But I told my brother out loud, “I really love the idea of turning this project into a longer piece. The history that went into making the two people with the love story we’ve always taken for granted is fascinating. I mean, slavery, dynasties, two major civil wars that still define who their countries are—that’s totally worth exploring for another three years of school.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I couldn’t see Byron, but it sounded like he was rolling his eyes. “My cop show would be way more interesting.”
So no, Byron wasn’t the most encouraging person I could’ve called. That probably would’ve been Lena, who I hadn’t spoken to in years.
But I was grateful to have someone from my old life to talk to at all. I was also grateful to have a project goal that I could complete over the last three years of my marriage sentence.
It was almost beginning to feel as if I’d won. Almost…
“Good idea. I was searching for other things to take away from you.”
Victor’s words from our second anniversary continued to haunt me.
The morning of our seventh anniversary, I woke up and held my breath. I’d transferred another grip of money from the account he’d set up for me. And I was sure this would be the time that Victor would make good on his threat to take away the one thing I truly loved.
But Victor didn’t show up that morning. Or that afternoon. Or even while I was eating dinner. I hadn’t gotten the date wrong. I checked and double-checked and even asked the Amazon device I bought myself as a second graduation gift to make sure it was May 25th.
It got so late that I put on pajamas and crawled into bed.
Maybe he’d gotten caught up with business.
Maybe he’d gotten hurt. He was a Chinese gangster, after all, no matter how many expensive business suits he put on over it.
Or maybe he’d found somebody else. Somebody permanent.
I poked at that last maybe, wanting it to bring me solace. If Victor were booed up, then this would be over. The two guards who took turns sitting outside the house and driving me to school would still be there, but I’d be free of Victor.
Which was what I wanted.
Right? I asked the dark.
Right? I asked my heart.
Right? I asked my restless body.
The dark didn’t answer. And my heart was beating so fast and loud, I couldn’t hear anything it was trying to say to me.
And my body…
It throbbed, not understanding why it hadn’t been thoroughly sexed today. Throbbed to the point that I didn’t think I would be able to fall asleep. Not without…
Sigh. I turned on the nightstand lamp and threw back the covers as I always did when I had trouble sleeping. But I refused to grab my back massager. That big boy was for when I deserved to get off. At the end of long days, filled with work and accomplishment.
I hadn’t done anything but wait all day. So I slipped my hand beneath the band of my panties and punished myself with my fingers.
What was wrong with me? Why did I imagine Victor on top of me? Not like he’s been at any of our past anniversaries. But like that night in Tokyo.
“Victor. Oh, God… Victor.” I groaned his name out loud, imagining his hot breath in my ear as he desperately drove into me on the floor of his apartment.
“Victor…Victor…”
I hadn’t come that time, but thinking of it, thinking of a time when he loved me….
“Victor! Victor! Oh God, Victor!” I came. I came so hard, calling out his name.
And only then was I able to turn off the light and fall asleep.
I woke up with a gasp when a set of hands seized my body without any warning, and I found a shadow looming above me.
The shadow smelled like cologne and alcohol. And it flipped me over on my stomach before I could even think to scream. But even if it had occurred to me to scream, I wouldn’t have. I knew who the shadow was immediately.
Victor.
My monster had shown up for our anniversary, after all.
14
VICTOR
This would be the anniversary when he didn’t go to her. Victor was sure of it.
On the seventh May 25th of their marriage, he put everything in place to maintain his willpower. He, Phantom, and Han decided to throw a party on that date to celebrate a record sales quarter for the high-end baijiu company they’d acquired five years ago. And they invited all of their friends and associates.
They closed down Kuang’s club in Chelsea for the night. Out of deference to Han, no pros were invited. But there were beautiful women on standby, willing to assuage Victor’s every whim and distract him from thoughts of the woman he refused to go to in Rhode Island.
The president of the baijiu brand they’d bought gifted Victor, Phantom, and Han with a 50-year-old bottle of their premium product. And Victor proceeded to get very, very drunk.
So drunk, the world began to spin. So drunk he felt on the verge of passing out when he went to take a piss around…he wasn’t sure what time it was. Late.
He’d probably have to leave the party soon and retreat to his hotel room to sleep all the sorghum liquor off. Even this May 25th detail hadn’t been left to chance. Victor had booked a room in New York, a city three hours away from Providence, just to make sure he wouldn’t go to her before the morning of May 26th.
He had been trying and failing not to go to her for seven years now. Seven years!
Victor thought he’d learned his lesson the second year. And, he’d put in place a promise that he was sure would inspire him to finally acquire some willpower when it came to Dawn.
He couldn’t take her art school away from her until he managed to go one anniversary without visiting her. It should have worked. But no, he’d caved on the third year.
He’d tried and failed not to show up on their anniversary for all four years of her undergrad, rendering the deal he’d made with himself mute (some pun intended).
Or so he’d thought.
His blood had frozen over in early May when he opened up her bank account to find an even larger deduction taken out from RhIDS than the one for her senior year. This time the money was going toward grad school.
