Chapter 3
ZARINA
The moment the ballroom’s double doors click shut behind me, I deflate.
My hands shake, and my skin crawls. I scrape my palms over my neck, my arms, my chin.
Darius leads us through the maze of back hallways, and I assume we’re on our way to the dressing rooms, but I couldn’t name the color of the carpet or the walls, even if threatened.
Tamayo’s fingers hover over the small of my back, not touching but radiating warmth and weight, like an ephemeral anchor to reality.
I focus on the magnetic pull of her presence, hoping it can calm the frenetic pounding of my heart echoing in my ears.
“Shit—Pat.” I halt and turn to them. “Security tapes.”
They nod, turning on their heel and racing back down the hall. Only then do I notice that three of Tamayo’s people are behind us, and further down the hall, my parents round the corner.
“Fuck.” I grab Tamayo’s wrist. “Get me out of here. Now.”
“Gladly.” She taps one of her capos on the shoulder, and they turn, arms up to stop my parents’ approach. Then Tamayo’s guiding me forward, and Darius is leading the way again.
“Can I touch you?” she whispers in my ear.
The question, after Marcus’s second assault on my person, tumbles bricks from the precarious dam close to crumbling inside of me. “Please.”
Her hand finally closes the gap, wrapping protectively around my waist and half-carrying me through the door—to outside.
I gulp lungfuls of brisk, autumn air. It stings my throat, and goosebumps scatter up my arms and chest, a cleansing freeze that burns away his touch.
The fear he invoked coats my tongue like an acidic aftertaste that won’t fade.
I lean into Tamayo lest I trip down the steps and face plant on the asphalt.
“Careful,” she murmurs.
Darius yanks open the car door, and Tamayo lifts me into the back.
She tries to settle me into my seat, but my hand won’t relax around her wrist, a claw digging into her suit jacket.
I look at my arm like it’s another person’s limb.
But no matter how many times my brain commands it to relax, it won’t.
Tamayo simply slides in next to me, pulling me against her chest so she isn’t awkwardly leaning across me. And then the door slams shut. Darius and one of the capos slide into the front, taking off with a screech of tires.
The city passes in a blur of lights and sounds I don’t try to discern.
All I can muster focus for is trying to loosen my grip on Tamayo’s wrist. I stare at my fingers, lifting one at a time.
But before the next can rise, the previous snaps back like magnets to metal.
It’s useless. I squeeze my eyes shut, face stuffed into her starched black shirt, and without permission, her arm under my grip morphs into Marcus’s gun. My breath shallows, my muscles tighten.
“Tamayo.” Her name comes out like a plea.
“A few more minutes.”
Tears burn my eyes, and I suck in a calming breath, but the exhale is shaky and wet. We’re not alone yet. I can’t release. Not yet.
“Princess.” Tamayo’s voice is pained. She lifts me off the seat and onto her lap, maneuvering me and my unwieldy dress into position so I can rest my head in the crook of her shoulder, nose stuffed into her neck and breathing in as much of her scent as possible.
“Focus on my voice, hm? We’re in the car, on our way home, where Marcus can’t touch you.
You’re in my arms, and you can stay there as long as you need.
” She strokes the loose hair at the nape of my neck.
“Hell, I might need you stay in my arms longer than you do.”
I sniff a chuckle.
“Whatever you need, let me know. You’ll be okay.
” Tamayo keeps speaking, a low whisper in my ear, lips soft against my cheek.
Her hands rub soothingly over my skin until I stop shivering.
I focus on the feel of the calluses on her palms and fingers, on the timbre of her voice, on the weight of my body where it sits in her lap.
Tangible, real things that are grounded in the here and now and not the scene twenty minutes ago.
And when the car pulls into the garage, I can finally let go of her.
But Tamayo can’t.
She threads her fingers through mine and leads me toward the house. And for possibly the first time ever, Darius doesn’t follow. He stays in the town car as the nameless capo jumps into another, less ostentatious sedan, and both back out of the garage, one after another.
I shoot Tamayo a confused frown.
“Pat and the other capos.” She holds open the door and tries to guide me through it.
I don’t move. Instead, I watch until the garage closes fully, unable to shake the thought that someone could roll under it and inside. I glance up to the ceiling—no sky lights for anyone to pry open and jump down into our small fortress.
