6. Lia

6

LIA

Sarah's hair is the color of the night, her eyes are the color of the sky, and she has been my brother's girlfriend since we were both fifteen.

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

R haim was stupid if he thought a little physical labor was going to scare me away.

I'd gone to five boarding schools in the past decade—he had no idea how many times I'd been hazed.

But knowing I was going to stay up all night was daunting, especially after not being able to sleep all day. I'd kept replaying all the decisions I'd made since going to Vertigo on Friday, trying to figure out a way that would've avoided this.

Why the fuck did I have to go and ruin everything by getting horny? kept running through my head like a freight train, quickly followed by, And why the fuck had I doubled down and asked to call him Daddy?

Had that truly been a blow to his ego, or was he understandably creeped out because he was my actual father's friend?

On the scale of Shit That was Fucked Up With Lia, that was actually pretty low—he just didn't know it yet.

He only saw my clothing and my money—he didn't know a goddamned thing about the girl on the inside, and how infrequently I'd actually gotten to be "little" growing up.

No one had ever protected me.

Except for him.

Just the once.

"And you're sure, miss?" my driver asked for the fourth time, derailing my thoughts as he pulled into the lowest level of the garage beneath my father's building. I took a deep sip of the coffee I was nursing in my hands before answering.

"Yes." Then I went for the door and paused. I didn't know when he was supposed to return for me.

How long did people work when they actually had a job?

What was that Dolly Parton song?

Goddammit, maybe Rhaim was right— and also I couldn't reasonably be expected to do math at ten-fifty-five at night.

"I'll text you. And I'll make sure you get overtime for all of this," I said.

He gave me another worried look—I wasn't familiar with him, but he knew my father, and anyone who knew my father was afraid of him. "I'll be sleeping right here," he said, pointing to an empty parking space behind us. "You just let me know when you're ready to go home."

I felt bad, but the idea of having backup was too tempting to resist, even if he was a stranger. "Okay—thanks," I said, and finally stepped out, walking beneath bare lightbulbs over to the only building door inside the garage. My middle-of-the-night concierge service wasn't over yet—there was a man in a cleaning uniform there, waiting for me, the same man who'd hired me, after clearing it with Rhaim.

"Sorry about this," I said, coming up to him, after letting myself inside with my keycard.

"Yeah, me too," he said dryly. "But something made me think I should onboard you in person."

"Don't you have a family?" I asked, embarrassed for the both of us as he led us down a narrow hallway.

"I do—and I need to stay employed. I have two kids with braces right now." He turned to eye me—I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and Timberland boots I'd had Amazon insta-deliver for the occasion—and he was dissatisfied. "I'm not sure what's going on between you and El Lobo, but I also can't have you fucking this up for me."

El Lobo? The wolf?

Rhaim?

I was bemused to be getting to use my rudimentary Spanish at this late at night without being in a bar ordering tequila.

And in my attempt to put him at ease in my anxious haze, I said the exact wrong thing. "How hard can it be?"

The man's expression went entirely flat . "How many minutes does it take to mop a thousand cleanable square feet of floor with a fourteen-inch flat mop and dual-chamber bucket?" he quizzed me.

"I—I don't know," I said.

"Yeah, you don't. Remember that," he said, exhaling roughly while shaking his head. Then he regathered himself. "Come on. Let's go get you a uniform."

He took me to a locker room facility, showed me how to get inside with my key, and waited while I changed into one of the waiting uniforms they'd gotten back from being cleaned. After that he assigned me a rolling trash bin, cleaning supplies, a mop bucket, and we went up into the building.

"I'll show you how to do one first, watch you do one, and then I'll set you free. I don't expect you'll be able to do everything tonight—so we'll break it up after that. I'll do odds, and you'll do evens."

"One person...does the bathrooms for the whole building?" I was mystified.

"One person who you've briefly put out of a job, yes. They're on paid vacation this week now—just like Rhaim is." He handed a set of thick gloves over. "I told them not to leave town, though."

His condescension was palpable. "I'm tough," I said, realizing half a moment later that no one who is actually tough ever has to utter those words.

"We'll see." He shrugged one shoulder, and held the door open for me.

I was tough, but it also was late, and I hadn't done this many deep squats or kneeling exercises since my volleyball coach wanted to punish me for tripping another girl on purpose.

Carlos—I'd found out his first name after we started—explained everything as he went through, and once I could do things up to his high standards, he left me to my own devices.

