did I do to deserve this wrath?”
Her hands, so prettily arranged in her lap, turned their palms up in a subtle entreaty. “I’m aware that my only value right now is my ability to reverse the inconveniences I’ve arranged.”
“I’m confident I can reverse them myself before they do too much damage. Your value is nil.”
“You’re probably right.” She nodded, not even sweating. Her only betrayal of nerves was the rapid tattoo of the artery in her throat.
Gabriel had a weakness for puzzles. There was a twelve-year-old boy inside him itching to lock the door, put on his noise-canceling headphones and hack his own system until he’d found every Easter egg she’d hidden there. Not because he was worried. Purely for the game of it.
And there was a thirty-one-year-old man who wanted to put his hands on the twisted pieces of this woman and see how quickly he could untangle her and make her come apart.
“If what you say about your circumstance here is true...” He set aside his coffee mug again. “One could argue that by taking control of my grandmother’s assets, I am taking possession of you.”
There was that intriguing stillness again. The screen of her mink lashes, so ridiculously long and curled like a filly’s, hid her eyes while her mouth might have trembled.
“One could argue that,” she admitted in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. “I’ve done my utmost to protect all of her assets. Including me. Which wouldn’t stop you from unloading me. As assets go, I’m probably at my top value right now. If you were to sell me, for instance.”
He told himself she was mistaking him for someone with a conscience that could be played upon, but his stomach clenched in revulsion.
“Of course, if you were to do that, I would make every effort to use what I know of her business interests to my advantage,” Luli continued.
Such a cool delivery. He told himself to focus on that, her complete lack of emotional hysteria despite the topic they were discussing.
Instead, he was compelled to ask, “Is that how she acquired you? Off some auction block?” He would turn the fortune over to the authorities, not wanting a penny of it if it was built on something so ugly.
“No.” She shifted the fit of her hands, interlacing her fingers, but her knuckles remained white, telling him she was in a state of heightened stress, even though that was the only visible sign of it. Why? Because her story was true? Or because the lie she was telling had grown too heavy and unwieldy to carry?
“My mother lived in a building my father owned in Caracas. She was his mistress. He was in government, married to someone else. He sold the building to your grandmother without making arrangements for my mother’s upkeep. Mae was trying to have her thrown out. My mother cut a deal with her to take me as an employee in exchange for allowing her to stay there. I’m working off my mother’s debt.”
She named a figure in bolivars that would calculate to about a hundred thousand dollars.
Was that what a human life was worth? Pocket change?
“You were fourteen?”
“Yes.”
“Why haven’t you left? Even if she deducted room and board, I would think you’d have paid that off by now.”
“Where would I go?” Her hands came up empty. “If your grandmother has my passport, it’s long expired. I have no right to be here and there’s nothing for me in Venezuela if they deport me. I could live on the streets, I suppose, and work under the table as other illegals do. How is that better than this? At least here I’m safe, fed and clothed.”
And now that safety net was gone. He began to understand her motive.
“I’m grateful to your grandmother,” she continued. “I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but there was a man who had also come to the apartment. If Mae hadn’t insisted on taking me, I’m quite sure my mother would have given me to him. My computer work these last years would have been purely as content.” Her faint smile was an inscrutable Mona Lisa of agonized acceptance.
No. A sharp spike of repugnance slid deep into his gut at the idea of any woman being exploited that way. At fourteen. Ever.
“She really doesn’t pay you?”
“Please don’t be offended when I say this.” She angled her head with apology. “I think she looked on me as a sort of daughter. She didn’t pay me because you don’t pay family for working in the family business.”
“If that’s how she saw you, why didn’t she leave everything to you?”
“She said...” Luli sighed toward the ceiling. “She said that when the time was right, she would arrange a marriage for me. I don’t know if she was serious, but if I brought up money, she would get defensive and ask me if I would be happier scrubbing pots in the kitchen.”
“No one else knows about this agreement?” Could it be called an agreement if Luli hadn’t been given a choice?
“I’ve never told anyone. I don’t believe she ever did.”
Because, no matter the lofty motives she might have had, holding Luli here like this was a crime.
Or a complete fabrication.
And his grandmother was gone. He couldn’t ask her if she had really kept a young woman as an indentured servant for eight years.
“Mr. Dean—”
“Gabriel.”
“Mr. Dean.” Her voice made his scalp prickle, her accent so musical and warm despite her formal address. “I very much appreciate that you’ve given me this opportunity to explain myself.” Her gaze slid to the clock on the mantel, an ornate bronze piece atop a trumpeting elephant, likely from one of the Louis periods.
“If you’re willing to continue this conversation, I would like to reset the timer on the laptop.”
* * *
He was impossible to read. Intimidating with his innate physical power on top of his wealth and influence. She had to continually remind herself to breathe. Inhale, exhale. No sudden movements. Predators were attracted by panic and the stench of fear.
She suspected he deliberately let the seconds tick audibly in the silent room as a small form of torture to her. A test, perhaps, to see how nervous it made her.
Poise was something she had begun cultivating as soon as she understood the word. She made herself hold his gaze, refusing to give up her small advantage until he agreed to her condition. If he thought what she had told him about herself was a complete fabrication, they would discover the hard way that it was true.
His head jerked in an abbreviated nod.
In a smooth, unhurried motion that hid the gallop of her heart, she went to the desk and opened the laptop with a single minute to spare. She used the opportunity of having her back turned to gather her composure. Her fingerprint unlocked the screen, but she had to enter a code at the same time and she had to get it right in two tries. She managed it, then navigated to give them another thirty minutes of playing chess on a minefield.
As she turned, she found him on his feet. He removed his suit jacket and draped it over the arm of the sofa. His shirt strained across the virile expanse of his shoulders and chest and tucked into the narrow belt to accentuate his lean waist.
“More kopi?” She moved to the tray where the urn sat, more to avoid approaching him than a desire to be a conscientious servant.
He brought his cup to the tray. “No, thank you.”
A deliberate effort to approach her? His jawline was what some might refer to as chiseled. It was a clearly defined, angular structure from corner to corner, quite a fascinating study for an artist’s eye.
Or