Page 23 of The Assistant
I’m pacing back and forth in my room, running my fingers through my hair when my phone rings. It’s him.
“Dad?” I answer, taking a seat on the edge of the bed and waiting for him to elaborate on what the fuck is going on.
“Are you home now? Is Harper with you?” he asks. I don’t hear any loud music in the background, so I assume he’s left the nightclub. Hopefully, that means Malik is nowhere nearby.
“What the fuck was that?” I can’t contain the rage in my voice, and it spills over in a way that my father has never heard from me before.
“What do you mean?” he asks, apparently deciding to play dumb with the whole situation.
“You told me I had a meeting with Malik, and you decided to parade Harper around him instead,” I explain. “A heads-up about that would have been nice.”
“I didn’t want many people to know before I knew it was official, but I can tell you about it now,” he begins, excitement light and airy in his voice. “Malik really liked her. He wants to go forward with it too.”
“Go forward with what?”
“Marrying Harper.” He’s as nonchalant as someone putting in an order for takeout. I blink a few times and replay the last three seconds over and over, trying to figure out if I misheard him or if he was actually serious.
“Marrying her?” I ask, clearly dumbfounded.
“Yes, you heard me correctly,” he says on the other side, moderately annoyed about having to repeat himself of all things. “We’ve come to an arrangement with Malik for this. Harper is going to marry him, and in turn, we get a generous financial package and several of his men for protection. We’ve been having a lot of trouble moving products over the border lately, and Malik’s men are some of the best in the business.”
How could I have not seen this sooner? My dad has been trying to do business with Malik for a long time, but he’s never had anything to offer him other than money. For men like Malik with more money than he could possibly ever spend, it means nothing. To trade with Malik, he would have to bring him something truly valuable. As it turns out, that’s Harper.
He couldn’t tell me sooner because it was a secret; that’s why he made me think I had the meeting. That’s also why he had me dress Harper up like some common whore to parade her around in front of him. He wanted me to show off as much of her to her potential buyer as possible.
I saw the way Malik looked at her. He liked what he saw.
“Does Harper know about this?” I already know the answer is no. But it’s the only thing I can think of to ask right now. Maybe, just maybe, there’s some shred of a moral compass hiding deep down within my father to get him to stop this. It’s the 21st century—trading a young woman off to someone for money is barbaric by anyone’s standards.
“She doesn’t, and you won’t tell her about it,” he immediately replies. I close my eyes and hold my forehead in my hands, not knowing what to do with this information.
“You can’t just marry her off to some old pervert like this,” I say, jumping to my feet and shaking my head. I can’t let this happen. Harper is mine.
The idea of Malik laying a hand on her makes my stomach twist in a knot, and I feel like I could be sick.
“You’ll stay out of this, Dawson. This is what we need to do for our business, and I won’t have any interference from you. You don’t have any say in this,” he says. His voice is cold and emotionless. He seems almost surprised that I would even try to stand up for her. “There’s one more thing. This is the entire reason I have her under your control for the next year. I expect you to keep a close eye on her, understand?”
I shake my head and try to think of some way to break this deal while he continues.
“With her job, she shouldn’t have any time to fool around. She needs to stay busy and distracted. You’ll have to make sure she stays pure, too,” Dad says. “That’s one of Malik’s demands, and if that falls through, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
My heart sinks to my stomach, and I can’t bring myself to say anything. Of course, Malik would want a virgin. And of course, I took his soon-to-be bride’s virginity before I knew anything about this. That sure does seem to complicate things.
We end the call, and I pace back and forth for a while, trying to come to terms with everything I just learned. I’m pissed off. My dad lied to me and used me. I should have known there was an ulterior motive for giving Harper this job, but I thought he was just trying to make her earn art school if he was going to pay. Maybe I was naïve.
I never thought he would sell his own stepdaughter.
“You’ll have to make sure she stays pure,” I repeat to myself, scoffing at the sentence. It echoes in my brain, and all I can think about is how Harper was once pure before I took that from her. I suppose I took that from Malik too. But it was mine to take. Harper is mine.
I don’t waste another moment before I storm out of my room and barge into Harper’s. She’s lying in bed on her stomach with a sketch pad in front of her, still in the skimpy dress I picked out for her.
When she sees me, she sits up, but I close the distance between us before she can and push her back down on the bed.
She gasps, but she doesn’t fight me on it. When we kissed in the car earlier, I could feel the excitement with every swish of her lips. She wanted me as much as I wanted her.
I climb on top of her and kiss her, holding her against the mattress while my tongue infiltrates her mouth. She kisses me back, moaning with every swish of my lips against hers.
My hands climb down her body, exploring the thin fabric of her dress and imagining the soft skin that lies beneath. I slide my hand inside the low-cut top of the dress to feel her breast. It’s soft and pillowy, her nipple hardening under my touch. I flick my thumb over it, and she gasps from the jolt of pleasure that courses through her.