The little minx had decided to get an MFA. It seemed to Victor both a challenge and a chance to redeem himself.
An opportunity he would not let slip through his hands this time.
Thus, he teetered into that bathroom, feeling like a winner, despite his inebriated state.
However, standing proved to be difficult, bordering on impossible. He could barely keep his eyes open after pulling himself out for his leak. He swayed dangerously, threatening to topple into sleep right there at the toilet.
He needed something to distract him. So he brought out his phone. He would check the feed just one more time, Victor told himself. Then he would go back out to the party, say goodbye to Han and Phantom, and retire to his hotel room.
Victor rarely made use of his voice. But he laughed out loud with triumphant glee when he saw her on the screen. She had already gone to bed, and her room was completely dark. Problem solved.
Until…
For many years afterward, he wondered what would’ve happened if she had continued to sleep.
If she hadn’t switched on the light, flipped onto her back, and thrown off those covers.
If her hand hadn’t slipped underneath the band of her panties.
If after a few languorous strokes, she hadn’t begun to moan, “Victor. Oh, God… Victor.”
Shock, not 50-year-old baijiu, flushed his body with heat. A few moments ago, he’d been on the verge of passing out. But now, he was completely awake. The formerly soft flesh in his hand became a steel beam as he stared at what was happening on the security camera.
He watched. He watched her on that bed in a place three hours away from where he was now. Her body writhed under her hand, and her face was helpless with need as she moaned his name.
Calling for him.
She was c
alling for him.
And that was all it took.
“Victor!” Han yelled out when he emerged from the bathroom. He was standing with Phantom and held up three stemmed shot glasses filled with the ultra-vintage baijiu they’d been drinking all night.
Victor took the shot from Han but didn’t pause his strides. He threw it back with one scalding gulp and tossed the glass against a black stone column. The resulting shatter seemed to echo what was happening inside of him.
“Victor! Victor! Where you going, cuz?” Phantom yelled after him.
Victor ignored Phantom and all the other people calling out to him as he walked out of the party. And as for his drunken state. Well…
He sobered up during the three-hour taxi ride to her prison.
The night guard came scrambling out of the parked Audi when Victor suddenly came through the gate on foot around 3 AM.
“Boss, you made it,” he called out. “I didn’t think you were going to come this year.”
Victor didn’t answer him, just walked into the house and straight up the stairs. He didn’t stop…
He didn’t stop until he reached her room. Where he flipped her over, fell on top of her, and then savagely buried himself inside of her.
She was already wet. Why was she wet? And why did she moan at his forceful entry, her legs widening and one arm reaching up to cup the back of his head as he began driving into her. Why could he feel her relief as he finally filled her up, the same as if it was his own?
No, his willpower hadn’t been a match for her this anniversary either, just like it hadn’t been for all the others. He rutted on top of her, mindless as an animal.
And she took him, her wet heat squeezing him impossibly tight. Then, she gripped him even tighter when she came with a cry, her body shuddering her release underneath him.
Luckily, his body was pre-programmed. The tingling sensation in his balls cut through the fog of lust to let him know his own release was imminent.
At the last moment, he pulled out. But this was not an act of pride as it had been before. His back caved as his cock spurted, a firehose without any guide.
He came and came for an impossibly long while. And by the time he was finally emptied, he fell onto his back, drained and wrecked—the very opposite of powerful.
Somewhere in the distance, he sensed her tugging on the bed’s top cover. Dragging it from underneath him and tossing it somewhere he couldn’t see before climbing back into the bed with a heavier quilt to cover them both up.
They lay in the dark. Breathing together but no longer touching.
“I was afraid when you didn’t show up today. I was afraid you were…hurt.” Her voice was a soft knife in the pitch black.
Afraid.
The word squeezed around his heart. She’d been worried about him. And he was so defeated, so exhausted. He couldn’t fight it when the old feelings arose.
But then he remembered her sitting on the couch. Her eyes widening as he made his marriage proposal. The way she’d knocked him over with her yes, as if she’d been overjoyed.
It had been a lie. An act orchestrated by her father. She was a good actress, the best he’d ever known. He had to remember that.
Disgusted with himself, he climbed out of bed and left as abruptly as he’d arrived.
And the next day, he didn’t disenroll her from RhIDS, as he’d so maliciously planned.
He’d failed the test for the seventh year in a row. He still didn’t deserve that particularly sweet vengeance.
The eighth year went no better. He made plans to leave the country for the week, somewhere far away, where he couldn’t possibly change his mind within twenty-four hours. But at the last moment, he turned around and called one of his men to come to get him at the airport. Less than an hour later, he stormed into the Providence house. He hadn’t even made it on the plane.
The ninth anniversary found him at her home bright and early, rutting her desperately before she even had a chance to fully wake up.
He kept her in bed all day again for that anniversary, but it still went by too fast. One moment he had just gotten there, and the next, it was May 26th and time to return to his own world.
