Chapter 10
TEN
Chantal
Sorcha delivers the news as if she’s telling me my favorite boutique just went out of business.
“Mr. Lochlan’s requested you assist me with household duties from now on,” she says. She’s come by with the new normal breakfast tray: mushy eggs and granite for bread.
“You guys really need to diversify the menu options here,” I sigh, picking up the bread roll and cracking it against the side of the tray. “And by diversify the menu options, I do not mean rodents.”
“Miss, did you hear me?” Sorcha asks. She edges closer. “Mr. Lochlan wants you to assist me around the house. Starting today.”
I blink at her, certain I’ve misheard. “I’m sorry, he wants me to do what now?”
“Assist me. With the cleaning and upkeep of the estate.”
“Cleaning,” I repeat slowly, the word practically foreign to me. Which, to keep it real, it kind of is. “As in... manual labor? He wants me to do manual labor?”
Sorcha nods, her large, pale eyes dropping to the floor.
I wait for the punchline.
For her to crack a smile and say just kidding! For her to tell me Lochlan’s idea of psychological torture hasn’t devolved into making me scrub toilets like some kind of Cinderella knockoff.
But the punchline never comes.
“You can’t be serious,” I say. “I don’t clean… like, ever in my life. We had housekeepers for that. Multiple housekeepers. A whole team of them.”
Sorcha gives me a sympathetic frown. “Mr. Lochlan’s orders, miss. We’re to start in the attic. There’s much that needs clearing out.”
Of course it would be the attic.
Because why would my foray into indentured servitude start somewhere reasonable like a living room?
Nope, we’re jumping straight to the creepiest, dustiest, most haunted-house-ass part of this entire nightmare estate.
A part of me wants to refuse. I consider crossing my arms and telling Sorcha she can inform Mr. Lochlan that I’d rather starve than stoop to menial labor like some kind of peasant.
But then I remember the dead mouse on the dessert plate. The man whose throat was slit right next to me while I sat frozen in my fancy burgundy dress, and the man before him whose brains were blown out.
Let’s not forget that bath Lochlan took it upon himself to give me.
I’m not exactly in a position to be making demands.
“Fine,” I mutter, pushing myself off the bed. “Lead the way, I guess.”
“But breakfast—”
“Let’s be real, Sorcha. I wasn’t going to eat it anyway.”
The attic’s located on the fourth and final floor of the house, accessible only by a narrow staircase that rocks under my weight.
Dust coats every surface like a fuzzy gray blanket, smaller particles floating through the air. The only light in the room comes from a grimy porthole window, and cobwebs hang from rafters in elaborate patterns that tell me plenty of spiders have made the place home.
Boxes are everywhere, stacked far above my head.
I cough, my face souring at the inescapable mildew smell.
“This is…” I trail off, dread pooling inside me. “Um… this is a health hazard. There have to be laws against making captives work in conditions like this. OSHA would shut this down so fast.”
Sorcha keeps herself from responding, though I do notice the small quirk of her lips as if she’s tempted to smile at my commentary.
She hands me a rag and a spray bottle of cleaner that claims to be all purpose. Whatever that means.
“We’ll start with the boxes along the far wall. Sort through them, decide what’s worth keeping and what needs to be thrown out.”
“How am I supposed to know what’s worth keeping? I don’t even know whose stuff this is.”
“It belongs to the Callahan family. Generations of them.” Sorcha is already rolling up her sleeves, getting to work like this is just another Tuesday for her. Which, ugh, I guess it is. “If it looks valuable or important, set it aside. Everything else goes in the rubbish pile.”
I stare at the mountain of boxes and old furniture and unidentifiable junk that stretches across the attic. My manicure—what’s left of it after a week and a half of captivity—is absolutely not about to survive this.
Neither is my dignity, but that ship sailed somewhere around the bathed-by-my-captor incident.
“Okay,” I say, squaring my shoulders like I’m preparing for battle. “Okay. I can do this. It’s just cleaning. How hard can it be?”
The answer, as it turns out, is very, very hard.
Much harder than I ever realized.
Within the first couple hours, I’ve broken yet another nail and wound up caked in so much dust it’s in my braids.
“Ewww!” I squeal, swatting at the air. Dozens of tiny dust particles rushed up at me the second I opened one of the boxes we’re supposed to be sorting through. “This can’t be good for my respiratory system!”
Sorcha glances over then simply shakes her head before returning to the box she’s working on.
