Heartless Lover by Faith Summers

9

Summer

“Can I get you anything else before I leave?” Lyssa asks.

“No, thank you,” I reply, straightening up and forcing a smile. It’s not her fault I’m in this situation or this sullen mood. It’s also definitely not her fault I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Eric since yesterday.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You barely ate, dear.”

“Honestly, I’m okay,” I assure her. “I don’t feel much like eating.” I decide to go with the truth because of her sincerity.

“Alright. There are some sugar buns on the side if you get hungry.”

“Thanks. Did Eric say when he’d be back?”

“No, I’m afraid he can be like that sometimes. Some weeks I don’t see him at all.”

“Oh, I see.” Maybe that will happen to me. I can’t say that’ll be a bad thing given our last encounter, but it’s not a good thing either. I can’t stay here day in, day out, not knowing what’s going on.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, and I wave.

She leaves me, and I relax a little allowing my true mood to show.

If staying with this man means being torn between arousal, fear, or in a state of flux it’s going to make me crazy.

I like my independence for all those reasons. One of the things I loved about being on my own was the freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted.

When you’ve spent most of your life trying to survive, knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow and the next day and the day after that is imperative.

This situation, however, is one that’s completely out of my hands, and I have to do something I haven’t done in so long I can’t remember how to do it.

I have to trust a complete stranger.

Regardless of my plans or how much I hate this fucked up situation, I have to trust Eric on some level with my life.

The weird thing about that, though, is usually when you trust a person, they care about you. He doesn’t care about me at all. Eric is just like every other man who needs something from me. Right now, that something is me.

I have no idea how long it’s going to take to find Robert and Micah, but since Eric suggested seeing Dad on Sunday, I think it might take longer than what I was hoping for.

I look around the room at the boxes on the floor that arrived from the cottage. I’m grateful for my things from there too. They were delivered earlier, so it gave me something to do.

There aren’t many, but there’s a mixture of Scarlett’s things she kept there and the bare minimum I was able to bring from Monaco. Had I gone with whoever was sent to retrieve them, I would have left Scarlett’s things there. Now that they’re here, though, I’m glad to have them. They make me feel closer to her, even though seeing them also makes me sad too.

I kneel and continue sorting through the boxes. I decided to separate the items, but I’ve been looking for something, and I can see it now. It’s a little journal. On the front is a picture of Grandmama with her arms around Scarlett and me.

Of everything that I had at the cottage, this was what I worried about losing. My grandmother made it for me. She made one for Scarlett too.

It’s an acting journal. She said it was one of the most important things in an actress's life because it’s supposed to serve as a reminder of where you came from.

Scarlett and I were six years old in this picture, and Grandmama hadn’t yet been diagnosed with the cancer that would claim her life.

Scarlett’s hugging me tight, and we have the biggest smiles on our faces. Grandmama had us dressed in matching pink puff-sleeved dresses.

She took the picture after we’d just gotten casted for the part of twins in a sitcom called, All my Years. We were on that show for four years. That was the start of the dream for us. After that show, I was the one who went on to do stage plays, and I did it all before and during high school. I can’t believe that was only eighteen years ago.

Scarlett and I look happy. The dream to be actresses was the thing that glued us together. It wasn’t being twins. That dream was something we both shared, and it kept us going.

Our Grandmother was our idol. It was she who paved the path for all of us to follow. She landed her first role in Hollywood when she was sixteen.

Originally from Louisiana, Grandmama was a real southern belle. It was that attribute that got her many of her roles in several notable classic films the world knows today.

Scarlett and I wanted to be her. Mom did too, but unlike us, my mother was obsessed with getting famous and doing whatever she needed to do to get it.

It was that obsession that destroyed us because Mom couldn’t see Ted for the monster he was.

Grandmama died a few months after the show, and that’s when Mom met Ted. Ted promised my mother the world and enticed her to cheat on my father.

I’m not sure if she needed much enticement, though, because Mom loved money and prestige. She divorced Dad within a year of meeting Ted, leaving my father heartbroken and depressed, but Mama loved nothing more than being on Ted’s arm.

She just wasn’t aware that while she thought he had big money, he was only interested in her inheritance and the prestige he could get from being with her.

She didn’t know that being with an actress of her caliber was good for his campaigns. Neither did she know his fascination with feisty little girls and his extra-curricular activities.

Swallowing hard, I put the journal away and decided to push those memories out of my mind.

It’s hard to look at anything from the past, especially now, and keep those thoughts at bay. They stir now for the significant fact Scarlett isn’t here anymore. My nightmares started when I promised myself I’d always protect her.

Now that she’s gone, it feels like everything I went through was for nothing.

I need a walk or something. I’ve been in this room virtually all day. I was told to make myself comfortable, but I will never feel relaxed here, and I don’t want to.

