He groans, low in his throat. “How can I leave you on the side of the road?”
“Where else will you leave me?” I ask, gasping.
“I can’t,” he mutters. “I can’t leave you anywhere.”
And then he undoes my jeans, pushing them down far enough to touch me. To make me squirm in surprise and fear. To make me melt in liquid pleasure.
If I could have thought this through, if I could have planned it, I would have thought we’d use my bed. It’s large and soft, even if it’s part of my prison cell.
Instead he pushes me against the window, my back flush against the cool glass. I’m visible to anyone who looked in my window, but all I can see from here is the empty lawn and a tall wall. No one is looking. No one will see.
He pushes me harder and farther than I knew I could go, my body twisting in agony. There’s so much heat inside me. Energy. Something wild and new awakened now.
“Please,” I gasp.
He pants against me, with his own heat. His own energy. “Shouldn’t.”
He will hold himself back forever, I realize. And so it’s me who unzips his jeans and finds his arousal. It’s me whom awakens something wild in him, new enough that he lets go of his refusals.
And then he’s pushing inside me, his body fused with mine, pressing me against the glass as we can escape through pure force of will. It’s almost like being free, being senseless against the dark night. If only I stopped feeling the cold glass at my back.
CHAPTER SIX
I’m wide awake when the phone rings. My mother’s name flashes on the green Caller ID screen. How many times have I spoken to her on this pink phone? And this might be the last time. It’s only been a few hours since Niko left my bed, climbing down the ladder before sunrise.
A heavy weight descends on me as I pick up the receiver. “Hey, Mom.”
“Are you still asleep?”
I haven’t been able to sleep all morning, knowing what was coming today. My salvation or my surrender. I’m not sure I’ll ever have another chance. “Not anymore.”
It feels like I’ve been asleep for years. Ever since the psychiatrist sided with my parents, writing the words Pathological Liar on my chart. Whether day or night, light or dark, I’ve sleep-walked through my whole life.
And whatever happens next, I’m painfully awake. Painfully aware.
“It’s eleven o’clock,” she says.
I look over at my panda bear alarm clock, blinking ten thirty a.m. I won’t be able to take him with me. There’s a small satchel in the back of my closet with some clothes and a little money I’ve been able to hide over the years. I don’t know how long it will last me in the outside world.
Not very long, probably.
“Is there a reason you’re calling or do you just want to know if I need anything?”
There’s a part of me that will always want my mother to love me. To take care of me. Even if I manage to escape, if I make it a thousand miles away, if I live to be a hundred years old. I’ll still want that, with some sad, broken part of me.
It’s the rest of me that’s going to escape.
“If you can manage to pull yourself out of bed, I need your help.”
That makes me sit up a little straighter. “Really.”
“Your father is going on about Sergio De Fiore. Convinced he was going to try and steal something out from her under him. Anyway, he’s coming home early. I don’t know what kind of mood he’s going to be in, but I need you to calm him down. We need this deal to go through.”
I close my eyes, because my mother has never asked for my help before. “I’ll talk to him.”
“It’s bad enough that we have to stoop to dealing with someone like Sergio De Fiore, but it would be even worse to get stuck with a bunch of diamonds we can’t fence.”
A little gasp escapes me. She’s never spoken this frankly to me. “You know about it?”
“Of course I know about it. You do, too. We don’t like to talk about it because it’s messy. But your father can be… well, you understand. He can be rash.”
I learned exactly how rash he could be when I saw him shoot his business partner in the parlor downstairs. He conducts his business in this house; of course my mother knows about it. Which means she knew I didn’t lie all along. I could never be sure if she really believed my diagnosis.
It shouldn’t hurt worse to have confirmation that she’s known I didn’t lie all along. It shouldn’t hurt worse, except for the knife that’s between my ribs, stealing my breath. Hot tears sting my eyes.
“I have all day at the spa and then a charity benefit tonight. If I don’t go everyone will be asking about it for months. And if anything goes wrong with the deal it will be even more conspicuous. Which means I need you to handle it.”
It’s something I’ve wanted almost as much as her love. For her to need me. And now I’ll have to fail her, just like she’s failed me. “I understand.”
“And Emily? Be careful.”
The sweetness of those words collides with the dread building inside. For my mother to care enough about what happens to me to warn me… but still to send me to deal with my father, knowing that he’s a violent man. Knowing that he might expend that violence on me.
My father’s rage doesn’t happen with kicks and punches. It happens with a gun.
As soon as the phone clicks I’m out of my room and down the stairs. I’m through the back kitchens and outside. “Niko,” I call out to the man by the shed, his back toward me.
Except when he turns to me, I see that he isn’t Niko.
He’s Niko’s uncle. The one who’s been planning this theft for a long time.
The one who won’t let anyone get in the way of it.
He smiles when he sees me. It’s not a nice smile. “What do you want, little girl?”
“Where’s Niko?”
“He’ll be along shortly, don’t worry. He told me about your little deal.”
My blood goes cold, realizing that this man has the perfect opportunity to get rid of me. Wouldn’t he rather do that than deal with someone who knows about his plan? “Oh.”
He takes a step toward me. “We haven’t been introduced properly. My name is Pattin.”
“I’m Emily.”
Another step. “I know.”
“Something’s happening,” I blurt out, my hand forced by that small, latent sense of self-preservation that’s kept me safe in these walls for so long. I would rather tell this to Niko. That’s what I came here to do. But I have the dark sense that if I don’t tell the truth now I won’t live to see him again.
He stops, his dark eyes narrowing. “Is there a problem?”
Those eyes are so like Niko’s and yet so different. Instead of mystery they’re filled with menace. Instead of an endless pool there’s a hard surface. “Daddy thinks someone’s stealing the diamonds. But not you. The person who’s buying them.”
“De Fiore?”
The sound of the front gate rattling reaches around the back of the house. “That’s Daddy. He’s coming home early.”