“Are you always this determined to see the bad side of any situation? It’s no wonder you never did anything with your life.”
“Excuse me.” She pushes at me, wriggling out of my grasp. “I have so done things with my life. Just because I’m not all gangstered up in a private fortress doesn’t mean I’m not doing exactly what I dreamed of.”
“No one dreams of minimum wage.”
“Nice to hear you speak for all people. Someone has to do the grunt work, you know.”
“Letting your employer ruthlessly exploit you for maximum gain isn’t noble. When you don’t challenge bad behaviour, you encourage it.”
She immediately shoots back, “I’m trying to challenge your bad behaviour and look where that’s getting me.”
“In a lovely room with a rich man who’ll be eternally grateful to you.” I roll my eyes as she convulses with laughter. “What more could you possibly want?”
Isabelle sits fully upright, burying her face in her hands. “Are you going to hurt Sergio when you find him?”
“My men will. Then I’ll kill him.”
I lay still, observing her. I understand loyalty. What it’s like to live on both sides of it. It’s the only reason I stay ahead in my game.
But loyalty to the wrong side is a death warrant.
She sniffles, reaching over to the nightstand on the far side of the bed for a tissue. “He’s been my boss for so long, I feel like I should say something in his defence.”
“Like what?”
“Like he’s so lazy and unambitious that it seems farfetched he could be involved.”
“But he was.”
She inclines her head, shoulders slumping. “Yeah, he was.”
“And he tried to kill you.”
Her chin sets, jutting out at such a stubborn angle that I want to laugh despite the gravity of the situation. “He didn’t try to kill me. He tried to stop me driving away.”
I sit up, but only long enough to pull her back down to lie beside me. “He rammed his car into yours. That isn’t something you do without the knowledge it might hurt the people inside.”
I don’t allude to what might have come next had he succeeded. She has enough real terrors to conquer without introducing imaginary what-ifs.
“I guess.” A tear slithers along her cheek, dropping onto the covers. Soon another follows, then another. She turns into me as the sobs deepen, pressing one hand flat against my chest while the other curls around my neck. “I’m sorry,” she whimpers, trying to stop crying but failing.
“Don’t apologise. You don’t have to be any way other than how you are. Not here.” I turn farther onto my side and pull her closer, her head tucking under my chin so easily that I feel a possessive howl building in my chest. “You’ve got some big fans in this household, you know.”
“And here’s me without a greatest hits album even compiled.”
I think of how she was earlier in the dining room, letting me touch her, pupils spun out so wide I could have fallen into their depths. Every cell in my body had cried out to dominate her. To take her back to my room and show her exactly who’s in charge.
But that was before her brain split open and all the horrors from the other night came spilling out, ready to play.
“Can you…?”
Isabelle’s voice trails away and I try not to move, willing her to pick up the sentence again on her own. Because the answer will be, yes. Yes, I can. No matter what she wants to ask of me. Yes.
“I know you’re busy, but can you stay here until I fall asleep?”
She uses the same intonation that Sophia does when she thinks she’s asking an impossible favour. Like if she can stay up ten minutes past her bedtime or have ice cream for breakfastjust this once.
Like with Sophia, the actual request asks so little of me it would be churlish to refuse.
