My eyes drift over the words on the plaque that sits on the edge of his desk, and my heart jumps into my throat. It’s all been lies. All of it.
He never cared about me. Not in the way that I wanted him to.
He’s just been treating me like he treats all of the girls who come through here, giving me what he thinks I want because it’s the easiest way to train me.
Men wait years for one of his girls? I bet they do. Every ounce of fight has been taken from them until they’ll do whatever they’re told like zombies walking through their own lives.
I pick up the plaque and hurl it across the room, hearing it thud against the wall, and watching as it bounces, unharmed, to the floor.
The scream tears out of me as the words are turned my way yet again, mocking everything I thought was happening between us.
“No attachments. No exceptions.”
***
Tears sting my eyes as I run back through the garden. There are muted voices behind me, but I don’t care.
I don’t care about any of it anymore.
I clutch the plaque as I pant and race down the path toward the cliffs and the beach. How could he send me back?
No attachments. The words are carved and burned into the wood in my hand as I struggle through the sand.
He never cared about me. He cared about his payday.
There’s a shore opposite, miles away across the water, dotted with houses, each one a palace, but none that even come close to what Sebastian has here.
“How could you?” I scream into the wind, my vision blurry as I read the words on the plaque again, feeling betrayed and alone. Then angry. Angrier than I’ve ever been. “Howdareyou?”
I raise my arm, and with a scream of rage, I fling the plaque into the ocean.
Plop.
The waves take it from there. Pulling it down, and a small, hateful, pre-Daddy smile curls my lips.
Then I laugh. The sarcastic, rebellious girl who arrived here is reborn inside me.
He thought he knew me? He doesn’t know the first thing about me.Thisis the real Larissa. This is who I am. Not his obedient babygirl, ready to be sent back to Hoover. If he wants to make me intothatgirl, it’s clearly going to take a lot longer.
As I turn from the waves, his face flashes behind my lids.
Daddy’s face. Sebastian. My uncle.
Sort of. But more than that. So much more.
I remember him giving me a room painted yellow like Belle’s dress, just because he knew I would love it. I remember Maria talking about how a mothershouldbe. I remember…
I remember Daddy laying me down in his bed, spreading my legs, and giving me everything.
“What have I done?” I yell to the sky, the seagulls circling above. “Oh my God, what have I done?”
The plaque belonged to him. It wasn’t mine to throw away.
Throwing away something that belongs to him surely will not convince him to keep me here. What if I misunderstood?
God, I’m impulsive. I’m not that strong, I didn’t throw it that far out…
“Shit, shit, shit,” I mutter, turning back around to the sea.
