Page 43

ADRIAN

H er eyes were haunting. A chocolaty brown with flecks of honey color no photo could capture right.

Her hair long and dark, though it was usually pulled tight and piled high on her head, and her smile tense.

The kind of smile that held back far too many secrets with a taut jaw that suggested she was afraid of them tumbling free.

My mother was a stranger to me, a fairy tale I both idolized and despised over the years.

But this girl wasn’t her. She just looked like her.

For a brief moment when my brain made the mistake of filling in all the holes with something familiar.

Like a childhood memory turned nightmare.

Except it was hard to remember shit when you never met the woman.

“Adrian, are you okay?” Trixie whispered as she took a blurry step in my direction .

“Yeah… no…” I lifted a hand to my head, rubbing at my temples as I tried to orient myself. “How’d you get in here?”

The girl tugged on my sleeve, urging me to stand as she dragged me off the floor and over to the other side of the room.

Then I watched in stunned silence as she used all seventy pounds of her body weight to push my bed away from the wall.

By the time she was finished, I was staring down at a rolled-up portion of the area rug and an open trap door.

“Don’t tell Mama…” Trixie looked at me from over a shoulder, those brown eyes wide and pleading. “I heard a bunch of banging and I got worried something happened to you…”

Didn’t know why she gave a damn about me.

Sure, I was friendly with the kid’s mother.

The way you were friendly with someone who shared the same hell you were cursed to live inside.

You didn’t know much about ?em other than the fact they were just as fucked as you were.

Guess that could be comforting in a way.

Not that I ever really stopped to think about it…

I didn’t have time to think about it now either.

I braced a palm on a bedpost as I peered into the square-shaped hole in the ground. I couldn’t make out the bottom. Just a long stretch of blackness that told me the tunnel went deep. And far. Under the entirety of Prescott Estates, if I were to hazard a guess.

I sucked a steadying breath into my lungs, forcing it out before glancing back to the girl. “Where’s that go?”

Trixie shrugged, twisting her yellow sundress between her hands while gnawing on her bottom lip. “All over. Mama said we were only supposed to use it if Mr. Prescott came looking for us.”

Tate, not my father. The old man didn’t have it in him to go around skirt-chasing downstairs anymore. Mostly because it was downstairs . And the fucker’s failing health couldn’t handle all that cardio. Install a freight elevator and I was sure Daddy Dearest would be back at it again.

Though Justine’s girls were young even for his tastes.

Trixie was almost twelve, small for her age, a little na?ve too.

In and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals for most of her life.

No one seemed to know exactly what was wrong with her, and she was locked up in that room too much for me to try to figure it out for myself.

Not that her mother would let anyone with Prescott blood in their veins touch the kid.

For reasons that didn’t need mentioning.

And Alice? The girl was sixteen going on thirty.

At least she thought so. She was also exactly how my brother liked ?em.

Pliable, with the body of an adult and the mind of a child.

I saw the hypocrisy when it came to my infatuation with a certain schoolgirl. I just didn’t care. Shit wasn’t as easy for me as it was for Tate. I deserved to be selfish once in a while.

I also wasn’t attracted to Marisela because of her age. Because of a power dynamic that meant she couldn’t say no to me. I was attracted to her because of how much of a challenge it was to manipulate her to say yes . To scream it. Over and over.

Trixie tugged on my sleeve again, breaking me from the kind of thoughts I shouldn’t be having in the same room as a child.

“Your head’s bleeding.” She lifted her chin to look up at me. One eyebrow raised like this kid was somehow judging my life choices.

She was also wrong. I wasn’t bleeding. Anymore. Coagulation set in days ago. What I did have was a large door-shaped indent in my scalp that probably wouldn’t heal right without a few strategically placed stitches.

I scraped some of the dried blood off my skin before gesturing for Trixie to climb down first. She got herself here. I could only assume she could get us both there . Outside this room, if not outside these walls.

It took Trixie less than a minute to slide down the metal ladder, and I shimmied the trap door back in place before following her. I’d have to worry about covering my tracks later, because there was no way my ass was fitting under the bed if I tried to reposition the furniture how it was.

A few quick turns, as I held on the wall to keep myself upright, and then we were popping up on the other side of the servants’ quarters.

Most of the old man’s employees lived onsite, and it wasn’t because Tate Prescott was the generous type.

It was because he liked holding it over your head.

Controlling all aspects of your livelihood.

A do as you’re told or you’ll be out on your ass sort of thing.

It also kept you close enough to answer his every beck and call at a moment’s notice.

I left the troublemaker to her own devices as I slipped out Justine’s bedroom door, glancing down each side of the corridor before creeping towards the kitchen. As much as I wanted out of this house, I needed something in my stomach first or I wouldn’t make it past the threshold.

My fingers had just closed around the handle of the pantry door when a solid palm slammed down on my shoulder, freezing me in my tracks.

“Where have you been, boy?” Prescott’s voice boomed from behind me. He didn’t care to wait for an answer before grabbing me by the back of the neck and guiding me towards the stairs. “Borrow one of Tate’s old suits. We have a special guest coming for dinner tonight and the whole family’s invited.”