Page 43 of Resist

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Vaughn

“I’m not ready to sell yet, Ella.”

A rich laugh rings through the connection. “You’re ready to sell—you’re just not ready to give up the daily income that comes with selling your client list.”

“True.” I load the dishes from the sink into the dishwasher. “I told you I’d let you know when I was ready to get out.”

“In the meantime, you’re snatching up all the good clients and killing my business in the process.”

“Don’t expect an apology for that,” I joke, repeating the same conversation we’ve had every couple of weeks for the past two months. Can’t say I’m going to complain that a rival escort company keeps calling about buying out my client list.

That is the endgame for me, when all is said and done, after I pay down my debt enough.

“Then I guess I’ll just keep calling you then until you say yes,” she says.

“I promise you that one day I will.”

When I hang up the phone, I startle to see Priscilla standing at the screen door looking at me.

“Is this a bad time?” she asks with her skeptical smile, her reading glasses perched on her beak-like nose and affixed by a chain of beads that wraps around her neck. She passes judgment on me before I even utter a word.

“No. I’m just tired,” I say as I open the screen door. “I had a long shift last night.”

Long shift? That’s an understatement. Ken requested that I stay on in the Eight Pod, even offered to pay my time if I did. I fought it, told my boss I couldn’t, but when another server fell ill, guess who stayed at work until closing time? And of course that meant I had the pleasure of spending the evening serving drinks to a very drunk Ken and Gene. Of watching women fawn all over Ryker despite the way he sat aloof on the velvet couch with the weight of his stare following my every move. Of making sure to avoid the senator and his curious glances. The ones where he was trying to figure out how he knew me every time we were in proximity of one another. All of that while silently hating Ryker for his stupid ultimatum and at the same time needing to know if he was interested in any of the women fawning over him.

“May I?” Priscilla asks, her eyes widening, perhaps because I haven’t invited her in.

“Yes. Of course.”

She walks past me, her nylons making a swishing sound as her white orthopedic shoes thump over the floor and into the house. I watch her study my home. She runs a finger over the rustic red farm table that sits in the dining nook and skirts around its yellow chairs. She angles her head into the door of my office to check it out before heading down the hallway without asking if it’s okay. She pushes open the first doorway on the right, takes a moment to see the bedroom I’ve had made up for Lucy. Its soothing blue walls with light-yellow accents and a bed decorated with Lucy’s favorite stuffed animals should be enough to tell her I’m ready for my niece to come home.

Priscilla makes a humming sound of approval and heads to the next bedroom, a quick glance in to make sure there isn’t anything she disapproves of before moving on.

Exasperated with these random checks that never lead to any progress, I want to tell her the dungeon where I keep my sex slaves is behind the secret wall but don’t think it will go over very well with that stick firmly planted up her ass.

“Everything looks good,” she says with a clinical smile as she walks into my living room. She takes in the dusty boxes stacked against the far wall. “Are we doing a project?” she asks benignly, and yet we both know she’s sticking her nose in.

“No. My sister kept journals for years. I’ve only recently had the courage to start going through them.”

“That must be hard.”

I think of what it’s like to see Samantha’s handwriting, to hear her voice in my head when I read them . . . and to read the unspoken words between the college-ruled pages that deep down I already know to be true. The truths that I swear led her to take her life because she couldn’t live with the demons they brought.

“I’m trying to preserve as much of her memory as possible for Lucy. Little stories her mom might have written about. Dates to remember so I can make a baby book Lucy can look at when she’s older. Little things,” I lie, knowing that my reading through the journals this time around is solely for me. The need to know what happened and how my uncle James plays into it the paramount reason.

Priscilla looks at the stacked boxes for a second before the TV in her periphery catches her attention.

“Oh, a classic. I love a good classic.” She falls silent as Audrey Hepburn owns the screen in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

“I do too,” I murmur, thinking of the one constant I’ve always had in my life—the old classic movies my mom used to snuggle up on the couch and watch with us. My source of calm and normalcy. We watch for a few seconds before Priscilla’s attention turns back to me. “Yes?”

“You’ve made a lovely place for Lucy here, and it’s obvious she loves you dearly.”

“But . . .”

“But your financial status is concerning.”