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My eyes take in the small, mysterious box, then dart up to meet his hard gaze, and I’m left without words.
Surely, this man is speaking in tongues. Is he giving me what I think he’s giving me? Eyeing the item with suspicion, there’s every chance this is a trap, and I’m walking headlong into it.
Thorne seems pleased enough with my silence. “There’s an auction night coming up at Noire House, and you are required to attend. The Anguis will expect to see you there in exactly the capacity your father used to oversee those evenings in the past.”
My stomach knots.
Of course, there’s an auction. Of course, there is. And what he’s asking me—no, forcing me to do—involves taking on the position of my father, who used to schmooze with his room full of pathetic followers, as women get sold off onstage. Meanwhile, the real trade was going on, hidden from view downstairs. The whole lavish affair of these nights acted as a cover for the fact he had children locked in the basement. The auction nights were always a distraction and a front for his trafficking operations. It makes me want to go clutch the toilet bowl whenever I stop to consider the way I unknowingly lived under the same roof as his sordid empire for so long.
Do they know about the reality of what my father did? Or, an even worse thought catches in my throat, could they also be involved…am I at the mercy of monsters worse than my father?
I can’t even form a reply. Protesting against this is futile.
So I remain in my seat with my eyes lowered, like a pathetic little creature.
Thorne doesn’t offer me any further explanation.
They just leave.
And once again, I’m surrounded by the echoes of their scents while outside, the drifting mist curls its ghostly white fingers against the window panes.
17
It’s long past midnight, yet sleep has no desire for my presence.
Ky and Thorne are still finishing up preparations for tomorrow’s auction at Noire House. Allowing me to return to the compound and get on with the never-ending list of surveillance reports and bullshit for the Anguis…in peace.
There’s also the matter of checking in to confirm what our little bitch of a prisoner got up to while we were gone. She doesn’t deserve the level of trust Thorne gave her yesterday. Permitting her to have a cell phone? I warned him it was a shit idea, but at least there’s every form of spyware installed, giving me full control over anything the cunt might attempt with the device.
With a single tap, I can see every time she’s even glanced in the direction of the damn phone screen. The device gives me full access to her camera and audio, not to mention every action or keystroke.
Other than contacting our pre-programmed numbers, she’s blocked from making calls, sending texts, or accessing the internet. I’m curious to see how many times she tried to do any, or all, of those things while being left alone for an entire day unsupervised.
As I open the browser on my laptop, what I’m expecting to see is a screen littered with a long list of keystroke actions, each should be recorded with a timestamp. But instead, all I see are a small handful of items. I can see that she unlocked the phone—not bothering to set a password or face ID, interesting—and she’s looked through the three contacts added. Each of our numbers were already loaded into the phone. She spent the longest hovering over Ky’s number, and that makes something in me sit up to attention. From the log on my computer, I can see that she opened up a text message to send to his number but didn’t type anything, then closed out of it immediately.
The next move she made was to bring up the keypad as if to dial a number. But again, hovered over the phone without pressing anything before swiping out of it again.
After that, the device detected no activity for the rest of the day.
Curious. Foxglove Noire didn’t try to contact the outside world, call for help, or seek out her friend. Maybe the girl is finally understanding her place in all this—that she’s nothing but property and her very existence is ours to destroy piece by piece.
I’m almost fucking disappointed she didn’t spend the day frantically trying to escape or run away or track down assistance. Her lack of effort, or fight is pathetic.
However, trust is a hard won commodity in my world. There’s not one piece of my black soul that believes she didn’t get up to something while we’ve been gone. I watch her on the cameras and the way the girl drifts around this place sets my teeth on edge.
There’s an easy way to confirm my lingering suspicions, so I bring up the video feed from the day and speed through it to track her movements through the house. She sticks to her usual simple routine: gym, shower, and then spends the rest of the day floating between the kitchen, pool, mezzanine above the lounge as she always seems to like to do. At least now I don’t have to deal with watching her curled up on her bedroom floor for hour upon hour like a wounded dog anymore.
Even if the girl did try to escape, there isn’t anywhere she could go without us knowing. The tracker in her phone matches the one inserted at the back of her neck.
As I tap through the real-time camera footage, I notice that she’s not in her bed. Her covers are thrown back and none of the motion detectors are alerting me to her location inside the compound. Both trackers indicate the same place, and from what I can tell, she’s locked herself in the bathroom.
For fuck’s sake.
The last thing I need right now is for this Noire House princess to be trying to slit her own wrists while she thinks no one is looking.
While the spyware allows me to access her camera to see what she’s up to, I really don’t care; I don’t need to see what she’s doing while she’s concealed herself in the bathroom. But apparently we need to keep her alive and healthy, as per Thorne’s orders.
I fucking told him we should install cameras in there, too, but he said it wouldn’t be necessary. Now would be the perfect opportunity to let him choke on his own words.
