by Huss, JA
But he must not’ve checked this desk. It has been over seven years since I used it.
There’s more stuff in there. Stuff I’d forgotten about. But it all feels very familiar.
And pretty soon I’m sitting on the beanbag writing.
I write about Mason. Not the kidnapping. I would never place him in the middle of this shit-show of a life I’m leading by outing him in a diary.
I write about what he looks like. And I imagine what it would be like to know him outside of this house.
I bet he’d be nice. I bet he’s not a bad guy. He was pretty fair with me all things considering.
I mean… normal me knows that’s all wrong.
But princess room me… she has a very warped view of what’s normal.
And he sure did make me feel good.
But so what? Maybe he does feel good. Maybe I do enjoy the way his fingers feel inside me.
But none of that matters anymore because he’s just another liar.
He’s not on my side.
No one is on my side.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - MASON
She spends the next five days pouting like a child in that room. Never coming out once. I take her food three times a day and ask her if she’s ready to come downstairs.
And each time she says, “No, thank you, Mason.”
I have looked through the whole house by now. There is a room in the middle of the hallway that has clothes I presume to be hers.
Jeans and shorts. Shirts and t-shirts. Cotton dresses in pink, and pale yellow, and light blue. There’s also underwear. Just plain cotton panties and bras.
Each day I choose something for her to wear and take it up with her breakfast. She offers up no opinions on my selection but she puts them on.
These things make her look younger than she is. I know she’s twenty-five, but the day I choose a pair of cut-off shorts, a baseball tee, and a pair of white knee-high socks I have to do a double-take at lunch time because she seriously looks twelve.
She’s sitting in the bean bag chair writing in a pink journal with a unicorn on the front. Her pencil has some fuzzy pink topper thing on it. All stuff she found in the little white desk, I suppose.
Turns out, making her learn to cook wouldn’t have been a good idea. The kitchen is stocked, but it’s very basic stuff and there was a meal plan for her in the pantry. Her stepfather called me that first night to see how she was doing and I asked him about that. He said her food must be controlled to keep her moods stable and I was to follow it precisely.
Oatmeal for breakfast. Grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch. And either spaghetti with meatballs or hamburgers for dinner.
When I asked him how that crap could possibly even out her moods, he said she liked comfort food. It made her happy and he would like her to be happy.
And even though she doesn’t look anything close to happy whenever I go up to her room, she does eat the food.
So I don’t argue. Just do as I’m told. Because Baylor did keep up his end of the deal. He wire-transferred that fifty grand directly to my mother and five million dollars appeared in my Swiss bank account. Paid in full. Up front.
And my mother was chosen for that experimental program. I’ve talked to her a few times over the last several days, but she refuses to answer any questions about the treatment. Just says, “We’re going to remain hopeful and positive,” and leaves it at that.
I wasn’t going to rummage through the office because that seemed like crossing a line. So I didn’t. I made it all the way to day five and then… I don’t know. I just got bored, I guess.
The office is very grand. Built-in bookshelves line three walls, but the fourth wall has built-in drawers below the windows. They were all locked but I found the keys in the desk.
I feel like staying here in this house, with this girl, has suddenly turned me into someone I’m not. Because Mason Macintyre isn’t normally the kind of guy who snoops through people’s private papers.
Until yesterday, apparently.
Because I looked through every single drawer. Most of it was boring shit. The deed to the house. Lyssa’s name on it. Which I find interesting for a few reasons.
One. If her stepfather is so disappointed with her, then why give her this estate? It’s kind of a big-deal place. All the acreage outside, the forest, the lawn, the twenty-one bedrooms. Like… OK. I guess he wants her to start a family. I get that part. But twenty-one bedrooms? Who the hell needs that many rooms? Does he think she’s going to open up an orphanage or something? Do they have some huge family that will come visit regularly? I mean, how many kids can one girl push out?
I dunno what she studied in college. I assumed it was something worthless like literature, or history, or art. Or something even more pointless like philosophy. Because the way she talked about her college let me know that it was one of those exclusive private liberal arts colleges. The place you send your daughter to get just enough educated brainwashing for her future career as a politician’s wife.
But maybe that private college taught her how to be an event planner? Because this place is more like a hotel than a home. In fact, it’s not a home. No one lives in a house like this. No one normal, that is. How would you even keep an eye on those kids? Like… they could get lost in here. It’s just so stupid.
The second reason having her name on the deed is the dumbest thing ever is because it’s so damn clear she didn’t want the estate. So my guess is—first thing this wild girl does when this whole wedding bullshit is over is sell it and get all the money. Then she won’t need her stepfather’s paycheck anymore.
Didn’t he consider this? Or is he so powerful that he’s not worried about it? Hell, I imagine it’s hard to sell a mansion like this under the best circumstances. And Baylor probably has every real estate agent within three hundred miles in his pocket. Or maybe everyone who could afford it would be too afraid of him to actually go through with the purchase?
I don’t know. It makes no sense at all. Fathers who have been perpetually disappointed in their crazy daughters don’t go out and buy them a country estate. They just don’t.
