Twenty-One

by D. Victoria BonAnno

  Dia rang the doorbell. A silence stretched. Each passing minute twisted her stomach. She rang again. Still nothing. The bouncer had said Demetrius would be home, that he was staying in tonight. She glanced up and noticed a security camera in the upper right corner of the doorway. Did he see her face on some screen in the house? Was he ignoring her like he had her letters? The sorrow of the thought soured to anger. They were family. Demetrius had said it often enough as he snarled at leering drunks who eyed her in crowded bars, as he whispered in her ear while she dozed in his lap. How dare he ignore her? How dare he cut off contact from her, from family, when she needed him most? She had abandoned her wedding for this, for him. She wouldn’t be cast aside as if she were one of the countless scantily clad conquests he had tried to hide from her. No, she deserved answers. She would not be ignored. Dia took the keys she had found in the Magnum, the car that smelled so much like him, and slid the house key into the lock.

  She stepped into a grand marble entryway that bled into a dining room crowded with people. A party. Demetrius had skipped out on that club to host a party? That didn’t sound like him. She approached the crowd, waving her arm.

  “Excuse me!” she said. “I’m sorry to just walk in, but I’m looking…”

  Her voice trailed off as she got a better look at the crowd. There were naked women everywhere, covered in paint with collars around their necks. There were men there, too, some of them also naked, some in black jeans and shirts, painting the women. She caught sight of a raised area, a stage of some kind in front of a large table, where a blonde woman and an older man were talking. A figure lay on the table, covered by a sheet. A hand peeked out from underneath the sheet, limp and lifeless.

  Dia backed away, her heart sinking. She couldn’t process what she was seeing. What was going on? All eyes fell onto her. Everyone looked startled, panicked. She knew from the hair standing up on her neck that she had made a grave mistake.

  “I-I….sorry,” she stuttered, stumbling back to the door. “I’ll just…I-“

  The room burst into motion. The naked women flopped down onto their stomachs, and the entire group of men broke into a run, running for her. Dia sprinted for the door.

  “Stop her!” someone shouted. “Stop!”

  Someone caught Dia around the waist and she screamed, trying to wriggle from their grasp, but it was no use. More hands appeared, clawing at her arms, her legs, dragging her screaming and struggling toward the dining room.

  “Help!” she shrieked, digging her nails into whatever skin she was able to catch. “Let me go!”

  “Sound the alarm!” the blonde woman at the table shouted. “Find Demetrius!”

  Chapter 46

  December 13, 2011

  Demetrius sprung up from the bed, scrambling for his mask on the floor. The alarm hadn’t gone off in four years, with the exception of Chloe’s attempted escape early on. Tripping it meant a true emergency. He retrieved his jeans and rifled through the nightstand for his Beretta.

  Chloe sat on the bed, hugging herself, her eyes wide with terror.

  “Stay here,” Demetrius ordered, and he was out the door and through the study, gun raised, ready for anything.

  He first noticed that the front door was cracked open, letting in the winter air. In the dining room, the slaves were once again on their stomachs, left alone. Their attendants had all gathered in a group, clutching a struggling, screaming figure in white. Abigail and Konri stood a safe distance away with the twins, staring at the commotion in disbelief. Seventeen’s corpse lay on the table. Whomever had come into the house had seen everything.

  Demetrius approached the attendants and their captor, his finger on the trigger. This was a disaster. The person’s screams were female, a vaguely familiar voice. If she was the detective he was supposed to interview with, he was in for trouble. Killing a detective would be the biggest disaster he had ever tried to conceal.

  “Put her down,” he ordered, raising the gun. Detective or Jehovah’s Witness, she had seen everything, and therefore everything was jeopardized. The attendants dropped the woman on her knees and tried to restrain her while keeping out of Demetrius’ way.

  The woman looked up just as Demetrius pointed the gun at her head. Large liquid brown eyes, skin flushed with terror, her pouting lips open as she gasped for breath.

  Demetrius dropped the gun.

