I paced back and forth across my bedroom floor, feeling like a tiger trapped in a zoo. I wanted out, but I knew that none of my captors were keen on letting me see the light of day anytime soon.

 

It had only been a day since the last time I went out, but it felt more like a month—I’d forgotten how tough it was to be trapped up in here, to be forced into doing nothing but entertaining myself. I had walked around every inch of the garden, craning my neck to peer over the top of the walls at the end of the grass—but I found myself getting a stern look from one of the bodyguards placed around the perimeter, and swiftly returned to my stroll. They knew as well as I did that if I got out, there would be no end to the hell that my father would rain down on the staff. Not to mention me, whenever he got his hands on me.

 

All the places I’d been looking at before had gone; I had called up all the estate agents when I got the chance, covering my mouth and hiding my words from anyone who might be listening to me. I kept my voice as perky and polite as I could, but found myself getting beaten down with each call; every answer being a kind but firm “no.” I couldn’t pretend that I was surprised—after all, I’d been too busy hiding out in Jasper’s bed to do much else, and I’d assumed that that door wouldn’t suddenly be closed off to me—as it had been.

 

When I was finished all the phone calls, I went down to the corner of the garden I knew I wouldn’t find anyone else, and cried a little. It was a quiet little spot, right next to one of the ponds that had been overgrown with weeds and moss—the stone seat was covered in leeching green when I came down to perch on the end of it, but I couldn’t have cared less.

 

The tears leaked down my face, and I tried to remember the last time I had cried—usually, my tears meant that something big was going to happen as my father flailed around to try and make it right. I hadn’t cried in front of him in years because it often led to someone getting fired or worse—and it wasn’t as though I could even give him a hint as to why I was actually upset. I just needed to let out the emotions that had been clouding me the last couple of days, let them pour from me so they didn’t end up backed up and handed out in little parcels of rudeness and rage to those who didn’t deserve it.

 

Who did deserve it? Who’d put me in this mess? I guess I could have easily blamed Jasper for all of this. When I got to my angriest, that was exactly where I put the blame—if he hadn’t come along to that interview, if he hadn’t slept with me, if he hadn’t hinted to me that he would be the one to get me out of the awful mess my father had put me in, then none of this would have happened the way it had.

 

That bastard let me believe that he cared for me past a fuck, that he actually gave a shit about me—he shared parts of his past with me that he seemed reluctant to share with anyone else. We’d been in that little happy hole for about a month—the longest relationship I’d ever conducted without my father’s knowledge, and the first that I’d felt truly happy in.

 

And, when he would touch my face while I slept, hold me in his arms while I dozed as we pushed the times he would take me home later and later, I found myself believing that he actually cared for me too. He’d kept his mouth shut long enough for me to believe that I was his priority—that he wasn’t just doing all this because he got paid, or because it would get him on my father’s good side, or because he saw me as nothing more than a convenient hole to fuck.

 

He went around those apartments with me, he ate takeout with me, he saw me at my worst and my best and he seemed to like it all. Seems like I had misread him as dramatically as it was possible to misread someone.

 

I sat down on the edge of my bed and let out a sigh. I couldn’t believe what an idiot I’d been. I wondered if he’d meant any of it at all, or if it was all an act—he would still get paid, after all, no matter how I felt about the matter. And besides, it wasn’t as though I could go to Dad and get all mad and pouty about Jasper not treating me like his pseudo-secret-girlfriend anymore. If Dad even got a hint of this…I shuddered at the thought. Well, at least that was one thing we could both agree on. I knew we weren’t about to blow each other’s cover, at the very least.

 

I knew, though, that I couldn’t blame Jasper for all of this. Yeah, he’d led me on—but then, I’d treated him as if he owed me it. All that teasing, especially from someone who’s paying him money to spend time with them, might have come across as…what, something more serious? Something that offended him?

 

But it hadn’t come after all of that. It had come after he went down to the club again. I knew he’d been skipping out on meetings—he had to have been, because he’d been down there weekly for the last fortnight as well as going this evening too. That was why he couldn’t take me out today—he had “business” to attend to. I only knew because he called my father to tell him that he wouldn’t be around to guard me that day, and was that alright with him?

 

Of course, Dad agreed at once, delighted to have a reason to keep me in the house once again. If Jasper had called me, he’d have gotten the earful of a lifetime for slacking on his duties, as well as a few good minutes of begging from me to try and get him out and taking care of me once more. I had become addicted to my freedom, and having it snatched away so easily reminded me just how precarious it all was.

 

Laying down on the bed, I stared up at the ceiling and wondered what Jasper was doing at that moment. He’d told my father that he had a club meeting, and when I tried to press Dad on what that might have meant, he dismissed me with a wave of the hand and assured me that if Jasper was letting him down then it must have been important. I knew that much was true, despite my Dad’s constantly arrogant way of describing anything and everything that happened to him. But why had Jasper felt so insistent on letting me down? Was it something I’d done over the past few days?

 

I knew I hadn’t been the easiest, but then, neither had he—we’d gone from spending every day together in a state of orgasmic bliss to dropping off the map faster than I could blink. One minute, we seemed like we were on the brink of falling for each other, and the next, Jasper could barely look me in the eye without balking. He’d grown sharp and harsh, and that, in turn, made me respond in kind. Whenever people treated me badly, my response was not to kill them with kindness—it was to lash out in response, teach them a lesson, remind them that you don’t fuck over a D’Orazio and get away with it.

 

The club Jasper was at—surely, it had to do with the bodyguarding he’d told me about that day at his apartment. I wondered if that’s who the man who spoke to him in the coffee shop was—another member of the club, another little snippet of his world. I saw the way he looked at Jasper, the way he looked at me, and knew that whatever was being said, it wasn’t complimentary about either of us.

 

Maybe I was just being paranoid, but there was something about the way that man had looked at me—with complete and utter incredulity—that suggested he thought less of Jasper for associating with me. And, as much as I could try not to take that to heart, it was hard to pretend that I hadn’t seen in. It put my back up even more than it already was, forcing me into a corner where the only person I had left to lash out at was Jasper—and that had driven him away, as well it might. Maybe he was trying to save face, put some space between us so he wouldn’t be seen as getting too close to me. I knew I had a reputation—it was thanks to my father, more than anything, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew how people saw me, and it wasn’t exactly an honor to be associated with me.

 

I closed my eyes, ran my hands through my hair, and finally pulled myself to my feet. Things might be hard, but I didn’t want to wallow—if I wanted to convince Jasper I was worth guarding, I would have to do something about that. I would have to make myself worthy of his attention. And even though I wasn’t sure how I was meant to do that, I would find a way. Because that what D’Orazios did.