Chapter 2

A million thoughtshaunted me like ghosts of the past floating all around me, blurring the view of my surroundings as I walked. As if they didn’t want me to see where I was going on purpose.

That train ride back home was sounding better by the minute.

The moans of that woman whose face I hadn’t even seen, being fucked by my boyfriend in my bed—and then she kicked me out of my goddamn apartment, too. She doesn’t want you here.

I laughed in the middle of the street—and so what? At least I was still standing. I had yet to give up. I was moving.

Probably because I was so pissed, which was understandable. But…that’s it.

I was not heartbroken. I did not miss Brandon. I did not think my life was over because I wasn’t with him anymore. I did not care that I was never going to kiss him or touch him or lay with him again.

On the contrary. I was relieved.

Relieved—which was not what I was supposed to feel, was it?

“Does it matter?” I asked myself out loud.

It really didn’t. I’d basically knocked on the door of every business for the past couple hours, and the best I had was a restaurant at the edge of town that only paid per table, and the grocery store—the same one I was on my way to this morning when I forgot my wallet. They wanted me in the back handling the storage room with Jamison the manager, who made it so painfully clear that favors would be required of me during working hours and sometimes after because—and I quote—“the market is tough out there. One must do anything they can to keep their position, if you know what I mean, he-he-he.”

Suffice to say I was not going to be spreading my legs for a half-bald guy with a beer belly and bad breath who thought giving me a job meant owning my body—and for minimum pay, too. I could never afford to rent my own place in Roven if I worked at the restaurant or the grocery store.

Maybe if I took both jobs, though.

Or maybe…

“Please step back. This is private property, miss,” the guard dressed in an expensive-looking black suit said when I was still basically across the street from those large golden gates.

I blinked at the sound of his voice, distracted by my ghosts. So distracted that I hadn’t even noticed where I’d come or where I’d stopped—in front of the Paradise mansion, looking at it through the golden gates, taking in details I’d never seen before.

Holy shit, it really did look like a castle. Two towers poked at the blue sky, their roofs a deep pink. Every inch of the outer walls that I could see between those large trees in the front was perfect—a mixture of white and pale pink. Pink roses on the sides of the pathway and pink lanterns sprouting in between them like they were trying to impersonate flowers, too. I couldn’t really see much else, just the entrance doors in the front of the building, white and polished, shining like they were just dipped in lacquer.

Now I wanted to see the inside so badly.

How the hell had I ended up here, anyway?

The sun was still up. I hadn’t eaten anything, and I was starving. Fuck, I shouldn’t have been here at all. I stepped back and turned around to leave, go to Annabelle’s bar and crash on her couch before…what?

Before what?

What exactly was I going to do after that?

I stopped walking, looking down at the wide road ahead of me as it went lower and lower until it reached the main crossroads of the town. If I just kept walking, kept putting one foot after the other, I was going to get to Annabelle’s. I could lie down in the back and close my eyes and sleep and forget there was a world out here at all. Just…forget where I came from. Where I was. Where I was going.

The sound of rotor blades I’d heard plenty of times before was coming from somewhere east. I turned to look, trying not to feel so goddamn hopeless, and I followed the dark green helicopter with my eyes as it flew inside the gates of Mama Si’s Paradise, then began to land somewhere behind the building.

For whatever fucked up reason, it made me want to cry. For whatever fucked up reason, the sound of those blades spinning made me think of adventure.

For whatever fucked up reason, I suddenly wanted to get on a goddamn helicopter so badly I could barely breathe.

My legs shook. They refused to take me forward. My body revolted against the thoughts in my head. It fucked rebelled against the idea of going back to the life I knew. The life I had. The life that wasn’t a life at all, just what the fates threw at me and I accepted. None of what I’d done until now had been my call. I hadn’t decided to leave home on my own. I hadn’t decided whether I wanted to work or not. I hadn’t decided whether I had a say in what I would do for the rest of my life—nothing. I hadn’t decided anything for myself.

And now I wanted to. I wanted to decide to have a goddamn adventure.

My options were fairly limited—I could either turn back to those gates or I could be stuck on this sidewalk, staring at Roven, begging my feet to take me forward until they did.

I turned back.

It was almost like an out-of-body experience. Almost like I wasn’t in control of my limbs at all, but a moment later my ghosts were gone, and I was standing in front of the guard again.

