The Institute, Daddy Issues

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.