part0031

“Please…” Mitch took another step toward the door, her path soon blocked by two heavily armed security guards who came between her and the women standing in the grand doorway to the main house. “Please, Vanessa!”

Yet Vanessa said no words as she stood back and watched her security do the dirty work. Bags were hastily packed on Mitch’s behalf. Although so few people were working that early in the morning, Mitch had crawled back to her room to see Maria and two other maids filling a suitcase and the duffel bag Mitch had brought with her to the house. Everything else she brought was carefully tucked into the depths of her bags, while a few choice “gifts” from the woman now casting Mitch out for breaking the most important tenant were included.

She had no chance to plead her case. As soon as Chantelle got wind of what happened, she was up, dressed, and pulling Mitch out of the house by the scruff of her neck. Although Mitch was far from proud of it, her yelps of desperation echoed in the house and awoke anyone not already awake and watching in mild amusement or, worse, absolute glee. It seemed that every face now turned to Mitch that foggy dawn demanded her blood as sacrifice.

That’s also what it felt like as security forcibly escorted her to the car awaiting her in the driveway. One would have thought this was her original date of departure from how efficient everything was. Except Mitch was the one left confused as Chantelle descended the steps and got in her face.

“You don’t get to break the rules and stick around,” she spat. “You know what you did. You fucked with the wrong people.”

Mitch gaped at the other woman standing at the top of the front stairs. Vanessa, wrapped in a silk robe and completely bare faced, was more regal than a queen demanding that heads start rolling. Her demeanor had almost allowed Mitch to forget what was happening.

Yet she couldn’t forget for long. Not when more than one person was dragging her away and attempting to throw her into the back of the same car that had brought her there.

“Vanessa!” Mitch cried, her shoulder hitting the open car door and immediately ringing in pain. She was numb to it, however. The most important thing was gaining that otherworldly woman’s attention. I can’t leave yet… I only wanted to see…

“Those who cannot wait,” Vanessa began, “get nothing.”

Surely, she could not be enjoying this! Did Mitch really mean so little that Vanessa could watch her be treated like she was chattel to be driven away to slaughter? Don’t tell me I mean nothing to you! Such a cold and unfeeling look graced that visage, however. Was she the same woman? Were her masks laced in a cooling balm that soothed the anger lurking deep within her heart?

“I can explain!” Mitch continued to shout. “Mistress!”

That was the word to make such an unwavering countenance stutter. For the briefest moment, a flash of pain and disbelief enveloped Vanessa, as if she suddenly remembered what they had and how much it had meant to them. Could she so easily throw away the intimate memories they had shared? The secrets they divulged? What they truly meant to one another?

Instead of stopping this madness, however, Vanessa turned around and retreated into her palace of a prison.

“Vanessa!” Mitch was still yelling that as Chantelle shut the car door in her face. The locks immediately set and forbade her from escaping. The driver raised a privacy partition and started the car. Mitch was powerless to do anything more than slap her hands against the window and realize that it was over.

With one fatal mistake, she had condemned their connection to be severed.

Mitch slumped down into the seat as the compound slowly disappeared. Within minutes, she cast herself across the backseat and cried.

“You did the right thing,” Chantelle said, carefully stepping around Vanessa’s pathetic form. She had started off on the couch in her chambers, yet without hardly realizing it, had fallen to the carpet with a soft and hearty plop. Her robe was open and her hair limp against her face. She didn’t care. Chantelle could behold whatever she cared to see, not that she had ever been interested in Vanessa like that before. “She tried to kill you.”

“We don’t know that.” Except Vanessa could not deny the fear that had gripped her heart when she woke up in her own bed and saw a figure looming over her. Even when she recognized Mitch, she had mistaken her candle for something much more sinister. When a woman was conditioned to see enemies around every corner, she was inclined to make the worst out of any situation – especially those that startled her.

“Why the hell else would she break into your room, Vanessa?” Chantelle scoffed, as if the answer was so obvious. “I’m telling you, I’ve had her on surveillance ever since she got here. She’s always made me uneasy. Something about her was simply…”

“Shut up.” Vanessa slammed her arm on top of a seat cushion and held back a sob. “You don’t understand. She was…”

“I know you were in love with her.” Where did such a soft voice come from? Nobody could tell Vanessa that Chantelle was capable of that level of empathy. Someone who manhandles my lover like she did isn’t capable of empathy. That’s what Vanessa thought in defiance as Chantelle stood before her, that cocky confidence driving half the house mad.

