[English] The Virgin

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“Hang in there. You want some crackers?”

The mention of food sent her stomach rumbling. Without answering him she raced to the bathroom at the back of the bus and vomited hard into the toilet. She prayed no one had heard her getting sick. People would remember a young white woman in a Mets cap on a Concord bus puking her guts out. But she couldn’t worry about that yet. When she was done being sick, she rinsed her mouth out and splashed cold water on her face. Then she pulled her pants down and checked her bleeding. It was heavy and thick. She tried to feel sad, feel remorse or regret. Instead, she felt only relief. She held on to that relief as she made her way back to her seat.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. The man in the seat next to her patted her clammy hand and she opened her eyes. He placed three saltines in her palm. For the rest of the trip she nibbled on her crackers. In her weakened state and on her empty stomach, they tasted like manna from heaven.

“Thank you,” she said. He reached out and patted her shoulder. A kind, grandfatherly touch. She ached so much for human warmth right now she wanted to sit next to him and lean against him. When another cramp slammed into her back, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

“It’s all right,” the man said in a low voice. “We’re almost there. I get carsick too sometimes. Especially if I try to read. You’re gonna make it.”

She smiled so he knew she heard him, but didn’t tell him the truth. She wasn’t carsick. Elle Schreiber did not get carsick. Any car, any kind, she could drive it. She’d been driving since she was twelve years old. She could hot-wire a car in under fifteen seconds. She could shift like a race car driver. She felt more at home in a car than she did anywhere else on earth—except for Søren’s bed. Carsick was the last thing she was.

When the pain passed, she lifted her head and rested back against the seat. For a few minutes all she did was breathe. Long breaths. Slow breaths. Breaths that filled her lungs and emptied her mind. At first she didn’t realize what she was doing. Then she remembered.

“Little One, take deep breaths when you’re on the cross. Deep full breaths. Fill your lungs and empty your mind. When I beat you, it’s for us, for our pleasure—yours and mine. Don’t be afraid. Never be afraid of me.”

“Never ever, sir,” she’d whispered back to him.

But now she was afraid.

“You running away from home, young lady?” the man in the seat next to her asked. She could hear the joking tone in his voice.

“I don’t run,” Elle said. “It’s not running away from home if you’re not running, right?”

“That’s a good point. Visiting friends or family here?”

“A friend,” she said. “I think he’s a friend. I hope he is.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

“I broke his heart once,” she said, smiling again.

“You look like a heartbreaker.” The man nodded sagely and Elle laughed.

“I don’t mean to be. I never mean to hurt anybody,” she said. “But I do.”

They’d been joking the way strangers packed into a crowded elevator or jostled about on an airplane joked. But what she’d said was too true and too somber, and he gave her a look of curiosity and compassion.

“A little girl like you couldn’t hurt a fly,” he said kindly.

Elle looked up and took a breath. If he only knew.

“I could hurt a fly,” she whispered.

After six hours and two bus changes, she finally arrived in New Hampshire. She wasn’t done with her journey yet. At the station she followed a young woman to a parking lot and offered her a hundred dollars to drive her forty miles. The woman seemed skeptical at first, but Elle held up the money. That did the trick.

Elle sat in the backseat of the beat-up Ford Thunderbird. The front seat was taken up by a child’s car seat, and Elle was happy to sit in the back and not look at it. She thought about asking the woman where the kid was, but she didn’t want to talk, especially about children. She apologized for her lack of conversation. Still recovering from car sickness, Elle said. The woman turned on the radio to cover the silence, and Elle kept her eyes closed all the way there.

A little after one in the afternoon, she arrived at her destination. Elle almost wept with relief at the sight of the long curving driveway she remembered so well, the columns, the stairs, the rows of windows in this old Colonial mansion.

The woman seemed stunned that this house, this mansion, was her destination.

“Old friend,” Elle said by way of explanation. “I hope.”

She paid the woman her one hundred dollars from the cash in her duffel bag. Five thousand dollars wouldn’t last very long, but a deal was a deal.

The relief Elle felt faded as she walked up the long, curving cobblestone driveway to the house. Her back spasmed with every few steps and the heavy duffel bag dug into her shoulder. The blazing sun followed her every step. She took off the Mets cap and ran her hands through her sweat-drenched hair. As she walked, she wondered...would he take her in? Would he help her? She’d broken his heart, yes, but she’d also helped him when he needed her most.

Elle rang the doorbell and waited.

As rich as he was, no one would have begrudged him a housekeeper or a butler. But it was the master of the house who opened the door. His blue eyes widened as he looked at her and took in her paleness, her exhaustion and her fear.

“Oh my God...Eleanor. What did he do to you?” he asked.

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Elle almost laughed. If she’d had the energy, she would have.

“Don’t ask, Daniel,” she said as she walked past him into the house. “Just don’t ask.”

4

DANIEL GAVE HER tea and put her in the downstairs guest room. The entire time she was in his presence she stared at the gold band on his left hand.

“Where are Anya and the baby?” Elle asked. She hadn’t seen either when Daniel brought her into the house.

“Upstairs in the nursery. Marius has the flu. We’re taking shifts. She’s on the day shift. I take the night shift so she can sleep.” He smiled and she saw the contentment on his handsome face.

“God, you’re so married.”

“I am. Again,” he said and smiled.

“Enjoying it? Being married again? Being a dad?” Elle asked as she pulled the blanket to her stomach.

“You show up on my doorstep with no warning and nothing but a bag and the clothes on your back and you want to talk about me right now?” Daniel pulled a chair up to the bed. It was barely two o’clock in the afternoon, but Daniel had seen right away that all she needed right now was rest. “Eleanor, please—”

“Elle,” she said.

