20. Lia

20

LIA

"You're the only thing keeping me here, you know?"

"That's awful. Don't say that."

"It's true, Berry. I worry about you every night." Mason's voice was raspy, his breath smelled bad, and he was still breaking my heart. "I need to know you'll be okay when I'm gone."

—Sarah, from One of a Thousand Wishes by A. R. McGeorge

I finished our dinner order quickly. Burmese was one of the few cuisines I knew nothing about, so I doubled up on everything he'd picked since I didn't know any better.

Then I figured out what I else I was going to buy. Rhaim wasn't wrong about my wardrobe; I didn't have many business-oriented pieces. I'd never needed them before—which was why my father's shopper had sent an outfit for me the other day, I realized, so I wouldn't embarrass my dad when he took me around the office to show me off.

I quickly hopped from store to store online, picking out clothes in the soft grays and warm browns that I knew went well with my pale skin, along with a few jewel-toned pieces for color, in the same shaped skirts and blouses and slacks I'd seen women in the halls wearing here.

And for a second I thought about buying a new phone, since my screen was broken—or a trip back to Europe, where I would be safer from my uncle.

But now that Rhaim was less mad at me, I didn't want to. Plus, I knew there was nowhere in the world I could truly disappear.

I'd run away once from my first boarding school, when I was fourteen. It'd been a little bit like prison-lite—bars on the windows and guards at the gates. I'd concentrated so hard on getting out of the place that I hadn't figured out any of my next steps—like how I was going to live on the streets in an entirely foreign country—and my father's goons had tracked me down in under twenty-four hours. I might be slightly slicker now if I tried, and definitely multi-lingual, but there wasn't anywhere else for me to go too that would be any safer for me as long as I still needed my father's money to get by.

I stared down at Rhaim's Amex card, wishing it were mine—and then figuring out how I could get one.

It'd start off by getting an actual paycheck. My dad had blown me off when I'd talked to him, but that wasn't fair. I was here, working, and putting effort in...or I would be, if Rhaim ever wanted to teach me anything.

I stared at the closed office door between us.

I did want him.

But I also wanted freedom—the kind of freedom that only the kind of job that earned a black Amex could buy.

I needed to talk to my father again and make him see me like an employee, not just his daughter.

I quickly bought the rest of what I hoped would be a "professional enough" wardrobe and then a text on my phone let me know that our dinner had arrived.

I walked into Rhaim's office sipping from a sweet, cold coffee drink in one hand, while holding another in the other, with the plastic loops of the delivery bag on my arm. "This is delicious!"

He looked up from his desk at me and frowned instantly—it was his almost constant expression. "Oh, Christ, don't drink that, you'll never go to sleep—it's like rocket fuel," he said, standing up and coming around to help me, taking his drink and the bag, careful not to touch me—but his eyes fell on my wrist. "What's that?" he asked, before I could shake my sleeve back down.

"Nothing," I said, fighting the urge to hide my arm behind my back, knowing that would only make me seem more suspicious.

He set the bag of food down on his desk with one hand—and then used it to lunge out to snatch my wrist, so quickly I jumped and squeaked.

I didn't like being grabbed.

"Easy," he said in a soothing voice, pulling my arm in his direction.

I let him, taking a step closer as I did so. His fingers around my wrist were like beautifully articulated bands of warm steel. Suddenly, I understood Sarah's attraction to Caleb's hands in an entirely different way, and Rhaim's nearness and attention almost distracted me from everything else he might find as he set his drink down on his desk and then used those cooler fingers to start sliding my sweater's cuff up.

My heart leapt into my throat as the entirety of my moth tattoo was exposed.

That was bad enough—but if he kept going?

I was already at enough of a disadvantage here—he didn't need to know that I was crazy.

Luckily for me, he stopped, not investigating a millimeter further.

"What's this?" he asked again, while running his thumb over the moth, as if to see if he could rub it off.

If I hadn't been so terrified of all my other scars being exposed it would've been extremely hot—oh , fuck , it was anyways, especially when he kept stroking the pad of his thumb over it in a small, determined circle. It was a small, gray photorealistic picture of a moth, just a little larger than a quarter, and it had bright orange eye-spots.

