Chapter 9
9
HER
“ I didn’t look at anything on it,” I blurted without turning around. “When I gave it to you, I gave it to you .”
“That’s not—I just want to talk to you, yeah?” The statement was haltingly phrased, almost tentative, like he actually thought there was a chance I’d say no.
I had resolved not to look at him, even though looking at him was literally the only thing I’d wanted to do for weeks. But why look at someone who didn’t want to see me and didn’t want to be seen?
But he was here. He wasn’t leaving, wasn’t hiding. Wasn’t accusing. Wasn’t demanding, why are you still in my business when I literally just told you to stay the hell away from me?
He was just standing there, his long, sculpted arm with its scarred fingers still curled loosely around the phone and aloe bottle. But he wasn’t looking at them. He was seeing me, through the eyes of a boy who had long ago learned the slim odds of any given roll of the dice turning out in his favor, but who kept playing because it was all he’d ever known how to do. And now he’d just bet his life, lost it, and seen it placed back in his hand.
He opened his mouth but didn’t get a chance to speak.
“Loulou? Is that you?”
Daddy, of all people, was in the kitchen, just on the other side of the door, raising his voice over the fizzing of the espresso machine. Why did there have to be so goddamn many people in this house? “What do we—” I started.
“Shhh. I’m not supposed to be in here,” he admitted. “Meet me after your class. Downstairs.”
“The slave quarters?” I hissed.
“Why not? No one’s going to look for you down there.”
“True.”
A second later, he had disappeared outside through the other door, leaving me standing alone in the cool, silent pantry and—not for the first time with him—unconvinced I hadn’t dreamed it all.
Well, I didn’t exactly relish a chat with my father given the state I was in, but I couldn’t stay here . I opened the door to the kitchen, only to practically smack into Daddy, clutching an espresso cup.
“You’re up early,” he said, his voice brighter than I’d heard it in a long time. Why?
“Well, I have an early class today.” Not one that required me to be up at dawn, but it wasn’t like Daddy had nothing better to do than memorize my school schedule. Although these days, who knew?
“How’s the tutoring going?” he asked, of all questions. “Has it helped?”
Fucking hell, had my parents hatched some fiendish conspiracy to siphon my every thought and feeling about the boy right out into the open? Could the half-demented smile I’d pasted on my face possibly convince him that opening that chemistry book hadn’t started an earthquake that might as well be knocking pictures off the walls as we spoke? “Um, good,” I said through gritted teeth. “Really good.”
“I know using a slave as a tutor is a bit unusual, but apparently, his former owner made it into a lucrative little side business for himself,” he said, apparently oblivious to the way my eye was twitching as if about to burst. “But it’s all about thinking outside the box and leveraging your strengths, right?”
Like punishing the boy for tutoring me and then taking credit for the idea? Yeah, that was a real power move right there. “I really have to run to my psychology class,” I squeaked, even though I knew the only psychology I was going to be capable of today was the psychology of how I could sit in a lecture hall for an hour, ruminating over everything he might possibly say when we met, without collapsing into a boneless heap on the floor.
“Well, just be sure to be home in time to get ready for dinner because I have big news to announce,” he blathered on. “You may as well know that Max Langer and I are formally announcing tonight that I’m going to become a partner in his new venture.”
So that was it. That was how he planned to save us all. By hitching what remained of his splintered, broken-down wagon to, of all people, Corey’s boss. I took a deep breath in an attempt to sound slightly less hysterical than I felt. “Daddy, don’t you know that his old partner dealt in slaves? Is that really the reputation you want in this era of corporate social responsibility?”
“Well, I can see your scholarship money is being well-spent at that college,” he said lightly. “I love that you have strong convictions, sweetie. I did, too, at your age. But you have nothing to worry about. In fact, Max is planning on disrupting the whole industry of slavery. He says that era may be coming to an end, and who knows? He’s a genius. Maybe he’s right.”
“So … what, we’re going to free all of ours?” I couldn’t help it.
Daddy chuckled as if I were just too precious for words. “Six months from now, when this pays off, it’ll be the start of a better life for all of us. You can live in the dorms next year. We can start going on vacations again. You can finally have that new Chanel bag and a car.”
