There was no hesitation as Milli stood up from where he was sitting. “Of course, sir.”
I kept my head up straight as Milli and Merrick left the room, but as soon as they were gone, I drooped again. I twisted my head side to side, cracking the tightness in my neck away, but it did little to ease the tension. I was certain my father was currently telling Milli to keep me on a tighter leash and send him more reports. Even if Milli was truly deferring to me more than my father at this point, with my dad on high alert, Milli would have no choice but to listen.
Which sucked.
On top of that, the problems that I still had to sort out were honestly new territory for me. My father was willing to forgive me, but Avion was a different story. I was going to have to bend over backward in order to earn her forgiveness, and I wasn’t even entirely sure how to do that. It wasn’t just that I’d never bent over backward for anyone in my life before, but all the amount of bending couldn’t make Avion trust me again unless she decided to do that on her own. Avion had now become the second Narzand that I’d invested in, and unlike her father, I couldn’t let this investment slip through my fingers. But recovering money was a much easier task than recovering someone’s trust.
How was I supposed to do that?
18
AVION
I locked myself up in the bathroom until I could see the light getting darker outside the bathroom door. I’d cried so much that my eyes were sore from me wiping them and my head was pounding. I was angry with Gio, yes, but I was even angrier with myself. Thinking back on the situation, he pointed out the camera so nonchalantly, and itwasfairly obvious that it was there. It was clear that he truly did believe that I knew the camera was there. I should have known it was there. Embarrassed and stupid were two words that barely covered how I felt, but it was honestly much deeper than that.
It was terrifying the person I seemed to turn into when Gio was involved. No matter how much I tried to keep my mind focused on the reality of the situation, I seemed to keep forgetting that I was a prisoner at the end of the day. Gio even said it.
“Why would I lock a prisoner in a room and not have them under surveillance? That’d be stupid!”
Thatwouldbe stupid. Gio wasn’t a dumb man, and when I first got to his compound, he managed to see that I had my phone on me almost immediately after I pulled it out. I anticipated that he must have seen it on a security camera somewhere, but I couldn’t see one in the room when I looked.
But then in my mind, I drifted back to that place and gave it another once over. I looked up at the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It had the same fisheye shape as the camera above the door in my current room.
“Fuck!” I screeched out loud, chucking the roll of toilet paper I’d collected across the bathroom.
How dumb could I be?
I had to get it together. What was I doing getting so drunk on those images of Gio in his bedroom? I saw something that I didn’t understand and witnessed pleasure that I never experienced before, and suddenly I was so aroused with only one way to satiate it. Even as I thought back on it now, I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t think straight. I imagined him looking at his feed of my room and seeing me there with my legs open, pleasuring myself.
It would look like an invitation in those circumstances.
And then when he was standing in front of me, no amount of logic could keep me from begging him to touch me. All I could think about was feeling the way that woman in his room seemed to feel. Remembering the feeling of his hands on me made my legs tingle. I seriously could sit there and let my mind drift off and get turned on again. He’d done so little and yet he’d made me feel so good. I wasn’t inexperienced by any means, but nothing that I’d come across personally or even heard other people coming across came close to what Gio had done with just one hand.
Just one.
Even more frustrating was the fact that, if I was being honest with myself, I could see indulging in him more. Hopefully not invited by him watching me on a security camera. It was just too good for me to completely shut it down. If that was what he could do fully clothed with one hand, what did he have waiting in the wings?
I combed my hands into my hair and forced my brain to find a place of purchase. I couldn’t just continue to exist there with a foot in both camps. Either I was going to be a prisoner and was going to start doing whatever it would take to escape, or I was going to lean into this new relationship with Gio and ride it out until he got sick of me and killed me or let me go. If it was going to be the latter, then I needed to figure out how to work my way towards no longer being a prisoner. If Gio and I were going to continue on, we weren’t going to do it on his terms.
We were going to do it on mine.
I sniffled in and told myself I wasn’t going to cry anymore. It was time for me to be done being the helpless victim and fight for myself. What Gio did next would determine my own next moves. Regardless of if his misunderstanding was reasonable, that didn’t mean that he didn’t upset me. If he continued to treat me like a prisoner who needed to just get over it, then I’d take that as a sign and know exactly where I stood with him.
Picking myself up off the bathroom floor, I looked in the mirror and ran my hand through my hair to straighten it out, and splashed some water on my face. I hadn’t been wearing makeup since I came to the compound because I didn’t have access to it, but it was fine because I’d been blessed with my mother’s natural glow. I did, however, look totally washed out because of my anguish. It’d take some time for my color to come back, but I at least looked reasonably presentable.
Peeking out of the bathroom door first to make sure no one was there; I quickly ran out into the room and over to my door to lock it. It wasn’t as if anyone who wanted to get in couldn’t if they needed to. I was pretty sure Gio had locked the door when he came in before, but then Milli and the other staff members had no trouble getting in. It made me feel better though, and just to be safe, when I had collected a fresh set of clothes, I went into the bathroom to change.
Once I was dressed, I got to work tidying up the mess I’d made. I saw the pillows strewn all over the place, the broken dishes, and shattered vase, and felt like an idiot. I’d really flipped out against a man who could have killed meeasily. As I picked up the flowers that were scattered about, I had to frown. They were really beautiful flowers that I’d destroyed for no good reason.
It took a little bit of doing because I didn’t have a broom, but eventually, I got all of the glass cleaned up. I was certain there were small fragments left behind, but I’d just make sure to step lightly in that area until I could secure something to clean up more thoroughly. It took a little while for me to feel comfortable that I’d effectively cleaned up my mess, but by the time the sun had set outside, the place looked at least marginally better. I remade the bed and then sat on the couch wondering if I’d actually get dinner that night for the way I had behaved. If I were Gio, I wouldn’t give me dinner.
But then there was a knock on the door.
My heart jumped a little bit, wondering if it was Gio himself. “Come in,” I called out.
“Um,” a voice called back, not Gio’s or Milli’s. “The door is locked.”
“You can’t unlock it from your side?” I asked.
