It was one thing to give Damon up when I was a child, alone in the trailer.
Another when I’m almost a grown woman.
I need to get out of this place, but I can’t do it alone, not with trained guards patrolling the perimeter. I watch them out the window when Avery thinks I’m mostly comatose, but that doesn’t reveal any answers. They seem to vary up their schedules, as if they know someone might try to enter.
As if they know someone might try to escape.
Avery doesn’t mean me any harm, that much I believe. But she’s as much a prisoner here as I am. Neither of us can leave. She’s the only one with any access to the outside world—a cell phone that she carries with her almost everywhere.
I know she texts her friend from college, because she tells me about some of them.
Other times her brow furrows, worry tinting her hazel eyes. She doesn’t tell me what she texts when she gets like this. I don’t know what she’s afraid of, but it’s something.
She looks up from her phone, her gaze beseeching.
“Come for a walk with me,” she says.
It’s something we’ve done before. Walks around the mansion. Through the garden. There’s even a maze made out of hedges. I swear, the things rich people think of to get rid of their money. It’s like they don’t know what to do with it all.
But I don’t know why she’s whispering. Who does she think will hear her?
The line of her throat moves as she swallows. “I want to find out where the voices are coming from,” she says, her voice shaky. “Will you help me?”
A shiver runs through me. What voices? I haven’t said much. Only Damon seems to thaw me enough to speak, but I know this is important. Important because I can help her, maybe. The way she’s been helping me.
Important because I can help Damon, who’s out with Gabriel in the bowels of the city, searching through rundown tenements and alleys for a modern-day dragon.
Smart people don’t always have perspective.
It had been a declaration. Does he love me? As a woman or as a child?
I’m not sure he knows, not sure it matters what name we put on it. It was the most unassuming gift he could have given me, one without any expectation that it would be returned. Thinking that I’m too young or maybe just too innocent to give it back.
Except I’m not the only smart person without perspective.
He knows I need him, but the truth is he needs me, too.
Avery leans close, something close to panic in her eyes. “You don’t hear them, do you?”
I’m afraid she might come apart if I tell her the truth. The house is painfully silent. It hurts me, that’s how silent it is. The lack of sound a physical presence, as if the world has become muted.
We’re underwater here.
I’m desperate to find a way to her phone. The words to confide my plan on the tip of my tongue. I don’t think she’ll want to go along with me—her faith in Gabriel is too complete.
Aid comes from one of the least likely places. One of the guards appears in the doorframe. “Someone’s at the gate,” he says, making it clear he’d rather turn them away.
Some old friend of Avery’s has come to visit her. More than a friend, if I read her hesitation right.
It would be an entertaining power play to watch—the guard who could probably bench press three hundred pounds and the young woman with her quiet control. And it’s the perfect cover for me to slip her phone beneath the pillow. My hand moves maybe two inches. Neither of them notice.
“I’ll stand outside the room,” the guard says, deference winning. “With the door open.”
Avery’s voice is kind, gracious in her victory. “Thank you.”
It takes forever for the guest to be searched for weapons. So long I’m afraid that Avery will look for her phone. I can’t let her notice that it’s under the pillow. She wouldn’t suspect me of anything, mostly because she thinks I’m half brain dead. But it would ruin my chance.
I have to distract her. “Who is he?”
“An old boyfriend,” she says, her cheeks turning pink.
“Oh.” Gabriel won’t be happy about that when he finds out.
Her eyes look lighter when she’s curious. “Do you… do you have one? A boyfriend?”
I’ve been so deep underwater that I haven’t even thought about him.
Guilt whispers through me. Brennan would have worried about me. The first night, the second. It’s been five days. Does he think I’m dead? Daddy must think so, when I left with Jonathan Scott and didn’t come back. I don’t feel as bad about that, since he’s the reason I’m in this mess.
Encased in ice, I could spare myself that acidic mixture of worry and shame. Now it comes rushing back like bile, promising that every step on land would hurt. I could transform into a human again, but I would pay the price in pain. There’s too much blood in the water to emerge unscathed.
When the security guard takes Avery away, I don’t waste any time.
The number comes from memory. My fingers don’t tremble as I dial the number. That’s the only nod to confidence. Inside I’m a mess of fear and dread and worst of all hope.
“Hello?” The hoarse word tells a long story of the past five days.
“Daddy, it’s me.”
The pause that follows hangs heavy overhead. Storm clouds. North winds. “Is it—how are—oh God, Penny. I didn’t know if you were—”
He can’t seem to finish a sentence. The worst part is that I can’t finish it for him, not with the knot in my throat. Not with the tangle in my mind, where familial love crosses accusation, a biological short-circuit.
“I’m alive,” I manage to say.
“Where are you? Can you come home?”
Home. The word pings around inside me, unable to land anywhere. In the apartment with weak locks and cracks in every window? The lumpy armchair where Daddy sits each night? The Rubik’s Cube. That had been home for a little girl desperate to find herself.
