worth of my car payment, white and real gold.
"Just leave it in here when it is finished," he told me. "I will get everything as soon as possible."
"Okay," I agreed, waving the folder at him, then making my way down the hall toward my room, sitting up on the bed, racking my brain for the most ridiculous things I could demand from him. Either hard to secure or obnoxiously expensive—or both.
If he was going to force me to stay here, I was going to put a little dent in his pocketbook out of spite.
What can I say? I just didn't have it in me to be a model prisoner.
Two hours and one full sheet—back and front—later, I made my way back out of my room, dropping the binder on Christopher's desk in his empty office, following the sounds and smells of lunch in the kitchen.
I spent the rest of the day helping Cora with lunch, with early preparations for dinner.
It was around six when Alexander finally sauntered in, hair bed-messy, wearing basketball pants and a loose-fitting band tee. His hand was raised, further ruffling his hair.
"I hear you're a prisoner here too," he greeted me as he walked over to Cora, giving her a small smile as she handed him a plate of almond cookies.
"What? Prisoner? No. You're both very safe here," Cora insisted.
"What is that phrase you use in the States?" Alexander asked. "About drinking juice?"
"The Kool-Aid," I corrected.
"Yes, she's been drinking the Kool-Aid," he said, giving me a wobbly smile.
"Did you sleep those drugs out of your system? I've recently experienced that myself," I added when he started to stiffen, like I was calling him out. Oh, the teenaged ego. Always so fragile. "The hangover from it was a bitch."
"Yeah," he agreed, nodding, dropping down beside me.
"I bet Cora's legendary frappe might help with that," I added. "I got Mr. Adamos to put some mocha in mine for me, and it was di-vine."
The two of them shared a strange look, something I found hard to interpret. But it was something like surprise and curiosity and just... something else. I didn't know, but I wanted to.
"Christopher made you a frappe?" Cora asked, brows furrowed.
"Ah... yeah. Why?"
"I didn't think he knew how," Alexander told me.
"He did. He didn't make it seem like it was a big deal."
But maybe it was. Maybe he always relied on others to do for him. Which made it sort of sweet that he'd been willing to do it for me.
"Do you want chocolate, Alexander?" Cora asked, oddly wanting to brush the topic away when she usually liked to wax poetic about the little boy she'd helped raise into a man, and therefore had a motherly love for.
"If Miller says it is good, it must be. Miller," he said, rolling my name over his tongue. "That is a strange name."
"It's my last name," I told him. "I don't like people in my work life calling me by my first name," I added.
"Why not?" he asked, offering me an almond cookie. I'd already had three, but what was another pound or two in the grand scheme of things?
"Because it is a really feminine name. And sometimes men don't take you as seriously when you are very feminine."
"Says the woman who had been flirting with Chernev," he shot back, gaining a slap to the side of his head from Cora. "It's true," he insisted, giving her hard eyes.
"Sometimes, women need to use everything at their disposal," she shot back. "And men, they like when women flirt with them. She did it to help save you."
"Believe me, I can do a hell of a lot better than Atanas Chernev."
"That's right," Cora agreed with a firm nod. "She is a very beautiful woman. A little skinny, but we are working on that."
Alexander shared an amused grin with me. "She tells me I am too thin all the time too."
"I think she secretly just likes cooking for us," I told him, grabbing another cookie off his plate.
"They don't feed him enough at school. And you, you eat on the go too much."
"Cora is teaching me how to cook," I told Alexander.
"One perk to your imprisonment."
"I don't like this word," Cora said, slamming a spatula down on the counter, making both of us immediately clam up, chastened. Even if we were somewhat right.
"Do you get a phone?" I asked him when Cora walked out back to pick some herbs she had growing in pots in the garden.
"No, he does not," Christopher announced,