It was gross, but it wasn't disgusting. And, unlike my time in boarding school, no one was here threatening to put me in to a toilet physically. I'd been in plenty worse places, and the way I saw it was I could either pretend that it was beneath me—which it wasn't—or get over myself and do a good job.

Plus, all the lights in the bathrooms were nice and bright, which helped me stay awake and made me feel safe—especially once I realized they had good acoustics and I could listen to music on my phone to sing along with. Soon, YMIR, Des Rocs, and Friday Pilots Club were playing at blasting volumes, and I was actually enjoying myself.

It was about to be game over: Lia One, Bathrooms Zero.

I'd been too thoughtless to bring myself a lunch, because taking breaks to eat in the middle of the night made no sense to me, but Carlos showed me where the vending machines were—and was nice enough to spot me the change for a Snickers, because I hadn't brought my purse either.

In fact, the only thing I'd really packed—other than the coffee, which I'd pounded down hours ago—was my pride.

And I was feeling pretty good about things, honestly.

I wasn't as fast as Carlos would've liked, but I could tell he appreciated how thorough I was being, and the fact that I wasn't whining—unlike Rhaim, he wasn't the kind of man who could keep his emotions off his face—and I was certain I was in his good graces when he returned with a second Snickers bar around five in the morning. I tossed it in my pocket, so I could have it when I was done with my current cleaning, and once the bathroom I was in was spotless, I folded the gloves up and placed them on the edge of the massive trash bucket I was rolling around. I washed my hands and sat down against the floor that I had just mopped, with my back against the wall that I had also just wiped down, feeling a little bit like Cinderella but in a good way. I'd be sore as hell tomorrow—sore on top of sore, as I still wore Rhaim's bruises on my ass—but things were all right.

This was good.

I could do this.

Five nights would be a piece of cake.

And I liked having the building to myself, all quiet-like, I thought, as I broke into the candy bar.

It made me feel like I belonged here.

I'd been in town for two weeks, setting myself up in a new apartment before I'd come by this morning with my dad. I'd been worried about inserting myself into Rhaim's life, and making sure my dad didn't pawn me off on some other employee, but now that I'd successfully managed that— ish— I had space to think about other things.

Like how all this cleaning felt metaphorical to me.

Like I was earning myself a fresh start.

And maybe I really could manage to swing everything—getting Corvo and getting Rhaim—then the lights went off and disabused me of my dreams.

I hunkered down instinctively, parts of me that I'd tried to forget reacting before conscious thought.

"Carlos?" I called out, over my music. "C-C-arlos?" I tried again when no one responded. "This isn't funny!"

I fumbled my phone out of my uniform pocket and pushed the volume down.

"Hello?" I said, waving my arm, hoping I could trigger whatever motion-sensitive light had gone out on me before my incipient panic attack. The flashes of light from my phone screen ricocheted off the long row of mirrors, making it look like I was trapped in a mirror room at the carnival.

It's going to be okay, I tried to tell myself, trying to outpace the acid rising at the back of my throat. You're going to be okay.

You're in the Corvo building.

You're safe.

Only there was no way I could make myself believe that—not in the dark, not when it was terrifying.

"Hello?" I called out, putting handprints all over the freshly cleaned wall as I clung to it to trace to where the light switch was.

My fingers found its plastic shell with a sense of relief—then fresh fear washed over me, as I discovered it was already in the on position—and when I frantically flipped it, nothing changed.

Not a joke?

Just a power outage?

But the end result was the same.

I went out into the hallway, which was completely dark, except the small red lights on the fire alarms on the ceilings, blinking like distant planes.

"Carlos!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs. When no one answered me, I went to change my hold on my phone, to turn its light on, but I dropped it in my haste, and then as I fell to my knees to try to find it, I kicked it accidentally and heard it skittering away, along with the last of my ability to control myself—the darkness had beat down the doors of the closet I'd hid in so often as a child.

No.

No-no-no!

Please no!

You know there's nowhere you can hide, right?

Let me go!

Stop begging.

My hands clenched against the floor as bile rose up, just as fast as my memories. I was going to throw up?—

And then the lights came back on, all at once, drowning me in their fluorescent safety.

Not fast enough to stop me from puking up the Snickers bar though.

I made sure to hold my hair out of the way—and the irony of the fact that I was going to have to mop up the mess I made wasn't lost on me as I made it.

But I was safe now.

Right?

I rocked back, crawling away from my vomit and towards my phone, picked it up, and then kept going until I could curl up with my back against a desk, sobbing.