more breaks over the next few years. Maybe go back to Wales.”

Gray pushed his starter away. He’d been polite by taking a bite of the Cornish cod, but fish wasn’t really his thing, except he knew it was his father’s, or it had been when Gray was young, with him always out fishing. “Yeah? You seen a property you’d like to purchase there?”

“Not buy, no. But….” Cal’s smile seemed a little private as he finished his starter. “There’s one inCaernarfon that’s always stolen my head, let alone heart,” he said gently. “One I’d like to rest my head at once in a while. That’s if, preserving Ed’s memory, you think you would be okay with that?”

Ah. Gray messed with the rim of his starter plate. “So that’s why we’re here, huh?” He gave the nod to the waitstaff to collect up what they’d finished.

“Partly,” said Cal as the plates were cleared away.

His father made it too obvious over how he was alone: not many would take a new lover back to where he’d loved and lived with the one he’d lost. Maybe he hadn’t dated through the years, not properly, and it took Gray’s more… selfish side closer to Cal. There was comfort in knowing his father had kept his mother close all this time, no one else, because that was where a lover belonged.

A soft jostle of tray brought their main meal over, and as the plates were served, Gray shifted and tugged a set of keys from his pocket.

“Another coffee, please?” He got a nod off the server, and Gray slipped a key off the ring and let it rest by Cal’s empty cup. “An Earl Grey as well.”

“Of course,” said the man, and he disappeared now he’d finished serving dinner.

After a moment, Cal picked the key up, his smile lost to it for a moment.

“Get a spare cut and get that one back to me,” said Gray.

Cal slipped the key onto his own set before they started to eat. “Thank you.” And his look over at Gray meant that as their hot drinks were served as well. “Give me the dates when you go there, and I’ll work around them.” Quiet. “Although on the odd occasion, I wouldn’t mind seeing you there, Jan too.” He winced. “I’m not so sure Jack would tolerate the offer.”

“Get you and him in a room, I doubt it will be Jack you have to worry about.”

Cal cut into his steak. “Strange how they both go for the throat over absent fathers when it comes to you and me, hmm?”

Gray shrugged. “It takes time with Jack, always has. Don’t see it as a full negative. Jack’s close to his old man. Greg stayed by him through Martin emerging even when Martin broke Greg’s bones for it.”

Cal frowned, maybe more so at the call for one father staying around when he hadn’t. Gray hadn’t intended it like that.

“I didn’t know there’d been domestic abuse on Martin’s side to add to the Harrison mix,” said Cal. “Certainly not forhisfather.”

“Neither did Jack.”

Cal winced. “Oh. Sorry.” Giving a sigh, he put his knife and fork down. “On that note….” His body language changed, and he looked at the near-empty plates before offering his phone over.

Gray frowned. Had he been waiting for them to finish eating?

“From my trip to Japan over the weekend and beyond.” Cal tapped the phone, the touch light, but it was done to let Gray know surveillance for listening devices had already been done. “Use the headphones, please.”

Gray did as Cal picked up his Earl Grey, then he caught the date of the video clip on Cal’s phone. December 20. Roughly four months ago. He thumbed play.

“Hear no evil, see no evil, or speak no evil. The choice—is yours.”

The voice sounded metallic and hollow in the shadows of the background, but the speaker stayed out of camera shot where the three words to the phrase wrote itself across a wall. After a moment, the camera twisted angle to three sets of items laid out on the floor: a petrol can and lighter, an eye speculum and scalpel, then razorblade and gag. The intent behind the words and how they matched the items wasn’t hard to bridge.

Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil. All it needed was the subject element.

The camera shifted angle again, and bathed in a red-light district halo, two women knelt facing each other on all fours. Naked, in dog cages that only allowed open access to mouths and arses, their bodies already called rape from the dirt streaks on their asses as tears, sobs, and shaking called out their abuse. The more vicious violation came with how similar in look the two Japanese women were. One in her forties, the other early twenties, but definitely mother and daughter.

And the items between them?

“Again, ladies and gentlemen. Hear no evil, see no evil, or speak no evil.” The voice came from the shadows again. “Voting lines are open for sixty seconds. Three hundred pounds per vote, with as many votes as you need to ensure your choice. No payment, no vote, no further access to this stream.” From out of the shadows, a black leather touch ran over the curve to the younger woman’s ass. “She’s already had her fill.” A finger pushed inside her, and a cry went out at the brutal violation, more so from the mother. “Now it’s your turn. What’s your pleasure? Voting lines are open… now.”

Gray stayed with the video for sixty seconds, the sobs and cries off the women, then Black Leather came fully out of the shadows, Japanese mask in tow.

Gray paused the stream for a moment.

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