“Inside,” he repeats.

“I’m done listening to you,” I say, and even I can hear the panic in my voice, the high-pitched thread of fear. “You don’t get to order me around. You don’t even get to talk to me.”

Ivan stares at me, and I imagine him slapping me. I imagine him pushing me against the bloodstained brick and choking the life out of me. I imagine him turning me over the trash can and spanking me.

His expression softens. “It’s okay, Candy. Look at me. Focus on me. You’re okay.”

“I’m not.” My voice is shaky. It’s my little-girl voice, the one I only use for him. Except now West and Oscar and Luca are hearing it too. Not just as part of an act, with a dress-up schoolgirl outfit and pigtails. This is the real little girl that’s buried inside me, right on the surface.

Ivan sees it too. He reacts to it, even if he doesn’t want to. “I want you to go inside and wait for me. Right now.”

“I’m scared,” I whisper. “It’s happening again.”

A month ago there was a message left on my vanity mirror with bubblegum lipstick. John 10:16. A Bible verse. A warning. And now this, a river of blood. Ivan believed that was a random attack, but it felt familiar. And this feels personal.

Ivan doesn’t deny it. “I’m going to fix this,” he says, right there in the back alley, in front of Luca and West, with the seedy downtown Tanglewood as my witness. “Daddy will make it right.”

He holds me tight, and only when I’m wrapped in his arms, turned sideways, do I see it.

Scrawled across the crumbling brick of the Grand is a message. No bubblegum lipstick this time. This one is written in blood. Peter 2:25.

Chapter Ten

I meant to leave the Grand tonight, to quit, to go somewhere else and start over again, just like I did years ago. It broke my heart to even think about it. Leaving the Grand and the girls. Leaving my friends, especially Honey and Lola. And Clara, though I really should never have befriended her.

And most of all, leaving Ivan. It broke my heart more than I’d been willing to admit, and there was a part of me that had wanted him to make good on his threat to keep me down in that basement. If I didn’t have a choice, it wouldn’t be my fault. It wouldn’t be my sin.

But after all that hoping, all that heartbreak, here I am in Ivan’s house, tucked into my old room.

Right where I started.

I close my eyes again. I don’t even remember how I ended up in this bed. Did I walk here? Did he carry me? The walls are bare, painted a pale cream. No windows. The sheets are white and soft as butter. The room is an expensive blank slate. An upgrade from my colorless days at Harmony Hills, but not much better.

My muscles are stiff when I pull myself out of bed. I’m wearing my baby blue tank top and peach-colored panties. My jeans are slung over a chair in the corner. It’s dark outside, which means I must have slept for hours. I pause at the staircase and look out at the courtyard, more concrete than grass, walled in by a high brick fence. The front door opens directly to the street, the front of the house an impenetrable brick face. Around the back is a tall brick gate that surrounds a concrete courtyard. From up here, I can see the spikes in the top of the wall that keep someone from climbing over.

A few plants cling to life in ceramic pots around the space.

If there’s one upside to being here, it’s that I feel safe. Safe from whoever left those notes, if not entirely safe from Ivan. His house is more of a fortress than a home. I’m surprised there’s not a moat surrounding us.

But then I guess the barbed wire and armed guards do the trick.

The lights are off downstairs, a deep stillness creating a kind of intimacy. I can feel Ivan’s presence down here, a beating heart in one of the cold rooms. I search until I find him—his silhouette, seated at the head of the long, ornate dining table. I can see that he’s wearing a suit. I’m guessing he never changed from earlier.

He’s reclined in the high-backed chair, one leg slung over the other. It’s a relaxed pose, but I can feel the tension running through his body. I can feel his eyes on me too.

He doesn’t speak. Neither do I.

There’s a book spread open on the gleaming table in front of him. I don’t even need to look closely to know it’s a Bible. I have seen enough of them to recognize the thickness. I can almost smell the thin, ink-drenched pages. Where did Ivan get this? I can’t help but wonder if he asked Luca to bring one to him. It almost makes me smile to think of him buying one—or stealing it.

I drop my finger to the words, barely making out the heading Peter. It’s too dark in the room to see the letters. Has he been sitting here since the sun set?

I don’t have to read to know what it says.

“‘For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.’” Even soft, even hesitant, my voice rings out in the quiet.

“Did you sleep well?” he asks, solicitous.

“I should go,” I say. “I already quit, and this…this doesn’t change anything.”

“Are you hungry? I had Rosa put a plate together. I’ll heat it up for you.”

Frustration rises in my chest. He’ll take such good care of me, making sure I’m well fed and well slept. And well spanked, probably. He won’t take care of what I need most. “Stop ignoring me, Ivan.”

“You should go back to sleep. That wasn’t enough for the night.”

I stomp my foot. “Stop. Ignoring. Me.”

His fist hits the table so fast and so hard I jump. “I’m not ignoring you, Candace.” He leans forward, breathing hard. “You’re all I can fucking think about every second of every fucking day. I have to know what you’re doing, where you are. I haven’t treated you right, and the worst part is, I don’t think I’m capable of it, but if there’s one thing I’ve never done, it’s ignore you.”

I take in a shuddering breath. “God.”

He flips the Bible shut with a bang. “Fuck this asshole who thinks he can fuck with my club. He’s nothing. I’m going to find him and snuff him out like a fucking cigarette. You don’t worry about him.”

He’s talking about the nameless, faceless stranger who defaced the club, but he could just as easily be talking about God himself. You don’t worry about him.

“Because Daddy’s going to fix it?” I ask, only the hint of a challenge. I’m a shadow of the girl I was in that club. Stripped of my armor. “Are you also going to buy me a mockingbird? And a diamond ring?”

“Do you want them?” he asks mildly.

Part of me wants to hit him, just to get a reaction. Something intense. Something meaningful. It’s the same reason I smoked and drank and danced up against guys at dark underground parties. I lashed out at him, and God, he lashed back. “No.”

“What do you want then?”

My gaze finds the black rectangle on the table again. It’s been so long since I saw a Bible. Since I touched one. It leaves me shaken, and I want something other than a spanking. “Something to call mine.”

I place one hand on his shoulder. He’s tense underneath his suit jacket.

Slowly, carefully I climb into his lap. I half expect him to mock me. Or maybe just push me to the ground. He doesn’t do either of those things. He just lets me climb onto him, into him, cradling myself with his strong body, self-soothing with the erection I feel growing beneath his slacks.

One minute passes. Then another.

I’ve resigned myself to this, to holding him while he doesn’t hold me back. Then his arm moves. He slides a hand around my shoulders and drapes his other arm over my legs. I’m curled up in his arms—like a child. That’s how I feel, helpless and small.

Only now can I tell him what I’ve been thinking, ever since I saw the blood on the wall. Before that. When I saw the bubblegum-pink message on my vanity mirror. “It might be…” My voice breaks, and I have to start over again. “It might be someone from my past.”