Chapter 31
“I’m alive. I got shot in the shoulder and I was unconscious for a long time.
My wound got infected. If I hadn’t been found by a former surgeon, I wouldn’t have made it.
I’m still recovering. Will be in touch when I’m strong enough.
” -- Decoded message from ILF undercover operative Nightingale to ILF handler Hiro Tanaka
Two Years Ago
Briar
He’s looking at me. I always know when he’s behind me because it feels like bugs crawling all over my skin, invading every inch of my being.
“Hello, wife.” Lochlan unbuttons his olive-green jacket, takes it off, and passes it to one of his assistants, who bows his head and leaves the room with it.
Every fucking evening, the same routine. No one in the house gets dinner until he gets home, and it’s usually late. The later, the better, as far as I’m concerned. Every hour I don’t have to be in his presence is a win.
“I said hello.” He glares at me from the end of the oblong wood dining table.
“Hello,” I respond robotically, my gaze locked on the small painting behind him.
Leonardo’s original Ginevra de’ Benci painting belongs under lock and key in a museum. That’s where it was when the world I knew ended four years ago. Soren Whitman was prepared, and his forces looted priceless artistic treasures while others killed each other over canned goods and bullets.
Lochlan was an art history professor before the virus, and the original works of art Soren has gifted him are his most prized possessions.
I have something in common with the woman in Leonardo’s painting—I’m also Lochlan’s possession. Her cool, detached expression is my visual mantra.
Don’t engage. Bide your time. Survive.
Servers fill our wineglasses and deliver our chilled dinner salads.
It’s the exact same salad every night, precisely as Lochlan likes it: cold, crisp iceberg lettuce, a single sliced Roma tomato, six Kalamata olives, and freshly shredded mozzarella.
Buttermilk ranch is served in tiny silver pitchers we’re each given on a saucer.
“Dr. Hansen tells me you failed to conceive once again.”
I suppress my urge to pick up my fork and stab him in his meaty red face.
I have to be smart. The damage from head injuries compounds, and after nearly a month of daily beatings when I was first brought to his home in handcuffs and proclaimed his wife, I started getting terrible headaches and blurred vision.
My father taught me well, so I got the better of Lochlan several times. I escaped him and ran for my life.
But I never even made it out of his home.
Every door is tightly secured and guarded around the clock.
The property is surrounded by a tall iron fence that’s been reinforced with electrified spikes on top.
Every person inside the home who doesn’t wear an olive-green uniform is a prisoner, and all of us are women.
“Yes. I’m sorry.” I eat my salad, playing the game I have to play until I find a way out of here. “The salad is delicious.”
He loves compliments, even if he’s already heard them dozens of times. Anything that makes him feel powerful, in control, and a man of taste always lands well.
“That cheese in plastic bags never compares to freshly shredded,” he says. “But don’t try to distract me, Briar. You’re lucky Caroline is pregnant.”
I’ve been his prisoner for eleven months, and he’s tried to get me pregnant every one of them. He still has a scar on his face from that first time, when I bit and clawed him as I tried to fight him off.
Those faint bite marks on his cheek are like the woman in the painting behind him: they remind me that I’m still me.
I may be his prisoner, and I may submit to his assaults to avoid irreversible brain injury, but this won’t last forever.
I’ll never have his child—the tea one of the housekeepers secures for me every month will ensure that.
And I will get out, even if I die trying.
He has several mistresses, but Caroline is currently number one because she’s expecting his baby. I felt guilty when he told me the news two months ago, because I knew it would take some of the pressure off me.
“She’s over the morning sickness,” he says. “Our son is strong and healthy.”
Our son. It sickens me every time he says it. When Caroline gives birth to her baby boy, he intends to take him from her and bring the child here to be raised as mine and his.
There’s no end to the cruelty of the regime and those who power it. There are a few women in high-ranking positions, but only because they already had military leadership experience when the virus hit. So few people survived that Whitman had to put any women on his team who were willing.
Those are the ones I despise most. The women who sit in those meetings and say nothing.
They know damn well the rest of us are treated like objects.
We’re housekeepers, childcare givers, cooks, service workers, and vessels.
Whether they call us mistress or wife, none of us wants this. But the instinct to survive runs deep.
“Our son will give you purpose,” he says.
“Yes. I look forward to it.”
Servers clear away the salad dishes and bring the second course, which hides beneath stainless domes over each plate. One server, Robbie, stands beside me and the head butler, Alonzo, stands beside Lochlan. They remove the domes at the same moment, steam rising from whatever’s inside.
“Bone marrow consommé with whipped marrow and sea salt,” Alonzo proclaims.
Lochlan’s newest head chef has a strong will to live.
Her name is Amanda, and she works tirelessly to make sure every dish Lochlan requests is made perfectly.
The last chef, Marcone, had his right wrist shattered by Lochlan after serving undercooked pork chops.
Since he couldn’t use his hand anymore, he was sent away.
