Maggie was directly outside the room now, and I was wild with adrenaline. Everything could go so wrong. My mother would be crushed that I’d snuck away again, my dad furious when he had to foot the bill for this. I didn’t want them to feel that way.

And Maggie—what if they fired her? Mom wouldn’t. But Dad could and would. Even Mom wouldn’t be able to convince him otherwise. It wasn’t the first, third, or even fifth time that I’d run away when Maggie was in charge.

“Okay, okay,” I breathed out, shoving my hand into his pants. His penis was thick and big. It felt weird and unnatural. The wooden pastry made its way up my throat. I needed to puke.

“Now squeeze,” he instructed with his breezy English accent.

I did. I squeezed again and again and again, pumping it like a stress ball, wanting to hurt him badly. But the more I tried to make it painful for him, the more he seemed to like it. It all happened really fast. Ten seconds flat. His eyes rolled in their sockets, dropping shut, and he shuddered.

He pushed me away all of a sudden, a jerky reaction. I fell on the floor and watched as he took a multicolored handkerchief from his breast pocket and shoved his hand into his opened zipper. When the handkerchief reappeared, it was wet and sticky.

“Bloody hell,” he breathed heavily, wiping his brow. The look on his face when he saw me on the floor, staring at him, was confused, then angry.

“On your feet, now.” He clapped twice.

I shot up the minute Maggie walked into the room. She wasn’t alone. Mom and Dad were with her, too. One look at the three of them, and any regret I might’ve had for doing what I did with this man vanished. Mom and Maggie had tears in their eyes. Maggie’s brow was dripping with sweat. Dad looked like he was about to kill someone. If they thought I’d snuck away to break a six-million-dollar piece of art, I’d be grounded well into my mid-forties.

“Vaughn!” Mom cried with relief. She ran to me, scooped me up, and held me tight, like I was a baby. My limbs flailed helplessly. I felt her heart pounding violently against my own, and the trace of something gluey in my left palm.

“God, I was so worried. What am I going to do with you, Little Houdini?”

“Chain him by the ankles and throw him in the basement until he hits eighteen, by the looks of it,” Dad commented, striding toward us and plucking me from her arms. He put me down and crouched to my eye level, his face full of thunder.

“Who is this guy?” He tilted his head sideways, motioning toward the guy who’d asked me to touch his penis, but still staring at me.

I’d just opened my mouth when the man cooed, “Emilia LeBlanc-Spencer! We finally meet. Huge fan over here.”

“Harry Fairhurst. Same could be said about you. I just bought one of your paintings.” Mom had recovered from her earlier hysteria, but still gave him a suspicious look.

She glanced at me, waiting for cues. Dad stood up, frowning. He didn’t like something about this scene, either, but couldn’t place what it was.

But me, I was ashamed.

Ashamed I’d screwed up.

Run away.

Fell into this person’s scheme.

I felt stupid and juvenile and more destructive than I ever had been, with Maggie on the line.

She could’ve lost her job, and Dad could have paid six mill for my stupidity. And anyway, I wasn’t going to see this asshole ever again.

“What was my son doing in this room with you, Fairhurst?” my dad asked.

Maggie snatched me into her arms. Mom turned to the Fairhurst guy, her body tense.

“Harry?”

He looked between them, at everyone but at me. His eyes glittered with something desperate, but I didn’t know what it was. He pointed to the broken statue at his feet, and my heart skipped a beat.

The motherfucker.

“I accidentally dropped this,” he explained nonchalantly, the smile returning to his voice. “Vaughn here heard the crash and rushed in. He said he’d help me clean up. I told him that was not necessary, that he needed to go back to whoever was calling for him.”

Lies. But I thought they worked in my favor, so I kept my trap shut.

Dad turned to me. “Is this true?”

Harry Fairhurst did not dare to breathe for the duration between Dad’s question and my answer. Mom took a step away from Fairhurst, her eyes wild with something I couldn’t read—not just worry. She was aghast. I couldn’t do it to them, not when I knew Harry still had a napkin with that wet shit on it in his breast pocket.

“Yeah,” I answered finally. “I wanted to see what happened.”

“You can tell us the truth,” Mom said quietly. She had that look, like she was going to cry.