“I used to lead classes at the resorts in Nassau. Now I teach it to the kids.” Dreya, I’d learned, was primarily responsible for homeschooling and caring for the fourteen children that lived on the island. She didn’t shoulder the burden completely on her own; the other men and women rotated their duties to assist her, and though the youngest, Marge and Erris’s baby, was only four months old, Mateo and Sanyjah’s eldest two girls, at fourteen and fifteen years of age, were tasked with a fair amount of childcare as well as grandma watching.
And all of them, including Azariah, Joette’s eighty-five-year-old mother, apparently met on the beach near the staff quarters every morning for yoga.
I’d always hated yoga. I hated group exercise in general, but particularly one that had me twisting in silly positions with weird names.
But island life had left me lonely. I had no internet. I had no phone. And most of my interactions with the staff had remained transactional. I ate my meals alone. I took my daily run alone. I spent my time alone.
So I accepted the invitation to yoga. I bent and stretched and laughed when five-year-old Jaden toppled over out of Vrksasana and smiled impressively when Azariah did a full back bend that I was smart enough not to even attempt.
And when the whole sequence was almost done and I lay in Balasana, child’s pose, my forehead on the mat that Dreya had provided, the sound of gentle sighs around me mixing with the crash of ocean waves behind us, I realized I could breathe easier and deeper than I had in a very long time.
“Will you join us tomorrow?” Dreya asked when the mats were all cleared up, and I had nothing to do but leave to go back to the main house.
“I’ll be here any day you let me,” I answered honestly.
“Every weekday then.”
I gave her an answering smile. “I’d like that.”
“Your husband will be pleased to hear.”
I didn’t let that final remark ruin it, letting it fall off me as I turned to go on my way, but I knew without being explicitly told that the invitation hadn’t really come from Dreya at all.
The following day was Christmas Eve. I remarked on it, casually, to Tom.
“Perhaps you want to write a letter to your family?”
The suggestion was startling. And exhilarating.
“Can I?” I clarified. “I mean, am I allowed?”
“Why wouldn’t you be allowed?”
I could think of several reasons, the most obvious being that I’d tell them I was being held captive and to get the FBI involved in finding me ASAFP.
But Tom was digging out stationery and a pen, and I wasn’t about to clue her in on her mistake.
I kept it simple, sticking to facts and details needed to initiate a rescue mission. I addressed it to my father, knowing he was the one who had the power to do things, the man who would make things happen. I didn’t tell him he’d been right, that Edward Fasbender was no good, that he was a devil, that I should have avoided him at all costs.
He’d already know that without me saying it.
I sealed the note in the envelope Tom had provided and handed her the letter, feeling more hopeful than I had in weeks.
The next gift came Christmas morning, along with another invitation.
I’d expected to be alone for the day, and that idea had brought on the worst bout of melancholy yet. Though I wasn’t emotionally close to my parents, we were close in other ways. We did things together. We went to the ballet, the opera, charity fundraisers. We spent holidays together. We exchanged cliché, meaningless gifts, but we were together.
Except for the year I was in the hospital, I’d always spent Christmas in their condo, snuggled up in my pajamas, watching It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. There’d be an early dinner first, with the Pierces, either at our house or at theirs, but classic movies was the evening routine. My father would leave less than halfway through the first one and my mother would drink too much sherry, but it was tradition. It was what I knew, and I missed it more than I thought I could.
I missed them. More than I should. More than they likely missed me.
But I had dealt with those feelings laying in bed on Christmas Eve. And after acknowledging them, I’d made a plan for distraction. I’d spend the day reading something from the library—one of the countless business communication books or one of the worn paperback romances that I assumed belonged to Edward’s sister, Camilla, or his ex-wife, Marion. The pickings were slim, but I’d always enjoyed reading. There would be something to occupy my mind, even if I had to reread something I’d already read.
Instead, I awoke to the smell of something delicious baking and the sounds of commotion.
“What’s going on?” I asked Tom when I found her in the kitchen pulling cinnamon rolls out of the oven.
“These should do you for breakfast,” she said, as if that was an answer. “Sorry this is all I have time for before getting back to my own. We’ll have dinner at our quarters at three. Dress casual.”
“Okay.” I hadn’t thought for a moment I’d be welcome at their family Christmas celebrations, and I wasn’t about to question the invitation. “I heard noise in the library too. What’s going on in there?”
“Oh, that’s your Christmas present from Edward. I think you’ll be quite delighted with his choices.”
Without hesitation, I left to see what she was talking about. There were a few people in the library—Louvens and Peter as well as the two eldest of Peter and Tom’s kids. While Lou was breaking down boxes, the rest were loading empty shelves with books. I surveyed the titles. There were a lot of classics but more contemporary reads, titles that I recognized but hadn’t yet picked up. Titles that were definitely on my TBR.
Edward had guessed my taste in books as well as he’d guessed my taste in clothes.
Except, guess wasn’t the right word for it. He’d studied me. He’d learned me.
