“Anytime, you know that,” Chase said seriously.

I gave him one last wave as he pulled out of the circular drive that rounded a string of midtown apartment buildings and businesses and a sprawling park that tumbled down in front of the modern architecture. The park used to be the home of every homeless person in the city, but when the city remodeled this part of the downtown area, they kicked the bums out and made this section classy and upscale. The bums scattered further east to the heart of downtown and the no bigger than two bedroom condos filled in with rich couples and eligible bachelors. My mom loved this area because she felt hip and important. I loved this area because I felt like it was hiding a filthy, dirty, secret past.

Just like me.

With a deep, fortifying breath, I walked into the modern elegance of my building and took the elevator to the top floor, preparing myself for the worst. The shiny elevator doors opened and I crossed the quiet, empty hall to our sprawling two bedroom apartment that overlooked the park and downtown Omaha.

I let myself in quietly and set my keys in a porcelain bowl designated for keys and other junk on the kitchen counter. Mom had decorated the apartment completely modern chic, which meant that every room of my home was cold and unwelcoming, but expensive and looked nice.

I hated it.

Not that I would have ever expected my mother to pick out an overstuffed couch and comfortable throw. She wasn’t one of those women that could curl up in front of the fire with a nice book. She never stood still for more than two minutes at a time and the designer heels that were permanently attached to her slender feet would have poked holes in any such couch by now anyway.

Plus it’s hard to relax when you have a giant stick up your ass.

But I did wish that my house felt a little bit more like a home. Everything was ivory and robin’s egg blue or some shade of gold. Everything was breakable and easily stained. The appliances were expensive; the electronics were state of the art, the windows were floor to ceiling and the thread counts high hundreds. And everything, every single thing was bought and paid for with some other schmuck’s credit card, including my once upon a time father’s and the string of lovers stupid enough to fall for her charm and long legs.

Once the door was closed with a final click behind me and the lock had slid into place, I struggled for a big breath; I was slowly suffocating in this posh prison, slowly fading away into the slavery I had been born into. I set my backpack down on a narrow, Tiffany’s suede bench by the front door, and tossed my trendy pilot’s jacket on top. I straightened my shirt, and fidgeted with the hem of my short jean skirt doing my best to delay walking fully into the apartment.

I could already smell him here, his cologne permeated every inch of air around me. He was man where there was usually only female, he was musk and rich earth where there was usually just floral and fruit. Suddenly my feet felt cemented to the bamboo flooring, my back magnetized to the front door. He was everywhere and I couldn’t make myself walk forward and meet him. Every instinct inside of me cautioned to get the hell out of here, to run. But I was conditioned to repress those feelings, raised to ignore instinct and reason. Hot tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, my nose twitched with the effort not to cry hysterically. I was a wimp.

“Ivy,” Nix purred as he rounded the kitchen cabinets and came face to face with me.

I smiled at him, forcing my feet forward, forcing my legs to move. I was a coward and a hypocrite and a terrible, awful person. But I couldn’t do anything but move toward him and step into his open arms. I kissed his cheek, once and then twice on the other side. He held me close to him, his strong arms encircling my biceps and his hard, chiseled chest pressing against me inappropriately.

“Hi, Nix,” I greeted in what I hoped sounded like a chipper, welcoming voice. I mean, I heard the unmistakable tremble and crack in every word.… but I just had to hope he didn’t.

“How was school?” he asked. He took a step back and I relished in the space between us. I sucked in a sharp breath, but he was still everywhere, his scent, his cologne, his essence still clung to every bit of air around me, choking the life out of me.

“It was, um, the same.” I met his emblazoned gaze and tilted my chin for an added illusion of confidence.

“Despite what your mother has told you, I could get you into a different school if you wanted me to. I know you’re unhappy where you’re at. Just say the word, and you can join Exie and Sloane wherever they’re at. Enough money will always get you what you want.” He finally released my arms to walk into the open kitchen and poured himself a drink from my mother’s intense alcohol collection.

