The Housemaid(78)

But of course, he doesn’t come. He might be able to see me, but I have no idea where he is. Is he in the house? At work? He could be anywhere. He knows where I am, but I don’t have the same privilege.

That bastard.

It’s an hour later when I hear footsteps outside my door. I want to cry with relief. I’ve never been claustrophobic before, but this experience has changed me. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to ride in elevators after this.

“Millie?”

“I did it, you asshole,” I spit at the door. “Now let me out.”

“Hmm.” His lackadaisical tone makes me want to wrap my fingers around his neck and squeeze. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“But you promised! You said if I kept the books on my belly for three hours, you would let me out.”

“Right. But here’s the thing. You pushed them off a minute too early. So I’m afraid you’ll have to start over.”

My eyes fly open. If there were a moment when I would morph into the Incredible Hulk and rip the door right off by the hinges, that would be this moment. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m so sorry. But these are the rules.”

“But…” I sputter. “I don’t have any water left.”

“That’s a shame,” he sighs. “Next time, you’ll have to learn to conserve your water.”

“Next time?” I kick the door. “Are you out of your mind? There’s not going to be a next time.”

“Actually, I think there will be,” he says thoughtfully. “You’re on parole, right? If you were to take something from our house—and I’m sure Nina would back me up on that—where do you think you would end up? One offense and you’re right back in jail! Whereas you only have to stay in this room for a day or two every once in a while if you misbehave. I think this is a much better deal, don’t you?”

Okay, this would be the moment I would turn into the Incredible Hulk.

“So,” he says, “I would get back to work. Because soon you’re going to get pretty thirsty.”



This time I wait three hours and ten minutes. Because I don’t want there to be any chance that Andrew will claim that I need to do it a third time. That will kill me.

My belly feels like somebody has been punching me in the abdomen for the last several hours. It hurts so much, at first I can’t even sit up. I have to roll onto my side and push myself into a sitting position using my arms. And my head aches from lack of water. I have to crawl over to the cot and pull myself onto it. I sit there and wait for Andrew to come.

It’s another half an hour before his voice reappears behind the door. “Millie?”

“I did it,” I say, although my own voice is barely a whisper. I can’t even stand up.

“I saw you.” There’s a patronizing edge to his voice. “Excellent job.”

And then I hear the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. It’s the sound of the door unlocking. It’s even better than when I got out of prison.

Andrew comes into the bedroom, clutching a glass of water. He hands it over to me, and for a moment, it hits me that he could’ve slipped some sort of drugs into the water, but I don’t even care. I gulp it down. All of it.

He sits down beside me on the cot. He rests a hand on the small of my back and I cringe. “How are you doing?”

“My belly hurts.”

He tilts his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

“You do have to be taught a lesson when you do something wrong—it’s the only way you’ll learn.” His lips twitch. “If you had done it right the first time, I wouldn’t have had to ask you to do it again.”

I look up and study his handsome features. How could I have fallen in love with this man? He seemed nice and normal and wonderful. I hadn’t even the slightest clue what a monster he is. His goal isn’t to marry me—it’s to make me his prisoner.

“How could you tell exactly how long I was doing it?” I say. “You can’t possibly be able to see that well.”

“On the contrary.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and brings up an app. A crisp color image of my room fills the screen. I can see the two of us sitting together on the bed in incredible resolution. The image of myself shows me looking pale and hunched over, with stringy hair. “Isn’t that a great image? Like a movie.”

That bastard. He watched me suffer in here for the entire day. And he has every intention of doing this to me again. Except next time it will be longer. And God knows what he’ll make me do next time. I’ve already been a prisoner once—I won’t let it happen again. No way.

So I reach into the pocket of my jeans.

And I pull out the bottle of pepper spray I found in the bucket.





FIFTY-THREE





NINA





When I hired that private investigator to dig into Wilhelmina Calloway’s past, I found some very interesting information.

I had assumed Millie went to jail for some sort of drug crime or maybe theft. But no. Millie Calloway went to jail for something entirely different. She was in prison for murder.

She was only sixteen years old at the time of her arrest and was in prison by seventeen, so it took some effort for the detective to get all the information. Millie was in boarding school. No, not just a boarding school. A school specifically for teenagers with disciplinary problems.