Page 43 of Mama Si's Paradise

“Is it the Premium contract?”

“How many times a week?”

“How many hours a night?”

“What are the specifics?”

I swear, they all talked at the same time. Assa raised her hands in surrender and said, “I don’t know, okay? All I heard was that he wanted exclusivity, that’s it. That’s all I got.” And she basicallyraninside the mansion.

I still had no clue what to think, so when I looked across the pool and saw Hannah sitting up on her lounger, her blue eyes on me, my heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t trying to hide how she felt about me at all right now. God, she wanted to fucking murder me, and I could tell by the way she was gripping the edge of the lounger—hard. So hard that it actually cracked.

I paused for a moment.

The loungers were made out of wood underneath the mattresses, and the fucking wood cracked where her hand was. I saw it, heard the sound of it in my mind, even though the girls were already around me, jumping up and down like they wereexcited.Like they couldn’t see Hannah at all before she stood up, put her sunglasses on, tied her silk robe tightly around her waist, and left.

Left the fucking cracked lounger behind.

Fuck.

The memory of her pushing me against the wall that night and grabbing my wrists in her hands came over me. Her grip had been strong.Unusually strong. Impossiblystrong. A woman with a frame like hers shouldn’t have been able to crack a piece of thick wood so easily like that. Just…impossible.

A million questions left the girls mouths within the minute. I had no idea how to answer them, and eventually they let me go back to my room. I locked myself in the bathroom and threw up every bite of the breakfast I’d eaten, until all my strength was spent.

Then I lay down on the cold tiles, exhausted.

Within two days,everything changed.

The girls, the maids, the guards—everyone looked at me differently, like I wasspecialall of a sudden, and I hated it. It’s why I spent most of my time in my room, until Amber cornered me after dinner on the third night.

“How about we go and check this place out, huh? Just the two of us. I can show you around. There are incredible places to hide in around here, not just your room.”

Butterflies in my stomach. I actuallylovedthe sound of that. “Okay,” I said before I could give myself the chance to change my mind.

Amber winked. “Just don’t tell the others,” she whispered.

We left the dining room separately, but when we met again on the second floor, she laced her arm to mine and told me, “Are you ready to explore the Paradise?”

I smiled. “I think so.”

“Good. Let’s start with the fountain.”

She knew exactly where she was going as we walked to the other side of the floor, a part of the mansion I hadn’t been to yet. She said nothing else until we reached our destination, and I was stuck in my head with the same questions—where was Johnny now? Why had he signed that contract? What were the specifics? Where was I going to get the courage to actually ask someone about them? Why-why-why?!

“There it is!”

I blinked and the view in front of me had changed. We were no longer walking the hallways. We’d arrived.

The water wasglowing—that’s the first thing I noticed the moment Amber pushed those doors open. The water was glowing a gorgeous pinky purple, and it was spilling from the tips of fishtails carved out of white stone. It was in the middle of what looked like a balcony, and the open sky over us camealive with a million stars that I could have sworn were reflecting the same purple color as they winked at us. The railings were made out of the same white stone, and there were benches around the large round fountain, and pink roses all around it, sprouting from missing tiles on the floor here and there, while the lanterns on the wall by the door burned low.

The smell of the roses, the sound of the water spilling, the open sky over us and those gorgeous stars, not to mention the view of the ocean that looked pitch black from here—it all took my breath away and wiped my mind clean instantly. One word came to mind—magic. This was what magic felt like.

“Like it?” Amber said as she went closer to the fountain. “We throw parties here in summer. Private parties. Come, look at the water. It’s something special.”

I somehow got my body moving, and I followed her closer to the fountain, only to pause in surprise all over again. What I’d thought were statues of fish were actuallymermaids.

Three mermaids were hanging onto a rock, their hands reaching for the open sky, their eyes upward, and the water was coming out the tips of their fins.

“Wow. That’s…that’s…” It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. The statues werealive,so perfectly made, every edge and every curve, every line exactly right.

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