Page 96 of Silent Ties

Roma and Elijah chatter about random things. Max keeps his arm around my shoulder. Yelena slips off, not that anyone cares. Irina is now arguing with both sons in Russian.

And I’m. . . I’m actually happy for the first time in a long time.

CHAPTER 24

Russet

Music plays softly. I hum along as I ice cupcakes.

Max is at work and Jane, Olga’s replacement, is off dusting. Even when she’s in the kitchen I don’t mind it. There’s an easiness between us, unlike Olga’s grating presence. I don’t worry about spying and I don’t mind when she calls her husband to check in. Last week she left early to do something with her grandkids without any problems. It’s a professional relationship built out of mutual respect.

I lick icing off my finger when my phone rings. Daisy.

The last time I shirked her phone call we could barely legally drink. I’d been tired and humiliated after finding my boyfriend in a bathroom stall with another woman at the bar I worked at. I’d screened her phone call, not in the mood to deal with my friend right at that moment.

A similar feeling runs down me now, except I don’t have a good reason to dodge her call. Just because Max provides for me, doesn’t mean I get to gain an ego.

“Hello.” I squeeze the phone between my ear and shoulder, messing with the cupcakes.

Indistinct noises filter through. The linecrackles.

“Hello?” I say again. “Daisy.”

The crack sparks, the line dying.

I call back. Voicemail.

It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. A pocket dial.

The phone lights up again and I answer.

“Daisy? I can’t hear you.”

“She needs help.”

The line cracks. Or maybe it’s my heart. “What?”

Another voice softly speaks. “S-she needs help, Daisy.”

“What’s happened?”

The prolonged pause takes me out as much as the eerie whispers.

“Sh-she um,” the first voice stutters. “She whored her out.”

Everything stops.

“She what?” I can’t remember my skin ever crawling like this.

A burning, pricking sensation heats my skin, but the inside. . . it’s frozen. My chest moves, the beat of my heart in my ears. I’m just a cavity. A vessel for this tsunami of emotion threatening to detonate.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Movement in the background drowns out their whispers. I think the call will end only before a rushed voice says, “One of Marissa’s clients has a thing. . . He paid double, said he’d make it a good time.”

No nightmare can rival how sick this is.

“But. . . ”

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