Page 30 of Tarnished Reign

Shit, I let my temper get the better of me. Her face flushes when I say the words “alcoholic father.” The shutters come down. That blank, withdrawn expression fills her eyes again, drowning out the tentative joy.

I reach for her hand, but she pulls it back from me and settles both of them in her lap.

“You’re acting like a sociopath,” she says calmly. “I understand that this is just another day at the office for you, but this is all terrifying for me. I have no floor beneath me. Everything I had and was has been ripped away, and you just want me to eat a meal and pretend to be having a happy, normal time.”

Ouch. It’s not the first time I’ve been accused of being hard or cold, but sociopathic?

“Adriana, this is more complicated than you understand.” I keep my voice extremely low. I glance out the window again and look as far behind me as I can to make sure that the reassuring shape of the black SUV is there. It is. We were seated at a table where no one is within hearing distance, so I continue. Part of me is loath to share this information, but we’re at the point where she needs to know. “Dorian wasn't just keeping you for himself. He was going to sell you for a hell of a lot of money. Given that Dorian waved a hefty debt for you, we can assume he believes he’ll make that and more in return by selling you. Maybe even make millions.”

She bursts out laughing as if I've just told a great joke. I frown at her in confusion.

“His men mentioned something about me being sold. But millions? It’s ridiculous. Why would anyone sell me for that much money?” she asks, her arms spread wide as if she’s struggling to comprehend what I’m saying. “For what reason? I don't have any skills. Unless they want someone to tell them about great literature, or perhaps organize their library for them. Still,” she says, as if thinking about this seriously, “a librarian would be better for that. I guess I could clean, but I'm not the best. My mother used to say I was a scatty girl with my head in the clouds, and I didn't notice the mess I trailed everywhere around me. I'm not the best cook either.”

I stare at her in disbelief. Is she really this naive? I've never been to England, or anywhere in the United Kingdom, but I'm pretty sure they have television there, the news, and all modern communication methods. She can't have grown up not understanding how the world works. “You do have something you can offer.” I keep my tone even as I make the point.

“Oh, you mean my virginity.” She rolls her eyes. “God, men are weird. Why would anybody pay for that? Okay, so let's say they would. Dorian is going to sell me for my virginity. And he'll get what, maybe fifty thousand for it. I'm sure I saw something once where a student sold her virginity online, and she got fifty thousand. Maybe it was even a hundred thousand. So where do the millions come in? If he truly let Hana off a debt worth a small fortune for me and my silly virginity, he’s made a bad mistake.”

“I don't think it's just your virginity that the buyer would be after,” I say.

“I mean, what else? I'm not, you know, good at that stuff.”

Her face flushes again, and I swallow hard as the meaning of that stuff hits home. For some reason, her telling me that she's no good at sex, instead of making me question my obsession, only fuels it more. I'm now sitting at a table in one of the most expensive restaurants in Napa Valley with a raging hard-on.

“You're stunning,” I say. “Some men will pay a lot of money to own that beauty.”

“They wouldn't own it, though, would they?” She meets my gaze, and there's a spark of defiance there. I like that spark. It's better than the shutters that come down when she closes off. “I wouldn't let them own my supposed beauty.”

“Adriana, no offense, but with the kind of people we're talking about, you couldn't stop them from taking it.” Then I smirk. “Also stop it with the supposed beauty crap. You know how gorgeous you are.”

She shakes her head. “I know I’m pretty but I’m not uniquely gorgeous. There are so many stunning women in this world. I'm not that special. I don't even wear clothes that highlight any of my figure. I rarely wear makeup. Why would anybody notice me?”

I file away the information that she rarely wears makeup, yet she applied some for our date.

“If you think that most men can't see beyond the fact that you're not wearing makeup or a sexy dress to see how stunning you are, then you're sorely mistaken. You clearly don't understand men at all. In fact, of course you don't. Have you even had a boyfriend?”

“Of course I've had a boyfriend,” she says with a rolls of her eyes that manages to make her look goofy but also kind of sweet.

Fierce possessiveness settles over me. I hate the fact that she had a man in her life, or more likely a boy. Some pimply nerd who talked about literature with her. Maybe he wrote her poetry. Perhaps he picked her daisies on his way to meet her. I don’t do those things, but I will kill anyone who means her harm. If you ask me, that’s a much better present than a poem. If I bring her the head of Ari, what could be more romantic?

“How long were you together?” I ask.

“Not long … well, not long for my first boyfriend. We were together about four months. My second boyfriend lasted a little bit longer than that. I think around six months.”

“So you had two long-term relationships, and yet you’re a virgin. How come?”

She's just taken a sip of wine, and she giggles a little before coughing. She coughs so much that her eyes start to water. I hand her a napkin. She keeps coughing, and I pour her a glass of water from the pitcher at our side.

“Hey, take a drink of this.”

She drinks, and slowly the choking subsides.

“It’s not that weird,” she says.

“It kind of is outside of pretty conservative communities, I would think.” I realize I don’t actually know and that I’ve made a lot of assumptions about her.

“I’m not deeply conservative or religious,” she says finally as she gains her composure. “My mother was, and I went to church with her sometimes. It amuses me that men assume the only reason a woman might want to be careful is if she’s religious. My mother warned me about men. She told me that they were pigs. Most of them, anyway. She said they only wanted one thing, and that if I had any sense about me, I wouldn't give it to them. She said it to me often. I think maybe something bad happened to her. I used to think my father was her savior, but these days I'm not so sure. Maybe my father was just another in a long line of pigs.”

She glances at me and then back to the almonds. She picks one up but instead of popping it into her mouth, then she plays with it, dropping it in the bowl, picking it up, and dropping it in the bowl again. Soon her second hand joins the first, and she messes about with the almonds as if they are playthings, not food.

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