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Master formed me. Shaped me. He taught me how much my body can take.
He gave me all that power—even, in the end, the power to kill him. He made me the woman I am today. I have to love him for that. It’s a sick love. A twisted love. A desperate love. But a true love, all the same.
Dead mother. Dead twin. Dead Master.
With a track record like that, I can’t let myself love Trap anymore. I can’t give him what he needs. He won’t give me what I need.
I couldn’t explain while he was here. But in the gray light of dawn, as I shiver on the hearth, as my arms and legs ache with cold and exhaustion and the aftermath of what Master’s brothers did to me in New York…
Now I know the words I should have said. The explanation of why I need what I need. The true meaning of love.
This is what I should have told Trap: The worst things in the world can happen to me, but I can survive them if I know I have your love. Hurt me in the most terrible way I can ever imagine being hurt, but be there in the morning. And then, at last, I’ll finally be free.
My mother didn’t stay. My brother didn’t stay. Master didn’t stay.
But I truly believed that Trap was the one. Trap was my true love. Trap would stay.
But he didn’t.
He left.
And now I’m alone forever.
When my teeth start to rattle in my head, I pull myself off the hearth. My bones ache from staying in one position for so long. I have to hold the banister, hauling myself up the stairs.
In my bedroom, I strip off my emerald dress. It’s filthy. The hem is ripped out. The seam of the bodice has split.
I pull on my blue smock. I touch the lifeline that still circles my wrist. And I walk downstairs to take my place at the long pine table, waiting for Ursula to make me breakfast.
36
TRAP
* * *
My entire life, I’ve known right from wrong.
It was right to stay in that stinking hut in Congo, even though I was scared out of my twelve-year-old mind, even though I knew people were dying around me and I might never see my father again.
It was right to ditch management training at an investment bank and go with my gut, opening Diamond Freeport as a tax haven for billionaires.
It was wrong to look the other way when some of my clients skated on the shadier side of the law, but all we’re talking about is money and who really gives a fuck?
But hearing Alix beg me last night… Listening to the things she needed me to do… Walking out of that house of pain and torture, leaving Alix there, accepting her decision even though every cell in my body told me I’d die if I walked away… I don’t have a clue if that’s fucking right or wrong.
She’s a grown woman. She’s been through more than any human being I know. She’s allowed to exercise her own free will, to ask for what she needs, to demand it.
But I can’t hurt her the way she needs to be hurt. I can’t be that man. Can’t live that life.
Jesus Christ, how can I live with losing her?
I only wake at noon because the sun is shining straight in my eyes. I check my phone before I hit the john, hoping, actuallyprayingAlix has sent a text.
I can get back to Herzog’s in thirty minutes. Fuck the speeding tickets. If she wants to go to the penthouse instead, I’ll send the helicopter to pick her up. Hell, she can have the jet and any destination in the world.
She hasn’t sent a text.
But I’ve got three unanswered calls from Rider. The last one was three hours ago and he left a two-word voicemail. “Call me.”
