6. Chapter 6
6
HIM
A s my lacerated fingers groped a pair of heavy pruning shears hanging on the wall behind me, I couldn’t help thinking how tempting it was to grab them, knock her out cold, and dash to safety. Of course that would just create more problems than it would solve, but one of these days, I hoped to get to use pure brute force instead of coming up with clever, elaborate plans all the time. It was becoming exhausting.
“Go ahead and say something,” I said, calling her bluff. “I don’t care.”
She wrinkled her nose and mouth in a way she probably thought was cute. At one point, I might have agreed, but at the moment, the effect was slightly demented. “So you really don’t care if I walk right in and tell the housekeeper what I just heard, and she calls the master? You’d be fucked six ways to Sunday.”
“Wait, what?” That was a new one for me.
Her green eyes flashed in annoyance. “Never mind. It’s an American saying. You’re telling me you don’t care.”
“Nope.”
I glanced warily over her shoulder and out into the waning lavender light of the gardens. I could do this. Just con her long enough to buy another day. No, I didn’t even need a day. Just a night would be enough. Hell, a few hours . Not to mention, I had to extricate myself from this situation before Louisa came looking for me because the shed would be the first place she’d look. And yeah, maybe I would have been able to explain away the phone call alone. But this situation would require a level of finesse beyond that of mere mortals, and I could not, much as it pained me to admit it, actually turn water into wine.
To my relief, though, she had started to look somewhat disconcerted that her plan wasn’t working. “You’re playing games with me.”
“You know me. I don’t play games.”
She scoffed. “Oh, right, Mr. Chessmaster-rocket-scientist-brain-surgeon-whatever-you’re-claiming-to-be-today,” she said. “Well, in that case, you should have no problem explaining just why you don’t care whether I tell anyone.”
“Because by the time you tell anyone, I’ll be gone.” I swallowed. “And I want to take you with me,” I blurted out. “Baby.”
I cringed. Really? That was the best I could come up with? I was disappointed in myself. But it was too late to do anything but double down.
“What?”
“You heard me,” I said, making my first small attempt to wriggle out of her shadow. “I’ll take you with me. Tomorrow morning, when I go to find my sister. The master’s away. It’s our best chance.”
“What about the chips?” Her voice gave nothing away.
“I know how to deactivate them,” I lied, ducking past her. “Someone showed me how. Someone from the SLA.”
“I thought the SLA was gone,” she said, blocking me with a hand on my chest. She couldn’t physically prevent me from leaving, but if I left and she chose to run to the housekeeper, where would I go to escape that ? “I thought they all got arrested and sent to the mines years ago. Or they’re in hiding.”
“Not all of them.”
“You’re shitting me.” The surprised expression was a new one for her.
I shook my head and smiled reassuringly. “I’m not,” I said softly, moving closer and lightly touching her hand. Was this laying it on too thick? “I know what I want, and I want you with me when I go.”
For a few seconds at least, it seemed to work. She appeared momentarily captivated by my words, her hardened gaze softening and her smirk replaced with curiosity.
A second later, the smirk was back. “Well, then you’ll have no problem showing me,” she said, shaking some dark hair out of her face and tilting her lips up toward mine.
Well, shit. I had to get out of this. I might be able to charm the birds right out of the trees, but she was now less a bird and more an angry, buzzing horsefly, nimbly dodging whatever I tried to swat her with.
I turned to push her aside, but in a second, it didn’t matter, anyway.
Louisa stood in the doorway, where the fiery light of sunset had at some point been replaced by the violet twilight, and almost would have been beautiful if her eyes when I met them hadn’t been utterly, terrifyingly blank.
The maid spun around, sizing up the situation instantly. Any idiot could have.
I should have known it all along. She’d had no intention of telling anyone about anything. She’d just wanted to fuck things up between us, plain and simple, and her work here was done. Little did she know that hers was just the icing on a fucked-up multi-layer cake.
“Well, good luck,” she told me lightly, reaching up to pat my cheek. “You know where to find me if you need me.” She turned to Louisa in the doorway. “Thanks for the hat, miss, but you can have it.” She handed it to Louisa, who took it robotically before dropping it in the dust, her eyes glued to me .
“I’m not really a hat person, either,” the maid whispered conspiratorially before slipping away.
Ironically, I’d wanted to buy myself some time. But it only took one terrifying second for Louisa’s eyes to fill with tears, another for her face to crumble, and a third for me to watch helplessly as her silhouette disappeared into the gloom.
“I didn’t,” I said to Louisa’s back as she sat in her pink velvet swivel chair, writing something out in a notebook. She didn’t turn around.
