Dollars (Dollar #2)

by Pepper Winters

  Grabbing Pim’s arm, I dragged her with me as I stormed away.

  I needed to leave before I reneged and decided his death was worth more than my future tasks. I had too much to do before my journey was at an end—too many apologies to utter, too many wrongs to right.

  Walking away was the only thing to do but fuck it pissed me off.

  Selix kept up closer than before, his gaze hopping over the gathered crowd. Men in tatty work clothes, women with blinking children. The public’s disapproval was readable, trying to conclude if I was the bad guy or if the man on his knees was.

  Who to stop, who to question?

  Luckily, deliberation was our friend, and after a few glowers, the welldoers decided to leave well alone.

  We continued down the road with no harassment.

  Pim trotted beside me as my stride lengthened.

  My thoughts were on home—of getting on the water regardless if we weren’t due to leave for another night. I wanted the empty horizon. I wanted freedom from the slime inhabiting the earth.

  Ducking through a pop-up market selling bright fabrics and pungent curries, Pim stumbled on a crumpled water bottle. Her weight landed squarely in my hand where I held her, reminding me she wasn’t physically fit to tear through the streets with no pause.

  Letting her go, I jerked both hands through my hair. “Sorry.” The shakes began—the energy my body conjured to pummel that bastard into smithereens had no violent outlet so it hijacked my nervous system.

  If we weren’t so close to the port, I’d order Selix to run back and grab the car, but the welcoming sight of water glittered up ahead. The urge to sprint consumed me.

  Pim’s gaze fell on a shopping cart full of bronze figurines and touristy paraphernalia.

  The haunted look was back in her eyes. The memory of what she’d been and what could happen again hounding her.

  Screw lunch and mingling with likeminded diners. My appetite was nil. I was sure Pim felt the same.

  Her fingers hovered over a small bronze lantern the size of her thumb.

  The wrinkled shopkeeper smiled with capped teeth and a teal veil over her head. “It’s the genie lamp. Touch it. Rub it. Tell it your secrets.”

  Pim gave me a hesitant look as if she’d been caught breaking a rule. She snatched her hand away, backing from the stall.

  The shopkeeper, sensing a losing sale, held up the figurine, plucking a small wooden bound notebook below it. “This is the wishing book that comes with it. You write in your wishes and rub the lamp, and it comes true.” She leaned across her wares. “Here, take it. All your dreams for only ten dollars.”

  Pimlico stepped away, keeping her head down and body wrapped low. The straightness of her spine from the past week or so together rolled, curving down and down into the question mark of her existence. I’d somehow managed to give her answers enough to trust life and not seek death. And that fucking cocksucker had undone my hard work. I hated that she’d come face-to-face with a man who would pay an exuberant amount of money to do exactly what Alrik had done. That her faith in humanity was once again shattered because where good lived evil did too, and sometimes, it cast a shadow over everything.

  I couldn’t let that bastard undo everything I’d achieved.

  She was mine.

  She owed me.

  Her time was almost up on repaying.

  Pulling out a fifty US dollar, I shoved it at the shopkeeper then scooped up the notebook and genie lamp. “Keep the change.”

  The bronze token was surprisingly heavy as I strode to Pim and captured her elbow. Taking a deep breath, I ignored the heat between us, banked like a small furnace waiting for more fuel.

  “Whatever happened today doesn’t matter. It’s your choice to relive or forget. I can’t do that for you.” Pressing the gift into her hands, I added, “However, perhaps I’ll be your genie. Write down your wishes, silent one. Tell me what I can do to make it right.

  “Who knows what will come true.”

  LIFE DIDN’T SUDDENLY change, even though my heart had.

  It’d slammed back the steel lock, flooded the moat, and cranked up the drawbridge after tentatively tiptoeing into the world Elder promised I would be safe in.

  For a moment, I was able to notice what others did—the sun, the wind, the shopping, the scents of a bustling city.