“Not necessary,” I said quickly, too quickly. He glanced back at me over his shoulder and his dark eyes studied me for way too long. “It’s just that I don’t want to go against my mom or anything. She wants me at Central, so at Central I will stay.”

Nix turned around and leaned back against the granite countertop, arms crossed against his chest, his tumbler of Scotch resting in his hand. He was classically handsome with a tall, lean, muscular frame and broad shoulders. His dark hair was perfectly tussled and cut exactly business-man short. His even darker eyes were framed with long lashes and were as intense as they were sultry. He was the perfect specimen of man, enticing, alluring, sexy as hell and absolutely terrifying. Women were drawn to him without reserve or caution, men feared him, my mother worshipped him and I had to hold back my gag reflex. He was vividly evil, the worst kind of human being.

And he controlled my life. He controlled everything about me…. every little thing past, present and future.

“I like that, Ivy,” he paused to take me in again, his gaze raking over my figure from head to toe. I stilled the shudder that threatened to rip through me, repressing it into the deepest, darkest part of my soul, the part he couldn’t touch. “I like your obedience.” His voice was low and seductive and I didn’t even want to think about what he could be referring to. I couldn’t think about it. The fear of what was left unsaid haunted my nightmares and every waking thought that spun around tumultuously in my head.

“Where’s my mom?” I asked in a breathy, child-like voice. I wanted to stand up to him so desperately; I wanted to shout at him to stay away from me, not to touch me or even look at me. But I couldn’t. He was all-consuming and demanded respect and I had been conditioned to react to his every breath since the moment I was born.

“She went to see Honor,” Nix explained turning his gaze to the floor to ceiling windows across the room that led out to our substantial balcony. A look of pure, unadulterated hate flittered across his face, and his eyes turned to pools of malicious energy. Waves of aggression rippled through the room as he let his emotions fill up the apartment.

Finally, even amidst his overpoweringly negative energy, I found some solace in my situation. I was a prisoner, trapped and held without permission. But my sister, my little sister had an actual chance at life. Nix hated that, hated her. But without much of a choice, him and my mother tolerated Honor’s dictator of a father, with the hope that one day Honor would come into full custody of my mother.

My mother, the renowned and somewhat notorious Ava Pierce, had followed her routine with Honor’s father to the last ounce of successful practice she did with every one of her conquests. She found rich men on their death beds, exploited their loneliness and her exceptional good looks and then wiggled into the last will and testament moments before their final dying breath. It was her way of securing our wealth and my future.

Securing children took an entirely more complicated approach however, and there was a ton of work that went into the process. She couldn’t just pick anybody. The sperm donors had to pass an entire gamut of criteria and qualifications in order to be considered a viable candidate and then they had to be near enough to death so that they weren’t an issue for much longer, but healthy enough to father a child. It was a disgusting mess of deceit and sin. And somehow my mother pulled it off with me. But with Honor’s father, things didn’t go exactly as planned. He made a last minute miraculous recovery and when he came back to himself it was like my mother’s spell was completely broken. He divorced her and somehow managed to keep custody of Honor. His gobs of money and the female judge overseeing the case saw to that. Now my mother was only allowed supervised visits with his permission.

This was what kept us in Omaha. My mother had to get Honor back. Her pride, not her motherly love, demanded that she win. Plus, she was a huge embarrassment to our circle because of her failure and lack of ability to secure her offspring. She was biding her time until Honor became her possession. Nix was making sure she followed through. Honor’s father was securing a separate future for his daughter. And Honor was sheltered and protected from it all, while I was caught in the middle, a jaded, shell of a human being.

I would do anything in my power to protect Honor from this life. I loved her probably more than myself, even though we weren’t that close. I wasn’t allowed to visit her without my mother and it was almost impossible for us to have a conversation with her hanging around. But I adored her, she was my sister, the only person in my life that had no expectations for me, had no hidden agenda or was captured under the curse. No matter what it took, I would always make sure my mother had absolutely nothing to do in Honor’s life. She was eight now, too young to see what an evil wench her mother was, but still blissfully adoring of her doting father. I prayed it stayed that way. I prayed that she never met Nix and the circus of demented hell he brought with him.

