A lot of good it’s ever done me.
Son of a bitch!
Eric had heard of men doing things like this—putting up revenge porn to get back at women who’d divorced or broken up with them. He was glad he already knew that this story ended with Stewart’s ass sitting in prison. Otherwise, he’d be making plans to hunt the bastard down.
He did his best to keep the anger out of his voice. “Did you call the police?”
She shook her head, regret written on every feature of her face. “I panicked. I wasn’t thinking straight. My phone started ringing almost right away. I got text messages and emails from men who said repulsive things. I was terrified that one of them would show up at the office or my front door. I was afraid my father or my boss would find out. So I promised Stewart I’d get him the money the next day.”
She cast him a furtive glance, as if afraid to look into his eyes. “You probably think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”
The self-doubt in her eyes put an ache in his chest.
“That wasn’t your best move, but you’re not an idiot. Nothing prepares a person for a situation like that.”
“I felt so …violated. He lied to me. Every minute I was with him was a lie. Every kiss, every word he said—all lies. He used me—for sex, for money—and I fell for it. How could I have been so stupid?”
“Hey, now.” Eric gave her hand another squeeze, wanting so badly to hold her. “You didn’tlethim do any of that. He’s a predator. He played into your hopes and expectations. That’s what criminals like him do. You couldn’t have known that.”
She sniffed, shrugged. “There were little signs. His attitude toward me went from hot to cold for no reason. He was vague about his job. The way he positioned himself during sex—he had to stay out of the way of the camera, didn’t he?”
The image that flashed into Eric’s head sickened him.
Christ.
Victoria reached for a tissue, wiped her eyes. “The next day, I called in sick, then changed my email address, my phone numbers, and the locks on my doors. I went to the bank and took the money out of my trust fund. Stewart told me to meet him at the Wicker Park fountain and reminded me that if I had him arrested, more stuff would go up online. He said a friend of his would be there to take the money from me. When I asked him how I’d recognize his friend, he just laughed and said the guy would recognize me. I knew then that he’d shown the tape and the images to his friends. But it was worse than that.
“When I got there, the man waiting for me was the same man who’d hit on me at the nightclub.”
Chapter 12
Eric didn’tlike where this was going.
Tears filled her eyes again. “He walked up to me with a mean grin on his face, took the money, then looked me up and down and said he wished he’d had Stewart’s job in this little caper because he would’ve loved to fuck me. I threw up in the bushes.”
Eric felt his teeth grind.
The entire thing had been a setup from the beginning.
“A month or so later, I got an email from Stewart again. It turns out he knew my brother from rugby and had gotten my new email address from him. I clicked on the email, and there was the video again. He said it would go live unless I gave him two million six hundred dollars by the next afternoon.”
“Where did he expect you to get that kind of money?” If someone tried to blackmail Eric, they’d be so screwed.
“That was the exact amount in my trust fund—information he’d gotten from my brother, who has never apologized, by the way.”
What the hell was wrong with her brother?
“Did you pay that asshole again?”
“No. I got angry.”
“Good.”
“I realized it would never end as long as he thought he could get more money from me. I called my father and told him what had happened. He went crazy and shouted at me over the phone.”
Now Eric understood why she wasn’t close with her family—a brother who gave away her private information, a father whose first reaction to a predator committing a crime against her was to yellat her, and a mother who had apparently abandoned her for Italian men. “Didn’t he do anything to help you?”
“Oh, yes, he did—when he finished yelling. He called a friend of his in the district attorney’s office. They called the Chicago police, who worked with me to set up a sting. I took the money to a deli on the Riverwalk like Stewart told me to. This time, the woman showed up, the one I’d caught him having sex with at my condo. I was wearing a wire and got her on tape telling me that Stewart’s having sex with me had just been a business transaction. I told her to tell him that I wouldn’t pay them another dime. She said I would do whatever they told me to do. She said I should think of it as a tax on stupid.”