But then I noticed the date on the deed. It’s seven years old.
Seven years? What the fuck? He bought this place for her back when she was eighteen?
Why?
Has been empty this whole time? Lyssa didn’t seem familiar with it.
But she was familiar with the furniture in her princess room
What the fuck is going on?
I don’t know. But that was just the one drawer. The drawer next to it was even more confusing. It was filled with file folders. And inside the file folders were court papers for Lyssa.
Confusing thing number one about this drawer. She has been arrested sixteen times.
Sixteen. Fucking. Times.
She’s only twenty-five, for fuck’s sake. How does a girl like her get arrested sixteen times? And they’ve all happened in the past three years. Probably started around the time she finally managed to get through year five at that stupid over-priced college.
All her court folders are in chronological order and they start off with pretty typical stuff. Public drunkenness. Indecent exposure—I have to stop here and shake my head when I read the full report of how she flashed a cop by opening her legs getting into a limo. Because this would be the moment I’d pull my wild-thing daughter aside and say, “Hey, look, princess. I get that you dig the whole commando thing, but it’s time to put some panties on, OK?”
Apparently, Baylor didn’t do that. Because the next folder is also indecent exposure with the added bonus of a drug charge.
There’s a few more drug charges. Nothing about this is surprising if you’ve ever seen Lyssa in action. She looks like she does drugs.
Well, at least she did that night I kidnapped her. That heavy makeup on her eyes. All darked up and smoky. Her glossy lips and contoured cheekbones. The long, wild mane of blonde hair that gives off a just-fucked vibe, and that gold dress.
>
A predator. She looked like a predator that night.
And all her mugshots are sexy as fuck. I’m talking… why the hell all the tabloids haven’t run these yet is beyond me. These mugshots could be on the cover of every grocery-store magazine.
It’s so wrong to be thinking that. Because if these pictures were on the cover of magazines they’d also be in every man’s bathroom.
And thinking about guys jerking off to her face just pisses me off.
She doesn’t look like her mugshots so much anymore. She looks like a damn teenager now. And not the wild kind, either. She looks like… you know. Typical Daddy’s girl princess.
OK. So the charges all pretty much make sense until I get up to number ten. Then things get weird.
Because she gets arrested for prostitution.
Just… what?
Lyssa? Prostitution?
I can’t see it. I mean, I’ve seen her in action. Hell, I’ve been on the receiving end of her animal instincts. But selling her body for money?
Then again, she did tell me she was broke. Maybe she did?
There’s two of those, then shit really goes off the rails. Because the last few weren’t for prostitution, they were for pimping and pandering.
What the what?
I literally had to read that four times to make it sink in.
Lyssa Baylor is a madam?
Get the fuck out of here.
But there it was. All in black and white. Her sexy-as-fuck face front and center in each of those mugshots.
And she was found guilty too.
I shuffled through every file and realized she was found guilty every single time. And each time, her stepfather got her off with community service and a steep fine. Some of the more recent fines were in the millions.
Must be nice to be rich. That fucker bought judges.
But I thought about that all damn afternoon as I cooked comfort food for Lyssa as she sat up in her princess tower and scribbled away in her journal.
If he could buy off her sentences… why didn’t he just buy off her crimes?
Why leave her with this long record?
So I went through it all again and at the end of every single file was a single piece of paper, signed by the same judge, which had a big red stamp on it that said RESTRICTED DISCLOSURE.
I didn’t even know what that meant. I had to look it up and apparently people can like… hide criminal records from the public using this restricted disclosure thing.
Then I got lost on the internet looking up legal terms. Like what is the difference between a sealed file and a restricted disclosure file?
Because it’s all kinda weird.
If Baylor has the power to buy off a judge at the sentencing stage and get her entire criminal history marked with this restricted disclosure thing, why not just do it from the start and get her off with charges dismissed?
Was he trying to teach her a lesson?
Maybe.
God, the guy is kind of a dick.
Not that she’s an innocent victim here. Jesus Christ. Her rap sheet is worse than a lot of the scumbags I know in the bounty-hunting business.
But… I don’t know. I’d want to protect my daughter from all this. I’d definitely have done something drastic before it got to this point.
Or at least, I tell myself that.
Maybe that’s why her stepfather is doing this to her now? This is an intervention. Not a typical one, from what I understand of interventions. But rich people. They’re not typical.
On the morning of day six I’m sick of oatmeal, I’m sick of grilled cheese, and if I have to make another meatball I might lose my mind. Plus, I only have four days to get her ready for the wedding planners and her stepfather, and she hasn’t even tried on the dress yet.
So that’s my plan for today. Enough moping. She’s coming out of that room.
I open the double doors and yell, “Come down here, Lyssa.”
She huffs back at me from above.
“Now,” I say.
When she appears at the top of the stairs she’s wearing a new combination of clothes. Things I brought to her over the past several days, but not an outfit I chose.
Red athletic shorts that are so short and tight, if she were to turn around I’m pretty sure her ass cheeks would be hanging out. I brought those up the other day but she didn’t put them on. Just lounged around in her underwear that day. Teasing me and tempting me by opening her legs each time I brought her food.