I looked him straight in the eye. He was a handsome fella. Dark hair, dark eyes, square jaw and a broken nose that fit the rough expression on his face perfectly. He had wide shoulders, unlike Brandon, and he looked like he could handle me perfectly fine—and effortlessly.

“I’ll say it again, miss. This is private property. Please step away,” he said, and his voice was very low and very dark, too. Just like the rest of him—these things I’d never noticed before. These things I never allowed myself to notice before on other men because I was already taken.

My first boyfriend. My only boyfriend. My soulmate.

Fucking hilarious.

“I’m actually here for a vacancy in housekeeping, and I wanted to apply in person,” I said, and my voice came out strong. It didn’t shake. I didn’t stutter a single time.

At that, the guy raised one brow, looked down at my body like he was trying to see underneath my clothes.

I felt nothing.

“Please back away three steps. I’ll be right with you,” he said and turned his back to me.

I did as he asked, backed away exactly three steps, which put me in the middle of the street, but there were no cars driving near the Paradise. People who drove cars couldn’t afford to get through those gates. The ones who could flew here in fucking helicopters.

But the guard was talking to someone, one finger pressed to his ear, and his wrist close to his mouth. I waited, focused on the beating of my heart. It was steady.

Then he turned. “Seems there is an opening in housekeeping, miss…”

“Hayes,” I said. “Autumn Hayes.”

He brought his wrist to his lips again and whispered my name in what was probably a tiny mic I couldn’t see.

“You will be searched before entertain the building. Is that all right with you?”

Searched. “Yes.” My answer sounded like a question but the guy didn’t mind.

“Very well. Please proceed, Miss Hayes,” he said, waving at the large golden gates behind him.

My heart tripped all over itself suddenly.

They were going to actually let me in.

Wait, wait, hold on a minute…I hadn’t been serious, had I? I mean, I was sure that they would never let me through those gates. Look at the way I looked—hair uncombed and tied in a messy ponytail, no makeup, wearing an old shirt with bleach stains around the sleeves and an old pair of jeans because I’d wanted to make a point out of taking only the things that had cost very, very little. Only things that had cost Brandon just a few bucks—including those four books in my bag. So, of course, nobody at this gorgeous, sophisticated, fancy-as-fuck palace was going to let me in!

Except they were about to.

The gates groaned as they slowly began to move backward, opening without anybody even touching them. Goose bumps rose on every inch of my body.

My instincts confused me. The ghosts were no longer there—I was no longer thinking, only feeling. And my feelings were confusing as hell because half of them insisted I keep going, right into that building that seemed more a beast now than an object, and the other half begged me to turn around and run. Run and never look back. Run all the way back home to Detroit if I had to—just run.

“Miss Hayes,” the guard said, waiting for me to move, because I still hadn’t. I was still right there in the middle of the street.

Taking in a deep breath, I started walking forward, straight through the golden gates, and the guard followed behind me. There were more of them standing near trees I hadn’t seen from the outside, all around the large building. They all wore suits. They all looked at me. Maybe I was paranoid, but I got the feeling that they would kill me before I could blink if I so much as made a sudden movement they found suspicious.

The fear climbed, making my heart slam against my ribcage. What are you doing here, Fall? Turn back now! a voice in my head said, but how could I when the guard was behind me? How could I when the gates were swinging closed again all on their own?

Suddenly, I was in front of those white doors that looked so shiny and glossy, like they were covered in a layer of glass. Another guard came closer, holding a black device in his hand, saying, “Please, step to the side and spread your arms, miss.”

I did. Like in a dream, I watched him wave that wand thing all over my body on both sides slowly, and the light blinking in the middle of it remained green.

That seemed to please the guard, whose face I couldn’t even focus on. All I could look at was that green light.

“Please, proceed,” he finally said, and waved for me to step in front of the doors again.

Everything was happening so fast.

The next second, the left door opened a bit, and a woman came into view. She wasn’t smiling. She didn’t look much older than me, either—maybe twenty-six or -seven? She only pulled the door back until she could see all of me, then looked down at my body much the same way the first guard had.

“Autumn Hayes, applying for the opening in housekeeping,” he said from behind me, and I almost jumped back. I hadn’t even noticed that he was still there.

This is happening. I’d actually come to Mama Si’s Paradise, and they were letting me in.

“Right, then,” the woman said, stepping to the side. “Please follow me. And don’t touch anything.”

With a quick glance back at the guard breathing down my neck, I walked inside.

Inside the mansion-slash-palace-slash-castle. Inside the Paradise.

And I didn’t have the slightest clue that my life was about to change forever.

