I did as he said. I’d never had a smartphone. They’d come out the summer after my sophomore year of college, and I was barely keeping up with the annual tuition raises at Mount Holyoke, so no fancy iPhone for me. But all the hype I heard about it had been correct. It was ridiculously easy to navigate, and I instantly found the envelope icon.
I pressed it, wondering whether I’d have to use some kind of syncing process to get to my Yahoo account. Nope. Both my school and Yahoo accounts immediately popped up on the front screen. And the Yahoo account had a 1 beside it, which I assumed meant I had a new message.
I clicked on the mailbox, and my heart dropped into my stomach when I saw the sender. Dr. Olivia Glendaver. She was the assistant director at the Women’s Disability Clinic, the small medical center where I was supposed to start interning next week.
The subject line didn’t bode well. Re: dropping out of the internship
I pressed on the message anyway.
“Dear Dawn…” I read out loud. “Thank you for letting us know you wouldn’t be joining us for the summer internship. Though your message was brief and received only three days before you were due to start, I’ll assume this must have been a hard decision for you to make. Fortunately, we have a long waiting list for this incredibly prestigious internship, and I’ve already filled your spot. Best of luck with your future endeavors. Dr. Olivia Glendaver.”
I dropped my gaze to the original message below her polite but obviously-pissed-off reply. It simply read, “I changed my mind about taking the internship. Replace me with someone else.”
“Oh my God, this message is so rude!” I looked up at Victor in complete disbelief. “I can’t believe you got someone to hack into my account to send it. Why would you do this?”
Victor’s eyes glittered, ferocious and cold as he answered, “I am your owner now. And I don’t have any desire to see you live out your father’s dream. You will stay here in Rhode Island in the place I’ve set up for you with monthly money.”
I could only assume “monthly money” meant some kind of stipend or allowance.
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Waiting,” he replied. “For your owner to return.”
Strangely that answer made me even more furious than the email he’d sent. “I don’t want to sit around doing nothing!”
A hard moment passed between us. Then he signed, “Do you truly believe I care about what you want?”
No… I guess he didn’t. Not anymore. I’d been holding it together before, but panic started to close in on me, like a night shadow the sun couldn’t hold back.
“Answer me,” he signed. “Answer your owner.”
I did, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk, to say it out loud.
“No,” I answered, my sign short and to the point.
“No,” he confirmed.
Only a few moments later, we pulled up to a house set far back from the street, with a high wall of evergreen shrubbery standing in front of it. A section of the natural green wall had been carved out for a rust-red gate. When we pulled up to it, it buzzed and slid open to give the car access to the long driveway hidden behind it.
This was where I would be living for the next ten years. I peered out the window at a bright yellow two-story colonial with black shutters and large windows. A short row of brick steps led to a huge front porch with white stone columns holding up the front. And two gorgeous flowering bushes were flanking the steps.
My prison was beautiful. Like something straight out of Suburban Dreams magazine.
I was trying to keep it together. I was trying not to let the panic win. But this made it real.
I’d spent four years of my life getting that diploma. I’d made plans to become a doctor and finally make my parents proud.
Med school, residency, possible fellowship. That was where I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to be doing for the next ten years. Thirty-two had always seemed like the year when I’d have to get serious about having kids. But my internship wasn’t going to happen. Or med school at Manhattan University….
All those plans. All my parents’ dreams….
Panic squeezed it’s cold fingers around my heart, threatening to collapse my mind.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked Victor again, turning back to face him in the car. “Why don’t you just kill me?”
I expected him to ignore this question, just like he had so many of my other ones. But his hands immediately started moving.
“I want you to hurt. I want you to suffer. I want to humiliate you the way your father did me. I want you to lose everything.”
Well, I asked the question, and that was an answer. Not an answer I liked, though.
I wanted to tell him that I didn’t have anything to do with what happened that day. But he’d already told me the consequences for even attempting that again. And why would he believe me anyway? My father had done such a good job of selling the story he’d completely made up.
Besides, who would I be telling?
The only person I wanted forgiveness from was the boy I fell in love with four years ago. But Victor had made it more than obvious. That boy was gone. And the only person left was the monster sitting across from me.
Once again, he got out of the car, expecting me to follow.
Okay, forget him and forget all these games he’s trying to play with my head. He owned me now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he hadn’t given me any orders. He hadn’t said explicitly that I had to walk myself into his beautiful prison.
I ignored the open door and made myself real comfortable in the back seat. This car was so lux. I could see myself staying there for a long, irritating time, especially now that I had a new iPhone.
The partition between the front and back seat came down when I reached for it, though.
“You can make me come back there and pull you out of that back seat if you wanna,” Phantom said without even bothering to look over his shoulder. “But I can’t guarantee you won’t get hurt if I do. That was my uncle you sent to jail.”
“Your uncle who deserved to go to jail,” I pointed out. “But I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Fuck you,” he answered. “Get the hell out of this car or else.”
I thought about calling his bluff. But nothing from my previous interactions with Phantom made me think he had a bluff to call when making threats.
I got out of the car but made sure to be real huffy about it as I did.
However, I slowed outside the door Victor had left slightly ajar.
What would happen in there?
The answer unspooled in my head like a movie.
He’d order me around in there too. It would be just like the Bentley ride. Him gleefully manipulating me and me struggling to catch up.
But I wasn’t the girl I used to be, a silly doormat overwhelmed by his sheer power. I had to endure some of his BS to keep my family safe. But I didn’t have to put up with all of it. I could take back some control….
5
With a steadying breath, I pushed open the door and walked into what turned out to be a front hall with a living room to the left and a dining room to the right.
Victor was waiting near the set of dark wood stairs that led up to the second floor. It was quite the dichotomy. A raven had landed inside the Suburban Dreams layout.