Page 31 of XOXO, Little Butterfly (The Storyteller’s Bodyguard #2)

Birdie

The light filtering through the curtains isn’t warm.

It’s sterile, fluorescent—hotel light. Am I sleeping?

Have I slept at all? I’m awake before I open my eyes.

My skull throbs. I don’t need a bandage anymore, but the headache is still there, a dull, pulsing reminder that I fell. Or imagined I did. Or…

I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and reach for my phone. Not there. Right. Tristan took it. My head throbs more painfully. I pop a pill and get up.

When I crack open the door, Brandon’s massive frame blocks it like a wall of muscle. He doesn’t flinch. “Good morning.”

No. “Where’s he?” I don’t care about my hoarse voice or messy hair. I need that asshole to give me my phone back.

“Raiford.”

“What?” That wakes me up faster than caffeine. “No. No. What’s he doing there? Does he think he can just go there and visit Shane, without me, without even telling me?”

“He didn’t say, but I don’t think he’s there to visit an inmate. You need to apply first and get approved before you can, which takes several days, if not weeks. It’d be such a waste of time.”

The kid is right. “How do you know so much about visitation rules?”

His eyes flick to the hallway behind him for a split second. Then he shrugs, too fast, uncharacteristically casual. “I was a private detail for a guy whose brother got locked up. Same routine. Applications, background checks, fingerprinting.”

That’s the first time I catch Brandon in a lie.

I step forward, testing his boundary. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even shift his weight.

But it’s too late. I know a made up story when I hear one.

There’s no hiding it from me now. I’m not interested in the reason or the truth behind it though, not at the moment.

What I’m looking for is leverage and distractions.

“Can you go into Tristan’s room and bring me my phone please? ”

“No.”

“No?”

“Mr. Morra said you’d ask for your phone and left strict instructions not to give it to you.”

Looks like Mr. Morra’s words are more intimidating than my leverage. “Fine. Can I use your phone?”

“To call Mr. Morra?”

Smartass. “Sure. I need to remind him of his promise never to let me out of his sight, which he broke, again.”

“Technically, he didn’t let you out of his sight. He has active surveillance and tracking apps on his phone. Also, I report security stats every fifteen minutes, and I’m keeping my eye on you at all times.”

“Your phone, Brandon.”

“Sorry. He said no calls or internet until he returns.”

No internet as well. That means my laptop is a dead piece of metal, too. No wonder Tristan never bothered to take it. “Did he also tell you to keep me locked in here like a prisoner?”

“He said to keep you safe.”

I smile, slow and sharp. “From whom exactly?”

No answer. Just silence and the faint tick of the hallway ventilation. I study his face. He’s good at keeping expressionless but not perfect. There’s a flicker of doubt in his eyes, a shadow of something deeper. Guilt?

“Take me for a walk, then,” I say. “Around the block. Down the hall. To the goddamn ice machine. I don’t care.”

“Can’t. I must stay here and guard not just you but our rooms. If your stalker is close or watching, the second I take you out or leave the floor unattended, he could make a move. This is a hotel. There’s staff and—”

I slam the door shut and haul myself back inside. Brandon is wired. Tristan’s little bitch. There’s no hope with him, but if I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll scream. I need to call Blake, and I need to know what the fuck Tristan is doing at the prison.

Glancing at the windows, I curse. Tristan has chosen these rooms on the fortieth floor on purpose. No escape whatsoever. What am I supposed to do? Wait for Tristan and beg for permission like I’m some wind-up doll?

I spy the landline by the minibar. It’s black with a golden trim, almost quaint—designed for pillow service and overpriced champagne, not desperation. Still, I snatch it up and dial.

Silence, no ringing. Then a soft click echoes. “Front desk,” a woman answers, chipper and professional.

“Hi,” I say, as calmly as I can. “Could you please connect me to an outside line?”

A pause. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Abel,” she says with the warmth of scripted politeness. “Outgoing calls are currently restricted from your suite.”

I stare at the receiver. “What?”

“I’ve been instructed that all outgoing calls from your suite must be approved by your security liaison. Is there someone on staff I can connect you with instead?”

My voice sharpens. “This is an emergency.”

“Then I can transfer you to security,” she offers quickly. “What’s—”

I slam the receiver back into the cradle before she finishes the sentence. The minibar hums beside me, its small screen reflecting the tick in my jaw. He’d thought of everything. Every goddamn thing.

There’s a knock on the door. I know it’s Brandon. I thought he’d barge in the second I held that phone. Now, I realize why he didn’t bother.

“Ma’am, please open the door,” he says.

“I’m not getting lectured by a twenty-one-year-old. Go ahead, report me to Tristan and return to guard the hall like the good do—boy you are. Do whatever he told you to do. I’m going to take a bath.”

In the bathroom, every muscle in my neck is tight. My scalp feels like it’s shrinking, and the pounding in temples intensifies.

I want to cry, but I don’t. Innocent, real tears always come with a price.

When I was little, I learned crying made everything worse. My mother couldn’t stand the sound of it. Not the hiccupping breath or the trembling lip or the stifled sniff. She said it grated on her nerves, that it scratched her ears like nails on glass.

Every time I cried, she’d slap me, and when the pain made me cry harder, she’d hit me some more. And more. And more. She wouldn’t rest until I passed out and couldn’t make any more “noise.”

“Shut up,” she’d say, like I was some broken radio she couldn’t unplug. “You’re too loud, you little bitch. Always whining. Why do you have to ruin every goddamn moment?”

That was how she saw me. I wasn’t the innocent baby she carried in her womb.

I wasn’t the life she was supposed to nurture and protect.

I was the bitch who ruined every goddamn moment of her life.

As if it was my fault that my father cheated on her when she was pregnant with me.

As if I was the one who got her too depressed to drink herself to sleep every night until she became a violent alcoholic.

As if I deserved to have my jaw shattered because I coughed too loud in the kitchen. As if I deserved to be locked outside on Christmas Eve because the snow globe my father gave me made a soft jingling noise that pissed her off.

As if I deserved to be held in the basement, bleeding and starving for days, because…

I keep my jaw clenched, my eyes dry, my voice calm. You learn not to cry when it costs you something every time. You train your body to obey. You shut your tear ducts like vault doors and freeze your face mid-panic.

Because tears are dangerous. Because silence is safer. Because, even today, when I know she’s rotting in a grave and can’t lay a hand on me anymore, somewhere deep down, I still believe someone might hit me if I make a sound.

I twist the gold handles and wait as hot water gushes out and fills the oversized marble tub. Steam fogs up the mirror. I strip and slide into the water before the tub even finishes filling. I need to disappear.

The thing about silence is that it builds. It expands in your chest until it becomes something else. Something that curls around your ribs like a wire, twisting tighter and tighter.

The heat wraps around me, too hot at first, then just right. It doesn’t soothe me, though. It stirs—like slipping into a bad memory.

Shane’s voice echoes through the steam like a heartbeat underwater. Not words. Just laughter. Sharp, cold, the kind he used when something ugly was about to happen and I didn’t yet know it.

My mother’s hands in a sink full of red water.

Her voice as she told me I was just like my father. A whore.

The crack of my bones.

The dripping of my own blood.

I dunk my head under to silence it, to shut it all up, to make it stop.

It’s quieter beneath the water, like I’m going into a different world or rather seeing the world differently.

A change of narrative. A story told from a different side.

But the water follows me. Fills my ears, my nose. My arms feel too heavy.

The steam rises, but I’m slipping lower, face tilted toward the ceiling, breath held too long.

My body finally goes still. I see and hear nothing now. No water. No light. No voices. Just—