Chapter 7 #2
Because I see what the dresses are. I see it every time the woman in the suit holds one up against me, murmuring about the cut, the slit, the way this neckline will photograph.
None of these clothes are for me. They’re for the version of me that hangs on Sevastian’s arm in a room full of dangerous men, the gilded proof that the pakhan has himself a pretty toy.
I’m shopping for the costume of the woman everyone already thinks I am, and the worst part is how good the fabric feels against my skin anyway.
I’m holding a dark red dress that’s mostly an idea of a dress when I see him.
Not Sevastian. Him. The other one.
He’s in the fitting-room mirror, past my own reflection, out through the gap in the curtain, across the boutique floor.
A man. Nondescript in a way that’s nearly a skill, the kind of face that slides off your memory.
Except I’ve seen this face before. Outside my building.
At the edge of the casino drive. Now here, in a store on the most exclusive block in the state, standing too still beside a rack of scarves with his phone up.
The phone is pointed at me. He is not texting.
He’s photographing me through the glass.
My whole body goes cold under the beautiful red dress.
This isn’t one of Sevastian’s men. Sevastian’s men sit in cars, read newspapers, want me to know they’re there.
This one never wanted to be seen at all.
The only reason I caught him is the mirror, plus a dancer’s habit of always knowing where the eyes in a room point.
He followed me here, to a place I picked at random an hour ago.
Which means he didn’t follow me from home.
He’s been close the whole time, close enough to know where I’d be, and that’s a different, much worse kind of cold.
Here’s where the old Cindy bolts. Hides in the dressing room. Calls the number. Waits for big men to come handle it.
I don’t do that.
I’m done being the thing people happen to. I decide it right there, half-dressed, with a stranger’s camera on me. I’m furious, and fury, it turns out, is useful.
So I think like a dancer instead of a victim.
Every stage I’ve ever worked has a way out the back, a hall the customers never see.
A store like this is no different, with deliveries, staff, trash, all going somewhere that isn’t the front door.
I take my time. I step out of the dress, calm as anything, tell the woman in the suit to box everything up and have it sent.
Then I ask her, sweet as pie, where the ladies’ room is, and she points me down a private hall toward the back.
I don’t go to the ladies’ room.
I go past it, through a door marked staff, into a concrete corridor that smells like cardboard.
Crystal trots after me confused, loaded down with bags.
I put a finger to my lips and keep moving.
Past stockrooms. Past a break room. Toward the red glow of an exit sign, a loading door that lets us out into a service alley behind the block.
We blink in the sudden hard sun, two streets over from where a man with a phone is still watching a curtain I’m no longer behind.
As we come out past the valet stand at the corner, I pull off the thing I’m proudest of all day.
There’s a valet kid leaning on his little podium, a clipboard of tickets at his elbow.
Parked at the curb, idling, gray and forgettable, is a sedan I recognize, because I’ve made it my business this week to recognize cars.
The watcher’s car. He left it with the valet.
Of course he did. A man can’t tail someone on foot and find his own parking at the same time.
I smile at the valet kid. I tell him my husband sent me to grab the ticket for the gray sedan, we’re running late.
I’m good at this. I’ve spent my whole career making men believe easy little lies.
He barely looks up as he hands me the stub.
I read the name printed there, the name the watcher gave when he checked in.
Then I hand the ticket back, tell the kid never mind, my husband has it after all, and I walk away with a name burning a hole in my memory.
It’s probably fake. Men like that don’t valet under their real names. But it’s a thread, one single thread on the second set of watchers, the ones who aren’t Sevastian’s, the ones nobody has told me about, and I pulled it myself.
I get Crystal home, still floating on diamonds and leather.
I get myself home. Then I sit on my bad couch with the name turning over in my head, making a decision I can already tell will define how I survive this.
I don’t call the number. I don’t hand the thread to Sevastian.
He has an army, a fortress, a hundred men who answer to him.
I have one secret nobody knows I’m keeping, and a girl learns fast in this life that the only card worth holding is the one nobody knows you’ve got.
So I keep it. I tuck the name away and say nothing, leaving the boxes from today piled by my door, the dresses, the lingerie, the costume of the woman I’m supposed to be tonight.
Because that’s the other thing the shopping was for. The salon opens tonight, the whole reason for the bottomless card. Sevastian is coming to collect me himself so we can walk in together, his woman on his arm, in front of the richest and most dangerous people in the state.
I’m still zipping myself into the dark red dress when there’s a knock.
I come down the stairs to find him waiting in the doorway of my building, and he goes still the way he went still in the desert.
His eyes move over me slow, openly hungry, and for one second the most dangerous man in Nevada looks like he forgot how to speak.
A week ago that look would have scared me.
Tonight it does something better. Tonight I let him look, and I think, you have no idea what I found today.
Because for the first time since the desert, I’m not just the girl this is happening to.
I know something he doesn’t. I’ve got a name in my pocket, a thread in my hand, and somewhere under the red dress, under the borrowed glamour, a thing I thought died with my knee is sitting up, paying attention.
I am so tired of being a pawn. Turns out I make a much better player.