Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 162003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 810(@200wpm)___ 648(@250wpm)___ 540(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 810(@200wpm)___ 648(@250wpm)___ 540(@300wpm)
If he thought he was getting another photo of his marks on me, he was crazy.
I lifted the silver lid and found an assortment of cold breakfast foods. Fruit, granola, and a yogurt adorned the tray, and my stomach growled in response. I hadn’t eaten dinner last night.
I ate it all, more ravenous than I’d ever been. The whole time I was chewing, my eyes kept darting to the shopping bags. They had the name Barneys imprinted on the side, and my fingers were itching to see what was inside of them.
But they shouldn’t have been. Was he buying me clothes now?
I snorted at the thought. It was probably something much more sinister, disguised in a nice package. I laid my curiosity to rest as I dumped all the contents onto the table.
Dresses. Lingerie. Shoes.
It was all there. And it must have cost a fortune. I was disgusted, and yet the little girl inside of me who had always loved fashion wanted to be excited. When I checked the soles of the shoes, they were red.
Red.
It could only mean one thing. I was going color blind.
How could he spend this much money on me when he insisted I was just something to be used? Unredeemable, as he said last night. Did he actually… feel sorry?
No. Absolutely not. I wasn’t going to make excuses for him or his erratic behavior. There was only one person who could answer those questions, and that was a trained psychologist.
As for me, I just had to get through the rest of this game. Five months and three more weeks.
I sighed as I walked to the bathroom to take a shower. At least I would be blackmailed in red bottomed shoes. That obviously made all the difference.
***
I sent him a picture.
I wasn’t proud of it, but after seeing how much he’d spent on me, the guilt ate away at me. It always did whenever someone did anything remotely nice. I didn’t like to depend on anyone or feel like I owed them. It was the one rule my mother had drilled into our heads. I would never forget the time I borrowed a cup of sugar from the neighbor and the ass beating that ensued from it.
Norma-Jean spat her stale cigarette breath in my face when she told me I was never to borrow anything from anyone. Either I could afford it on my own, or I didn’t have it at all. The irony wasn’t lost on me that she never made rent and relied on Brayden to keep a roof over our heads. But in the mind of Norma-Jean, that was perfectly acceptable.
Needless to say, I’d heeded her rule from there on out. I looked at things but never bought them. I worked but never allowed myself luxuries. Every penny went to necessities, and the rest went into my savings. Even now if I bought myself something that cost more than twenty dollars, I would usually end up returning it.
So walking into work wearing a casual Valentino dress, I thought for a moment I was going to be sick. The same girl that had snickered at me the day before was in the elevator, and now she was openly glaring. I kept my eyes on the shiny metal until the doors opened and I sprang free.
When I got to my desk, there was something waiting for me. A single blood red lotus.
I glanced around again, but nobody was paying any attention. How the hell was he delivering things to my desk without somebody noticing? A better question was, how did he even getting into the building?
The answer popped into my mind and quickly expanded into all-consuming terror. Did he work here too?
Matt chose that moment to walk over and say hello, and I eyed him suspiciously. Was it possible he could be…
No. It definitely wasn’t Matt.
But then someone else popped into my head. Someone that made much more sense when I thought about it. If I was being logical and didn’t believe in coincidence, then there was someone else. A real possibility…
But that just sounded like more of my brain’s twisted way of thinking. I stopped myself right there. I was seriously going crazy, and I needed to stop. I needed to put my blackmailer out of mind. So that’s what I did. Until later that afternoon.
***
My job at the Bennett Corporation consisted of work I could do in my sleep. I didn’t have to focus too much because it was all repetitive, monotonous busy work. This had its pros and cons.
My mind kept drifting back to my blackmailer. Sadist. Whatever the hell he was. I’d only been playing his game for a week, and I was already losing… bad. So far, he’d seen my every play before I even made it. Knew my motives for wanting to touch him. For wearing awful clothing to meet him. He could even see that some sick and depraved part of me liked the things he was doing to me. I needed to gain back my control, and I needed to do it fast.