I return to assessing the filth I’m covered in.
My hands are so dirty I’d leave dusty fingerprints if I were to touch anything made of glass. My knees ache and have tiny grainy pieces of dirt stuck to them from crouching on the floor.
Every time I glance around the room, I want to burst into tears.
We’ve been working for hours yet barely made a dent in the junk. Lochlan called it—he must’ve realized the worst way to make me suffer was… this.
Put the pampered, art gallery owner, senator’s daughter to menial labor and you’ll break her.
It’s the only thing that pushes me to keep going. The stubborn urge to prove Mr. Psychopath wrong.
He won’t break me; he won’t ever break me.
I’m tougher than he—or anyone else—realizes. I’ll prove it too.
“How do you do this every day?” I ask after another half hour. I wipe sweat from my forehead, possibly smearing more dirt across my face in the process. “Like, genuinely, how is this your life?”
She pauses in her sorting, a stack of old photographs in her hands. “It’s work, miss. Hard work, yes, but honest.”
“But why this? Why here?” I gesture vaguely at our surroundings. “What made you want to become a maid in the first place?”
The question comes out before I can think better of it, and I immediately cringe at how tactless I sound.
I’m coming across like some stuffy, pearl-clutching, tone-deaf, old White lady who doesn’t realize not everyone is as fortunate as she is.
That’s never me.
Spoiled and wealthy? Hell yes. I’ve always owned being a soft life girlie. I’ve delighted in being a Black girl who could rest in her femininity and enjoy the pleasures of life like shopping, brunch, and spa days.
It’s always been so easy to indulge in luxury as escapism when the real world can be so ugly.
But I know better—I know not everyone lucky enough to have been born into the circumstances I was.
Sorcha said she’s only been here for a year, and that she’s from overseas. Her circumstances are obviously tougher than I can ever grasp.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “Don’t listen to me.”
“It’s alright, miss,” she says, her accent more distinct. “But to answer your question, I’m not very good at anything else. I needed to make money somehow. This was what was available.”
“I didn’t mean to imply there’s anything wrong with what you do. I just...” I trail off, not sure how to finish the sentence without making it worse.
Sorcha waves off my apology with a flick of her wrist. “It really is fine, miss. I’m used to it. I don’t even mind it much. Besides, if it wasn’t for Mr. Lochlan, I’d be a lot worse off than I am now.”
I nearly choke on my own air.
“I’m sorry, what? Lochlan? The same Lochlan who made me watch him murder two people? That Lochlan?”
“Yes,” she answers, cheeks flushing bright pink. She’s returned her attention to the photographs in her hands. “He’s... he’s been kind to me. In his own way. He helped me out of a very bad situation.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to argue her down about it. Tell her there’s no way that man’s ever done a good deed in his life. Certainly not after his stint in prison.
He casually slit a man’s throat at the dinner table! He told me how he would sex traffic me as he forced me into a bath—and that was after he’d killed another guy with a bullet to the face.
There’s no way he helped Sorcha out of the goodness of his heart. What heart would that even be?
But I stop myself before I can go badmouthing Sorcha’s employer. She looks so vulnerable as she sorts through the box of photographs, it’s none of my business.
If she feels like Lochlan’s psychotic self has helped her, who am I to say otherwise?
It might be more complicated than I understand.
My hostage situation sure is. Every time I’m around my captor, I’m struck by an urge to stand strong and be the confident, unfazed baddie I know I am deep down.
But I’m also terrified as hell and then confused as hell when he invades my space.
…which seems to be a thing he gets off on.
He’s done it three times now, and each time he has me questioning whether it’s just another mind game he’s playing.
I’m about to change the subject when something brown with way too many damn legs moves out the corner of my eye.
I glance over and let out a scream that’s high pitched enough to shatter glass.
The spider is huge—way bigger than one should ever be! It scurries across the floor mere feet away from me, darting from one dark corner to the next.
I’ve leapt back, knocking over a box full of old curtains.
Sorcha rushes over, startled and alert as she says, “What is it? What’s wrong, miss?”
“Did you see that spider?!” I shriek, breathing fast. “It was damn near the size of the mice that live here!”
“A spider? That’s all?” Sorcha says, brows knitting.
“Yes that’s all! That one must’ve been the pregnant mama or something, because how was it so big?! Why is this place so infested with… with everything?!”
“Mr. Lochlan’s mentioned an exterminator. But it’s not a priority right now.”