Chapter Seven
Lemon
“This is the most archaic thing I can conceptualize, Papa! It is supremely fucked, and I will not apologize for my un-ladylike language, either.” I give a pointed glare to Phillip, Papa’s driver, who doesn’t even attempt to hide his smirk in the rearview reflection.
“Fuck off, Phil.” I flip him the bird because I actually like him, and that’s our thing. Still, it’s not fair for poor Phillip to endure this.
My father sold me.
He is giving me to someone as a live-in fucking sex slave or some cruel and unusual alternative.
Papa sighs, and I swear he must hear my thoughts. “It is simply a nanny position, Zitrone. You act as though I have arranged a marriage on your behalf.”
“My apologies, Daddy Dearest. I didn’t realize this was merely a recruitment endeavor. Can I get my pay in advance, then or do I need to call up whoever Britney hired and cut through the chains of conservatorship while I’m at it?”
I’m fuming, probably as red in the face as I feel in my fiery soul right now, but he only sighs like I’ve tired him.
How one does around a child, the only thing he will see me as, until I belong to another man.
Shit. He really thinks I’ll fall into this role of compliant little nanny and emerge a changed woman with a long line of suitors ready to snatch up my winning motherly skills, on recent exhibit as the newest Von-Trappy governess, and all.
“M?uschen—”
“Do not call me pet names, Vater! Not when you’ve just sold me like cattle.”
“I did not sell you, Zitrone. Bitte! Listen to yourself!” He whips the tabloid from his jacket, the one with Onyx, Tina, and me plastered across the front doing body shots like every other twenty-something I know.
I roll my eyes, but he shakes his head and forces the paper in front of me. “Bist du blind? Look at yourself!”
He reaches for my hand, but I yank it away, hundreds of charms clanking together in the wake of my resistance. My father casts his eyes to the ground when I cradle my wrist to silence them.
Phillip’s voice cuts through the speakers. “We are here, Mr. Perkins.”
“I worry you will become her.” My father clasps his hands in his lap.
“Beautiful, passionate, proud. And these are such good things to be, mein Kind. But you are reckless. Not just with your body, but your heart. Your mind, Zitrone. I fear your soul will always wander, and then what?” Hurt and fear cross over his eyes in a flash.
“You will become dead in a ditch somewhere like your mother.”
Tears fill the space around my father’s eyes until the drops threaten to spill free right before me, but my anger flows faster. “You don’t know that. You do not know that she is dead, Papa. You do not know!”
“I feel it!”
Silence fills the car, nostrils flared, and lips pressed the same way, as we heave in air but refuse to sound remotely winded. Never rattled by the storm, only ever the cause of it.
I might look like her, but I am him.
Something is silently stated in this moment. I just wish I understood it, the look he gives me as he reaches over my lap and pries the door handle open to urge me away.
“You seek something I cannot teach you, Zitrone. I pray this new journey will. I love you, even if you doubt it fiercely.”
“Love?” I gasp, tears rolling down my cheeks as the one man I trust breaks every bit of it.
“You’ve cut off my access to banking, despite the fact I’m certain it’s not legal, you’ve contracted me out to a family to…
live in their house and…and…serve them. You stripped me of my freedom and my autonomy as a twenty-eight-year-old grown-ass woman and forced me into a prison!
And you tell me you love me? This is not love. This cage? This is why my mother left.”
“Das reicht!” His voice blasts against my face before I can take back what I’ve said. I can feel his anger in the force of his breath against my skin, and it breaks my heart what I’ve just done to him, the glass walls I shattered because stones were easier to throw with words.
My breath hitches as he wipes his eyes with the back of his ring-fingered hand, a reminder of his unending love for her.
“Es tut mir leid, Papa. I did not mean—”
“No! You did not think! You have gallivanted far too long, opening your bed and your heart for the thrill of the moment. I have paid for handfuls of degrees and certifications so you can find your peace and live your dreams, Lemondrop, but this…” He waves the tabloid into the air.
“This is too far. You will serve this family as if they are your own, as their live-in nanny. You will do an impeccable job caring for my most trusted employee’s four children in his country estate—you will keep all rock bands out of it— and you will regain access to your trust accounts when you prove capable of a whole summer with no shenanigans. ”
“Or what? If I don’t go along with this indentured servitude you’ve conjured up? What will be done to me then? Will you cast me off to a foreign prince with the highest dowry? Perhaps Dubai. I hear the jewelry selection is decent there.”
“Stop this, Zitrone! You will act like the adult I should have raised you to be, and you will mind the reputation of Perkins Global while you live in his house, or you will not regain access to your trust. Ever. I’ll do what I must to fix the mess I made of you.
Weil ich dich liebe. Do I make that clear? ”
“Glasklar.”
I do not blink.
I do not hug my father.
Instead, I slam the door, and it fucking stings, because I love that stupid asshole motherfucker more than anyone on this planet.
“He didn’t sell you, miss, if it pleases you.” Phillip unloads my luggage. “Likely few willing buyers.”
His crow’s foot wink eases my nerves, the banter warming me with familiarity before I’m cast into the unknown, but he frowns just as quickly.
He, too, believes Papa has gone too far.
I know I’ve screwed up a time or two, but he’s completely frozen me out of my accounts. I have zero control over who I am, what I do, or where I go from this point until one of them releases me from shackles.
I stand at the edge of my destiny, a long stone driveway past sky-high, monogrammed gates, no different than the ones I grew up behind.
No wonder these kids need a nanny who can keep up. Bet they’re crawling out their school uniforms to scale these bars if their father is anything like mine.
“Who is this ‘most trusted’ employee?”
A worry line forms across Philip’s brow. I don’t like it.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He nods to the large French doors, unloading more than luggage at my feet with his final whisper. “This man didn’t pay your father, Miss. Your father paid him. Eight million dollars to keep you busy.”
I’m nobody’s to keep.