CHAPTER 2
Nate
Mara left the office like fire rampaging through an open door. The scent of blood orange and orchids still lingered in the room, the taste of her frustration beneath it. That round face—as innocent as it made her appear—hid an existence that was so much more than she let out. I had spotted her in the lecture hall earlier, her defiant gaze provoking me. She had shown that she was full of passion and knew exactly what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid to go after it. To hang what was at stake in front of me, the lure taunting, an open challenge. She wasn’t the first student to use a harsh tone with me, but she was the first that made me stop. Made me think. Made me consider her proposal. Consider her. I could appreciate that.
There was something different about Mara. It wasn’t simply the lack of flattery. At first, she had tried to butter me into the contest like her graduate peers had done in the past, but once I called her on it, she dropped the facade. Nor was it the fact that she hadnottried to trick me into a date, like the student before her. There was something else. Something deeper.
But Mara was only another student. There had been hundreds before her. There would be hundreds more.
A sharp woman’s voice cut through the open doorway, talking to another student outside. “It’ll only take a minute,” she said. Dr. Smith, a fellow assistant professor, let herself in. “Dr. Evans. Youarehere.”
Dr. Smith took the seat in front of the desk. Her haircut was angular, her broad chest thrust forward. Dr. Smith was always ready to saunter her academic clout. It wasn’t my style, but I understood why she was vocal.
“You do know there’s a student out there, right?” she asked.
I had seen her sit down. Hazel, Zaid’s soon-to-be sister-in-law. Grant’s current assignment as a protector.
“She can wait,” I said.
“You want me to come back some other time?”
It was best to get this, whatever it was, over with now. “What do you want, Smith?”
Dr. Smith glanced around, as if searching for a particular item. Her chin darted back and forth, dancing around the subject. Dr. Smith was the one who had initiated this meeting, not the other way around. I looked at the notes in front of me, then turned on the desktop.
“By the way,” she said, as if the non-existent conversation had magically led into the current discussion, “how are your stocks?”
My investments were better than ever. But Dr. Smith never asked anything without reason.
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s not like you need this job.” She flicked her finger towards the wall. “Some of us wonder why you’re even working when you have that kind of money.”
None of their fucking business.
“My investments help pay for your Annual Lakehouse Retreat.”
“About that.” She sat up. Here it was. “I was thinking we could go back to Tahoe this year, fly the students out. It might be more secluded. Give them a break from the city life.”
We had done the trip at my lakehouse in Tahoe the year before. But since then, I had ordered renovations there to be completed in the spring. It was out of the question.
“Lake Mead is adequate,” I said.
“Lake Mead is hardly a step out of their backyard,” Dr. Smith moaned. She meant her backyard. She had created the Annual Lakehouse Retreat as a draw for highly-sought-after potential students, but in reality, it had been so that Dr. Smith could get a free vacation in the name of academia. The department didn’t see the appeal and refused to fund it, but I didn’t mind providing that experience for the students.
But sometimes, I regretted the decision. Being around pompous professors irritated me, especially Dr. Smith.
“Lake Mead,” I said.
“And it’s still two students maximum, correct? For you, Neil, Chris, and me?”
With twelve of us at the lakehouse, it would be more than substantial for a retreat. I nodded. A look crossed her face, one that I knew. A prying, conniving expression, venomous. What Dr. Smith had been searching for, what I would not give.
“That woman,” she said. I waited, staring back at her. For a moment, my mind crossed to Mara.Thatwoman. But I knew she wasn’t who Dr. Smith was referring to. “Why did that poor woman come to your office years ago?”
The image of Lisa flashed through my mind: hair wrecked, her mascara caked on her cheeks, a purple and red bruise, shaped like the Milky Way, stretching across her back, covering her ass, still wearing the same slave outfit Eric had assigned her. Years ago. Lisa had been my accomplice in infiltrating Eric’s organization, but he was dead now. Lisa had managed to survive.
But a woman looking like that, wandering through the humanities department, demanding me, screaming my name, it was a memory many tried to politely forget. But Dr. Smith, on the other hand? She had different intentions, to use it against me.