  But then I’d been slapped in the face by rancid cruelty once again.

  He wanted to buy me.

  He wanted to hurt me like Alrik, Tony, and Monty.

  He has tickets to the same auction I was sold at.

  Bastard!

  Would I never be free to just be me? To be a girl walking down a street without worry of being kidnapped and sold?

  Clutching the bronze genie lamp, I glanced at the wooden book that accompanied it. A wishing book.

  Don’t I already write wishes to No One?

  I sat cross-legged on my bed (even though it hurt my hips) and stroked the notepad to my imaginary friend while eyeing up the wood-bound gift Elder had purchased.

  You don’t write wishes, you write confessions.

  There’s a difference.

  Ever since the awful incident where Elder almost killed yet another man to keep me safe, then brushed off the confrontation and bought me this innocuous figurine, we hadn’t spoken. He’d marched me back to the Phantom with both him and Selix glowering at every shopper and peering into every shadow.

  By the time we boarded, my nerves resembled chewed up spaghetti and Elder was no better. A grunted goodbye was all I earned before he vanished to his quarters, leaving me to dwindle off to mine.

  For the past hour, I’d sat clicking my pen’s nib open and closed, open and closed, trying to decide if I should write a secret to No One or indulge in a wish to Elder.

  Guilt sat heavy at the thought of using Elder’s gift over a lifetime of spilling my soul to No One. But it didn’t stop me from cracking open the wishing book. No One had been there for me in my darkest moments. Perhaps it was time to let Elder be there in my future.

  He was going to kill him.

  My heart wrapped itself up in warm blankets before I recalled his face when the offer of ownership was first discussed.

  He’d contemplated giving me up.

  He’d been both saint and sinner and I hated that. I needed him to be either good or bad, commendable or corrupt. How could I decide what I felt toward him if he was human? Humans weren’t perfect. But I expected Elder to be.

  My pen came down, a whisper of a wish formed, but a loud clanking noise interrupted.

  My head wrenched up, my nerves still shredded into strings thanks to that asshole in Morocco.

  It’s the anchor.

  My heart didn’t listen, whizz-banging in terror.

  We’re leaving.

  Abandoning the wishing book on the bed, I traded the pen for my genie lamp and headed across the suite. By the time I made it to the door and down the corridor to herald the lift, the clunking anchor chain had spindled, and the noise stopped.

  A more familiar rumble followed—the cranking of massive engines waking from mechanical slumber to chug us far away. Away from men with penny-bulging pockets to buy a life to torment.

  Thank God.

  Stepping into the lift, I glowered as the mirrored walls reflected not me but the scene of Elder stripping me yesterday. Instead of the heated fear from him caressing me, my skin crawled.

  Had that been a test?

  Had he pushed me to see if I was ready? For all his talk of not touching me…had he run out of patience?

  When that man asked for my price tag—

  My insides hurt, remembering yet again the way Elder sighed before exploding. For a second, his body language relaxed in relief.

  He lingered over the chance to be rid of me.

  And why shouldn’t he? I was a thorn in his unblemished kingdom, pricking holes into whatever peace he valued.

  He should get rid of me.

  I wanted to get rid of m
e most of the time. Just because I was stuck fighting my way back to health, bound to fixing every fault before I could live again…it didn’t mean Elder was obligated.

  He can do what he wants with me. I’m completely at his mercy.

  More nerves quaked at how flimsy my existence was as I stepped off the elevator onto the top deck and padded barefoot on the polished, silky wood. My fingers never let go of my genie lamp. Elder had bought me clothes and kept me fed, but it was the first thing I’d been given that was frivolous and unnecessary to survival—apart from my origami gifts.

  It’s mine.

  An intense need to keep it close enveloped me. It was such a new possession, but I was in love with it as much as I’d been with my Minnie Mouse watch my dad had given and my murderer had stolen.

  Squinting in the russet aging sun, I spotted him.