As if any of that stuff mattered. “I just want us to be happy. Like before.”
“This does make me happy, sweetheart,” he said. “Providing for you and Mom, that is. I know you’ve had to endure a lot of hardship recently, and you deserve it.”
Endurance? Hardship? The fuck did he know about those? He was speaking an archaic language, meant to communicate with a version of me from a previous lifetime, a Louisa obsessed with pink-and-green dorm decor, who would go to homecoming with a guy like Corey and come home crying because another girl wore the same one-thousand-dollar dress.
“Besides, I would never do anything that my little Loulou objects to. I promise.” He kissed the top of my head.
“You said it would pay off,” I said. “But what if it doesn’t?” He seemed not to have heard, so I asked again. “Daddy? What if it doesn’t pay off?”
He spoke carefully. “That’s not anything you need to worry about. It’s not going to happen. The only thing you need to concern yourself with right now is school. I mean it.”
“Daddy, I’m eighteen. I’m an adult now. I know I don’t always act like it, but I can handle this. I need to know what we’re up against.”
He set the cup down on the counter as if it had suddenly grown heavy. “Then we sell off everything, starting with the house. And the slaves.”
It wasn’t really the basement.
It was an entirely separate wing of the house, a bunker, really, a windowless slab of concrete built in the desert where lower floors were expensive and totally unnecessary, except to allow maximum separation from the bright and beautiful parts of the home. Maximum ignorance, on my part, of everyone who was forced to inhabit it. And maximum chances, in the time it took to traverse from the main house to the other wing, to allow me to turn back from making a horrible mistake. One so all-consumingly awful that just thinking about it during my lecture, after chewing the erasers off not one but two mechanical pencils, I mounted another attack on the cap of a ballpoint pen. When you got right down to it, there were at least a million reasons not to make the trip down those stairs, and only one reason to go.
And Option A still didn’t have a chance.
The worst part was, once I got home, I had no time left to freak out about it. Ten minutes at most. If I waited any longer, he’d be ordered upstairs to do some thankless task, and I’d miss my chance, maybe forever. All I could do was hope my legs held out as I forced them to carry me out the access door, down the path of lava rocks, behind an artfully placed clutch of palo verdes, to another, smaller door that opened to reveal the top of a narrow staircase, where I paused. I already felt utterly disrobed under the lurid yellow fluorescent light and its passive-aggressive buzzing that was nevertheless not loud enough to drown out the hammering of my heart and the churning of my insides as I descended, trying to keep my footsteps light.
At the bottom was an empty corridor. And at the end, more cinder block, more fluorescence, and another door— the door, probably. I glanced at the walls, suddenly fearing danger. Security cameras? Microphones? Or maybe a two-way mirror, or a curtain allowing my second-grade teacher to jump out and announce she was hereby revoking that “Excellent conduct” score I’d earned on my report card all those years ago? I knew it was ridiculous, but?—
“Lost?”
I jumped. He stood right there in the doorway at the end of the hall, arms crossed. He looked better rested and was wearing a shirt I hadn’t seen before, a soft aqua blue one that somehow fit him perfectly; it hugged his torso and even under the harsh lights, seemed to turn his eyes and hair to liquid gold, a glittering treasure submerged in a coral reef.
A few mangled erasers were a small price to pay.
I couldn’t see much of what was in the room behind him. More cinderblock: what a surprise. Also: a few narrow metal bunks, the threadbare sofa that used to be in our media room and that I thought my parents had thrown out years ago, and light struggling to spill through a single high window in the corner.
So this was it. His everyday reality. For some reason, I felt grateful that he was letting me into it, even though technically, I could have come down here years ago, at any time. Yeah, it was supposed to be off-limits, but it was my house, for God’s sake.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“About what?”
“About this.” I gestured lamely to the dismal space. “Believe it or not, I had no idea.”
He seemed confused. “Are you kidding me? I mean, there’s a window. And a sofa . Trust me, the place is a palace.”
“I really don’t want to know what you’re comparing it to.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, even though he must have known that actually I did. “Come,” he said, and for one absurd second, I actually thought he might take my hand .
