Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Send her in.”
The man opens the door for me and ushers me into the room. I find a typically English space waiting for me. Lots of fancy chairs. The sort of thing BP kept around in some of the spaces when he wanted to seem fancy.
Okay. This is really feeling like it could be Leo’s work.
But it’s not Leo who I find waiting for me. It’s not someone I know at all. He has a mustache like someone out of the 1950s, and fine brown hair styled the same way. He has muddy brown eyes, and the smooth skin of a man who has had facial work done. He’s wearing a three-piece suit with a tweed vest, and when he speaks it’s with an English accent.
“Who are you?” I ask the question before he can give me whatever spiel he was planning on giving me.
“My name is Eric Mandeville,” he says. I am almost entirely sure that is not his name. “And I have some questions for you regarding the Levin boys.”
Ah, goddammit. I can’t escape this situation. All the money in the world is not enough to get away from it. Obviously I’ve been followed by more than Leo and Luke and Aiden. They’re not going to be happy when they find out about this. This is going to really piss them off.
“I don’t know anything about them. At least, nothing about the ones who are still alive.”
He smirks quietly in a way I find grotesque.
“That’s a lie.”
“Is it?”
I reply with a question.
“Why were you fucking Aiden Levin on an island in New Zealand?”
Well, that’s a bold and rather rude question.
“Because New Zealand is made up of only islands. If you’re going to fuck someone, you have to do it on an island,” I deadpan.
In this moment, I really miss Ethel. Ethel would solve this by biting him. I wish I hadn’t run away. I thought there was somewhere I could go that all of this would melt away. They’re getting worse.
I had three men who wanted me, but I was engaging with all the worst thoughts I ever had, and I was pushing them away whenever they tried to help me. I couldn’t just let myself believe I was actually loved, and now I’m here with a man who chose Eric as a fake name quizzing me about my sexual adventures.
“He paid me,” I say. “A lot of money.”
“He paid to sleep with his dead brother’s girlfriend? What a sick bastard.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I didn’t ask about his inner motivations.” I sound bored. I’m not bored, I’m just very annoyed. More annoyed than afraid, even though my life is clearly at risk. Apparently the Levin men are not the only guys I am unable to shake.
“You did good work for BP, and it seems like your connection with the Levin family is in good stead to be leveraged again,” Eric says.
I am getting very, very tired of men seeing me as some kind of assassination adjacent fuck doll. I am even more tired of a lot of international travel and being kidnapped. It really takes it out of you. People don’t talk about that enough.
“Oh, yeah?” I give him a noncommittal response that I hope he will interpret as a cue to stop talking. He does not take the cue.
“I believe so. And as you are taking money for sex, it seems like it would still be your bailiwick.”
“I’m not interested,” I say. “And I’m going to go.”
“That’s going to be difficult.”
“Why?”
“Because I have armed men outside the door,” he says.
Fortunately, or rather, unfortunately, I am accustomed to being kidnapped. I sigh and sit down.
“I’m hungry,” I say. “I want a grilled cheese.”
Eric rings a little bell, and a man in a butler’s suit shows up through a door I didn’t notice because it looks like a bookcase. Very cool. I wonder if there are armed men at that door. I doubt it, somehow.
“Bring the lady a cheese toastie,” he says. “And some tea. And probably coffee, because she’s American and they rarely drink tea properly.”
“I like to steep my tea for several weeks in the nearest harbor,” I say, making a deep cut historical joke.
“You’re quite sassy,” Eric Mandeville notes.
“Cake would be nice too,” I say. “It’s just the little things about hosting, you know?”
“Of course,” he says, his eyes shimmering like a mud pool. “I should have thought to make more generous accommodations for someone who was so close to BP for so long.”
“He’s dead, and I have independent means of making money now. If this is about him, I am not interested.”
“I think I could interest you,” he says.
“I assure you, you cannot.” I’m accidentally speaking the way he does now. There’s something about an accent like his that compels my brain to mimic it.