Trey - Shandi Boyes Page 0,37
to it. It was at the end, right before I imploded with an array of emotions I’ve never experienced before. Talking was above me. I couldn’t even refuse his request for us to meet again tomorrow night when all was said and done. That’s how scuttled my brain was and still is.
Furthermore, who’s to say he won’t kill me the instant he realizes he fucked the help. Achim has a fondness for sexually cavorting with the female members of his staff, but not many other men are like him—thank God. They’d never lower their pigheadedness enough to ask a member of their staff to suck them off since their fiancées refuse to.
When India remains quiet, I gingerly lift my head. Although she’s standing directly in front of me, her focus isn’t on me. It’s on someone behind me. I don’t need to peer over my shoulder to know who she’s staring at. I can smell his aftershave from here. It’s also embedded in both my dowdy nightclothes, recently washed hair, and the air, and I’m not going to mention the deep grumble of his British accent when he wishes his ‘Duchess’ goodnight. His tone is super flat and low as if worried I’ll expose their secret.
They have nothing to be worried about. I’ll keep their secret as long as I plan to hold mine. It may be the only way I’ll stay alive.
Seconds after the clomping of boots sounds through my ears, India lowers her eyes to mine. They’re not kind. That’s not unusual. They are never kind. “Come with me.” When my lips twitch, preparing to respond with any excuse I can find, she snaps out, “I wasn’t asking.”
My knees knock the further we walk down the isolated corridors. I’ve been down these hallways before. It never ended well. This is the men’s side of the residence, and more often than not, the rooms are brimming with monsters whose morals are lower than Achim’s.
“Back so soon? I shouldn’t be surprised.” A man with golden blonde hair, a gaunt face, and a sneer oddly familiar stops talking when he spots two shadows entering his room. “Who is this?” he asks, peering at me, somewhat amused.
The humor on his face doubles when India replies, “She’s the key to your kingdom.” Her smile is so evil, I don’t see the dark creeping up on me until I’m struck across the temple and knocked out.
When I come to, I’m bound to a chair, a hessian bag is shoved over my head, and I’m gagged. Although my temples are thumping, and the conditions are poor, I can determine I’m in a room with approximately three or four people. One is more familiar than the rest. I’ll never forget his scent, let alone the comfort he gave me in the dark. The memories will keep me warm even while recalling how he has his gun pointed at my chest.
I can feel his torment, smell it slicking on his skin, but at the end of the day, we both know he’ll pull back the trigger.
I’m the help.
The slave.
The woman who deceived him.
I deserve to die.
The belief doesn’t lessen the amount of moisture burning my eyes, though. I thought we had a connection. A unique closeness that was tripled because of the dark.
I, for once, thought I was worthy.
Silly me. There’s no price tag associated with my name. No wealth. I’m nobody. And it’s proven without a doubt when the man who saved me from the darkness yanks back the trigger…
Gasping, I jackknife into a half-seated position as my hands shoot up to check my chest for a bullet wound. There won’t be one. There never is. My hazy head often confuses the emptiness in my chest as the gaping hole of an invisible bullet. Not even the real bullet that shredded through my shoulder only minutes later that morning hurt as much as the fake one that rocketed out of the man from the pantry’s gun.
As I struggle to regulate my breathing, I scan the room I’m waking up in. It’s starkly contradicting to any of the rooms I’ve awoken in previously. It is masculine but with a touch of the sophistication I admired anytime I was a chambermaid for a female member of the Novaks’ family.
The skyrocketing blood pressure I’m only just getting under control spikes again when my eyes land on the chest of the tattooed man sleeping across from me. It’s the same tattooed chest I was confronted by only hours ago, but