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I sat straight up in bed with a start. And looked around the room with wide eyes, chest heaving, the fear so visceral I pulled the down comforter around my neck before my surroundings came into focus. The flat-screen television mounted on the wall across from the bed. A beautiful cherry wood dresser just below the TV with a matching chest of drawers to the left of the bed and an armoire near the window. The walk-in closet was next to the main bathroom, filled with designer brands.
I was home. My penthouse condo in Emerald Isle.
I was safe.
“Son of a motherfuckin’ bitch!” It had been months since I had a dream about my previous life. I hadn’t thought of those years in a long time, those awful years that started at age eleven when my tits sprouted up overnight, and they hadn’t stopped until I ran away from home, the day before my sixteenth birthday. It was the only way to stop the nightly fuck-fests, the only way to get a good night’s sleep. And from that moment forward, it had been me against the world.
But damn, that dream was so fucking real my skin was coated with sweat, and my heart still raced with anxiety and fear. I got up and made my way to the kitchen, appointed with a small wine fridge, a top-of-the-line coffee and espresso maker, a six-burner stove even though I didn’t cook, and my favorite, a subzero fridge that kept my late-night booze nice and cold.
This was my place, a gift for keeping the details of Brendan Rhymer’s death a secret, and it was just how I wanted it, expensive and luxurious and most of all, safe.
I dropped down on the plush sofa and curled my feet under me before I downed a shot of tequila and reached for the remote, turning on the television to help me forget the nightmare. The memory.
The memories, or nightmares as I called them, didn’t crop up often, usually, only when I was stressed or afraid, two things I tried to avoid as an adult.
But with the shooting of Sadie and another go-around with Jasper, I should have expected it. But I didn’t because that’s how trauma worked. You forgot the trauma to survive, so you could live in the world without the shadows and demons coloring every fucking second of every damn day. If you did this long enough, you might forget it happened altogether.
Until it returned in vivid color. Often in a nightmare.
I clicked on the TV and found a celebrity cooking show to distract me. Padded to my luxe fridge for another shot and a beer to drown out the memories until they dissipated. I held up the shot glass with a bitter smile.
“Fuck you, dear old dad. Fuck the past, and fuck Jasper too.” All in that order. None of it was worth the real estate it took up in my mind.
The past and my father would reside there until the end of time, but Jasper? I still had a chance to purge him from my heart and mind. Maybe it was time to move on from Glitz. I had the money and life experience that I lacked when I found my way to the desert, so theoretically, I could leave. But the Ashby family, especially Sadie, would never let me go.
Ever.
They would probably kill me before letting me walk away, I knew too much, so it was just a thought. A fleeting thought that popped into my mind whenever some bad shit went down. And it did, often, like whenever I felt my heart ache a little too much from loving Jasper.
Not that I would actually ever leave. I couldn’t, not because of the whole kill me dead thing, but because I owed Sadie too much.
When I arrived in Vegas, a baby-faced sixteen-year-old with a smart mouth, big tits, and no experience in the real world, Old Man Rhymer tried to turn me out, turn me into a trick by ‘introducing’ me to one of his young and handsome business associates.
The guy claimed he wanted to show me his Ferrari, and naive little girl that I was, followed him down a dark alley where the bright red sports car sat shining under the golden glow of an overhead light.
I bent over and looked inside, ran my hands over the soft, buttery white leather with the red stitching, the gear shift, and all the other bells and whistles that were unlike anything I’d ever seen before. That’s when he pushed me face down on the passenger seat, my legs hanging out of the car, and ripped my panties. He’d been seconds away from shoving his gross cock inside me when I heard the click of a woman’s heels followed by a crunching sound and then a gurgling sound.
