Page 25 of The Castle (Endgame 3)
“No,” she whispers.
I push up on my elbow. “Penny?”
“Don’t leave me here.”
Her eyes stare at nothing. I’m not sure if she knows I’m here, if she knows she’s safe. It seems like her mind is still back in whatever horror Damon took her from—which must be the worst curse of all.
Her body is here, but her mind isn’t.
My chest constricts, the situation too familiar for comfort. I’m tucked away into an ivory tower, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe. Not while I’m hearing voices.
“I won’t leave you,” I say, almost fierce. The way I would want someone to promise me.
Like they mean it.
She begins to shiver. “Please don’t leave me.”
“Not going anywhere.” I press my forehead against her temple, the way Gabriel did to me in the restaurant. That feels like a lifetime ago, even though it was earlier tonight. I had been hopeful about the future then, cautiously optimistic, excited to spend the evening at my favorite restaurant.
Now I’m grateful to be alive.
I wrap my arms around the girl—how old is she? From the brief glimpse of her body she looks fully grown. A woman. Except the frail body in my arms doesn’t feel big enough, strong enough. Not with shudders racking her slender frame.
We stay like that for long moments, only her halting breaths breaking the silence.
“So dark,” she murmurs, her voice almost dreamlike. She doesn’t sound afraid, only lost. “And cold. And heavy. That’s what you don’t realize about water. How heavy it is.”
My throat tightens. “Did you fall off the docks?”
My dad used to have a yacht on the lake outside Tanglewood, but we didn’t spend much time on it. A few company parties with his executives, lots of suits and hearty handshakes. One time the VP of Commercial Development, drunk on bourbon and his new promotion, went overboard.
She shakes her head, voice small. “The west side.”
I blink, unsure what she means. The lake is to the east, and besides, the west side usually refers to the jumble of tenements that house Tanglewood’s poorest population. There are no lakes there. No rivers. Barely any trees. Only miles of broken concrete.
So how did she end up drenched and shivering?
“Did you go swimming?”
A violent tremble shakes her small body. She burrows her face into my chest, and I pull her close.
It feels strange to comfort someone like this. The closest friend I have is Harper, and even though we could talk about anything, she’s a force of nature. Too powerful to ever need solace.
For so long I didn’t have a mother to do this, to hold me, to stroke my hair.
To whisper that everything would be okay.
And I find it gives me a kind of peace to hold her, as if we’re both helping each other. I’m not sure how long we stay like that, in that place between past and present, in the hazy shadows of trauma and relief.
It feels like the world might be passing us by, one of those fast-motion videos of the sky with clouds migrating across the city. This might not be the ivory tower Gabriel keeps me in, but it’s a safe house all the same. A building without time, without even reality to intrude.
Penny shifts slightly, and I know she’s awake.
“Are you one of them?” she asks.
“One of who?”
“One of the girls. The ones Damon collects when someone can’t pay the loan back.”
“Do you mean the strippers?” Damon owns clubs around the city. I could have ended up onstage in one of them, working off my father’s debts, lap dance by lap dance. I should be grateful that I’m with Gabriel instead—and I am, but I can’t shake the feeling that I don’t know everything.
My father kept secrets from me. On good days I think he was trying to protect me. Then I remember that he sold me to Gabriel Miller as part of a shady business deal well before the auction.
Regardless of his intentions, the fallout from his crash destroyed my life.
“Are they strippers?” Penny asks, her voice drowsy. “I thought he kept them for himself. I imagined a harem of girls, one for every day of the month.”
The only time I’ve seen another woman at the Den was the night of my auction. Candy was there to help get me ready. And a few other men brought women on their arms, mistresses or sex partners. Temporary guests in a purely male environment. Is that what I am?
“There aren’t other girls. At least not here.” And apparently this is Damon Scott’s bedroom. Where else would he keep a harem but nearby? “What made you think there were?”
“He threatened to take me. If Daddy didn’t pay.”
My hope dims. I don’t want to depress her, but I don’t want to lie either. “Maybe he wanted you to work off the debt.”
I don’t mention that he might auction her off to one of the men who bid on me.
