Chapter Four: Something Worse

Dorian

She didn't scream.

That was the first thing I noticed.

The elevator doors had closed behind Richard Rowan and the girl hadn't moved. She hadn't begged. Hadn't thrown herself at my feet the way the last one did. She just stood there in that faded blue dress with her head bowed and her hands clasped so tightly in front of her that her knuckles had gone white.

I walked toward her slowly.

She stared at the floor.

I stopped a foot away. She still didn't look up. Her shoulders had pulled inward, making herself as small as possible. Like she was trying to disappear into the carpet.

"Look at me," I said. 

She didn't.

"I said look at me." My voice dropped.

Her chin came up maybe two inches. Her eyes landed somewhere around my collar. She would not meet my face. Her jaw was trembling but her mouth was pressed into a thin, determined line, like she was fighting very hard not to make a sound.

I studied her the way I studied everything. Clinically and completely.

She was too young. Far too thin. Old bruises were yellowing along her jaw. There was a split in her bottom lip that was still healing. The dress she wore was clean but the hem was fraying, the fabric was too soft with age. It had not come from a store recently. It had come from someone else's closet years ago.

Richard Rowan had signed this girl away to settle a gambling debt and hadn't even put a coat on her first.

"Sit down," I said.

She moved to the chair across from my desk immediately without hesitation. The obedience of someone who had been conditioned to comply before the words were even finished. She perched on the very edge and dropped her eyes back to her lap.

I sat and opened the folder Marcus had left. Her name was at the top. She had no employment history. No financial records. No emergency contacts.

Nothing. She existed on paper the way a shadow existed. Present but leaving no mark.

"Your name," I said.

"Ivy." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Ivy Rowan."

"You understand what the contract means."

She paused for a second then nodded.

"Say it."

Her throat moved. "I'm to be your wife."

"In three days." I closed the folder. "Tonight you'll go to the estate. The housekeeper will explain what's expected of you."

Silence fell over the room. She didn't ask questions. She didn't argue. She just sat with her spine curved slightly inward and her eyes fixed on her own folded hands.

Most women in her position demanded explanations. Lawyers. Phone calls. Most women screamed.

This one looked like screaming had been beaten out of her a long time ago.

I rose from my desk and walked toward the window. Behind me, I heard the faint sound of her breath, shallow and controlled. She was working very hard to stay quiet. To stay still. To take up as little space as possible.

I recognized it. The particular stillness of someone who had learned that movement attracted attention and attention brought pain.

I had been that still once. A long time ago.

"You're not crying," I said, keeping my voice cold.

She didn't say anything.

"Most of them cried."

Still nothing.

I turned. She was staring at a point somewhere past my shoulder, her gray-green eyes fixed on the wall behind me. She had still not looked at my face. I wasn't sure she had looked at anything directly since she entered this room.

"Do you know who I am?" I asked.

She nodded slightly.

"Then you know what they call me."

Her throat moved again. Another small nod.

"And you still haven't cried."

Her lips parted and closed again. She seemed to be deciding something. Then, very quietly, she said, "Crying doesn't help."

Those words were flat and simple and so completely devoid of self-pity that they landed in the room like stones.

I looked at her for a long moment.

She was still staring at the wall past my shoulder. Her hands had unclenched slightly in her lap. She seemed unaware of it.

I walked to the door and opened it. Marcus was waiting in the hall.

"Take her to the estate," I said, my voice low. "Give her the east wing room. Not the one we used before."

Marcus glanced past me at the girl. 

Something moved across his face. He was careful about it but I saw it.

"And Marcus." I kept my voice flat. "Put two men outside her door tonight."

His eyebrows rose a fraction. "Containing her?"

I only shrugged.

He was quiet for a beat. "Dorian…"

"It's a precaution," I said. "Nothing more."

I stepped back into the office. The girl had risen from the chair without being told, already anticipating the dismissal. She stood near the desk with her head down, her braid falling over one shoulder.

"Miss Rowan." I called.

She went very still.

"You will want for nothing at the estate. Food. Clothing. Whatever you need, Mrs. Chen will arrange it."

She said nothing. Didn't thank me. Didn't look up.

Something about that bothered me more than it should have.

"Go," I said.

She followed Marcus without a word, without a backward glance, her footsteps so quiet they barely registered on the marble floor. Like she had spent years practicing how not to be heard.

The door closed.

I stood in the empty office for a moment, then walked back to my desk. The folder was still open. I turned to the last page, where a document had been slipped in behind the official papers.

A small photograph. Slightly creased at one corner.

A little girl, maybe six or seven, with loose auburn hair and bare feet, laughing in a garden full of sunlight. A woman was spinning her in circles, both of them blurred with movement and joy. A man stood a few feet away with his hands in his pockets, watching them with a smile that belonged to someone who had everything he ever wanted.

Her parents.

I set it down on the desk and stared at it.

Then I picked up my phone.

"I need everything on Richard Rowan," I said when the line connected. "Every debt. Every crime. Every lie he has told in the last twenty years."

I paused.

"And find out how her parents really died."