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“Do you ever want to see him again?” I ask.
“Not at all. He was... abusive,” she says.
“Abusive?”
She looks at me again. “I don’t want to be that cliché hooker with daddy issues, okay? It’s just, he didn’t hit me, but he tortured me. He was merciless and cutting, and I had to get out of there. So no, I don’t want to see him ever again.”
I kiss her softly on the forehead. “Thanks for telling me that,” I say.
“It’s weird. I haven’t talked about him in a while.”
I smile and kiss her again. “I’m happy you feel comfortable talking about it with me.”
“You’re supposed to be a client...” She trails off, shaking her head.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you this stuff. The Syndicate, they gave us some, I don’t know, training. I’m supposed to be mysterious and alluring for you.” She laughs lightly. “How am I doing?”
“Perfect,” I say. “You’re perfect.”
“My last name is Taylor,” she says. “I don’t know why I wanted you to know that. I just did, I guess.”
I grin ear to ear, and have no clue why that makes me so happy. I kiss her again, not sure what else to do, and hold her tight.
I want to know her, and having her open up to me makes me happier than I would have guessed. It’s strange, sharing this sort of intimacy with someone that I supposedly own, but I don’t feel like I own her. Not right now, at least.
Her guard is down and I believe everything she’s saying. I believe that she feels something, maybe something like what I feel, although I’m not exactly sure what that is yet. I believe she’s a good person and wants to do right.
And I know I’ve seduced her. All of that, it was real. She wanted it as much as I did, if not more. She wanted me to fuck her and to make her come and she would have done it, money or no money.
I should feel good that I won my game, but I don’t.
I just feel like there’s another game coming, and this one might be even better.
18
Aria
”Play it again.”
In my dream, he stands over me like a phantom. His eyes are a furious red like I always imagined them to be, though I know they’re really just brown. His brows knit as I raise the violin to my chin again and prepare to play it all over.
In my dream, I know that I’ve been standing there and playing for hours. My fingers are bloody and torn to shreds, but daddy doesn’t care. I’m nine years old and I should be a prodigy by now, but I’m not. According to daddy, if I’m not the best at what I do, I’m not worth anything.
And so I play it again. I go through the notes, playing as best as I possibly can considering blood runs down the strings, but that doesn’t matter to him. He simply sits there, smoking a cigar and watching me. I don’t look at his face, because I know what I’ll see if I do.
When I finish, he stands and walks over to me. He slaps the violin from my hands and growls.
“Pathetic,” he says. “What the fuck am I paying these teachers for if you can’t play right?”
I cower away from him, waiting for him to hit me, but the blow never comes. It never does. He hit me once, out of anger, but not since then. Still, he threatens it all the time, and I believe he’ll do it if I give him a real reason to.
“I’m sorry, daddy,” I whimper.
“Sorry isn’t going to make you better, girl,” he says. “How the fuck are you going to take over everything I’m building if you can’t even master one instrument? It’s not even a fucking hard one, for fuck’s sake.” He stalks away and I collapse onto the floor, sobbing.
He stands by the bar with a glass in his hand. He always has a glass in his hand. He’s a drunk, a mean stupid drunk, and I hate him. In the dream, which is also a memory, I know that he’s a piece of shit but I can’t do anything about it.
I’m just a little girl and I still love him. I barely see him anymore, and when I do, it’s always painful, but he’s still a towering figure in my life. I want to live up to him. I believe everything he tells me. I believe every bit of pressure he puts on me. I feel it weighing on me every night, and every night I cry myself to sleep because I’m such a disappointment.
“Maybe I’ll leave you too,” he sneers at me. “Just like your mother left you. She knew you were pathetic garbage. Do you want me to leave you?”
“No!” I cry out, terrified.
“Good,” he says. “Play it again.”