He didn’t, though, just beckoned me around another corner, where we found ourselves in an alcove made of yet more cinderblocks, plus the bonus of a dingy area rug, a dented metal stool lying on its side, and a broken bookshelf stuffed with old cookbooks and dated encyclopedias. Down the hall, another door was ajar, and I could just see more bunks, one with a handmade quilt—the women’s quarters, I could only assume.
“Sorry I can’t offer you a drink,” he said, raking his hand through his thick golden strands as he followed my gaze. “Or a chair.” He turned around and offered me a sheepish half-smile. As if I would ever criticize this view.
I glanced behind me. “Should we be?—”
“It’s okay,” he assured me. “They’re all busy. You should see the housekeeper’s to-do list for today. Reading Advanced Quantum Mechanics was less scary. Nobody will be down here for hours. Oh, and there’s no security camera. Not in this spot.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin wire. “And not as of this week. Anyway.” With that one word, his easy confidence melted away, replaced by that hesitance when he’d called back to me in the pantry. “I just wanted you to know that my sis—Maeve’s—messages were on that phone.”
So he’d spoken to her. I knew, now. I knew why he’d given me the indescribable look he had when I’d walked in, like he was seeing something in me I’d never even seen in myself. That look he was almost giving me again, now.
“I don’t know how you did it, or what you had to do.”
I closed my eyes, trying not to think about what I’d had to do, or what I’d heard between him and the gardener, or whether any of it should, or did, involve me. It all could wait.
“But you were amazing.”
I popped my eyes open. “Wait. I was amazing?”
“Are,” he clarified. “Are amazing.”
For the first time in twelve hours, I genuinely smiled. “Is … is this a thank you?”
“A really, really incredibly shit one, but yes, it is,” he said, rushing ahead. “Also, I, um—I’m sorry.”
“ You don’t need to apologize!”
“Yeah, I do.” He kept running his hand through his hair. It was a nervous habit of his I’d noticed right from the start, one he would probably never admit to having. But I’d never seen him do it this many times in a row. “And I’m completely fucking it up, too. I guess because I—we—don’t do this very often. Not for real.”
“What do you mean?”
“So sorry, sir, thank you, sir, please don’t beat the shit out of me, sir. It sort of loses all meaning after a while.”
“What? You mean that stuff isn’t sincere?” I asked, pretending to be shocked.
He shook his head. “Sadly, no. I hate to be the one to break it to you. Anyway, let me try to explain something. About what I said last night.” He took another deep breath. “Nobody does anything for me. Ever. If I want something done for me, I do it, or it doesn’t get done. That’s the way it’s been for a very long time. And I’m not sure I would know what to do if that ever changed.”
After a pause, I said softly, “It has changed.”
“I know,” he admitted, slumping back against the wall. “Fuck. I know.”
For some reason, my smile only grew.
“It’s just,” he continued, “I never thought the person who would do it would be someone who can get me thrown down a mine shaft just for thinking about …” He trailed off all politely as if there could be any possible chance I didn’t want to know exactly what it was.
“About what?” I didn’t think my heart could pound any faster than it had at the top of the stairs. I’d been wrong.
“Things a good slave should never even think about.”
“Sure, but I don’t know why that would ever concern you .”
That made him laugh. He rested one shoulder against the cinderblock wall, like he wanted a better view of me, though he kept his eyes slightly averted. As he spoke, he trailed a finger slowly along the grout between the cinderblocks, and for some reason, I found it fascinating to watch. “And why not?”
“Well,” I said, “because if you were a good slave, we wouldn’t be here . And yet here we are.”
“Here we are.”
He met my eyes again suddenly and spectacularly, the weight of it nearly knocking me off-balance. Something had shifted. The energy around us hummed like a field of charged particles. He stood up straight, raised his hand for a second, dropped it, raised it again, killed me with how close he was to doing something, while I killed myself over how I shouldn’t be allowing him to do it. Not just for my own sake, but for his. Maybe even more for his. My entire moral compass was breaking down in real time, realizing that I now cared so much that the only right thing to do was to stop caring .
