She Discovers Their Secret, She Chooses Their World novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Cuff on My Wrist

The men admit they share women, Elsa arrives with a gift, and Sergio finds Élise locked into a cuff in his study.

"Why did you lock the door?" I asked.

I said it to Marco, but it was Sergio who answered.

"So you'd stay and hear it from us," he said, "and not from the housekeeper."

His thumb was still on my lip.

I turned my face out of his hand, and it cost me.

"Hear what?"

"What you saw," Marco said. "We share women. Sergio and I. We have for twenty years."

He said it as plainly as he'd tell me the weather.

My stomach turned over.

"Every night?" I asked.

"No," Sergio said. "Often."

"They leave before you wake," Marco said. "Sergio's rule. You eat breakfast with us, and that stays clean."

"Clean," I said.

The word came out of me sharp and ugly.

"You let me think you were my family," I said. "You sat across from me and asked about my homework."

"We are your family," Sergio said.

"Family doesn't do that on the sofa down the hall."

Neither of them answered.

Marco's face went carefully blank, and Sergio looked at me for a long moment with something I could not read.

"Was she the first one I've seen?" I asked. "Or just the first one I caught?"

"The first you caught," Marco said.

"How many were there?"

"Enough that you'd stop asking," he said, and it was not unkind.

I wanted to hit him, and I wanted to sit in his lap, and I hated that both were true.

"You're eighteen," Sergio said at last. "I won't lie to you tonight. That's all I'll promise."

"Unlock the door."

Marco looked at Sergio.

Sergio nodded once.

The key turned, and I went up the stairs without looking back.

I did not sleep.

In the morning the redhead was gone and the table was set for three.

Sergio read the paper with his coffee, and Marco buttered toast.

They were exactly as they had been every morning of my life.

I sat down and stirred my tea without drinking it.

"You didn't eat last night," Marco said.

"I wasn't hungry."

"Liar."

He reached across the table and closed his hand around my wrist.

His palm covered the whole of it, hot and heavy, with a ring of black ink around his thumb.

"Eat," he said.

I looked at his hand and could not look anywhere else.

I was thinking of that same hand wound into a stranger's hair.

My pulse was jumping under his thumb, and I knew he could feel it.

Neither of us let go.

Across the table Sergio had stopped turning pages.

"Careful, little one," Marco said, and a slow smile moved over his mouth. "You're staring."

I snatched my arm back and knocked over the milk.

Heat flooded my face.

Marco laughed, low in his chest, and handed me his napkin.

"Enough," Sergio said, but he wasn't looking at Marco.

He was looking at my mouth.

The doorbell rang before anyone spoke.

The housekeeper came in and announced, "Miss Elsa is here."

A tall woman with pale gold hair walked in as though she had been coming to this house for years.

She wore a camel coat, and she carried a flat gift box tied with silver ribbon.

"There she is," she said, and her smile was so warm I smiled back before I could stop myself. "The birthday girl."

"Elsa runs a club for us in the city," Sergio said. "She keeps our books and our secrets."

"And yours too, if you let me," Elsa said.

She set the box in front of me.

Inside was a scarf of dark green silk, the same shade as the stone at my throat.

"You'll want this in the city, I think," she said. "The wind off the river is cruel."

"It's beautiful," I said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Wear it."

She sat in the chair beside mine, poured my tea out of the pot, and slid it across to me exactly as I took it, with one sugar and no milk.

I hadn't told her.

I was too tired to wonder about it.

She tilted her head and studied my face.

"You have your mother's mouth," she said softly.

"You knew my mother?"

"Everyone in this business knew of Claire." She patted my hand. "Drink, sweetheart."

I drank.

Marco watched Elsa with his eyes narrowed, and Sergio was already standing.

"My study," Sergio told her. "Now."

They went out together.

I waited a minute, then two.

I told myself I was only going for a book.

The study door was closed but not locked.

The sofa had been straightened, and the lamp was off.

On the desk lay a leather case that I had never seen, its lid open.

Inside were four wide leather cuffs lined in black velvet, each one fixed to a short chain.

I picked one up.

It was heavier than I expected, and the velvet was soft against my palm.

I fastened it around my own wrist.

It fit.

"Take it off," Sergio said behind me.

I spun around.

He stood in the doorway alone, with Elsa's laughter drifting down the hall behind him.

He didn't look angry.

He looked hungry.

"Or don't," he said.

He shut the door and walked toward me.

I held up the wrist with the cuff on it, and it trembled.

"I didn't mean to," I said.

"Yes, you did."

He took my wrist in both hands and turned it over, and the chain clinked softly against the desk.

His thumb moved across the inside of my arm, where the skin was thinnest.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"No."

"Does it frighten you?"

"No," I said, and my voice cracked on it.

"Then why is your pulse going like that?"

I had no answer for him.

He leaned in until his breath touched my ear.

"Last chance to leave this room," he said.

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