  No. No. No.

  He took a step back. The world tilted.

  “Let her go.”

  The attendants did not respond.

  “Let her go!” he snarled. He lunged, wrenching their hands away from her. He shoved them back hard enough to knock a few of them down. Only then did the crowd retreat to a safe distance.

  Dia Belaire sat shaking on the marble floor. Six years had changed her. She was a woman now, her features less girlish. The photos she had sent him with letters did her no justice. She had grown more beautiful than he could have ever imagined. Dia, his sweet girl, in this place. He reached for her instinctively, folding her into his arms, and the scent of jasmine permeated his mask for one brief ecstatic moment. Dia screamed again, shoved her little hands against his chest until he dropped her.

  “Get away!” she screamed. “Get away from me!”

  She scrambled for the door. Demetrius followed her, unable to speak, unable to think. The attendants moved to stop her and he could only utter a dangerous, unintelligible growl to keep them at bay. He caught her outside by the arm.

  “Dia,” his voice was raw. “Dia, stop. Please-“

  Tears cut the roses in her cheeks. She ripped her arm away from him and stared at him full in the face. Her rage and terror cut him to the core.

  “Stay away from me!” He hadn’t seen her so distraught since Dede’s death. “What is this? What are you?”

  She stumbled toward a blue Honda parked beside his car, and he knew if she got into that car…he couldn’t even finish the thought. He caught her again, held her against his chest, squeezed her when she struggled to get away from him. Dia shrieked again, slapping and scratching at him. For a moment she weakened, collapsing against his chest and melting into his arms, and he held her as she sobbed, kissing her forehead through his mask, her hair. He held onto the moment as long as he could before she tore herself from him and backed away.

  “What have you become?” she cried. She drew further and further away. Demetrius couldn’t follow. He couldn’t move. She opened her mouth to speak again, her sweet lips trembling, but she turned and ran in the other direction. As her car sped away with squealing tires, Demetrius stood where he had held her, clinging to the vanishing scent of jasmine.

  Chapter 47

  December 16, 2011

  Demetrius couldn’t stand the sight of Abigail’s face, that sardonic smile she used to mask her discomfort. She didn’t want to be alone with him, and he didn’t blame her. He wanted nothing more than to throw her into the bedroom wall. She called herself a Mistress and though he could not deny her skills no matter how much she irritated him, she was not as talented as she believed herself to be. If she weren’t his business partner…oh, to give her the smallest taste of what he did to his slaves. She would break in a week, he guaranteed it.

  The thought of Dia came again and his rage gave way to sharp, incomprehensible pain.

  “What have you become?”

  Oh, my sweet girl. I’ve always been this. You just didn’t know. I made sure you didn’t know.

  The way she looked at him…the expression he’d seen on countless faces of slaves, prostitutes, women foolish enough to take him home, on her face…what little shreds he had left of humanity died in that moment. He had died in that moment.

  Farewell, happy fields, where joy forever dwells…

  Abigail was talking again. He couldn’t have cared less. To hell with business. To hell with the name he had built for himself. Nothing mattered. He had been numb to it before and he was numb to it now. He had enough money to live three comfortable lifetimes. He had no need
to continue this. But what else was there for him, especially now?

  “We need to decide what to do with Seventeen’s body,” said Abigail. “It’s been on ice in the kitchen since you let that…well, since you locked yourself away.”

  She reached over the electric piano that stood between them and touched his hand. He didn’t realize he had stopped playing idle melodies in a feeble attempt to quiet his mind. Her hand on his disgusted him. He pulled away.

  “Burn it,” he muttered. “Like always.”

  Abigail came around to stand beside the piano bench, but he cut her a look that sent her a step back. He barely tolerated her incessant pawing in front of the buyers’ cameras, her kisses and caresses, as if he were one of her lovers. He would not tolerate it at all now, alone and away from those for whom he pretended to enjoy her company. She sighed, masking her nerves with folded arms and an impatient toss of her hair. Her clenched fingers betrayed her. But Demetrius didn’t care. He wanted her gone. He wanted them all gone.

