His Dancer, His Chains novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Booth Night

Cora's POV

On Sunday night I went looking for a stapler and found myself in the wrong drawer.

Rafferty's study had a desk with six of them, and I had been told to use anything I needed.

The third drawer held a manila envelope with no label.

Inside were eight photographs, printed on glossy paper.

They were the board's pictures.

There I was in the blue light, bare-shouldered, my head thrown back.

There was the booth, and the curtain, and the man in the middle with a glass in his hand.

He had kept them.

I stood very still.

Behind me the door opened, and I heard his footsteps stop.

"Cora."

"You printed them."

"My lawyer did. For the file."

"You kept them in a drawer."

"I haven't looked at them."

"That's a lie." I turned around with the envelope in my fist.

"You've been through them. You know which one I look best in."

"That is not what..."

"I don't know what you are," I said. "You buy a woman's dance and keep your hands on a cushion."

"You marry her to save her, and you keep her picture in your desk."

"It's evidence."

"Of what? That you paid?"

He did not flinch.

"You laughed," I said.

I had not meant to say it.

It had been sitting in me for a week.

"I was at the curtain, waiting to go on. The girl before me was on that stage, and you laughed."

"You and the men at your table."

The color went out of his face.

"Yes."

"One of them bet on her. I heard him. I heard the whole table."

"Yes."

"I was scared out of my mind, with my sister in a hospital bed, and you were laughing."

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