Page 15

MARISELA

I clicked my bedroom door closed, even as everything inside me screamed to slam it, and glared at the pink-on-pink that stared back at me. Until a bright-red package on the center of my bed caught my eye.

It wasn’t there when I was summoned for dinner, and I sure as shit didn’t leave it there myself. Which meant someone had been in my room. And I had a good idea as to who that someone might be.

I should have put on a hazmat suit and tossed the little box back out the window it likely came from—there was no other way in or out of here.

If there was one, I would have found it a long time ago.

But I was the first to admit that both curiosity and boredom had me closing the distance and swiping it up instead.

The paper was thick, expensive , the tape cut with precision rather than torn as I peeled back the first layer to examine the white box underneath.

I could only hope that if it was a bomb, it would take my father out with me.

Otherwise I had no doubt he’d use my untimely demise to press whatever bullshit agenda he had in the works right now.

I could already see my face plastered across every news outlet, the poster child of using fear to make rich men even richer .

I removed the lid and pushed the tissue paper aside, and before I realized what I was doing, my fingertip was tracing along the hand-stitching of the red leather mask, a much more feminine version of the one the shadow man in the alley was wearing.

If this was his way of asking me to be his girlfriend, he should have picked something a bit shinier… and sharper. Like the pocket knife he’d failed to return.

I glanced back towards the window again, even knowing he wasn’t there because some part of me could just sense that he wasn’t, and lifted the mask from the box. A little notecard fluttered out with it before settling face-up on my pink comforter.

An address and a time. Nothing else. Apparently I was surrounded by people who didn’t know what a question mark was or how to properly use one in a sentence. Demands were second nature, much more convenient for the types of men not used to hearing the word no .

One side of my mouth tipped up into a grin as I pressed the mask to my face, inhaling the scent of the polish until I was feeling lightheaded and giggly.

Good thing I was used to making those types of men regret forcing me to say yes .