I'm learning to cook, which sings to my maternal side, and I know I won't be locked in this resort-like gilded cage forever, just until he finds my dad… Andkills him.I swallow thickly, clearing my throat as heavy footsteps pour down the path.
"Fucksake," Henchman Jeeves pants, dropping forward with his hands to his knees.
My henchman/butler/rat…
Not happy with you.
He breathes through a kind of panic, having exerted himself to the point he's vibrating to get air.
Three guards are now halting from their run behind him, sighing with relief when they see me sitting unfazed by the poolside.
I blink at the dishevelled men. "What?"
Henchman Jeeves catches his breath before saying, "For the love of God, how did you get down here?"
And I know it was stupid and that Clay won't approve, but I don't lie when I answer, "I climbed down the fire escape on my balcony."
"She's going to get us killed," one of the henchmen hisses, spinning and sauntering off, curses soaring around him.
Henchman Jeeves slowly shakes his head. "Why?Why would you do something so dangerous and—"
I shrug, interrupting petulantly. "Looked like fun? The ladder is perfectly safe. It isn't like I climbed down a fucking drainpipe. I wasn’t escaping. The ladder is right there on the side of the balcony. I just had to climb over the railing."
The remaining henchman grumbles behind him, wiping his rigidly set brow. "Don't tell the boss, Fawn, or…" His voice continues to run, but the words are mumbled through annoyed breath.
Henchman Jeeves frowns at him, scolding him with one snap of his gaze. "Miss Harlow." He turns back to me and offers me a faux smile. "It would be best if you don't tell the boss that you were by the poolside alone."
Fawn.I don't correct him and ask him to call me by my given name. He slips up often, but I know he must call me Miss Harlow now. I don't even know who Miss Harlow is, really. It doesn't seem like my name; I never felt like a Harlow. I was hoping to find my identity as a Nerrock. And I'll probably never be a Butcher… I sigh. "Would you get fired?"
Shaking his head slowly, he laughs without mirth. "Iwishthe answer was yes."
"He'd kill you?" I whisper as the other guards wander back inside the house, clearly annoyed, leaving HJ and his fixed gaze that delivers an undeniable answer to that question. "I see." I nod towards the retreating backs of the other men. "They don't like me very much."
He sighs, pity tumbling through his voice. "You do talk to your food more than you talk to them."
"Clay told me not to talk to them."
"I'll have words with them. Don't worry."
My hero."They don't treat me like they treat Aurora. They treat me like a ward. Like they are babysitting… So do you now. We used to joke."
He looks regretful. "Fawn. It's respect."
And it isn't his fault or theirs. I'm an eighteen-year-old unrequited daughter of a mob boss and the lover of his enemy. Bound in inadequacies and eighteen years of an orphan identity to boot. No idea what to do from one moment to the next or how this half of society lives.
Privilege is kind of boring…
So, I get it—they don't know how to treat me.
Just like I don't know how to behave.
CHAPTERTHREE
fawn
This isAurora's concept of happiness—clothes shopping with a bottomless account.
A spare room has been transformed into a pop-up boutique. I pull another pencil skirt off the rack, wondering how it varies from the previous one.