I hadn’t been able to avoid the housekeeper, who seemed convinced that I was up to something, which, of course, I was. I always was. So I told her this, which seemed to put her off for a second while I disappeared upstairs. After all, it was either risk her wrath or Louisa’s if I didn’t at least attempt to explain myself, and the choice was obvious. I took a deep breath.
“I know,” she said. “But you would have.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But only to get out of the situation.” Like that made it any better.
She spun her chair around so suddenly it startled me.
“Oh, you mean the situation where she saw you calling my professor, with a number that you took off my desk, in an attempt to save your sister from a supposed kidnapper who you think is my dad’s business partner?”
And I thought I’d been speechless in the shed.
HER
“Maybe I haven’t stressed this enough,” I began, channeling my father in the way he peered down at people from behind his massive desk. If he insisted on treating me like an idiot. “I may not know as much as you do about chemistry, or physics, or calculus, or metaphysics, or epistemology, or French post-gypsy jazz, or whatever other highfalutin Eurotrash art forms you think are really cool, but I am not an idiot .”
“I know you aren’t. But—”
“That day I saw you at the window looking at the mountains,” I said. “You found that piece of paper with Erica Muller’s phone number on it, in that little pink box on my desk. You had to grab it fast and shove it in your pocket, and then you put it back when I turned away.”
His shock was evident. But all he asked was, “How come you didn’t say anything then?”
“Because I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt,” I said. “But you weren’t willing to give me the same. Instead, you looked like you were about to kiss and do who knows what else with a chick I’m pretty sure you don’t even care about—stop me if I’m wrong—just so you could continue to sneak around.”
“You’re not wrong,” he said quietly and seriously, in a way that was breaking my heart already. “I don’t care about her. I never did.”
I bit my lip. To my surprise, I believed him. Maybe because I already knew him well enough to know that if he ever betrayed me, it wouldn’t be by doing something so cheap and lazy and stupid as kissing some slave girl in a toolshed. It would be smart, calculating, and deeply, deeply deceptive.
Just like him.
“But what I don’t understand is how I was supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt.” He seemed genuinely confused.
“ How ? Do you really think I wouldn’t have just given you the number if you’d asked ?”
“I know you would have,” he said quietly, coming farther into the room. I backed up a bit, but I didn’t prevent him from entering. “And then you would have asked why. And then we’d be right back here. With you asking me to choose.”
I leaped out of my chair. “Don’t you understand, you absolutely infuriating idiot? I’m not asking you to choose. I’m asking you to let me in and help you. That’s all I’ve been asking this entire time. Why don’t you get that?”
“I do get it. I just can’t do it.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Because your dad’s involved!”
Now it was my turn to be speechless.
“Nondikass.” He took an angry swing at the back of the swivel chair I had just been sitting in, sending it spinning toward the bed.
Whoa. What was that ? He had never exactly shied away from profanity in English, but in his native language, it sounded downright scary, and quite jarring to observe in someone who had been raised, albeit unsuccessfully, to be submissive.
“Why did you make me say that?” he demanded. “Why did you push me?”
“How about, why did you lie to me ?” I demanded back. “I think that’s the real question here.”
“I never lied,” he said. “And if there were things I didn’t tell you, it was only because I was trying to protect you.”
“You’ve known this whole time, haven’t you?” I asked quietly. “Since the first time you tutored me.”
He tried to calm his tone to match mine. “The real estate title for the place where Langer is keeping her and other girls, too, is in your dad’s name. I found it in his file cabinet.”
“ What ? By accident?” As if that’s even possible, dumbass, I scolded myself.
“No.” He was unapologetic.
“God,” I said, shaking my head. “But how did you know he and Langer—”
“I’ve known for months. Since Germany. It’s … well, it’s kind of the reason I’m here.”
Another piece of the puzzle filled in. “The warehouse,” I said. “That was it on the map the gardener was waving around at the party, wasn’t it?”
“He was trying to blackmail me with it.”
“After you printed it off my computer,” I concluded.
He cringed and nodded.
I threw my hands up. “Unbelievable.”
“But I never lied to you,” he insisted.
“Oh, yeah, no, sure, of course you didn’t lie.” I was shaking now. “You just misled me about everything . Did you ever even want to be in here with me? Did you even—did we even—” I bit my lip, a sob building.
Slowly, tentatively, he approached me like I was a scared baby animal who might bolt. He touched the tip of my elbow, but I snapped it back from his fingertips. “The first time I came into this room, it was for my sister,” he said. “But every time I came back, it was for you. If you don’t believe anything else I say, believe that.”
