Page 25

CHAPTER 25

I don’t dare touch anything in the hotel bathroom, afraid I’ll smudge the gold fixtures. If I’d come up with an escape plan sooner, I’d be so far away from here. Even if that far away was also far from Marcus.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I grip the edge of the counter to pull my thoughts back down to the cold, marble floor under my bare feet. The overhead vent blows stale, icy air on my exposed shoulders and my gaping, tattered heart slumps inside me. It beat slower and slower last night in Chef Torres’s kitchen where the ghost of my old dream trailed me, confused and misplaced. Three months ago, my heart would have leaped at all the exciting possibilities. Now without Marcus, it barely beats.

Chef Torres is as detached as the steam billowing above the grills in her sleek kitchen where I’m supposed to spend my summer. No amount of hiding in her kitchen will change the fact that every night during my summer, I’ll have to return to the apartment Nick secured after Chef Torres offered me the internship.

When we got back to the hotel after a late dinner, Nick staggered to the couch and passed out and I’d hurried to my room, locking the door behind me. All night, I watched time move across the ceiling, afraid I’d hear the doorknob wiggle, wishing I had the guts to take my things and run. But Nick was between me and the door.

This morning, he’d told me through my closed bedroom door that he had meetings most of the day but would be back for the gala. I’d thought for that spark of a moment the gods had answered my prayers. I’d stared at the box of jewelry and pictured myself disappearing with it, but my hope vanished when Nick added that Chaz and Xander would be here all day if I needed anything.

I turn back to the vanity mirror, my eyes tripping over the selection of makeup Nick bought for me. I don’t want to cover up anything; I want him to see exactly how I feel about him. No more pretending.

The heaviness in my chest tugs me down to the padded bench, and I slide my phone off the counter and clutch it to my chest, the metal frigid against my bare sternum. All I have to do is call Marcus. He’s begged. I’ve dialed, but never called. I open the messages he’s sent for the past ten days and scroll to the final one, blinking through tears.

It’s been a long day. Don’t know what day it is. When you left, everything just kind of stopped. I was late for school today because I couldn’t get out of bed. Just laid there and stared at the fan. It was too dark. My dad assaulted me with questions yesterday after I said I didn’t want Chinese. Said he doesn’t like the dark circles under my eyes. Asked if I was on something. I was last week. Not sure how long withdrawals last. The way everything in my chest feels right now tells me they’re not leaving anytime soon. Johnny texted an hour ago and said he doesn’t like how many times I’ve avoided hanging this week. Audrey hates that I canceled our lunch date but eating makes me wanna puke. My AP history teacher didn’t like my final paper. Know what I don’t like? That I used to like my life but don’t anymore. Know what else? That you’re gone and I have no idea why. I also don’t like feeling this mad at you. I don’t like how much you’ve messed me up. Don’t like myself for letting you. I hate that I have memories. That I make up conversations with you in my head so I won’t forget your voice. Hate that I’m not strong enough to delete your texts or voicemails from when things were good. Know how many texts we averaged every day? 410. Averaged. One day, we sent over 1,000. Someday maybe I’ll delete all 20,960 but I hate thinking about that, too. Just can’t hate you, no matter how hard I try. Too much love I don’t know what to do with now. I’ll start working on that so in 50 years, maybe I’ll finally love something besides you.

His words slam against my heart like someone pounding fists against a locked door. I read one text after the other, tears sliding down my face, then I click on my voicemail. Twelve messages stare back at me; they’ve almost killed me every time I’ve listened. Hopefully they’ll finish me this time. The last thing I’ll hear is Marcus’s voice. I scroll to the second to last and close my eyes. Leaning back against the wall, I grip the phone with one hand, the other pushing my heart back into place.

“If anyone ever tells me I’m too young to fall in love, I’ll freaking lose it.” I pause the message, let his voice melt over all the painful, aching places inside me.

