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“If your little behind wasn’t so grown you would tie your hair up like I said and make it last longer,” Zena said.
“I will,” she said softly, hating that pang of hurt she felt.
Miss Zena never hit her, but there were no hugs either. Not anymore.
Why do you hate me?Desdemona mouthed, wanting to give voice to the words. To her feelings.
But she didn’t.
She knew the answer. Kinda.
The day of her father’s funeral she overheard Zena telling someone how she was stuck raising the child her husband had with another woman when she wasn’t able to ever have one of her own.
“Maybe, in a weird way, she is your chance to be a mother, Zena,” the woman she had spoken to had said.
“Or she’s a daily reminder shoved down my throat,” Zena had replied. “His will leaves everything to her, and for me to get a stipend every week I have to agree to be her trustee. So, I don’t have any choice but to raise her. Daniel fucked me over once again.”
Well over twenty years and she remembered her stepmother’s rejection of her so very clearly.
I don’t have any choice but to raise her.
Being somewhere when you knew you weren’t wanted was a bad feeling—particularly for a kid. It took adulthood for her to understand that her mother had been her father’s mistress, and the façade Zena put on of the happy family faded with the death of her father.
It was one of the first lessons Desdemona learned about honesty and trust.
She turned from the window and looked around her apartment. The fine things in her life that she acquired on her own. She was thankful for it all. The highs and the lows. The lessons and the blessings. “Not bad, kiddo,” she said, before turning to cast her gaze out at the view once more.
Chapter Three
One month later
“Yoweeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
At the high-pitched squeal of pleasure, Desdemona and Denzin shared a look across the island in the kitchen of the Riverdale estate.
“Plum,” they said in unison, both without a doubt who could make a grown man hit a falsetto note to rival an opera singer.
“Did you know the term ‘pimping’ is from the early eighteenth century?”
Desdemona tilted her head down to look at Denzin over the rim of her oversize tortoiseshell glasses. “It didn’t mean then what it means now,” she said. “And I’mnota pimp.”
Denzin flipped the page of the book he was reading. “I agree you have no pimp-hand.”
She dropped the pen she was using to check through the list of her courtesans’ latest round of blood tests—everyone was drug and disease free. “If you would like me to backhand you, I can,” she said.
He chuckled. “No thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said.
“There’s a level to this, and I’m not scaring or beating anyone and we all make good money together,” she said, her tone offended.
“Yes, we do,” he agreed, before falling silent.
Desdemona crossed her legs in the crimson red matte jersey floor-length skirt she wore with a matching cap-sleeved crop top. She settled back against the padded back of the high chair as she pushed her spectacles atop her curls. She eyed him. “How’s your mom?” she asked.
Denzin’s brows creased. “She passed away last month,” he said, looking at her before shifting in his seat and looking away.
Desdemona eyed him curiously. “I’m sorry to hear that, Denzin. Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
He shrugged a bit. “We’re not friends,” he simply said.
