He reached for the phone from the nightstand.
“Bro? Right. Yep. Okay, two hours. Right.” He hung up and looked at me.
“I need to go to the office for a conference call with Chen’s partners.”
“If they find out you’re not and I’m..if they do, they…” My words were screwy again.
“But you’re behaving, baby. You’re my perfect Angel. There’s nothing to be afraid of, okay? Nothing? I own you. You’re mine. You’ve done everything right. You’re allowed to tell me everything. I mean that. You’re mine, not theirs. So you can tell me everything because you’re my girl. My good girl. Forget them. You’re not theirs. You’re mine. They don’t matter.”
Oh my god. He was it. He was it for me. I felt a surge of emotion and peace rush within me and wash over me.
He reached for me again, “Let’s get you that release, Angelbaby. I could use one, too.”
God, I loved him.
As I came I couldn’t stop the words “I love you” from tumbling out. I said, “I love you, Dare,” and then I closed my eyes and drifted off toward sleep almost instantly afterwards. He was against me, holding me. He didn’t reply. But that didn’t matter. I just needed him to know. He held me a while and then I felt him tuck me in and tell me he’d be back later.
Dare
Does she love me? She’s so fucked up right now. She’s regressed so deep into her slave behavior and she’s so fucking fragile that I need to handle her with care. I don’t know what more I need to know from her in order to move forward but she’s given me enough for me to go into this meeting.
After I was sure she was asleep I moved carefully out of the bedroom and headed downstairs and called Tommy and asked if he could have someone bring Tia to come hang for a few hours with her so that if I was a while she’d have someone to talk to besides security. If Lisa hadn’t fallen apart it’d be better if it were her but Lisa wasn’t an option right now.
When I got to the office my brother arrived and then we headed to the board room to put on our game faces and talk to the Kruna scumbags. I had the phone call recorded.
Angel
I dreamt about Thailand, about the time before Kruna.
Jason was tall, dark, and handsome. He was rich and charming and obsessed with me. He was a devil in disguise. He liked the power of running the bar and his powerful uncle at his back. But I didn’t think he wasn’t a really bad guy. I think he was a little bit of a spoiled rich kid caught up in things. And he tried to stop them from taking me in but they thought I knew too much. And because of that they punished him by making him watch them work at breaking me that first day. Jason cried that day. I saw him crying. And then his uncle repeatedly brought him in to watch while I was abused.
I dreamt about the few dates we had, the laughs we had. And then I woke up. I stayed in bed.
I thought back to when he proposed to me and wondered if I’d just said yes if he could’ve protected me from what’d happened over the next two years. But if he’d done that and I’d somehow managed to stay in the dark about the existence of Kruna my life would’ve been a lie. I’d have been married to a liar. And I’d never have met and fallen in love with Dario Ferrano.
I let my mind wander even farther backwards for the first time in a long time.
Two Years Ago:
“Angie! There’s mail for you!”
My little sister Holly thrust the envelope at me, “It’s thick. It’s gotta be a yes!”
My application to teach in Thailand had been accepted. I was stoked! I was leaving in two weeks. I’d arranged for Holly to move in with her grandmother in Anchorage a week later and I was getting the heck out of Alaska.
I met up with some of my friends at a bar that night and we toasted my journey. When I got home I was a little tipsy, but I’d taken a cab. No harm; no foul. My mother, though, she was not impressed.
“So, you’re leavin’ now and you think you can break all the rules, huh?” she sneered at me, clearly way drunker than I was.
“I decided you can go now,” she mumbled, staggering to the sink to put her glass in, “I started packing for you.”
She wandered away, bouncing off walls all the way to the staircase in her threadbare cotton nightgown. I flipped her the double bird behind her back, took a deep breath, and walked into my bedroom, which was off the kitchen.
Everything from my closet and from my drawers was piled on my bed. Every drawer in my nine drawer dresser was open and empty. Books, clothes, shoes, papers, all on the bed. Posters from the wall ripped off and thrown on top. Curtains from the window? One half hanging by one remaining hook, the other on top of my bed.
I texted my best friend Laurie, “Can I crash at your pad tonight? She is off the charts.”
She replied right away, “Come! Slumber party. Yay! :)”