“I didn’t even recognize myself this morning. Don’t look like myself, don’t feel like myself, and honestly…I don’t wanna be myself right now. I know it sounds dramatic, but I’d rather be anything than without you. You’re the one thing I want. I got up and left class today because someone said May—like the month—and I broke. Don’t even know how to do this. Maybe you don’t wanna work it out, but…” His voice drifts away and when he speaks again, it quivers. “I need you.” He pauses again, letting out a long, weary breath, and I picture him sitting on the edge of his bed, staring into his dark room. “We can’t just leave things this way. I can’t, anyway.”

I can’t either. But I have to. So I’ll go downstairs and pretend with Nick with Marcus’s words in my ears.

I scroll to the last voicemail, push play, close my eyes. Silence, rustling. I picture Marcus running his hand through his hair, elbows on his knees, head hung. Then his voice crackles: “ I love you, Mei.” A click. The end of that world.

Nick’s invisible leash tugs me through the sprawling ballroom dripping with chandeliers and wrapped tightly in gold wallpaper. I’m nothing but a pet dressed in satin and diamonds. Fancy pets on fancy leashes want the same thing ordinary pets want: freedom.

My dress clings to me, and I want to rip it off so I can breathe. The diamonds hanging from my neck and ears are so heavy, the only comfortable position is looking down at my crystal hors d’oeuvres plate. They’ll have to come off when I run.

I scan the room for exits, sip the bubbling champagne. It mixes with the acid in my throat and almost erupts out of me and all over the starched tuxes and flowy gowns draped on women who laugh through their noses, their eyelashes reaching out to scratch me if I get too close. But I won’t. I’ll slip out one of the four exit doors. My only hope of that is to make Nick as drunk as he was last night.

“So you’re the lucky plus one for Mr. Chao.” A woman twice my age wearing a dress that looks like a vampire cape gives me a toothy smile that fades as she inspects the diamond necklace glittering on my exposed sternum. “We were wondering who he’d bring tonight.” She tilts her head, waiting for my answer.

I smile and shrug once, wondering what I’m supposed to say to this woman who sees Nick as some kind of prize, but he kisses both her cheeks and beams at her.

“Yes, this is my fiancé, Mei Li. Mei Li, Rosa.”

The bubbles from the small sip of champagne in my stomach multiply and I want to throw them up along with fear and disgust but instead, I pretend to take a sip of champagne and the conversation flows between her and Nick. I nod in all the right places as servers in short, shimmery dresses circle our group, taking empty glasses, replacing them with full ones. One of the girls reaches for mine but I hold it up so she can see it’s still full. I need something to hold onto. But then our eyes meet, and I freeze, my throat dry. Su Ling. She hesitates, then turns away, and my fingers choke the glass stem.

My eyes follow her from where I’m frozen in the crowded ballroom, people drifting around me like water around a glacier. She has the same, faint birth mark on her lower jaw and even with bleached blonde hair, I know her face .

My eyes follow Su Ling from table to table, her short skirt climbing her legs as she bends and twists. She says something to a group of men whose eyes are focused everywhere but her face until one of them stands and takes her hand.

They walk toward me, and my heart trips over itself like I should meet her halfway or run the other direction. But as they pass, I open my mouth, stiffening when her hand catches mine and slips something hard against my palm. I look down at a keycard and a note scrawled on the back of a cocktail menu: Meet me in 2803 before the toast.

I look up in time to see her slip out of the room with the man. People are looking for her. Detective Miller. She didn’t run away to work here. She’d never leave her kids. Why would she choose this? Maybe she’s running from something. Or someone.

I hurry toward the door she walked through but someone grabs the back of my arm and whirls me around. I almost lose balance on my stilettos, but Nick’s firm grip keeps me upright, his face in mine.

“Where’d you sneak off to?” Waves of sharp, tangy liquor jab at me and I hold my breath.

“I got lost in the crowd. This place is so big.”