Her top is a stretchy white t-shirt that hugs her curves and I can tell, even from down here, that she has no bra on because her nipples are hard. She didn’t wear that the day I brought it up either, opting instead to wear a pink zip-up hoodie with nothing underneath, the zipper down far enough that I caught a glimpse of her tits when she made a point to bend over and pick something up off the floor.
And extra-long, thigh-high tube socks. Which I brought the first night as part of her sleepwear ensemble. Apparently she doesn’t sleep naked. Because she put this stuff on without comment. All the pajamas were long nightshirts with cartoon characters on them.
Right now she’s staring at me from the top of the stairs, snapping her gum, and her long, blonde hair has been pulled up into two pigtails that are each curled into a loose spiral.
No wonder her stepfather treats her like a child. She certainly dresses, eats, and acts like one. Because right now, this image of her in this moment, was all her choice.
“What?” she snarls, bratty teenage princess on full display.
“You need to try on your wedding dress,” I say.
She huffs, but begins to descend the stairs. I step aside to let her pass and get a whiff of perfume. Something overly sweet. Like baby powder.
“Which room?” she asks, swinging her hips as she walks down the hall. I catch a glimpse of her ass cheeks, because yes. They are hanging out. There’s the tell-tale remnants of a yellow-green bruise from where I smacked her with the belt that first day across the bottom where her ass meets her thigh.
“The one with the open door,” I reply.
She saunters in, still enticing me with her hips, and I follow her.
The dress is hanging on the back of the open closet door, sealed up in a white bag.
“Take it out and put it on,” I say. “The seamstress needs to know if it fits.”
She pulls the zipper down on the bag, takes the dress out, and lays it across the bed.
“It’s pretty,” I say, trying to be helpful and break her out of this mood. I’m sick of it. Really had enough. Her wedding day can’t come fast enough if you ask me. I think back on that first day we spent here and how I thought I liked her, but it had to have been the sex. Or the spankings. Or something. Because right now she’s nothing but high-maintenance and tiresome. And that criminal record. I should not have snooped. I liked her a lot more before I learned she was this drugged-up exhibitionist who likes to sell herself and other women.
“Pretty?” she says, lifting one eyebrow at me. “I guess. If you like cascading organza ruffles in pink and a sweetheart neckline. Who the hell wears pink on their wedding day, anyway?”
Yeah, she’s got a point there. It’s fugly. Fugly as fuck. Like Cinderella’s fairy godmother threw up a ruffled pink pumpkin and this is what came out. “So I take it you didn’t choose this dress?” I ask.
“Do you think I chose this?” she says, panning her hands down her body to indicate her present outfit.
“Actually, you did. I didn’t bring that ensemble to you.”
“Right.” She snorts. Then lifts her shirt over her head and throws it on the floor.
I know I should turn away, but she instantly goes from bratty teenager to seductive grown-up. And her tits are just as beautiful as I remember. So I look at them.
She places one foot on the bed, right on top of the wedding dress, and begins rolling down her thigh-high knee sock.
I watch, unapologetically, as she repeats that process with the other
leg.
Then she turns to face me, smiles, and twirls around as she slides her shorty-shorts over her hips, wiggling her ass like a stripper doing a tease.
“Lyssa,” I say.
She kicks the shorts off one foot without comment and reaches for the dress. Unzipping the back and stepping into it. Once it’s on she walks over to me and says, “Zip me, please,” then lifts her pigtails up, even though they’re not in the way of the zipper. She did that so I’d notice how her breasts rise up.
“Turn around,” I say, twirling my finger.
She does, and even though I’m trying my best not to touch her bare skin—because I am totally hard right now and I don’t need any more encouragement. I’m not going to mess with this girl again. Not gonna do it—my fingertips brush along her back when I reach for the zipper and my cock jumps a little.
She sucks in a breath and part of me knows she did that so I could zip her up, but some other part of me wishes it was because of my touch.
When the zipper’s up she drops her pigtails and lowers her arms. Turns to look in the mirror on the back of the closet door, and our eyes meet in the reflection.
“It’s gross,” she says, smoothing down the huge ruffles of her long skirt.
“It’s nice,” I say. And it is. I mean, OK. The dress is fugly, but on her it actually looks good.
“Yeah, if this were my sweet sixteen and I had no taste. Sure, I guess.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “So tell him to get you a different dress.”
She rolls her eyes in the mirror. “I don’t even care.”
“Look,” I say, reaching for one of her pigtails to pull the elastic off. I do that again with the other one, then arrange her hair so her long, loose curls fall over her shoulders. “That’s better, right?”
She studies herself. Turning a little to the left, then to the right. Picking up her layered skirt with her fingertips, then letting go. “Little bit.”
“Well… I was planning on making you go to the mall with me today. I know you like comfort food and everything, but I can’t eat any more of that shit. I was hoping you’d be agreeable and we could go out. So maybe we shop for another dress? I have money. I’ll pay for it.”