“Daniel—”
“Don’t apologize,” he snapped. “I don’t believe you.”
“I wasn’t going to apologize.”
Rain clouds hummed somewhere in the distance. Lightning flashed. A storm was coming on, and Daniel didn’t feel a thing.
“By the way,” he called over his shoulder. “I want my fucking coat back.”
…
Samantha stormed into the Ancillary Chamber, her feet smacking against the floor, announcing her presence. She didn’t care if she looked like a half-drowned rat from the rain showering her walk back to the house nor did she care about the grass stains on her hem. Nothing mattered but the blue jacket, the one she was going to wear when she walked into her house tonight, the one she would show off to her father and wear to dinner with him tomorrow night. This was the moment she’d fought for, cried for, sacrificed everything for.
The Ancillary Chamber was decidedly male. None of the women remained, leaving the Animos Society to wallow in a pit of streamers and spilled booze and crushed napkins. They cheered her arrival.
“Piggy!” Captain said, raising his glass to her. “What are you looking so glum for? I thought it went well, all things considered.”
She held out her hand. A commanding gesture for someone who’d done nothing but bow and scrape and defer all of her life choices to these men for weeks.
“Give me my coat. I want my coat and I want it now. I’ve jumped through every hoop and I’m getting my coat. Give it to me.”
“You’re not getting a coat.” Captain took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke in her face.
“Very funny. Hand it over.” She opened and closed her outstretched hand a few times, agimmegesture. “I won; I’m in Animos now.”
The joke wasn’t about the jacket. The joke was on her. She knew it only because the room erupted in the wheezing, side-gripping laughter of a band of hyenas. But no one laughed harder, louder, or with more teeth than Captain.
“You’re not in Animos,” he exclaimed.
“But I won.”
“You thought we were serious? You thought you were actually going to get in?”
Sam’s eyes widened, which only made her more hilarious to them. Her body seemed to empty of blood; she thought she might turn to dust and blow away.
“Y-you said—”
“This is a club forgentlemen. You were a distraction. A plaything. You were never going to be in the Animos Society, no matter who your father is.”
Dismissive. Obvious. She was so stupid. So blind. So, so very dumb. What little fragments of her heart broke into pieces too small to see or pick up ever again. She’d given them everything. She’d given them Daniel.
“I did everything you asked!”
They were not moved, neither to more laughter nor sympathy. Not a single one of them spoke up in her defense or against her. She was suddenly on the outside, the very far outside, and totally alone.
“And it was amusing,” he tutted. “But not enough.”
Not enough.Nothing was ever enough. Not for her father. Not for these bastards. Not for herself.
“You may go, Piggy.”
For the last time, Samantha obeyed.
Sam didn’t know how she got home. Maybe she walked. Maybe she took a cab. All she knew was when she threw open the door of her house, her father was there, flipping through the evening post. And she couldn’t help it. She didn’t have control any longer.
“Dad,” she breathed.
“I—”