His eyes shift and he pulls me closer. “Perhaps we should get lost together, right after the toast.”

“I’m not feeling great. My stomach is upset,” I lie, praying he’ll believe me. “Would it be okay if I go lie down for a bit?” I pause, pulling all the strength I can find to say the rest through a weak smile. “Maybe I’ll feel better after the toast…”

Nick squeezes my arm tighter, sucks in a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. My stomach churns until panic is swept away by hope and relief when he hands me the keycard.

The thought of running and not meeting Su Ling pounds through my head as I slip inside the dark hotel room, counting the silent, frantic seconds. I shouldn’t waste time; I should be running. But why is Su Ling here and what if she needs help and I’m all she has?

On second 683, she pushes through the door, frantically locking it behind her and turning to me. “What are you doing here, Mei Li?” Her eyes are all over my face in the gray light.

Mine go from her platinum hair to her sunken eyes. She looks like she’s aged forty years in the past three weeks. “I’m…here to meet a chef. For an internship. Nick set it up.”

She swallows, her fists clenching at her side. “I was afraid—”

“Why are you here?” I rush, my whisper harsh against the stillness of the hotel room. “The police are looking for you.”

“I know,” she nods, her neck tense.

“Then why haven’t you told them where you are?”

“Nick threatened my boys.” Her words come out in a strained puff of air, her eyes piercing mine. “I overheard information I shouldn’t have. At the restaurant. He said he would hurt my boys if I didn’t do as he said. But we don’t have time to talk about this. Just know I’m not the only missing woman here, and if you don’t leave, you’ll be one of us. You can’t tell anyone you saw me. Get your things and meet me on parking level 2. A car will be waiting. Stay away from Nick.”

I search her eyes. “Why does he want you here?”

She grabs my arm. “Whatever you’re thinking, you’re probably right. Get as far away from him as you can.” She lets go of me and rushes to the door, pulling it open. “Five minutes.”

I stare at her, then slip out of the room and take off my shoes, running down the hallway to the elevator. I jab the button until the door finally opens, but a hand grabs me from behind and whips me around. Hot, sharp fear flares up my throat when my eyes collide with Chaz’s.

“What are you doing?” His fingers bite into my arm and my heart claws up my throat, choking any words as I search his eyes for a hint of what he plans to do with me. “Answer me,” he hisses, tightening his grip.

I go on tiptoe to relieve the pressure on my arm. “I was headed to my room…I’m not feeling well.”

“You’re on the wrong floor.”

“I…got lost.”

“With Su Ling? Nick won’t be kind when he finds out.”

My pulse jumps under Chaz’s fingers and I struggle against his grip. “Let go!”

But he pushes me back against the hard wooden wall. “I should let him deal with both of you.”

His words strike at me, igniting my anger. “Do it,” I spit. “But I’ll tell him about you and Xander.”

“What about us?” Chaz narrows his eyes but not enough to disguise the flicker of fear.

“I heard your conversation in the room.”

Chaz gets in my face. “Hard to talk with a slit throat.”

I tilt my head to expose more of my neck. “Go ahead. You’d be doing me a favor.”

He shoves away from me, turning his back, hands on his head before whirling back to me. “If you breathe a word of anything you heard, you’re dead.”

I clench my jaw, drag in a breath through my nose. “I won’t say anything.” My voice is thin and strained, like the risk I’m taking with him. “But you have to promise the same.”

Chaz’s breathing quickens and I tense, but he punches the wall beside me, and I flinch, the overhead light fixtures rattling. “You’re on your own,” he growls, “and you better not get caught.”

He takes off down the hall and I let out the breath cowering in my throat before pressing the button with a shaky hand. When the doors open, I dash inside and punch the 46, flinching as the beeps grow louder and shriller with each passing floor. 43. 44. 45.

When the elevator stops, I hurl myself out of it and down the hall toward the room, the carpet coarse and unforgiving under my feet. I swipe the keycard and rush inside, pressing my forehead against the closed door. My breathing matches the frantic speed of my mind and I try to slow it until a voice slices the silence.