Focus slipped from me.I followed the woman inside the Paradise, into a hallway so large I was doubting my own eyes. The gold railings on the two sets of stairs, the crystal chandeliers over our heads, the paintings, and the walls with so much detail and gold and beautiful pastel colors…

I was suffocating on thin air, and I had no idea why.

“Do you…do…do you work here?” I choked, desperate to make a sound, to prove to myself that this was real.

It was real and I was here, and I wasn’t going to fucking die just because I’d entered a fancy building.

“Of course, I do. Why else would I see you at the door?” One look back at me and the woman stopped in her tracks, looking me up and down once more. “Are you okay? You look really pale.”

“No, I’m fine. I just…I didn’t actually think you’d let me in.” And now I couldn’t fucking breathe. It felt like my very presence was making this place filthy.

The woman snorted a laugh. “It’s just a place. Don’t lose your head,” she then said, waving her hand up like the way everything looked around here didn’t impress her at all.

She led me to the stairway on the left and behind it, through a door in the wall colored a pale purple and into a narrow, much darker corridor that looked very ordinary. White walls and normal overhead lights and normal brown doors to the sides. People. More people—all dressed kind of the same, I realized. Just like the woman I was following.

It must have been a uniform, its color a baby blue with white threads and golden buttons, fancier than anything I’d ever owned. Was the woman a housekeeper, too? She did wear an apron and her dress was a bit loose around her frame, like she wanted to be comfortable to move in it. Her hair was perfectly combed and tied behind her head, and she wore little makeup, but it was flawless.

Every other woman walking from one of the many doors in the corridor to the other looked the same—clean and polished.

“What exactly is this place, if you don’t mind me asking?” I said as we went through the third door and finally came out in a half-open room. Two rows of tables took up the space near the left wall, and men and women were behind them, some working with fabrics, some with shiny metals. There was no wall on the right, just thick pink pillars holding up the high ceiling.

Beyond them I saw pools. I saw trees. I saw the Atlantic Ocean glistening under the sunlight in the distance, far below us.

I forgot to breathe again.

“Are you coming or what?!”

I blinked, focusing on the woman—she’d moved and I’d stopped right by the door without realizing it. The people working by the tables all turned to look at me as I rushed to her side.

“I said, the Paradise is a hotel that accommodates its guests’ every need. That’s what this place is,” she told me.

“Right.” A hotel—just like the woman at Annabelle’s bar said. Except I’d been to two of the town’s hotels today looking for work, and they weren’t half as fancy as this. They hadn’t had this many people dressed in those beautiful uniforms working in half-open rooms by multiple pools, either.

“Over here,” the woman said, pointing left toward the last table near the pillar that separated it from the outside.

Outside, where the pools were. And the loungers. And the absolutely drop-dead gorgeous women on them.

I stared with my mouth open.

Then I was grabbed by the arm and pulled closer to the table where another woman sat by herself putting a thread in a needle.

“I’m sorry. So sorry,” I whispered, not exactly sure what the hell I was saying sorry for—being distracted by my surroundings, by these people and those girls that looked like an upgraded version of supermodels, with glowing skin and sparkly bikinis?

Or by the air that smelled heavily of roses and really was thicker to breathe in?

Or by the fact that I was here, applying for a job I didn’t even want to apply for?

But maybe it was because I was already sitting down across from this woman who’d managed to put that thread in the needle, and now she was unfolding a piece of pink satin clothing without ever looking my way. She was older than the others, silver hair done in a thick braid that rested over her right shoulder. Her wrinkled skin was clean and radiant, and her uniform didn’t have the same golden buttons in the front as everyone else’s. I don’t know why I took that to mean something.

She began to sew a tear on the satin shirt, and I just now noticed that music, slow and soothing, was coming from everywhere at the same time, like the air itself was whispering the notes. Maybe that’s why it was so thick and coated my tongue like I’d eaten rose petals for lunch.

I felt sick.

“Hello,” I breathed before I lost my damn mind.

The woman finally looked up at me.

“Autumn Hayes, applying for the vacancy,” she said, and her voice was light and soft, not at all what I expected.

“Yes,” was all I managed. I wasn’t exactly afraid to be under her gaze like that, but I was far from comfortable.

“I don’t see a resume on your hands. How old are you?” she asked, never even looking down while she sewed.

“Twenty.”

Her brows shot up like my age surprised her. “Experience?”

