Chapter 4: THE RIDE HOME
1761 Words
(Carrie's POV)
The car waiting at the base of the steps was a Rolls-Royce, black paint so deep it swallowed the porch light rather than reflecting it. I thought, for one brief, reckless second, about simply walking away from all of it, down the gravel drive and onto the main road, and figuring out the rest from there. But I had no phone, no money, no idea how far we were from anything resembling a town I'd recognized, and the dress and heels I was wearing weren't built for a walk down an unlit country road in the dark. Even if I made it somewhere, I had nothing to show anyone that would prove what had just happened to me, no paperwork of my own, no witness who'd corroborate it over a rich man's signature on official documents. Getting into the car wasn't surrender. It was the only option that didn't end with me stranded, alone, and worse off than I already was.
The driver opened the rear door without a word, his eyes fixed somewhere past my shoulder, and I climbed in.
The man was already seated on the far side of the bench, a folder closed on his knee, staring straight ahead at nothing. I didn't know his name yet, only the one the auctioneer had used when the bidding ended, Calloway, and I wasn't about to hand him the familiarity of a first name he hadn't earned. He didn't acknowledge me as the door shut. The car pulled away from the private road, and the silence inside stretched so long I started to wonder if he intended to say anything at all before we reached wherever this car was taking me.
"There are terms." His voice arrived flat. I couldn't tell if he was bored at the sight of me or simply reading from something he'd recited before tonight. He opened the folder without turning it toward me. "You'll live at my residence outside the city. There is staff. Certain areas of the house remain closed to you, and I expect that boundary to be respected without discussion. You do not speak to the press. You do not speak to my business associates unless I am present. You do not leave the property without informing my driver first."
"Terms." I said back to him like it tasted bad in my mouth. "You auctioned me off twenty minutes ago like a piece of livestock, and now you're handing me a list of house rules like I'm interviewing for a job I somehow already accepted."
"That's the arrangement." He glanced at me once, quick and clinical, then returned to the folder.
"That's not an arrangement. An arrangement implies I agreed to something." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, heat finally breaking through the numbness that had carried me out of that building. "You spent ten thousand dollars on a person tonight. Ten thousand dollars, and the first words out of your mouth are about staff and property boundaries. Do you understand how that sounds? Do you understand how any of these sounds?"
"I'm aware of how it sounds."
"Are you? Because you don't seem particularly bothered by it."
"Being bothered by it wouldn't change the fact that it happened." He said without looking up, and something in the evenness of his voice made me want to reach across the seat and shake him.
"Are you going to hurt me?"
He didn't answer that one right away. His jaw tightened, a muscle working near his ear, and he flipped a page he clearly wasn't reading.
"That's not a no."
"It's not a yes either." He finally looked at me, something unreadable behind his eyes. "I don't know you yet. I'm not in the habit of making promises I can't guarantee to a stranger in the back of a car."
"Where is this house? Do I get a phone? Can I call my mother? Does she even know where I am right now? Does anyone know, or did Renzo just hand me off like a package with no forwarding address?" The questions came faster than I meant them to, tumbling out now that the shock from the ballroom had burned off enough to leave room for something sharper underneath it, my hands twisting in my lap, my knee bouncing against the leather seat. "What happens tomorrow. Is this permanent? Is there an end date? Does the paper I signed say anything about when this is over, because nobody explained a single thing to me tonight, and I am done being the only person in this car who doesn't understand what's happening to her?"
He watched me through all of it, his eyes tracking over my face like he was searching for something specific and couldn't quite locate it. I kept talking anyway, refusing to let the silence win, until he finally reached forward and tapped twice against the glass partition. It rose without a sound, sealing us off from the driver.
"You don't get to go quiet on me now," I said before he could retreat fully to whatever wall he was building. "You bought a person tonight. The least you owe me is an actual conversation instead of a folder."
"Fine." Something shifted in his voice, lower now, rougher at the edges. "Ask me the one question you actually want answered, instead of throwing ten of them at me at once hoping one sticks."
I stopped, caught off guard by the directness of it, and for a moment the only sound in the car was the low hum of the engine.
"Am I going to survive this?"
He went very still, not the stillness of a man ignoring a question, but the stillness of a man caught off guard by one, his eyes narrowing slightly.
"Survive," he repeated.
"That's what I asked."
"In the last six minutes," he said slowly, "you haven't once tried to talk your way out of this. Most people in your position spend the whole ride negotiating. Bargaining. Crying, sometimes, or making promises they think will buy them something."
"I'm not most people, and I'm not an i***t. I know exactly what kind of leverage you and Renzo have over me tonight, and I know screaming at you in the back of a car won't undo a single signature on whatever I signed without reading it." I held his gaze. "So no, I'm not negotiating. I'm furious, and I'm scared, and I'm asking you a direct question because I'd rather know what I'm dealing with than waste what little control I have left performing panic for your benefit."
Something flickered across his face, closer to respect than anything I'd seen from him yet.
"I don't know yet." His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth before returning to mine. "That's the truth. I don't know."
I reached for the folder, meaning only to move it out from between our knees, and his hand came down over mine at the exact same moment, his fingers closing briefly over my knuckles before either of us thought to pull away. His hand was warm, warmer than I expected from a man who'd spent the whole ride so cold, and for three full seconds neither of us moved, my hand trapped beneath his against the leather, his breath audibly catching before he drew his hand back like the contact had burned him.
"Apologies," he said, though nothing in his voice sounded apologetic.
We passed beneath a streetlight a moment later, the glow catching my face at an angle, lighting me fully for the two or three seconds it took the car to pass beneath it. He went rigid beside me. When I turned my head his eyes were fixed on me with an intensity that had nothing left of business in it, his lips slightly parted.
"What?" I said because the silence had gone on a beat too long.
"Nothing." He turned toward the window, his jaw working twice before he spoke again. "A trick of the light."
"That wasn't a trick of the light, and we both know it. Tell me what's actually going on, or stop acting surprised when I don't trust a single thing you say."
"I said it's nothing." Sharper this time, and he seemed to hear it himself, exhaling slowly before adding, quieter, "Forgive me. It's been a long night."
I didn't believe him, but I let it drop for now, filing the moment away the same way I'd filed the layout of that back room, information rather than comfort. We didn't speak again for several miles, until the car slowed for a curve lit by a security light mounted high on a distant gate, and in that new wash of pale light his eyes found my face again. This time he didn't look away.
"Turn toward me," he said quietly, and when I hesitated his hand rose and closed gently around my chin, tilting my face into the light. His thumb rested just below my jaw.
"You look," he said, voice dropping to barely above a whisper, "exactly like."
He stopped.
I watched the exact second the name reached the back of his throat and died there, his lips parting around the first sound of it before something in him slammed shut so hard I felt it through his fingers. A tremor passed through his hand before he let go of my face entirely and turned back toward the window.
"Meg," he said finally, so quiet I almost missed it.
"Who's Meg?" I asked directly, unwilling to let the moment close the way he clearly wanted it to. "You don't get to say a name like that and then go silent on me. Not tonight. Not after everything else you've already refused to explain."
He didn't answer. The car fell into a silence so complete I could hear my own heartbeat, and neither of us spoke again for the rest of the drive, though I kept my eyes on him the whole way, refusing to be the one who looked away first.
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