Chapter 9
WILLOW
After getting cleaned up a bit, Vic and I talk for a while, murmuring over the phone in low voices. We talk about stupid things, anything and everything, and it’s nice just to hear his voice.
I don’t know how long I make it before my eyelids start to droop, but after a while, I fall into an exhausted sleep.
The stress of the day, combined with the relaxing after-effects of a couple of good orgasms, knocks me out hard, which means that I thankfully don’t have any dreams—or at least, none that I remember.
When I wake up in the morning, I feel more determined than ever. Feeling so connected to Vic last night, hearing him say that he and his brothers are going to keep me… it makes it even more clear what I have to do. Even if I don’t want to.
My fingers shake as I grab my phone and scroll through my contacts to call Olivia.
It rings for a few seconds, and then she answers.
“Willow. What can I do for you?” She sounds surprised to hear from me, and my stomach twists, thinking about how her saying those words used to make me feel safe and cared for. Like someone was looking out for me.
Now it just makes me feel sick.
“I want to make the most of what I can’t avoid,” I tell her. “If I’m going to be getting married to Troy soon, I need to know how to survive and thrive in this world—your world.”
“I see,” my grandmother says. “I was under the impression that you didn’t care much for ‘my world,’ as you put it.”
“I don’t,” I admit. “I hate it, honestly. But you’ve made it pretty clear that I have no choice in the matter, so I’d at least like to not fall on my face when it comes to navigating this life. I want to know how to hold my own. To… to fit in.”
I don’t even have to pretend to sound resigned to it. It’s how I felt even before all of this happened, like I was a fish out of water, not sure how to act when she invited me to things. It’s easy enough to tap into those feelings, along with not hiding the fact that I don’t want any of this.
If I tried to act otherwise, she’d be too suspicious to believe it. But she knows that she has a lot of leverage over me, and that I’m willing to do what I have to as long as it keeps the guys safe.
And as far as she knows, there’s no way out for me now.
God, I hope she’s wrong about that.
Olivia is quiet for a moment, and my stomach twists as I wonder if she’s seen through me or guessed that I have an ulterior motive. But when she speaks, she sounds pleased.
“Good. Very good. You may not want this, but at least you realize your role in all of it. It would be a shame to have you embarrassing the family name, so yes, I will help you.”
I don’t even really know what to say to that. Thank you would be a step too far, so I settle on, “Okay. Should I come over?”
“Yes,” Olivia agrees. “We’ll get started right away. Adam will drive you.”
After ending the call, I get dressed in another Olivia approved outfit and head downstairs. A guard is still stationed outside my place—someone other than Jerome today, presumably Adam—and he watches me as I head toward his car and get in.
When we arrive at Olivia’s mansion, I’m ushered inside by one of the house staff. My grandmother is waiting for me in the sitting room, but at least Troy isn’t there with her today.
She has tea laid out, and she sits primly in her chair, watching as I step awkwardly into the room and settle on a couch across from her.
The maid who led me in offers me some tea too, and I take it, even though the paranoid part of me can’t help but worry that my grandmother drugged it or something.
But I don’t see how that would serve her right now, and she’s nothing if not cold-heartedly pragmatic, so I lift the cup to my lips and take a small sip.
Once the maid steps out of the room, Olivia clears her throat, fixing me with an assessing look.
“Now, I know you haven’t had a very good example of what it means to be a wife at all, let alone a wife in this world,” she says. “Your mother died, of course, but I highly doubt she would have been a good role model to begin with.”
It takes me a second to realize she means my birth mother, not Misty, and I clench my fingers around my tea cup, dragging in a deep breath.
Olivia doesn’t even seem to notice, caught up in her little lecture.
“Men with money like to believe they are untouchable. That is what you must first understand. They buy into the idea that they’re the man of the house, that their word is law, that they have all the power. And we let them think that, because it’s easier when they’re happy.”
“Was my grandfather like that?” I ask before I can stop myself. Learning anything else about my toxic family seems useless at this point, but still, I want to know.
She smiles, and it seems truly fond, which only makes me hate her more.
“He could be, at times. He liked things a certain way, and he could be very demanding. But that doesn’t mean I let him do whatever he wanted.
In this world, behind every powerful, rich man, should be an equally powerful and savvy woman.
My husband was the face of the Stanton family, and everyone believed that he was in charge, but I had my ways of guiding him to do what I wanted. ”
“How?”
“It comes from knowing the man. Knowing what he likes, knowing what makes him listen. I would make suggestions, while making sure his glass was full. I would speak with him over his favorite meals and use his good mood to make him think that my ideas and plans were his ideas and plans.”
I frown, staring down into the murky depths of my tea. “So… you manipulated him.”
She waves a delicate hand carelessly. “Call it what you want, but it worked out well for both of us. You just have to know how to handle your man.”
“Well, I don’t think that’s going to work for me,” I mutter, bitterness rising up in my throat. “Troy doesn’t even like me, much less respect me.”