“We—we shouldn’t be here,” I said. No. Don’t listen to me. You know I’m an idiot. I’m failing chemistry, for fuck’s sake. “What if someone—what if you—and what about Maeve—and the mines, and the?—”
“Fuck, Louisa, what did I just say?” he cut off my desperate babbling. “Why would I have gone through with that whole fucking embarrassing speech just now if I didn’t want to be here? Can you just trust me enough to know what I want? Because I know what you want.”
“What do I want?” I asked in a small voice.
“You want me to touch you.” His gaze lowered under those long lashes, like he was seeing my body for the first time, drinking it in, inhaling it, taking a slow voyage across every visible inch of my skin and using his imagination to fill in the rest. “Not by accident. Not for comfort. But just because you want it.”
That look , so serious, the kind of seriousness he’d only worn up till now when trying to puzzle out a particularly thorny chemistry problem. In some ways, this wasn’t much different. In other ways, well, it was.
“You’re doing it already.”
It was true. One of his knuckles had brushed mine. Like an accident. I knew it wasn’t.
“Am I?”
He kept going, letting our fingers intertwine for a brief second, come apart, then intertwine again. His thumb traced along the top of mine, gentler than anything so roughened by hard labor had any right to be. His other hand traced a delicate pattern on the exposed skin between the bottom of my crop top and the waist of my corduroy miniskirt with the buttons down the front.
I must be flushed red from my head to my decolletage right down to my toes, and I hoped to God he was enjoying it. As for my insides, they had melted into a puddle of thick, viscous fluid, and I hoped he was enjoying that , too, because there was no way he couldn’t have sensed it somehow.
“Yes. You’re touching me.”
“Oh. So sorry, miss.”
One little deft flick of his wrist and I was somehow propelled forward against his chest, with one of his hands migrating to the small of my back.
“So I was right.” He could breathe the words into my ear now. “You, of all people, should know I’m always right.”
“About chemistry, maybe,” I breathed back.
“About so much more than that.”
A second later, somehow, a roughened thumb was tracing the line of my jaw, tilting it closer to his mouth.
Well brought up, schooled in propriety and decorum, I should have run away and screamed and yelled and—oh, now I was ruined, ruined. Eighteen years’ worth of straight As and gold stars and proper deportment just to let a slave kiss me—and kiss me like that .
Not only chemistry anymore. Physics, too. Torque. Velocity. Gravity. Things powerful and explosive and dangerous, unavoidable and immutable, capable of blowing off all the chains and locks and bars in the world.
His mouth was moving farther along my jawline now, finally arriving at my neck with a playful and exploratory little nip, prompting me to flip up my chin, my mouth forming a wondrous O directed up toward the crumbling ceiling plaster.
“Touch me,” I whispered breathlessly. “Now.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere. I just want your hands on me.”
He obeyed immediately, his rather large, rather graceful hand sliding underneath my tank top. Instantly, the juxtaposition of the hard metal chain on his wrist against my softest and most vulnerable parts sent a sublime shiver shooting through my body as if it—my body, that is—just wanted to race ahead to get to the good part and didn’t care what else had to happen to get there.
I did, though.
The kisses that had started out gentle gradually became more assertive: warm, wet, famished nibbles aimed at the exposed skin around my ear, shoulders, and neck. His fingers trailed up from my navel and across the sides of my purple lace bra, pulling the fabric aside; I sharply inhaled when my nipples poked out and greeted the cold basement air. While he—ever the scientist—puzzled out the straps and hooks with one hand, he stroked the inside of my thighs with the other, caressing the soft tissue of my bare leg all the way down to the back of my knee, cupping and lifting it lightly up close to his side.
That’s when I felt his excitement for the first time, unable to help letting out a short, sharp gasp when I felt it, straining against the insides of his shorts and digging, bold and brazen, against the bare skin of my leg. He barely seemed to notice, as keen as he was on exploring—and claiming—the new world of me . Not quite sure what to do with it yet—if anything—my hands ventured behind him instead, landing tentatively on his broad back, eagerly and breathlessly working their way around that wondrous strip of soft skin and baby-fine hair just above his shorts and beneath his shirt, my fingers breathless with anticipation as they kept ranging farther. But they stopped immediately when I collided with the pain.