No one in this house gets medical treatment after beatings. So if bones are broken, they probably won’t mend the right way. For an art professor, Lochlan is surprisingly brutal. He loves drawing blood and inflicting pain.
“This is very good,” I say, dipping my spoon back into the soup.
I consider myself part of the staff in this house, though I’d trade my job for anyone else’s in a heartbeat. And we take care of each other as much as we can.
When Lynette, one of the housekeepers, recently had the flu, we waited for Lochlan to leave for the day and then Tony, one of the gardeners, helped me get Lynette’s work done. She instructed us on what to do in between trips to the bathroom.
I slept better on those nights than I have in a long time. I miss my life before. Not just before the virus, but also after the virus and before Lochlan saw me at that market.
Every day, I had to put in work to survive. I was lonely at times, but also at peace. I’d given up actively searching for my parents and Mae, because it was killing me inside to see how awful people were treating each other in every city I went to.
I still felt them with me when I was on my own in the forest. Trickling creeks made me think of Mae and me taking off our shoes and socks to dance in shallow streams when we were hiking with our parents.
A perfect bloom on a flower reminded me of my mom’s endless fascination with nature.
Thunderstorms made me remember the way my dad would sit on our screened-in porch when it was storming, because he loved the sounds and the fresh, earthy scents.
Rib eye with a side of au gratin potatoes is the next course. Amanda slices the hot, perfectly cooked steak tableside. She practiced cooking this meal for days before making it the first time, the rest of the staff helping her learn how to time everything perfectly.
The rib eye needs to rest for fifteen to twenty minutes before slicing. The potatoes need to come out of the oven five minutes before the rib eye is ready to go out. Amanda has it down now, and she’s confident as she places sliced meat on Lochlan’s plate.
“Thank you,” Lochlan says.
It’s weird how he’s occasionally polite. It doesn’t make up for the rest of his behavior. It’s actually kind of unnerving, because he always uses the same measured voice, whether he’s thanking the chef for his steak or telling me I’m a worthless bitch he can’t get hard for.
Amanda gives me a quick wink when she puts steak on my plate.
I like talking to her when she’s working in the kitchen.
She’s thirty-two and was a veterinary technician when the virus came.
She says she could barely even make scrambled eggs.
But surviving in the postvirus world means adapting, and she has.
“We annexed another three thousand two hundred square miles to the east,” Lochlan says, raising a bite of steak to his mouth.
“That’s good.”
“I’m traveling there tomorrow to oversee the securing of the new border.”
Hell yes. Everyone in the house relaxes when he’s gone for several days. In the evenings, we make pizza and watch old DVD copies of our favorite movies. This multimillion-dollar home may be our prison, but it’s a much nicer one than others are trapped in.
Alonzo and Robbie come in to clear away dishes, keeping their gazes on the dining table.
“You’re ovulating, so I’ll come to your room tonight,” Lochlan says. “Wear the white bra and thong.”
My face heats. Everyone in this house knows Lochlan is trying to get me pregnant, and several of them worked here when I used to fight him. Alonzo used to sneak me ice packs and pain medication after beatings.
Them knowing what I’ll be wearing makes it even more humiliating, though. My father raised me to cut off the balls of any man who tried to violate me the way Lochlan does.
He’d want me to survive, though. I know that. My life’s mission isn’t just to get out of here. It’s to make him pay a heavy price for every single time he’s laid a hand on me. It won’t be quick and painless. I’m going to kill him slowly.
Lochlan will learn what it feels like to be trapped. Caged. Hurt. Invaded. Knowing my smiling face will be the last thing he ever sees as the life drains out of him sustains me.
“Maybe I should just take you right here on this table,” he jokes as Alonzo and Robbie deliver flourless dark chocolate cake to each of us.
Maybe I should slice his tiny, pale dick off with a steak knife. My gaze locks onto the woman in the painting behind him.
“If you want to,” I say absently.
She’s looking away from Leonardo in the artwork, focused on something else. It’s the way I dissociate when Lochlan is wheezing and grunting on top of me.
I thought I could only feel close to my family in the woods, surrounded by nature. But that first night I agreed to sit in this dining room and eat with Lochlan, more than a month after I was brought here, I saw Ginevra.
The painting’s title, Ginevra de’ Benci, translates to Ginevra of the Benci family. My heart raced into overdrive when I saw it. My father loved the painting because Ginevra means “juniper”, and that’s the middle name my mother gave me.
Juniper is a plant that’s part of the cypress family. It’s resilient, surviving and even thriving in conditions that kill other plants.
In harsh, windswept climates, juniper gets twisted and gnarled into what Germans call “krummholz”—stress-sculpted beauty. Though it looks damaged, it’s very much alive and deeply rooted.
The painting was the sign I needed. It was my parents’ way of telling me to endure. There will be a time for retribution. I just have to hold on until then.
He can do whatever his sick mind thinks up with my body, but Lochlan Murphy will never break me.