The Paper Swan(12)

He looked at me for a beat, before opening one of the cabinets I hadn’t gotten around to.

Yes! Maybe he had a satellite phone or a walkietalkie or whatever boats used to communicate.

He pulled out a jar and sat on the bed. He uncapped it and proceeded to moisturize his feet.

He f*cking moisturized his feet.

“Did you hear me?” I squealed. “I’m going to die.” I started taking deep breaths.

He took his time, first one foot, then the other, like it was the single most important task in the world. Then he pulled on his socks and closed the jar. “So die.”

I f*cking hated him. He didn’t want money. He didn’t want sex. He didn’t care if I lived or died. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going. He wouldn’t tell me why. And now he was calling my bluff.

“What do you want?” I screamed.

I was sorry the minute I said it. He moved fast. Lightning fast. Before I could apologize, he had me gagged, bound, and secured to the bedpost.

Then he turned off the light and got into bed.

The bastard wasn’t even out of breath.

I didn’t know which was worse—my arms stretched painfully over my head, the sides of my cracked lips bleeding on the gag, or knowing that this was how it was going to be. One room, one bed, my captor sleeping next to me, night after night.





I WOKE UP STIFF AND sore. Damian was gone, and I was still tied to the bed. He took his time getting back to me. I felt a surge of relief when I saw him standing there with the now familiar tray.

I had once attended a spirituality workshop that taught me to be witness to the moment, to not analyze or reason or think about the when or the why or the how. It was really an excuse to hang out with a bunch of girls, get Ayurvedic massages and bitch over green juice. My friends had long since drifted, but that’s the way it goes when you bond over the latest trends and hippest places. Things shift and change. And after MaMaLu and Esteban, I’d pretty much closed myself off. It had been just me and my father for the longest time. Nick was a possibility, and the fact that he got along with my dad was one of the reasons he’d lasted longer than most of the guys I dated. I liked my men to get along. I pictured the two of them beating Damian up and it made me happy. I liked witnessing the happy much more than I liked acknowledging my reaction to Damian. I was starting to associate him with food and bathroom breaks and relief from the pain of being bound up.

Breakfast was some kind of sloppy goo. I had a feeling it started off as oatmeal, but got beefed up with protein powder or egg white or something equally distasteful. He could have thrown in liver and onions and I’d still have finished. My arms felt like they were going to drop out of their sockets from being tied up all night, but I’d earned a metal spoon. And there was an apple. And water.

I looked up to find Damian watching me. There was an odd shadow in his eyes, but he blinked it away. When I was done, he let me use the bathroom. He’d put out a toothbrush for me, and a comb. Things were starting to look up.

I didn’t bother with my hair. I tried to avoid looking at it altogether. Damian watched me the whole time. I followed him back to the room like a good girl, and let him lock me up. I even smiled as he shut the door on me.

Then I fell back on the bed and let out a deep breath. The uncertainty was killing me. I’d braced myself for another painful encounter, another round of humiliation and degradation before I earned my privileges. I’d held the possibility, all tight and tense, in my shoulders and neck. But Damian had done the unpredictable, and that was far worse than a patterned system of abuse, because now I was in a state of constant alert, fearing what would come and fearing when it didn’t.

How do we kill him, Esteban? I closed my eyes and remembered the two of us, plotting in my room. I’d been an earnest eight year old, four years younger than him, but an equal instigator in all our adventures.



He gave my question considerable thought before responding. I liked the way he twirled his hair when he was deep in thought. His hair was long and dark, and when he let it go, it left a little curl. MaMaLu was always after him to cut it and the times she succeeded, he came home with nowhere to hide his face.

“I don’t think we have to kill him,” he said. “Just teach him a good lesson.”

Gideon Benedict St. John (pronounced Sin Gin), formally nicknamed Gidiot by Esteban and me, was the bane of my existence. He was ten, but bigger than the two of us combined, and when he pinched me, he left big, blue bruises on my thighs.