Giovanni
I tracked down the asshole from the other night. I had to fly across the country to fucking Dover, New Hampshire, but I found him.
I look down at Sienna. She’s a mess. Her hair is a giant tangle around her head, she’s wearing the same dress she had on the day I left. When I put my hand against her belly, it’s concave. Empty.
She hasn’t eaten more than a few bites from a few trays. The maid said she wouldn’t let her into the bedroom. I could tell when I brought her in here. The bed was unmade, the comforter a heap at the center of it. The glass walls blacked out.
And here she lies, sleeping. Peaceful when I look at her face with her eyes closed, slightly sunken now. Her thick lashes flutter and she mumbles something, then settles back into sleep.
Her color is paler than usual, but it makes her lips look almost redder for it. Snow White in her glass coffin. Cursed. Sleeping until true love’s kiss wakes her. Or is that the other one? Sleeping Beauty? I don’t fucking know.
I lay on my back and look up at the ceiling.
The door isn’t closed so it’s not pitch-black in here. I’m still fully dressed, haven’t even taken off my shoes.
I still haven’t fully processed what I learned.
What I saw.
I know men. I know we’re sick-all of us. But I understand now why she said there were worse men than me out there.
Fuck, she’s met them. Known them intimately.
Senator Williams was part of it. He’s lucky he’s already dead.
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.
Sienna 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 Sienna with those eyes-only they were terrified then. That’s how he’d recognized her. Her eyes.
Sienna the child dressed as a child.
Pretty in pink. I remember her reaction to the pink clothes.
Sienna 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 Sienna Williams 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 Williams, 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 Ciara 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.”
“Why did you accept the second offer? The month?”
“The driver’s license, Sienna Chase.” She stops, reconsiders, changes track. “I don’t have great memories of that time.”
“Your time with the Williams family.”
“Yes.”
“And you ran away.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t want him to know where you are?” She knows who I mean by him.
She doesn’t reply right away but when she does, it’s not quite my question she answers.
“I don’t know what they know or don’t know. Growing up in foster care sucks, Giovanni. I don’t remember anything about my birth parents. All I know is that I was told I had a bracelet with my name on it when I was found. And then I got lucky and got adopted by a wonderful couple, but after they died in a car crash, I was back in the system.”
I don’t say anything. Just let her talk.
“Everyone wants babies or toddlers. Not kids older than that and definitely not teenagers,” she pauses. “But then Senator Williams… It was an election year and he’d just had a scandal. That’s all. He didn’t do it out of love for me or any remotely human feeling for a child.”
“Did he hurt you?”
It’s taking effort for her to keep her expression neutral, but I see through it. I see the little girl she’s trying to hide.
To protect.
In fact, I can’t get the image of that little girl out of my head.
But I need to be careful I don’t let her see it. Don’t let her know what I know.
“No, nothing like that,” she says, but her answer is too smooth. Too quick.
“Nothing like what?” I press.
Her gaze snaps to mine and I think she’s going over what she said. I think she’s trying to make sure she didn’t give anything away.