Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(106)

“Looking back now, I think it started with them. Maybe they already were prostitutes. Or simply girls who came from . . . situations.” He glances at me. “My father might not have been the breadwinner my mother desired, but he still came from a long line of people who knew people. My mother mined those connections. Small, intimate dinners at first, inviting the neighbors, family acquaintances. Mother kept things simple. Cocktail hours, small cookouts to show off the house, introduce her new ‘daughters.’

“Maybe she was trying to reposition herself, us, in the community, but I think from the very beginning she had a plan. She knew what older, bored, wealthy men really wanted. So she started with a couples event, then later, the husbands might ‘drop by,’ to see if my mother needed any help, maybe stay for a few hours. I didn’t understand the full implications, but I still noted the new patterns. More and more male visitors. Two ‘foster daughters’ who spent most of their time giving male guests tours of the house, including long stays in their bedrooms. I don’t even remember their names anymore, but those first two girls, that’s when it all started.”

I have pictures in my head. A middle-aged woman in elegant linen trousers escorting me out of her car. Leading me through a tired but obviously once grand home. Taking me up a long flight of stairs in the south-facing turret.

This will be your room. The tower bedroom. You can make yourself comfortable. I’ll bring you clothes.

She closed the door. Was it locked? I’m not even sure anymore. Maybe, in the beginning. But it hardly mattered. Living out here, stuck in a mansion perched on a mountainside, thirty, forty miles from civilization. Where would I have gone? Where could any of us have run?

Madame Sade had not relied on armed guards or overt controls. She had a cold smile and indomitable will that served her just as well.

I look up now. I can’t see it, but I feel like I should know where it is, the three-story, wood-shingled turret, rising against the night sky.

“I loved that room,” I whisper.

“I spotted you in the window,” Thomas says. “You were ten years old, the first young girl she brought—”

“Bought,” I say bitterly.

He doesn’t correct me. “Close to my age. I’d been out in the yard, mowing, because everyone, even me, had to earn their keep. I looked up. Saw your face pressed against the glass. Your expression was so serious. Then you held up your hand, as if reaching out to me . . .

“And I . . . I don’t know how to explain it. I was only twelve myself, but I took one look at you and I was struck. I wanted to talk to you, become your friend. I wanted to know you, even though it wasn’t allowed. The rules had already been established. Foster kids were separate. Mother managed you. Guests visited you. I, on the other hand, was never to mingle.”

“You waved at me.” For a moment, I’m ten again. Lonely and overwhelmed by this fancy house and well-dressed woman who already terrifies me. I’m in the prettiest bedroom I’ve ever seen, in an honest-to-goodness princess tower, but I already know nothing in life is free. This room will cost me. This house will cost me.

Then I look down. I see the boy. A flash of smile. A quick wave. He quickly tucks his hand behind his back, glancing around self-consciously. But I don’t put my hand down. I keep it pressed against the window. I imagine, just for one moment, that I’m standing on the lawn with him. He’s still smiling at me and I’m not so scared or lonely anymore.

Thomas was right: We hadn’t been allowed to mingle or interact. But in his own way, he had become my lifeline, a point of interest in an otherwise monotonous existence of sitting in a gilded cage, waiting for nightfall. Madame Sade called the shots: First she isolated us in this mansion; then she extolled her own virtues. Look at this fancy house where I brought you to live; look at this new dress I found just for you. Aren’t you so lucky to have me to take care of you, so fortunate to have this opportunity to get ahead in life.

She’d flash that cold smile, the one that never reached her eyes, and the smart girl did as she was told. The smart girl didn’t dream of life beyond these walls.

Or Madame Sade would take away your food, shred your clothes, slash one of your new toys, maybe the one she’d just given you the day before. She’d twist your arm behind your back, so hard you could barely breathe, and she’d remind you of everything she’d bought and paid for. Oh yes, including you. So you’d better wise up, shut up and entertain that man over there, because it wasn’t like anyone would miss you if you didn’t show up one morning for breakfast. Lots of things disappeared in these deep, dark woods. Including ungrateful little girls.

I wised up. I shut up. I entertained that man over there.

But I also watched the boy out mowing the lawns. I studied him from beneath my lashes as he strode across the grounds. I caught his eye from time to time, as we passed in the hall.

Vero had the magical queen and the lost princess from the secret realm.

I had entire fictional conversations with a young boy I’d never officially met. Until, of course, I lost my place in the tower bedroom.

Now I look back at the sky, to the blank space on the horizon where there had once been the three-story turret. She’s close, I think. Very close. No longer just a presence in my mind, but here in these overgrown ruins.

“Vero took my room,” I hear myself say. “She arrived, and I was booted downstairs.”