Everyone else is staring at him. The confrontation was a little shocking in the lobby of a luxury hotel, but what I see in Gina and Jeremy’s faces goes beyond that. They look almost … scared.
When Rebecca Grange is gone, Andre turns away from Gina and Jeremy without a word. He comes walking back my way.
As he gets closer, I see what they’ve seen: the vicious, predatory look in his eyes. He’s even walking differently, stalking more than striding. It doesn’t fit with the cultured sophistication of his clothes. It’s more than the intensity and arrogance of a rich and powerful man. It’s … primal.
It makes the hair lift along my nape. It makes my cock harden.
Maybe I wasn’t wrong about him. Maybe he isn’t so normal under that mask.
I shiver as he walks by. He doesn’t say anything until he reaches the elevator. His back is to me when he punches the button for the doors.
“We’re done for the day.”
I guess I already knew that because I haven’t moved, haven’t followed him. I would if he called to me or even looked at me. But he never does, not even when he gets in the elevator and turns to press one of the buttons on the panel.
I think he knows what I saw in his face, what everyone saw. He’s not happy about it, and he doesn’t yet have it under control.
The doors close. He’s gone.
EIGHTEEN
Elias
It’s almost midnight when I’m riding the subway back from the Bronx. Before I started working for Andre, I had already committed to this single-night pet sitting visit. The timing was set based on my old schedule. I forgot to update the owner about it and didn’t feel like I could cancel at the last minute. I’d actually forgotten about it entirely until my old phone, with its battery nearly dead and its prepaid plan almost up, dinged with a reminder.
I’m kind of glad, actually, that I had something to do tonight. With Andre calling off our day of work, I’ve been so bored. Not just bored. Lonely.
That’s something I’m coming to understand. It’s pretty obvious, I guess, but I didn’t really realize it until today. I’m so damn lonely. I have been for a long time. Forever maybe.
The only friend I ever really had was our cook Rose, and she’s dead. And she was more like a mother anyway. At least, I think so. I guess I wouldn’t know. Mine died soon after I was born, which is why my father hated me.
My mother didn’t like having a baby. She didn’t want me, so she took all those pills. At least, that’s what my cousin Ernesto would always say. He was eight years older than me and came to live with us after his parents had been killed, when I was five and he was thirteen. My father took revenge, of course. That was the first time I saw dead bodies.
As much as my father hated what had happened to his sister, Ernesto’s mother, he was glad, I think, to replace me withErnesto, who was tough and mean and impossible to overlook. Unlike me.
I vaguely remember wanting to be friends with Ernesto, but there was never any chance of that. My father hated me, so Ernesto did too. Ernesto used to call me “the ghost.” He would walk straight into me sometimes like he hadn’t noticed me. I used to stand in his way and make him do it because even if it hurt, at least it was something to feel.
Rose always told me I shouldn’t do that. She would give me hugs and make me hot chocolate. She would let me play with her cat.
She was all I had. Even if I hadn’t been so awkward and shy, I doubt I would’ve been allowed to have other friends. Friends my age, I mean. Mafia families are pretty closed.
After Rose helped me escape and I created a new identity, I didn’t suddenly develop the skills to make friends. And hookups were always so disappointing. I guess I gave up. I accepted being alone and half dead. At least … until I submitted that fantasy to ForbiddenX.
Then, for the first time in my life, I felt fully alive. I felt like Ihadsomething. Something that was mine. Something important.
Now I’m addicted to it. I don’t know what I’d do without it. Without … him.
My stalker.
My tormentor and savior.
I need him. I think I would die without him. I would just … stop existing. Because now I know what it feels like toreallyexist. To be alive. To be seen. To matter.
I am aware, of course I’m fucking aware, that this is something I’m paying for. But that doesn’t matter. It’s still something I need. And, real or not, he makes me believe that he needs it too.
Riding the subway back to Manhattan from the Bronx, I wake up my phone to read, again, our last text exchange, where I wrote,He wouldn’t have fucked me. He’s not like you.
My stalker replied,What does that mean?