  He stood at the front of the yacht. The telltale sweet smoke wisped around his head as he faced out to sea. His back remained taut and tense, his shoulders locked in stress. He didn’t look around as I moved toward the side, drinking in the departing scene of Morocco at sunset.

  The dusty city changed from every-day colours to drenched in orange and sienna. People moved like ants in the distance, and even now, a faint smell of curry and exotic spices carried on the breeze.

  I kept Elder locked in my peripheral, watching but pretending otherwise. I wanted to judge him—to read his thoughts, to understand my stability in his life. Was he rethinking keeping me? After saying no to Dafford, did he think about the possibility of selling me to another who he approved of?

  Navigating the harbour, the captain slowly opened up the engines, speeding us farther and farther from the man who’d reminded me that the world was no longer a safe place, no matter where I lived.

  England, America, Morocco—each was tainted by evil running unrepentant over good. How did anyone stay decent when self-obsession and lawlessness seemed to favour the bold?

  Was that what happened to Elder?

  Had he once been a normal son, brother, and friend—then lost sight of his goodness and embraced bad instead?

  I never moved from my spot on the railing, my fingers warming the genie lamp. Other vessels and tanker ships were our neighbours as we steadily made our way out to sea. As Morocco slowly turned from large cosmopolitan to toy city, I made my first wish.

  I wish to no longer have a dollar value that people can bargain and buy.

  The universe offered no answer, and I placed my elbows on the railing, letting the water world put me in a trance.

  * * * * *

  An hour or so later, stars blanketed the sky and my stomach rumbled for food. Elder’s weed cigarette had long since been smoked and he stalked past my resting spot without a word.

  My skin tickled with rejection. He’d seen me but hadn’t stopped.

  Why?

  What did he mean about being my genie? Did he think he could grant me happiness again? Could he somehow remove the torture and pain associated with sex and leave me normal—so I might run toward rather than away from the electricity between us?

  Trapped by yet more questions, I headed below and entered my suite. There, I found dinner waiting for me on my dining table—pan-fried fish with couscous and a tagine full of roasted vegetables.

  Something inedible also waited, tucked carefully next to aromatic food: a folded masterpiece in the shape of an exquisite dollar rose.

  An origami creation denoting my worth to the printed value of one hundred pennies.

  The contorted money flipped my stomach and made me sad at the same time.

  Whatever had happened between us yesterday—the almost kiss, pickpocketing, and meeting the prince and princess—today had ruined it.

  Knowing without being told I would be undisturbed for the rest of the night, I pushed the dress off my shoulders, stepped from the puddle, and sat down to my meal with my dollar rose.

  Alone.

  * * * * *

  Three days passed.

  They were the worst since Elder had saved me.

  Not because he was cruel or violent, not even because he avoided me and only graced me with tight glances and surly commands to eat, rest, and get out of his way so he could work in peace.

  But because he pulled away from me.

  So much for his comment about being my genie.

  No matter how much I rubbed that little lamp, I received no magical smoke or mystical being ready to listen and deliver.

  He no longer made an effort to ask me questions. He didn’t command me to bring the wooden notebook to him and write replies to things he wanted to know.

  He just stopped caring.

  As if…as if…the thought of doing yet more for me, when he’d seen how totally ruined my mind was, was no longer feasible but stupid—a total waste of time.

  He’d been slapped with alternatives. I wasn’t what he wanted. I could no longer be his crucifix to bear. He might get off on bringing me back from the dead, but he’d never get me to sleep with him willingly. He’d never hear the secrets he wanted to hear.

  Even the sizzling chemistry whenever we were near didn’t have the same pop and crackle.

  His eyes were void of lust. Even though I hated those four letters and the word they depicted, lust was what hummed quietly between us—it was what gave us the glue to keep dancing this strange dance.

  But now…nothing.

  And I knew why.

  He’s going to sell me.

  That’s why he’s waiting. That was why we’d left port—to travel to another city with better prospects for a deal.

  That man had mentioned Hong Kong with connotations of women being used.

