Daddy Issues Read online

  Chapter One

  “You want us to go where and do what?” I stared at my Cap­tain in dis­be­lief.

  He gave a long suf­fer­ing sigh and ran a hand through his thin­ning hair.

  “It’s called “the In­sti­tute,” Sug­ar­baker. It’s sup­posed to be a re­sort for wealthy busi­ness­men and their mis­tresses but we have reason to be­lieve there’s more go­ing on there—a lot more.”

  “I know what it is—every­body in Vice has heard of it,” I said, cross­ing my arms. “I just don’t un­der­stand why you want Salt and me to go there.”

  “This In­sti­tute is a place of per­ver­sion—yes?” Viktor Saltanov, my part­ner for the last three years, frowned down at me.

  He was able to look down be­cause, even though he was sit­ting in the chair we were shar­ing and I was sit­ting much higher on the arm of it, he was still con­sid­er­ably taller. It was a dis­par­ity I was used to. I’m pretty small—5’1 in my socks. My part­ner, on the other hand, is—put­ting it mildly—huge. Salt is 6’6 with a weight­lifter’s physique. They didn’t call him the Rus­sian bull around the de­part­ment for noth­ing. Now he raised one eye­brow at me, his ice blue eyes filled with ques­tions.

  I snorted. “Per­ver­ted is put­ting it mildly if even half of what I’ve heard is true.”

  “It may be,” Cap­tain Douglas said. “But we’re pretty sure it’s where this new sup­ply of Please is com­ing from.”

  “Please?” Salt frowned again.

  “You know…” I el­bowed him in one mus­cu­lar shoulder. “That new de­signer drug that’s sud­denly all over the place—‘Please, Daddy.’ Please for short.”

  ‘Please Daddy’ also known as ‘Touch me, Daddy,’ in some circles was that rarest of drugs—an aph­ro­dis­iac that ac­tu­ally worked. It was sup­posed to give the user un­quench­able sexual ap­pet­ites. Un­for­tu­nately, it also had some nasty side ef­fects—put­ting it bluntly, the user of­ten felt they had to have sex or die after con­sum­ing it. And in some cases, they ac­tu­ally did die. Please had some weird side ef­fects that weren’t com­pletely un­der­stood yet—which didn’t stop any­one from tak­ing it.

  The in­ev­it­able beg­ging for sex after tak­ing the drug had helped name it. There were videos on the in­ter­net of girls who were ab­so­lutely shame­less after hav­ing a single hit—one es­pe­cially had gone viral. I hadn’t seen it my­self but sup­posedly it was a blonde girl in her twen­ties beg­ging to get fucked after tak­ing a hit of Please.

  “Daddy, please! Oh God, please, Daddy,” she kept say­ing over and over to the man in the video with her. From what I had heard, the man wasn’t really her father but the name has stuck. “Please Daddy” was the hot­test new drug around—and the most deadly.

  Know­ing that Please was spread­ing all over the place was enough to make you sick—it made me sick, any­way. And as a de­tect­ive first class, I would be more than happy to go shut down the sup­ply from its source in any way I could.

  Well…al­most any way.

  “Ex­plain it again,” I said to Cap­tain Douglas. “What do you want us to do at the In­sti­tute?”

  He sighed again, look­ing har­assed and I knew he must be think­ing what a dif­fi­cult bitch I was—not that I cared.

  I have a repu­ta­tion as a ball-breaker around the de­part­ment. But that’s pretty much in­ev­it­able when you’re a fe­male de­tect­ive who’s de­term­ined not to let her lack of a penis stand in the way of pro­fes­sional ad­vance­ment. I don’t back down from any­one and the Cap­tain knows it. I really think that’s why he paired me with Salt to start with—to take me down a peg.

  Born and bred in Mother Rus­sia, Viktor Saltanov is pretty much as macho as they come. But not how we West­ern­ers think of the concept—it’s more of an in­grained per­son­al­ity trait with Rus­sian men. They are just simply more there—more male if you will. At least, that was how Salt seemed to me.

  Right from the start, I thought my new part­ner was go­ing to be trouble. He was al­ways do­ing things like open­ing doors, pulling out chairs, help­ing me into my coat, giv­ing me a hand in and out of cars…all those little things that West­ern men used to do but mostly don’t any­more. At least none of the ones I had ever gone out with did them.

  I don’t know why that kind of thing stopped—maybe be­cause so­ci­ety has shif­ted or maybe be­cause fem­in­ists like me have trained it out of men. But for whatever reason, Salt hadn’t got­ten the memo that treat­ing a wo­man like a pre­cious creature un­able to do things for her­self wasn’t done any­more.

  At the be­gin­ning of our part­ner­ship, I fumed si­lently for about a week of this overly de­fer­en­tial and—to my mind—sex­ist treat­ment. But things fi­nally came to a head when we stopped for lunch at my fa­vor­ite res­taur­ant and my part­ner ordered for me—telling the wait­ress ex­actly what to bring me and ex­actly how to make it—be­fore I could even open my mouth or look at the menu.

  “Just what do you think you’re do­ing?” I de­man­ded, after he gave the wait­ress our or­der and she left to go whis­per with her friend.

  I was sure they were talk­ing about Salt. With his black hair, pale blue eyes, and his im­mense size, he was well worth look­ing at. He also has an air of quiet au­thor­ity that acts like cat­nip on a cer­tain type of wo­man—a kind of grav­ity that al­most never lifts. I think it’s be­cause he smiles very rarely, which is not be­cause he’s un­happy as I ini­tially thought—it’s just not done where he comes from. He once told me there is a Rus­sian pro­verb—‘a man who smiles con­stantly is one step from be­ing a fool.’ And you can call Salt what you want but he’s no fool—he ac­tu­ally has a brain in that big, mus­cu­lar body. You ought to see him play chess—I’ve never beaten him, not once, and I was on the chess team briefly in high school.

  But back to the dis­astrous lunch.

  “Why did you or­der for me?” I asked him, well and truly pissed.

  He shrugged, look­ing mildly sur­prised.

  “Is what you al­ways or­der.”

  “Yes, but what if I wanted some­thing dif­fer­ent?”

  “Then you should have told me. I would or­der it for you,” he replied calmly.

  “You don’t get it,” I sputtered, get­ting an­grier than ever. “I like to or­der for my­self! And I like get­ting my own door and pulling out my own chair and put­ting on my own coat…all this weird ‘I’m such a gen­tle­man’ bull­shit you’ve got go­ing on is wasted on me! I’m your part­ner—not some date you’re try­ing to im­press so you can get laid. So stop it.”

  Salt had looked more than mildly sur­prised at my out­burst.

  “But as you have poin­ted out, you are my part­ner,” he said reas­on­ably. “So I must take care of you.”

  “Would you hold open the door for an­other guy? Would you or­der his lunch for him?” I de­man­ded.

  “Of course not.” Salt gave a rare laugh, as though it was a ri­dicu­lous idea. “But you are fe­male, Andi. So I take care of you.”

  “Why…you…you chau­vin­istic…miso­gyn­istic…as­shole!”

  Salt’s face darkened.

  “I may still have too much Rus­sian ac­cent but my Eng­lish com­pre­hen­sion is quite good. I know the mean­ing of these words, Andi—I am not these things.”

  “How are you not?” I de­man­ded. “You just ad­mit­ted that you treat me dif­fer­ently be­cause I’m fe­male. That’s the very defin­i­tion of a chau­vin­ist.”

  “You don’t un­der­stand…” He leaned for­ward and put a hand on mine though I don’t know how he dared touch me when I was so ob­vi­ously pissed off. “Yes, I treat you dif­fer­ently,”