“Did you bring the money to Damon Scott?”
A terrible pause. “I looked for him, Penny. I swear I did. He went underground. Everyone said he couldn’t be found when he didn’t want to be.”
“And then you spent it.” There’s no anger in my voice, not anymore.
Only resignation.
“No,” he says, urgent and sincere. “I tried to find Jonathan Scott then, to give the money back to him. To tell him the deal was off. To find you. But he was gone, too.”
Uncertainty wraps itself around me, warm and almost… comforting. Maybe ten thousand dollars doesn’t matter in the large scheme of things, but it feels like I earned that money. It feels like it matters. “Where’s the money now?”
“It’s here. God, I’ve been so afraid that someone would know. That sounds crazy. It’s not like I could ever hold onto a dollar longer than an hour. But I just… I’ve been sitting here, keeping it, thinking you were dead.”
His voice breaks, but it doesn’t sound like the end. It sounds like a continuation.
This is where we’ve always been. I can’t walk away from the only family I have, from a person who actually cares about me. When Damon braced his body above me in his bed I had felt like a woman, grown and even sexual.
Now as I cling the phone I’m painfully aware that I’m fifteen, that my bed has pink sheets. That I’m only a girl who dreams about having her mama back.
That I want nothing more than a daddy who loves me.
Who am I to dream I could save Damon Scott?
Who am I to dream at all?
* * *
He finds me on the balcony, a wide marble-floored space with a carved stone balcony. From here I can see the expansive grounds—a lush garden and elaborate hedge maze. Rolling green hills and woods beyond. A view that carefully hides security cameras and armed patrols, an electric fence hidden in the tree line. Such deadly beauty.
I feel him before I see him, that prickling awareness that can only be Damon Scott. I’m
Footsteps come close and then stop. It must be my imagination that senses his heat. He’s still a few feet away at least. How can he heat me up like no one else?
“Avery says you aren’t eating,” he says finally.
She worries about me, which is sweet. I don’t really know what to do with that. I’ve had friends before, like Jessica. Even Brennan, but there’s always a careful distance. Growing up in the west side, we all know not to get too close.
“I’m eating enough.”
“She says there are nightmares.”
“Aren’t there?” I ask softly. “For you?”
That finally brings him around in front of me. It’s a shock to see him in daylight, maybe for the first time. The sunlight makes his black hair gleam. His eyes look almost luminous out here, but calming, the contrast to the sun a relief.
“I’ve had nightmares,” he says, his voice distant.
Unemotional, even though I know that’s a lie. No one experiences what we have and comes out unscathed. Avery talked to me about seeing a counselor, asked if I wanted one, but I can’t imagine what acceptance would look like.
Oh, that black pool with green tiles? Sure, I had a rough time almost drowning. I’m over it now. Anyone who says that is lying, so what’s the point?
He looks cold and removed, like he has somehow achieved the impossible.
It makes me want to tear him down.
“Tell me,” I demand.
For a moment I think he’s going to refuse. He’s going to keep that wall between us, thin now but crucial. Whatever we were before this—friends, potential lovers. Enemies. We’ve shared something now. We’re both survivors.
Then he sits down, the softest sound of his breath releasing. And in that sound I hear the wall come down. I feel it, erased from existence—if only for this moment. It makes every nerve ending tingle along my arms, my stomach. He’s been nearer to me than two feet away, but never as truly close as this.
“It started when I was five,” he says, breaking my heart in that one emotionless statement. “I’m not sure what happened before then. Nothing good, I’m sure. But I remember the training that started at five.”
“Training?” I say, horrified, terrified, but needing this. This connection.
“He said it would make me stronger. That people out in the world would hurt me. That I had to get strong enough to withstand them.”
My stomach turns over. “I’m sorry.”
“We practiced every day in that pool. There were other parts of the training. Other things I had to be ready for. In the other rooms, there’s equipment that—”
“Please stop.” I’ve heard enough for today. For a lifetime. And you only have to listen. He had to live through it. “How do you live with it?”
He looks at me then, his brow cocked in question. “What other choice is there?”
Dying, but I don’t say that. It sounds too dramatic, and besides, I don’t want to die. That’s not what I’m really asking. I’m asking how to stop the nightmares. “I feel safe when you’re with me.”
Because he’s the only one who understands.
No, that’s not entirely true. Even before this happened I felt safe when he was around. Not safe with the way he made my body feel or what he let my father borrow. Safe in that I know no one can touch me when he’s around—not even his father.
Damon is the only man on earth who would be glad to see Jonathan Scott. That would mean he could kill him. Or worse, probably. He might use some of that equipment.
“You shouldn’t,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I let you down.”
“No, you got me out of there.”
“Don’t. Don’t pretend like I did you any fucking favors. What you went through before I got there… That’s been harder to live with than anything that came before.”
It’s more than feeling safe. I finally feel warm when he’s around, my very own heat source. And it wasn’t my body that came out of that pool. It was something reptilian. Cold blooded. I can’t keep myself warm; I need him to do it for me.
