Page 11 of Protect Your Queen

“Stay. In. The. House!” My brother bellowed.

He must have been saying something and gotten no response from me.

“Kuya!” I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream.

“I don’t care if you’re bored!” Jareth’s voice was measured and calm. A certainty that he was about to rage at me at any moment. “Go home and stay home.”

“Please…” I said in a whisper. “Please don’t…”

Don’t what? Don’t keep me in my prison made of golden bars and take-out food? Don’t force me to look out of the floor to ceiling windows at California’s glorious sunsets?

I couldn’t say it, but I hated it all. I just wanted to get out and distract myself from how miserable I was. I had worked so hard to get here, but it could all be ripped out from under me. One wrong move, and I’d be nothing.

There was a sigh on the other end of the line.

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I’ll take you to the jazz club down in Santa Monica, okay?”

It was a concession. A small one. But it was enough.

“Salamat, Kuya,” I said.Thank you, big brother. “Sige,bye.”

“Bye.” I heard the click as he hung up the phone.

I put my phone in my custom Yves St. Laurent bag and hoisted the gold strap over my shoulder.

“Miss Jestiny?” Brian was my 60-something driver, built like a brick in a polo shirt. His white hair was in disarray, as he looked at me from beneath his low, silver brows.

I really liked him, and his white nose hairs. He was the reason for my most recent fight with Jareth, but it wasn’t really his fault. He was under strict orders to not deviate from the work-home route.

“We’ll go home, Brian,” I said, with a reluctant nod. “I’m sorry.”

“No, Miss.” He opened the glass front door of the building, and with a sweep of his arm, let me go through it first. “I just think that Mr. Barkada is right. We need to keep you safe.”

Hot air hit me as soon as I stepped outside. It swirled around my ankles, before it danced upwards, tossing my hair around. It was the warm air of the Santa Ana winds. Joan Didion was an author that “got” California. She wrote entire prose about the magic of these winds, and the strange, tensed stillness that came with it. A natural, annual phenomenon that filled me with unease, every time the hot, dry air hit my skin.

I looked up at the glass skyscraper of the Dryden Studios, vaguely wondering how such tall buildings didn’t sway.

It was the best studio in LA county. The entire building was set up with all the latest tech, and they put just as much money into thelookof the place as the equipment inside. The Dryden name advertised old Hollywood money, and that meant they needed the newest gadgets.

Artists who brought in the big bucks worked here. Artists who liked their own reflections looking back at them from the high, mirrored walls. My face stared back at me, wearing Jimmy Choos, and a gold Gucci thigh-length dress. She was a doll that could carry a tune, but not much more…

She had done terrible things to ensure her place in this echelon.

I had stolen from other girls who had worked just as hard, and probably had more talent.

“Do you like me, Brian?” I asked, looking at my driver.

His face softened, the wrinkles along his brow seeming to smooth out with his concern. “Of course, I do, Miss Jestiny.”

“Could you just call me Jes?”

I had always suspected that, at some point, we’d get close enough that he’d just make the transition as naturally as a work colleague turned into a friend. Still, three years later, it hadn’t happened.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Miss Jestiny.”

My heart sank. So maybe he wasn’t that fond of me after all.

“You’re a lot younger than me, and my boss. I can’t be that informal, no matter how fond I am of you.” He tried to smile, his white caterpillar brows crawling over his eyes. “You’re a young, beautiful woman, and I’m an old man. It’s just not right. I wouldn’t like that for my daughter.”

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