“What?”

“I told him the day I met him that I went by Elle. Not Eleanor. My whole life my mom called me Elle or Ellie. That’s who I am. But he called me Eleanor anyway. He calls me Eleanor. I prefer Elle.”

Daniel looked at her, rubbed his hands together.

“Elle,” he said. “Please tell me what’s happening. Can you do that for me?”

“You don’t want to know.” She tried to smile. She hoped he appreciated the effort that took her.

Daniel met her eyes, and she held the gaze. Back when he was a regular player in Kingsley’s world, his blue-eyed Dominant glare was the stuff of legend. His late wife, Maggie, had even named it—The Ouch, she called it with equal parts fear and affection. When he gave her that look she knew she’d be saying “ouch” the next day, maybe the next week. But it wasn’t the infamous Ouch he gave her now. Instead, he looked at her steadily with curiosity and compassion. And pity.

She hated pity.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I needed to get away for a few days.”

“You didn’t come here because you needed to get away for a few days. You go to the Hamptons to get away for a few days.”

“You go to the Hamptons to get away for a few days because you’re rich. Normal people do not go to the Hamptons.”

“Elle.” Daniel met her eyes. “You’re the most famous submissive in the entire city of New York. You’re owned by a Catholic priest, and you’re sleeping with the King of the Underground. You are not normal people.”

“I am now,” she said. “Trying to be anyway.”

“How did you get here?”

“Kingsley’s driver dropped me off.”

“Kingsley drives a beat-up Ford Thunderbird now?”

If she had had the strength to give Daniel The Ouch, she would have.

“I have security cameras,” he said. “I saw someone drop you off. It wasn’t King.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Does King know where you are?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me what happened.”

“You don’t want to know,” she repeated. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m here, okay?”

“I think I do want to know. Remember, I’ve known Søren for years. Not only do I know him, I like him. We’re friends. If I can know him and still like him, I think I can handle anything you tell me.”

“Maybe you can handle hearing it. I don’t know if I can handle saying it.”

Daniel moved from his chair to the bed. She tensed immediately and he seemed to sense it.

“I’m not going to touch you if you don’t want me to,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.

“You’re married, you have a kid and I’m—” she paused to find a suitable lie and decided on a half-truth instead “—not feeling well.”

He reached his hand out but didn’t touch her with it, only waited. Slowly Elle leaned forward the three necessary inches and rested her face against the palm of his hand.

“You don’t have a fever,” he said.

“No.”

“I don’t see any bruises on your arms or your neck.”

“Søren didn’t beat me up or rape me,” she said, annoyed that he would even think something like that had happened.

Daniel nodded.

“But he did hurt you.”

“You didn’t put a question mark at the end of that sentence.”

“I told you, I’ve known him for years. It wasn’t a question.”

“Yes,” she admitted finally, closing her eyes. “He hurt me.”

“Kingsley?”

She shook her head. “This isn’t his fault,” she said, rolling over onto her side. “This is my fault.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Daniel said. “But you have to give me something here. If Anya left me, ran away, I would be so sick with worry I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Søren pisses me off too sometimes, and I consider him a friend, but I have never doubted his love for you. Unless you have a very good reason to scare him like this, you need to go home.”

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“I can’t go home.”

“Tell me why you left him or I’m calling Kingsley right now.”

Elle weighed her options. She could tell him the whole truth, which would hurt more than the pain she was currently in. She could lie and come up with a suitable story he would believe to explain why she left. Or she could tell him a half-truth, just enough truth to get him to stop asking questions.

She went with option three.

“Do you remember that thing you told me?” she asked.

“I told you a lot of things.”

“I told you I was happy, content. You said that I should enjoy my contentment because someday something would happen and it would be gone.”

He nodded. “I remember.”

“It happened.”

“What happened?”

“Søren ordered me to marry him,” she said.

Daniel looked at her and looked at her and looked at her, and finally he spoke.

“Get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

“You have any other sheets?” she asked, her face warming.

“Are you cold?”

“No,” she said, pushing the blankets. A red stain had formed underneath her. “I’m bleeding.”

It took ten minutes of begging and pleading to convince Daniel not to call an ambulance. This was just part of the process, she told him. Nothing to worry about. She was fine. A little blood never killed any woman...

Even after calming him down Daniel still seemed dubious and worried. He stayed in the bathroom with her while she took a quick hot bath. He kept his back to her to give her privacy although he’d seen her naked before. Once upon a time she’d been his lover. They’d ****ed in this very bathroom. Down the hall was the library where he’d bent her over his desk and taken her from behind. In the living room by the fireplace, he’d fisted her and given her one of the better orgasms of her life. In the bed he now shared with his wife, he’d ****ed her more times than she could remember. But now that felt like a lifetime ago. Had it only been two years ago she’d last been with him? So much had happened in those two years. He’d fallen in love with someone who wasn’t her, got remarried, had a son. And her? What had she done since then?

Elle got out when the water turned pink, and she drained the tub before Daniel could see it.

He ordered her to eat to some soup and then ordered her into bed. There was nothing at all erotic about any of these orders.

“You really are a dad now, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Don’t get any ideas. I don’t do the Daddy-Dom thing,” he said, pulling the covers up to her chest.

“Could have fooled me,” she said.

“Don’t flirt. Anya’s the jealous type.” He winked at her so she would know he was kidding. Not that he needed to tell her. She’d known Anya before he did. Knowing Anya, she would worry Elle would catch the flu from Marius, not that she would sleep with her husband. For the first time in Elle’s adult life, *** was the last thing on her mind.

He kissed her on the forehead once and on the lips twice.

