“What’s wrong?” Robert asks, his voice close to my ear as he pulls the coat free from me.
I shake my head. “I’m just really tired.” And kind of terrified by the fact that I will never escape you.
“Do you want something to eat?” Robert gestures toward the kitchen with its massive fridge and commercial stove. He must have parties here. An image of the last time I saw Robert at a party—which was the first time I met him—creeps across my consciousness. The Biltmore Club, a brick townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper West Side draped in ivy and wrapped in secrecy.
I’d arrived on the arm of Declan Doyle, who looked so good in a tux I fucked him in the library. It was hot. Warmth infuses my cheeks at the memory. Robert cornered me after, invited me to play with him. Insisted I’d enjoy it even more. I turned him down and a spark came into his gaze. That was it, that was the beginning of this obsession. I said no, and he’s been angling for a yes ever since.
“Sydney?” Robert asks, drawing me back to the present. To his oceanic eyes and his arched brow. I blink at him, unsure of where we were in the conversation. I feel detached from reality, like I’m floating a little above it all, time a construct, and me just a bundle of atoms singing the same tune. “Are you hungry?”
My gaze falls back on the stove, on the kitchen, on the now. “No, thanks. But Blue needs food.”
“Certainly.” Robert crosses to the kitchen with the dogs and me trailing behind. He tugs open the fridge. It’s filled with glass containers—like whoever bought the food took it out of the gauche packaging it came in and put it in pretty glass replacements. There are also stacks of what look like prepared meals and enough seltzers to satisfy the thirstiest of armies.
Robert pulls out a round Tupperware container and pops off the lid. Blue sits, licking his chops, fully understanding what is about to go down. Nila sits as well, her focus on the food. Frank continues to happy dance around me, pushing his head against James’s feet, sniffing him, and generally acting like a big old goofball.
His ridiculousness pulls a smile onto my lips, and I reach down to pet him. Frank leans against me and sighs with great appreciation. I laugh softly.
Robert places the dog food container on the floor. Blue waits for my command before starting to eat. Nila watches calmly; Frank continues to lean on me, eyes closed, releasing a chorus of grateful warbles and growls.
“Are there other dogs here?” I ask.
“Yes,” Robert says. “The cowboys use them for the horses. It’s a ranch, Sydney.” He smirks all I’m a billionaire who owns horses.
“Do you ride?”
“No, but I like horses. They are wonderful creatures. Are you sure you’re not hungry?” he asks. “I could make you a grilled cheese.” Robert smiles, this time gently, fondly. Perhaps remembering the time he made me a grilled cheese sandwich right after our engagement. That was when he warned me I couldn’t tell anyone our marriage was fake—even my close friends. Especially Mulberry.
When I asked why, Robert said that Mulberry would try to stop it, and Robert would have to kill him. How romantic.
“No.” The word comes out curt, annoyed. Because our history is choking all the kindness out of me.
“Let me show you to your room then,” Robert says, ignoring my tone. “There is clothing for you and James.”
Robert’s hand lands on my lower back again as he leads me past the couches and the empty fireplace down a hall. Blue’s nose brushes my hip and Frank stays glued to my side, Nila following behind us. The left side of the hall is all glass, beyond it a darkened L-shaped courtyard with a pool shimmering in the starlight. The outline of the gentle rolling hills in the distance creates an uneven horizon.
“This is your room,” Robert says, pushing open a door. “And I have a nursery set up next door for James.”
I shake my head. “We sleep together.”
Robert nods, and I get the sense he knew that already. Peter told him everything, the lying sack of shit. What am I going to do about him? I can’t just let him get away with this level of betrayal. But I don’t think I have it in me to kill him.
Peter and James laughing together, both splattered with avocado, springs into my mind. The vision slides between my ribs and pierces my heart, making my whole chest ache. Blue’s nose touches my hip again, steadying me. I clench my jaw and take in a breath.
Robert turns on the lights. The room is cozy. There is a stucco fireplace and a four-poster bed covered in a wool blanket with a geometric pattern on it in rich oranges, reds, and blues.
Robert gestures to a dresser underneath a TV. “Clothing for you both in there. Some books and toys as well. And,” he steps forward, picking up a thick packet of bound papers and holding it out to me, “this is for you.”
The Malina Santos Federal Sex Work Reform and Human Rights Act is written on the cover along with a Senate Bill number. “What is it?” I ask, not taking it from him.
