Vicious Carousel (Suncoast Society #25)(34)

Kenny stared at the front door for a moment in confusion, then looked at Betsy. “Wow.”

Betsy smiled, and for the first time since Saturday night, it looked real, not forced. “Wow is right. In the good ways.”





In the back of Betsy’s mind, however, she still harbored a lot of anxiety over what potential landmines still lurked out there. Tony stopped by later that evening to return her laptop after Nolan had come home and they’d already eaten dinner.

Tony and another friend, Mike, had thoroughly gone over the machine, combed through all of Jack’s online accounts, and deleted every shred of evidence Jack had on her that they could find. Pictures, e-mails, anything that remotely had to do with her. They printed out damning information that outlined some of his plans for her and getting her under his control. Then they went in, after screencapping everything, and either deleted the accounts or changed the passwords, secret questions, and contact information so there was no way Jack could gain control of them again. Tony and Mike now had full control of them.

The only things they left intact were Jack’s bank account, his cellphone account, and his utilities accounts.

Not that Jack would be able to pay his bills anyway while sitting in jail.

And they’d deleted his primary e-mail account as well, so he wouldn’t be able to use it to log back into those accounts unless he remembered his passwords to them.

Betsy wouldn’t let the fact that Jack had taken the computer and used it—a computer she’d originally bought with her own money before meeting him—deter her from using it now. Tony had wiped Jack’s presence from it and restored it to a date just before she’d handed it over to Jack.

It was like he’d never had his slimy hands on it in the first place.

And, lucky for her, Jack had not deleted her e-mail account like she’d thought he had. He’d only changed the password, which Tony had been able to retrieve since Jack had set his e-mail address as the backup. Tony reset it, as well as her Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Tony showed her how to add the new Gmail account she’d created on her phone to her existing Gmail account, so she could receive those e-mails in the same account, as well as get her old Gmail e-mails on her phone.

It felt like a chunk of her had been restored. A chunk of her that Jack had desperately tried to erase in his attempts to completely own her.

“Can I set up a new FetLife account?” she asked. They’d found hers, deactivated by Jack, and reactivated it for her.

They’d changed Jack’s account, not wanting to deactivate it yet until they’d gone through and screencapped all the evidence of his contacts with other submissives, both in Florida and in Michigan. Tony and Ross wanted to contact the people to let them know about Jack’s arrest in case they had stories of their own they wanted to tell.

Or perhaps charges they wanted to file.

And they delinked him from her relationship-wise, and her from him.

They’d also found out he’d been actively talking to two other subs on FetLife within the past few weeks, messages that indicated he might have been trying to groom them to be his next slaves despite having Betsy chained in his apartment.

Tony had written to them from his own account, with the conversations copied and pasted into his messages to them, so they knew he wasn’t just faking when he warned them off Jack and about the close brush they’d had with an abusive asshat.

“That’s up to you,” Tony said. “I suggest only friending people you actually know in person. I also suggest sending people private messages when you friend them, to tell them who you are and why your new identity needs to be kept secret. I definitely would not use your old account. I would change the screen name and hold onto it, if you wanted, but the URL and user number doesn’t change if you do that. Use the new one for your new activity just in case Jack has a way of finding out your old one.”

She looked to Nolan and Kenny. “What do you think?”

Kenny held up his hands. “That’s up to you.”

“I miss being able to keep in touch with my friends,” she said.

“I don’t blame you,” Nolan replied.

She thought about it. “Obviously, no face pics.”

Tony smiled. “To quote Tilly, duh.”

“I can say I’m in Tampa or something, not Sarasota.”

“Again, that’s wise,” Tony said. “Or, I hear there’s a massive kinky population in Antarctica these days.” He smiled.





Chapter Twelve


Tuesday morning, after the men left for work, Tilly got Betsy up and moving and into the shower, where Betsy was actually able to shave more of her legs by herself before asking for Tilly’s help.

Tilly made her get dressed in the same outfit she’d worn the afternoon before, since it’d only been worn for a couple of hours. Then they sat at the dining room table in front of Betsy’s laptop and started her online job search.

Plus Betsy e-mailed her resume, and the letter of recommendation from her former employer, to Kenny’s mom.

By lunchtime, Betsy had to admit despite physically feeling like crap, mentally it felt like she’d tipped her head sideways and a literal ton of cobwebs and dust and debris had fallen out her ear, leaving nothing behind in her skull but a clean, blank slate.