“I honestly don’t know. It’s never come up. I’m sure Gabe will take you out of the house plenty as well.”
“Gabe isn’t my master.”
Annette was taken aback by this declaration. “But he brought you here, and his intentions seemed pretty clear to me.”
Julie spent the rest of breakfast telling Annette the story of how she’d come to be with Gabe, starting all the way back with working at the bar and their one failed date.
Annette showed sympathy in all the right ways and at all the right points of the story, but there was one thing she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around.
“So... you aren’t kinky... like... at all?” Annette asked like Julie was a circus freak. “I’m absolutely fascinated. Tell me more about this not being kinky thing.”
Julie wasn’t sure if Annette really wanted a play-by-play of what it was like to not be kinky, but she was spared having to try to explain it by a new development in the cafeteria.
Sometime during their meet and greet, the cafeteria had begun to fill up as women meandered about and formed in clusters, some standing, and some sitting at tables. The clock on the wall showed fifteen minutes until the lunch period started. Julie couldn’t believe she’d been sitting with Annette this long.
A hush fell over the room as two people dressed in all black walked in. One man, one woman. The man was terrifying and intimidating in all the ways Julie had come to fear, but the woman was a whole other thing. Outside of an action film, she’d never seen a woman look so scary and badass in her life. She had long dark hair and wore a black form-fitting corset over black leather pants with black boots that came just up to her knees.
“Who is that?” Julie asked.
“That’s Mina. Brian’s slave.” Annette said.
Julie’s eyes were drawn to the collar around Mina’s throat. At first, her mind had dismissed it as just jewelry. It was made of a white metal—silver, platinum, or white gold Julie couldn’t be sure—with black stones set in it. The metal had a lot of delicate filigree work in it. It looked like it could be an antique, but probably wasn’t.
While Annette certainly didn’t behave like a meek abuse victim, Mina came across to the casual observer as so dangerous that to think she was owned by another human being seemed too bizarre to seriously contemplate.
A woman at one of the tables made a snide remark about Mina thinking she was the shit around here and how they’d love to see Brian truly punish her to wipe that smirk off her face. Brian heard it.
“Oh, shit. She didn’t just say that,” Annette whispered.
Julie was riveted. Given the look of murderous rage on Brian’s face, she expected she was about to witness his reputation in action, but instead, Mina’s black high-heeled boots clicked ominously across the floor to the woman who’d spoken.
Mina grabbed her by the front of her T-shirt and jerked her out of the chair. “Fiona, you’re still pretty new. I’m going to give you a chance to apologize before I have to make an example of you in front of everyone.”
“Whatever, bitch,” Fiona said.
Mina let go of her shirt and slapped Fiona hard across the face. When she pulled her hand away, a bright red handprint was left behind.
“I can do whatever I want to you right now and nobody here will stop me,” Mina said. She stared her down hard, and finally Fiona shrank under the power of that stare.
“I-I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“I’m sorry, what?” Mina snapped.
“I-I’m sorry, Ma’am.”
“Good. That was your only warning. You’re on my radar, dear. And that’s a bad place to be.”
Fiona sank into the chair and Mina took another hard look around the room, probably searching for more mutiny in the ranks. Brian relaxed and went back to talking to one of the guards.
“God, what a bitch,” Julie whispered, certain Annette would agree with her.
“She’s not a bitch. She was protecting that girl.”
“Protecting her? Are you insane? She hit and threatened her.”
“Only to make her back down so Brian wouldn’t take her to the dungeon and punish her. Brian is bad enough without it being in retaliation to someone disrespecting Mina. And Mina knows that. Since she’s belonged to Brian, she watches out for most of the girls when she can. Everything isn’t always what it looks like on the surface around here.”
Gabe walked in then and whispered something to Brian as Mina crossed the room to Annette and Julie’s table.
“Hey, I’m Mina.”
Before Julie could reply, Annette said, “This is Gabe’s girl, Julie.”
“Huh. Well, good for him. So, we’ve got another lifer. Excellent!”
This must be some in-joke between the two of them, since Annette had said practically the exact same thing.
“Oh… fancy!” Mina said, admiring the black shiny collar around Annette’s throat. Up closer, Julie could see that it was onyx and had intricate swirled carvings in it.
Annette blushed a little. “He gave it to me a couple of nights ago for our anniversary.”
“I can’t believe Anton actually sprang for a real piece of jewelry. It annoyed me forever the way he kept you in a leather collar like a dog or something.”
Annette shrugged. “It didn’t bother me. And before you, I was the only permanent slave here. I think once he saw the collar Brian got you, though, it started to get inside his head. You know how he is.”
Mina laughed. “I know how they all are. Well, it worked in your favor because you look fabulous in it.”
Annette smiled. “Thanks. You going to have some lunch? We can sit with you.”
“Nah, we ate on the road, and I want to throw a few rounds down the range before we have to clean the guns. Brian is about to lose his mind because I’m becoming as good a shooter as him. Between you and me I think I’m a little better, but if he finds out I said that I’m in so much trouble.”
“Mina!” Brian shouted across the cafeteria.
She turned innocently. “Yes, Master?”
Hearing Mina utter that phrase was even more crazy than hearing it from Annette.
He motioned for her to join him.
“Duty calls. Later.” Mina winked. Then she, Brian, and Gabe disappeared out the side doors.
As Julie explored the house, she had to keep reminding herself this was just fancy prison. Though after Dmitri’s house, it was hard to take that idea too seriously. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware this was what she was supposed to be thinking and feeling, not what she actually did feel. After all, already she was being treated far differently and better than Dmitri and his men had treated her.
Every so often she would catch herself thinking about freedom. Actual freedom. Going back to her old life. But even if such a thing were possible, she didn’t know how she could bring herself to be out in the world again all alone. After Aleksei had taken her, there was no longer any nice safe world in which everything stayed normal. Even if she could somehow get her life back she would always be looking over her shoulder. Gabe was the devil she knew. And compared to where she’d been, angel seemed much more true a descriptor.
So far Julie had seen the spa, the impressive fitness room, the pool, the library, and most of the outside grounds—just being out in the fresh air with an open sky and no visible barriers had been a welcome relief from the claustrophobia of being cooped up in Dmitri’s house all the time.