The Blood Debt

Chapter 5

Ayla

I'm finishing off the breakfast Rejab brought me earlier when the door opens for the second time.

Roman comes in holding a garment bag.

My period's over so I think it's been at least a week since I've seen him.

His eyes travel up and down my body with distaste. I'm wearing the grey pyjamas he got me. I know he doesn't like me, but when he looks at me like he is right now, it's hurtful in a weird kind of way, not because I want him to like me - that's the last thing I want - but because it opens an old wound.

I've never been confident. I didn't get my mom's delicate features like Holly did and I've always been chronically shy. Getting through high school without a boyfriend or even being kissed didn't help. I don't count that sloppy drunken kiss Miles Beckworth gave me at prom because that felt more like a badly coordinated invasion than it did a kiss.

I'm not ugly, but my face has always been a little too masculine and angular; my mouth a little too big. In elementary school, the mean girls used to call me Chomper Moore, and the legacy has stayed with me. It's an insecurity I still carry ten years later, always making sure to cover my mouth as I laugh even today.

They call me the Railroad Heiress like I'm nothing more than my family name. People act like my entire identity revolves around it. I've only ever had one boyfriend, a Lions quarterback back I met at last year's Yule Ball. Todd Doyle. It lasted exactly a month. He had no idea who I was, or so I thought at the time, until he shoved his hand down my pants in the back seat of his friend's car and then called me a frigid bitch when I asked him to stop. He threw me out of the car and told me to take the subway home with my free lifetime membership. I cried all the way home. The next time I saw him on campus he called me 'no-Moore,' creating a new nickname rivaling the trauma of my 'Chomper Moore' days.

So when Roman looks at me the way he is now, it's familiar in the worst kind of way.

He lays the bag over a chair and sits down at the table.

"Make me a coffee," he says, polite as ever. He has a habit of speaking in demands.

I do as I'm told.

I've learnt compliance makes me less visible to Roman.

"I'm taking you downstairs to the club tonight," he says, as I pass him his coffee in a paper cup.

I'm still not allowed any crockery or utensils.

Roman's house rules are stricter than an asylum for the criminally insane.

"Why," I ask. I don't mean to. It just slips out of my mouth. This has been my plan all along, but I'm surprised and sceptical and it just comes out of my mouth.

"You've been good, so I'm rewarding you," he says, his eyes studying my face for a reaction as he takes a sip of the coffee.

I watch him with the same suspicion, imagining what a pump of dish soap in his coffee might do to him.

"If you can behave yourself tonight, you can start coming out more often... but if you'd rather not."

I want to scream 'Are you kidding me? Of course I want to', but I reign back the enthusiasm. I know from the way he's looking at me that if I get too excited he might change his mind just to spite me.

"No! No, no. I want to."

He stares at my face like it has some encrypted message on it he's trying to decipher. I hold his gaze for what seems like an eternity, knowing how his mind works. How he might think I'm hiding something if I look away.