She smiled up at him.

“Get some rest, Elle,” he said.

“It’s not even night yet.”

“I don’t care. You’re exhausted. Sleep.”

“Is that an order?”

He smiled down at her. “If I gave you that kind of order, would you obey me?”

“No.”

“Then no, it wasn’t an order.”

He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. A fatherly touch. She didn’t remember him ever touching her like that. Becoming a parent had changed him, changed him for the better. But she knew that didn’t happen with every man. Her own father was proof. Her father, Søren’s father, her mother...

Her mother.

“Good night, Elle,” Daniel whispered, and she saw his reluctance to leave her alone.

“Good night, Daniel.” He started to leave. She stopped him with a question. “Daniel—what am I going to do?”

Daniel turned around in the doorway and looked back at her.

“If you took orders from me, which you don’t, but if you did...I’d order you to go back to Søren and marry him.”

Elle rolled onto her side and gazed at Daniel through the dark.

“Now I remember why I left you,” she said.

“Because I wanted to take care of you?”

“Because you don’t know me at all.”

The smile faded from Daniel’s face.

“Rest,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

It wasn’t an order, but Elle followed it anyway. She slept an hour or two and when she woke up, there was a terrifying moment when she couldn’t remember how she’d got here. But the moment passed, and she remembered.

What was she going to do? No Søren. No Kingsley. No town house. Jesus, she didn’t have a real job. She had a little less than five thousand dollars to her name, a college degree in English literature and almost no work experience other than a few years at a bookstore. What was she going to put on a résumé? That she gave good blow jobs and could take a beating better than any masochist in New York?

She sat up in bed and buried her face in her hands. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. Slowly she breathed, slowly she calmed herself. She would not cry. She could not cry. If she started crying over Søren, she’d never stop. And if she cried, that would mean it was real, that she had left him and that she was never going back.

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When she was calm again she whispered into the quiet of her room, “What am I gonna do?”

No one answered, not even her.

Wincing as her sore muscles protested the movement, Elle got out of bed. She walked down the hall to the bathroom where she’d stored her duffel bag. On the way back to bed she noticed a light on in Daniel’s library. Wasn’t he supposed to be on the night shift taking care of Marius?

She crept to the half-open door and heard him speaking to someone. She saw no one else in the room and then noticed he had a small mobile phone to his ear.

“She’s not well,” Daniel said. “Let her stay here a couple days until she feels better. Than you can come get her.”

Elle froze.

“Not tonight, King. She’s not in good shape. Mentally or physically. Let her rest. We’ll take care of her.”

Rage welled up in Elle. She took one step forward and then stopped. Kingsley had warned if she had to flee, she’d have to be smart about it. She’d been stupid before but she wasn’t going to be stupid again. She crept back to the bathroom, grabbed her duffel bag and got dressed. As quietly as she could, she left the house. She didn’t leave a note, didn’t lambast him with accusations and recriminations. She didn’t call him a traitor or an asshole or an arrogant piece of **** who thought he knew what was better for her than she did. She did something much worse and much better at the same time.

She stole his car.

Thankfully Daniel wasn’t some rich dip**** who drove a flashy Maserati or a Ferrari to show off his money. Daniel had a classic black Mercedes-Benz sedan. Nothing that would attract any unnecessary attention. She took the keys right off the rack in the kitchen. She coasted out of the driveway with the lights off and resisted the urge to squeal the tires as a final **** you and fare thee well.

He wouldn’t call the police. That wasn’t Daniel’s style. And he wouldn’t have to. She’d dump the car somewhere the cops would find it, and it would be returned to him in one piece.

More or less.

After ten minutes on the road the adrenaline rush faded and the reality that she was alone again with nowhere to go set in. No...not nowhere to go. She had lots of places to go. Unfortunately there was nowhere she could go where Kingsley wouldn’t find her eventually. Especially now that she’d stolen a registered car. Wherever she dumped the car, that’s where Kingsley would start looking, and he would find her in a matter of hours.

Which left only one option. She would have to go somewhere Kingsley and Søren couldn’t follow her. Even if he knew where she was, it would be somewhere he couldn’t enter. She thought about getting herself arrested and sent to prison. Seemed a better option than her only other choice.

Then again, she’d faced prison once before and Kingsley and Søren had got her out of going then. He would do it again if she was foolish enough to get herself arrested. Kingsley took care of things. That’s how it worked. She needed a ride somewhere? Kingsley’s driver would take her wherever she wanted to go. If she needed a vacation, Kingsley would send her and Søren to Europe. If she got injured during kink, he’d send her to his doctor, who knew how to keep his mouth shut. If she got pregnant...well, he took care of that, too, didn’t he? Whether he wanted to or not.

Kingsley...she kept her mind on him. If she thought about Søren, really thought about him, she’d turn the car around and drive straight back to Connecticut. Instead, she focused her mind on Kingsley. Was he okay? She hadn’t seen him in a few days. He hadn’t offered to go with her to the doctor. He’d made the appointment for her, had the car take her. But he wasn’t there when she left, wasn’t home when she got back. If she’d asked him to come with her, he would have. She knew that. That he hadn’t volunteered was proof that he didn’t want to face it any more than she did. So she didn’t ask him. She went alone and didn’t make him more a part of it than he already was. Kingsley was more dark knight than white knight, but whatever his sins, he had one bright, pure and beautiful hope—that he would be a father someday. She wasn’t going to make him stand there and watch her put an end to that dream.

“King...I’m sorry,” she whispered as she reached a crossroads. If she drove south, she’d be in Manhattan in four hours.

Or...

Elle pulled the car over on the side of the road.

