LOGIN“You are an interesting woman,” he says finally, as though he has been collecting sentiments about me like curiosities. “I am not for your amusement,” I say. “Amusement is a generous way of putting it.” He turns his face to me and finally, which is nothing like mercy, he kisses me. It is a small t
“You will come with me tonight,” he says suddenly, and when I look at him the certainty in his eyes is a rope. “Where are we going?” I ask. I do not like the sound of my own voice in the dark halls. “To the club,” he says, as if the clubs he owns are nothing more than rooms he has arranged for his
The dinner goes on without ceremony. I wear a dress that fits like a promise and is less comfortable than anything else I own. The woman who dresses me fusses at the strap and at the hem with an intimacy that is practiced, like a ritual done daily for decades. The room where dinner is served is a pl
“You should not have broken a tray,” he says in that voice that is silk wrapped around steel. It makes everyone quiet because it is a voice that is treated like currency in this house. The words are simple but the way he says them says a thousand more complicated things. He is not angry the way I am
I come back from the memory to find sunlight in my eyes and orange juice dried on the carpet like the outline of a wound. My hands are trembling now for reasons I cannot name. The house clock in the hall ticks the way a heart does when it is being measured. There are noises behind the walls, small h
Oh God, I hate him. He is the center of everything I cannot control in this place. He is the reason doors close and keys rattle and the nights feel like traps. He is the reason my throat tastes like metal at dusk. He is also the reason, absurdly and against my every better judgment, that sometimes
When I closed my eyes later, Estela’s face came back like a photograph soaked in bleach and left to age. Her lips were set in a way they had never been when she smiled at me, a baring of teeth that hurt less because they were honest. There were flecks of ash and glitter in the folds of the office ca
The accusation landed like a rock in a pond, and ripples spread out until even the wallflowers leaned forward. That word pet stung more than anything they could throw at me, as if someone had named me a thing rather than a man. I let the hurt sit there, heavy and believable. I thought of Estela in t
~~ROMANO~~ What the fuck have i done? The was the first thing i thought gazing into the empty office after killing Estela and watching her body float away. The second was to kill all her guards and that stupid dog of hers. And the third was to go quietly back to texas to formulate a new plan. T
Outside, the night had a thin line of light across the horizon that promised the coming day. Somewhere, people like me folded into their shifts, unaware that a new hunger had taken shape in the world above them. Somewhere else, the girl with the golden hair slept or woke, unaware that a man in anoth