My throat felt suddenly tight.
Unwittingly, a memory popped in my mind, one of the last games I’d played with Hudson. Or I’d thought it was a game. He’d decided it was something different. The subject was Alayna Withers, the woman who would one day become his wife. He’d called me from the Hamptons with a list of books he needed me to purchase and have delivered to his penthouse immediately.
He hadn’t told me, but I’d known they were for her. Even then, I’d suspected where things were headed. That he was done with me.
The books he’d chosen had been personal, it was obvious. He’d put care and thought into the selections, and a strange throb had begun in my chest. Like a knocking against my ribcage from deep inside. I wouldn’t let the emotion out, wouldn’t let it show itself, but I’d recognized it.
It was envy.
What would that feel like, to have a man care about me so much, to have him be that attentive and adoring that he’d fill shelves and shelves with exactly the books I wanted to read?
When Louvens and Peter and Tom left a short while later, I knelt on the library floor, stared at the shelves of new books, and took long, deep breaths until the dizziness went away. Until the tightness loosened in my chest. Until I could make my mind separate the gift from the man who’d given it.
The gifts continued the next week and into the new year, if gifts were what they were. The allowances. The evidences that I remained on Edward’s mind.
First, on the next grocery day, came a beautiful handcrafted wooden chess set and a book on how to play. Which was fine and all, but I knew how to play already, though it had been ages since I had, and who was supposed to oppose me?
I found myself reading the book anyway, learning new moves, brushing up on techniques. I set the board up and played against myself as best I could.
The next week, Eliana began joining me for afternoon games. She beat me most of the time, but I was a quick study, and the company was good.
One day when she came to play, she noticed the copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude that I had on the table near the sofa, face
down to keep my place.
“If you have specific books you’d like, let me know,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do to get them.”
I wasn’t sure if that meant she’d go through Edward or she’d simply pick them up on grocery day. There wasn’t much I wanted, at the moment. He’d stocked me up fairly well.
Except, there was a subject I was interested in, a topic I wanted to know more about before my husband returned. “Could you maybe see if you could get me some books about BDSM?”
“Romance books?” she asked, her expression strange.
“No. Nonfiction. About being a submissive. A how-to guide or whatever you can find.”
The following week, she brought me three—Exploring Kink, A Dominant’s Guide for Submissives, and Sadistic Desires. I felt powerful with them in my possession. It gave me a guide for my future.
And if Edward knew about them, fine. Perhaps it was good he knew that I was prepared.
The same week, I learned that Marge had been a massage therapist before she’d moved to the island. I discovered it when, after yoga one morning, she announced that I was to follow her to the pool house. It was right outside the main house, but I’d never bothered to go in. Now I discovered I’d been missing out. It was well-equipped with a steam room and boxing ring and, surprise, surprise, a massage room. For two hours, I lay on that table and Marge worked every muscle until I was a noodle.
“See if you can stay that loose until next week,” she said when she was done.
“What’s next week?”
“Your next massage. Mister Fasbender has decided they’ll be weekly.”
I knew by now that everything happened at Mister Fasbender’s request, and still, each declaration to that effect made my stomach drop and flutter all at once.
That night I wrote another letter to my parents. The first one had gone unanswered, and I suspected it had never been sent at all. This one wouldn’t reach them either, but it felt good to talk to them. Felt good to open up and say things, honest things. Things I wished I could say to someone. Anyone.
It’s beautiful here.
I miss my home. I miss my freedom. But I’m not any more alone here than I was in New York.
Something’s changing in me, and I don’t know who I am anymore. Tell me who I am.
I sealed the envelope and gave it to Tom, futile as I knew it was.
The next week a Hispanic beautician came back with Eliana from Nassau. She couldn’t speak a lick of English, and I could only speak a handful of words in Spanish, which I was sure was intentional. Language barrier or not, she understood what I wanted with my hair and after three hours of fussing with it, my highlights and length were back to what I preferred.
The following week beauty supplies were sent. High-quality skin care products and makeup, more than one person could ever use with ingredients that almost made me stop jonesing for my Botox.
The next week it was a Korean woman who arrived from Nassau, with perfect eyebrows and full pink lips. She spoke more English than the hairdresser, but it still took me quite a while to understand her. At first, I thought she’d come to do my nails. When she pulled out a wax warmer and applicator sticks, I figured she was there to shape my brows into perfect arches like her own. And she did do that.
But when she was finished, she gestured lower, toward my shorts.
I did usually keep things neat down there. I’d attempted a trim or two while on the island, but I’d pretty much surrendered to letting it turn into a jungle. I could say it didn’t matter without having a man around who’d see it, but the truth was I’d always waxed for myself. I liked the feeling of being mostly bare. I liked the way my underwear rubbed against my skin, the way my bikinis smoothed without a tuft of hair underneath.
I should have been appreciative that Edward had thought of this. Of even this.
But this wasn’t a gift. This was going too far.
Leaving the beautician in confusion, I stormed out of the pool house where all my beauty procedures had been performed, and into the house to find someone—anyone—who would listen to my complaint.