She had to do it, right? What other choice did she have except to go back? And that was no choice at all. Because if she went back she’d be admitting defeat. If she went back she would be walking straight into a different sort of prison.

Even now, her heart raced at the thought of Kingsley tracking her down and bringing her home. That wasn’t right. She should be able to leave if she wanted to leave. She should be able to go if she wanted to go without fearing someone was following her. That’s how it worked in the real world, right? Women got sick of the lives they were leading and they could do things like move out and move on and start over without an ex-assassin for the French government dragging her home by her hair.

Right?

Was it too late for her to be part of the normal world? If it wasn’t, did she really want to go there? She didn’t know the answer to either question. But she did know the longer she sat in the car, the sooner Kingsley would find her. It was nine o’clock now. The summer sun had finally set. By sunrise, Daniel would notice she—and his Benz—had disappeared. He’d call Kingsley, and Kingsley would start the search for her. She needed to be somewhere safe by morning, somewhere no one could follow.

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That left only one option.

She was twenty-six years old.

She was the ex-lover of a Catholic priest.

She was recovering from an abortion.

Might as well go all in.

Goodbye, men. Goodbye, ***.

She headed west to her mother’s convent.

She didn’t look back.

5

KINGSLEY STOOD IN front of locker 1312 but didn’t open it. He couldn’t open it. Not yet. The last thing he wanted to do was open it and have every one of his fears confirmed.

At four that morning, Søren had called him looking for Elle. She wasn’t answering her phone. When Kingsley had gone to her room and found her bed made and empty, he’d known exactly what happened. Kingsley had seen this day coming since the night he’d met her. She’d finally done it. She’d left Søren.

But why? Søren wouldn’t tell him anything, only that they’d fought and Elle had driven off in Kingsley’s BMW, which she drove whenever she went to Søren’s. They’d argued. She’d driven away. Nothing new there. They’d fought before. All couples did. But this time was different and the empty bed proved it. She hadn’t come home last night.

So where the **** was she?

He took out his keys and opened the locker.

Kingsley stared at the hastily scrawled number five on the inside of the locker. He closed his eyes and took a breath. In between the intake of air and the outtake he whispered a word to himself.

“****.”

Then he saw it. Far more damning than the number inside the locker was the six-inch length of carved bone he pulled out of it.

Kingsley held it in the palm of his hand, stared at it and knew how it had got here, knew why she’d left it.

“This is why I left him,” it told him. If she’d been here he would have replied, “Good.”

Kingsley shoved it into his back pocket and slammed the locker door shut.

“You son of a bitch.” Kingsley swore under his breath. If Søren had been here, he would have said it to his face. Kingsley was thirty-eight years old and had known Søren since he was sixteen. Søren had beaten him, brutalized him and used him. He’d married Kingsley’s sister, which had precipitated her death. And never in all those years since they’d met had Kingsley felt this level of rage, of abject fury at the man he considered his truest friend and the only man he’d ever loved. Swear at him? If Søren had been here right now, Kingsley might have killed him.

And yet, he knew most of that rage was anger at himself. This was his fault, his doing. Kingsley never should have let her face Søren alone. He shouldn’t have let her face any of it alone. If he needed any further proof he wasn’t ready to be a father, it was this—he’d made her a doctor’s appointment and then abandoned her. He’d left the city for two days, lain low in Boston and done more drinking than he’d done in years. And Elle? She’d thanked him for making the appointment. That was all. “Thanks, King, I’ll take it from here.” And there’d been a pause, as if she’d been waiting for him to say, “I’ll go with you” or “Let me help you” or even “How are you?” He hadn’t said it, hadn’t said anything, and she hadn’t asked him to come with her, to be with her during it all. Kingsley knew she thought she was doing him a favor by going alone, but in the end all that it had done was make him feel like ****.

He leaned back against the row of lockers. In scenarios one through four she’d been instructed to write the name of her destination inside the locker—Canada, Maine, Seattle, somewhere else if that’s what she wanted. But in scenario five, she’d only write the number and disappear. And so she had. If he had any doubts about her determination to run away, they’d dissolved when he’d got the phone call from Daniel.

She’s here, King. And she’s not in good shape.

Kingsley was already on his way to the door when Daniel cautioned him to wait a day or two to let Elle calm down and rest. It was a smart idea even though Kingsley rebelled at the idea of leaving her alone another minute. But she wasn’t alone. Daniel had loved her once and still cared for her. Anya adored her for bringing her and Daniel together. The house was beautiful, idyllic. She would calm down out there, recover, and when Kingsley showed up in a day or two, she’d be less likely to put up a fight about coming home.

But an hour later, the second call had come.

She’s gone, King. And she stole my ****ing car.

Kingsley had hung up and stared at the phone in his hand. Then he laughed. A sad tired laugh with no joy in it at all, but still, he laughed. Because of course. Of course she’d stolen Daniel’s car and driven away in the night. He should have seen that coming.

Once upon a time, he and Søren had made an idle wish to someday have a girl who was wilder than him and Søren put together.

Be careful what you wish for.

In the back of his mind he wished Sam were here. He could use a sane and rational voice of comfort right now. She was always good at helping in a crisis. But Sam had left him six years ago shortly after that first night he and Søren had topped Elle together. Sam had met someone, fallen in love, but even that might not have broken up their partnership. Except Elle had quickly become the most important woman in Kingsley’s life. She brought Søren back to Kingsley’s bed, something Sam could never do. The first time Sam had seen Elle walking around the house in one of Kingsley’s shirts, that was it.

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Sam wasn’t angry, wasn’t hurt. She just knew it was time for them both to move on. Sam told him she loved him and then gave her two weeks’ notice and started packing for LA.