My lips opened and closed a couple of times. “I’ve cleaned after myself and the people I’ve lived with my whole life,” I finally said. “That’s the only experience I have.”

One corner of her thin lips curled up, and she finally looked down at the shirt she was sewing. “And now you want to clean up after other people, too,” she concluded.

“Except this time, I want to be paid for it.” With actual money. Not with things that would never truly belong to me—with money. I could get my own damn things, and I was never going to let anyone provide for me ever again.

“As you should.” She put down the shirt and the needle for a moment. “However, holding an actual job is slightly different, I’m afraid. My question to you is, ar?—”

She stopped speaking.

The sound of something being thrown against the wall filled the air, followed by glass breaking—a lot of glass. Maybe a window? My heart jumped and I gripped the edge of the table, waiting for someone to start moving already.

Nobody did. They’d all stopped what they were doing and had turned to the outside, to where that sound was coming from.

Words in a language I didn’t understand were being shouted. Something else was thrown against walls, something heavy that shook the whole ground. Then came a growl, like a goddamn tiger was nearby, readying for attack, making every hair on my body stand at attention.

I stood up, ready to run if I had to.

But the woman who’d brought me here was suddenly at my side, head down and hands folded behind her, whispering: “Don’t make eye contact, and don’t say a word.”

It was a warning if I’d ever heard one.

Now I was practically hyperventilating. What the hell was going on?! Why were all these people suddenly turning toward the sun like that with their heads down and their hands behind their backs?!

Silence.

No more shouts or growls. Instead, the sound of footsteps—high heels piercing the white tiles like someone was hammering nails into my temples—made me shiver. Every step was precise and fast, like whoever was coming our way was either in a rush or pissed off. The smell of roses in the air seemed to be turning up, too, as the music sort of faded into the background. I swear, the atmosphere itself was conspiring to scare me shitless right now, like I’d done something terribly wrong by just being here, and I was about to get severely punished for it.

Get a grip, I told myself in my head because I was being ridiculous. It was just this day that had gotten to my head. Just this fucked up day that still felt like a dream to me, and those martinis probably didn’t help. This day was to blame, and whoever was coming wasn’t going to fucking eat me like my instincts insisted. They had legs and wore high heels—just a person. Nothing to be so damn freaked out about.

And then I felt her, saw her shadow falling on the floor in front of me, and saw the black dress she wore that covered her feet completely. I smelled the scent of her coming at me in waves—roses. She smelled like roses, like her perfume had been the scent lingering in the air from the moment I stepped through those gates.

I raised my head, the words the woman whispered to me just a minute ago completely forgotten, because I had to see. I simply had to see who was walking like that, whose shadow touched my feet, who smelled better than a fucking garden, and who filled the air with so much raw energy.

And I saw.

She was a head taller than me, curly blonde hair falling on her shoulders, a black satin dress melting on her tall, thin frame, her big, perfectly round boobs on full display. Another woman was standing behind her, holding a beautiful white umbrella over her head so that the sun didn’t fall on her at all—and I couldn’t blame her. That face shouldn’t be in contact with the sun—or anything else that could potentially harm it.

Come to think of it, that face shouldn’t be real at all. No woman should have a face like that. A weapon like that.

Air no longer went down my throat. I looked at her as she went, bloodshot eyes ahead, gloved hands fisted in front of her, her chin raised.

Was she the one who’d shouted? Was she the one throwing things and breaking windows?

No idea, but when she was walking barely a couple feet away, her head turned slightly my way. She must have sensed me watching her. She must have known I’d raised my head because she stopped.

Our eyes locked and my heart became her prisoner when the second was over.

She looked older than me, much older, yet somehow the signs of time were nowhere to be found on her skin, and it really didn’t look like Botox or fillers. More importantly, I couldn’t pick a color in her eyes. They were pink and purple, green and blue, black and brown and grey and white. Her unearthly beauty seemed to be radiating heat or that scent of roses—possibly both. She’d stopped walking, frozen in place just as I was, just as everyone else in the half-open room was, and the woman holding her umbrella stopped, too.

The next moment lasted an eternity. Her hands were no longer fisted.Her eyes were no longer bloodshot. Instead, the colors in them painted her curiosity and I saw it clearly. I understood it.

Then she spoke. “Who’s this?”

Her voice was like a melody. A piano note. A song meant to soothe ears and mend broken hearts.

I breathed.

“Mama Si,” the woman who’d been interviewing me said, her head still lowered. I should have done the same, lowered my head and avoided those eyes with more colors in them than a rainbow—except I couldn’t. She’d put a spell on me, and I couldn’t look away if I tried.