The silence that fell between us after mentioning Honor was expected. Nobody knew what to say about her. Her father keeping her was unprecedented. Her father denying my mother something that she wanted was absolutely unparalleled. And it drove Nix mad.

“We’re meeting her for dinner in an hour. Go get dressed, Ivy,” Nix commanded, taking a sip of his forty year old beverage. He continued to stare out the window, his expression a mixture of hateful, concentrated emotions. A trickle of fear slid down my spine in the form of a single bead of sweat and as much as I wanted and needed to protect my sister, I said a silent prayer that none of the feelings swelling inside of him would ever be directed at me.

I nodded my acceptance of his demand and peeled my feet off the floor, where I swore they had started to grow roots. As soon as the promise of escape from Nix and his ominous presence was offered I took off like I was in a race for my life, practically sprinting to the solitude of my bedroom.

His deep, melodic voice followed me down the hall and before I could escape to the sanctuary of my bedroom he threw out one last command, his voice no louder than it would be if he were standing right next to me. I heard every word as if he were whispering in my ear. His words snaked around my insides, coiling them tight with revulsion and hopelessness. “I want you on display, Ivy. Wear something that I can appreciate.”

The door closed behind me, like the door to my fears and feelings. I bottled them up, shut them away and locked everything tightly inside of me. I ignored the trembling of my hands and the ice cold feeling of dread that washed through my stomach like acid and foreboding. I was sixteen years old. How the hell was I supposed to deal with that? Process it? Tonight there wasn’t any choice but to obey Nix, his word was absolute law in my life, no matter how much I hated this life or him.

I just had to get through the next two years. Just two years.

Someday soon he would have no say in my life…. or in my wardrobe.

And I would be able to breathe.

Chapter Ten

“Ivy,” Nix called out from the other side of my door. I stood frozen in front of my closet in only a lace bra and matching underwear, undecided on what to wear. “Can I come in?”

Fear, cold and shrill, chased my blood through my veins. He could come in, if he wanted to and there wasn’t anything I could say. I was not really wearing any clothes, but that wasn’t even the most frightening part of this. Nix had seen me like this before, hell Nix had seen all of us like this before. My terror originated in the fact that my tattoos were completely exposed and I would be so dead if Nix found them.

“Uh, I’m still getting dressed,” I called back in a quivering voice. I walked over to the door on my tip toes, making as little sound as I could. My breath felt hurried and deafening as I tried to be as quiet as humanly possible. I desperately wanted to disappear, blend into the carpet or dematerialize into the stagnant air of the apartment. I placed two shaky hands against the solid wood of the door and held them there as if I could stop Nix from entering, as if I could stop Nix from doing anything that he wanted.

There were several beats of silence and I wondered if Nix was processing the real reason I was keeping him out. “Do you need help?” he asked in an almost exasperated voice. There was no perverse anxiousness or even inappropriate curiosity. My mother would be waiting and Nix hated to be late, even for her. My stalling was costing him time and money, that was all.

I exhaled a small breath of relief. A small, tiny one, almost insignificant. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t trivial. Just a little bit of release, that was all I needed, that was all I wanted.

“No, I’m just finishing up. I’ll be ready in five minutes,” I answered more confidently than before. I slid one hand down the smooth wood, enjoying the cool, flat feel under my fingers and as quietly and slowly as I could manage I double checked that the door was locked and secured. Another miniscule breath of relief.

Not that a locked door had ever stopped Nix from getting what he wanted, but tonight I had the desperate hope that what he wanted was not me.

“Five minutes,” he echoed in a surely command.

I moved back to my closet and slipped inside, digging out the tattoo cover up from my secret hiding place. I rubbed it generously on my ribs and wrist and then took thirty seconds to stare at myself in the mirror and make sure everything was hidden. Even though I hoped these parts of my body would always stay hidden, there was no denying the fear I lived with daily of being found out for these small acts of rebellion. I didn’t even want to think about the price I would have to pay. Thank God for Kat Von D and her miraculous cover up products.