His sister was dead because of his love for Søren.

His Sam was gone to California because of his love for Elle.

His Elle was gone because of his love for his stupid foolish dream to have children, a dream he put before her.

They were all gone. Maybe they were on to something.

Kingsley thought about going back home, but he couldn’t face Søren right now. Søren was nearly catatonic with shock when they’d last spoken. “You’ll find her,” was all Søren had said to him before the first phone call from Daniel had come. They’d been sitting in the music room, Søren at the piano but not playing.

Kingsley had nodded. “I’ll find her.”

He wanted to ask Søren “Why did she leave?” but he also didn’t want to ask it. Søren might tell him, and the last thing Kingsley needed was to hear what fate Kingsley had abandoned Elle to. Søren out of control was a sight as rare as a volcano erupting and nearly as terrifying.

It would be easy to find her. She’d stolen Daniel’s car. All he had to do was call a few contacts in the police department with a description of the vehicle. In a few hours they’d know which direction she’d gone. From there they could extrapolate her likeliest destination. If she used one of the cre*** cards, they could pinpoint her whereabouts precisely. A quick jaunt on an airplane to wherever she’d gone and by tomorrow night she’d be back in Manhattan whether she wanted to be or not.

He could find her. Easily. Søren had asked him to find her, and he couldn’t tell Søren no. He wasn’t strong enough to tell him no, and he would fail her again as he’d failed himself. Over and over in his head he cursed himself. He’d gotten her pregnant and then abandoned her to deal with it on her own. Then she’d faced Søren on her own. And Kingsley had the shard of carved bone in his back pocket to prove that conversation had not gone well. He’d never met a stronger woman in his life, a woman as free and as fearless as she. If she said Søren had crossed a line with her, Kingsley believed her.

Kingsley owed her. She’d fled somewhere—he didn’t know where but he assumed she’d picked a place she felt safe. What right did he have taking her away from there if that’s where she wanted to be? But he would do it, and he would do it for Søren, and he would do it because she’d become such a part of his life he couldn’t imagine waking another morning to find her gone.

If Kingsley went back to the town house right now he’d call all his contacts and find her. Søren would be sitting there, waiting, depending on Kingsley to find her.

But.

But if he didn’t go back to his town house...

Kingsley pulled his mobile phone out of his jacket and dialed a number.

“Don’t speak,” Kingsley said before his assistant could say a word.

Silence was his answer. Good.

“Answer the next question I ask you only with a yes or a no. You understand?” Kingsley asked.

“Yes,” Calliope said. Her voice was calm, controlled. She betrayed nothing. He’d trained her well.

“Is he there?”

“No.”

“No?” Kingsley repeated. “Good. Now you can talk. Did he tell you where he went?”

“No,” Calliope said. “He told me to tell you he had an idea where she might be. Then he got on his motorcycle and drove away.”

Kingsley’s brow furrowed as he leaned back against the lockers.

“He’s not going to get her back,” Kingsley said.

“Are you going to find her then?”

Kingsley didn’t answer. He had a decision to make. Calliope made it for him.

“She wouldn’t leave him without a good reason, right?” she asked. “She wouldn’t leave him unless she had to. I know her. I know how much she loves him.”

“So do I,” Kingsley said.

“Did he hurt her? Like in the bad way?” Calliope asked, her voice awash in fear and confusion. Kingsley could sympathize.

Kingsley didn’t answer.

“King?”

He had a decision to make. He made it now.

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything,” she said.

“I need you to move into the town house. Someone needs to take care of the dogs. Can you do that for me?”

“I practically live here anyway. Dad’s not going to be thrilled, but I’m eighteen. Not much he can do about it. Sure. Anything you need.”

“You can have any room that isn’t mine or isn’t hers. There’s ten grand in cash in my bottom desk drawer. The combination is—”

“I know the combination.”

“How?”

“You hired me because I’m the sort of girl who knows combinations, remember?”

“Good point.” He almost laughed. He did know how to pick an assistant.

“Shut the house down. Close it. Cancel all the parties. Cancel everything, even the newspaper.”

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

“Yes. I have to leave the country. Don’t tell him I’m going. I’m not going to tell you where I’m going so you don’t have to lie when he asks you. The truth is, I don’t know where I’m going, and I don’t know when I’m coming back. But you can handle things while I’m gone. Yes?”

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“I can, yes,” she said again. This time he heard a tight note of fear in her voice. But she was smart, savvy. She was also barely eighteen years old, but he wouldn’t have hired her if he didn’t trust her judgment.

“I’m going now. I’ll call when I can. It won’t be for a week or two. But everything’s fine. You believe that?”

Calliope answered, “No.”

He cared about her too much to make her believe the lie.

“Me neither,” he said. “Be a good girl. I’ll call when I can. Take care of the kids for me.”

“I’ll walk them every day,” she said. “And pet them all the time.”

“Merci.”

“Come home soon.”

Kingsley hung up and tucked his phone away again.

Once more he fished his keys out of his pocket. He turned back to the lockers. Underneath the one set up for Elle was another locker. He opened it, pulled out a leather duffel and checked it for a passport and money.

For you, Elle, he said to himself as he walked through the bus station and out onto Forty-Second Street. I’m doing this for you. Or was he?

He hailed a cab and ordered the driver to take him to the airport.

Well, it was about time he fulfilled a long-held dream of his. After all, his dream of being a father was dead. But he had other dreams, dreams about seeing parts of the world he hadn’t seen yet. If he didn’t go now, would he ever?

“Which airline?” the Caribbean-accented cab driver asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” the driver repeated.