“Stay with me,” I ask, my voice breaking. “Like that first night. When you were with me, I didn’t have the nightmares. You keep them away.”
You keep him away.
“It’s during nights that he comes out of hiding,” Damon says, his voice tortured. “That’s when I need to look for him. It’s my only chance to find him.”
“I need you more,” I whisper.
He makes a low growling sound. “Don’t fight me on this. I almost lost you.”
“You’re losing me now.”
His jaw clenches, a muscle moving beneath three days’ growth. “Once I’m done I’ll stay with you. I’ll protect you. But I need to do this first. I need to kill him.”
He can’t let it go. His anger has dug a hollow through him, as surely as little feet beneath the swing. “More than kill him, I’m guessing.”
It’s a merciless smile he gives me. “More than that.”
This is his addiction. No needles or cards. Hating his father. Hunting him.
And he was choosing it over me.
“No,” I say, almost desperate. “If you do this you’ll become him. That’s what he wants. That’s what he’s always wanted.”
“Maybe I could have escaped it,” Damon says, almost melancholy. “Except he touched you. And there’s no way I can let that stand. No way I can let him live.”
Which is exactly why Jonathan Scott had taken me.
Somehow, he had known that.
Damon stands, almost pushing back against the sunlight, as if the rays hurt him. And I realize with horror that they might. How much sunlight did he get as a child? “I hope one day I’m the man you deserve.”
“And until then?” I ask, the knot in my throat so thick and so rough.
“Until then I’ll make this right the only way I know how.”
Chapter Seventeen
Gabriel Miller’s house is a sprawling modern mansion, designed with so many twists and turns they must be intentional. He wants people to be lost, to be intimidated, and it works.
I have a path of breadcrumbs using the abstract art decorating the cherry wood walls—splashes of red against swaths of black. Pops of yellow. I can make it to the kitchen on my own, not that I go there often.
And I can find Avery’s room when I need her, although I never do at night.
Gabriel keeps her well occupied in the evenings when he returns from searching for Jonathan Scott. Whether I have nightmares or restless insomnia, I don’t follow the hushed words and the moans down the hallway.
Those times are the hardest, when I feel so alone my chest aches.
This is what I always feared. Mama leaving me. Daddy, too. He chose his addiction over my safety. I can’t decide whether that makes him weak or just human.
My only solace comes from a stack of books on the side table.
The only books remotely mathematical in nature are about stock charts and economics. They’re even more dry and obtuse than the automotive books, but I revel in them like they’re sun after a long rain.
There are a few books I remember were on the syllabus in English class this year. Grapes of Wrath doesn’t hold my interest, but I keep it there anyway. It serves the same purpose as my self-enforced bedtime in that trailer—pretending like there’s a grownup to guide me.
I wander down to the library after lunch, carrying the stack of books.
A fire crackles beneath the large marble mantel. Someone must be here. I take a step backward, prepared to leave. Avery peers around the wide leather wing of an armchair. “Hey, you. Don’t go.”
Hesitant, I hover beneath the arched doorway.
Avery’s been incredibly kind to me, even nurturing, but it only makes me conflicted. I wanted that kind of nurturing from Mama. And occasionally I’d even get it, when she was between boyfriends. But I learned not to trust in it. It would be snatched away when I needed it most.
“What do you have there?” she asks, looking at my books with interest.
The urge to share with her is too strong, to show her what I like and find out what she does. I approach the rug with slow steps, feeling almost shy.
The library is massive, two stories connected by a carved spiral staircase. And on the second floor, the shelves go so high you have to use a ladder to reach the very top. Small leather benches set off the different bookcases, which is where I would usually sit.
In the center of the room is a plush rug that holds two oversized armchairs and a circular table. An intricate carved chess set sits there, positioned so the people in the chairs can play.
Avery points to the empty chair beside her. “Join me. Please.”
In a rush I settle into the cushion, sinking deep. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to disturb you.”
“You’re not.” She tilts her head, reading the spines of the books I’m holding. “You found Gabriel’s financial books.”
“Do you think he’d mind?” I ask, holding the books tighter.
She laughs. “I’m sure he wouldn’t. In fact he’d probably love to discuss them with you. He’s kind of a numbers junkie, but it’s all over my head.”
There’s a book in her lap, with plain text on the front.
“Athenian Vase Painting,” I say, reading the cover aloud.
“It’s my guilty pleasure,” she says, not sounding very guilty. “The classical section of the library is incredible, if you’re interested in the subjects. I can point out some of the more accessible books. This one’s a little dense.”
“Does Gabriel like ancient history?”
“No, but he likes making me happy,” she says with a private smile. “It used to be my major in college. Before I—well, before I left.”
“Why did you stop?”
She sucks in a breath as I realize my mistake. I’ve cared too much, revealed too much. And worst of all, I’ve reminded her of something dark.
“I’m sorry,” I add quickly, starting to stand. “Never mind.”
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