I realised, now I was facing them again and the prospect of being sucked back into their world, I wanted the chance to try again, to do better. If I could have back what I’d had for this past week, I would try harder to actually make something different of my life. I… maybe I would even bring something else out of Devin, if he could see me as more than some skulking little spoiled princess.
I stared at my parents as a conniving barrier to that outcome, and I saw them recoil at what they faced in my eyes. Yes, I was different in some ways they could probably guess… and others they couldn’t.
Daddy tried to step in, take control of the situation. “Well, I think the first thing we should do is get you off to the holiday house so we can all relax after what’s been a very draining period. Try to clear our heads.”
“The holiday house, huh. I guess we’re not going to go back and enjoy that fabulous view you paid so much for.”
“The holiday house is more private,” said Mum with this look of tremendous hurt like she’d had to sacrifice her own kneecaps for it.
“So you don’t run the risk of someone kidnapping me back, huh.”
I wasn’t going to blurt it out to them, but I had no idea if Devin would even try to ‘kidnap me back’. Maybe it would be easy for him to believe I’d run off by choice. Assuming he even realised I’d left the apartment. He’d probably be delighted to think I’d given up on bothering him on the text, I thought as Mum claimed my handbag from that sleaze who’d come so close to violating me in an unforgivable way.
They hustled me out a different way to the one I’d entered by, into an unfamiliar car too quickly to fight. Daddy buckled me into the back seat, locked the door on me, and went around to join Mum, sitting prim in the front passenger seat with two bags on her lap.
“Do you realise that man in there was one of the same men Devin hired to take me?” I couldn’t help bringing it up. “That he would have raped me if he could have gotten away with it?”
Daddy made a humming noise I couldn’t interpret. “That is what men do, Julia,” said Mum. “You have only to let them think they can get away with it.”
“Are you blaming me for it?”
“I never said that, Julia,” Mum retorted, but of course she didn’t have to say it. I didn’t need someone to tell me in words to know they looked down on me when they were so completely careless of my safety.
Devin, for all he’d made me feel like an idiot, didn’t think I deserved to be punished for my ignorance. He’d tried to protect me… whenever he thought I was facing too much, like he’d said.
Suddenly I wanted Devin to come find me more than I had ever thought I would. I didn’t want to be sliding away into the morning with my parents, who had never gone to so much trouble to pick me up for a birthday party. Devin had invested himself in my life more in the space of days than they ever had.
I thought about banging on the window of the car and screaming.
Mum was right there ahead of me. “I wouldn’t try to draw any attention to yourself if I were you, Julia. You’ll have to be very lucky to catch someone in law enforcement we don’t have an arrangement with.”
Those cursed mafia connections. Apparently, I needed an opposing mafia connection to fight this.
I needed Devin. And I hadn’t succeeded in getting him on my side when we were able to see one another… what hope did I have of getting him to come to me when I didn’t have any way of communicating with him?
My parents didn’t give my bag back when we arrived at our East Coast holiday house. They did leave me alone to wander through the faintly familiar rooms, touching doorways, freshly-painted walls, the bright kitchen benches and the shining bedframe in my usual room, so I accepted this temporary reprieve as a gift. I didn’t think I was going to get very many of those going into the future.
I was able to avoid the two of them for a few hours by skulking around in rooms they weren’t in, but I didn’t have anything to show for it by the time Daddy called me out to join them on the porch. I knew better than to try to slip out a window and run: when we were staying at this house, as with our regular house, a bevy of cameras now reported back to my parents’ phones in real time when there was any strange movement. They had shown me the way the system worked. It had been done for me.
I felt very conspicuous as I made my way out. I didn’t want to move in one of my usual ways: sulking around the edges of the rooms, flouncing like a little girl—the exact age depending on whether it was my parents or a boy I was dealing with. I’d been too frightened and confused to behave like myself since coming face-to-face with Devin’s world, but I supposed I’d been resisting coming up with a new self.
Now, I had to come up with something new that would save me from slipping back.
What I settled on seemed mostly like, well, a blank. Just a woman walking to meet her fate, no personality attached at all. But something about it made an impression on my parents. They were stiff in their seats at the little table on the porch, only their eyes following every subtle movement I didn’t think I was making.
Daddy patted the only other chair at the table. “Sit down.” I sat, taking my time to really align myself properly over the chair as I came down.
Mum almost started talking before I was fully seated, and made a big show of shutting herself up for a few seconds longer. “Now, do you know which lawyer’s office holds the paperwork?”
“The paperwork,” I repeated, saying the words slowly in case it helped them to make more sense.
“For what he agreed to pay you to play along with this charade. You’ve done your job according to the requirements, but you have to understand he is very likely to try to screw you out of anything because he wasn’t able to get the kind of control over you he hoped.”
How did my parents know about that arrangement? Caroline had probably spilled. I tried to not be obviously boiling over with fury that the little bitch had dared butt into my personal business so badly.
It wasn’t so hard actually, because once it sank in, I was cackling. “Is that why you took me back? Because you want to lay a claim on his money?” The more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed. “Even more of his money?”
They had little enough shame to puff their chests out. “A man like Devin O’Hare needs to be taken down a peg or two regularly. Once he gets too cheeky, just…” Daddy snapped his fingers in a gesture that looked like he was slapping an insect out of the air. “I should think us having access to more of his money, and completely legally, will keep him in his place for a decade at least.”