The time I got to spend with Leo before Delfino came back home was way too short. I could hear him coming from a mile away, the rumble of his engine distinctive from all the other cars that occasionally passed through our street. I had spent so much of my life listening for that sound, dreading it, a reminder that whatever reprieve I experienced from the man who kept me prisoner was always short-lived.

But at the same time, that sound made me feel less… alone. Delfino was my only company, as he had been ever since Leo left. He didn’t allow me to walk amongst the rest of the townsfolk unchaperoned. I was told that I needed to be kept safe. Even among the “flock,” he said, there are still wolves.

He had no idea how right he was.

“Lucy,” Delfino called from the door. “I’m home, child.”

I was, of course, ready for him, I’d learned after years of living like this that I was meant to be waiting in front of the stairs for his arrival with dinner prepared. It was the days that I was not prepared for him that were the worst. If I imagined hard enough, I could see the phantom bruises on my arms.

“Welcome home,” I replied with a practiced enthusiasm. He liked it when I seemed happy to see him. He would prefer a lie, and I had become a very good liar. “Dinner is ready and Leo is in his room. I can call him down, if you’d like.”

“Have you done as I told you?” he asked, stepping a bit closer than I was comfortable with. I wasn’t sure how to explain it at the time, but something seemed off about Delfino—more so than usual. To tell the truth, odd was his typical setting, but this time he seemed more inquisitive than I would have expected. He never really questioned me about my day unless he thought I’d done something wrong, and moreover, if he did suspect I’d screwed up somehow, it was standard procedure for him to inspect the finished product of my task rather than to ask me about it.

It put me off-guard, made me feel as though I was no longer certain of where I stood with him. One thing I’d learned during my time in Pleasant Lakes was that to survive under Delfino’s rule, you had to get used to routine. You had to become so methodical, so reliable he could set his watch by you. To experience a variation in the code, so to speak, was practically unheard of. I wrung my hands.

“Of course,” I said, taking a cautious step back. “Leo’s receiving my utmost attention, just like you’ve asked.”

Delfino looked into my eyes for a long time, as though searching for some trace of a lie. I hadn’t been dishonest with him—not if he took my statement at face value, anyway—but there was an intention between the words I certainly didn’t want him to find. I dipped my head just slightly, a display of reverence that seemed to appease him.

“Excellent,” he murmured, reaching out to brush the backs of his knuckles down my upper arm. It took everything in me not to retch. “That’s excellent, Lucy. Thank you.”

“Yes,” I replied. It was the only safe thing to say.

He turned away from me in an almost military fashion, striding toward the dining room without sparing me so much as a backward glance. “I’m ready for dinner,” he announced. Despite the surety of his movements there was something distant about his tone, as if he suddenly found himself with a lot on his mind. “Please call Mr. Richards down so that we can all eat together. I would like very much to get to know him better while he’s staying with us.”

I still wasn’t sure what Delfino’s interest in Leo was. It couldn’t be anything good. Still, there was no point in disobeying him, and my earlier conversation with Leo had made me feel like it was possible that for once, Delfino didn’t quite have the upper hand he thought he did. Hope, as I had said before, was a cruel thing. But sometimes that brand of cruelty can be a light in the dark. And when you’d been in the dark as long as I had, you took whatever glimmer you could get. Even if it turned out to be naught but fool’s gold.

“Of course,” I said, swallowing the nervous quaver in my voice as I forced a smile. He had sought my eyes for some deception, some betrayal of what Leo and I were actually up to while he was gone, but I knew by now how to remain impenetrable. Could Leo say the same? He might not be afraid of Father, but the flash bang of his anger could just as easily give us away.

I mounted the stairs to the guest room and rapped on the door. When Leo said “Yeah?” I assumed that meant it was all right for me to come in.

Boy, was I wrong.

“Dinner is…” I began as I opened the door. But I couldn’t finish my sentence, because suddenly my mouth was full of saliva and the part of my brain that controlled language shut down. I sputtered something unintelligible instead, my eyes glued to Leo’s ass as he pulled up his boxers and khakis in one fell swoop. He had his shirt off, allowing me to slowly raise my gaze up the curve of his spine to the coiled muscles of his broad shoulders, then the cut of his jaw, and finally his face as he turned and raised a brow.

“Ready?” he asked me.

I nodded dumbly. “Uh-huh.”

And then I realized he was talking about whether food was prepared, rather than if I was, and the ensuing rush of blood to my face made me dizzy.

“Good,” Leo said, reaching for the dress shirt on the bed. He grunted faintly as he put his arms through it, straining the muscles housing his broken ribs. “You remember what I told you?”

I stepped around him to assist in dressing him, my fingers trembling, but not so much that I couldn’t do up his buttons. “Just relax and we might be able to get through this,” I quoted him. “So long as neither of us slips up, then we should be fine.”

“Probably easier said than done,” Leo muttered, lips thinning in disapproval as I tucked the front of his shirt into his waistband. “But nobody said it’d be a simple task.” The back of my knuckles skirted over the front of his boxers and I felt him twitch through the fabric. When I looked back up at him, the corners of his mouth had quirked up. His eyes gleamed.

