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I’d be happy if I never saw those panties, or this dress, again in my life. But the thought of the consortium keeping them as evidence of a crime?
It’s what they said they were going to do, and I’m still disgusted. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I feel too good for the emotion to knot my stomach.
His attention back on me, Gabriel reaches for my hands first. He gently breaks my grip on the hem of my dress. It’s not until he’s coaxing each finger to relax that I discover how tightly I was holding on. I’m not sure I could have let go without him. When he’s freed the dress, he shakes it out, letting it fall to cover my legs. Then he and Jacob each loop an arm around behind me and help me sit up.
Gabriel smooths my hair. His green eyes, bright with the gold around his pupils, search mine. Whatever he sees there, which is probably how sex-drunk and sad I feel, is enough to convince him that I’m okay.
It’s only then that he puts himself back together. In seconds, his clothes are back in place. He offers me his hand, and I slide off the table and onto my feet.
That’s the signal for the other men in the room to converge on us. My father’s first. He doesn’t bother to look at me.
“You’ve proven your loyalty to the consortium,” he booms, extending his hand to Jacob first, then Gabriel. I’m ushered out of the way by Samuel Newhouse as my father pushes Gabriel’s suit jacket out of the way and places two leather portfolios on the gleaming surface where Gabriel and I had sex.
Newhouse won’t look at me, either. He looks at the floor while we cross the room to the beverage cart in the corner. There are two chairs nearby. He helps me into one, his eyes averted from my body.
“Let me get you a glass of water, Elise,” he murmurs. “Just rest for a minute.”
He says this like he didn’t just watch me participate in a fucked-up ritual that started with kidnapping. I want to snap at him that I don’t need a drink, but I’m still shaky from all the adrenaline. And the sex. And the orgasms.
Chambers claps his hand on Jacob’s shoulder. Jacob gives his father a tight-lipped look. He was the one who knew the initiation was coming, but he doesn’t look very happy to have done this. Jacob and his father both turn to follow what my father is saying about the paperwork.
Because of course there’s paperwork. A secret, murderous consortium can’t be based on sex acts alone. It needs formal agreements.
The second Jacob’s father isn’t watching, Jacob glances at Gabriel. The corners of Jacob’s mouth curve down.
He’s worried.
I’mworried.
Gabriel is as calm as he was a minute ago, but it reminds me of the drive to get Lydia. He’s too collected. Too in control. I’ve been watching him all night. I watched something in him start to break. I don’t buy that it’s not still happening.
“Here.” Samuel Newhouse crouches down next to my chair. He’s holding a glass of ice water. I should be fine to drink water by myself, right?
Wrong. My hand shakes on the glass. I’m so obviously unsteady that Newhouse doesn’t bother letting go of the glass. He moves his other hand carefully to my shoulder, then raises the glass to my lips. “There you go. I’ll hold, you drink.”
Oh my God. It’s the best ice water I’ve ever tasted. I could cry for the brisk, refreshing cold. It’s been hours since I had anything to drink. Samuel Newhouse probably didn’t expect to have to hold the glass for this long. His face doesn’t show any sign of impatience.
He was always nice, wasn’t he? Newhouse was the patient man in the consortium. The quiet one. I remember that he never minded when the kids at the big, casual parties got rowdy or needed an adult to step in. I’ve never seen him be anything less than attentive and affectionate to his wife, Inara. They both looked genuinely thrilled to see me at Lydia’s party. He stood against murdering Gabriel’s parents until my father forced him into it.
And now he’s helping me drink. Half the glass of ice water is gone.
“Not too much at once, okay?” He uses a concerned, fatherly tone with me now.
See?Nice.But how can anyone be truly kind when they’ve made their life around being part of this school of barracudas? Which version of Samuel Newhouse is real? The one without a conscience, who sat through this initiation without a word of protest, or the one who pays attention so that none of the water drips on my chin or my dress?
This could be an act.
Or…there could be duality.
My mind is slow to work in the aftermath of the night’s intensity, but I feel my thoughts light up at the idea of duality.
If duality exists, then Samuel Newhouse can have done terrible thingsandbe kind to me.
That means there’s a part of me that’s good, too. I’ve known I was tainted, just like my father, since I was six years old. I accepted it as fact. I deserved to be caned. I deserved to cancel my plans for college. I deserved every three-thirty alarm and long day at the bakery.
Maybe I still do. But maybe I’m not just an evil murderer.
And ifthat’strue, then maybe I’m looking at the consortium the wrong way.
