When the weekend rolled around, Sawyer felt animated despite Sonya’s refusal to go to the club. He held on to the hope that she would soon change her mind. His heart ached at the thought of continuing his journey without her, but he was prepared to do it, no matter how heartbreaking the thought was. He had to. He owed it to himself to explore this part of his life.

New things were on the horizon for him. Even with the possibility of facing a future without Sonya, he couldn’t help feeling optimistic. The last time he had felt this energized was when met Sonya. Before that, it had been years.

He owed Isabel a big thanks for everything she had brought about. Namely the changes she had inspired in Dylan that in turn made him discuss his love for her and his lifestyle choices. It was strange to think of the Dylan before and the Dylan after Isabel. It was two completely different men. He wondered if Dylan realized that.

Also, he owed her a great debt for introducing him to Sonya. Although things hadn’t worked out the way either of them had wanted, Sonya had brought him emotionally back to life and awakened the feelings he had buried alongside his wife.

A gift was definitely in order to convey his deep gratitude. The image of her body hanging from the suspension rig flashed in his mind. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her too badly the previous day when he whipped her. He reminded himself to ask her when he saw her.

Sawyer arrived to work later than usual after stopping to get something for Isabel and found Dylan looking more stressed than usual.

“What’s the problem?”

Looking up from his desk, Dylan’s eyes flickered with annoyance. “You don’t want to know. I knew it was too good to be true,” he commented somberly.

“What is it now?”

“Someone is contesting the disbursement of Emilio’s estate. They want an investigation into his death.”

Sawyer frowned with cold fury. Emilio Ibanez. Again. Even dead he was wreaking havoc on their lives. After his death, it had come out that he surprisingly had no will and so all money and property was to be released to his only living family member, Isabel. The amount his sizable estate was worth was staggering, in the hundreds of millions.

Sawyer quickly became irritated. “Who?”

“A business partner. Fuck, Morrison. We don’t need this kind of stress. Not with us trying…” he snapped his mouth closed and cut his statement short as if he had inadvertently spoken.

“Trying to what?”

The look on Dylan’s face was intense, as if he were holding onto a secret. He shook his head and stood, moving towards the large bank of windows and gazing out at the Denver cityscape. Something was obviously eating at Dylan, but he was avoiding talking or thinking about having to deal with the shit that was about to go down.

“Tell me,” he demanded when Dylan refused to elaborate.

“Trying to get pregnant,” he whispered.

Sawyer stumbled backwards towards the large chair in front of Dylan’s desk and sank into it. He was under the impression Isabel couldn’t have children after the physical abuse she had endured at the hands of her father. Dylan had told him as much. But how? And what the fuck?

“You let me whip Isabel knowing that?” he barked when he got his wind back. Dylan swung around to face Sawyer with an astonished look on his face. “And you? You whipped her, too. What the fuck were you thinking, Young?”

“Calm down. There was no chance of any harm being done. Don’t you think we’ve done our homework about that? Jesus, give us some credit,” Dylan responded defensively with a haughty toss of his head. “And I wouldn’t have allowed to you to do anything that would seriously hurt her,” he added.

Sawyer felt slightly better, but not much. The fact was he still felt nauseous at the thought of lashing Isabel with even the remote possibility of her being pregnant. “I thought she couldn’t conceive,” he forced himself to say.

“She couldn’t, but she underwent extensive fertility treatments and surgery, and we’ve been really lucky.”

One corner of Dylan’s mouth twisted upward and he was suddenly beaming, but Sawyer was hurt he was the last to know.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“In case… you know… anything should go wrong.”

That was understandable but it still didn’t alleviate the sting. Fucking, Emilio Ibanez; he always had the worst timing to rear his cruel head. Though in all honesty, Sawyer wasn’t worried about the investigation. He had confidence in his cleaning skills and knew a probe of Emilio’s death wouldn’t yield anything of great value. The only thing he dreaded was that the news media would be all over it.

After Isabel’s father had died and everything came out about his past and abuse of Isabel, the media storm around them had been intense and stressful. It had only recently started to die down, and now this bullshit would only renew the public’s interest in the couple. No doubt the sexually explicit videos of them that were leaked would resurface again and make their rounds as well.

Dylan had been Denver’s Golden Boy and most eligible bachelor for years. He had piqued the public’s interest and made his way into the City’s Heart when he was orphaned at 14 after his wealthy and respected parents were heinously murdered. They took even more interest in him when, at the age of 16, he had been emancipated as an adult and was recruited by the NSA at age 17 after hacking into several government agencies.

But people were fickle and the community had turned against him when they had found out about his sexual proclivities and taste for sadism. Luckily, his business reputation preceded him and wasn’t affected, but the exposure, along with everything else that had happened at the hands of Isabel’s father had taken its toll on the couple. Sawyer had done what he could to help them out the only way he knew how – by protecting them from further threats. He wished he could’ve done more, like shielding them entirely from the harsh scrutiny of the media. Everything had spiraled so far out of control, all any of them could do was put their heads between their legs and wait for the tempest to pass.

With his eyes downcast, Dylan sat on the edge of his desk, scanning the floor. His muscular shoulders heaved with his breathing and he shook his head but remained quiet. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and troubled.

“Fuck.”