“There you are.”

I whirl around, my palms pressed against the door behind me for support as blood plunges to my feet.

Nick sits on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, arms stretched along the back of it. Black on black on black. I lock my shaky knees.

“I was getting worried.” His voice is smooth, his eyes sludgy as they sweep my body.

I press my toes into the cold marble.

“I promised you some fun after the toast. But maybe a little trivia first. Like where, oh where, has my little Mei Li been?” His words tumble over each other, but the sharp point of his voice impales me. “Or did I interrupt an important phone call with the boy?”

I shake my head so fast I lose balance and grab the door handle. “No—I…threw up. In a planter. I had to clean myself up. Too much champagne. First time.”

He laughs dryly, but it drifts away like dust. “Why must you always be so defiant?”

I should plead for mercy. Beg, cry, do whatever he asks so I can stay whole, but his twisted face and words wind something inside me that uncoils in rage, shoving words out of my mouth. “I’m not your pet. You can’t cage me.”

He laughs more black into the darkness as he stands and stumbles up the two steps from the sunken living area, swaying across the marble toward me. “That’s unfortunate. I prefer my women caged.” He reaches for the wall, and I throw frantic words at him.

“I know what you do.” I crank the door handle but he’s a dark smear as he rushes me, slamming his hand against the door before his body crashes against mine.

“You have no idea what I can do.”

I tense as he fists my hair with one hand, the other slithering to my backside, yanking me against him. “You could have had the most glamorous cage, but now, I’ll strip it bare. No internship. No school. Nothing but you playing whatever role I give you. Doing whatever I want you to do.”

I squirm in his grasp, but his hand tightens. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I always get what I want.” He presses his mouth against my ear, hot and sticky, and I squeeze my eyes shut as he pins me against the door with his hips. “Every last bit,” he snarls, tugging my dress down.

I shove him, but he pins me tighter, his mouth forcing mine open so hard I thrash and dig my fingernails into his face. His hands fly over mine, but he loses balance and grabs at me as he falls, catching my earring and ripping it out.

I scream and grab my ear, warm blood pooling in my palm as I’m dragged to the floor. Tears flood my vision when I yank my leg from under him and crawl away, leaving bloody handprints on the floor. My dress peels off me as I scramble toward my room, but he catches me around the waist and jerks me backward, his rough hands gripping my stomach.

Rage and terror explode in a scream, and I kick as he drags me to his room and throws me on the bed. Rolling me to my back, he pins my hands above my head.

“I was going to ask your little boy how you taste but I’ll just find out for myself.”

When his mouth slams against mine again, I shove my knee into his groin. He curses and jerks away enough that I heave myself against him, knocking him onto his side before crawling off the bed.

I’m halfway out of the room when he grabs my waist and jerks me backward, the air lurching from my lungs with a grunt.

He spins me around, hurls me back on the bed, straddles me. His hand clamps over my mouth, the other tightening around my neck until he chokes my scream, and my eyes burn. I claw at his hands as blackness edges my sight and a static buzz drones through my head until his hand connects with my face.

The world slows, and acidic fear drips down my throat. My chest tightens with a trapped scream, my head vibrating with its echo. I use my waning energy to focus on the one thing that makes me feel everything but fear.

I’m at Marcus’s. His leg bounces to some awful hip hop song. He’s drawing a diagram on my arm. I laugh, then laugh harder when he protests. I’ve messed up his masterpiece. But he doesn’t care. He looks up at me. One glance sweeps away all thought and leaves only feelings.

My chest aches, and I struggle for air, but it’s too thick with dread. I can’t breathe…Fear pounds at me. There’s nothing between me and Nick. No—I’m not here. Not here.

When I was a child, mama told me about reincarnation. When we die, our bodies turn to ash, but our souls live on and, how good we are in one life determines the consequences for our next. But I always wondered what happens if your soul dies first.