Kingsley leaned forward. “If you had all the money in the world and could use it to go anywhere you wanted, where would you go?”

“All the money, sir?” the driver asked. “I’d go everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

“Everywhere,” the driver repeated. “And then I’d go home.”

“Where’s home?” Kingsley asked him. The accent was like music in his ears—French but not French, warm as white sand under the sun.

“Haiti, sir,” the driver said.

Haiti. Well, Kingsley had always wanted to go to Haiti. A tropical island, a long history with France. Maybe he would go there. Or maybe he’d do what his driver suggested. Maybe he’d go everywhere. He’d leave today and travel the world. Elle would have one less person to run from, one less man to fear.

And if Søren wanted to get his Little One back badly enough...

The bastard could do it himself.

6

Upstate New York

IN THE LAST minutes before midnight, Elle arrived at the Abbey of the Sisters of Saint Monica. It stood before her, a two-hundred-year-old stone edifice rising up three stories from the deep green earth. Spotlights shone on it, illuminating the high gray walls and the cobblestone path that led from the winding driveway to its hulking wooden front door. She knew more about this abbey than any laywoman should. Briefly she’d lived with her mother after graduating college in the hopes of repairing their fractured relationship. Her mother had let her move in for reasons unknown. Perhaps she’d harbored the same hopes. Reconciliation was a sacrament to Catholics, after all.

It was on the first day back under her mother’s roof that Elle found a white folder embossed with the initials SSM on the front. S and M Elle understood. But no, this was SSM—The Sisters of St. Monica. That place had been a foreign country to her. Soon she discovered her mother was in complete earnest about fulfilling her teenage dream to become a nun, a dream derailed when a one-night fling with a handsome older boy ended in a pregnancy, a shotgun wedding and a quickie divorce soon thereafter.

Now William “Billy” Schreiber was dead and buried and no one mourned him. Elle was an adult. And now Margaret Kohl was Sister Mary John of The Sisters of Saint Monica, a small order that consisted of five abbeys around the world, less than five hundred women in total. Their charism, according to the literature Elle had read, was to serve Christ like true brides—with love and devotion, and to pray for His church unceasingly until it found salvation, as Saint. Monica, mother of Saint Augustine, had prayed unceasingly for her son’s salvation.

The nighttime air was still warm with the day’s heat, but Elle had put on the black jacket she’d found in the duffel bag. She had no idea what to wear that would be appropriate for a convent, but she guessed the less skin she showed, the better. Under the jacket she wore a plain white T-shirt and dark jeans. At least in her black-and-white clothes she’d match the sisters in their black-and-white habits.

She left the car parked at a gas station a mile away and had walked the rest of the way here. The car would sit and sit and sit until the owner called the police and reported it. The police would run the tags and call Daniel, who would likely say he’d lent it to a friend who forgot where he’d parked it. The police would be dubious, but would say no problem, hang up and Daniel would retrieve his car.

For that moment when owner and car were reunited, Elle had left a little note in the glove compartment for him.

Dear Daniel,

I lied. I didn’t leave Søren because he asked me to marry him. I left because of what he did after I said no. If you’d been there, you would never have ratted me out to King. I hope you never have a daughter someday.

Love, Elle.

P.S. **** you.

P.P.S. Nice car. I dented the fender on purpose. And the driver’s side door. And the passenger side.

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P.P.P.S. And the hood.

* * *

At midnight she crossed the threshold and entered the convent. Silence reigned inside the heavy stone structure. She could hear her own breathing, her own heart beating. She breathed like a wounded runner who’d had to crawl to the finish line. But she wasn’t done crawling yet. Not until she was behind the inner door. Only behind that door would she be safe. Only behind that door could she rest.

Like every monastery, the convent employed a doorkeeper. Søren had told her about the original doorkeeper for the Jesuit order, Brother Alphonsus Rodríguez, who joined the Jesuits after the death of his wife and his three children. According to Søren, Brother Alphonsus treated every person who knocked on the door of the Jesuit school where he was stationed as if it were God Himself at the door. He worked as nothing more than a porter, a glorified doorman for forty years. In 1888, the world’s most devoted doorman became a saint.

Elle didn’t feel like God as she walked to the porter’s window. She didn’t feel like the Devil, either. She felt tired and scared, and she wanted more than anything to wake up in her own bed at Kingsley’s to find the past week had been nothing but a dream, nothing but a nightmare. She’d wake up and find Søren next to her in bed, and she’d roll over and stretch out on his chest, press her ear to his heart and listen to it beating. He would stir and wake and stroke her hair and her bruised back until she fell asleep again. When she woke up for the day he would be long gone with only the stains on the sheets, the welts on her body and the scent of winter on his pillow to prove he’d been there.

That was the Søren she knew and loved. She had no idea who this new Søren was, the one she’d met two nights ago. But she was relieved to know she’d put several hundred miles between them. And yet, several hundred miles wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would be enough until she was behind that door in front of her, the door with a simple brass plaque that read, No Men Beyond This Point. No men allowed. Not even priests.

She rang the bell and said a prayer to Saint Monica, praying her earthly daughters would take her in and shelter her.

A wooden panel at a window that reminded her of an old-fashioned bank teller’s was pushed aside and a woman in large glasses peered out at her.

“Welcome, child. Can we help you?” she asked, her tone kind and curious.

“My mother is here. Sister Mary John,” Elle said, her voice wavering against her will. “I need to talk to her.”

“Is it an emergency, or can it wait until morning? Now is the Great Silence and nearly everyone is sleeping.”

That question utterly flummoxed her. Emergency? Nothing was burning down at the moment...except her entire life. Did that count as an emergency?

Yes. Yes it did.

