I was none of those things.
I waited until they’d left and I was alone before pushing off the cushion and smoothing down my skirt. I checked my watch and calculated fifteen minutes to eat, then five to leave if my luck held up. It all depended on whether or not Cordelia was occupied when I arrived. That seldom happened. Cordelia deliberately sat facing the door. Sneaking in would require jumper cables and a catsuit.
But I crept out of the parlor, a thief in what should have been my home and rounded the corner at an almost tiptoe. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until a shadow lurched into my path and I choked on the wedge of air caught in my lungs. I staggered to a stop, my body automatically tensing for the blow. My arms crossed over my face even as my whole torso twisted in defense.
“Hey.” It wasn’t David’s voice.
That much I was nearly certain of over the roar of my own terror throbbing between my ears. But that only meant it was someone worse.
Kieran’s golden gaze found mine between the fingers I spread. Their concern was like acid dribbling onto my face, burning away skin and muscle until there was nothing left but my shame. I wanted to snap my fingers closed and keep covered until he went away, but I knew it didn’t work like that. There was nothing left to do, except lower my hands and pray he wouldn’t ask.
“Kieran.” I snuck a peek behind him, half expecting Cordelia to be watching, disgusted, and finding only the empty corridor. I returned to his perfectly poetic features. “What are you doing?”
“I forgot my phone.” That hint of a grin appeared in the subtle lifting of his lips, as if we were sharing a secret. “At least, that’s what I told them.”
I swallowed, and it seemed to echo throughout the entire house. “Why?”
“Because I never got to say hello to you.” Those predatory eyes paralyzed me to the spot. I could almost taste my own heartbeats. “You seemed so intent on blending in with that window. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
I felt warmth in my cheeks. “I wasn’t. I was just...” There was no excuse for my rudeness. Despite the dependency of surviving the evening, I should have said something. “I’m sorry.”
His head cocked to one side. “Why?”
Guilt lowered my chin until my gaze was level with the milky white swirl of his top button. “I should have said hello. It was rude of me.”
“I didn’t mind. It gave me a chance to get you alone.”
I hated that my heart actually missed a beat. I hated that my head got foggy and my thoughts scattered. I hated that he always stood too close, and that he always seemed to know exactly what to say to tip my world into chaos.
“You should go,” I whispered. “They’ll wonder where you are.”
“Come in with me.”
The very idea was grounds for immediate beheading. I couldn’t imagine what possessed him to even suggest such a thing. He had clearly lost his mind.
“No, I can’t.” I flinched when he reached for me. “Please.” I snatched my hand out of the way of his extended fingers and stuffed them behind my back. “Don’t.”
He had absolutely no idea what he was asking. He didn’t understand what a simple act like walking into a room together could mean for me.
The questions.
The consequences.
“Very well.”
I watched him with my lip stapled between my teeth as he turned and left me in the corridor. I counted each erratic heartbeat until his clipped footsteps had faded to nothing.
Only when enough time had passed did I inch my way forward. The doors stood open to the sounds of the family settling down for dinner. They chattered about their day while tugging their chairs under their usual place settings. With only eight spots filled, one half of the table remained morbidly unclaimed, a daunting scenery of crystals and china to a barren wasteland of dark wood.
My spot was at the very end of the lavish display, just before the buttery cloth ended. I was placed next to Alton, who barely glanced up when I slipped into my seat.
“I almost forgot you were still here, Gabrielle.” Cordelia’s purr drifted over the table and smothered the conversation. “Should someone check the silverware?”
All eyes were on me now. I was the center of attention, a frozen deer in headlights. My flight reflexes misfired, torn between running from the room and throwing the bowl of floating tea lights at her face. But I could only sit there, careful not to react.
“When did you arrive, sweetheart?” Mom asked.
“I’m surprised you didn’t hear her from a mile down the road,” Cordelia chimed in for me. “Honestly, isn’t it time for an upgrade?”
My parents didn’t buy me a car for my sixteenth birthday, or ever. My parents didn’t get me a condo after high school. My parents have never given me a platinum, unlimited credit card. Everything I owned from the time I had to sell part of my soul for freedom were things I bought with money I earned. My piece of crap Honda may have been a sore sight next to the glossy sheen of the Bentley and Lamborghini, but it had never failed me.
“My car is fine,” I said evenly.
“Is that pile of rust your car?” Eric broke out in a fit of cackles that his friends quickly followed. “I thought the maid forgot to park in the back again. Does it run?”
“It probably runs better than the six cars you’ve destroyed.”
Kieran’s smooth delivery distracted the crowd. With those few words, everyone forgot about me and went on to talk about Eric’s many misadventures with cars. I knew he’d done it on purpose. I knew I should thank him. But I couldn’t even look at him.
I couldn’t bring myself to see the pity in his eyes.
“Leaving already?”
Cordelia caught me as I was pulling on my coat exactly fifteen minutes later. I don’t know how I missed her approach with the ice picks strapped to her feet, but she was there, standing behind me with her arms folded over her flat belly.
“It’s getting late,” I lied.
She hummed quietly, her eyes shrewd and calculating.
