Chapter 11: Friday

I looked at my father's two men, and then past them at the penthouse door I had just closed.

Rhodri was asleep behind it.

If I screamed, he would come out in his shirtsleeves.

Augustus's men would put him on the floor of his own hallway.

Then my father would call the police and say a trespasser had assaulted two guests.

Chisolm would be waiting in the lobby with a lawyer.

I knew exactly how Augustus thought.

I had learned it at the dinner table.

"All right," I said.

His smile wobbled.

"All right?"

"I'll come home. I'll wear what you want."

I walked past him to the elevator.

"Cornelius is the only man who'll take me. You made sure of that."

He followed me down thirty-one floors without a word, which was what I wanted.

A man who is waiting for a trick does not check for a note.

I spent Thursday in my old bedroom in Lake Forest, behind a door with a new lock.

I used the day.

I took the flip phone out of my bra, where it had ridden since Monday.

I wrote one line to Leontine.

Don't let him come to Evanston. Midnight.

She wrote back almost immediately.

I'm not letting him do anything. He's reading the same note on the floor of his study.

Then, a minute later, Juliana, he's furious. In the good way.

I put my forehead on the cool glass of the window and laughed until it hurt.

By Friday evening my stepmother was zipping me into the dress.

I had slid the flip phone into the silk of the bodice, flat against my ribs.

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