Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 110757 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110757 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Every day, I had to put in work to survive. I was lonely at times, but also at peace. I’d given up actively searching for my parents and Mae, because it was killing me inside to see how awful people were treating each other in every city I went to.
I still felt them with me when I was on my own in the forest. Trickling creeks made me think of Mae and me taking off our shoes and socks to dance in shallow streams when we were hiking with our parents. A perfect bloom on a flower reminded me of my mom’s endless fascination with nature. Thunderstorms made me remember the way my dad would sit on our screened-in porch when it was storming, because he loved the sounds and the fresh, earthy scents.
Rib eye with a side of au gratin potatoes is the next course. Amanda slices the hot, perfectly cooked steak tableside. She practiced cooking this meal for days before making it the first time, the rest of the staff helping her learn how to time everything perfectly.
The rib eye needs to rest for fifteen to twenty minutes before slicing. The potatoes need to come out of the oven five minutes before the rib eye is ready to go out. Amanda has it down now, and she’s confident as she places sliced meat on Lochlan’s plate.
“Thank you,” Lochlan says.
It’s weird how he’s occasionally polite. It doesn’t make up for the rest of his behavior. It’s actually kind of unnerving, because he always uses the same measured voice, whether he’s thanking the chef for his steak or telling me I’m a worthless bitch he can’t get hard for.
Amanda gives me a quick wink when she puts steak on my plate. I like talking to her when she’s working in the kitchen. She’s thirty-two and was a veterinary technician when the virus came. She says she could barely even make scrambled eggs. But surviving in the postvirus world means adapting, and she has.
“We annexed another three thousand two hundred square miles to the east,” Lochlan says, raising a bite of steak to his mouth.
“That’s good.”
“I’m traveling there tomorrow to oversee the securing of the new border.”
Hell yes. Everyone in the house relaxes when he’s gone for several days. In the evenings, we make pizza and watch old DVD copies of our favorite movies. This multimillion-dollar home may be our prison, but it’s a much nicer one than others are trapped in.
Alonzo and Robbie come in to clear away dishes, keeping their gazes on the dining table.
“You’re ovulating, so I’ll come to your room tonight,” Lochlan says. “Wear the white bra and thong.”
My face heats. Everyone in this house knows Lochlan is trying to get me pregnant, and several of them worked here when I used to fight him. Alonzo used to sneak me ice packs and pain medication after beatings.
Them knowing what I’ll be wearing makes it even more humiliating, though. My father raised me to cut off the balls of any man who tried to violate me the way Lochlan does.
He’d want me to survive, though. I know that. My life’s mission isn’t just to get out of here. It’s to make him pay a heavy price for every single time he’s laid a hand on me. It won’t be quick and painless. I’m going to kill him slowly.
Lochlan will learn what it feels like to be trapped. Caged. Hurt. Invaded. Knowing my smiling face will be the last thing he ever sees as the life drains out of him sustains me.
“Maybe I should just take you right here on this table,” he jokes as Alonzo and Robbie deliver flourless dark chocolate cake to each of us.
Maybe I should slice his tiny, pale dick off with a steak knife. My gaze locks onto the woman in the painting behind him.
“If you want to,” I say absently.
She’s looking away from Leonardo in the artwork, focused on something else. It’s the way I dissociate when Lochlan is wheezing and grunting on top of me.
I thought I could only feel close to my family in the woods, surrounded by nature. But that first night I agreed to sit in this dining room and eat with Lochlan, more than a month after I was brought here, I saw Ginevra.
The painting’s title, Ginevra de’ Benci, translates to Ginevra of the Benci family. My heart raced into overdrive when I saw it. My father loved the painting because Ginevra means “juniper”, and that’s the middle name my mother gave me.
Juniper is a plant that’s part of the cypress family. It’s resilient, surviving and even thriving in conditions that kill other plants.
In harsh, windswept climates, juniper gets twisted and gnarled into what Germans call “krummholz”—stress-sculpted beauty. Though it looks damaged, it’s very much alive and deeply rooted.