17. Prudence
Prudence
I am on the couch reading a romance book Nora lent me, when the elevator chimes at half past two.
It cannot be Ronan. He left for a meeting only twenty minutes ago.
Nicholas has been sending packages all week—shoes, accessories, a scarf the color of champagne—so I set the book down and turn toward the foyer expecting a delivery.
The man who steps off the elevator is not carrying packages.
Father stands in the entryway of Ronan’s penthouse in his plain white shirt and dark trousers. His silver hair is swept back from his forehead. His eyes are like twin flames.
My body responds before my brain does. I am on my feet and standing with my head bowed within a single breath.
nineteen years of conditioning fires through my nervous system, overriding my taste of freedom.
“Girl.” His voice is the same quiet murmur. The word is not a greeting. It is a classification.
My tongue is cement. I cannot speak. I cannot lift my head. The book lies open on the couch behind me, spine cracked, pages exposed, and I am irrationally ashamed of it, as though Father has caught me reading profanity.
His eyes sweep the penthouse, surveying it—the glass walls, the cream furniture, the gleaming kitchen—with the same appraising look he wears when inspecting the Enclave’s animal pens.
“You’ve been comfortable,” he observes.
I want to ask how he got in here, but I dare not speak. He must see the question in my expression because his next words act as an answer.
“The Lord opens doors for the righteous.” He unfolds his hands and clasps them behind his back. The shift is subtle, but I know what it means. He is settling in. He has a message to deliver, and he is not leaving until he’s delivered it.
A bolt of cold understanding shoots through me. This building has a doorman. A locked lobby. A private elevator that requires a key. Ronan tripled my security detail. And Father walked through all of it as if none of it existed.
If he can reach me here, he can reach me anywhere.
“I came to you out of love, Prudence. As a shepherd seeks the lamb that has wandered from the fold.” He tilts his head. “You look well-fed. Rested. Adorned.”
Adorned carries a weight that presses against my ribs. The cashmere sweater I am wearing cost more than a year of supplies at the Enclave. I know this—Nicholas told me, and I did not ask the price of anything after that.
“Your husband,” Father continues, his voice lowering into the pastoral register that could convince water to flow uphill, “is a man of the fallen world. He is generous, I’m sure. Kind, perhaps. Even tender.” He pauses. “And you have repaid his kindness by poisoning him.”
“I have not—”
“Is he not troubled?” Father takes one step closer.
“Is he not burdened? He was a man of purpose before you entered his life. And now—” His pale eyes hold mine, and I cannot look away, cannot move, cannot breathe.
“Now he carries the weight of a stolen soul. Your presence has drawn sin into his household. Your body has led him into lust. Your needs have drained him.”
Each sentence lands with the precision of a lash.
Father’s voice does not rise. It drops. “He disrupted a sacred ceremony. He stole a daughter of the Flock. He bound himself to a woman saturated in original sin, and every pleasure you take from him strips another layer from his protection.” He pauses.
“You are not a wife. You are a curse dressed in cashmere.”
My legs are trembling. I lock my knees to keep from falling.
“If you love this man—” Father says love the way he would say disease. “If you have any genuine care for his wellbeing, you will remove the source of his suffering.” His eyes bore through me. “You, Prudence. You are the source.”
He turns toward the elevator. “I will wait outside this building for fifteen minutes. If you do not join me in that time… May the Lord have mercy on your soul.”
At the threshold, he pauses. He does not look back.
“I will not force you home. That is not God’s way.” His voice carries the quiet weight of a verdict already rendered. “But you know where you belong. And if you wish to be cleansed, to be washed clean of your terrible wrongdoing here in the outside world, you must return to the Flock.”
The elevator doors close behind him.
I stand alone in the living room and think of the closet full of beautiful clothes, the kitchen where Ronan and I drink coffee every morning, the bed where he holds me and touches me in ways that make my body sing.
Every pleasure you take from him strips another layer from his protection.
I am a taint on his soul and if I stay, Ronan suffers. The thought that I am hurting Ronan simply by being here is a blade in my heart I cannot pull free.
My tears fall, and I brush them away angrily.
I must do it. I must free him as he tried to free me. There is but one way—penance.
I must return to the Enclave to be washed clean and save the man I love from the fires of hell, but I cannot disappear without a word. I owe him an explanation—the truth about what I am and why he must not come after me.
I pick up my phone with shaking hands and carry it to the bedroom. I prop it on the nightstand, angling the screen toward the bed where I sit on the edge—our bed—and open the camera.
I press the red circle and begin recording.