“Shut up,” Vanessa said again.

Sighing, Chantelle knelt down at Vanessa’s eye level, like a parent preparing to explain to a child why it was in so much trouble. “You’ll be grateful you made this decision, but it might take a little while to see the sense in it. Why don’t I have Maria bring you something to drink? How about some lunch?” While it was true that Vanessa had been up since two that morning and hadn’t eaten anything more than her own words, she couldn’t say she was hungry. She wouldn’t be hungry for at least five weeks at this rate. “I’m famished. If you want, I can eat with you. Or I can leave you with your tantrum.”

How does she always know the perfect thing to say to make me hate her? Chantelle may have been damn good at what she did, but it made her a fucking bitch. No amount of conventional beauty could make Vanessa change her mind about that. Not like I don’t know who pulls the reins in her marriage. Chantelle snapped her fingers, and Luke was off doing her bidding. It worked for their job, but it often left Vanessa too disgusted to look away, as if she rubbernecked a gruesome car wreck on the highway.

“Never forget that you hired me to keep your ass alive,” Chantelle said when she stood back up. “So that’s what I do. If I see a security threat of that level… God, that reminds me. Where the fuck was Jones? He was supposed to be guarding your room last night. How many times have we gone over those fucking drills? You know what? I’ll kill him myself. I assure you I’m going to audit the entire staff, ma’am. If a threat like Cruise could get in here, I can only imagine who is currently running this circus.” Did she include herself in that?

“Do what you want,” Vanessa said. “And fuck off.”

“They say I have a winning personality around here.” Chuckling, Chantelle showed herself out with more promises to get to the bottom of “this.” Whatever this meant. Vanessa was too far gone in her fresh, raw wounds to know what.

She’s gone. While she acknowledged her blooming love for a woman named Michelle Cruise, Vanessa didn’t feel the true impact of those past several hours until that moment, when she suffered the silence of her room. Why couldn’t she wait? We were going to make it official tonight. Since the mishap two nights ago, Vanessa had been deep into planning how she would make it up to her lover. The grandest dinner. The sweetest lovemaking. The reveal of her face to the one woman she now trusted more than anyone else…

Well, she had trusted.

Vanessa didn’t know how long she wallowed in her room. The sun traveled across her floor, exposing every imperfection in her carpets and every pit of darkness in her heart. While she had suffered painful breakups before, this was… well, it was unprecedented. Never before had a girlfriend broken her trust so swiftly and in such a confusing manner. Hadn’t Vanessa made it clear in her note that the worst of this would be over soon? Why couldn’t Mitch wait? It made no sense. She must have had an ulterior motive for literally breaking into Vanessa’s room and giving her such a dangerous fright. To think, I had been dreaming about making everything up to her after…

Was it vengeance? The result of Vanessa breaking Mitch’s trust first? Was she getting back at me?

“Ma’am?” Maria appeared in the doorway. The same one Mitch had picked the night before. “I found a few things in the guest room that you might want to look at.” She crossed the room and, without commenting on Vanessa’s perch on the carpet, handed her employer a small stack of items. “Let me know if you want me to dispose of them in any way. I’m currently having the room deep cleaned. Will we be expecting new guests anytime soon?”

Vanessa looked up, in awe that her head housekeeper could be as callous as the head of security. “Get out.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Maria promptly turned around and closed the door behind her.

The items in Vanessa’s hands fluttered to the floor. They were nothing of any consequence. The phone she had given Mitch for their private communications. A few written instructions that Mitch had always followed to a T, as if she truly enjoyed being Vanessa’s submissive lover. Was it all an act? To get to me? The paranoia was mounting. Chantelle was getting to her. Except… it made sense, didn’t it? The only reason Mitch had for doing what she did was to get to Vanessa. To hurt her. To kill her.

When would Vanessa learn? She could not have love and safety. That was the kind of pipe dream that made her dependent on dangerous drugs.

One envelope on the floor caught her eye. She picked it up, recognizing her own handwriting. It was the correspondence stating she would show Mitch her face in time.

The envelope was unopened. Mitch had never read it.

Vanessa slammed it onto the floor and thrust her head back onto the couch behind her. She’d rather die than consider her consequences.