I gulp as I ride the elevator to the twentieth floor.

I swallow hard as I step out and my heels click on the polished floor.

Then, as I stand outside the doors of the conference room, I take a deep breath and try to steady myself. I know he’s already here. I can smell his cologne on the air… something thick and cloying and old-man-like.

The smell brings back memories… of clawing and biting and penetration.

I gag a little bit, grabbing the wall.

I can do this.

I can do this.

This is me ringing the bell.

I open the door, and as confidently as I can, I step inside.

William waits for me at the far end of the massive conference table.

“Come in, my dear,” he calls. Even his voice sounds like an old man, thin and frail. I swallow my disgust and approach him, keeping my eyes carefully on him as I stop across the table from him.

He smiles.

“Now, was this so hard? Really, my dear, meeting with me didn’t have to be this way.”

“I know what meeting with you is like,” I manage to bite. “Why did you want to see me today? Let’s just cut to the chase.”

William nods, satisfied. “You’re such a Greene, Nora. So ready to do what you need to do.”

My stomach rolls.

“What do you want?” I ask stiltedly. My fingers are gripping the edge of the table so tightly that I can’t feel them anymore.

William rocks back in his chair.

“I want to tell you a little bit about your boyfriend, of course. You’re so young and inexperienced… I know you probably didn’t do a background check on him. Right?”

I roll my eyes. “That’s what you’ve got? I don’t need a background check. I know him. He’s a decorated Army Ranger, a hero who saved my life. That’s all I need to know.”

William chuckles, a thin fake sound in the quiet room. “Oh, my dear, you’re so naïve. Your boyfriend is an Army Ranger. But I doubt he told you why.”

I can tell from William’s voice that I’m not going to like what he’s going to say next. I wish I could close my ears and not listen, but I have to know.

William won’t give me a choice.

I don’t say anything, so he continues.

“Branden Killien attacked his father right after he graduated high school,” William says with satisfaction, his faded eyes gleaming. “His parents pressed charges and the judge suspended the sentence if Branden would agree to join the military.”

I’m stunned.

I’m not mad at Brand, because honestly, after hearing about his father and seeing his mother in action, I don’t blame him. In fact, I commend him for waiting so long. But I am surprised that he didn’t mention it.

William enjoys the look on my face.

“I see he didn’t mention it to you,” he says cheerfully. “I can see why. He thinks his records are sealed, so he never had to worry about telling you the truth. But see, my dear, nothing is sealed to me. I have connections everywhere. Which brings me to my point today.”

He pauses and I wait. I stare him down, my gaze unflinching.

Fuck you, you fucking monster.

“I’m sure Brand doesn’t want it known that the only reason he ever served his country was as a punishment for assault and battery. His company is successful in large part because of his and his partner’s decorated military history. The connections I have in the pentagon… they wouldn’t be very happy to know that they’re doing business with a fraud.”

My head snaps up.

“Brand isn’t a fraud,” I spit. “No one would ever think so.”

William nods, very happy with my reaction, happy that he’s getting one.

“They would believe that if I told them to. They would publicly withdraw their business and cite their reasons… that Branden is a fraud, a criminal, if I told them to. And when that happens, Brand’s company would go bankrupt. He’d be ruined and left with nothing.”

My breath leaves my body in a rush, even though I desperately try not to show it. “They wouldn’t,” I say, attempting to call his bluff. “His company does a good job. They would have no reason.”

William drums his fingers casually on the table, as if we’re having a friendly, normal conversation.

“My dear,” he says, ever-so-sweetly. “They would do anything I ask them to do. That’s how much weight I pull in Washington.”

I stare at him and his eyes narrow as he gets up and walks toward me.

I have to fight to remain still, to stand my ground.

“You can’t run from me.”

He takes another step toward me, then another.

“I always get what I want.”

He stops right in front of me, close enough that I have to breathe in his hateful cologne, and smell his fetid, hot breath.

“Ask me, Nora.”

I turn my gaze up to meet his. His eyes are as cold as they are faded and old.

I seal my lips, unwilling to do it.

“Ask. Me.”

He grabs one of my hands and squeezes it, pushing the delicate bones of my hands together. I grit my teeth with the pain.

He squeezes harder.

“What do you want?” I finally ask, to make him quit hurting me.

“You.”

I fight the urgent need to vomit.

“He’s getting in the way of what I want,” William says pleasantly now, releasing my hand. “I want you to leave his cottage, and come with me for a trip to Abu Dhabi. We’ll say it’s for business. But I assure you, it won’t be business.”

His hand juts out and cups my crotch, his fingernails digging into my tender flesh there, biting into me. He likes pain. I know this. I’ve experienced it before. He likes inflicting pain.

I step backward, yanking away from him, from his evil touch.

“You don’t want me. You wanted my mother and you couldn’t have her. I’m not my mother.”

William’s wrinkled mouth pulls into a cynical smile. “What a clever girl you are. It might’ve started out that way, I wanted you because your mother had to watch me chase you and she could never do anything about it because she’s a helpless cunt. But I want you now. Your mother is old.”

So are you. I swallow the acid on my tongue.

“And if I say no?”

William raises a bushy eyebrow, as if he knows I’d never dare.

“If you said no, you’d be a very foolish girl. I’ll ruin your meat-headed boyfriend, then I’ll ruin you. And don’t for one minute think that at least you’d have each other… because after I’m finished with him, he’ll never want you. Not ever. Do you think he’d really want someone who willingly entered into an incestuous affair with her very own uncle and enjoyed it so much?”

Bile rises into my throat as he pulls out a pack of pictures and shoves them across the table.

It’s me. Giving my own uncle a blow job.

From the angle of the camera, you can’t see that my hands are bound behind my back. All you can see is the tattoo on my shoulder, a unique identifier. The twisted anchor, the words. Fluctuat nec mergitur. It’s most definitely me.

And it’s most definitely my uncle. His wrinkled hand is on the back of my head, forcing me to take more of him in my throat… and his very unique signet ring is on his finger.

My uncle smiles pleasantly as he tucks the pictures back in his pocket.

“There’s more. There are many of you fucking me, you little whore,” he tells me, each word icy. “And I don’t care if it gets out… you were of legal age and if anyone questions me, I’ll simply say that you’re a wanton whore who pursued me for years and in a moment of drunkenness, I gave in to you. If you look at the pictures, it certainly appears that you’re enjoying yourself.”

I wasn’t.

I wasn’t enjoying myself. I was trying to get through it, to not die on the inside.

But he’s right. You can’t see that on the pictures. In the pictures, my make-up looks smeared from passion, not from tears. You can’t see how my hands are bound, you can’t see the lash-marks from my uncle’s whip.

You can’t see any of it… except for a girl having sex with her own uncle.