is watching me, and every time, even after I’ve calmed myself down and told myself I’m just being silly and paranoid, I’ve been unable to fall back asleep.
“Your father never slept well either,” she says, her eyes turning sad as she looks for a brief moment at her sparkling Jimmy Choos, jutting out from beneath the silk of her white form-fitting gown.
Regina deserves my anger and more, but seeing her sad about my father, thinking for even a split second that she could have, in fact, had genuine feelings for him the man I viewed as a superhero and loved more than anyone in the world, makes me feel sympathy for the woman who’s kept me virtually locked away for going on six years now.
“I know, but when he did, he’d snore like a freight train,” I remind her with a small smile.
Her eyes brighten. She points a long white shiny fingernail at me. “That’s a secret for you, me, the housekeepers, and the old walls of the house to take to our graves. But yes, his snoring shook the house and probably several close by. When he died, they probably wondered why Manhattan stopped having minor earthquakes every night.”
We both chuckle, but the laughter dies almost as soon as it starts. Her glassy eyes are now clear and focused without a trace of sadness. She turns her icy blue glare to something in the corner of the grand room and adjusts her thin diamond tiara above her perfectly-styled platinum blonde hair. There’s no need for the adjusting; I’ve never seen the woman with a single flaw. Not lipstick on her teeth or a glob of mascara in the corner of her eye, not so much as a hair out of place.
“There’s Seth,” Regina says, pointing to a corner where Seth is standing suspiciously close to a woman wearing a blood red dress with a bodice even tighter than my own. Her auburn hair brushes against his cheek as she leans in to whisper something that is apparently funny, because Seth throws his head back in silent laughter, the sound absorbed by both the crowd and the music. “He likes you, and he has a lot of money. I’m not sure why you’ve never showed him any interest.”
I sigh. “Because I’m not interested in liking someone just because they like me, and I’m not interested in his money.”
It’s true. My interests are darker. Because I want someone to be watching me while I sleep. Touching me.
Hurting me.
“That’s a shame,” she sighs dramatically. “He’s from one of the richest families in the city.”
I open my mouth to reply but think again because there isn’t any use. Regina doesn’t do arguments. She’s single minded and can’t understand how someone with money wouldn’t interest me.
“Why are we doing this?” I ask, turning toward her. She walks ahead of me, and I find myself talking at her back. “You’ve never allowed me to go to parties or anywhere for that matter, so why now of all days?”
She turns on her heel, and I almost run into her chest. I crane my neck to look up at all of her six feet of perfection. “You may think me shallow and vapid, but you’ve been under my protection for years. You think it doesn’t matter to me that tomorrow you will be an adult, and I’ll no longer be the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever been?”
“A mother?” I ask, confused that she could ever see herself that way. I don’t remember much of my mother, but what I do remember is a feeling of love and safety, something I’ve never felt sharing a house with the Ice Queen herself.
She picks up a lock of my hair, running her fingers over the shiny wave before flipping it over my shoulder and flicking her fingers as if to remove something from them. “I’m not maternal, Neve, we both know that. But I’ve done my best to keep you away from the realities of this cruel world, and as much as I hate to admit it, this day has been weighing heavily on me for months and not for the reasons you think.”
She genuinely looks hurt. There’s an actual line between her eyebrows as she frowns.
“I’m…I’m sorry. I never looked at it that way,” I admit, feeling empathy for her for the first time ever. Tonight is my birthday, and at the stroke of midnight, I inherit everything my father left to me. His company. My trust