Tamayo’s phone rings, and I jump, hand to my chest. She digs it out of her inner jacket pocket and switches it off, her other hand never leaving mine. “They can wait. Come on.”
“We’re safe here, right?” I ask as she pushes the door shut behind me.
“Yes.”
I eye the large windows facing the backyard, the French doors leading to the deck. “How safe?”
“Safe enough that the Accardis didn’t dare make a move until we were out of the house,” she murmurs into my ear.
“Good point.”
Tamayo pauses at the foot of the stairs and looks to the second floor with her bottom lip between her teeth. “Zarina—”
I flinch. It’s not Tamayo saying my name, it’s Mother, it’s Father, it’s Marcus Accardi with his hands so tight around my neck that blood struggled to reach my brain. “Don’t use my real name. Not tonight.”
She offers me a reassuring smile. “Noted. Princess—I don’t think I can leave you alone in your room tonight.”
“I’ll be fine.” Except that’s a lie. I will absolutely not be fine, unless Pat comes back and climbs into bed with me. I think I might have a panic attack if I’m alone right now.
“I know you will.” Tamayo lets me have my paper-thin lie. “But I won’t.”
“What?”
She dips her head down to meet my gaze, her brown eyes warm as sun-soaked bark during golden hour. “I’ll spend my night worrying and not sleeping if you’re not with me.”
“Oh.” I swallow hard. “If it’ll help, I’ll stay with you.”
“Thank you, princess.” She presses a soft kiss to my temple, so gentle in comparison to everyone else this evening that the contrast topples a few more bricks from the dam.
“Anything to help,” I say. And I don’t look at it too hard, don’t think too critically about the fact Tamayo gave me exactly what I needed without pushing me to ask. I simply accept it.
We climb the stairs, her arm around my waist, catching me as I stumble over my heels.
“I need to shower, first,” I mutter.
“Use mine.”
I blink as more bricks fall. The dam is almost gone now, mere moments from breaking. I try to make light. “Can’t be away from me for one minute, huh?”
She squeezes my waist gently. “No.”
Same, I think. But I don’t say it. We pass my bedroom door and head for the double doors at the end of the hall. Tamayo pushes them open and steps inside, at ease in her own space. I stand in the doorway, arms around myself, unsure how to enter her bedroom, the most intimate room in one’s life.
It’s warmer than I expected. With the cold black-and-white themes throughout the kitchen and dining room, I thought maybe that was Tamayo’s aesthetic.
But her room is full of soft textured blankets, deep crimson bedding, cozy nooks to curl up in.
Books sit in piles around the room—one stack by the wingback chair in the window alcove, another beside the bed, another on the low dresser.
“The bathroom’s through here.” Tamayo stands in the doorway to the en suite, watching me where I hover on the threshold.
Do I enter? Exit? I could let my dam break in my own room, alone, in the shower.
Let the water wash away every traitorous, cruel touch.
My mother’s claws pinning me to the trap.
Marcus’s hands threatening a lifetime of terror.
Tamayo glides over, her feet already out of her boots, and grabs hold of one side of the double doors. She swings it closed then grabs the other side to do the same. Slowly. As if allowing me the option to leave if I really want to, like I was considering.
But I stay.
I stay and follow Tamayo to the bathroom. And it feels better to be here with her rather than in my bedroom alone. Which is dangerous. Tamayo isn’t my friend. She isn’t my ally. Not really. Not with this fake engagement ring weighing down my finger and subsequently any trust we have.
She rambles as we walk into the en suite. “Hot’s on the left, cold on the right. Towels are in the warmer here, and I’ll set out something for pajamas—”
I stop her before she can leave, turning and pulling my hair over my shoulder. “Unbutton me?”
In the mirror, I watch her study me until she answers. “Sure.”
“Thanks,” I whisper.
But Tamayo hovers behind me, not unbuttoning anything, just staring.
I let her. I slip off my engagement ring, hoping that relieving myself of its weight will relieve my conscience of the knowledge of this teetering edge I’m dancing on with the woman at my back.
I am a wreck, crushed by the people who should love me the most and the man they want to sell me to.
And every time that reality hits too hard, I keep turning to Tamayo for help.