I closed my eyes. I believed him. I almost wished I didn’t. “And yet, despite all we’ve been through, you still don’t trust me,” I said softly. “And apparently I can’t trust you , either.”
“Lou, your dad is loyal to the guy who’s going to make him rich again, and you’re loyal to your dad,” he explained. “Can’t you see how I couldn’t risk putting my sister in more danger when I came this far just to find her? They’re doing horrifying things to her. Maybe as we speak.”
“Like what?”
“What do you think?” he asked. “It’s slavery. Do I have to draw you a diagram?”
He reached into his pocket, a slow, deliberate movement, and pulled out a small, blood-stained bracelet—Maeve’s. He handed it to me. The metal was cold, the reality colder. Because what I noticed immediately, besides the blood, was that it was totally intact—it hadn’t been cut off or smashed or even torn from her wrist by force. The implications made me gag.
“Corey gave it to me. He said it was courtesy of his boss.”
“Langer.” I recoiled, the bracelet dropping from my fingers and onto the carpet as if it were electrified. “Oh God.” Horror churned in my stomach. And amid my trembling body, an eerie chill surfaced. I looked up at him. “You’re going to go after her, aren’t you?”
He paused as if this were the hardest admission so far. “Yes.”
My knees turned soft, and I sank onto the bed, head spinning, eyes a blur.
“If I don’t, no one will. I was hoping Erica Muller would help me come up with a plan to do it without getting myself or my sister killed.”
I wasn’t sure which was worse—the deeds he was accusing my father of, or that he was planning to run away forever in an attempt to stop them.
And all he could say was, “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He was right. He had warned me. He’d warned me not to poke, not to prod, not to search, not to get involved. I’d done it anyway. Why? For a lark? To give my life meaning, to get a gold star in compassion? Or because I cared, and never in a million years had ever thought it would blow up in my face like this ?
“How could you think so little of me?” I demanded, not daring to look at him. “You’re literally standing here telling me my dad is a kidnapper and a rapist, or at least helping someone who is. And assuming I’m going to defend him.”
“I don’t have to assume. You are defending him.”
“I’m defending him because he’s innocent!” I cried. “Daddy’s a lot of things, but he is not a rapist.”
For a second, his expression changed, and I knew he was taking in the information. “If Langer is doing what you say he is, I can guarantee you he’s lying to Daddy, too.” My voice teetered on the edge of breaking. “And if you’d only bothered to ask—if you’d only bothered to trust me, instead of going behind my back, I could have told you that. Say what you will about what a complete fucking mess my family is, but nobody in it has ever done that to a slave. Ever.”
His voice was cold. “Then you’re blind.”
“How dare you?” I screamed. “This is my family !”
“Yeah, I had a family, too, once,” he said. “Now one of them is dead, and the other is being held captive by a sicko because of people like your family. And you wonder why I have trust issues? You know, I never realized how easy it must be to forget your family owns slaves,” he continued, “when you have the privilege of not being one of them .”
“Oh yeah, ‘privilege.’ I’ve heard that before. What privilege? The ‘privilege’ of having the shittiest, most dysfunctional family of anyone I know? The kind where I spent my entire senior year counting down the days until I could get myself the fuck out of here and then being told I couldn’t go? The kind where I had to stop having friends over because I’m so fucking embarrassed by them?”
“Right, you’re just so embarrassed that you’re stuck in your ten-million-dollar mansion with slaves serving your every whim. Yeah, I feel just really fucking terrible for you. Will you listen to yourself?”
“That is so unfair.” I was crying now, for real. “You of all people should know that what I have—my status—whatever label society gives me—is not who I am.”
“Except in this world, it’s all the same in the end, yeah? Because what you forget is that not only do they have power over me, they have power over you . They can take all this away from you in a second,” he said, waving to the room around us, the refuge in rose gold, where we’d spent so much time exploring and learning and sharing the wonder of our young bond, all going up in smoke now as if someone had taken a match to it. “And then where would you be without your designer clothes and pink furry pillows and brand-new computers and country clubs and pool parties and your overpriced college education that you’d be flunking out of if it weren’t for me, by the way? And meanwhile, you’re feeding me cheesecake and letting me sleep in your bed but only as long as I’m a good boy and do exactly as I’m told because if I don’t and you tell anyone, I’m off to a mine tomorrow. And you know it. Maybe you even like it. Because deep down, you’re all the same.”
I just stood there with my mouth open like a fish. Neither one of us said it, but we both knew who he meant: the free women of his past. The ones who, with one false word, held the power of life and death over him.
