It was a valuable skill early on in my career. But the second I had enough power behind my name, all of that stopped.
Until I watched someone get murdered, of course. Then all my agency was taken from me.
Obviously I was used to the picture thing. Everyone who approached me didn’t really want to talk to me. They wanted physical evidence of the interaction. They wanted bragging rights, they wanted likes for their social media. I wasn’t a person to them, I was social currency.
With Harriet, it was different. I was a person to her. If she had found me somehow lacking, I’d know. She wasn’t rude or cruel enough to treat me with disapproval, but I’d felt her respect, treasured it, and I wanted to preserve this moment in any way I could.
So I posed for the picture.
I even copied her gesture and flipped the bird to the camera.
She regarded the picture. “Yeah, that’s a good one,” she muttered.
I looked at the screen. She was right, it was a good one. I’d posed for millions of photos in my life. In almost every single one of them, I looked beautiful. Flawless. Empty. Something about me flipping the bird at the camera next to an eighty-year-old woman in a sequined crop top and red lipstick was different. I looked...alive. I was a person, not just an instrument for likes or social cache.
“What the fuck is going on?” a low boom demanded.
Both of us jerked with the aggression in the familiar voice.
Duke didn’t give either of us time to respond but stormed across the room to snatch the phone from Harriet.
“Weren’t you taught not to do that as a toddler?” Harriet demanded. “I should know, since I taught you to never snatch a thing from a woman, unless it’s her heart and she’s willing.”
Duke, of course, didn’t answer her. He was too busy fuming at Harriet’s phone. He tapped at the screen then looked up to me.
“We’re talking. Now.”
Harriet scowled. “I don’t remember my grandson resembling a Neanderthal the last time I saw him,” she said. “And the fact you’re fucking with my Instagram engagement is basically elder abuse.”
Duke didn’t even glance at his grandmother. “Anastasia, now.”
Again, I shouldn’t have listened. Should not have obeyed. It must’ve been something to do with this family. Something in their genes. Because instead of telling him to fuck off, like Harriet was doing with a well-practiced glare, I stood. I walked toward Duke and let him usher me out of the room.
The walk to the bedroom was silent—which was saying something considering the living area was in a whole other wing of this giant homestead.
I refused to say anything because I was so damn pissed off at myself, and Duke by proxy. I guessed that he didn’t say anything because he was too busy simmering in his macho-man fury.
He was ready to say plenty the second we set foot into “our” room.
“What the fuck do you think you were doing?” he growled, advancing on me the second the door slammed shut.
I didn’t retreat, though I wanted to, though every single fucking cell in my body told me to. There was a time when I retreated from men, submitted, bowed down. There were plenty of times I did that.
And I vowed I’d never do it again.
So I didn’t.
But it was hard.
Especially since Duke made sure to get right up in my face, so I could taste the mint on his breath, smell his cologne, mixed with the scent of him pressed into my skin. His fury covered me like a sheen of sweat, almost sticky. Uncomfortable.
I jutted my chin up. “Your grandma wanted a photo.”
His eyes flared, whether in fury of the response or the fact I wasn’t cowering or submitting. “You do realize that fucking photo could get you dead?” he hissed. “Could put my entire fucking family in danger? I know you realize that because you’re smart. But you just can’t fucking help yourself.”
It was all back in those words. The resentment, the hatred.
“I couldn’t say no to Harriet,” I protested, covering my hurt with some resentment of my own. “I want her to like me.” I hadn’t meant to say the last part, but it slipped out.
Duke’s face changed ever so slightly. The anger slipped, almost fell right off his face, before he got hold of it. He leaned in even closer, so our faces almost touched, lips almost brushed. “She doesn’t need to like you,” he whispered. “None of them do. You’re not here to make a good impression on my family. You’re here to stay alive. You’re here until the trial. Then you go. You’re never going to see them again, so it doesn’t matter who the fuck likes you.”
He hovered close to me for a second longer, to make his point, to make sure his words hit the mark.
Satisfied, he stepped back and left me standing in the middle of the room. Alone with the words. With the truth. The pain.
The smart thing would’ve been to stay in the room.
Well, no.
The smartest thing would’ve been to pack my bag and fucking hitchhike off this damn ranch, even though there was a high chance a crime lord could locate me and murder me so I couldn’t testify against him.
I was a survivor.
I liked my odds at figuring out a way to stay alive outside of this situation because it was quickly becoming more dangerous than being on the run.
It might’ve been my dramatic nature to think that.
Yes, it might’ve been dramatic, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like a noose tightening around my neck, having to act like I had a connection with Duke in front of his family, having to act like he was nothing more than a man employed to protect me.
Which was the lie?
I couldn’t tell.
Hence me not staying in the room.
And not running either.
Well, not off the ranch at least.
But far enough so I could breathe.
I didn’t run into anyone on my escape, thanks to the size of the house and the fact everyone was doing other things. It was a good thing too, since I feared I might break down in tears, or worse, tell the truth to whichever of Duke’s family I encountered.
I veered away from the outbuildings, the barn, and what I now knew were the ranchers’ quarters. I walked in the direction of the horizon, hoping it might somehow swallow me up, or at least suck away all of this pain.
I walked for a while until my already aching muscles protested. But I didn’t stop.
The air smelled of dirt, of sunshine, of something I couldn’t describe.
There was nothing, as far as the eye could see. Nothing but nature. Mountains. The ranch was a speck in the distance. It was a surprise that I hadn’t encountered anyone on my escape. But not really, I guessed. People weren’t milling around waiting to become a secondary character in my story. I wasn’t the center of the world here.
I was like the ranch, a speck. Life went on. There were things to do. I hadn’t been here long enough to understand the kind of life that Duke’s family lived, but I knew it was hard, simple, which didn’t make much room for drama.
Pretty much the opposite of my life.
It showed me how empty my life was, despite the fact that every second of my days used to be accounted for, scheduled. I “worked” as much as they did, but not in the same way.
I had no family.
No true friends, except Andre.