"Haven't you ever seen a tattoo?" I tried to joke, and wondered if I shouldn't pull my arm away from him, like a normal girl who wasn't completely mesmerized by his touch.

"Why yes, I have," he said dryly, a strange lightness pulling up the corners of his mouth. Was I rating a smirk, instead of a frown? "Why a moth?" he said more slowly, like my tiny brain might need a moment to catch up.

"I—" I said, and then I choked like I always did any time I tried to speak my truth.

In fact, starting that sentence off, giving him a single solitary letter, might have been the closest I had ever come to telling another soul.

The first time Freddie Senior trapped me was in a storage room down at the boat house. I thought it was such an excellent hiding place—it never occurred to me how all the distance between it and the main house would muffle any shouting.

And there'd been a moth we'd disturbed trapped with me there, fluttering against a high screen, trying to get out.

But neither of us could.

The moth because it didn't understand how rooms worked—and me because I was young, I was stupid, and I believed. All sorts of things, really, and everything he told me, that I was special, that I was smart, and that I was the only one who could help him, and didn't I want to be good, more than anything?

Of course I did.

So I did.

And once he'd left I threw up the salt of him in my mother's roses.

I think by then I knew it was too late for me. But I crept back down there after dinner, before the sun went down, and made sure the moth got out.

One of us had to escape.

I blinked back to the present and found Rhaim still watching me intently. He wouldn't know any of that—he would just think I was a slightly weird pretty girl, standing there, mute.

I waited, my mouth open, trying to get my body to behave. Not that I wanted to blurt out my history with my uncle on my third real day at work, but anything would've been better than how I was sure I looked right now.

"I like moths," I managed to get out.

He didn't appear to believe me, but he did release my hand—I took it back and quickly yanked my sleeve down. "It's all right. You don't have to tell me," he said, turning to his desk and going through the bag of things I'd ordered, apportioning our dinners, until his was on his desk for him, and the rest was in what I now realized was a to-go bag for me.

I had wanted to stay here and eat with him, dammit.

Why'd I have to go and ruin things?

Could you charge being normal to a black Amex card?

Was there a fucking store somewhere that I could buy that?

"And don't worry, I won't tell your father," he went on. "As long as you don't rat me out for knowing when he eventually catches you." He handed my dinner over. I took it with great reluctance, but I couldn't think of another reason to stay. He tugged the plastic loops back though, at the same time I tugged forward. "Promise me you'll be on time for work tomorrow?" he asked, and when I nodded, he said "Good girl," letting go—right as he reached for the drink in my hand.

"Hey!" I protested as he swiped it.

"It's way too late for you to be drinking this much caffeine, trust me," he said, definitely smirking as he brought my drink to his lips and drank from my straw—and I had never wanted to be a cheap piece of plastic so badly.

Some dwindling shred of self-preservation told me I needed to leave the room, now, before I did anything else embarrassing.

So while I pouted at him, I managed to keep my mouth shut as I walked back for my office, only slamming his door a little bit behind me—so I could melt into it, sinking against it with my back. I only barely stopped myself from audibly clunking it with my head.

I like moths?

I rolled my eyes at myself so hard I should've seen brains.

Lia, really?

The next day I woke up bright and early, almost on my own. I showered, did my hair into a bun, my face with light makeup, and pulled out what I hoped would be the last of my "art school" outfits: a black, long-sleeved cable-knit sweater that had been intentionally torn on the shoulder by the designer, tight dark blue jeans, and my favorite low-cut gray boots that had a little bit of heel. I also decided to bring a big red satchel for my laptop—if Rhaim wasn't going to give me one, I'd take my own in.

I let myself into the building, waved cheerfully to the security guard behind the kiosk, and listened to my heels click authoritatively along the marble tile as I made my way to the elevator and took it up to Rhaim's floor.

Today was going to be the day he was going to teach me things.

Maybe business things—or maybe things involving doing to me like what he'd done to that plastic straw in assorted locations.

I just knew it.

I let myself into Mrs. Armstrong's office, humming to myself, and was setting my bag down, when the door reopened behind me, and someone muttered "What a view" appreciatively, clearly in relation to my ass.

But I didn't recognize the voice.

My head whipped back up—and I saw a semi-stranger there.

