Page 53 of The Crowned Garza

“Hell.”

“Sounds cozy.” Then it dawns on me... “Wait, does this go up to your loft?”

As if he thinks I’m slow for just figuring it out, he merely blinks at me.

“Oh my God.” I groan from stale embarrassment. “That’swhy I didn’t hear you get in that day...”

The elevator whispers to a stop and deposits us into another small, dark room. Saint touches a spot on the wall and that whole rotation thing happens again, leaving us in another room. The pantry.

Damn. I probably should’ve snooped more when I was here.

Following him out into the loft, I spot Indy lazing on one of the couches. At the sound of our entrance, she lifts her head and yawns. She then squints her eyes at us, as if annoyed by our presence, leaps off the couch, and struts to her room. Half a minute later, her door slams shut.

It gets a guffaw out of me. “She likes it better when no one’s around, huh?”

“Sometimes I get home and find her curled up in my bed, in the bathroom sink, in the closet… But once she sees me, she’s gone.”

“I think she just enjoys playing hard to get,” I muse. “Like her owner.”

Ignoring me, he pulls a stool beneath him at the peninsula, then gets out the takeout containers and pops the lids.

“You wanted to eat, eat,” he orders me.

Why so moody? Ugh.“Feed me.”

Eyeing me, he forks some saffron rice into his mouth. “Something wrong with your hands?”

“They’re tired from peeling potatoes and pitting garlic all day.”

He chews slowly, his amber gaze roaming my face.

What are you searching for, my beautiful fraud?

His gaze goes dark before it drops to my plate. He forks off a piece of lamb, adds a bit of roasted carrot, then feeds it to me.

If my mouth wasn’t busy chewing, I’d be grinning. There’s nothing quite as heady as when Saint gives in to me. Such sweet, sweet victory each time I get him to do something he doesn’t want to.

“How are things at the new job?” he asks.

“Weird. In that it’s a new job but still my old job, if that makes sense? I was thinking of leaving. But tonight my boss told me she’d been testing me and promoted me to line.”

He feeds me another forkful of food. “That’s good...?”

“It should’ve been. But, eh. Maybe if they didn’t bum me out for six months. I think I’m just at a breaking point with this industry.” I shrug. “I might wake up feeling differently tomorrow, though.”

“Hm.” He feeds me another mouthful. “You’ll be all right.”

“Who knows about this loft?”

“You. Tor. My Hands.”

Huh?“Your Hands? What does that mean?”

He pauses, looks at me under those dark, long lashes for several contemplative beats, then tentatively explains, “Back home, we have…servants. There’s a family that owes our family a large debt, dating back several centuries. A binding blood agreement was made back then. Every member of the indebted family, for the next seven generations to come, is to serve seven years of indentured servitude to our family. That’s what a ‘Hand’ is.”

“Seriously? In this day and age?”

“There’s a lot to it,” he says in a tone that expresses he has no inclination to explain further. “But my assigned Hands are Sofia and Paloma. When I was moving here, they had less than a year left on their servitude contract and I had every intention of leaving them behind. But they begged to have their contracts extended to come with me. Not uncommon. The Spinellis are an extremely sick and screwed-up family, so the younger women are always looking for ways to escape.”