Their anniversaries always went this way. The 364 days between May 25ths dragged. A slow and steady accumulation of enemies, partners, money, and power. But the day of their anniversary passed in the blink of an eye. Fleeting moments of bitter weakness and sweet lust as he gave in to all the demons and emotions that had destroyed him in the past.
He had thought a decade would be more than enough to overcome this weakness. To overcome Dawn. But here he was.
One more year, he thought as he left the house after his ninth anniversary failure. One more year, and then he would be honor-bound to let her go.
Seven months after Victor’s ninth failure, Kuang invited him to his mansion overlooking Gramercy Park for what the Chinese called the White New Year’s. He was pleased, Kuang told him that January 1st, more than pleased with their partnership. And he was impressed that The Silent Triad had managed to establish themselves as a global organization, with corporations and snakeheads operating out of six of the seven continents in such a short time.
“If I do not watch out, you will soon become more powerful than even the 24K.”
Though he said this in a jovial tone, his eyes were direct and sharp.
“I would like to offer you my daughter. She is in her final year of business school, and I’ve told her she can delay no longer. She had some wild years in her youth. But she has calmed down now. She is very intelligent. I assure you, and she will make for a gentle and beautiful wife. I am hoping that after you two meet, we might plan a wedding for next fall.”
Victor thought about Kuang’s words and the implications of his offer.
Then for the first time in nearly a decade of partnership, Victor raised his hands to say the only thing he had ever directly signed to Kuang.
Han translated after he was finished: “Next fall will be perfect. And I will be ready.
15
DAWN
“I’m sorry, Dawn, but I can’t make any changes to the schedule,” Jacoby Pirelli, the director of the Animation MFA program, told me from behind his super avant-garde desk made entirely out of wires. “As I said at the beginning of the school year, I have sole discretion in picking the thesis presentation dates, and they are all set in stone.”
Yes, he had said that at the beginning of the year. And I’d hoped and prayed all of the first semester that I wouldn’t draw the May 25th slot. But here we were at the beginning of my last semester of grad school, prayers unanswered. Ugh!
I swallowed to clear the way for the colossal whopper I was about to tell. “But that’s my parents’ wedding anniversary. And we already planned a huge party.”
Jacoby lifted his silver eyebrows which somehow managed to be razor thin and bushy at the same time. “Wow, you are a very dedicated daughter. I’m truly impressed. If I remember correctly, you also threw them a very special anniversary party last year. According to the notes left by the head of the Experimental Animation program, that was why you weren’t able to make it to the Group B grad thesis showcase, even though all second years were required to attend.”
My stomach twisted with guilt. But I pressed past it to say, “After all my parents have done for me, it’s the least I could do.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Jacoby answered with a thoughtful look. “It’s just so sad that their anniversary falls on the same day as your grandmother’s funeral and your grandfather’s funeral and your grandmother’s funeral and then your grandfather’s funeral again. It’s a wonder how you seem to be either celebrating or crying on this particular day every single year.”
Dammit, caught! Before this, I’d mostly had to hand in excuses to individual teachers, not the program director, who could easily look at all my past records, including the excuses.
But I was in for more than a few pennies at this point, so I doubl
ed down. “Yes, we’ve suffered a lot of tragedies on this day. That’s why it’s so important to me to make my parents’ wedding anniversary special.”
The mask of faux sympathy dropped from Jacoby’s face, and he regarded me with a stern look. “I’ve scheduled your thesis presentation for May 25th. Be there or be fine with not receiving your MFA because you did not present your thesis on that exact date with the rest of Group B. Good day, Dawn.”
With that, he went back to typing something on his computer, which I guess meant no more arguing. I’d been dismissed.
FML.
I trudged out of Jacoby Pirelli’s office.
“Yeah, Dawn wears a ring on her wedding finger, and she’ll tell you she’s married if you asked her. But I think she’s lying.”
I stopped walking when I heard the voice coming from around the corner where all the grad student lockers were situated. I recognized the voice immediately. It was Elizabeth Ann Margaret, the only other person in our Experimental Animation program who’d attended undergrad with me.
“I’ve never once seen her husband. Not for any of her big presentations, not for social events—he wasn’t even at her graduation ceremony. We once went over to her place for a group project—get this. She lives in this huge house. I snuck upstairs to look at her room. No men’s clothing that I could find. There weren’t even any pictures on the wall. I’m pretty sure she lives there all alone. It’s so sad.”
Have you ever had a person in your life who always smiled in your face but who you could tell secretly hated your guts? Which was fine because you didn’t like them either? For me, that person was Elizabeth Ann Margaret.
She insisted that everybody call her by all three of her first names and only by all three of her first names. But she never mentioned her last name, which was Loge—as in Kenneth Loge, the hacky children’s television producer who made a fortune in the 90s turning out the kind of soulless, cookie-cutter cut-rate animations you can’t get away with these days.
Victor: Her Ruthless Owner: The VICTOR Trilogy Book 2 [50 Loving States, Rhode Island] (Ruthless Triad) Page 10