A man who looked like Uncle Freddie—not quite, but close enough that my stomach contents were trying to escape on a cellular level, each molecule of the coffee I'd drunk on the ride here this morning now returning to my stomach, ready to come back up.

"No hugs for your cousin?" Junior asked as my brain finally placed him. My older cousin, Freddie Senior's son, who unfortunately looked just like him. Somewhat handsome to everyone else in the world, but like my worst nightmare to me. He was clearly currently high, too, with red eyes and a bleary expression, and that reinforced my stomach's feelings—he looked a little bit like a zombie.

And yet somehow he was good enough to have a seat on Corvo's board—same as his father—and was the general manager of Blackwing Hotel, in charge of five hundred rooms, two three-star restaurants, and close to a thousand employees.

Whereas I was here—and I hadn't yet learned anything.

"C'mon, Lia, bring it in," he said, reaching out, while I stood there, pinned to the ground by both fear and anger.

"Junior," said a booming voice from the door, and I glanced over Freddie Junior's shoulder to see Rhaim stepping forward.

And if I thought he had frowns galore for me—I realized I had never really, truly seen one, till now.

He cut through the office like a shark, putting himself partially in front of me, blocking me from Junior's advances. Junior smiled to see him, showing all his teeth. "Rhaim!" he said. "It's been too long!"

"Or has it?" Rhaim asked back, entirely without mirth.

Freddie Junior shrugged. "My dad told me you were tutoring Lia—I thought I might stroll through and see if you couldn't give me any tips."

Rhaim pretended to think for a moment. "Don't get a third DUI?" he snarked, and it looked to me like Junior's resolution flickered, like a bad screen on a very old TV. For a second he seemed cold and angry, but the moment I realized it, he went back to being his greasily congenial self.

"You're so funny, Rhaim, but really," he said, looking over to Mrs. Armstrong's desk where I'd set my things. "Seems like she's answering phones?—"

"Lia is well on her way to becoming an integral part of this company."

Junior gave him a look of wild disbelief. "Cleaning toilets?" he asked, then laughed and laughed.

"Fu—" I started, fully prepared to tell him to fuck off—then I remembered Rhaim's order from yesterday and swallowed my curse.

Rhaim's gaze went darker and harder as he went for Junior's throat. "And just when was there anything last under your nails except for Cheeto dust? You think playing Call of Duty in the basement of our flagship hotel is the same as putting the time in?"

Junior suddenly sobered and his cheeks flushed as red as his eyes. "You forget your place, Rhaim," he snapped. "I'm family."

Rhaim tilted his head. "And she's not?" he asked, then clearly blew off Junior and walked past me, letting himself into his own office, returning with a stack of papers which he put on the desk behind me. "If you're done waving your dick around, Junior, Ms. Ferreo and I have actual work to do."

Junior's eyes raked over me with disgust, before he turned towards Rhaim again. "You're going to regret being so unhelpful, bestiola," he said with great derision.

Rhaim was completely unfazed. "You should ask your uncle why he calls me that before you use that name again."

For a mad moment I thought Junior might do something foolish, like spit at Rhaim or throw a punch, but apparently he decided to survive the morning and turned heel, walking out of the office before slamming the door, so then it was just Rhaim and I standing there—Rhaim, clearly deciding whether or not to go commit violence, and me, rather helpless at his side.

I looked over at the large stack of papers and folders he'd brought with him on my desk, wondering if they were truly mine—or just props, before I had another day of message managing—and then he turned to look at me.

"Integral?" I asked, hoping he wouldn't pop the rising bubble of my pride.

"Not yet," he admitted, then gave me a slight nod. "But perhaps eventually." He jerked his chin at the small tower of paperwork he'd given me. "That's everything for the distillery your father just bought, plus the drive I gave you access to on your computer. Go through it all and give me three reasons why your father bought it, and your recommendations based on them by the end of day tomorrow."

Given me access to it...when? Not just now, when he'd gone into his office to pick things up.

He must've done it last night.

And the thought of that made my heart race almost as much as my two sips of Burmese iced coffee had.

Because it meant this wasn't a pathetic task to orient me on, created during an emergency, as an act of fluff to occupy a silly girl—it might be a real, useful thing.

"Yes, sir," I said giving him a wholesome smile.

He didn't say anything to that, just considered me a second longer before going into his separate office.