“I’ll escort her.” Troy was suddenly at my side, holding his hand out.
He wanted her leash.
Checkmate.
The only thing I could do to prove that she was just my pet, and I didn’t care for her.
Was hand it over to him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Donovan
He wanted to play master, dragging her toward the baby grand piano in the middle of the glamorous ballroom, with its hanging chandeliers and dim lighting.
I clutched my hands into fists, took a breath, and reluctantly handed the leash over. “Take care of what’s mine, Troy.”
“Oh, I always do.” He shot her a sinister smile. “Shall we?”
She eyed me for permission; either that or she was petrified. I offered a small nod before he pulled her to her feet, leading her by the small gold chain toward the piano.
Attendants walked up to pull the bench out for her.
Troy looked back at me as he leaned in, whispering something in her ear, and when she nodded at him, he ran a hand from her shoulder down nearly to her ass.
I saw murder.
I wanted to draw his blood and laugh while doing so. I sat and crossed my legs over my knee like this was normal, like I was normal, not internally losing my shit and wondering how soon I could murder my dead father’s best friend and business partner.
Troy walked by me and slapped my shoulder the same way he’d caressed hers. Leaning over, he declared, “Think of her playing as a gift that I do hope you enjoy. I know I will.”
I didn’t tense. “Since when have I ever enjoyed any gift you’ve given me?”
His eyes turned to steel. “You’ll see.”
The music started at that moment, and every single shield I thought I had erected came crashing down around me while Juliet started the first part of “I Giorni” by Ludovico Einaudi.
It may as well have been the blanket I held at night when nobody would hold me. It was my safe space. Every single echo of the music took me back to that closet, to a place of so much fear and shame that I wanted to die in front of my guests.
From the second she began playing, I was thrown back to another time, another place, where all I saw was the comfort of my mother—the woman my father had murdered with my hand in broad daylight.
“One day,” Mama whispered through the hole in the closet as she sat next to me and put her pinky finger through so she could touch me. I wasn’t allowed to hug her.
In terms, that one touch was my oxygen.
It was my strength.
I looked forward to our nightly chats when Father was gone. It meant for one brief second, in a dark room far away from the real world, I was with an angel.
I was with my mom.
She was with me.
And all was right in our messed-up world.
Maybe God didn’t exist.
But in that moment, angels did.
“One day,” she rasped.
I could hear her tears and wanted nothing more than to take away the pain.
“You will go far away from this place, Donovan. One day, even if I’m not here, I’m going to save you.”
“How?” I questioned through blurred tears. “How could you if you aren’t here?”
Suddenly her finger was gone, and the start of Ludovico’s song played, and I laid against the wall and listened only to have her stop after a few minutes, then come back and whisper, “Did you feel that, Donovan?”
“Yes,” I whimpered. “It was really pretty.”
“That wasn’t music—that, my dear son, was heaven.”
“Heaven doesn’t exist.”
“It exists in music. Music gives us strength. It has the power to end wars, to change emotions, to humanize a person. So wherever you are, no matter what, you feel this music. You listen over and over again, you escape into the heaven I created for you, and you become strong.”
“I’m afraid.”
She would leave again to play, and for one brief second, I wasn’t trapped anymore.
No. I was free.
With her playing her piano for me.
The clapping around me jolted the memory I was wreaking havoc in. I couldn’t stand and didn’t want to appear weak. I simply clapped with everyone and watched in utter horror as Troy took Juliet by the leash again and walked her to our table, making an announcement that would set off a chain of events even I couldn’t prepare for.
“I’m going to take your little pet to one of the rooms. Her hands play so beautifully, Donovan. I wonder what the rest of her body sounds like.” He winked. “That’s not a problem, correct? You can even watch. I know you like that.”
Juliet’s eyes pleaded with mine.
Everyone watched in rapt fascination at our table as if a war was looming, and I’d already lost.
I shrugged like it didn’t matter and then gulped down my entire glass of bourbon.
“Let’s go.”
I thought I knew real shame when my father made me hurt my mom.
I was wrong.
Real shame was the look of abandonment in Juliet’s eyes.
And sadly, all I could do…
Was look away.
Juliet
I’d never been more terrified in my entire life, looking around the opulent yet disgusting room. It was a horror movie gone wrong.
Donovan was actually allowing me to be in there with Troy.
He’d touch me.
He’d caress me, and my villain was letting him.
Worse off, he would watch it. The man old enough to be my father tugged on my chain, leering at my body.
“You’ll enjoy this, pet.”
Why did it feel so different when Donovan said it than when Troy said it?
Troy made me feel weak.
Donovan said it, and at times I felt strong, impenetrable. He took me to a different place mentally and physically, and maybe I was crazy, or he was breaking me completely, making me crazy, but for a few short moments in the last couple days, I actually believed he cared.
Oh, how stupid I was…
He clearly didn’t. Standing in the corner, arms crossed, face blank—impassive.
I wanted to scream at him.
Beat his chest.
I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
A tear slid down my cheek, and I tried wiping it away when Troy grabbed both of my wrists.
“No, no, leave the tears. It makes it so much more enjoyable to know what you’re feeling at all times.” While he held my leash, he looked around the room. “Ah, this one, I think.”
Still pulling me toward him, he hit a button, the floor opened up, and a giant metal X slowly came up. The floor closed below it with a resounding locking noise.
It truly looked like a typical X made of metal, except there were ropes attached to each end of the letter.
“Troy,” Donovan expressed his name like a curse.
He grinned. “I hate it when they squirm too much. A little is enjoyable, but you know how I like things, Donovan. Oh wait, I guess you haven’t been in a room with me in quite some time.”
“For good reason,” Donovan hissed.
“Oh, she’ll be fine. Won’t you, pet?” He tilted my chin toward him. “Now, be a good little girl and climb onto that X, facedown, arms and legs spread. I need to find something to mar that pretty skin a bit.”