Her pale, almost completely white skin looked so smooth and soft and perfect. The way those lashes that touched her thin arched brows curved up. The way those lips, painted a deep mauve, glistened.

Mama Si.

She existed. It wasn’t just the name of the mansion like I’d thought—she was an actual woman.

“Please forgive her. She’s just an applicant for the open housekeeping position,” said the woman, her voice light as a breeze, barely a whisper now.

Please forgive her, she said. For what?

But Mama Si leaned a bit closer, those strange eyes searching every inch of my face, studying every feature like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever witnessed in her life.

God, she smelled so fucking good…

“What do they call you, doll?”

Fuck, it was so hard to find my voice. “Fall,” I said on the third try.

Her brows—those thin, perfectly arched brows—shot up to the middle of her forehead. “Fall,” she whispered, and that whisper echoed in my head, bouncing off my skull, repeating itself eternally. She then threw a glance at the woman behind her, holding up the umbrella. “How fitting.”

Fitting? Fitting how?

“It’s actually Autumn,” I said. “My name is Autumn Hayes.”

She smiled, and it was like the sun setting slowly on the horizon while you sat there with a blanket over your shoulders and watched it, completely at peace.

“A beautiful name for a beautiful doll,” she said. “Tell me, Autumn Hayes, why do you wake up in the morning?”

I blinked. “What?”

She came closer. “Why do you wake up in the morning, doll? It’s a simple question.”

Why did I wake up in the morning? What the hell…

I shook my head. “I don’t…I don’t know.” I woke up in the morning to live. I woke up in the morning to make sure Brandon had his breakfast ready and his clothes pressed before work. I woke up in the morning to clean and cook and make sure we had everything we needed to just…live.

I woke up in the morning to go to bed at night.

The way those glossy lips stretched and stretched and stretched until I saw all her perfect teeth…

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“So young,” she breathed. “Where do you come from, doll, if you don’t know where you’re going?”

“I-I-I…” Words died on my lips. “Detroit.”

“Detroit,” she repeated, like she wanted to taste the word on her tongue. “And who waits for you in Detroit?”

A sound went off in my head, like an alarm ringing. A warning—do not go there! A goddamn warning.

“No one.” I raised my chin, defying the thoughts in my own head.

No one waited for me in Detroit. For all I knew, Missy was fucking dead. She’d never taken my calls when I first came here and tried to reach her. Never. Good riddance. I’d never really needed her, anyway.

No one waited for me anywhere.

“How sad,” Mama Si said, though she was smiling still. “But I have the most important question for you next.” She drew in a deep breath like she was preparing to ask it, then slowly said, “Are you in love, doll?”

My eyes closed for a moment as if I was trying to find the heartbreak I should have been feeling inside because I’d caught my boyfriend cheating on me just that morning.

It wasn’t there.

“Well, are you?”

Mama Si was waiting for my answer. I shook my head. “No.” I wasn’t in love. I didn’t think I’d ever been in love a day in my life.

The woman then took a step back and let those strange eyes scroll down the length of me. “I’m afraid the housekeeping position is no longer available, Autumn Hayes.”

It was like a slap to my face, confirming everything I knew even before I stepped into this place. Of course the housekeeping position wasn’t available anymore. “Oh.”

“But,” Mama Si said, raising a gloved finger at my face. The glove was part of her dress, one with it, and you could tell how long her fingernails were underneath that satin fabric.

“But there is another position open in my Paradise, doll, and I want to offer it to you. If you want to hear about it, follow me.”

With a wink, she turned around and walked away, and the woman carrying her umbrella went with her.

Everyone else in the room straightened their shoulders and breathed, moved, went back to their tables and their jobs.

The woman who’d been interviewing me turned to me with a deep sigh. She looked at me like…like she was sorry for me.

“Well? What’s it going to be? You heard Mama Si. We don’t have all day,” said the one who’d met me at the door, looking down at me like I now suddenly disgusted her.

I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. I had no clue what I even wanted—what did I wake up in the morning for?

Nothing. I woke up for nothing but a silly dream that I could one day, somehow, have my kingdom—just a place where I could do everything I’d always wanted to do. A place where I could paint and feed birds and play my own piano every single day, every waking hour.

How comical.

“Thanks for your time,” I somehow managed to say to the women.

Then I stepped outside and followed the blonde one with the colorful eyes as a way of defying my own self.