I wasn’t controlling; wasn’t dominant; wasn’t cruel. But right now, I was full of the kind of anger and pain that could make even a rational girl do something irrational; something monstrous. The kind that could relate to them .
“If you want to go?” I said through gritted teeth before a sob tore out of my throat. “Go. See how far you get once I tell Daddy.”
“Oh, I’ll get as far as I need to get, chip or no chip,” he said, stalking toward the door as my vision blurred.
This was happening. He was walking out. In seconds, he’d be gone.
Time. How had it come to this?
Fiercely, I turned my back to stare at the window to keep him from seeing the tears pouring down my face. I yelled over my shoulder, “Well, for your sake, you’d better because I’m telling him everything!”
I regretted it as soon as I’d said it, but it was too late.
“Then you are all the same.”
We went a day and a half without communicating, long enough for me to see my B-plus pop up in the university’s online portal. And when I came home, there was no one to tell—just my empty desk with the wicker chair still pulled up next to mine, the dusky afternoon light swirling around it weakly. I fell asleep on top of my chemistry book, tears running down the pages of the wordy volume I used to hate and that had now become the most cherished one on my shelf because it was the only one with spiky boyish handwriting in the margins and globe mallow petals pressed into the pages.
Really, I just wanted to press the intercom and start all over again. But I wouldn’t be asking for coffee this time.
I had threatened to punish him. But I should punish myself for thinking that someone so hurt and abused could ever learn to trust anyone, let alone the daughter of the man who owned him and had the power to destroy him. Even a man innocent of the accusation, as I knew my father was.
Still, in a way, he had been right. I had wanted to find a way to keep him with me—let’s face it, forever if I could. It was why I had threatened to call my father and why I still wanted to, to the point of grabbing my phone every time I was seized by the grief and rage of him turning his back on me. It was an instinct that deep down I was afraid was horrid, that made me fear maybe I was the same as all the rest.
But the fact was, I didn’t really want that. I didn’t want to own him, or command him, or violate him, or punish him. After all, having the rarest, most beautiful bird locked in a cage, no matter how much you petted and adored it, wasn’t like letting it fly. If it had to fly, you had to let it fly. And let it be enough to know it was somewhere out there, wings spread, a tiny, glimmering flash against the massive sky.
The bird could still choose to stay, of course. But for that to happen, you had to accept that it had to be free to fly away, and the bird, that the cage door would always be open.
My phone vibrated, jerking me awake. Papers flew off my desk as I scrambled to wipe off the sticky combination of hair and saliva pressed into the side of my face. The sun was much lower in the sky, and the room was gloomy. What time was it?
The display showed four new messages from Corey, but the call was from Erica Muller, and needless to say, that seemed far more important. I raised the phone to my ear in a daze.
“Where is he?” My professor’s voice blared out of the earpiece.
“Who? What? I don’t—”
“You know who I’m talking about. You have to find him, Louisa,” she continued. “Immediately. Normally, I would never betray the confidence of a slave who came to me like this, but I can’t reach him now, so he must have burned the phone. He’s in danger, and so is his sister. Make sure that whatever he does, he does not go to that warehouse.”
“What? Why?” I sputtered incoherently.
“I don’t have time to explain now.” My professor sounded alarmed, her voice so unlike the cool, dry, pedagogical tone she used in the lecture hall.
“But what do I tell him?” I’d be lucky if he’d listen to or believe anything I said, after the words that had been exchanged. Words we could never take back.
“Tell him I can help him and that I know other people who can. But he cannot handle this by himself.”
“What should we do?”
“You both need to come see me as soon as possible, and we’ll take it from there. Can you get to the mirror telescope building on campus today?”
“I think so, but—” There were several “buts,” the first one being that we had both more or less vowed to never speak to each other again. But I had a feeling that Erica, if I tried to explain that , would slap us both upside the head and tell us to get over ourselves. People’s lives may be at stake.
Except there was another, even bigger “but.”
I’ll get as far as I need to get, chip or no chip.
A shroud of dread unfolded slowly over me from head to toe. Because there might be a reason, other than the fight, that I hadn’t seen him all day.
My father was 400 miles away physically, my mother was 400 miles away mentally, the other slaves were understandably slacking off, and I was avoiding him.
If he was going to take off, this was the best, and maybe the only, opportunity he would ever have to buy himself enough of a head start to succeed.
“Good,” said Erica, whom I’d forgotten was still on the line, and who had apparently already decided that there were no “buts” acceptable. “When you get there, look for one of the volunteer guides with a name tag reading Milagros . She’ll be expecting you.”