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Then, testing the waters, I said softly, "Chloe?" For all her openness other times of day and other situations, I didn't know if she'd even acknowledge I'd spoken, let alone answer my questions.
"What, Annie?" She sounded resigned. For Chloe, this might not be too far from normal.
I found I didn't want to be the reason she was punished. Which very nearly made me laugh right then and there. As if! If she didn't want to be punished, she needed to find a different relationship.
Which was all part of what I wanted to ask her.
"Is this something you enjoy?" Leaving my hands behind my head meant I had no way to gesture. Just as well. I didn't know if I meant the room we were in and the events we were about to experience or her life as a whole.
Did I enjoy being undercover with a gang that sold meth and China White to pre-teens? No. But that was work. This was a choice.
Chloe was quiet for so long I had decided she wasn't going to answer after all and maybe that was a good thing.
"Yes," she said, and on the heels of that word, "No."
Silence. But still no footsteps. Could Claude hear us as well as see us? Or was he watching. He could be somewhere in the rest of the house watching porn, getting aroused for his session. Or inviting all the neighbors. Or feeding raccoons. I had no fucking idea where he was or what he was doing and I didn't care. As long as he wasn't here, that was good.
"It didn't start this way," Chloe said. She didn't look at me but she also didn't try to pretend she wasn't speaking.
And I was tired of trying to second guess the rules. I was the kind of keyed-up that happens on a sting operation when everything hasn't gone sideways but the timeline is being fucked with because the inconsiderate druggies have no idea there is a timeline because they're the focus of the sting. All wound up and nowhere to go. So I didn't pretend I wasn't talking with her and I didn't lower my voice. I just let her set the lead.
"Oh, fuck it," Chloe said and dropped her hands. This time she rose clumsily and dragged me to my feet after. "He's going to punish the fuck out of you and me for not training you better and Cole's okayed it and unless you're prepared to walk, you've okayed it too. You want to hear the story? My feet hurt." She leaned on a counter and tapped one finger against the side of her face before she put her cheeks in her hands and said, "It wasn't always this way. We started off curious together. There are people at all income levels and all walks of life who do what we do but it's easier I think for the very rich because they don't have to answer to as many people. They should, but they don't. it's just how it works. And to be honest, at least with Cee, there was a lot of arrogance already. He knew what he could do, he had evidence of what he'd already done, he was..." She shrugged. "...You know?"
"King Pharma," I said, meaning St. Martin. "I know."
Chloe ran her bare toes over the floor, watching them. "It was fun. A paddling. A tawse made of feathers. Being tied up and having my fantasies played out." She'd been looking off into the distance. Now she looked at me. Every bit of the woman she was poured back into her eyes and I resisted the urge to either step back, or take her in a hug. "My fantasies ranged from sweet moonlit sex on a tropical beach – " she said this scathingly, as if it were idiotic. "To being tied up and raped by strangers and he's made all of them come true." She looked intently at me, making sure I understood she meant all the fantasies.
I did understand. I shuddered.
I looked around the room. There was very little she'd be able to hide from me and very little I wasn't going to be a part of very soon. So I asked.
"But is this what you want now? Not just this room now, but sitting on the floor? Being traded when he wants to? Being – I don't know, whatever the fuck it is that happens here?"
Her smile was sad. "No. But now it's too late."
Of course it was. She had grown sons, both out of the house. If the youngest was even twenty, the eldest what, my age? Then she was probably in her mid-forties as least and had spent two decades with Claude. How would she change?
I expected if she answered me, it would be with something like that.
Instead, Chloe said, "He's a plastic surgeon, Annie."
Without any further explanation, my blood ran cold.
Chloe didn't seem to notice. She was caught up in her own story. "He can only do to you what Cole allows and Cole's not going to let you be permanently hurt. But Annie – he can do pretty much anything to me, make it look like an accident, and fix it after."
I opened my mouth to tell her we could leave. It wasn't impossible. Claude wasn't a super villain, he was a man and a nasty little toad of a man, at that. We could leave, we could go to St. Martin and if that didn't work, what the fuck! We could steal one of St. Martin's cars and head for Seattle. I may be furious with my family but that didn't mean they wouldn't help if I needed it and that I wouldn't turn to them if I had to.
But her face had already shuttered closed, the fear wrapping her into herself.
And Claude was already coming up the hall.
38
Cole
Ariel stood when I came in, then slid to her knees. On the screen of her laptop, she had a detailed page of text open. When I looked closer I saw it was a college catalog, open to the offerings of arts.
So. She'd decided to live. I stood facing her laptop for a minute, running one finger absently over the space bar without pushing it down. Blinking. Breathing in control. I had come here automatically, seeking the relief Ariel always provided one way or another. Sometimes it was turning her ass red. Other times birching her or leaving cane marks up her thighs and ass. Sometimes I sat and talked to her, laying out one concern after another. Even if she had nothing to say on a subject, just pouring it out was relief. Because there was no one she could tell. Her companion, or her therapist. Both were sworn to secrecy and buried under so many nondisclosure agreements I'd own them if they did listen to her and did share.
