Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
I grin like a maniac at nobody. Then I get practical again. I shower and throw on a clean shirt. Wallet, keys, phone. I stand in the entry and look at the sign—Do The Next Right Thing—and for once it doesn’t feel like it’s bashing me on the head. It feels like a hand at my back pushing me out the door toward the one person I want to be worthy of.
On the console table, the burner phone lies face down, silent. I leave it there. If Reyes wants to yank the chain he wrapped around my neck, he can wait an afternoon. He owes me that sliver of a day.
On the way out, I pass the mirror. My reflection looks like a guy who’s been up too many nights pretending.
“Don’t try to fix her,” I tell myself. “Just stand with her. Be with her.”
The road to Raven and Vinnie’s is muscle memory. I drive with the quiet hum of a plan in my chest and a ridiculous hope tapping a rhythm under my ribs.
If the result is what I pray it is, the world opens in a way I haven’t let myself imagine. If it isn’t, I’ll cross that bridge then.
Either way, tonight, after whatever this afternoon brings, I’m taking her to dinner. Not because a meal fixes anything—it doesn’t—but because someone I love deserves to be treated like she is loved. Because for once I want to give her a night that isn’t a crisis.
24
DANIELA
The envelope is the pale pink of a little girl’s stationery, the kind she’d use to send thank-you notes for birthday presents.
Inside is a single sheet of printer paper folded into thirds.
Meet me alone tomorrow morning, 8:00 a.m. Wear the blue thing I like.
Then an address and no signature. None needed.
The words tilt on the page. I steady it with both hands, and the kitchen swims anyway. The blue thing. Of course. He would remember.
For one second—one stupid, wobbling second—I tell myself maybe this is a coincidence. Maybe some other psychopath has a fondness for blue dresses and early appointments and cruel games.
No.
I know whose note this is. The tone, the control masquerading as courtesy, the way he flattens me into a thing—the blue thing, not your dress, not that gown—like I’m a prop that belongs to a scene he’s been rehearsing for years.
I read it again. Meet me alone tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow. If it were now, I could move without thinking. I could ride the adrenaline straight into a bad decision that might still save a life. But he gave me twelve hours to think, and that’s enough for panic to breed.
The blue thing.
Cinderella blue.
“Dani, what does it say?” Raven asks.
I crumple the note.
The kitchen’s fluorescent lights buzz. The refrigerator hums.
I don’t want to remember, but the note drags the past into the room and sets it on the counter beside the coffee maker. I blink, and the kitchen changes.
A different kitchen. A different country. But the same girl.
The same me.
Three years earlier…
I love my blue dress. It’s the color of the morning sky. The skirt sways when I walk.
I feel fresh and clean in the dress, even though inside I know I’m dirty. After that man—Señor Reyes is his name—made me…
I don’t want to think about it, even though I can still hear his voice slithering like a snake, still feel his big and clammy hands on me. Still remember how I gagged…
In this dress, I can pretend I’m Cinderella, except Cinderella got to scrub ashes out of the fireplace instead of nauseating images out of her head. She also got a happy ending.
Not in the cards for me.
I stand at the top of the stairs and watch staff members unload cases of wine. I hold onto the banister and tell myself to swallow what I feel, because my father smells tears before he sees them, and there is nothing he hates more than weakness.
The doorbell rings. Voices. The house fills. I smile where I’m supposed to, bow my head when my father speaks in that smooth, oiled tone he keeps for men richer than he is. I say bienvenidos and qué gusto and gracias por venir and es un honor until the phrases turn to ash in my mouth.
And then the heat pushes at the back of my neck, and the stench of all the expensive cologne—too sweet, too thick, too much—makes me dizzy and the room blurs. I excuse myself mid-sentence and walk—don’t run, never run—through the nearest door.
The kitchen.
How I love the kitchen.
Cooler air. Real smells. Citrus, garlic, earthy cumin. Every surface shines with the practiced sheen of someone who loves things enough to make them gleam.
Chef stands at the far counter with his sleeves rolled and his knife moving like lightning. He doesn’t startle when I enter. He never does. He seems to know the sound of my shoes.