How the hell could I ever forget that he’d been brutalized ? He still wore the lifelong marks of the old wounds and the distressingly new. Fuck, the file. The gouged, puckered disaster that was his back, starker than even the cinderblock and metal of all the places they’d caged him.
What am I doing? He can’t—and I shouldn’t—and— I snatched myself away. What if I’d hurt him?
“It’s okay,” he whispered reassuringly. “I’m okay. You can touch me, too, if you want.”
I managed a smile, though every part of me still hesitated. “Are you sure?”
He raised an eyebrow, then went in for a playful kiss. “Are you kidding?” He kissed me again. I’d frozen up, and he knew it would melt me. “You know I know what pain feels like, Lou. And this isn’t even close .”
Buoyed, I returned his kisses with relief, even brushing some golden strands out of his face to reach it better, while he went right back to business, unfolding his fingers again on the inside of my thigh, the tips brushing just under the seams of my panties—also lacy and purple, though, oh so creatively, a different shade from my bra—and over the mound, every centimeter he explored reducing a greater percentage of my insides to warm goo.
The intercom buzzed nastily from around the corner, dropping us out of the heavens. Was there anywhere we could go to be alone?
He looked away, his eyes startled, but not panicked. Not yet. “We?—”
“Keep going,” I said, a purr verging on a growl. “Just a little more. Please. Whatever you do, don’t stop.”
“I won’t,” he breathed into my ear. “I promise. But you have to help me, yeah?”
“Okay, I?—”
He quieted my mouth with a kiss. He forgot about the hooks, just sent one hand boldly straight up under my bra to firmly enclose my breast and claim my nerve endings with his calloused fingers. His other hand I clasped gently and guided along—to save time, to make it easier for him, but God, he was almost there already, magic boy—coaxing it to curl into the delicate space where my clit hid, shy and blushing in its solitude. A team effort. We were both rewarded with a long tendril of euphoria unfolding throughout my body, my knees dipping in response, and I whimpered as loudly as I dared to encourage him to push even harder against the outside of my mound, even as his knuckles still just barely brushed against the outer edges of my soaking folds. My back stretched and went rigid as he drove that powerful hand firmer, confoundingly delivering more and more of that incredible friction to my clit, its divine pulsations rhythmic and close, now. I somehow signaled to him, harder , and I kept my eyes squeezed shut, my manicured nails clawing into those massive shoulders and tugging at all that shining hair, already slightly damp with exertion, pulling his head close to rest briefly on my shoulder.
There was infinitely so much more to want—yes, of course I wanted to touch him. To reach for whatever awaited me beneath those strained shorts, for one thing. To undress him completely, to have him undress me , to touch and tease and watch every gorgeous inch of him swell and brighten and come alive, to invite him to do the same for me , to moan as loud as I dared, to scream , to lay all afternoon in a field of wildflowers—but there was no time, no space, and yes, that was the fucking housekeeper shouting from the top of the stairs, her intercom buzzing having gone ignored—and this was all we would get, for now or maybe ever, and I muffled my outburst, following his lead, back braced up against the wall, arching, catlike, then the sudden release, my body becoming a gauzy ribbon floating blissfully to the floor. He caught me just in time.
My eyes fluttered open to find him gazing right back, shoulders heaving. He shook some of the damp golden hair off his face to reveal a little bit of wonder in his eyes, if I wasn’t mistaken.
“What just happened?”
He rested his head on the wall, catching his breath, but glanced back with the trace of a smile. “Among other things,” he replied, “something you can never, ever tell your dad.”
With no answer, the housekeeper had given up, and he’d mashed the intercom, coming up with an elaborate excuse involving yard waste and wheelbarrows and the end of monsoon season that made absolutely no sense to me except that it somehow bought him five minutes longer by my side—five minutes we had to spend talking instead of fucking, unfortunately, if only because we had to figure out just what the hell we were going to do with … this . Whatever this was.