My soul is dying. I hear it. I thought it would sound like Marcus’s voice since he keeps it alive, but…it’s…shattering glass. Crushing weight. Silence.

My eyes fly open, and I gasp for air but choke in darkness and cologne. Nick’s body slumps to my side, pinning my legs, and my eyes dart to Su Ling standing above me with a broken vase in her shaking hands, her eyes panicked.

She steps back, drops the shard of glass, and I wrestle my legs from under Nick and scramble off the bed. But my eyes land on his pants around his knees, blood pooling under his head on the white comforter.

Su Ling tears me away from the room. “Put on your dress, I’ll grab your things. Your ride’s here.”

She runs to my room, and I stumble to the living room, grab my dress off the floor, quaking as I struggle into it.

When Su Ling returns, she’s holding my duffle bag. “Follow me.”

She leads me down the hallway until we reach a set of maintenance elevators. She swipes a keycard, and when the door opens, pulls me inside. We stop on P2 and rush out the elevator and through a double metal door.

A car is waiting for us in the parking garage, and she opens the door for me while she gives the driver hurried instructions. Her eyes skitter across mine before she closes my door and disappears inside the building.

The driver pulls out of the garage and looks at me through the rearview mirror, his long, wavy hair ruffling in the breeze coming through his open window. “You okay, love?” His British accent smooths the jagged edges of my fear, his eyes intent before he focuses on turning the corner when the light turns green. He puts down his visor against the setting sun and asks again. “Do you need me to take you to hospital? There’s one a few blocks away.”

I dab at dried blood crusting my nostrils but shake my head too fast and metal shards fly around inside my skull. I hold my head. “No. I just need to get home, please.” I touch my neck to hold myself together but the diamonds still dangling from it get in the way, cold under my palm. I reach for the earrings, hissing against the pain. There’s only one earring; the other is somewhere on the hotel room floor .

He glances at me through the mirror again, then nods and talks to the windshield. “You can borrow my jacket if you’d like.” He grabs it from the passenger seat and holds it over his shoulder.

I ease forward, holding my ripped dress up, and slide my arms into his jacket, wrapping it tightly around me like it will erase the marks and bruises rising on my skin. “Thank you.”

He nods. “Take a load off, yeah? Looks like you could use some rest. If you need to stop, just say so and I’ll pop off the motorway.”

I whisper another thank you past the lumps, knots, and raw spots in my throat. What would it feel like to “take a load off”? If only I could take off everything that happened tonight and hurl it out the window, watch it bounce down the freeway, get crushed under semi-truck tires. Smash against concrete barriers.

Panic and fear tangle in my chest, writhing as they grow bigger, overtaking me like sticky, black syrup inside me. What did Nick do to me?

I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on all the sore spots. My cheek…neck…angry carpet burns on my stomach…rising bruises on my back from falling on the marble floor. I swallow, not daring to let my focus move lower. But my knees are stiff, bruised. Nothing between my stomach and knees…between my legs.

I snap my eyes open, tense, focus again. But nothing. I shift in my seat. Still nothing. He didn’t get that far. I send a silent prayer of thanks to Su Ling and unzip my bag, pulling out a pair of underwear and shimmy them on. The worst didn’t happen. But it still could. Nick could find me. I can’t go home or to Lin’s. I can’t go to Marcus’s. I should have left when I had the chance—skipped meeting Su Ling and run. Now I’ll be followed, stalked. Caged. Su Ling, too.

Unless…Nick gets caged first.

I fumble in my bag for my phone, grateful Su Ling threw my clutch in my duffel. Clicking it on, I open a browser and find the right number, then hit send with stiff, cold fingers, holding my breath.

Two rings later, a tired woman answers. “San Francisco Police Department.”

“I know where you can find Su Ling Wang,” I blurt before I can think about what I’m doing. “And other missing women from San Francisco.”