Chapter 2 #2
I move to the door and quietly follow his gesture to follow him.
He’s one of the rotating roster of men my father employs to stand outside my bedroom.
I don’t bother learning his name. He’ll be here today and gone tomorrow.
It’s how my father works. His trust issues are deeper than mine and he doesn’t give anyone a chance to learn too much about our family.
This one is broad-shouldered, walks with a limp and prefers no small talk as he leads me down two flights of stairs.
He stops at the top of the last landing and gestures for me to continue.
Another rule of my father’s. The hired help is not to be seen.
“Your father waits for you below.”
Ugh. His words make slush against the sides of my stomach. I grab my shawl and slip it over my shoulders, covering my upper back and shoulders.
“Hey, you wanna take the back way outta here?” nearly slips out, but the dutiful daughter in me slaps sense into me with an invisible hand. I swallow the temptation, choose the good-girl words, and say, “Thank you.”
Sweat over the smoothness of my palm makes it hard to grip the handrail as I descend into the belly of the monster.
Instead of cold marble, blank white walls and a whisper of the artificially cool air, my mother has turned her mansion into a jungle of roses.
The thick sweetness of their scent hits me the second I get to the bottom of the staircase.
It pushes past the threshold of pleasantness into something almost overwhelming.
Curtains of flowers colored from cream and blush to deep crimson are arranged in towering centerpieces that line both sides of the grand foyer.
Petals lay scattered along the floor and the walls are draped in roses and vines woven into masterpieces reflecting majestic pieces of art.
To anyone on the outside looking in, those inside this home appear filled with love.
I say be careful of the hidden snakes among the vines and the poisoned thorns aimed for your heart.
I move past the foyer and step through the archway, following the light melody of music.
A string quartet in the far corner of the ballroom plays something sweeping and occasion-heavy and entirely too significant for what I assume is a standard political gathering.
It’s one of those sweeping pieces that feels like it was designed to make you feel the weight of the occasion.
Waitstaff in white gloves move through the crowd with trays of champagne that catch the chandelier light and throw it in small, scattered arcs across the ceiling.
I accept a glass of champagne from a tray and drift along the perimeter of the room. Eyes drift in my direction and there is little I can do but play the poised Governor’s daughter.
Judge Whitmore’s wife glances at me and then immediately at someone across the room, the gesture of a woman performing discretion badly.
Mrs. Alderman holds her champagne glass in both hands and smiles at me with the soft, cautious brightness of someone who has been told not to say anything yet.
A man I don’t recognize near the terrace doors watches me for three full seconds before looking away.
The champagne is dry and cold and tastes faintly of pear, and I take a longer sip than I intended because the roses are making the air feel compressed.
Something is off. I have been to enough of these events to know the difference between the ambient social observation of a political gathering and the targeted kind, and tonight I keep catching glances that slide away too quickly when I turn toward them.
I pin them with practiced indifference and keep moving.
“Persia.” My mother appears at my elbow in a column of navy blue, diamonds dripping from her ears and a cold, calculating smile on her lips.
She kisses the air beside my cheek, leaving a ghost of her gardenia perfume behind.“Come. Your father wants to see you.”
A part of me wants to say, fuck that—and him—and storm out, never to return.
I did that once and paid for it. I think better of it and follow the woman who claims to love me to the far side of the ballroom where my father stands with the particular posture of a man who expects the room to orient itself around him.
Barret Fiore, governor of Illinois, a man whose suits are always pressed and whose handshake is always too firm and whose round spectacles catch the light when he turns his head in a way that always makes me think of something predatory behind glass.
And standing beside him is Magnus Sterling.
Ugh. My stomach rebels. I press my palm over my midriff to help with the queasiness, but it’s not working.
I fiddle with the lace edges of my glove I’ve yet to put on. Magnus catches my nervous tinkering and I feel the weight of his attention immediately.
My father’s friend is in his late fifties, he’s tall, silver-haired, and carries himself with an elegance that takes decades and a great deal of money to cultivate.
