She struggles to her feet, face beetroot red.
I lose count of how many more times she comes before I finally say goodbye to my guests. By the end, she’s covered in sweat and the drinks are thrown together haphazardly, more pure alcohol than anything else. Kendrick takes the pot, and I make Ophelia kneel to present him with the vintage bottle of Hennessy Paradis I chose as the prize.
“Press the button one last time. For good luck,” I urge, and he does, watching calmly as Ophelia curls up at his feet with a tormented moan.
“She did very well tonight. I must say, I strongly disapproved of your choice, but she’s the perfect Ward for you. An excellent acquisition.”
The other guests agree, and I see them out myself, leaving Ophelia on the floor, absolutely spent.
We’re finally alone.
I pick Ophelia up off the floor and carry her into the bedroom. Tomorrow, she’ll be herself again. She’ll be my sharp, brilliant girl who is breezing her way through her anatomy course like it’s easy. Who is tackling her nemesis, math, with the help of an excellent tutor.
Tomorrow, she’ll be smart and funny and go back to lighting up my life with her wit.
But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, she’s none of those things. Right now, she’s just my pet, with nothing in her pretty little empty head beside a desire to please me. I love both sides of her. Everything about her, if I’m honest, and as I lock the shackle around her ankle, I’ve never felt happier.
“Just one last job, pet, before you sleep.”
She knows what to do.
I’m so desperate that the feel of her lips alone almost tips me over the edge. I don’t draw it out—she’s barely conscious—so I use her mouth like it’s my hand, controlling her movements until I shoot down her perfect throat.
She gives a contented sigh, licks her lips, and settles herself into her pet bed like she was born to be there. She was. She was fucking made for me.
I cover her with her blanket and climb into bed. How long until I throw another poker night? I’m already so full of ideas; it can’t come soon enough.
***
The next afternoon, I finish work in time to collect Ophelia from her shift in Medical. Today is a big day for her, and she’s had mixed feelings about it. Hadrian’s Ward is arriving, and Dr. Robert is allowing Ophelia to assist with doing the testing and fitting her tracker.
I told her she didn’t have to participate if she wasn’t comfortable, but she insisted. “I want to care for everyone here. This is part of it.”
She’s brave like that.
Two Gilda guards wait outside Medical but nod and wave me through. I enter the silent clinic and almost jump out of my fucking skin when a man steps out of the shadows looking like something from a horror movie.
A mask covers his face. It’s demonic, stylized into a twisted expression, but it shifts as I watch it. The lips move, flowing like sand in an hourglass.
I take a step back, heart pounding, but he holds his hands up. “Sebastian. It’s me. Hadrian.”
I don’t recognize the voice, either. It’s far deeper, far more gravelly than his natural tone. I lean forward to examine him. “What the hell is all this?”
“It’s a prosthetic and a voice changer.” He touches the side of his face. “She’s not going to know it’s me.”
“Who isn’t?” It takes me a second, but then it clicks. “Your Ward?”
“Yes.” He beckons me over. “Look.”
The eerie, horror-movie feeling doesn’t dissipate as I walk toward the sleeping woman on the table, covered to the neck with a sheet. Curly red hair spills off the table in a wave. A horrible suspicion settles over me, and as her face comes into view, it solidifies.
She’s the spitting fucking image of Candice.
He stands beside me. “Beautiful, isn’t she? We were high school sweethearts. Married for ten years until she betrayed me.”
“What?” I find myself glancing at the door to the staff room. Where the hell are Ophelia and Dr. Roberts? Why have they left me alone with this freak? Whoever this woman is, I pity her.
“She found my research unethical and turned me in. It set me back years. But”—he strokes a tendril of hair back from her face, revealing a spray of freckles—“after the divorce, I discovered something very interesting.”
“What was that?”
He turns his sinister mask my way. I can’t see which way he’s looking, and it sets me on edge. “She had some interesting fantasies, my Juliet. She never shared them with me, but I found it all after I did some digging.”
He turns back to his ex-wife. “Masked men, abuse. You name it. And if that’s what she wants—” The mask twists, and I can only assume it’s supposed to be a smile, though the effect is eerie. “—that’s what she’s going to fucking get.”