  “D,” Abigail purred, her voice saccharine and sickening as if she were charming a buyer. “We’ve lost two slaves this season, and they were our highest predicted sellers. But Konri and I know we can salvage the season. Konri is ready to ship the body to a contact of his in a mortuary. He can embalm her-“

  “What’s the point of that, Abigail?” Demetrius snapped. He pressed his fingers into the keys, straying into a melody somewhere in the middle of Beethoven’s Ghost, an old favourite. Abigail was obviously uncomfortable, but she always recovered quickly from his aggression, since he couldn’t harm a business partner. Once more he felt the savage urge to break her sense of security, to show her that the only thing keeping her from the very worst of him was their partnership.

  “Dr. Ghede is very interested in her,” she said. “I know you refuse to do business with him, but D, he’s willing to pay quite a bit for the body. I think I can talk him up to maybe-”

  “Fine,” Demetrius muttered. “Do it.”

  Abigail didn’t move. He didn’t have to look at her to read her shock. She had expected some argument. Dr. Ghede was blacklisted because he killed the slaves he purchased. It was a waste of time to seize, break, and train a slave that ended up strangled a couple of weeks after the auction.

  “Seventeen is already dead,” he said. “So do it.”

  Abigail smiled. “We’ll get it done. We’ll ship her out around auction time.”

  She circled behind him, and he felt her eyes on him like the pressure of a mosquito buzzing by his ear. She leaned against him, brushing her breasts against his bare back. The stench of her too-sweet perfume permeated his mask.

  “Come back to us, Demetrius,” she murmured, putting a forced purr in her words. Her lips grazed his ear. “We need you. You haven’t been yourself. Ever since you took that gir-“

  Demetrius shot up from the piano bench and whirled around to face Abigail. She sprung back as if expecting a blow. Her so carefully constructed image crumbled for a moment. His grin behind the mask was a fierce baring of teeth.

  “Get out.”

  Abigail stood straighter, rebuilding that lush, sensual persona as he watched. She turned, deliberately showing her back to him, but that compensation was pointless. He had already seen her fear.

  “See you at the auction, darling,” she said over her shoulder.

  Demetrius turned back to the piano, burning with savage satisfaction. He held on to it for as long as he could, until the image of Dia’s terror eclipsed Abigail’s fleeting moment of insecurity, and he sank into darkness once more.

  Chapter 48

  December 18, 2011

  Chloe was surprised to see Gabe come through the door of the suite. In the past few days, only Three had come up at her scheduled times to bathe, groom, and feed her. In the past, isolations like this had been maddening, but this time she had not been bound or thrown in the cage. The twins had seen her peeking through the study at the commotion, watching Demetrius with the woman who had broken into the Manor, and had taken her upstairs. Konri had come up to examine her. She had been terrified to be alone with the man who had tried to kill her. But he had given her more antihistamines and a few dark words, “Tell him and you die.” Chloe had seen the look in his eyes as he had watched her struggle to breathe. There was no doubt in her mind that he would keep his word. He left and she was alone, filling the time sleeping, doing yoga, and waiting for Three’s silent but welcome company.

  Where was Demetrius? She obsessed over their last encounter. His mutilated face haunted her whether she was asleep or awake. His words echoed in her head as if they played over the loudspeakers hidden around the suite. Did he really remember nothing of his past? How had he survived without a memory, without an identity? How could he live without knowing who he was? What had he done in New Orleans? His story raised so many questions, but she knew she would never again have a chance to learn their answers. That strange, frail period of vulnerability had vanished the moment the alarm had sounded. The mask went on and he left the room as guarded and volatile as he had ever been. However, he had become a different person the moment he recognized the woman in the attendants’ clutches. Whomever she was, she meant more to Demetrius than anyone in the world. Chloe knew that. Anyone who had witnessed him holding the girl knew that, she suspected.