“Your anniversary gift.” I meet his gaze and it’s far too open. It’s like he’s just trying to give me something, asking nothing in return, and I don’t buy it for one fucking second. “It does everything we wanted, basically legalizes sex work on the federal level. Yet keeps in strong protections against trafficking and underage activities.”
“You named it after Malina?” I ask, my voice quiet.
“I thought you’d like that. We also started a foundation in her name which is working on the local level.”
I glance down at the bill in his hands. The proposed law he had written for me as an anniversary gift that grants women more power over their bodies. And not just women, anyone who wants to trade pleasure and companionship for material survival. Sex work can be honest work if we let it. Legalizing it helps make it safer.
And he named it after my friend, a woman who sold her body but gained power from the act. The woman who taught me so much about what it meant to be empowered. What bravery and heart looked like. Felt like. What it meant to be a friend.
The friend I watched die in a cloud of smoke and a storm of bullets in Costa Rica what feels like a lifetime ago…she died saving people she didn’t know. Immigrants from Nicaragua who’d been lured across the border with promises of jobs that turned out to be enslavement—a tale as old as time. A narrative Malina was willing to die to change.
“It hasn’t passed yet,” Robert says pulling me back to the present. “But I have high hopes.”
“Who’s sponsoring it?” I ask.
“Richard Chiles is working with Senator Eunice Jackson.” He chuckles. “They are quite the pair.”
“I bet.” Senator Richard Chiles, as far as I’m concerned, is a monster. He was engaged to Consuela Sanchez, a woman I much admire, even though she arrested me. Or maybe because she arrested me.
Consuela was a part of the conspiracy to turn me into Mrs. Maxim. Robert convinced me to marry him to avoid prosecution, our nuptials granting him the right to refuse to testify. It was the only way to avoid spending the rest of my life in prison, separate from my son and dogs.
While Consuela did her part, she also recognized the chattel I became in the bargain. She worked with me to try to bring Robert down…then the shit hit the fan and splattered all over our plans.
Consuela’s niece was kidnapped by…Richard Chiles. He used the little girl as leverage to stop Consuela’s pursuit of Robert.
Robert doesn’t even need to do anything to protect himself—that’s how powerful he is. It’s like when you have a really good dog, you don’t have to tell them to attack the person aiming a gun at you. They just do it because to save you is to save themselves.
Robert’s power extends into so many corners of the world that his arrest, his toppling, would start a domino effect that would crush a lot of people. So Richard Chiles, the handsome senator on the rise, took matters into his own hands.
When I went into hiding, Consuela was still recovering from the shit show. She’d ended her relationship with my friend and fellow Joyful Justice member Dan Burke, which, to be fair, made logical sense even if not romantic sense. They loved each other but their worlds were too far apart—an officer of the law can’t share a life with a law-breaking vigilante.
Last I heard, Consuela started working for Eunice Jackson, a powerful senator from California. So the fact that Jackson and Chiles were co-sponsoring the bill gave me a tingle of anticipation, though I can’t say what for…it didn’t feel like the excitement of Christmas morning or the danger of a dark alleyway, but somewhere in between.
“Well,” Robert says, putting the document back on the dresser. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Just sleep, thanks.”
“I’ll see you in the morning. But let me know if you need anything in the night. I’m right down the hall. Just past the nursery.”
I nod, too tired to keep talking. Robert steps closer, his hand coming out and cupping my elbow. “Sydney.” His voice is low and intimate. “I’m very happy to see you, but I won’t force you to stay with me. Remember that. I want you, but I want you. Not a prisoner.”
I swallow and steel myself to meet his gaze. The aqua blue-green shimmers with emotion. He’s either an absolutely killer actor or means what he’s saying. My brain starts to run over different scenarios, ways to make it work, to have Robert, Mulberry, safety and love.
Imagined scenes pass through my mind of James learning at the knee of this monster how to rule the world, how to create a place for himself above and apart from the rest of humanity. How to create wealth so abundant that the weight of it crushes others.
No individual should have the power that Robert does. Children should not be kidnapped, lives ruined, innocents injured to protect a man, a system. I swallow all the images flying in my mind and blink, still holding Robert’s gaze. “I hear you,” I say, not trusting my tired mind enough to let more words out. They may come out loving or cruel, I can’t trust myself this tired. With this man.