“Someone’s trying to find me, and this is probably the first place he’ll look.”

The sister’s eyes widened farther behind her glasses.

“Is this person dangerous?”

“Very,” Elle said.

“I’ll find her for you.”

“Thank you,” Elle said with profound gratitude.

She closed the wooden panel at the window but she reappeared in seconds at the door.

“Come inside here,” the sister said, ushering her in. “It’s against protocol, but if someone’s coming after you, you should wait here.”

Elle could have kissed the woman for her compassion. The elderly nun trundled off down a long dimly lit hallway leaving Elle by the door. Even after the sister disappeared, Elle could hear the sound of her rosary beads and orthopedic shoes echoing off the stone floors and polished wood walls.

She leaned back against the door and closed her eyes. When she was a teenager, a closed door between her and Søren had been a challenge, a hurdle and a game. If she sat outside his office door and did her homework, it was only a matter of time before the door opened. He would step out, take a seat by her on the bench and go over her homework with her. She never would have survived precalculus without him. When the work was done and she put her things away, Søren would retreat back into his office, shutting the door behind him, and she would sit there staring at the door and loving him with all her heart and dreaming of the life they would have together when he let her behind all his locked doors.

But never in any of those girlhood dreams had she ever dreamed of this moment. She never dreamed she’d be grateful for the door behind her and the sign on it barring men from entering. She never dreamed she’d be relieved Søren couldn’t get to her. She’d spent the past ten years of her life trying to get to him. Would she spend the rest of her life trying to get away?

“Ellie?”

Elle looked up and saw a woman in white coming toward her. White habit, white veil and a ghostly white face.

“Mom?”

“Of course it’s your mother.”

“Sorry, I didn’t...” She didn’t recognize her own mother. Gone was her mother’s long black hair so like her own. Gone were the khaki skirt she lived in and the navy cardigans and her ubiquitous white Keds. Elle hadn’t come to her mother’s entrance ceremony. She would have if her mother had asked, but by then Elle had moved out and they’d stopped speaking. Elle had forgotten that part, that whole not speaking to each other thing. Hopefully her mother had forgotten it, too.

“What on earth are you doing here?” her mother demanded.

“That nun let me in here behind the door.”

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“No, what are you doing here? At the abbey?”

“Oh...long story.”

“Long story?” her mother repeated. “Long story? I haven’t seen or heard from you in two years—”

“You called me a whore, Mom. Did you really think I wanted to keep having that conversation with you?”

Her mother’s spine stiffened visibly.

“That was wrong of me. I was worried about you, and I took what I’d learned about you...badly.”

“Is that an apology?”

“It is.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Elle said, meaning it. Right now she was sorry for everything.

“Forgive me?”

“Yes. No. Maybe.”

“Maybe?” her mother said.

“I’ll forgive you for everything you said to me. And if you remember accurately, calling me a ‘whore’ was just the beginning of that discussion.”

“I overreacted. I had my reasons for overreacting.”

“I know you did,” she said, although she’d had no sympathy for her mother at the time. Everything had been okay between them until one night Søren had driven her home on the back of his motorcycle. Her mother was supposed to be out late at a church function but had got ill and come home early. One glance out the window and she’d seen her daughter kissing a Catholic priest. Elle had been so angry after her mother had called her a “priest’s whore” she’d spilled everything. The ***. The kink. And if her mother dared speak a word of it, Elle would never speak to her again as long as she lived.

The next day Elle had moved out.

“Mom, I need your help with something.”

“How can I help you?” she asked, sounding both concerned and suspicious.

“I need to stay here for a while.”

She shook her head.

“That’s not possible. Only sisters are allowed in the abbey. You shouldn’t even be behind this door.”

“Maybe they can make an exception for me. I can work.”

“Work? How? We do all our own work here. We cook our own food, clean, farm, everything. We don’t hire outside help.”

“But I can help. You don’t have to hire me. I’ll work for free.”

“No, Ellie. I don’t know what you’re into or who you’re in trouble with again—”

“I’m not running from the cops. I’m twenty-six years old. I’m not running away from home, either. I need a place to stay for a while, a safe place.”

“So you didn’t steal any cars this time?”

“No,” she said. “Well, one. But that was more like borrowing. And he’ll get it back.”

“Elle, I don’t have time for your games. I have work to do. I have a life here and you’re not a part of it. You can’t be. You can come to Mass here at the chapel. We can visit once a week. But this is a sacred place, a sanctuary.”

“I need sanctuary.”

“Why? Because you got arrested again?”

“No, Mom. Because I left him.”

Silence.

Total silence.

A great silence even. A silence so loud it echoed off the floors like footsteps. Finally her mother exhaled and crossed herself. Tears shone in her eyes and she whispered, “Benedicta excels Mater Dei, Maria sanctissima.” Elle didn’t know much Latin, but she knew a prayer of thanks to the Virgin Mary when she heard it.

Before she knew it, her mother had wrapped her up in her arms and Elle’s neck was wet with tears. Not her tears but her mother’s. Elle closed her eyes and breathed in the faint, clean scent of talcum powder. Some things were still the same about her mother. The clothes, the hair, even her name...that was all different. But at least her mother smelled the same.

“You can stay, baby,” she whispered. “I’ll make them let you stay.”

“Thank you.” She wanted to cry too but the tears wouldn’t come. She wouldn’t let them. Tears were not welcome here. Elle couldn’t remember the last time her mother had hugged her, had held her like this. Years. It was almost worth it to leave Søren for this one hug alone.

“You really did leave him?” her mother asked again.

“I did,” Elle said.

“For good?” her mother asked.

Elle nodded against her mother’s shoulder.

