Vice(56)

Fernando smiles, his thin lips stretching across his skeletal face. “Of course you are invited, Kechu. It would make me very happy if you would help me oversee the event, in fact. As I’m sure you are already personally aware, Harrison takes his job very seriously. Another pair of eyes and ears on the ground cannot hurt, though. Do you think you’re up for the task?”

Oh, he has no f*cking idea. I’m up for the task all right. I’m seriously up for the task. “I’d be thrilled to help out,” I say. And in the back of my mind, I’m already planning how to use this event to my advantage. It’s the perfect opportunity to strike against him. With so many people here, milling about in the house, strangers with unfamiliar faces, it will be easy for me to slip in and out of the crowd.

“Good,” Fernando says, sitting back in his chair. “I would also like you to do me a personal favor. My daughter, Natalia, is very beautiful, as I am sure you will have noticed. Some of the men who come here get caught up in the atmosphere at these parties. It is a constant worry to me that one of them will overstep and try to harm her in some way. I would be very grateful if you would make sure that does not happen.” There’s a tone to his voice, something edgy and sharp that makes his words sound like a warning. Don’t you overstep. Don’t you harm her. If he really suspected that there was any chance I might do that, though, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation. Not in a million years. I would be wolf bait.

“It gives me great comfort to know you are on my side, Kechu,” Fernando tells me, rising from his chair. “I’m not afraid to tell you that I will be disappointed when you have to leave Orellana. If you decide on staying longer, you would be more than welcome here in my home.”





******





Later, in my room, I’m expecting Harrison to drop by and pay me a visit (along with a pair of knuckle dusters). He didn’t seem happy at all that Fernando didn’t punish me for attacking him, and revenge seems like it would be his M.O. What I’m not expecting is Natalia, rapping against the French doors on my balcony at eight minutes after midnight, dressed in a tiny silk slip of material that makes my dick instantly hard. Her nipples are peaked, very visible through the thin fabric, and I want to run my hands over them. I don’t know why the tension of the afternoon has made me crazy. It seems every time I’m about to go on a killing spree, all I want to do is f*ck this girl. Seriously.

I open the French doors, letting her into the room. “I think this is supposed to be the other way around,” I tell her. “Aren’t I supposed to climb through your bedroom window?”

She smiles a small, nervous smile. There are dark shadows under her eyes, dark and bruised-looking. “I just…I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I wanted to see you. To see if…you are okay?”

“I’m fine.” This is only half true. I’m calmer than I was earlier, but I’m also almost certain now that Laura ended up in an open grave, with god knows how many other bodies piled in on top of hers, and that is not putting me in a good headspace.

“I can’t stop thinking about Persephone,” Natalia says sadly. “I should have been here, back at the house. I would have been able to talk him down.”

“How many times have you tried to stop him from doing something like that before?” I ask. “And how many times has he ignored you and done it anyway?” I can tell from the way her jaw is set and her cheeks are flushed that the answer to my question, though she won’t admit it, is many. “Today wouldn’t have been any different, Natalia. You can’t hold yourself accountable for every evil thing your father does.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she says. “Sometimes I wonder if I could try harder to reach him, though. I wonder if my own fear of him gets in the way of trying to help these people.”

“Stop. You’re beating yourself up over something you have no control over. There isn’t a doctor out there who wouldn’t diagnose your father as clinically insane. It’s okay that you’re afraid of him. Even if you did stand up to him, it wouldn’t make a difference.”

Natalia sits down on the edge of my bed, head hanging low. “I just can’t stop thinking that—”

“That’s exactly what you have to do, otherwise you’re going to drive yourself mad.”

“They were together, you know. Persephone was here maybe six months before Plato arrived. They became friends immediately. They fell in love some time after that. My father keeps his male and female Servicio separated at night. There are two huge dormitories beneath the house, and they’re guarded at all times. They’ve never slept in the same bed together, never fallen asleep in each other’s arms. But they’ve loved each other for years now. And now my father has even taken that from them.”

Sitting down on the bed next to her, I put my arm around her shoulders. “Simon says don’t think about it right now,” I tell her.

“Simon? Who is Simon?”

“You’ve never heard of Simon Says?”

She shakes her head. “What is it?”

“If I say, Natalia, take off all your clothes, you don’t have to do it. If I say, Simon says taken off your clothes, then you have to.”

She looks confused. “Why would I obey you just because you say that?”