CHAPTER ONE
RORYMORTONKNEWperfectly well she wasn’t supposed to be in this room of the extraordinarily posh Parisian private home she was meant to be cleaning. The many bedrooms, studies, and other public areas were to be dusted and carefully made even more beautiful than they already were. The kitchen was to sparkle, the bathrooms were to be left immaculate, and all the glass, chrome, and marble was to shine. The office—visible behind glass and neat as a pin—was not to be disturbed. The garage was not to be entered. The grounds on this parcel of land in the Golden Triangle, located in Paris’s upscale 8th Arrondissement, were tended to by a different service and should be left alone—unless, of course, Rory noted some cause for concern.
And the locked door on the second floor was to be read as a KEEP OUT sign and obeyed.
It had all been clearly laid out in the pages upon pages of instructions she’d received from the fussy assistant of whoever owned this surprisingly large property set down in the middle of the city that she’d been hired to clean.
Rory had come to Paris because it wasParis,which should have been reason enough. She liked to say it just like that and stare at whoever asked as if there could be no other possible answer.
But another layer to that truth was that she’d become deeply bored with her life, all of which had been lived in and around Nashville. She’d grown up in Nashville. She’d gone to college in Nashville. She loved Nashville—but Rory wanted to see more of the world than Tennessee.
When her two best friends moved to opposite coasts, Natalie to Los Angeles and Blair to New York, it was possible Rory had felt the need to throw down a power move in the shape of Paris. And yes, she now spent most of her life taking clever pictures to plaster all over her social media accounts to indicate, whenever possible, how much more amazing her life wason the Continent.#expatlife.
Once in Paris, she’d started a cleaning service because it was the most un-chic thing she could think of to do in the chicest city on earth, and therefore made her seem more authentic. It was a bonus that it also deeply horrified her parents—especially her mother, who liked to point out that she had come all the way to the States from the Philippines so her children could exceed expectations. Not clean up after other people.
Her long-suffering father preferred to drink his horror in the form of Tennessee whiskey, which he liked to say his people had been making in one form or another since they’d found their way to the Tennessee hills from Scotland or Ireland or both in the 1800s. But when he wasn’t drowning his sorrows, he was still Marty Morton, and his contacts through his decades of producing music provided Rory with a roster of wealthy clients who were only too happy to hire her to clean their Parisian second, or third, or fourth homes.
Rory liked to pretend that she was doing this because it was art.Everything is art if it’s done by an artist,she’d captioned one of her last posts, of her in profile near a priceless painting in a client’s flat, on her hands and knees with a sponge to scrub the floor.
She liked to be provocative. She could admit that. And so far it had gotten her hundreds of thousands of followers, so she figured she was doing something right.
And if Rory found she enjoyed the actual act of cleaning more than she’d expected—that it became almost meditative and reminded her in some ways of dancing—she wisely kept that to herself. It was one thing to do important work as a kind of digital performance artist. It would have been something else entirely toactually benothing but a house cleaner.
Not that Rory was concerned about her art at the moment.Darlin, you can’t tell me cleaning a toilet is anything but cleaning a got-damn toilet,her father had said the one time she’d loftily used that word to describe her work in his hearing. And she didn’t bother rolling her eyes at her father from across the ocean because what shewasconcerned with was the very private room in this place that had been locked up tighter than a drum for three months now.
Frankly, she thought she deserved a medal for her restraint and respect of her client’s privacy. And for not trying to jimmy the lock. Not even once.
Of course, the reality was that every other time she’d come here the door to the room had been sealed up so tight it didn’t budge. Meaning that Rory didn’t so much practice any kind of restraint as she’d repeatedly tried the dramatic, medieval door handle—every time she cleaned here—and always, always found it locked.
Maybe no medals, then.
But today, at last, the secret room was open.
Rory had finished up her normal rounds, leaving everything sparkling and bright andlifted, because that was what actually made her happy. Then she’d taken a few artsy photos and posted them, because that was herbrand. With all identifying details concealed, naturally, because her clients certainly didn’t want the masses showing up at their homes. Then, on her way out, she’d gone ahead and tried the extraordinarily over-the-top door, fitted as it was in a stone arch, complete with iron studs and scrollwork bands across the sturdy oak planks.
When everything else in this home was sleek and modern, as if to play off the old church’s gothic architecture.
She expected it to be as immovable as it always was, but instead, when she tugged on the iron handle, it opened.
A thrill shot through her, a wild tingling thing that was hot and cold at once—
“It’s just a door,” she muttered at herself, trying to tamp down all that absurd sensation.
It didn’t work.
She pulled her mobile out of her back pocket and hooked her spray bottle—filled with the noninvasive, nonchemical, nonharmful green cleaner she preferred, because she wasn’t a Boomer, hell-bent on destroying the world on her way out, thank you very much—on the waistband of her jeans. Then she took a few snaps of herself trying the handle of the secret door she’d posted about before, making faces upon finding it open and then pushing the door in as she went inside.
The first thing she noticed were the stained glass windows. She assumed this must have been the nave of the church, where the altar would have been, and the glass seemed warm and remote at once as the summer afternoon light streamed in. She ran her fingers over the wall beside the door, trying to blink her eyes into focus, and found what seemed like a particularly involved panel of light switches. Dimmers and another line of switches and who even knew what.
She flicked on the light switches, blinked, and then paused. Because she’d expected...a wine cellar, or something. A recording studio, like her father’s back home that he liked to treat like it was the Pentagon.
But not...this.
It was a large room with warm hardwood floors. There were area rugs that looked soft and inviting. The ceilings were high and airy, with whitewashed walls wherever the stained glass windows weren’t, and loads of exposed beams and brick.
It was nicer than her current flat in the Latin Quarter, if she was honest.
But it was also outfitted with a great many things she’d never seen in person before. There was a bed with four very high and sturdy-looking posters, all fitted with bolts and things that clearly indicated it was used for bondage. There was a chair nearby that looked like a throne but...wasn’t. There was a huge X-shaped cross against one brick wall. On either side of where she stood, stretching down the walls, were...tools. Of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions. Whips and actual chains. Obvious sex toys she could identify and a great many she’d never seen before in her life.