Page 6 of Carnal Desire

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like,” I said.

Like forever,I added silently.

My phone dinged with a text from Theo. I dropped her hand to check it out.

Theo:Pizza will be there in fifteen. Bob will have a detailed background check on Cinderella within the hour.

Ariel:You’ve got your fairy tales mixed up, you’re thinking of Goldilocks. But thanks. I trust her.

Theo:We’re still getting a background check, just in case. I added cheesecake to your pizza order. Call me tomorrow and let me know what happened tonight.

That was the great thing about having one of your best friends as your assistant. They knew what you needed without your even asking for it.

“The pizza is coming soon,” I told Sadie. “I’m going to take a shower and change into something more comfortable. Can you grab the pie when it gets here? The doorman will send them right up.”

“Sure.”

I started to walk out but Sadie stopped me. “Oh, uh, sorry, let me get my stuff out of your bedroom before you go in there.”

I bit my lip to keep from suggesting that she keep it there. Her stuff would be in my room soon enough. But I didn’t want to scare her off quite yet, so I waited in the hallway while she gathered up a battered backpack and a pair of equally battered gym shoes, both of which she’d stuffed halfway under my bed.

“Make yourself at home in the guest room,” I said, pointing to the room across from mine.

There was another room down the hall, but I wanted her close. Sadie walked past me with a mumbled thanks. I hated seeing her like this – sad and defeated. Even though she’d done her best to be quiet and unobtrusive whenever she came to clean the condo, there had always been a spark of life there. A touch of bravado. But being kicked out of her house and having her savings drained by that bitch of an ex had sucked the life out of her. And now this situation had clearly thrown her for a loop.

“By the way, what’s your ex’s name?”

Sadie looked over her shoulder at me. “Uh, it’s Jane Bedlow.”

I typed out a text to Theo, asking him to have our P.I. run a deep background on Sadie’s thieving ex.

“B-E-D-L-O-W?” I spelled it out.

“Yeah. Why?”

I waited until Sadie met my eyes so she could understand the seriousness of my words.

“I’m going to make her pay for what she did to you,” I vowed, my voice cold and deadly. “She will give you back everything she’s stolen from you, or I will systematically ruin her life, and I will make sure she regrets her life choices every day for the rest of her miserable life.”

“You can do that?”

“I can and I will,” I replied.

Sadie stared at me for a long moment, then she flew across the hallway and threw her arms around my waist, pulling me into a tight hug.

“Thank you, Ariel. Thanks for everything.”

Sadie

It had been a long time since I felt like someone was in my corner. Since my mom died in fact. Her death had been sudden. One day she was fine and the next one a blood vessel burst inside her brain. She was dead before she hit the floor. For the first nineteen years of my life it had just been me and my mom against the world, so her death hit me hard.

That’s why when I started talking to Jane I was so easily wooed. I felt alone, and desperate for affection. We met on a gaming site and somehow that led to us becoming online friends. I created this whole romantic fantasy in my head and when Jane encouraged me to drop out of school and come live with her in Chicago, I thought I was finally going to get my happily ever after.

It didn’t take long to realize that Jane wasn’t exactly Princess Charming. She held all the power in our relationship, and I never challenged it. My biggest regret wasn’t that I moved to Chicago to have a relationship with her, it was that I stayed in a relationship with her about five years longer than I should have.

That was the thing about abusive relationships, they started off okay in the beginning. Then something happened and you wrote it off, but one bad incident followed another until you didn’t realize how bad it had become.

Jane had never hit me, but she’d been emotionally abusive. She’d destroyed my sense of self, always making me feel small and worthless, then when she was done with me she stole every dollar I had.

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