  Gabe shuffled in with a bowl of soup in his hands. Chloe dropped to her knees, spreading them wide, her hands at the back of her neck.

  “Abigail told me to keep you in the suite for the auction,” he said, “and since I don’t have a slave to sell, I figured we could watch it together from up here.”

  Chloe frowned at the floor. The auction was happening? Right now?

  Gabe patted her head. “Come on, sweetie, I have your dinner. Sit up on the bed so you can eat while we watch.”

  Chloe rose, letting Gabe lead her to the edge of the bed. Gabe was the first person to address her with a sense of the old formality, but it was still not where it should have been. She felt oddly uncomfortable without the structure to which she had become so accustomed, the dichotomy of superiority and subservience. She looked up at Gabe to see if he would order her to look down. He had shadows beneath his eyes and his normally cheerful round face seemed worn and weary. He smiled and gave her a gentle chaff under the chin.

  “Don’t forget your manners,” he chided, leading her into a sitting position. “Just because it’s been crazy here lately doesn’t mean the rules don’t matter. Things will get back to normal with you, and then you’re going to be alone with the boss ‘til next year, remember. So don’t slip up now.”

  Chloe pondered his words as he propped his phone up on the pillows. All of the other slaves would be gone after this auction, off to who knows where. She supposed the attendants would leave, too. She couldn’t imagine the Manor being empty. Her heart constricted with the thought of being alone with Demetrius. The part of her that was still broken ached to see him again, though she had no idea how he would behave toward her. Perhaps Gabe was right. Things would settle down and he would be her Master again, as if she had never nearly died. As if she had never seen his face.

  Gabe sat back beside her on the bed. “All right, we’re logged on.”

  He picked up the soup and gave it to her by the spoonful. Chloe ate, her eyes on the little screen. The dining room podium was the center of the auction, surrounded by chairs of attendants. Abigail, Konri, and the twins sat along the edge of the podium on raised chairs. Demetrius stood in the center, wearing a suit similar to the one he had worn at the Dinner party. Chloe’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. He was masked, of course, addressing the cameras with a long black crop hanging idle in his hand.

  “Next we have Three, the youngest of our glass slaves this season, at sixteen years old,” he announced.

  “See? There’s your little friend,” said Gabe, pausing her feeding so she could watch. Three approached Demetrius on the podium, led by her Rodney on a long leash glimmering with crystals
. Her eyes looked even larger with makeup around them, though they were wide with fear.

  “Three is an exceptional glass slave. Rodney, if you would,” Demetrius said as Rodney took her in a circle around the podium as if he were showing a dog in a tournament. “She is physically delicate…quick to tears, as you can see…and she is by far our best slave of the season in domestic services. She also has quite the oral talent.”

  Three bent into a series of rehearsed slave positions as Demetrius spoke, much like the series Chloe had gone through whenever she could. She was very flexible, touching her toes with ease, dropping to her knees with a dancer’s grace. She rolled onto her back and thrust her pelvis into the air, her legs parted. Demetrius came forward and spread the outer lips of her little pink sex with his free hand.

  “Another highlight of this slave is that she is virtually untouched,” he said. “So the bidding will start on the high end at thirty million.”

  He released Three’s sex. The girl came to her knees, At Attention, eyes down, while Abigail and the twins raised their arms, bidding for buyers.

  “Forty five from Dr. Lane,” said Abigail, smiling at the cameras. Demetrius pointed at her.

  “We’re at forty five.”

  Faith raised her hand. “Professor Touissant for sixty.”

  Chloe’s eyes filled with tears as faceless Masters and Mistresses bid on a young girl like a calf at the county fair. It had never been clearer that her fate was out of her hands. She and the slaves were livestock to be herded and sold and shipped off.

  The bidding lasted only a few minutes. Demetrius tapped the crop against his boot, waiting, listening. Chloe saw no sign of the man she had seen without the mask. She knew she should not have been surprised. Whatever he had gone through to get here, whatever humanity occasionally peeked through the cracks in his walls, Demetrius remained a monster.