Perreault charm offensive? Sure, I understood my dad was a master manipulator. Well, now I did after discovering all that virgin contract business was because of the deal he’d struck with Hades, not out of any overprotective fatherly concern for me.
But did Ellie really think I was just like him? That I’d offered my advice and crochet lessons when I saw that she was down just to escape my prison? That I’d actually had sex with her brother?
“Congratulations on fucking my brother,” she all but spat out, confirming my questions. Her eyes, which had shined with laughter last night, were back to their usual setting. Bitter and angry. “Looks like your père done spit you out, didn’t he?”
And even though I was the one who’d been taken prisoner, guilt flashed through me as if I’d done something wrong.
“I didn’t…”
I started to answer, but then stopped when I saw the large item parked in the place where my dog cage usually stood. It was a clothing rack, of all things—filled with long evening gowns.
Instead of defending myself, I had to ask. “What’s all of this?”
“Da hell it look like, Persy Putain?” Ellie rolled her eyes. “You’ve gotta pick a dress. H is taking you to some charity ball.”
CHAPTER 13
PERSEPHONE
I was going to a ball!
Two weeks after picking out a tasteful evening gown that—gasp!—reached past my knees and—double gasp!—covered the terrible tattoo on my back, I was—triple gasp!—putting on makeup. Like, actual makeup for the first time in months.
How many months? No idea. And I kind of regretted being too proud to ask Ellie exactly what season it was outside the tall windows I’d only been allowed to look out wistfully…until tonight.
My heart soared with the idea of seeing people other than Hades and Ellie, who’d reverted back toward bitter and surly ever since assuming I’d slept with her brother. She was no longer open to talking about her mom with me or crochet lessons, even though, in the hugest shock of them all, Hades had gifted me with a craft room.
The place was no bigger than a storage closet. Knowing Louisiana, it was probably a servant’s tiny bedroom at some point in time. Unlike the rest of the heavily damasked upstairs, it featured plain white walls. Not going to lie, it kind of felt like an alternative prison now that the dog cage had disappeared.
But inside I found a treasure trove of items to keep me from losing my mind during the long days. A rolling caddy filled with crochet and knitting needles, along with skeins of yarn. Even fabric and a sewing machine—similar to the one I remembered Mama Fairgood using to make clothes to send home to her children. Maybe the exact same one I remembered her using.
I didn’t dare ask Ellie, who locked me in there every “morning” and only came back to fetch me for dinner.
No more boring afternoons in the throne room, but my new jailer was back to the kind of responses that could only be filed under three categories: monosyllabic, reluctant, and downright nasty.
No, I didn’t speak her kind of French, but I knew enough to glean that her new nickname for me—Persy Putain—wasn’t her calling me “sweetie.”
I’d thought about correcting her a few times. Not only about the ugly history of impugning women but not men for having sex, but also to let her know I was only sharing a bed with her older brother. And nothing else. But I didn’t want to disturb the current status quo I had going with Hades.
The dog cage was gone. Along with the nightly game of Russian Roulette. Hades had even sent a hairdresser around a week ago to finally take out my seriously old ombre blonde extensions. My mom would have rolled over in her grave if she could see that I was wearing my natural ear-length soft curls to a charity ball, where important people she knew would see me.
But thanks to solving Hades’s nightmare problem, I’d gained more freedom for both my body and my hair.
Though, believe me, after drawing his bath and quickly retreating to sit on the toilet lid every night prior to this one, I was deeply aware that our peace was fragile, at best. I didn’t want to compare myself to Scheherazade, but every sleep cycle I woke up happy to be alive—and positive thinking had nothing to do with it.
Still, over the last few weeks, there’d been a gentling between us. We’d actually started talking during his nightly bath. About safe things. Our wildly different childhoods, the differences between Cajun and formal French, what we’d had for dinner, my sewing projects, movies and TV shows we’d watched before all of this.
I couldn’t say the sexual tension was completely gone, but he didn’t gator-stare me down anymore, or bring home random women to fuck in front of me.
He hadn’t exactly thanked me for his lack of nightmares. But the craft room gift and, you know, not locking me up in a dog cage every day let me know he was grateful, even if he never said so with words.
And that was why I didn’t tell his sister the real reason we were sharing a bed. I would have had to explain he was suffering from nightmares. But that was what Mama Fairgood would have called “his business” when she’d warned me against the terrible sin of gossip. From what I could tell, I was the only one who knew about the nightmares. And though morals had no place in Hades’s brutal underworld, it didn’t feel right to disclose his private mental anguish to his sister.
Also, I didn’t want anything to ruin my chances of going to this ball.
Hades, with his mostly criminal circle of friends, obviously didn’t know how small New Orleans could be. But guaranteed, there would be someone I knew at the ball. Real power players who could help me out of this mess my father had gotten me into and maybe even get justice for Mama Fairgood.
My sister’s birthday was in April. If I played my cards right, I might be able to take her on that trip to Disney World after all. I just needed to find the right person to talk to, and the police would come storming in here to rescue me and arrest Hades. If I ever saw him again, he’d be behind bars.
