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“You can write, can’t you? You’re not too stupid to do that?” he grumbles, sitting across from the bed. I shouldn’t be on the bed. It feels weird with Marcum in the room, even if I am fully dressed and the bed is made. My fingers move nervously over the blanket and I grab the pen I had failed to catch. In reply, I grunt at him. This fails to impress him. I know that because he completely ignores me and fires his first question. “What’s your name?”
I sigh heavily. He crosses his arms at his chest and waits, his face full of warnings that I probably should take note of. We stare at each other like that for a few minutes. His face is set in concrete. I’m stubborn, but somehow it seems to ooze out of his pores. I curse him, though only in my head—sometimes not talking has its advantages.
Toi. I write.
“Toi? How the fuck do you pronounce that?”
His response pisses me off. I roughly pull the notebook back and write, knowing he can’t miss my irritation.
Gee. Let me just sound it out for you!!!!
I can’t verbalize my anger so I make sure to put extra explanation points at the end of the sentence. Marcum reads it, and I expected it to anger him, which admittedly is stupid—but, for some reason I wanted to piss him off. Instead, he laughs.
“You’ve got some fire in you, Dragonfly. I like that,” he says. He called me Dragonfly at the house, and it makes me feel funny when he says it. I don’t know why. I almost think… I like it.
My name is Toi like T. O. Y.
My response makes him smirk. I have the strangest urge to stick my tongue out at him. I resist, although just barely.
“Can you talk at all?”
He asks the question I really don’t want to answer. I could lie to him, but there’s really not a point.
It hurts.
“Do it,” he orders, and for some reason I just knew he would say that.
It hurts!!!! I write again, adding explanation points and stabbing my pen at the paper to make noise, trying to get my point across.
“Life hurts, Dragonfly. Do it.”
Fuck you.
“I never would have thought you were afraid of a little pain.” He sighs like he’s disappointed.
“Fu…ck you!” I squeak out, then cough. It feels like broken glass being rubbed against my vocal chords, and it hurts like hell to get the words out. You also can barely hear them, but I manage it. Marcum looks at me strangely, saying nothing.
“How did you lose your voice?” he asks, studying me and I get the feeling he might see something I don’t really want him to.
Accident.
“Like a car wreck?” he asks, and I shrug my shoulders, not about to answer that.
When do I get to leave?
“Probably never,” he says with a shrug, like what he said isn’t supposed to bother me at all.
My mouth drops open, unable to believe what he just said.
But I have a job! A life!
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asks, watching me closely.
If I said yes?
“It wouldn’t matter. Just mildly curious,” he shrugs.
I have responsibilities!
“So do I, and you just became one of them. Clean yourself up and when you get ready, knock on the door. Ghost will bring you to me. I have some people I want you to meet.”
I’m not becoming a club whore! I write as panic tears through me. Everyone in Crescent knows about the club and the stable of women the men keep. My heart is slamming against my chest. The Saints even run a club where men can go and pay for a woman. Prostitution is supposed to be illegal, but Marcum and his boys own the law around here. Hell… they are the law.
“Good to know. Now go clean up. Right now you look like hell,” Marcum says and then gets up and leaves, dismissing me. I stare at the closed door and try to swallow down my fear of what comes next.
I don’t succeed.6Marcum“Here you go, Marcum,” Ghost announces when he walks into my office with an obviously reluctant Toi.
Toi… the name makes me shake my head. Her parents didn’t do her any favors. A name like that gives a man ideas. It offers something. There was a time I would have wanted to take up that offer. I’m too damn old now. Toi might have her father’s blood, but something about her tells me she’s a good woman. She needs a man to take care of her and get her settled. I’ve got some good men, but with her disability she’d get run over and forgotten. She’s got some grit to her, but she can’t make it known.
I have no idea why I feel so protective over her, but I do for some reason. She calls to a part of me I thought was dead. The part that was bred into me by my old man before this life. A man—a real man—takes care of a woman, cherishes her because they are special in a world full of ordinary.