Unfortunately for her, I found Tom.
“This has gone too far,” I said, my tone harsh and louder than necessary. “He’s trying to butter me up. Trying to make me forget I’m in captivity by playing nice with all these favors. But I haven’t forgotten. And these aren’t favors—not really. They’re for him. The clothes? The hair? The makeup? A bikini wax? This is for him. This is what he wants from a wife—a perfect, pretty Barbie doll. He has no right demanding this from me. He has no right!”
Tom looked up from the dough she’d been kneading and wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead with her knuckle. “What about the chess? And the massages? What about the books? Are those all for him too?”
The question threw me off guard, but I was too worked up to let it go. I paced the kitchen as I talked. “Yes. Yes! Because he’s dictating my life. It doesn’t matter that I like it or want it. He’s deciding. He’s not even here. He’s however many hundreds of miles away, and he’s still controlling everything. He’s choosing what I fill my days with and shaping me in whatever way he likes as though he expects me to follow his commands. As though I’m his fucking submissive. As though I’m—” His.
I cut off before the word passed my lips, but it stopped me in my tracks.
Tom rose one expectant brow, waiting for the end of a sentence I would never finish. I couldn’t say it out loud, but this was my fate, I realized. This was what I’d agreed to. To break down. To submit. To become his.
Scowling, I spun around and headed back to the pool house where I let the Korean woman wax my pussy. She took everything off, leaving me bare. Usually I left a strip, but it didn’t matter what my preference was. This was what Edward wanted, and that’s what he’d get.
Later, I sat out on the lanai, my knees cradled to my chest as I stared numbly out at the ocean. Joette stuck her head out, most likely to tell me she was leaving for the day, but, seeing me, she came outside completely. She didn’t say anything, just stood there, patiently, making herself available.
Without looking at her, I spoke. “I know what you said. I know what he told you about why I’m here and that you believed him. How can you not see what this really is?”
“How can you not?”
My head swung sharply in her direction. A frown tugged at my lips, confusion knitted my brow.
She perched on the edge of the deck chair next to me. “I’ve known Edward for quite some time. He’s a man who holds much inside him. Rage, mostly. Destruction. He can be compassionate and thoughtful, but his darkness has always remained at his core, an infection that has no cure.
“Until now. Until you.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I didn’t understand what she was saying well enough to protest, and I certainly didn’t agree.
“He’s different with you,” she went on. “It’s not something you can see because you’ve only ever known him as the man who’s met you. But he is different. He’s more the man I think he wants to be. The man he needs to be, even if he doesn’t see it yet. It scares him, I’m sure, and perhaps he isn’t behaving the way he should with you, and for that I’m sorry. But I can see something coming—for both of you—and that’s what I’m holding on for. I hope you can find a way to hold on for the same.”
She was loyal, there was no doubt about that. And optimistic. And I wanted to say her rose-colored view was a bold-faced lie.
But she stood up to leave, and I said nothing at all.
The following Friday, the second week of February, I decided to do something new—I invited everyone to dinner.
Well, not everyone. The main house was big, but not quite big enough to handle twelve adults and fourteen children.
But when Edward had been here, he’d had most of the grown-ups over every night so I did the same. I approached Tom about the idea first thing in the morning, and by noon she’d confirmed that most of t
hem would be there.
“We’re looking forward to it,” she said with such sincerity that I chose to believe her.
That evening, we gathered. Joette, Mateo and Sanyjah, Tom and Peter, Dreya and Eliana. I’d been told earlier that Erris and Marge had volunteered to stay with the kids, so I hadn’t expected them.
“Where’s Louvens?” I asked when I looked around the table and noticed him missing.
Dreya and Eliana exchanged a glance that made me regret asking. As easy as they made it seem, they were a broken family of sorts. Louvens and Eliana had been married and had four children together before Eliana had fallen in love with Lou’s little sister. They all seemed to get along whenever I saw them, but perhaps there were disagreements that I wasn’t party to.
“He’ll be here,” Joette said dismissively. “How’s the plantain?”
The plantain was delicious. The whole meal was delicious, Joette’s cooking made better by eating it in the company of others. It was noisy and chaotic and that was wonderful. The conversation engaged me. The private stories of their families held my interest in a way I’d never thought domestic tales would interest me. I laughed—really laughed—for the first time in months. Maybe even longer.
I felt, shockingly, at home.
We were midway through the meal when I heard the front door open, and less than a minute later, I discovered why Louvens had missed dinner, where he had been.
He’d been at the airstrip.
He’d been picking up Edward.
Seven
“Edward.” It felt like I talked about him all the time, like he was always present in my mind, but seeing him in the flesh felt like seeing a stranger. And as much as I hated him, my breath caught in my chest, my heart tripping with elation.
His eyes held mine as he approached me, one hand held behind his back.
I stood automatically. “I didn’t know you were... What are you doing here?” I hadn’t expected him for another couple of weeks.