TANTRIC (Book 3 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 26: Front Men Aren't Legends Yet

Okay, so we had a lot of opinions about the POV's but in the end I had to do what I think serves the story best. This is Leed and Ashlynn's story, so I don't want to get lost in the POV's of TOO many supporting characters, chapter after chapter...  

Important note: I may have added some material to Chapter 24: Front Men Start A Fire after many of you read it. I don't usually add prose after the initial posting, but I realized that I had neglected to fully explore Leed's immediate reaction to seeing Ashlynn's scar. So I added four paragraphs of his thoughts, nearly a full day after the original posting. I actually sent out  a notification, but I may have simply posted the message to my board without pushing the notification to my followers. I'm not sure, but no one commented on it and that's kind of unusual. So in any  case you , if you didn't get my notification about this, or you aren't one of my followers, this is your heads up. You can read the new material by returning to chapter 24, scrolling down to the part where Leed sees the word "WHORE" on the painting--which is pretty easy to find because the word is capitalized and in italics, and the four paragraphs of Leed's thoughts immediately follow. You may want to check that out before his POV chapter here...

The song for this chapter is for Dev, because as always, he sort of...steals the show. The song is Pop Out by Polo G, feat. Lil TJay. It's pretty appropriate..."we pop out at your party/I'm with the gang..."

Leed

I'm sitting, elbows on knees, head down, tapping my phone against my hand.

Every time I try to stand, a big-ass security dude pushes me down and says, "Sorry, Mr. Lawson. I'll lose my job if you put Mr. Morrigan in the hospital."

That's why I'm keeping my head down, eyes on the floor. When I look across the room to where that Morrigan fucker is sitting, I try to stand up. But I don't want to put him in the hospital. I could have done that already, before Riley arrived and put security on me.

I could have broken his arm, when I had it twisted behind him, making him explain the hundreds of proof sheets of Ashlynn I found in his dark room and the photos on his phone of the painted porn that looks mostly like her, a little like Kat.

But I didn't actually damage him, because he was telling me everything.

Almost everything.

He admitted he finished more than three dozen photos of her for an anonymous buyer within two weeks of her returning to LA. Then, the guy wanted him to paint her. Seb claimed he refused to use Ashlynn as an exact model in the scenes, but the hybrid of Ash and Kat is pretty damn close. He claims he doesn't know who the buyer is. He claims he was assured that the buyer doesn't know Ashlynn personally, that he merely saw her on Kat's Instragram and thinks she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Supposedly this buyer wanted the photographs of Ashlynn while he considered commissioning Seb to paint for him. And supposedly, the buyer wanted Ashlynn as the subject merely to admire artwork of her.

I can see in his eyes, Morrigan doesn't believe that.

No, Morrigan knows what he was doing. Painting dark desires in blood, for a sick fuck that's stalking her.

I can feel it in my bones. Whoever this guy is, he's the one that carved her up, or somehow made her cut herself.

So now, I am much less concerned with this Morrigan asshole. Now, I'm only interested in what he hasn't told me.

All I need from him now is three more words.

A name and a city.

I know these three words have to come from the piece of shit across the room. I will demand the whole truth from Ashlynn, and she might tell me parts of it, but I know she will never give me the three words I really need. It's why she's so reluctant to reveal her scars. She doesn't want to tell the story. She doesn't want to name the guy.