Page 65 of Claiming Liberty
He fingers drum another several seconds while he looks like he isn’t quite convinced. Finally, he moves his hand to his face and rubs his jaw. “’Kay, well, let’s get this done, then.”
He takes my hand and turns toward the front entryway before leading me toward it. I can tell he’s nervous. Scared. And I doubt it has anything to do with him switching out a bunch of cigars that’ll end up killing people.
He’s nervous because of me. Because he doesn’t want me here. He still sees me as the princess he needs to save, but I wish he wouldn’t. I’m not that person anymore, which is good because that person hated Angel.
We go inside, Angel holding onto my hand tightly, and I have to force him to let go of his punishing grip on my hand once we stop at the familiar double doors.
He takes a deep breath, his gaze moving between me and the door.
“I’ll go first.” I give him a small, encouraging smile, one you’d give a child just before the doctors come and take you away for heart surgery.Mommy’s fine, dear, don’t you worry.
I push open the door and throw my hair back as I make my way into the smoky room. It looks a lot like it did before only with more people, several of whom I recognize from the night I came with Peter. It isn’t like this at the manor. There’s the occasional familiar face, but it mostly feels like an endless shuffling of men. It all kind of blurs together when you’re dancing on a stage.
My feet carry me farther into the room, and I try to look like I belong. I wasn’t lying to Angel about everything. Iammaking a mental inventory of the women here, specifically the unhappy women. The women with masters who are heartless, vile men who made their lives a living hell the second they were bought from Sawyer.
Those are the women who are going to be the most motivated to help. A huge chunk of them are about to be masterless, which I can only assume puts them back at the manor. When Peter first brought me back to the island, he wanted me to tell him how to turn the women there. It was an easy answer for me: I couldn’t.
They’re too brainwashed by Sawyer. But these women? These women took their blinders off a long time ago.
I come to a small, two-person table on the edge of the room and quietly lean against it, hoping I look like I’m waiting for someone.
I roam my gaze around the room, surveying all the people. It’s easier to pick out the women who aren’t good candidates rather than the women who are. Several of them hang onto men I’m presuming are their masters, wearing smiles that light up the room.
I keep sifting, ruling them out one by one until I land on a woman with short, cropped black hair at the poker table. She’s sitting on a man’s lap with his arm around her waist, but her body language doesn’t suggest she’s relaxed by it. In fact, she looks tense, her back ramrod straight. Her stare is aimed ahead of her, but I don’t think her glazed eyes are registering anything. There’s no smile. To be fair, there isn’t a frown either. Her face is blank, vacant, like she isn’t even here.
It’s harder than I thought it would be to pick out the tortured women, but I keep scanning, searching for bruises orsomethingto tell me for sure that she can be trusted.
Just as I’m about to give up on the woman, I spot it.
Her legs. Her dress is short enough that the marred skin on her thighs is just barely visible. If her legs were crossed, I would’ve missed it altogether, and if I hadn’t noticed the same scarring on Layan, I would never have known what it was from.
Layan does a thorough job of covering up the physical reminders of her previous master, but the day we got dressed for the manor, I saw the raised, spiderweb looking patches of discolored skin. I tried to look away, but it’s hard when you’re imagining how someone could get that kind of scar. She told me without me having to ask the question.
Acid. It’s an acid burn.
And from the looks of it, I bet they were done by the same man. It would be a weird coincidence otherwise.
My eyes move to the man. He’s kind of attractive, in a way the evilest of people seem to be. He doesn’t look particularly threatening, but somehow, staring at him, watching him study the cards in his hand, I know who this man is.
Eli Colley.
I turn and look down at the table, my pulse skipping. Goosebumps spread on my arms.
“Hey there.”
I jump at the voice, and spin to face a man in an atrociously green shirt with his teeth gleaming in a wolfish smile.
“Sorry,” he says, although there’s only humor in his tone. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
I don’t say anything. It’s silly to be afraid of evil at this point in my manor whore journey, but being in the same room as the man Layan has told me about suddenly makes me want to leave.
The woman with the black hair catches my eyes before she walks to the door. I hurry toward her, never giving the green shirt stranger another look.
When I get to the hallway, my head jerks right and left. It’s empty.
Shit.
I start down the hallway, slowing at each door to listen for someone inside. I don’t know where the bathroom is in this place, otherwise, it’d be my destination. As it is, I wander around aimlessly.