Olivia waves her hand again, giving me a patronizing look. She sets her teacup down and leans a little closer, as if we’re sharing a secret. “You’re just not looking at it the right way. You have something Troy wants, and you can use that to your advantage if you’re smart.”
It takes me a few beats to catch on to what she means, and when I do, I stare at her, disgusted.
She saw Troy on top of me when she came back into the room yesterday.
She’s heard him talk about me, and she clearly knows that he’s only interested in me because he thinks it’s somehow hot that I’m the daughter of a prostitute.
He thinks that’s going to make the sex better or some fucked up thing, and judging from the look on Olivia’s face, she wants me to go along with that.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” she says crisply as she notices the horrified expression on my face.
“A woman in this society has to use every tool in her arsenal, even if that means you have to give in to what he wants. Whatever he wants you to do, you will do it. You will give him anything he demands, because that will benefit you. And in turn, it will benefit me.”
My stomach roils, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.
I want to tell her off, to tell her I’m never going to do that and she and Troy can both go fuck themselves, but I bite my tongue.
I asked for this, in a way. I asked for her ‘grandmotherly advice,’ and this is it. But as disgusting as her ideas of how to get by in this world of hers are, it got me into her house, so that’s the win I needed.
“I need to use the restroom,” I tell her, getting up and setting my cup down, not bothering to hide the quaver in my voice. “I don’t… feel well.”
I can feel her eyes on me as I make my way out of the sitting room and down the hall, and I put my hand on my stomach to sell the idea that I’m about to go vomit again.
Once I’m out of Olivia’s eyeline, I straighten up a little, my steps quickening. It’s easy to find my way back to the room I passed by yesterday. The door is shut this time, and I take a second to make sure that none of the house staff are nearby before I try the handle.
The door isn’t locked, thank fuck, so I slip quietly into the room.
My pulse is racing, the need to rush making my hands shake. I probably only have five minutes or so if I’m trying to match the time an actual trip to the bathroom would take. Any longer than that, and Olivia might get impatient and send someone to fetch me… or even worse, come after me herself.
Dragging my phone from my pocket, I walk quickly over to the file cabinets and slide the top drawer of one open.
I don’t have time to take pictures of all the documents inside, so I snap a photo that shows all the little tabs at the top of the hanging file dividers.
I’ll have to show it to the guys and see if they recognize anything as relating to a job they’ve done for Olivia.
I repeat the process with the other file drawers, opening and closing them as smoothly and silently as possible as I count down the seconds in my head.
By the time I get to what I think has been four minutes, my heart is in my throat.
I snap a few more quick pictures and then shove my phone back into my pocket.
Taking a second to run my sweat dampened palms over my clothes to dry them a little, I force myself to drag in a few slow breaths to calm my racing heart.
Then I make my way back to the sitting room.
My skin prickles with awareness, but Olivia doesn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss, and as I take my seat on the couch again, she resumes the lesson in her coolly brusque tone.
I settle in, listening carefully and nodding whenever it seems appropriate.
She goes over everything from how I should be dressing to the kinds of conversations I should be having with people at social gatherings. There are apparently unspoken rules for everything, and my head is spinning with information by the time she finally comes to a stop.
She flicks her gaze over me and sniffs, lacing her fingers together on her lap.
“I don’t expect that you’ll pick it all up from one or two lessons,” she says. “And the best teacher is experience, of course.”
“Of course,” I mutter.
“You will have ample opportunities to learn, but learn fast.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She gives me a look that clearly says she doesn’t think very much of my best, and I sigh, already anxious to be done with this.
“That will do for today,” she says. “I have other things to do. Organizing a wedding on such a short schedule is no easy task.” She gives me a look as if that’s my fault, then adds, “We’ll meet again tomorrow.
We have a dress fitting scheduled. You need something for your engagement party, and I know you don’t own anything that would be suitable. ”
“Okay.”
I nod curtly, hating that by calling her this morning, I basically deprived myself of the one day I might’ve gotten to spend without seeing my awful grandmother. But at least I got something useful out of it.
She tells me where we’ll be meeting, but I barely bother listening, because she also makes it clear that she’ll have one of her men drive me there.
Once she’s finished giving me instructions for the morning, I stand up and glance toward the sitting room door. Since no maid has come to fetch me, I’m about to see myself out, but before I can, Olivia stops me by speaking again.
“You know, your little trio of men will be doing a job for me this evening,” she says, examining her perfectly manicured nails.
She glances up at me through her eyelashes, not even bothering to lift her head.
“But you don’t need to worry. If they do it right, it’s unlikely they’ll come to any harm. ”
Hatred fills me, and I entertain a little fantasy of punching her right in her smug face, but I try not to let any of that show in my expression as I give her a tight smile and then stride from the room.
We have a plan.
If the plan works, then all of us will be free of her and her bullshit forever. I just have to focus on that.