“Forever.”

7

ELLE’S MOTHER ESCORTED her down hallway after hallway. From the outside, the abbey looked like a gray stone square—three stories high and likely as long as it was wide. The inside, however, was labyrinthine. Every few feet they turned a corner, then another. Winding hallways, unmarked doors. On the walls were crucifixes, icons, shrines, image after image of Saint Monica in various poses, in various mediums. In one mosaic Saint Monica held her son Saint Augustine in her arms. Elle glanced at it only a moment, glanced away quickly.

“Where are we going?” she asked her mother, who hadn’t released her hand this entire time.

“I’m going to the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration. Mother Prioress is there tonight. We’ll need to get her permission to let you stay.”

“Will she give it?”

“She doesn’t like outsiders in the abbey.”

“Is that a no?”

“No, but start praying anyway,” her mother said, and Elle did as she was told.

Elle had a good sense of direction, but by the time they arrived at the chapel, she knew she’d never find her way back to the front door without help. Good. The front door was the gateway to the outside world. It was the last place she wanted to go.

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They walked under a polished wooden archway and into an open seating area that looked like nothing more than a living room. She saw bookshelves, baskets of knitting and chairs of all types.

“Here. Wait for me in the library,” her mother said. “I’ll be back soon.”

Elle took a seat in a cane-back chair that had probably been here since the convent was founded in 1856. It creaked under her weight but held her. A few minutes passed. Elle relaxed into the chair. For two days now she’d been coasting on the fumes of her fury. Now a deep exhaustion set into her body. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep. Sleep for a year, sleep for the rest of her life.

She looked to her right and saw a stack of magazines on a small table. Catholic Digest. Inside the Vatican. The Catholic Times. The front page of one of the magazines blared the headline Why God Demands Priestly Celibacy.

“What the **** am I doing here?” Elle asked herself out loud. No one answered. No one had to. Elle knew what the **** she was doing there.

Because she had nowhere else to go.

“This is your Eleanor?”

Elle stood up immediately. In the doorway loomed a woman who must have been almost six feet tall. She wore round glasses and a black habit with an elaborate rosary hanging down her side.

“Ellie, this is Mother Prioress. Mother Prioress, my only child.”

Mother Prioress looked Elle up and down.

“Why are you here?” Mother Prioress asked. She had a slight accent, vaguely Irish, but time in America had washed most of it out.

“I was just asking myself the same thing,” she said, deciding to try honesty.

“She left her lover,” her mother said.

“How is this our concern?” Mother Prioress asked.

“Because he beats her.”

“Mom, he—”

Her mother raised a hand to silence her. Elle closed her mouth.

“I’m very sorry to hear that. But isn’t that a matter for the police?” Mother Prioress asked.

“He’s in a position of power,” her mother answered for Elle. “And he has dangerous friends.”

Elle couldn’t argue with either of those assertions. Søren was in a position of power. And he did have dangerous friends. She knew that because they were her dangerous friends, too.

“Are you certain she’s telling the truth?” Mother Prioress asked Elle’s mother. Elle was about five seconds away from losing the last vestiges of her self-control. “Isn’t this the daughter who you said has had run-ins with the law?”

“That was over ten years ago, Mother Prioress. And I’m certain she’s telling the truth.”

“We don’t let outsiders stay within the walls,” Mother Prioress said. “That’s against our rules.”

“What of the rule of Saint Benedict?” her mother asked the prioress. “‘Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say I came as a guest, and you received Me.’”

Mother Prioress nodded. “Yes, and when Christ arrived to visit His disciples after the resurrection, He did not hesitate to prove Himself. Do you have any proof your accusations against this man are true?”

Elle looked her mother in the eye. She knew what she needed to do but was loath to do it. Everything within her rebelled at the lie she needed to tell. Søren was no saint and neither was she. But to blame him for a crime he hadn’t committed felt like blasphemy. Søren had sinned against her, yes. Sinned so that she never wanted to lay eyes on him again. But leaving him and lying about him were two different things. And yet...

She turned around and lifted the back of her shirt. Without even having to look she knew what her mother and the Prioress saw. Five nights ago Kingsley had flogged her before ****ing her, flogged her for an hour. Flogged her, then caned her. Flogged, caned her, whipped her, spanked her. And now her back boasted the fading welts and bruises from that long and beautiful night.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” the Prioress said, and the Irish accent came out in full force. Elle pulled her shirt back down. She’d always loved her bruises and welts, cherished them. Kingsley had kissed them after giving them to her. She knew he’d been especially bruising simply to goad Søren, whose return from Rome was imminent that week. The welts were Kingsley’s way of saying, “Look how much fun we had without you.”

“Only sisters and retreatants are allowed on the grounds,” Mother Prioress said. “We have our own rules to follow.”

“I can be a retreatant,” Elle said. “I have some money. What does a week-long retreat here cost?”

“One hundred dollars.”

A hotel room would cost her fifty a night, at least. “I can pay it,” Elle said.

“I suppose,” Mother Prioress said. “But this is highly unusual.”

“I’ll work, too. I’ll be useful. Please. I can’t...I can’t go back out there yet.”

Something in Elle’s voice must have gotten through to Mother Prioress. The fear, the desperation. Or maybe it was the money. Who knew? Elle didn’t care as long as they let her stay.

“If she works, she can stay,” Mother Prioress said at last. “We’ll consider it a special sort of retreat. No longer than a year, however. We work here. We pray here. We serve each other here. We, none of us, are in hiding.”

Elle turned around and faced them. She was too ashamed of herself to meet their eyes. Not ashamed of the bruises on her back. Ashamed that she’d lied.