For one panicked moment, I wondered if she knew about Kieran’s earlier lie. I wondered if she was going to strike out and remind me he belonged to her, and I needed to stay away. But she remained loose in her posture. Her eyes were cutting, not cold.
“Pity,” she mused. “I feel like you never stay long enough, except to eat like this is some soup kitchen.”
I fought against the heat rising in my cheeks. “I work Mondays,” was the only lie I could give her that she would understand.
The truth was that I had a training session and that was more important than sitting around hearing about how awful and pathetic I was.
“Yes, well,” she brought her hands together once, shattering the silence of the foyer with the clap. “Why don’t I see if the kitchen can pack you some leftovers? No one here will eat them, and you’re looking a bit thin.”
I’d had a backbone once. I even fought back. I made the mistake of telling Cordelia exactly what I thought of her. It had felt amazing, the best sort of liberation.
A week later, I’d been sent a letter to evict my apartment within the week due to being late on rent three months in a row, breaking my contract. It wasn’t until later that I found out that David had bought the building. I fought against it, but the court sided with him and I’d spent Christmas in my car, parked behind a strip mall with every piece of clothing I owned pulled on. It was a lesson learned the hard way. It was easier to let Cordelia get it all off her chest. It was one hour out of one day. It wasn’t worth fighting back, especially since David owned my new apartment.
“I’m okay. Thank you.”
“Are you leaving, Gabrielle?” Mom appeared behind Cordelia, only mildly tipsy from the four glasses of wine she’d consumed over the course of the meal. “We barely got to talk to you.”
I never knew what to make of Marcella, except that she was young and beautiful, and damaged. I might have been the only one to see that part. Maybe because I
was broken myself. But I saw the pain in her eyes when she thought no one was watching. I saw longing I never understood. She claimed to love David, and maybe she did. She definitely loved him a whole lot more than she loved me. And I was okay with that. He had the money. I didn’t. All she had to do was remain young, beautiful, and oblivious.
“The food was delicious, Mom.” I gave her a small smile. “Thank you, but I have work—”
“Right on time.” David stepped into view, sucking every ounce of warmth from the air. “We can almost set our watches to you, Gabrielle.”
“Supper’s over when Gabrielle makes her big escape attempt,” Cordelia chimed in, her smile reminding me of a shark.
“Both of you stop it,” Mom scolded. “If Gabrielle wants to leave...”
“It’s just convenient she always leaves right after we’ve finished feeding her,” David interrupted. “I can’t help feeling used, like I’m giving her something she hasn’t earned.”
I wanted to vomit.
It was rising up into my throat with every second that passed and he didn’t blink. His threat hung in the air, a demon visible only to me as it reached into my chest and squeezed my heart.
Earned.
It was fouler than the word rape and degrading in a way that bordered on sinister. Such a simple, harmless phrase and yet the mere whisper of it tore the very ground out from beneath me.
My whole life was based on that word, based on whether or not I earned new clothes, earned the right to the bathroom, earned my meals. David liked making me work for my basic human rights. He liked reminding me that I had nothing that he did not allow. That I was nothing.
“What matters is that she came,” Mom protested.
“I actually have to go as well.” Kieran stepped out of the parlor and joined the growing group in the foyer, already in his coat. “I have to get to the office.”
While the family immediately forgot all about me and argued with him to stay, I slipped out without them noticing. I got to my car at an unsteady sprint and practically threw myself behind the wheel. Metal jingled wildly with my reckless stabbing at the ignition. I choked on a sob when I couldn’t find the insert for the key. Everything kept wavering behind the wall of tears I couldn’t blink back.
“Please!” I pleaded with the inanimate object.
Victory arrived when I found the slot and twisted the engine to life. I caught a glimpse of the front door opening and Kieran emerging, but I was already ripping out of the driveway as if Satan himself were descending on me.
All the way home, I replayed David’s words, his close handed comment and wondered what it meant. Would he start making me earn Sunday nights? Nights I didn’t even want. What would he ask for? How much would it cost me? The sad part was that he didn’t want money. The price was usually me, or some part of me that he wanted. He’d already taken everything, except one.
The one thing I had always refused to give.
The thing I would never give.
I drove to my apartment in a state of paralyzed daze and let myself in. The cramped one bedroom overlooking a dead field was the best I could afford. It wasn’t too bad once the crack heads, hookers, dealers, and pimps were ignored. I kept to myself and kept my head down, which had so far worked for everyone.
I tossed my keys into the chipped fruit bowl that hadn’t seen fruit in a damn long time and stepped deeper into my little corner of the world, my piece of sanctuary. It definitely wasn’t much to look at with its mismatched furniture I’d found in thrift shops and street corners and its single window. The solitary pullout sofa took up most of the living room and inched into what was supposed to be the dining area. It faced the multitude of various bookshelves taking up the walls. There were no computers, no TV. I had a record player set up on one shelf next to a whole row of records that I couldn’t play; the walls were paper thin, and crackheads hated being disturbed at any hour.
But I seldom had time for music anyway. If I wasn’t working, I was at school. But with the gallery closed, I was at the Black Lotus getting trained on how to properly please men by some of the top paid escorts in the service.