I ignored him. There was no way we were going to be able to get through dinner if we got all riled up. As Leo reached for me I slipped through his grasp and hurried back toward the door. “Nothing worth doing is ever easy,” I said.

He looked me up and down. “You got that right.” I hoped that by the time we reached the dining room, the blush would have disappeared from my cheeks.

Downstairs at the dinner table, costuming myself in every scrap of composure I could piece together, I led Leo to his chair across from Delfino and helped him get situated. He was mostly dismissive of my attempts, or otherwise impassive to them, but we both knew I had to put on a show if Father was to believe all was well between us. As I turned from Leo, I caught sight of Delfino out of my periphery. He regarded Leo with such cool contempt it made my skin crawl.

I hated to leave them alone, even for a second. But someone had to serve dinner.

I’d already plated everything for them, thankfully, which meant I didn’t have to spend a lot of time out of their sight. I hurriedly returned, the nape of my neck clammy with dread as I set their meals down—steak and onions, Delfino’s favorite.

“Mr. Richards,” he said, a tone in his voice that might have come off friendly, if it weren’t for the underlying unease it instilled in me. “Leo.”

He seemed to chew on this word for a moment as I seated myself on his right side with my own plate. My heart was pounding, my palms sweating. I already knew that something was wrong, but I couldn’t divine for the life of me what it might be. I was so frightened that Delfino already suspected something was going on between Leo and me; that somehow he knew everything that we had planned.

“Tell me about yourself,” he continued at long last, scrutinizing Leo from across the table. “I’m eager to hear about the life a man such as yourself leads. You must have a great many stories.”

“I’m not sure that the kind of stories I have are the sort you’d want to hear,” Leo replied, glancing my way for just a moment. I wanted to curse him for it. If Father noticed, then whatever he might suspect would all but be confirmed. We had to act like we’d never known one another until now… and Leo was already doing a poor job of it.

“Is that so?” Delfino steepled his hands. “Do you think that people like us wouldn’t be able to handle listening to your exploits, Mr. Richards? The tales of your sexual conquests and criminal activities as a member of a motorcycle gang?”

“None of that is any of your business,” Leo said, his knuckles white as he gripped the table. I could see the strain on his face as he tried not to look at me, and part of me even hoped that he would. What conquests was Delfino talking about?

“I suppose not,” he said, “but I have every right to know who it is that’s living in my house, don’t I? After all, the last time you and your friends were in town you extorted us out of money in order to ensure you left us all alone. And now here you are, back again and without the rest of your gang of hooligans. So, you can at least forgive me for having a few questions, can’t you?”

Leo stared at his steak before cutting himself a piece and taking a bite, an excuse to keep himself from giving Delfino the answers he sought. But the longer Leo avoided the question, the more I began to wonder about it myself. I knew that Leo was involved in a biker gang, but had he really been a con man? An extortionist?

“You talk about us like we’re the mafia,” Leo said after a moment. I tried not to faint at his choice of words. “We’re just a bunch of guys who like to ride. That’s all.”

Delfino paused a moment, smirking. That was the only indication he gave that Leo had struck a nerve.

“And the money you extorted from the town?” he asked, leaning forward like a predator scoping out the jugular of his prey. “Does that fall beneath the purview of ‘enjoying a good ride’?”

“That wasn’t my decision,” Leo answered, his eyes on his steak again. “I just happened to be there when it happened. Wrong place, wrong time.”

I wondered how much of that was true. Leo didn’t seem to me like the kind of guy who was out of the loop on much of anything.

“So you weren’t involved?” Delfino asked, eyebrows raised. “Then what were you doing while you were here, Mr. Richards? Surely you didn’t just keep yourself holed up in that motel for all that time.”

My stomach clenched. I knew the answer to that question, of course, and I could only hope that Leo wasn’t dumb enough to answer. For all that time, Leo had been with me.

“I kept my nose clean, if that’s what you’re asking,” Leo said, glaring at Delfino over his plate. “Besides that, there’s not a damn thing I did that’s any of your business.”

I watched the both of them stare one another down, my throat tightening with a sense of impending doom I had come to know very well over these years of living with Delfino. I wanted to say something, to do something to save Leo from possibly letting something slip. My biggest fear was that he would get angry and say something without thinking… and I prayed that that fear would never be realized.

“W-Would either of you like anything for dessert?” I asked, my voice strangled, but I could think of nothing else to say that wouldn’t be read as insolence. I needed to distract them somehow.

“That sounds lovely,” Delfino said, the corners of his mouth turning up in a smile that I didn’t altogether find comforting. “What are we having?”

“Raspberry crumble,” I mumbled, glad that I was at least able to defuse the silence somehow.

Delfino smiled. It was cruel. “Well, Lucy. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you were trying to placate me.”

“Not at all. I just thought you deserved a nice dinner,” I lied, my face turned away from him to save me from any chance he might glean my dishonesty from a break in my expression. These last few years had taught me a lot, especially how to keep a secret.