I leave the room and look around for Oleg. He’s not anywhere, though, and it seems I’m alone. I doubt that I’m completely by myself, though, because I could just leave.

Curiosity makes me walk to the front door, and when I see the lock is one of those that is activated by a keycard, I just shake my head at myself for being so silly.

What was I going to do anyway if I could leave?

Run to the mountains like I contemplated? I’m not sure if it would be better than this. But it could be. I suppose this way, I get a front-row seat to see what happens. The other way, I’d never know, or maybe they’d find me like Eric said and kill me.

I stare out to the inky black sky through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. It’s beautiful here. I’m more of a house person, but I can see the surface appeal of living in a penthouse apartment that overlooks the city.

I turn and decide to head back to the room, but when I look down the corridor that leads to the west side of the apartment, curiosity gets the better of me, and I stop in my tracks.

Yesterday Lyssa took me everywhere, including the terrace, but I have no idea where Eric’s room is or what’s on the west side.

Telling an inquisitive, rebellious person like me to stay away from something is just as bad as telling me to do it. Yesterday I had eyes on me all day. Now that I don’t … who would know if I had a little look around the places I haven’t seen yet?

I make my way down the corridor, and the first thing I see is another living room. This one is bigger and looks more like Eric uses it for entertainment.

Further down is a wide space with an atrium and then another long hallway which I feel will lead me straight to where I’m not supposed to go.

I go down there, and the automatic lights come on, brightening my way.

There are two doors opposite each other, and these doors don’t require a keycard.

Both have standard metal door handles like the one in my room. I try the first door, and it’s locked. The second door, however, is not. As my fingers touch the cool metal of the handle and it turns, my curiosity piques all the more and drowns out the voice in my head, warning me away from venturing deeper.

When I open the door and find myself staring into Eric Markov’s bedroom, all I want to do is delve deeper into the mystery of the man. The décor of the room looks more elegant than I expected for him with its Rococo furnishing and well-thought-out design.

You can tell a lot about a person from what you find in their bedroom. I’d like to see what kind of man I’m going to be staying with. Or rather, what kind of criminal.

So, I walk in.

My footsteps are muffled by the plush cream carpet the moment I step onto it. I look at the clean white walls with one landscape painting hanging on the furthest. The place in the painting is beautiful and not what I’d expect to find in his room.

There are shelves on the wall adjacent with a multitude of books on physics, chemistry, and computer science. All subjects I would have failed at in school.

I see some classical literature books that I’m very familiar with, like Great Expectations, Dante’s Inferno, and To Kill a Mockingbird. That’s it, though. That’s all I recognize. Everything else is either by Einstein, someone like him, or what I’d imagine people like him to read.

I move over to the king-size bed and mull over its wooden headboard with the intricate design embossed into it. The design looks old. Like something Celtic, but I can’t quite be sure. The nightstands on either side match it, and the black bedsheets and pillows complement the design.

But that’s not what I’m interested in—pretty as it is. I want to see what’s in the drawers.

I open the first, and my cheeks warm when I see several boxes of extra, extra -large condoms and a little pot of lube sitting beside it. Next to them are a pair of restraints similar to the ones he bound me with nights ago. These have velvet cuffs, though. I pick it up and feel over the velvet texture.

When I saw the restraints the other night, I knew he was into BDSM. Now I’m sure of it. I don’t know why, but I wonder who he’s had in here that he used these on.

I set the restraints on the bed and pulled the drawer out a little more. That’s when I see a memory stick sitting on top of a stack of sticky memo pads.

That’s the kind of thing I would gloss over and keep snooping, but what stops me from doing so is the label on it.

It says:

Robert recording from Monaco Cliff.

My breath stilts, and my chest tightens like someone is strangling my lungs from the inside when I realize what this is.

This is the recording from my apartment. The one that captured my sister’s death.

I release the breath I’m holding and pick it up, staring at it like it’s a drug. Not the enticement part of a drug. No, not that. The enticement part is what you know that drug can do for you to ease your pain and allow you to escape reality.

What I’m referring to is the other part, though. The part that all addicts know but most refuse to acknowledge when they look at a drug. It’s the part where they know it’s bad, but they want to take it anyway.

I’m having the same effect here.

Seeing what’s on this recording would probably kill me, but I want to see it. I wonder if that’s why I want to watch it. Because I want to die. That can’t be true, though, because I don’t. Perhaps, the guilty part of me feels more guilt because I should want to, but my fight to live keeps me going.

I have the recording in my hands. If I took it, Eric would know, and what would I watch it on? I don’t have access to anything.

That doesn’t mean, though, that I might not at some point.

“Tsk, tsk.” Comes a sound from the door that has me snapping my gaze up.

When I meet the steely cold eyes of Eric Markov, I know there’s little point contemplating anything further.

Because I’m in trouble, and he already warned me not to make an enemy out of him.