And Robert would come calling sooner rather than later. He wouldn’t let me hide away for that long. He would never let me have peace without him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Merl and I join Dan in his suite for the council meeting. We sit on either side of the bed, our dogs curled up around us.
“You guys roll deep,” Dan says with a laugh as he opens up the app he designed for our video conferencing. “Syd, will you adjust that camera so it is directed more toward you?” he asks, pointing to a mounted device on one of his monitors. I stand and lean over him to shift the lens.
There are three large monitors on three different desks around his bed. Two of them have blank boxes for Lenox and Mulberry and the third has three boxes—one for each of us.
Lenox comes online first. He’s wearing a white linen shirt that contrasts with his dark skin—the gold chain around his neck glittering. It’s late in France, eleven hours behind us. But Lenox looks fresh. His smile grows when he sees us all. “Good evening,” he says in that accent of his that seems to dance across my skin. “How is everyone?”
“Good,” I answer.
“How are you healing, Dan?” he asks, his brow furrowing in concern.
“I’ll be fine, my cast will be off soon and then I’ll just have to learn to walk again.” He says it with humor but Dan’s recovery will be months.
“You will be paddling again in no time,” Lenox predicts, referencing Dan’s love of stand-up paddle boarding. He has a rule that the workers here have to get outside and do something every day. Dan understands the way his team can get obsessive and end up at their desks for days at a time…he is often guilty of that himself.
Mulberry comes online before Dan can respond. My heart beats faster at the sight of him. His stubble has grown into a full beard. And when he smiles through the camera it feels like a gut punch. Images of us spending the first few months of our son’s life sequestered away from the world—just the three of us—flood my imagination. Mulberry holding a baby in his arms, hushing him to sleep in the early light of dawn. Me pushing a baby carriage, Mulberry walking next to me, sun shining on us as we smile at each other.
I push the images aside. That kind of thing doesn’t work for people like us. When you’re trying to burn down society, you don’t get sunshine in the park with your baby…then I hear Merl’s voice in my mind.
The way to change society is to change yourself.
I blink, coming back into the room as Lenox addresses me. “Sydney, how are you feeling?”
“All good,” I say. “Had a checkup this morning. Everything is good.” Say good again why don’t you?
Mulberry’s face lights up and I have to look away, my eyes moving toward the image of myself on the screen. I blink at the woman I see there—she’s me…but different. The scars I’ve grown so used to now seem almost indistinct. One runs under my left eye; once a raised pink line, it is now a gentle reminder of what mad men will do if you don’t stop them. The one above my eyebrow isn’t visible behind my bangs.
My gray eyes spark silver in the camera’s lens. I cast my gaze to the floor, to where Blue sleeps, his chin on my foot. “I think we should start with the attack on Sydney and Petra,” Lenox suggests. “I have new information.”
My gaze rises back to the meeting.
“The evidence points to a rival brothel owner,” Lenox continues. “We are surprised—they are a small organization. Petra is convinced they have backing from others but we don’t have any hard evidence yet.”
“Petra has good instincts,” I say.
“She does,” Lenox agrees.
“Send me the details,” Dan says. “I’ll have my team check them out.”
“Thank you,” Lenox says. “Petra wants to kill them—and take over their clubs.” He says it like it’s a normal thing to say. “I am hesitant for more bloodshed but also recognize the danger of leaving them alive to try again.”
Merl shifts in his seat. “How do they treat the workers at their facilities?”
“To my knowledge, the workers are willing; we sent in an informant months ago to investigate and found the clubs to be fine. Not like ours, of course, but neither did they appear to be trafficking in unwilling or underage women. Though drug use is rampant…” Lenox leaves the rest of that sentence hanging in the air.
How often are people willing to do things for drugs they’d never do for anything else? Is a drug addict capable of making decisions for oneself? These are not questions we can answer, nor decisions we can make for anyone else. Laws say you can’t use drugs or sell your body. But imprisonment for self-harm doesn’t seem a fitting solution for the problems that plague these women.
Lenox sighs and smiles at us. When I met Lenox, then a high-end gigolo, he only worked with male sex workers—avoiding the perils of trading in women. But Petra convinced him that if he really wanted to change the business, to help people who worked in it, he couldn’t stay small. If you consider millions of dollars in revenue and an international network of male escorts small…
But Lenox never wanted to play in such treacherous waters and it shows in the tightness around his eyes. The man wants to do good, but hates having to witness so much bad.
Forcing sex work into the same shady, illegal world of dangerous addictive drugs means that the two will always be tangled. Until it all comes out into the light, the darkness will win.
We move on to other topics—missions currently in progress and new requests pending. I don’t bring up my urge to upend society and neither does anyone else. With the hundreds of requests we get for help every day and the ongoing attacks on Lenox and Petra, there isn’t really time to tear it all down and build it all up again.
But it has to happen or nothing will ever change.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bora Bora is as beautiful in real life as in the photographs—no, more beautiful. The turquoise water is crystalline, the breeze blowing off the ocean is gentle and forgiving. It’s paradise.
Our hotel’s lobby, restaurants and other common facilities are on solid, palm-shaded land, but all the suites are in bungalows on stilts over the reef-protected tropical waters. A network of raised boardwalks connects them to the main buildings.
“Your husband won’t arrive for another few hours, Mrs. Maxim.” The private concierge who introduced himself as Sven wears a burgundy short-sleeve button-up shirt and matching pants—they are ironed and crisp in a way that makes my skin itch in the warm weather. “He has arranged a prenatal massage for you in the suite.”
“Oh,” I say. How thoughtful. But also controlling…trying to tell me what to do with my few hours alone.
“Is that okay?” Sven asks, his voice unsure.
“Yes, that’s fine,” I say, feeling the twinge in my lower back from the flight.