He wears it like armor. His suits are always dark and perfectly fitted, and tonight he has a white pocket square precisely folded and what appears to be a pinky ring catching the light on his right hand, a thick gold band set with a dark stone.
He is handsome in a way that has nothing to do with warmth.
He looks like a man who has never in his life been told no and finds the concept more confusing than offensive.
“There she is.” My father’s hand lands on my shoulder and steers me forward slightly, a gesture that looks paternal from a distance, but the way his fingers dig into my tender flesh is anything but loving.
“Magnus, you’ve been away a while, but you remember my daughter, right?” There’s a level of fakeness to my father’s tone that says I’m about to be forced into doing something I don’t want.
“How could I forget such beauty?” My father’s friend takes my hand before I offer it and brings it to his lips. His eyes stay on mine the entire time he presses a kiss to the back of my knuckles in a way that requires deliberate effort to hold without flinching.
“Persia. You look the picture of lovely innocence this evening. I’m a lucky man.”
Heat scorches my face. I feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter and the flash of dark hunger that moves over his expression tells me I’m right.
“Thank you,” I say, because telling him to get his hands off me will earn the wrath of my father in a room full of people.
From the opposite corner of the room, the music morphs into a waltz.
“May I have this dance?” Magnus offers his arm. I wrap the ends of my shawl around my wrists, to help keep it in place before I take his offer. What choice do I have?
He guides us to the middle of the floor and I follow his lead. His hand settles at my waist and the other closes around my fingers and we begin to move. I focus on the middle distance over his shoulder and count the beats rather than focus on the man controlling my moves.
“You’ve grown up into a sensual creature since the last time I saw you, my sweet Persia,” Magnus nearly purrs next to my ear. His voice causes my skin to erupt in cold chills. It’s not the words he chooses, but the way he’s staring at my breasts when he says it.
I clear my throat of the frog lodged there and try not to squeak when I speak.“Most people do,” I offer, moving my gaze to his. “Grow up, that is.”
Something shifts almost imperceptibly in his expression, a slight adjustment in the quality of his attention that makes the skin on the back of my neck tighten.
“There is something I have always appreciated about you, Persia. Even as a child. You have your mother’s face but you have something behind your eyes that she never did that interests me considerably.
” He drops my right hand and moves to take my chin in hand.
Using the back of his thumb he strokes the underside of my bottom lip.
I keep my expression neutral and remove my chin from his grip.“I’m not sure I know what you mean.” And I mean it.
The hand on my back forces me closer.“I think you do,” he growls with a menacing tone that has my whole body go on high alert.
He leans in until the tips of our noses touch. This close I can’t breathe in without inhaling the stench of his cologne. It’s something dark and cedar-heavy that I will forever associate with the particular quality of dread I am feeling right now for the rest of my life.
Before I read his intentions, his mouth captures mine in a harsh kiss. A hand grabs the back of my head and I’m locked into place as he forces his tongue past my lips.
I turn my face away and take a deliberate step back, breaking our strides. Around us couples stop swaying to the music to watch us. We stop in the middle of the dance floor and the couple nearest us glances over.
Magnus goes very still. The silence between us lasts approximately three seconds, and in those three seconds I watch something move behind his eyes that has no business being in them.
Murderous intent to end me.
His hand comes up and takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger and he tilts my face back toward his with the unhurried certainty of a man who considers touching me his right.
“When we are married,” he speaks unhurriedly, causing me to swallow my nerves,“you will be mine to control, Persia. Mine. Once that happens, you will pay for ever refusing me anything I want. You’ll want to learn how to obey quickly, because I won’t be as patient as I am right now.”
I hear the words and I hear them clearly and for a moment my brain simply refuses to process.
I swipe the tip of my tongue over my bottom lip and grip the ends of my suddenly heavy dress. “What?” My heart quivers in a way that makes me feel sick to my stomach. “When we are married?”