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“Sit down, Logan,” Yvette says. I look at her. She looks at me. Then she offers me a small smile that comes with a shrug. “You said you follow orders, right? I’m just helping you out.”
AJ drags a stool across the floor, making a loud scraping sound, then sits next to her and starts helping himself to syrup and powdered sugar.
I am hungry. Fucking starving actually. So I pull out a stool across from them, and sit. “You gonna explain?” I ask, pouring syrup over my breakfast. “Or you gonna just let us all die up here on this mountain?”
“Dramatic, dude,” AJ says, stuffing a healthy portion of French toast in his mouth.
“If I tell you,” Yvette says, “you need to make me a promise.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“That you will not tell Damon anything I say.”
I shrug. “Done,” I agree, not because I’m particularly invested in her secrets, I just figure he knows all this already. He’s known she was up here for a long time before he sent us.
“OK,” Yvette says. “Then… OK.” She looks worried. Bites her lip, looks down at her plate. Cuts a piece of French toast with her fork. Eats it. Then sighs. “Damon’s father got me out.”
“Oh.” AJ laughs. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
“Explain,” I say. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
She frowns. Stays silent for almost a minute as she stares down at her plate.
AJ and I look at each other. I shake my head at him, a warning that he should not try to make this easier by cracking jokes or being charming.
“He raped me,” she finally says. Then she looks up and locks eyes with me. “Damon. His cousins. His little brother. His inner circle. All of them. His father too,” she adds quietly.
“Oh, fuck,” AJ says.
“His father was kinda infatuated with me. He tried to make our encounters more like… dates.” She stops again, probably remembering some specific time, probably wishing she could forget it. “We’d play cards. Poker, mostly. Which I sucked at. And he’d make the stakes sexual. You win this hand, I’ll do this to you. I win this hand, you do this to me. I always lost. I didn’t even know how to play and he never took the time to explain it after that first night. He would just laugh at me when I made a mistake. So of course I always did things to him.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” AJ says.
She shrugs. “Whatever. I did it for the same reasons you do it, Logan. To survive. You’re right, it’s easy to do what you’re told. To be reliable, as you put it. So I did everything he asked. And when I got pregnant I told Damon’s father first. I mean”—she laughs here—“no one knew whose baby it was. I was just a thing to them. And they were never careful.”
“Didn’t he have you on the pill?” I ask.
She nods. “He did. But I decided not to take it.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because something had to change. You know?” She frowns and her face is suddenly very sad. “I get you, Logan. Because when I made the decision to change something—anything—I knew that the baby would be born into this terrible, evil family and I’d be responsible for it. But I could tell Damon’s father liked me. He’s evil, don’t get me wrong, but I think he made Damon marry me because he wanted me.”
She stops. For a long time there’s silence. No one is eating.
“Go on,” I say. “Because so far none of this is helpful.”
“I told Damon’s father first because I was hoping he’d… I don’t know. Be happy? Or at least feel… proud? Or maybe possessive? And he’d put a stop to the others coming into my room at night. Not Damon, but the others.”
“Did he?” AJ asks.
“Yeah,” she says. “He did. But he told Damon to leave me alone too.”
“How did that go over?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not well, as you can imagine. I tried to run away a bunch of times but they always caught me. And after each time Damon’s father would come to me and say things like, ‘Why do you do that? Why do you run?’ Like… he’s such an idiot. Ya know?”
AJ and I both nod our heads.
“So after I tell him I’m pregnant I say… I say… ‘Damon wants to kill you and take over.’ I tell him the things I’ve heard the others say.”
“So it was true?” I ask.
“It was true. They really did want to kill him. I wasn’t going to leave or get away, but I was hoping he’d kill Damon first and at least, if I had to be stuck in this awful nightmare of a life, at least Damon wouldn’t be there anymore.”
“Good plan,” AJ says.
“Yeah,” I have to agree. “But you do know that Damon actually did kill his father a few years ago, right?”