  Is that where he’s taking me?

  Elder had fattened me up, increased my strength, and repaired my bodily flaws not for him, but for another. Someone like Alrik who would continue my existence in hell.

  I struggled to breathe.

  My awful, awful suspicions were confirmed when Michaels came to remove the bandage around my hand and checked on my tongue the third day at sea.

  I was on the mend. A healed trinket for sale whenever Elder chose.

  “Your stitches are gone.” Michaels grinned as if this was good not disastrous. “How do you feel?”

  Answering his questions had become easy. Besides, I was distracted by uglier things.

  My body moved without thought. I shrugged. I wouldn’t tell him I physically felt better but mentally I’d stepped ten paces back. I’d locked myself in a doubt-filled cell I couldn’t escape from.

  “You can test it out, you know. It won’t fall off if you speak.” He tilted his head, patience painting his softly freckled face.

  My tongue was no longer swollen. Tender and sore with certain movements but miraculous in how it’d reduced in injury. Being able to lick an ice cream or curl it to blow on hot soup was a blessing.

  Alrik hadn’t stolen my power of speech, after all.

  Not that I would know. I hadn’t attempted to use it.

  I was afraid.

  Petrified.

  If I spoke now, how could I go back to being silent when all of this was gone and the Phantom dropped me in Elder’s wake never to be free again?

  I bowed my head, not looking at Michaels even though he breathed heavily with frustration.

  He patted my healed hand, his eyes dancing over the fading bruises still lingering on my chest. Once again, I sat naked with just a sheet covering me. He’d grown used to my dislike of clothes; he made me feel accepted in a way Elder did not.

  If I was ever going to speak, it would be to Michaels. To this man who understood the struggle I lived with, the struggle inside not outside.

  But that first word would be so precious. I couldn’t just give it away. Give it to Elder to repay him for his generosity, regardless of his end intentions.

  I bit my lip at the thought. Would that stop him from getting rid of me?

  Was it worth the cost?

  Yes.

  No.


  Yes.

  I don’t know.

  Around and around on the merry-go-round of my topsy-turvy thoughts.

  The conundrum kept me silent. The fear that he would sell me kept me mute.

  “You know where I am if you’re ever ready to talk.” Standing, Michaels collected his bag and headed to the door. “You know, if you won’t speak to me, then perhaps it’s time you spoke to him.” He didn’t wait for my nonverbal reply before disappearing out the door.

  * * * * *

  That night, after another lonely dinner, I headed into the bathroom.

  If Elder was going to get rid of me, shouldn’t I attempt to escape? Shouldn’t I do everything I could to change his mind?

  Why was I wasting time doing nothing? Hadn’t I fought my entire life?

  Why am I stopping now when freedom is closer than it’s ever been?

  My depression from the past seventy-two hours dispersed, incinerating under the quick blast of determination. I liked those questions. They didn’t drown me but gave me a ladder to put my head above the tide and think clearly.

  I’d allowed Elder to replace Alrik. I slipped into old patterns of letting him decide my fate.

  Not anymore.

  A terrifying, totally insane plan quickly unravelled in my head.

  Could it work?

  Can I do it?

  My hands shook as I grabbed the genie lamp and squeezed, sending a quick wish.

  I wish to change his mind by any means necessary.

  Dina’s advice from our bathroom chat came back. She spoke of rewarding men for their good deeds. To lavish them with praise that kept them generous and kind because they felt noticed and appreciated.

  Perhaps, Elder needed to be lavished. To be told he meant a lot to me rather than barely tolerated.

  Do it then…

  Do what exactly?

  Sit him down and blurt out a mismatch of condescending praise like I would to a puppy that’d retrieved a saliva-soaked tennis ball? Pat his head and rub his nose and pitch my voice into sickly sweet, hoping such tribute would keep me by his side?

  You have better skills.

  My heart gasped, remembering those skills. Those disgusting talents I’d been forced to adapt to survive.