Exposed (Madame X, #2)(48)

“Indigo Ring?”

“That’s what it’s called. The Indigo Ring, capital I, capital R. That’s not what he calls it, I don’t think, but that’s the name for it among the people I could actually get to talk about it. I tracked down a guy who’d married one of Caleb’s girls. He was a forty-five-year-old multimillionaire, not really sure how he made his fortune. He was awkward and lonely and difficult, one of those work-all-night-and-all-day-for-a-week-straight sorts. His wife was twenty-nine, beautiful, voluptuous, smart, a real knockout. But apparently she was also an ex-drug addict and former sex worker; this is what she told me herself. She ended up in Caleb’s program somehow, got clean, worked her way through the program. I don’t know how she met Caleb, and she was squirrelly about what she meant by ‘program,’ wouldn’t answer me directly.” He shrugs. “She seemed grateful for Caleb, and also seemed to really love Brian, her husband. He helped her get a college degree of some kind. Apparently she was actually pretty intelligent, but the way she’d grown up had precluded her from really pursuing any academic interests. Once she went through Caleb’s mysterious program and got off the drugs, she was able to get a GED and explore what interested her. And Brian is a computer geek, developed a software program or something, I really don’t remember. But he sent her to school, and she got a degree. I don’t remember what, economics or politics, or social work, maybe? Something along those lines. It was kind of cool, to be honest. I mean, they were two totally different people from wildly different backgrounds. He was white-bread, from a well-to-do upper-middle-class suburban family, grew up in Connecticut, and she was a Latina girl from Queens who’d spent most of her youth hooked on drugs and turning tricks. But they met through Caleb and for all that I could see legitimately fell in love. It was weird.”

I think back to Rachel. “I know one of the girls in the program right now. When I ran away from Caleb the first time, I hid in her apartment. The girls in the program live in the tower, sequestered in these apartments. They’re all like that girl, the Latina who married the rich computer guy. Drug addicts and prostitutes living dead-end lives, and Caleb finds them and puts them through his program. It’s basically just getting off drugs, getting educated, learning how to function in normal society, how to be a good escort, basically. A companion, a Bride.”

“So they’re really not prostitutes?”

I shake my head. “According to Rachel, no. If there is sex, it’s always their choice. Of course that’s expected if they become a Bride, or a long-term companion, but it’s not part of the contract, explicitly. The client is not allowed to proposition the girls, and no money directly exchanges hands between the client and the girls. The client pays Indigo Services, who takes their cut, and then pays the girls.”

“So they’re basically contractors.”

“I suppose so.” There’s so much more to this, so many layers, and I don’t know how to put it all into words.

“What aren’t you saying?” he asks.

I shrug. Try to breathe. “The girls. The sex thing. There’s more to it. Caleb . . . trains them. Sexually. So when they become long-term companions and Brides, they know how to please. How to be good at the kind of sex men like.”

Logan blinks at me. “Jesus. By ‘train,’ I assume you mean he f*cks them all and calls it training?”

“There are actual lessons. Weekly reports and assessments. Techniques.”

“So the clients aren’t allowed to f*ck the girls, because they belong to Caleb.” This is phrased as a question, but spoken as the bitterest of statements.

“I hid under Rachel’s bed during an assessment,” I whisper.

“Meaning . . . you discovered all this by accident? Overheard Caleb having sex with some other girl?” he asks.

I nod. “Right.” I swallow hard. “Then one time I was visiting Rachel, because we were kind of friends, and I needed someone who wasn’t Caleb to talk to. He showed up, and caught me watching. Listening. So he . . . he forced me to watch while he—finished. With Rachel.”

“Isabel. God.” Logan wipes his face with both hands. “This is f*cked up on so many levels.”

“I admitted to him later that I was confused by the difference in the way he treated Rachel versus the way he treated me. He did things both to and with Rachel that he never did with me. And I wasn’t—I wasn’t saying I wanted those things, just that I was confused. He’d say things to her, do things with her sexually that—” I cut myself off, start over. “So then the next time I saw him, he did . . . what I told you. Which was the kind of thing I heard and saw him do with Rachel.”

I cannot put into words the confusion. The anger. The fact that part of me liked what was done to me. That part of me craves those moments of helpless weakness, those moments of belonging, of being owned, dominated, subjugated. I hate that part of me, and cannot speak it into truth.

But Logan, oh . . . he sees. His eyes, crystalline and indigo and piercing me like scalpels slicing through tissue. Cutting me open and baring my secrets for his perusal.

“Isabel.” His voice has that note of warmth. That layer of understanding. “There is nothing you could say, nothing you could do, no truth that could change my feelings for you. Do you know that?”