But his son isn’t.
I quietly climb up off the bed and look down at her. She looks really young. I always thought that, even on that first night. Like there’s a little girl inside there and when she doesn’t have her guard up, there she is.
I’m trying to understand it. Understand how a grown man can be turned on by a little girl. A child.
Then I think about Marcus and fifteen-year-old Calla.
Melissa was eleven.
My stomach turns at the thought of what I saw, but I make myself stand there. Make myself look down at her. At this broken girl who’s managed to piece herself together over the years, at least for anyone who isn’t paying attention.
The asshole from the party knew her from the videos.
I saw two.
Well, saw as far as I could stomach it. Eleven-year-old Melissa with those eyes—only they were terrified then. That’s how he’d recognized her. Her eyes.
Melissa the child dressed as a child.
Pretty in pink. I remember her reaction to the pink clothes.
Melissa holding her teddy bear, face white as a ghost. At least her eyes went absent during the terror. Like she wasn’t there anymore.
A ghost.
Grown men fucking a child. Making a ghost out of her.
My hands fist now, and rage tightens my chest. I think about the boy-man from the party. I think about his hands on her.
He claimed to only watch the videos. That he hadn’t been there when the acts took place. I only believed him because he’d have been her age then. The perverts would probably have stuck their dicks in him too if he’d been there. What a different world he’d be living in. What a different life he’d have.
Prey, not predator.
But at least he’d still have a life.
I walk toward the door and her words come back to me: “You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”
For what I did to that man, I feel no remorse. But what I did to her—whipping her like I did—fuck. I feel like the world’s biggest asshole. And even more so for leaving her there afterwards. Leaving her to get herself together alone.
I should have known better.
Hell, I knew she was coming apart, but I was too pissed off that she wouldn’t come clean. That she was hiding something from me. That she didn’t trust me.
That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Trust?
I’m about to leave the room when I see her tote beside the door.
After a quick glance at her, I pick it up, carry it into the living room and turn it over on the dining room table. Everything falls out, her wallet, her phone, a small notebook. A smaller bag with some lipsticks inside it.
And a passport.
This wasn’t there the other night.
The name on the passport is Melissa Doe and the photo looks a couple of years old. I leaf through it and don’t find a single stamp. She hasn’t traveled with it. Hasn’t even signed it.
Her phone is out of charge so I can’t go through that but when I go to put everything back inside, I notice something stuck half-in, half-out of a tear in the lining. A flash drive.
This is new too.
These are the things she went to get from her house. What if the videos are on here? What if she has them?
No. She wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t keep those. What would be the point?
I put the rest of her things back and go to my study, the only locked room in the penthouse. I switch on the light, sit behind my desk and plug the little drive into my laptop.
It takes a moment for my computer to register it, and when I try to access it, a password screen pops up.
I think for a minute and try the obvious, her birth date, her name and birth date, the name of her shop but nothing works. I’m thinking of different combinations when I hear her at the door.
“I don’t want to be locked up here again,” she says from the doorway.
I close my hand over the drive and discreetly pull it free then slip it into my pocket.
Circles shadow the delicate skin under her eyes. She looks tired, and I want to say it’s lack of sleep making her look like this, but I know it’s not.
I give her a long nod.
She looks around the room, comes inside and sits in one of the armchairs.
“Where were you?” she asks.
“Away on business.”
She just nods.
“It’s late. Why don’t you go back to bed?”
“Senator Boyd, he wasn’t a nice man.”
I don’t move. I don’t even take a breath so as not to spook her.
“Neither was his son. Not to Liza either. That’s why I did this for her. The first night I mean. I wanted to protect her from you. From those men. But when I went to see her…well, people don’t change, I guess.”