They didn’t use the word escorts or prostitutes. Men and women weren’t paid to sleep with clients, because even in this century, it was illegal. We were paid to provide companion services. What we did during that hour was entirely up to us, but the implication was clear — men paid extremely well to be ... comforted. And we were paid to make sure they kept coming back.
Louisa, my trainer, was a stunning woman in her sixties who always reminded me of a black and white starlet. Every time I met her, she was draped in diamonds and silk, and her hair was immaculately styled around a face painted with a heavy hand of someone fighting back the clock. I think it was because of this reason she was unable to fully open her eyelids, why they always seemed to be half-mast like she was seconds away from drifting off. But she would sweep into the room the way theater people swept onto the stage, with a dramatic poise that would have been eyeroll worthy if it didn’t suit her.
She was all drama and flare.
But she knew her stuff. She’d been in the business since the age of eighteen and retired at thirty-five with enough of a nest egg to live comfortably for the remainder of her life. The training, she said, was her way of not getting rusty. I think it was because it was all she knew and she missed it. Nevertheless, she’d become invaluable to my learning, which consisted mainly of posture. She refused to teach me any of the sex moves, because men want their virgins inexperienced.
I hated that. I hated going into a strange room with a strange person blind. I tried to do my own research at the campus library, but all the positions and techniques made my insides hurt. They terrified me enough to almost want to back out.
But I needed the money. The loan Hans had given me six weeks ago was nearly gone, most of it spent on rent and bills. I would need more if I wanted to keep living and going to school. But more than both, I needed that money to escape.
I would run straight after graduation, before I had to fulfill the remainder of my promise. That money would set me up somewhere nice, somewhere David couldn’t find me. It would cover my new identity and a plane ticket to the furthest corner of the world.
That was the plan nothing would deter me from. Not even Kieran Kincaid.
I undressed and neatly hung my dress up in the closet. Everything else was tossed into the hamper. Naked, I padded into the bathroom, disgusted with how that place always left my skin feeling dirty. Touched. Violated to the point where only scalding hot water was my salvation.
The tub filled while I watched. Steam coiled off the clear surface in thick tendrils. It was every drop of hot water the boilers in the building contained. It barely filled halfway, but it would suffice. I added just enough cold not to scar my skin. Then I set the timer on my phone and stepped inside.
The pain was astronomical, but the nerves beneath were too accustomed to the ritual to properly bypass the numbness. I nearly felt nothing, but the soothing relief that quickly followed as every speckle of David and that prison burned off me, washed out of me. I would have set myself on fire if I could stomach that level of pain just to be free.
I closed my eyes and counted every heartbeat, every breath as my brain sent warnings sparking through the rest of me to get out. Needles prickled along every inch of me, red, hot daggers cutting and stabbing. I just had to wait two minutes. The exact length of time to properly disinfect.
The alarm jingled exactly two minutes in. I let it buzz for several more seconds before pushing to my feet. Water droplets drizzled off me back into the tub, little raindrops that sounded almost melodious in the muggy silence. They stopped when I stepped out. The drops were muffled hitting the mat.
Swaddled in a towel, I made my way back into the bedroom. I redressed in a long t-shirt, checked the nightlight next to my bed, and climbed beneath the sheets. The cool fabric was agony rubbing my agitated flesh, but I burrowed in and closed my eyes.
&
nbsp; MORNING CAME WITH AN abruptness I could never understand. It always seemed to pop up out of nowhere after only mere seconds of me closing my eyes. There never seemed to be enough night, even though the darkness terrified me and was the reason I needed a nightlight at the age of twenty-two.
No, not the darkness. It was what would creep into my room, into my bed that I couldn’t handle. It was being blind, powerless when the door creaked open in the wee hours of the night, but it was better than being in the light, being awake, seeing everything. It was a double-edged sword that threatened to destroy me either way.
But I wasn’t a child anymore and I wasn’t in that house. I only had eight more months of my darkness. Eight more months and it would all be over. I survived this long. I could survive a bit more.
Resolved in my decision, I pushed out of bed and prepared for the day. I gathered my things, grabbed my keys, and left the apartment.
The training house was a warehouse in the middle of nowhere with plenty of parking spots. It was never full so I wasn’t sure if that was because there weren’t many girls, or if we were all given different times. During my six weeks, I hadn’t encountered anyone other than Hans and Louisa. Maybe it was an anonymity thing. If it was, I certainly appreciated it. I wasn’t sure I could meet another person’s eye in that place.
The entry had been crafted into multiple rooms and stages, each one catering to a different type of training. There were a few I flat out refused when Hans originally gave me the tour. The ones with the red walls and medieval contraptions sitting like hulking monsters in the corners. There were others painted pink with frilly beds and stuffed animals. Some were concrete walls and a drain in the middle of the floor. Mine was simpler than all that. Mine was a bed and a cushioned bench. Nothing ominous or terrifying about it.
Hans met me just inside the doors with his clipboard. He mutely looked me over and scribbled something down.
“Your auction day is coming up,” he told me simply, lowering his arms. “Our page has gotten a lot of views so I know it will be a big hit.” He offered me a crooked grin. “Not many virgins volunteer.”
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