“Are you okay?” Fuck, I couldn’t leave him to go do chores like this.
He sighed. “Well, I’ve been through worse torture. I’m kidding ,” he added before I could gasp in horror. “Seriously. I’m fine. Come.” He wrapped his arms lightly around my waist and drew me closer so we were face-to-face again. He did seem relaxed, genuinely satisfied just to have satisfied me , and the wonder and curiosity in his eyes were enough to indicate that he believed there’d be a next time.
Next time. Fucking hell. I was already never, ever getting over this .
“What’s going to happen now?” I wasn’t sure whether I was talking about the next second, the next day, or the rest of our lives.
But he began, quite logically, at the beginning. “Well, you’re going to go upstairs and get some sleep because you need it. And then, you’re going to review all of Chapter Nine, making sure to focus on aldol condensation and esterification.”
“ Seriously ?!”
He looked genuinely confused. “What? I’m still your tutor. You thought I forgot about your exam?”
I rolled my eyes. “It always has to be about science with you, doesn’t it?”
“Always,” he said with a laugh. “Anyway, after that , you’re going to get ready for tonight,” he said, reaching up to tenderly place one of my long curls behind my ear, sliding his fingers down its silken length, lingering as if he didn’t want to let it go. “When I’ll see you again.”
I closed my eyes. Yes, he’d see me again. And he would have to pretend not to. And that was what he’d have to do every time he saw me in public, from this point forward, if he didn’t want to get us both killed.
What the fuck kind of ending was this to our story?
The answer was, it wasn’t one.
“But what about you?”
Wrong question. The subtle change in his expression told me instantly how little he wanted to contemplate what the day had in store for him.
“Quantum mechanics?” I teased, trying to coax a smile.
“Molecular orbital theory. Diatomic and polyatomic,” he said. “Followed by floor scrubbing and silver polishing. And now I’m behind, for obvious reasons,” he remarked. “ Good reasons,” he added, his thumb stroking the bare skin between my top and skirt reassuringly.
Fuck. Why was he always comforting me over his life being a nightmare? I dug deep for anything that might cure that look of sad resignation in his eyes. Other than an orgasm, but that would have to wait.
“So about tonight,” I said. “Anything in particular I should wear?”
“Wait.” He sounded puzzled, though intrigued. “Do I actually get a say in this?”
“Well, you and I aren’t going to get to do much talking during dinner,” I said sadly. “So yes, you do. Within reason,” I added. I suspected it wasn’t every day he got asked about his tastes in women’s clothing, and I didn’t want him to get too carried away. “So?”
“Anything that makes you feel good,” he said.
“I love that you’re trying to be gentlemanly, but come on.”
“Hey, I gave it a try,” he said, then added eagerly, “Something short that shows off your back?”
“That’s more like it.” However, mention of the party jogged an unpleasant recollection. “Just to warn you, Corey’s coming. And his boss.”
“Max Langer,” he said immediately. “I know.”
I was surprised he knew who Corey’s boss—the man whose success all of our futures apparently now hinged on—even was. Then again, he missed nothing. Hell, he probably knew more about Max Langer than I did.
But I did wonder why.
With a swallow, I remembered how my last conversation with my father had ended. But I couldn’t bear to remind the boy in whose arms I now felt so safe that he was property in danger of being sold, any more than I could bear to remind myself.
“So how is your boyfriend going to dazzle us with his brilliance this time?” he asked. “An erupting papier-maché volcano?”
I giggled. His barely disguised loathing of Corey, after what had just happened a minute ago, was completely absurd, as much as it secretly delighted me.
“You’re adorable when you’re jealous. Did I ever tell you that?”
He rested one elbow on the wall, rakishly leaning on it, his face angled down toward mine. “You never told me I was adorable, and that’s the only part I’ll accept. I prefer ‘devastatingly handsome,’ though.”
The intercom buzzed angrily to life again.
“Shit.” He broke away, hand in his hair, his eyes shooting toward the door. “Someone could be down here soon. You have to go.”
“But you said?—”
“I lied.”
Could I blame him, really?
“Relax,” he assured me, turning toward me again. “It’s okay. Nobody saw anything.”