My parents arrange my marriage to Marcus Accardi; I strike a deal with Tamayo. I remove my tiara next. Marcus assaults me in Saint Christophers; I fuck Tamayo in the back of her car. I take off my earrings. Marcus attempts to kidnap and forcibly marry me; I find safe harbor in Tamayo.
And I shouldn’t.
She’s not my savior. In fact, she’s barely my business partner.
Yet I can’t stop turning back to her, like a tide pulled to shore over and over again.
Her fingertips brush my back, light as satin, as she finally begins to unbutton my corset.
Without my permission, a much more welcome, much less terrified shiver ripples over my spine.
“Are you hurt?” she asks, voice soft in the warm room.
“Not physically.” I pull out the many bobby pins in my hair, finger-combing it to get the worst of the tangles out.
“Emotionally?” she prompts.
“Rattled.”
She hums in acknowledgment. “You did amazing.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry you had to.”
“Me, too.” My chin trembles before I stop it.
She presses a kiss to my shoulder blade. “Will you forgive me?”
“For what?”
Her face is still buried out of sight, forehead pressed to my scapula. “Allowing it to happen.”
I turn in my dress, the buttons undone and the fabric falling away to the floor. I step out of the bodice, wearing only shape-wear, and take Tamayo’s face in my hands. Her gaze is pained, but she meets mine without balking.
I speak slowly, clearly, because I need her to understand. “You are not responsible for what he did.”
She wrinkles her nose. “But I provided an opportunity.”
“No, my parents did.” There’s a hitch in my throat that I refuse to acknowledge. “On purpose.”
“You were alone.” She wraps her hands around my wrists, her eyes dipping to my jaw, my neck, where I know there are red marks as angry as the fingers that made them.
“It was my fault I was alone, not yours.” I swipe my thumb over her cheekbone, over the mole under her eye, like I’m catching starlight. “I told Pat to wait at the door while I spoke with my mother.”
“Who was meant to get you alone for Marcus to make a move,” she grumble-pouts.
“Yes,” I say. Tamayo’s too cute not to smile at, but it’s pained.
My own parents. Their betrayal cuts the deepest. More than the arranged marriage, more than the years of patriarchal oppression.
My own mother was willing to do whatever it took, allow whatever was needed, to get me to that altar tonight. And Father sat back and let it happen.
I never thought they’d go this far. I always thought… But the gnashing teeth inside me bite down on that track, cutting it off before I can finish and the pain of it can pierce too deep.
Tamayo’s grip tightens around my wrists, as if calling me out of my head and away from my demons. “I’m sorry, princess.”
“Stop apologizing for things you’re not accountable for.” I gently smack her cheek.
The ghost of a grin twitches over her lips at that. “I’m not apologizing for the actions, rather the consequences. You deserve better.”
I blink at her, uncertain I believe her. My hands drop, and I frown at the dip of her collarbone.
Tamayo lifts my chin with gentle fingers. “You do. You know that right?”
I don’t. “Like you know it’s not yours to apologize for?”
“Touché.” She swallows and steps backward toward the door with a resetting breath. “I’ll let you shower.”
“Join me?” The words are out of my mouth before I can overthink them.
But the silence that follows leaves so much space that my anxiety rushes in to fill it.
I’m doing it again, turning to Tamayo when everything’s more fucked up than I thought it could be.
When I should be regrouping to focus on the reason I’m even here.
But the truth is, if she leaves me alone right now, the dam inside me will crumble to dust, and I don’t know if I can rebuild it myself. Not tonight.
Tamayo clears her throat. “We don’t have to—this wasn’t a ploy to—”
“I know that.” I rub my lips together. “Tamayo, you’re one of the only people in my life who has ever—and I mean ever—cared about my consent and autonomy. You might make a mistake, but you take responsibility and you try to be better.”
She shrugs off the compliment. “That’s baseline, princess.”
“It should be… but it’s not.” I reach for her wrist, tugging her gently away from the door and toward the shower. “Please? I want you to join me.”
Tamayo studies my face for a long moment. Not once does her gaze travel any lower, and it’s so small, barely significant, but tonight, it means everything. That she would recognize that even the sight of my body needs to be given by me. And it’s exactly why I want her to stay.
She must see it on my face, because she finally relents and releases the doorknob with a small smile. “Okay.”
I return the same smile as I pull her closer. “Okay.”