“I know you won’t listen to me, but you really have nothing to worry about. The powers that be won’t find anything,” Sawyer spoke with cool authority.

Dylan’s eyes shot up to his. Squaring his shoulders, he cleared his throat. “I’m not doubting your abilities, Morrison; I just want to make that clear.”

He stood in response and slapped Dylan on the back, a hint of humor touching his mouth and dark eyes. “Of course you’re not. You know better than that, don’t you?”

Arching a sarcastic eyebrow at Sawyer, Dylan scoffed, “One day of training and you think you’re all that?”

“I’ve always been ‘all that,’ Son, or have you forgotten Guam?” he snickered low and throaty.

Dylan rose from his chair and the two tall, broad-shouldered and solid alpha men stood eye-to-eye, glaring at each other before both bursting into laughter. Sawyer was only six years older than Dylan, but he had always felt like a father-figure or older brother to him.

“Fucking, Guam. How could I ever forget? Damn, Morrison, we’ve been through some jacked up shit together, haven’t we? How old was I - twenty?”

“I don’t recall how old you were, but I do remember you being smug as hell. I’ll never forget your face during our first firefight when I made my first kill in front of you. I thought you were going to shit your pants.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure I did,” Dylan chuckled, walking around to the back of his desk.

Sawyer grinned thinking about their first outing together. It was the summer of 2002 and the heat and humidity were unbearable when they first met in Guam. Dylan was working for the NSA and Sawyer, the CIA. The mission was a joint agency effort to capture a group of suspected foreign terrorists and one of Dylan’s first time out as a field agent. He was a cocky little-shit-rookie, but by far the smartest man Sawyer had ever met. Who the hell was he kidding, Dylan was no man then. He was merely a boy pretending to be a man.

They bonded over the incident and kept in touch over the years. Having no siblings or family of his own, he had always felt an inexplicable sense of responsibility for Dylan and took him under his wing, each of them sharing the knowledge and skills that they learned over the years.

Sawyer was also orphaned at a young and impressionable age and so he felt a connection with him.  They had grown up in completely different environments – Young surrounded by wealth and Sawyer’s early years in a lower/middle-class home in Baltimore. But it made no difference; they were both survivors with dark and tortuous pasts. He knew all of Dylan’s dark secrets, even those about his parents’ death, and in turn, he had shared his unpleasant past with Dylan. They were joined at the hip so-to-speak and there was no other person in the world that he trusted more.

After Sawyer’s parents had died in a tragic car accident when he was six years old, he was transferred to an orphanage in Phoenix and lived the remainder of his youth in and out of various foster homes throughout Arizona. He had been exposed to every kind of piece of shit there was imaginable, including bullies, pedophiles, drug dealers and crack-whores, but he came out stronger for it and managed to fight off every one of them on his own and without the help of anyone. It was his cold detachment, strong self-preservation skills, and driving intelligence that had garnered him a job with the CIA and made him such a good field agent and assassin.

He had felt tremendous pride when Dylan had ventured out on his own and opened his own national security business, and felt an even greater honor when Dylan had offered him a job, even knowing he had been disavowed by the CIA for his drinking problems.

The alcohol. Sawyer winced at the memory. It had come after Serena’s death and gotten out of control. Thinking back, he still felt the sting of dishonor for his failures as an agent; a job he took great pride in. Luckily no lives had been lost due to his drinking on the job. If they had, he didn’t dare think about what he might’ve done to himself. He was a wreck back then; miserable, depressed and angry at the world for having taken his beautiful and kind wife in such a cruel way. Fucking cancer.

Sawyer walked back to his office, still thinking about Serena. He hadn’t thought about the details of her death in almost eight years. He had pushed the horrible memories of her leukemia and treatment to the recesses of his mind, not wanting to dredge up how frail and sick she had gotten in her last days, and how sad and fragile his once strong wife looked as she laid in his arms and took her last breath. He had never loved anyone more. She was his first and last true love; his one and only.

He wondered how Sarah’s husband died. Was it an unkind death, too? For her sake, he hoped not. He didn’t know her well, in fact, he didn’t know her at all, but he could sense she had a caring soul. Like Dylan, he had a keen sense of judgment when it came to people and what he sensed about Sarah, he liked very much.

He smiled thinking about Dylan and Isabel being parents when Emilio suddenly came unbidden to his mind. He immediately logged onto his computer and checked into what was going on with his estate. It turned out not only Emilio’s business partner was interested in his money but several people,  though no one else was moving forward legally to contest the disbursement. It was no surprise that Emilio had screwed over so many people and now they were all swarming around like maggots on rotted flesh wanting their share.

Lunch came and went and his thoughts were scattered – Serena, Sarah, Sonya; domination, submission; Isabel and Dylan as parents. His attention was redirected when he received a phone call from an unknown number.

“Mr. Morrison? It’s Sarah. I texted Isabel and she passed your number along to me. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve called you.”

Sawyer was glad to hear her voice. He had been thinking about her all week and looked forward to speaking with her again.

“Not at all. I’ve been thinking about you,” he admitted.

Sarah cleared her throat anxiously. “Have you? Good things, I hope. I’ve been thinking about you as well and about your questions. I’ve had plenty of time to write out my answers and I was hoping we could meet again. There’s a munch planned for tonight and I thought it would be a good opportunity for you to meet some of the other members at the club.”