“What if someone sees me on the stairs?”
“Make up a story. You just learned from the best,” he said, nodding toward the intercom.
I paused to brainstorm. “I’ll tell them I came down looking for the maid.”
He shook his head. “Slow learner. No. Tell them you came down to find me.”
“What? Why?”
“Because they’ll figure if you really came down to find me, you’d say you were looking for the maid. Come.” He kissed me sweetly, casually, but—just for a second—hesitant to let me go. “You have a lot to learn about lying, young lady.”
“Know where I can find a good tutor?” I whispered slyly in his ear before sprinting up the narrow staircase in a daze. The cinderblock, the stark yellow bulbs, and the creaky wood no longer seemed quite as menacing. In fact, they were almost laughable, a weak attempt at muting the wonder I’d found.
I knew that wonder wouldn’t last. I knew I had to get upstairs and out of that basement fast. I knew we were in danger, and when we came together again at the party, we’d be in even more danger. I knew what we’d just done wasn’t going to lead to snuggling in front of the TV, elegant dinner dates, or autumn strolls in the park hand in hand. The exact opposite, in fact. For a second, though, I’d forgotten.
I shouldn’t have.
Before I could dart outside and dive behind a barrel cactus for cover, the door flung open with a thwack against the wall, and I was enveloped in the hulking shadow of the gardener, looming over me like a poison gas cloud.
“Hey there, princess,” he sneered, eyes gleaming with a rheumy film that made my stomach turn. “Lovely afternoon for a trip to the … basement.”
My entire body turned ice-cold. He leaned against the doorframe, grinning like a demented clown, revealing rows of empty tooth sockets as I felt myself almost literally shrink under his stare. Then I saw what was in his grubby hands: instead of a spade or shovel, it was a battered old tablet held together with masking tape, the screen glowing with that sickly light I’d only seen in one type of video—not that I made a habit of watching those . As he watched it silently, his lips curled up again, but it was nothing resembling a smile.
It couldn’t be. The slave boy— my boy, as maybe I could call him now, for lack of anything better—had disabled the camera.
Well, the one he knew about. And the one my father knew about, evidently.
“Ya know, I was real pissed off when the girls boarded up the basement window,” the gardener remarked. “Ruined the only real fun I ever had. And every time I tried to get into someplace better ...” He cackled before trailing off disturbingly. “Anywho, one of the old garden slaves used to take a peek with me. He was a real clever guy. Knew how to read, too. Before your daddy sold him, he set me up with this thing real good.” He waved the tablet. “Now I get to watch movies every night, just for me. Don’t even gotta do nothing but keep it charged. This time, though”—he paused to let loose a wheezy laugh—“it was a blockbuster.”
I could have vomited right there on the steps. “G-give me that.” I tried to grab it, but he snatched it away like a schoolyard bully. “Or I’ll tell Daddy.” I tried to force some authority into my voice, even though this sick fuck found me about as intimidating as a piece of construction paper covered in glitter and glue.
Batting me away handily, he tapped the screen with a dirty finger. His contorted lips twisted further, and bile rose in my thick throat, heart hammering so loud I was sure he could hear it. I watched his jaundiced eyes flit across the screen as if he were enjoying every second of what he was watching. Enjoying it as much as I had enjoyed it. “Let it go,” I hissed, desperate not to cry or scream for the boy I’d just left in the basement, like having him here would do anything but fuck us further. “Or, I told you, I’ll tell?—”
“Sorry, Miss Loulou.” He caught my wrist, and I barely stifled a shriek as he pulled me closer, like we were about to snuggle and watch a rom-com. In all the years he’d terrorized me, he’d never actually touched me—after all, he valued his life. And that he suddenly no longer seemed to care about that was the most terrifying thing of all.
He tapped the tablet again, then flipped it around. There was the basement, and there was me, caught in a moment I wished I’d never been stupid enough, even for a second, to believe wouldn’t be my downfall.
“Safe to say the only one telling Daddy anything from now on,” he said, “is gonna be me. Unless,” he continued as I choked on his toxic breath, “you tell your boy he’s gotta keep his word and share.”